t might be something that all of our adversaries are doing. China, Qatar, Iran, and Russia. But the weird thing is, and one of the things he mentioned was the Tenet Media situation. Do you remember that? It turned out that Tim Pool and Dave Rubin and some other podcasters were receiving money from a group that had some Russian backing. But they didn't know it. And the group wasn't asking them for any different treatment or any different editorial. So there was no impact whatsoever on what they did. They just got free money. And then it was uncovered that there was this connection to Russia. And I guess that got unwound.

But I've noticed that whenever Russia is trying to interfere with the United States it looks like a high school project level quality. Do you remember the troll farm that was allegedly trying to influence the 2016 election? But if you actually looked at how much they spent it was basically nothing. And then you look at the quality of the memes they presented and they were just ridiculous. Just so empty of any quality or persuasiveness. They were just nothing. And I thought to myself, is that the best that Russia can do to disturb our internal politics? Some memes that nobody saw and then giving free money to people to do what they were going to do anyway? That's the best they could do?

And then there was the story about the one hacker who got into, what was it, the Democrats or Hillary's email or something. And then we're told by our own intelligence people that it was Russia. And we know it. Well maybe. But I'm not so sure. So it seems to me there would be a lot more evidence of Russia doing something like that.

And then the other context is that it's what everybody does to all of their adversaries anyway. So the idea is that if you're just boosting, you're not creating from scratch but you're just boosting those elements within our society that are the most destructive, that's all it takes. And I'm thinking, isn't that exactly what we do to overthrow other countries? Don't we routinely fund their most divisive elements and specifically to weaken them and stage a coup? So maybe everybody's just doing it to everybody.

But the bigger context, the thing that to me seems the most salient is that there's nothing these other countries could possibly do to boost the most corrosive parts of our society that isn't already being done by Democrats and specifically Soros. So is Soros working for one of our adversaries? Because he seems to be more tightly wound around our Democrats. And it feels like that we're being torn apart from the inside. I don't see the impact from other countries. And my own view with this Yuri Bezmenov, who is sort of the OG of saying that Russia's got this plan to destroy our civilization with their clever shenanigans, I've never trusted him to be real. I have a theory that he's the op. He's not the person telling us the op. I think he's the op. Because if you thought that it was coming from the outside you would not be able to fix it. So I think he's just looking at the fact that we're naturally divisive and that if we're naturally divisive you're going to see all these examples that you're going to say, wait a minute, did Russia fund Antifa? Well no evidence of it. Wait a minute, is Russia behind the teachers unions? Well not that I know of. We have these wildly divisive elements in the US. I feel like this Yuri Bezmenov was either just monetizing what was going to happen anyway by acting like he had this theory about why it's all happening. I don't trust that guy at all. Like I feel like he's the op. But that's just a feeling. I don't have proof of that.

Anyway, so if all these countries are influencing us by boosting the worst most corrosive parts of our society, they don't have a chance compared to the boosting that the Democrats are doing to those exact same entities. And Soros in particular. So anyway I don't really know how to think about that other than it doesn't look like it's the biggest problem in the world compared to what we're doing to ourselves. The stuff coming from inside the tent.

Well meanwhile Israel announced yesterday that it's going to be cutting off electricity to Gaza, which would have the effect of cutting off water because the desalination plants there would require that electricity. And I guess they're going to cut off humanitarian aid. I believe they have food that would last them maybe weeks or months but no more humanitarian aid. Now this of course is to try to squeeze them to give up or to give up the hostages.

But according to The Hill, Tara Sud is writing that the Trump hostage envoy thinks that we might have a deal with Hamas or that we could have a deal soon to free all of the hostages within weeks. So that's Adam Boehler is the White House special envoy. And he thinks that every hostage taken by the militant group Hamas could be freed all at the same time in weeks. Now that doesn't even seem remotely likely to me. Do you think there's something we don't know about? Because if there's no new variables on the table I don't see how we'd get a different outcome.

So remember Trump said if you don't release them all they will be held to pay. Is it possible that we've delivered a threat that they completely feel is real? Maybe to the leadership, maybe to Iran. You know, maybe the threats on Iran, if we don't get them back we're going to take out your nuclear facilities. So it seems to me that this is one of those cases where we may never understand what the real deal was. Maybe we offered something of value. Maybe we offered a better threat. I don't see how this could just sort of work all of a sudden. I don't know. But we'll be optimistic.

Now the other day somebody in the comments challenged me to do the best I could to describe the Palestinian side of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Now that would be the ultimate third rail. So of course I said yes because I think I'm attracted to trouble. So let's see if I can do this and still be in business tomorrow.

All right, so I'm going to give you the best objective description of the situation. The first thing I would say if you're looking at the Palestinian, and here I'm not talking about just Gaza, so we'll talk about the Palestinians more generally, I don't think you can understand the situation in terms of who's good and who's bad, who has the better long-term claim, who's got the historical, let's say the best complaints about what happened and therefore the best narrative of how it should turn out. As long as you're thinking about who's good or bad or the narratives or the history, you're just lost. Nothing like that matters.

The only thing that matters in this region is who has the power at the moment. Israel has the power. If it were reversed it would be reversed, meaning that the Israelis would be complaining that they were under occupation or worse. And everything that the Palestinians are saying, hey you're blocking us from statehood, you're keeping us suppressed, we're in an outdoor prison, it would just be the other way around. Because you have two societies, two civilizations that are incompatible and they will always be incompatible. There's no way that they're just going to live next to each other in peace. So it's a power dynamic and that's it. So there's no good guy, there's