Podcasts about shia muslims

World tensions are running high over what is happening in the Middle East. Earlier this week Vice President J.D. Vance was engaged in talks to work out an agreement with Iran. Present were representatives of the United States and Iran, but also Qatar and Pakistan. Pakistan is an Islamic Republic, the fifth most populous country in the world, with approximately 260 million people. They are seeking to transform this region through this agreement, yet Islam has no tolerance for Christianity. Christians are often targeted for their faith, even if it means bringing false charges against them. Pastor Shahid Kaleem returns to Crosstalk to open our eyes to what is happening in this region. For example, what is Pakistan's relationship with Iran? How do Pakistan's Shia Muslims treat Christians? What about the blasphemy laws targeting Christianity? Most importantly, there's the vital need to get the gospel out to a spiritually needy nation.

The main difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims centers on a historical disagreement over who should have led the Muslim community after the prophet Muhammad died in 632 AD. Sunni Muslims believe the leader should be elected from among the most capable members of the community, while Shia Muslims believe leadership belongs exclusively to the direct descendants of Muhammad's family. Today, this distinction shapes everything from their religious practices and leadership structures to the modern political landscape of the Middle East.--The PursueGOD Truth podcast is the “easy button” for making disciples – whether you're looking for resources to lead a family devotional, a small group at church, or a one-on-one mentoring relationship. Join us for new episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Find resources to talk about these episodes at pursueGOD.org.Help others go "full circle" as a follower of Jesus through our 12-week Pursuit series.Click here to learn more about how to use these resources at home, with a small group, or in a one-on-one discipleship relationship.Got questions or want to leave a note? Email us at podcast@pursueGOD.org.Donate Now--

Erick Erickson fills in for Mark Arum today. He discusses the GA elections happening today! Erick also talks about the difference between the Sunni & Shia Muslims, its' origin and how it relates to modern day.

Erick Erickson fills in for Mark Arum today. He discusses the GA elections happening today! Erick also talks about the difference between the Sunni & Shia Muslims, its' origin and how it relates to modern day.

Erick Erickson fills in for Mark Arum today. He discusses the GA elections happening today! Erick also talks about the difference between the Sunni & Shia Muslims, its' origin and how it relates to modern day.

What happens when your search for God leads you to a truth that costs you everything?In this powerful episode of A Stronger Faith, Sajeda Wilson shares her extraordinary journey from 32 years of devout Islam to a life-altering encounter with Jesus Christ. Born in Pakistan and raised in a prominent Shia Muslim family, Sajeda was fully committed to her faith—until a personal tragedy and a search for truth led her to open a Bible for the very first time.In this episode, we discuss:⇨ The Hidden Inconsistencies: Why Sajeda's deep study of the Quran and Hadith left her with more questions than answers.⇨ The "Secret" Bible Study: How an avid reader discovered the person of Jesus through the scriptures in a hotel room.⇨ The Supernatural Nurse: Sajeda's incredible, verbatim account of a mysterious figure who appeared in her hospital room during a critical moment.⇨ The Ultimate Price: What it feels like to be told you are "dead" to your family for choosing to follow Jesus.⇨ Radical Redemption: How the "God of judgment" she feared became the "God of love" who rescued her.Sajeda's story is a profound reminder that God is actively pursuing us, often in the places we least expect. Whether you are questioning your own faith, seeking the truth, or need to be reminded of the power of God's love, this testimony will leave you changed.-------------------✟ ✟ ✟ NEW ✟ ✟ ✟SMALL GROUP DISCUSSION QUESTIONS from this episode:1.What does it look like to seek God with an honest heart, even when it leads us into uncomfortable questions? 2. How has God used long seasons—not just moments—to draw you closer to Him?3. What parts of your identity (family, culture, tradition, expectations) have shaped your understanding of God—for better or for worse?Key Bible Verses for Further Study:1. Jeremiah 29:132. John 14:63. Psalm 34:18------------------------✟ Donate to A Stronger Faith here ⇨ https://www.astrongerfaith.org/give--------------------------✟ Recommend a guest for us here ⇨ https://www.astrongerfaith.org/contact--------------------------✟ CONNECT WITH US! ⇨ Website: https://www.astrongerfaith.org/ ⇨ YouTube: https://bit.ly/asfmyoutube ⇨ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/astrongerfaith/ ⇨ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@astrongerfaith ⇨ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/astrongerfaith------------------------✟ If you need prayer or deliverance, or if you would like to join us as a prayer partner, please visit our prayer resources page at https://www.astrongerfaith.org/prayer.✟ If you are looking for a good faith-building book, visit our recommended books page at https://www.astrongerfaith.org/books.

Antoun Issa grew up quietly aware of a profound grief in his mother's eyes. As an adult, after living and working in the Middle East, he finally knew how to ask her about surviving the Lebanese Civil War.Antoun is a journalist who grew up in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, after his parents had escaped the civil war in Lebanon in the 1970s.Growing up in Craigieburn as the baby of the family, Antoun was particularly close with his mother.He was always conscious of a deep sadness in his mother's eyes, but was wary of asking her too many questions.As an adult, Antoun went to live and work in Lebanon.There, in the Middle East, where he worked as a journalist, Antoun saw firsthand what happens when the trajectory of human life is interrupted by conflict and violence.Upon returning home to Australia, he was finally ready to ask his mother about the source of her quiet and enduring grief, and what came out of her was a remarkable story of true love, true loss and resilience.Upon returning home to Australia, he was finally ready to ask his mother about the source of her quiet and enduring grief, and what came out of her was a remarkable story of true love, true loss and resilience.REBIRTH: A Love Story from the Depths of War is published by Hachette.This episode of Conversations was produced by Meggie Morris. Executive Producer is Eliza Kirsch.It explores the Middle East, War, Conflict, Beiruit, Israel, PLO, Palestine, United States, civil war, conflict, refugees, religious conflict, Lebanese Christians, Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, Mountains, Maronite Christians, politics and religion, proxy wars, Iran, Iraq, Arab-Isreali, Saudi, Cold War, Arab Cold War, Taif Agreement, political power, relationship, origin story, writing, books, memoir, novel, survival, death, violence, sliding doors.To binge even more great episodes of the Conversations podcast with Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski go the ABC listen app (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. There you'll find hundreds of the best thought-provoking interviews with authors, writers, artists, politicians, psychologists, musicians, and celebrities.

What does it really mean to lead without power but still make an impact? I had the chance to speak with Prince Gharios el Chemor, whose life blends royal history, humanitarian work, and a deep commitment to compassion and critical thinking. From his family's legacy in the Middle East to his upbringing in Brazil, Gharios shares how identity, purpose, and service shaped his path. As our conversation unfolds, you will hear how sovereignty today is less about ruling and more about responsibility. We explore education reform, the dangers of social division, and why compassion and critical thinking matter more than ever. Gharios also introduces his vision for the future through Logos One, a new education model designed to help people live with purpose. I believe you will find this episode both thought provoking and inspiring as you consider what it means to truly live with an Unstoppable Mindset. Highlights: 00:01:15 – Hear why titles mean nothing without purpose and service00:08:26 – Learn how identity and adversity shape a global perspective00:24:43 – Understand what sovereignty means in today's world beyond power00:36:43 – Discover how small acts of service can deeply impact lives00:43:31 – Learn why compassion and critical thinking are missing today01:02:04 – Understand what it truly means to live with an unstoppable mindset Bottom of Form About the Guest: HRH Prince Gharios El Chemor of Ghassan is a diplomat, author, artist, and leader recognized internationally as the heir of the Ghassanid Dynasty, the Christian Arab royal house that once ruled much of the Levant. He's a multi-awarded humanitarian on four continents for his work in cultural preservation and minority rights. He played a central role in restoring the House's historical continuity and securing its recognition under international law, including The special consultative status at the United Nations. He was knighted under the authority of the late Pope Francis, holds the U.S. Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award, multiple Congressional honors, and has been welcomed by heads of state, religious leaders, and academic institutions across four continents for his advocacy on behalf of persecuted Christian communities in the Middle East. Beyond diplomacy, Prince Gharios is an award-winning best-selling author of thirty-seven books spanning philosophy, international law, spirituality, governance systems, and martial arts. In 2014, he published the peer-reviewed Middle East: The Secret History, a groundbreaking work that earned him the 21st International Cultural Award Trentino–Abruzzo–Alto Adige (awarded by the Italian government) in the History category. Seven of his works reached number one on Amazon's bestseller list.   Since several of his titles achieved #1 across multiple categories, this actually represents thirteen #1 Best-Seller achievements overall.   His intellectual work includes the development of Skeptical Mysticism, the Law of the Triple Accord, and Neo-Holism, a framework that integrates reason, compassion, and systemic balance to address political and social crises. His works — including The Sovereign Perspective, Essentia, Sapientia, and Unitas — propose an integrated understanding of consciousness, ethics, and identity, bridging ancient wisdom traditions with contemporary science. Trained in acting and filmmaking, as well as holding a master certification in Aikido from the Aikikai Foundation in Japan, Prince Gharios embodies a rare synthesis of scholarship and lived experience. His humanitarian initiatives have provided food, education, and stability to thousands of displaced families throughout the Middle East. Whether in academic forums, interfaith dialogues, or grassroots relief missions, his message remains consistent: the future of humanity depends on restoring proportion, dignity, and truth — both within individuals and the societies they shape. Ways to connect with Prince Gharios: Website: www.PrinceGharios.org/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gharioselchemor/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/officialprincegharios/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@theroyalherald/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hrhprincegharios X: https://www.x.com/princegharios?lang=en TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@officialprincegharios Documentaries: The Christian Kings of the Middle East https://youtu.be/Xt5NBNGa0q8 The Royal Legacy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUAS2rq8Bt0&t=150s The Project https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TFkZk3qd3c&t=416s About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:04 What if the biggest thing holding you back isn't what's in front of you, but rather what you believe Welcome to unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. I'm your host. Michael hingson, speaker, author and advocate for inclusion and possibilities. This podcast explores how the beliefs we carry shape the way we live, lead and connect with others. Each week, I talk with people who challenge assumptions, face adversity head on and show what's possible when we choose curiosity over fear, together, we focus on mindset resilience and the small shifts that lead to meaningful change. Let's get started. Greetings everyone and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. It is fall in Victorville, California, and I guess in the whole northern hemisphere for that matter. So here we are once again, and we're going to have, I think, an interesting and a fun and a very thought provoking episode today, we get to chat with someone whom I never thought I would meet, but I got to meet him on LinkedIn, and then we've met in person, and now we're chatting. And he is a Prince, Prince Gharios el Chemor Chemor. And garrios lives in Los Angeles now, and that's an interesting story in of itself. He has written 37 books more than I've written, I can tell you. And he is involved with a lot of different kinds of activities, and I'm sure that he's going to talk about a lot of those and give us some interesting things to think about. So I'm just going to say, Gharios, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're here. Unless you want me to call you Prince, I'm either, either way. Prince Gharios el Chemor  02:04 Oh, thank you so much. It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. And I always say that the only person I demand to call me your highness is my wife. But every time I do, she laughs on my face, so I'm thinking about stopping it. Yeah, and what does she call you? She called me Gary. I became Gary. Michael Hingson  02:23 You became Gary? Prince Gharios el Chemor  02:24 Yeah, because my wife is American, so well. Michael Hingson  02:28 But do you call her princess? No, no, oh, okay, you can Prince Gharios el Chemor  02:34 call me any way you want. I'm like, I'm not special, yeah, and I, you know, as I always like to say, you know, a title in a 21st Century from a deposed dynasty is absolutely useless as a as a person of honor, unless you know, you have, like a work like we do, like my family kept this tradition because we have a humanitarian work with the UN we can talk more about that later. But as I always say, princes are not making even street names these days anymore, so I still have to pay for Netflix like everybody else, Michael Hingson  03:18 yeah, but I'll bet you think of your wife as a princess, whether you call her that or not, because, Speaker 1  03:22 oh, she's, she's a queen. She's not Michael Hingson  03:25 even a prince. There you go. See now we're talking Yeah, as it should be. Well, yeah. So I let's start with this whole issue of a deposed dynasty, and little bit about, maybe your background, where you came from, and all that, and we'll go from there, sure. Prince Gharios el Chemor  03:47 Well, there's a, there's a some people are a little bit, you know, as, as Voltaire used to say, Napoleon, also, Churchill, History is written by the victors. So especially in the United States, people don't are not very aware of world history. So is people don't understand how some things work. And even in the Middle East, whereby my family originated. I'm European, from my mother's side, and I have a little like 3% Jewish. I'm British, French, Italian, and in from my father's side, I'm Christian, Arab, from where today is Lebanon. You're a Michael Hingson  04:40 conglomerate all over the place, Prince Gharios el Chemor  04:43 yeah, so I have all the all the conflicts, all the colonizers, the people that are colonized, all within an only person. I'm the, I'm the living un so, but I. Even in the Middle East, you know, because since we are like a Christian family, a Christian dynasty, even that history was, you know, political propaganda. So you're not going to promote your your enemies. So since the Muslim regimes took over our lands through history, so the story they tell is a very limited history. So in a lot of history books, people think that our rule ended in the seventh century. So people say, Well, how come you are claiming a kingdom that ended 14 centuries ago? And I always say, well, first and foremost, we rule other realms after that, even our cousins ruled until 1921, so the like 100 years ago in what today is hail in Saudi Arabia, is called Jabal shumar, Jabal shmor, which is our last name. So they were our Muslim cousins, because some part of the family was forced to convert and but and the family that escaped and went where today is Lebanon kept being Christian, which is my direct family, and the Christian branch rule until 1747, to the 18th century. So it's not like 14 centuries ago. But even if that was the case, according to international law, we have a president, which is Israel. So Israel revived a state that, you know, they didn't hold sovereignty for over 2000 years. So our claim, even if we considered the last kingdom, we have a whole kingdom, because we rule principalities up to that. We rule the Byzantine Empire too, but that was very briefly, but we had like principalities or Sheik dooms, as we call the very same politically, political unit as you have the UAE, as you have Bahrain, as you have Qatar, Kuwait. So is a is as sovereign as an empire, but is a small principality, so that those are the kinds of realms we ruled after we lost the main kingdom in the seventh century, but we we rule, as I said, my direct, direct family into the 18th century, and my cousins until 1921 so yeah, so it's A our claim. Theoretically, if you consider Israel legitimate, you have to consider our claim legitimate, although we don't actively pursue any kind of political restoration or active, you know, restoration of a territory, kingdom, or anything. On the contrary, we support all the duly established governments, the euro and de facto, because we think that there's a lot of people there wanting power, and we don't want to be another force to try to fight for power or anything like that. On the contrary, we want to help to bring balance. We want to serve. We want to help to bring, you know, a stability and dignity to the people we're not interested in political movements or topple any governments or anything like that, although I've been offered many, many times, and thank God, I'm not at all seduced by power, because I it's something that is an illusion, in my opinion. Michael Hingson  09:08 So the family has certainly been spread out. Where were you born? Prince Gharios el Chemor  09:14 Well, I was born and raised in Brazil, because we have, still some family members were able to stay in Lebanon, but there was a huge famine and persecution after my family lost the principality in scarta ze way, which is in the northern Lebanon, My great great great great, great grandfather was assassinated, and then his son had to flee and like, adopt different last names for their children, because the it's funny, because it could be a great movie, because the Sultan, Ottoman Sultan was a hunchback, so it was a perfect. Villain, so the hunchback Sultan wanted to kill all the members of my family, so they were able to hide for some time, but then, when the first war, already in the end of the 18th century, 19th century, it was a great don't know if I can use the word genocide, but it was a genocide of Christians because the Druze, they ally with the Ottomans and to destroy the Christians. And so started this movement in the mid 1800s until the culmination of the First World War, and then my family members and many Lebanese not just my family members, went to Brazil because Brazil is still the largest Catholic country in the world. So today you have in Brazil twice the number of Lebanese people. Then you have in Lebanon. You have around 4 million in Lebanon. You have over 8 million Lebanese in Brazil. And I made fun when I first met the Lebanese president, we had the first audience in 2017 I we just had a Lebanese descendant president in Brazil. So I said, Well, you know, the our Lebanese president has like, twice the number of Lebanese people than than here. So Isn't that ironic and funny? What did he say? No, he was laughing. He said, Yeah, you know. And it was funny because he was actually, his name was Michelle Temer. It was from Lebanese descent. And you have today, I think the Minister of Economy in Brazil is Haddad, which is also Lebanese. Yeah. So everyone has an uncle, a cousin, even in my family, we have a very funny situation, because half of the family of my cousins stayed in Lebanon, and the other half went to Brazil. So you had two brothers from the same father that one doesn't speak Arabic or French and the other doesn't speak Portuguese. So they used to visit each other with their kids and using like cell phones and other things because they they were like brothers and couldn't communicate, because one was born and raised in Brazil, and the other, and still today, like My Arabic is a joke and my cousins make fun of me, so we talk in English, because My Arabic is the Arabic of the 19th century. And again, my grandfather never used the word Lebanon, because there was no Lebanon when he left. Lebanon was created in 1946 so I think it's very interesting when a lot of people say about Palestine, oh, there's no Palestine. There was never a state called Palestine. Well, there's never a state called Lebanon, another state called Syria, and every state called Iraq, another state, any of the states that we have today, the Middle East, they're all created after the first war. So they're all creations by the British and the French. And also, a lot of people don't know that. Michael Hingson  13:34 So what was it like for you growing up? Because however you view it, you have a very rich family and rich ancestry. So what was it like for you growing up? Prince Gharios el Chemor  13:47 Well, it was very interesting because I I had a Lebanese grandmother and I had an Italian grandmother, so that's why I became fat. Thank God now I'm I lost weight, but yeah, I it was funny, because I inherited gout, so I was very sick with gout when I was, like, 27 years old, and I had to take cortisone. And I always tell the story, because I used to go to my Italian grandmother, she looked at me and say, My god, you're so fat. You're so terribly fat. You have to do something about that. But not today. Now eat so. So she was like, you know, I could always start I should always start a diet the next day that I visited her, because when I visited her, I had to eat. So that's how that's that how the dynamic works. But I had a very normal, let's say, upper middle class for. Upbringing, yeah, upbringing. But the thing is, because my father, when my grandfather, arrived in Brazil with his parents, he had, they had nothing. They had they escaped. They had to sell the marble from the palace. We had to bribe the Ottoman soldiers so they were able to escape. So they had, like they grabbed some jewelry and something. So they started from zero in Brazil, but then my grandfather in many Lebanese families started selling things door to door, and they made a fortune. My grandfather made a huge fortune. He had like medication distribution. He represented many laboratories for southern Brazil. And then he had real estate. He became very rich, and my father and my father was born, my grandfather was already very rich, so he had like a playboy upbringing, different than me. And then my father never worked one day in his life. So when I came, my family said, Well, let's not repeat the same mistake that, you know, we made with him. So let's, you know, ration things with him. So I started, well, I started working because I wanted but I started working, working it with 13 years old, and I always I cannot not work because I have a we talk about that I have a cognitive difference than regular people, what People call romantically gifted, which is a very is not as romantic and beautiful as people think is like, is like OCD or something like that, and hyper sensibility and stuff. So I always, I cannot not study something. I cannot not work. So is an obsession that I have. So that's why I wrote so many books. I've done so many things. Michael Hingson  17:24 So what was your job? What kind of work did you do? At 13 Prince Gharios el Chemor  17:29 I worked in a video store, like, like Blockbuster, but was like a small one, because I watched all the movies. So people love to see me recommending the movies and Yeah, and so I always work like, I was like, 1516 I was the marketing director of a magazine, so I was always like, precautious, let's Say, and yeah. So my life was always very normal. I was always blessed. Thank God. I never had any need like I I had. I suffered a lot. I was bullied and I had a because I was different. So people, you know, they because of the way I talked in school, and I was probably the worst soccer player that have ever lived. And so in Brazil, that's the thing. So I was highly bullied. I and but other than that, and of course, because I'm an empath, so, but I never had any, let's say, need of food or anything like that, like I always had a very blessed life. Michael Hingson  19:06 So you went to school in Israel and so on. Did you do college there? Or what did you do for college? Or did you in Brazil? Prince Gharios el Chemor  19:13 Well, I studied two things in Brazil. I studied in a Franciscan school, the regular school, and then for high school, there is a special course in Brazil which is the equivalent of the university for theater, like Dramatic Arts. So I've done that. And then for college, I've done a course that's called Marketing and PR. So I have this two, this two trainings, one in dramatic arts and the other one in a corporate PR. Actually, my course even taught propaganda. So we studied a lot of how states work with Prop. Ghana and things like that, Michael Hingson  20:03 two significantly different departments of study. How did you how did you combine those? Or, how did you justify having two different things, art and marketing, that's pretty different? Prince Gharios el Chemor  20:18 Well, not to me, because I always worked a lot with media. So I'm also a filmmaker and professional actor, a SAG actor. So I'm sag here, and I'm in Brazil. It's called sated. Is the sag equivalent there? I directed a lot of even some commercials and some shows. So to me, that's very they intersect and and I have this artistic side of me that is very obsessive too. So I always have to be painting. I always have to be singing and doing something creative, because that's, that's who I am. And some people don't understand, but people that actually I'm not again, I'm not claiming i i have any special talent or anything like that. I think there are people that think better than me, people that sing better than me, but people that have this, let's say, gift, they, they have a need of putting out their work is not, oh, I skewed to paint or skewed to sing or no, this is the need that you have to manifest this energy that you have inside of you. So I give you an example when when I had had the first flare of gout was because my first wife said that I could no longer paint because of the smell of the oil paint. So I stopped painting. And then I was like, full time, the time, the full free time I had I was exercising and I was swimming, I was I wasn't my the prime, healthy body I could ever had. I had that time, and then I start feeling this small pain, and I it became, what's the what's the term I psychologically, I don't remember now the term, but it became a disease because of I could not channel that energy, psychosomatic, exactly so, because I could not channel that energy for painting. Then I got the gout. Michael Hingson  23:06 So how long was it before you could go back to painting? Prince Gharios el Chemor  23:11 Well, then I discovered that I could. I created a technique that I can make the acrylic paint look as almost as good as the oil and and with significant less smell and mess. So I've been painting with acrylic since then. Michael Hingson  23:36 And you what happened to the gout? Did it basically go away? Prince Gharios el Chemor  23:41 Well, I got significantly bad, and I had to go and have a bariatric surgery, and because I was taking cortisone, like a heroin addict would take heroin. So because I got in this vicious circle of not being able to exercise, gaining weight, eating, being depressed. So I had, almost every two weeks, I have a very bad flare. So I was like, in the beginning, I would go to the doctor for the injections, then my grandfather would come in and give me the injections. And then I learned myself to give myself the injections. They were so frequent that I had to do it myself. But thank God for the past, let's say 18 years, I had probably a couple of flares. They're very mild, and just with oral medication, I was able to I'm cortisone free for like, Michael Hingson  24:44 18 years. That's great, yeah, well, you know, going back to some of the things we talked about earlier, in terms of you, you still identify. With the Royal House that that has not been directly in power, although I I would suspect you'd say that that you and your family do provide influence. But what does sovereignty mean to you in the 21st Century? Basically, when monarchy no longer rules, clearly, you have influence and so on. But what does sovereignty mean to you? Prince Gharios el Chemor  25:28 Yeah, there's there's another thing that people, people don't understand. I'll give you a very, very simple example about my family. My family, even though is not officially sovereign anymore, but my family in Lebanon, they still have a palace in a city called farhatta in northern Lebanon, and non stop be we've been serving the community to the point that when my my predecessor, which was Sheik Antonio's Ashmore, was alive, he passed, unfortunately, prematurely. He was 60 years old in 1970 122, years before I was born, and he would open the doors of the palace, and people go there and ask money for medication, as you know, to send the kids to school. He would, you know, help the community like a ruler would do so because, you know, Lebanon, back then was very poor country, and he was like very, very wealthy. So until today, his sons, my cousins, that are part of the Council of princes of the royal house of Ghassan. They still do that to the community there. So we it's like we never stop, you know, doing the the service that. So who wants to watch our documentary. They can Google it. We have it on YouTube. It's called the royal legacy and the Christian kingdom of the Middle East. You see that, for example, my family provided free water that are still being used by 200,000 people in northern Lebanon for free. So we give free water to 200,000 people 48 villages in Lebanon. So thanks to my family also, dialysis blood dialysis is free for all Lebanese citizens because my cousin bought some machines, and my cousin interact with the president, who was his personal friend back then. So the President made a decree, and today, until today, no one that needs dialysis has to pay so, but my cousin passed two years before I was born and his sons. His oldest son was 15, so he left a lot of businesses for his sons. So they didn't develop the Royal House to the point that in 2008 37 years later, I was the one that took over, and then I got permission from them also, which is, in Arab monarchies, you have something that called baya, so it's like the family agrees who's going to be the next head, the next leader, and they, they give the consent, because in Europe is the succession is primogeniture, like the oldest son or daughter inherits the position. But in the Arab systems is the best qualified person according to the Council of princes, or according to the will of the last hat. In my case, they are so busy. I always say I'm the poor cousin, because they're they're rich, they I'm the one that took over this responsibility, and I have the time. So that's how, how it's done. But sovereignty, as I always say, is is a word like peace and democracy that can mean anything and everything so but unfortunately, people don't understand what it means in international law, and today, according. According to the many conventions, or in the charter of United Nations, every single people has the right called the right of self determination. Is the is a cardinal right is every single people, and that doesn't depend on anything ever is like is a right that every single people have, so is in the 21st Century, is no longer acceptable to have colonialism. Prince Gharios el Chemor  30:32 So all all nations and all peoples have to have this right to to self determination, and I think that's unfortunately we've been having a sometimes that multilateralism and international law are not being very much respected, and we have to make sure that we we work together. Because a lot of people criticize United Nations, and I agree that maybe United Nations has a lot of things to improve, but so as everything else in mankind. So as I always say, when you your car has a flat tire, you don't throw away the car, you fix the tire. So I think it's a lot easier for us to fix the system we have, then get rid of it and go back to barbarism. Michael Hingson  31:26 So given given all of that, and given what your relatives are doing in Lebanon and so on, how do governments view your house and how do they view all of you today. Do they? Do you think there's opposition? Do they appreciate what you're doing, because you're not really trying to seek power as such? That probably helps some. But what? What do governments think of of you and all of you? Prince Gharios el Chemor  31:57 Yeah, well, some people the Lebanese Government, since the next president, we've been working together with them, because they seen the value that we bring. So during the covid through our one voice Foundation, we donated half a million dollars of baby formula. It's like 60 tons of baby formula and recently, amongst other small actions, but recently, this year, we we fed about 5000 people for a whole month. We thought it'd be 3000 but Caritas, which is the logistical organization for the Catholic Church, estimated in 5000 so it was like something around 1000 families, but for a whole month. So together with SOS world and giving hands Germany, we got together and Caritas, of course, which made a distribution so they're they are very like we just last Saturday, we had an intercultural, inter religious event under the patronage of The President General Joseph on so we've been working together with the government in Lebanon, because the President in Lebanon, people might not know, but the President has to be Christian. The Prime Minister has to be Sunni Muslim. The Speaker of the House must be Shia Muslim. Because, believe it or not, with all its problems. Lebanon is the only actual democracy in the Middle East, because all the 18 religions have the exact same rights according to the constitution. So but other regimes, for example, I love Jordan, and I've I lived in Jordan. I had a second residence in Jordan for two years, and we try to implement some educational projects there. Because I have, I have this, I even now have a name now. It's called the royal Gambit. It's, it's a project to prevent the radicalization of teenagers from radical organizations, and there's even a book about it that is also the royal Gambit, which is a better and cheaper way to fight terror than actually just try to fight the effects, not the the reasons, the sources of of the problem. And so I had some problems because of the fact that I'm Christian, because you know who the King Abdullah in Jordan is doing a great job. And the royal family in Jordan is amazing. And I had. Many, many friends from the royal family. But, you know, some people don't understand that, but who also has the power is not the ruler, but the person that put the paper in front of the ruler so the ruler can sign it. So sometimes the ruler has the best of the intentions, but a couple of people try to prevent that, because they don't want you to shine. And I found the same problem with the Catholic Church, too, unfortunately, and I'm Catholic, but a lot of things that I try to implement, and again, I just needed the stamp of the Catholic Church. I didn't ask for anything, and a lot of people, mostly lay men, seem to have the interest of the need to keep existing so they are relevant. And that's very sad. That's very sad because there's a lot of people that are have the best of intentions, that have a lot of holy men in the Catholic Church, like I give you Pope Francis, absolutely, but Cardinal Koch, which is a Swiss Cardinal, it's a dear friend and a great holy man. But you also have people that are not interested. Obviously, I'm not citing names, but people that just want to keep their positions, and they just want to the problems to still exist so they are relevant, because they are the ones giving aspirin to the terminal patient. Can I Oh, go ahead. No, no. Sorry. Michael Hingson  36:39 I was just gonna say, and sometimes you just have to walk very carefully with what you do because of that. Prince Gharios el Chemor  36:46 Oh yeah. I mean, I made a lot of people look bad, because in my ignorance, my naivete, I thought that okay, I have solutions for many problems, so let's solve the problems, right? Yeah. Why? Why should we keep suffering if we can actually solve the problems. But apparently, no they want to keep with the problem. Michael Hingson  37:07 So So you but you do a lot of work with persecuted Christian communities in the Middle East, and especially, you know, persecuted people. What's one moment or one person that really stands out to you from all of that work? Prince Gharios el Chemor  37:25 Well, I think that I have two moments, actually. One was in 2014 that I had this Egyptian boy I went to the school here in Los Angeles to talk about bully, because, as I said, I was bullied when I was a kid, and then this 10 year old boy asked to take a picture with me. He was Egyptian Copt. I have a very good relationship with the Copt Orthodox Church in I met with the Coptic Pope in in Cairo. So he he said, I want to take a picture with you, because you are my prince, because I'm also a Middle Eastern Christian. And that touched my heart. I had to hold very, very tired not to cry in front of him. And I said, Well, you know, if I can inspire one person, I'm happy, and the other person was in Jordan in 2016 because at the height of the Islamic State, this 40 families of Iraq, they escaped to Jordan, and they were being in the Melkite church in Jordan, took them in, and then they called me and said, we have this family. They have no food. They have nothing. They just arrived from Iraq. Said, okay, so I got my people there. We got food for this 40 families. And then I went there, and I met this old lady and and I immediately connect with her. And I said, are you okay? I said, Imagine this old lady having to skate from Iraq all the way here, you know, because they were just killing the Christians. It's ridiculous. And then she said, Yes, I'm fine. I'm being take good care and everything. But the problem is that I have to go because I have a high blood pressure problem. I have to go every day to the hospital, and then I have to stay there for I don't remember, she said, one hour waiting just to take her blood pressure twice a day. And then I said, Oh my God. I looked to my assistant and said, for the love of God, go to the nearest pharmacy and get her blood pressure machine. So. You went there, and, you know, sometimes is not, is not a money, you know, for, for, I don't know, 3050 bucks. I solved the problem and and then I gave it to her, and said, Okay, so from now on, this is for you, for you to take your blood pressure, but you also, if anyone needs you're going to be the guardian of this. So she was so happy. And again, is not just about the food, is not but about people. Must know that you care. I think that's the most important Michael Hingson  40:37 thing, yeah. But it's not about you. It's about it's about them, and the very fact that you do care, and you're not doing it to try to gain a lot of notoriety, is what I'm hearing you say. But rather, you're doing it because it's the right thing to do. Prince Gharios el Chemor  40:53 No, I have to correct you on this. I'm doing it because the feeling that you get. It's yeah. It's worth more than any money or any fame or anything, the feeling that that I got from it right? Knowing that I'm, I'm, I'm making that life a little better, yeah is better than anything I've ever tried. And that's what Michael Hingson  41:19 I'm that's what I'm saying. It's yeah, it's not about you're trying to become a big guy. No, you're doing it because it's the right thing to do and you want to help people, yeah. But I Prince Gharios el Chemor  41:30 get a lot from it too. Michael Hingson  41:33 Sure you do. Sure you do. Prince Gharios el Chemor  41:35 But to me, is, like, the feeling is, is, is amazing, Michael Hingson  41:39 sure, yeah, oh, I, I, I totally appreciate it, because it's the the way I feel. If I can inspire people, if I've been able to help one person, then I think I've done good, and I appreciate exactly what you're saying. Well, you, you work with a lot of different people. You work with presidents, billionaires, you work with scientists, priests, martial artists and so on. What have you learned about the universal desire under all of that? What do they all have in common? Prince Gharios el Chemor  42:14 Well, there is this beautiful poem that Elvis used to date when he he used to sing that song, welcome out of my shoes. And he used to say to every student that then shoot or saw things through his eyes, shouldn't watch it. Helpless. Hands well hard inside he dies. So help your brother along the way, no matter where it starts, because the same God that made you made him too, this man with broken hearts. So to me, I think it doesn't matter. That's another part of the poem that I don't remember. Like they may be kings, they might be beggars. We are all figuring things out. That, to me, is the most important thing we we have some might know a little better, some less better, but we are all figuring things out. Figuring things out. We are not special. We are special. We have a special thing about every single person we have. Every single person has something good and something special and some unique thing. But we are not better than anybody in terms of dignity and value. We are all the same, and we are all figuring things out. So when you see someone, you don't you don't know the battle that that's that person is going through. You don't know the suffering that that's that person is is going through. And that's why I say compassion is so important. We have to try to put ourselves in someone's place and and critical thinking and compassion, the two things that are missing in the Michael Hingson  44:04 world, in my opinion, yeah, tell me more about that. Yeah. Prince Gharios el Chemor  44:09 Well, we because of this, this thing called social media, which has great benefits too. We got together because of it, but unfortunately, give rise to some cognitive biases that we already have in one side and also gets us that that heard anonymity you know, when we are in a group or when we are Anonymous, we seem to do things that we wouldn't do otherwise if we were present and alone. There's a lot of psychological studies about it. So. We are living in times that we have this destructive zero sum division. And as I always say, is perfectly and healthy, perfectly fine and healthy to disagree, to have different opinions, as long as we are constructive about it. Let's say in politics. So you know, left and right and center is all fine if we think the way we want to think, as long as first, that idea comes from ourselves and not from some celebrity or politician that we like or dislike, but from our own critical thinking. And second, we have to realize that we're all on the same boat, a country, a state, a city is a community is a boat. So is, is not because you don't like the captain, that you're going to cheer for that boat to sink because you're going to die too. So we have to realize these things. We have to realize that we have to end this thing us against them in everything, in politics, in religion, in everything, because that's not going to get us anywhere. That's That's this destroying the critical thinking and destroying the compassion, and therefore everything become a zero sum, like you know, in order for me to succeed, you have to be destroyed, and that only leads to destruction. And unfortunately, social media is a catalyst to that. Michael Hingson  46:32 How do we do that? How do we we regain or get more compassion? How do we get people to think more critically and and, well, don't try to just do everything for themselves. Yeah, one thing Prince Gharios el Chemor  46:44 that people don't realize is that our brain was built, was hardwired to survive, not to be happy. So we evolved a lot technologically, but our brain is still from the caveman times in a and not just the brain like everything else, why we get gain weight? Because our body thinks we're still back in those times that we have food once a week, and then if we don't have food for many days. We have to storage the energy, otherwise we're going to die. So the same with something called tribalism. So we are trained, our mind is trained, to see everything that is different as as the enemy. So we have this natural neurological tendency of of of that. And then we have, of course, all the cognitive biases, and the greatest one is, as I always say, stupidity, which is not ignorance. We are all ignorant about something. It's impossible to know everything about everything. Stupidity is our resistance, emotional resistance to expertise and knowledge and education. So that's one of the main things, is laziness of thinking. So why would you lose time considering who God is, who's your relationship with the divine? If you can go once a week to a church, I don't see anything wrong in going to the church, please. But what I'm saying is some people go to the church because there they can get, like, a synthesized summary, and they just, it's easy, if they just take that and believe in that. Then they keep thinking the whole week about who God is, what's right and rights wrong, about religion and about ethics and moral and things like that. And the same with politics. Why should I try to understand politics? To try to understand what is a common good? If I can just look one politician that I like and just go for everything he says and and that's the problem. That's why in the social media, again, is a catalyst of that. Because you, you can be, you can insult, you can criticize you, you. We have another thing called the Dunning Kroger syndrome, which is, we think that the things that we know the least are we have. We have more security in the things that we know the least than the things that we actually know. Right? Yeah, so you put that, put it all together. We have confirmation biases because this algorithm in all social medias, they only bring you things that you to confirm what you already think. They realize what are your preferences, and then they just bring you the confirmation bias so you only hear one side of the story. Michael Hingson  49:59 How do we change. Change that mindset. Prince Gharios el Chemor  50:01 Oh, we have to. We have to break the cycle. We have to develop compassion. First. We have to to realize that that person might not look like you, might not like the same things as you, might not believe in the same things as you. But is a is is someone that you have to live with that person. You don't have to agree, but you have to live in the best possible way. Michael Hingson  50:26 But again, the issue is that there is a lot of that on it. I hear what you're saying, but how do we break that cycle? How do we change the mindset so that more people will start to learn that just because we're all different, it doesn't mean that we're all less capable or less than than ourselves. Prince Gharios el Chemor  50:47 Yeah, well, first we have to identify the stupidity. Where is this stupidity? Are we? Is a very hard process, but we have to see if our opinion is actually our own first and foremost, think, think yourself is your opinion is, I have an exercise for that which is a contemplation. So you try to, to meditate, uh, imagining a conflict that you have, and then you remember your own position in this conflict. Then you you go and you try to put yourself in the shoes of the person against you, why that person has those concepts, those ideas, those opinions. And then you try to go out and see both of you, and try to see without any dogs on the fight. You try to see the same, same conflict. You see it from at least three different perspectives. To understand it, Michael Hingson  51:52 we've got to start teaching those concepts to people, because all too many people have children. They don't bring them up any differently. They they don't, they don't look at a broader perspective and horizon. And that's and I hear that's what you're suggesting. But we've got to start. We've got to find ways to teach Prince Gharios el Chemor  52:10 that the best way is education. That's why I created logos, one which is a new educational system. Tell us about that? Yeah, well, because I was gifted, you know, a lot of gifted people have problems in school, because when you have like, a very deep giftness, you cannot conform with the with the system, with the mainstream system. So I can only thrive if I create my own systems. So that's why I developed a whole new system of philosophy, original. I completed Aristotle Plato's work. I refuted Machiavelli sprints. I completed some of Kant's works too, because I I have to create my own frameworks. And then I said, Well, you know, 95% of what I learned in school is useless. You're not going to never going to use it. You're never going to remember it. So why do you waste the most valuable asset we have, which is time. You know, not even Elon Musk can buy time, because time is nothing you can do to get more. So why do we basically throw away time in school in a time that we have our beautiful youth. And so why do we do that? And then I realized that, well, the actual things that you have, you really have to know you can learn in two years, which is basic math, basic history, language, you know, all these things in two years, you can learn that. So I created a system that is based on your vocation and your level. So since a child goes to goes to kindergarten, the child starts being tested by vocation and the level and everything. So this child is taken to there's one of 15 traits that can be combined to 30 point 5 billion different profiles. So today you go to school, you have only one profile. You have to follow that profile, right? So with my system, you can combine it and have 30 point 5 billion different profiles. So if you have more tendency to be an artist, you're going to be an artist. If you have a vocation and desire to be an engineer, you're going to put all your energy. All your all your time to do what you like, to do what you're born to do. I like to say that logos one was created for the child that they cannot stand still because they supposed to dance. So if you don't conform, if you don't sit still, if you don't do whatever the teacher tells you to do, you are a bad student. And that doesn't mean you're a bad student, because you're supposed to be the world's greatest dancer or the world's greatest painter, so or the world's greatest engineer if you are not good in sports. So the system we have now was created for the industrial revolution. So the world needed factory workers, people that conform and with AI, all bets are off. So my system integrates with AI, and it's self regulated and self improved by AI. So there's a book out also. It's called logos one, and that's the future of education. You're not going to be able to because, you know, we're going to have a huge change in professions. So probably the child that is in a first grade today, the profession of that child doesn't even exist yet. So I'm sure, because a lot of the depression and mental problems we have today and suffering that we have today in our society is because we have to work to make ends meet. We have to work to put food on a table, and that makes us work in things that are not very nice and are things that we are not happy to to work. And working is probably you spend most of your like life working, so you're going to be miserable if you are doing something you don't like or you're not born to do. So that's why we have all this, Prince Gharios el Chemor  57:11 this problems in the world. So with my system, people will be happy because they will be doing what they are meant to do they love to do. And they have, as I always say, we're going to have one Einstein in each corner, because we give the tools of this that person to be what that person was born to be. Michael Hingson  57:30 Has logos? One been implemented anywhere yet? Prince Gharios el Chemor  57:33 No, no. I would just formulated this year. I had this idea for 15, almost 20 years ago, and I finally put everything together. So now we are going out to get it to be implemented. Michael Hingson  57:49 You've written 37 books. Is there any kind of a common theme or thread that goes through all the books? Prince Gharios el Chemor  57:55 Yeah, actually, they're all part of the same ecosystem, let's say so, because I see everything is inter related. For example, I created a I formulated a universal law that's called the triple accord, which everything in the world is the result of a resonance between reason, empathy and compassion. So critical thinking, compassion and balance, measured by balance. So a government, a civilization, a relationship, a friendship, everything is measured by these three elements. So with that, I developed what's called New holism, which is a model of governance, a brand new, completely new system of political system, which I always say is not left, center, right is forward. And a new way of seeing politics, a new way of seeing transcending ideology. So the same thing with the skeptical mysticism, which is a brand new epistemology, brand new metaphysics, which finally got science and reason. I'm sorry, reason and faith together. I created a new it's called juice Vera, which is a new legal system and a new penal system. I created, as I said, the Royal Gambit. I create logos one and Magnus delta, which is the higher education continuation of logos one. I mean, everything I created, I wrote about, is either related to history, sovereignty, politics, philosophy, which to me, is everything together. And I also brought the. Eastern and Western philosophy together, because I studied a lot of Buddhism, Aikido, Japanese, Shinto, Zen, Buddhism. So I brought that with the Western philosophy. And so my system is a balance between both, because I found out that everything has to be in balance otherwise the system destroys itself. Michael Hingson  1:00:26 If you could transmit one sentence or say one thing to humanity that would be remembered in 200 years, what would it be? Prince Gharios el Chemor  1:00:36 Well, I always, I always think that. I think as James, James Sherman, that said that, and I always like to repeat it. It's we cannot go back and make a new start, but every moment we have the chance to make a new ending, it doesn't matter how old you are. Doesn't matter how you think your life is not good, but you can always make a new win. You can always change, even if it's so hard, you can always make it better. It's up to you, you know, Michael Hingson  1:01:16 and it really is. It is up to each of us, and if we want to make the world better place, we can do it, but it's up to us to do it, isn't it, Prince Gharios el Chemor  1:01:26 absolutely and remember that the person, not just a person, but all the animals, all the planes, all the environment, we are all part of the same. The Science already proven that we're all part we share the same frequency. So you know, tried everyone with kindness. There's another saying that says that kindness doesn't cost anything, and buys everything, buys you everything. So be kind to an animal, to a plant, be kind to a person. Be kind, be kind. Be kind, be kind. It's never going it's never too much, Michael Hingson  1:02:03 and be kind to yourself too. Prince Gharios el Chemor  1:02:05 Oh, absolutely. Yeah, that's the first person you have to love yourself before learning to love other other people. And again, back to what I said in the beginning. We're all figuring things out. Don't, don't feel bad because you are figuring things out. Because we are. All are in different levels, but we all are, yeah, Michael Hingson  1:02:23 well, this has absolutely been, I think, very thought provoking, and I think it's been been wonderful. Last question for you, how do you define unstoppable? What do you think unstoppable means? Prince Gharios el Chemor  1:02:38 Well, in my opinion, unstoppable is that that thing that makes you, that drive inside of you, that that you know, despite of everything, everything can go against you, but you still manage to, like Nelson Mandela said, something is impossible until it's done. That's what I think is unstoppable, like you keep moving, because, you know, the universe is in constant movement. There's a breath that the Japanese would call koku ryuku, so we always breathing. So you have to keep moving. You have to keep moving. Nothing stays static is good. Michael Hingson  1:03:27 One of the things that immediately comes to mind is that there was a guy named Roger Banister. He is the person who broke the four minute mile. And people said for years before he did it, no one can physically run faster than a mile in four minutes, and if you do, you'll die. That worked until, I think it was 1957 when he did it. And yeah, there's so many the Prince Gharios el Chemor  1:03:51 same with the car, the same with the car. Remember? Yeah, yeah. People thought that if the car went more than 35 miles an hour, or something like that, it will explode. Michael Hingson  1:04:01 Yeah, yep. Well, I want to thank you again for being here. I think you've given us lots to think about. If people want to reach out to you and learn more about what you do and so on. How do they do that? Prince Gharios el Chemor  1:04:13 They can visit my website. It's Prince gharios.org's Can you spell that? Yeah, Prince, like you say it and, G, H, A, R, i, o, s.org, altogether.org, Prince darius.org, okay, yeah, and yeah, or Google, me. I have social media, I have Instagram, I have Facebook, I'll be happy to LinkedIn. Michael Hingson  1:04:43 I know LinkedIn, Prince Gharios el Chemor  1:04:45 yes, how we got together, Speaker 2  1:04:47 yes, how we got Yeah, yeah. Prince Gharios el Chemor  1:04:49 So YouTube again, you Google, you go to YouTube. Is our channel is called Royal Herald. You can watch documentary about what we do. It's called the. Legacy and the Christian kings of the Middle East. So both have history. You can watch the royal legacy, and you get both the history and what we are doing now. So it's free. You don't have to do anything. You just go on YouTube. Is everything we do is free. Michael Hingson  1:05:19 Great. Well, thank you for being here, and I want to thank all of you for watching and listening today, wherever you are, please give us a five star rating and give us a great review. I think that garrios has given us a lot to think about today, and I hope that you all agree with that. I'd love to hear your thoughts as well. Feel free to email me at Michael H, i@accessibe.com that's m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, and garos for you and all of you listening, if you know anyone else who you think ought to be a guest on unstoppable mindset, please introduce us. We'd love to hear from you and from them, and we're always looking for more people to have come on so that we can show that we're all more unstoppable than we think we are. But again, Prince garrios, I want to thank you for being here. This has been absolutely wonderful. Prince Gharios el Chemor  1:06:15 Thank you. My brothers. Was my pleasure, and I'm always here whatever you need Michael Hingson  1:06:23 thank you for being here with me on unstoppable mindset. I hope today's conversation left you with a fresh perspective, a new insight, or at least something worth thinking about if you're ready to go deeper into the ideas that shape how we see ourselves and others, I have a free gift for you. Head over to Michael hingson.com and download my free ebook, blinded by fear. It explores the invisible beliefs that hold us back and shows you how to reframe them so you can move forward with clarity and confidence. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast, leave a review and share this show with someone who can use a reminder that growth starts with mindset. When people think differently, we all move forward together. Thanks again for listening. Keep learning, keep questioning and keep choosing to live with an unstoppable mindset you.

In this episode of the Carl Jackson Show, Carl dives into the latest news and updates on the Iran conflict, discussing Vice President JD Vance's trip to Pakistan to negotiate a ceasefire deal. He shares his concerns about the Shia Muslim movement, known as the twelvers, and their potential to cause chaos and destruction. Carl also touches on the Artemis mission, the reentry of astronauts into Earth's atmosphere, and the importance of American exceptionalism. Additionally, he critiques the Democrat Party's policies, including Mayor Danny's racial equity plan in New York City and the California high-speed rail project, highlighting government waste and mismanagement. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carljacksonradio X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/carljacksonshow Parler: https://parler.com/carljacksonshow Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecarljacksonshow http://www.TheCarlJacksonShow.com Visit our Store https://CarlJacksonStore.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode of the Carl Jackson Show, Carl dives into the latest news and updates on the Iran conflict, discussing Vice President JD Vance's trip to Pakistan to negotiate a ceasefire deal. He shares his concerns about the Shia Muslim movement, known as the twelvers, and their potential to cause chaos and destruction. Carl also touches on the Artemis mission, the reentry of astronauts into Earth's atmosphere, and the importance of American exceptionalism. Additionally, he critiques the Democrat Party's policies, including Mayor Danny's racial equity plan in New York City and the California high-speed rail project, highlighting government waste and mismanagement. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carljacksonradio X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/carljacksonshow Parler: https://parler.com/carljacksonshow Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecarljacksonshow http://www.TheCarlJacksonShow.com Visit our Store https://CarlJacksonStore.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the midst of rising tensions between Iran, Israel, and the West, many people are asking how the Islamic Republic of Iran came to wield such enormous influence over the Shia world. To understand modern Iran, one must look beyond politics and examine the religious narratives promoted since the 1979 Iranian Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and continued under leaders like Ali Khamenei. This episode explores how concepts surrounding Imam Mahdi, Shia prophecies, and the role of scholars were interpreted and promoted through figures such as Hassan Nasrallah, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the Iranian clerical establishment. By examining the ideology behind Wilayat al-Faqih and the narratives surrounding the “inheritors of the prophets,” we uncover the deeper religious and historical ideas that shaped the Islamic Republic and influenced millions of Shia Muslims across Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon.

We are being fed a constant narrative that the Ayatollah is evil, that he is a terrorist and that he is leading an army that will attack America and put our nation at risk. What no one is talking about is that the CIA under President Carter helped the Ayatollah to come to power and replace the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlav. No one is talking about the CIA's role in training the Shahs torture program run under the SAVAK nor that Shia Muslims were the primary target of the torture. Question everything. We created the problem we are now trying bomb out of existence to cover our tracks and change the understanding of historical events.  #BardsFM_Morning #TruthBehindTheLies #Peacemakers Bards Nation Health Store: www.bardsnationhealth.com EnviroKlenz Air Purification, promo code BARDS to save 10%: www.enviroklenz.com EMPShield protect your vehicles and home. Promo code BARDS: Click here MYPillow promo code: BARDS >> Go to https://www.mypillow.com/bards and use the promo code BARDS or... Call 1-800-975-2939.  White Oak Pastures Grassfed Meats, Get $20 off any order $150 or more. Promo Code BARDS: www.whiteoakpastures.com/BARDS BardsFM CAP, Celebrating 50 Million Downloads: https://ambitiousfaith.net Morning Intro Music Provided by Brian Kahanek: www.briankahanek.com Windblown Media 20% Discount with promo code BARDS: windblownmedia.com Founders Bible 20% discount code: BARDS >>> TheFoundersBible.com Mission Darkness Faraday Bags and RF Shielding. Promo code BARDS: Click here EMF Solutions to keep your home safe: https://www.emfsol.com/?aff=bards Treadlite Broadforks...best garden tool EVER. Promo code BARDS: TreadliteBroadforks.com No Knot Today Natural Skin Products: NoKnotToday.com Health, Nutrition and Detox Consulting: HealthIsLocal.com Destination Real Food Book on Amazon: click here Images In Bloom Soaps and Things: ImagesInBloom.com Angeline Design: AngelineDesign.com DONATE: Click here Mailing Address: Xpedition Cafe, LLC Attn. Scott Kesterson 591 E Central Ave, #740 Sutherlin, OR  97479

While media claims Trump started a war, the truth is Iran has been at war with America since 1979, and their Twelver Jafari ideology explicitly requires destroying Israel and the United States to usher in the Twelfth Imam, making nuclear weapons in their hands a civilizational extinction event. With Iran's supreme leader eliminated, their navy sunk, and the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, Trump just cut off 80-90% of China's oil supply and deprived them of the economic fuel to wage World War III, but a grand ayatollah's jihad declaration now obligates every Shia Muslim worldwide to attack Christians and Jews, meaning America's sleeper cells may already be awake. ____________ VERITY METALS Convert your 401k or IRA into physical gold to protect your retirement from a volatile stock market and inflation. Your gold can be safely stored at a location of your choice, including your own business. CALL: 888-328-6703 https://converttogold.com ____________ FOLLOW US Website: https://patriotradio.us X: https://x.com/RepMattShea Instagram: https://instagram.com/patriotradious Telegram: https://t.me/patriotradious YouTube: https://youtube.com/@patriotradious Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/patriotradious Podcast: https://mattshea.podbean.com #live #patriotradious #news #truth #america

As the regime in Iran fell, a handful of Shia Muslim communities in Australia went into mourning for the Ayatollah, drawing criticism from New South Wales premier Chris Minns. Khamenei was a brutal autocrat, but he was also a spiritual leader to many Shi'ites. Is it the role of the state to decide who a religious community can mourn?  GuestDr Renae Barker Senior Lecturer, UWA Law School 

Donald Trump says he's liberated the people of Iran to forge their own future, after killing their autocratic leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But as the bombing continues and any organised resistance struggles to emerge, is this ethnically diverse land, with thousands of years of history, at risk of breaking up or descending into sectarian division? Nahid Siamdoust of the University of Texas specialises in the politics and culture of the Middle East. She's also part of the Iranian diaspora.Acclaimed journalist Robin Wright of The New Yorker covered Iran from the start of the 1979 revolution, which brought the first ayatollah, Ruhollah Khomeini, to power.  She's sceptical that the United States and Israel can bring change through aerial bombardment.As the regime in Iran fell, a handful of Shia Muslim communities in Australia went into mourning for the Ayatollah, drawing criticism from New South Wales premier Chris Minns. Khamenei was a brutal autocrat, but he was also a spiritual leader to many Shi'ites. Is it the role of the state to decide who a religious community can mourn?  Dr Renae Barker specialises in law and religion at the University of Western Australia law.

The national narrative is that Iran's leadership has been decapitated and that we are destroying the enemy. What is not being discussed is the second, third and fourth order effects of a decapitation strategy in a country of 92 million people, with a population that is 29.4 percent Shia Muslim. We are not hearing about the global impact on supply chains, and the regional disruptions to food. We are not discussing the impact of a war that begins with a bombing campaign but becomes a war rooted in martyrdom. No war is ever won by bombing alone; there is always need for boots on the ground. The national narratives are only stepping stones to lead the United States into another forever war.  #BardsFM_Morning #ForeverWar #SpeakTruth Bards Nation Health Store: www.bardsnationhealth.com EnviroKlenz Air Purification, promo code BARDS to save 10%: www.enviroklenz.com EMPShield protect your vehicles and home. Promo code BARDS: Click here MYPillow promo code: BARDS >> Go to https://www.mypillow.com/bards and use the promo code BARDS or... Call 1-800-975-2939.  White Oak Pastures Grassfed Meats, Get $20 off any order $150 or more. Promo Code BARDS: www.whiteoakpastures.com/BARDS BardsFM CAP, Celebrating 50 Million Downloads: https://ambitiousfaith.net Morning Intro Music Provided by Brian Kahanek: www.briankahanek.com Windblown Media 20% Discount with promo code BARDS: windblownmedia.com Founders Bible 20% discount code: BARDS >>> TheFoundersBible.com Mission Darkness Faraday Bags and RF Shielding. Promo code BARDS: Click here EMF Solutions to keep your home safe: https://www.emfsol.com/?aff=bards Treadlite Broadforks...best garden tool EVER. Promo code BARDS: TreadliteBroadforks.com No Knot Today Natural Skin Products: NoKnotToday.com Health, Nutrition and Detox Consulting: HealthIsLocal.com Destination Real Food Book on Amazon: click here Images In Bloom Soaps and Things: ImagesInBloom.com Angeline Design: AngelineDesign.com DONATE: Click here Mailing Address: Xpedition Cafe, LLC Attn. Scott Kesterson 591 E Central Ave, #740 Sutherlin, OR  97479

This is just a teaser for today's episode, which is available for Patreon subscribers only!   We can't do the show without your support, so help us keep the lights on over here and access tons of bonus content, including the "Last Week in Lebanon" column by Roqayah and our newest contributor Hadi Hoteit, by subscribing on our Patreon for as little as $5 a month. While you're at it, we also love it when you subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts.  This week's bonus episode is a collaboration with The Colony Archive and The East is a Podcast. While Roqayah is documenting the lead-up to another Israeli ground invasion of south Lebanon, Kumars and friend of the show Sina Rahmani were finally able to reach fellow friend of the show Navid Zarrinnal in Tehran.  Speaking on the phone as the internet blackout continues, Navid discusses his experience of the bombardment of Tehran, the US and Israel's increasingly untargeted strikes across the country, Western media's psychological warfare against people in Iran, and how Iranians are responding to the assassination of Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei. Sina and Kumars fill Navid in on the abysmal response to this attack in the United States, Iran's ongoing retaliation against Israel and US bases in the region, and the massive mobilization of Shia Muslims in response to the news of Khamenei's martyrdom.

pWotD Episode 3224: Ali Khamenei Welcome to popular Wiki of the Day, spotlighting Wikipedia's most visited pages, giving you a peek into what the world is curious about today.With 2,738,521 views on Saturday, 28 February 2026 our article of the day is Ali Khamenei.Ali Hosseini Khamenei (19 April 1939 – 28 February 2026) was an Iranian cleric and politician who served as the supreme leader of Iran from 1989 until his killing by US and Israeli forces in 2026. Khamenei previously served as the president of Iran from 1981 to 1989. His tenure as supreme leader, spanning 36 years and six months, made him the longest-serving head of state in the Middle East at the time of his death and the longest-serving Iranian leader since Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.Born into the Khamenei family, he studied at a hawza in his hometown of Mashhad, later settling in Qom in 1958, where he attended the classes of Ruhollah Khomeini. Khamenei became involved in opposition to Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, and was arrested six times before being exiled for three years by the Shah's regime. Khamenei was a mainstream figure in the 1978–1979 Iranian Revolution, and upon its success, held many posts in the newly established Islamic Republic of Iran. In the aftermath of the revolution, he was the target of an attempted assassination that paralysed his right arm. There had been continued assassination threats against Khamenei by Israel. Khamenei served as the third president of Iran from 1981 to 1989 during the Iran–Iraq War, when he also developed close ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). After the death of Khomeini in 1989, Khamenei was elected supreme leader by the Assembly of Experts.As supreme leader, Khamenei supported Iran's nuclear program for civilian use while issuing a fatwa forbidding the production of weapons of mass destruction. Khamenei favoured economic privatization of state-owned industries and, with oil and gas reserves, transformed Iran into an "energy superpower". His foreign policy centered on Shia Islamism and exporting the Iranian Revolution. Khamenei played a pivotal role in the development of the IRGC, transforming it into a primary tool for domestic control and regional influence. Under Khamenei, Iran supported the "Axis of Resistance" coalition in the Syrian civil war, War in Iraq, Yemeni civil war and the Gaza war, as well as Russia during the Russo-Ukrainian war. A staunch critic of Israel and of Zionism, Khamenei supported the Palestinians in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; his rhetoric included calls for Israel's destruction and antisemitic tropes. Under Khamenei, Iran was involved in proxy wars with Israel and Saudi Arabia; in 2025 and 2026, tensions with Israel and the United States escalated to a 12-day armed conflict and ongoing strikes.Identified as a pragmatic hardliner, Khamenei sidelined leftist factions, moderate clerics, and political dissidents, while occasionally easing restrictions when the regime's stability or legitimacy had been threatened. His leadership had been closely associated with the expansion of state militarization and the consolidation of power within the office of the Supreme Leader. Khamenei had also faced many protests, including the 1999 Iranian student protests, the 2009 Iranian presidential election protests, the 2011–2012 Iranian protests, the 2017–2018 Iranian protests, the 2018–2019 Iranian general strikes and protests, the 2019–2020 Iranian protests, the Mahsa Amini protests, and the 2025–2026 Iranian protests. Journalists, bloggers and other individuals were put on trial in Iran for the charges of insulting Supreme Leader Khamenei, often in conjunction with blasphemy charges. Their sentences included lashing and jail time; some of them died in custody. He was also known by the title Ayatollah and was considered one of the leading Shia Muslim marja' in the world. Khamenei's critics viewed him as a repressive despot responsible for repression, mass murders and other acts of injustice.On 28 February 2026, Khamenei was killed in an airstrike during the 2026 Israeli–United States strikes on Iran.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 07:29 UTC on Sunday, 1 March 2026.For the full current version of the article, see Ali Khamenei on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm generative Salli.

In this episode of History Speaks, Dr. Roshan Iqbal is joined by Dr. Akif Tahieev to explore a topic that rarely appears in mainstream scholarship: Shia Muslim communities in post-Soviet Eastern Europe. Together, they discuss who these communities are, how they live and practice their faith, and why their stories have been overlooked in both Islamic studies and European studies. From questions of identity and conversion to the impact of recent conflicts, this conversation opens a window onto a world many listeners may not know exists.

Podcast host, Alan Skorski, interviewed Dr. Tim Orr, an Evangelical leader, who earned six Masters Degrees, including a Masters in Islam, while studying at the London School of Islam under the tutelage of a Shia Muslim leader. During the interview Dr. Orr spoke of his visit to London on October 7, 2023, and without knowing all the news that was happening in Israel following the Hamas invasion, witnessed horrific antisemitic demonstrations taking place in the streets of London. At the same time, he was watching news from America from his hotel room, and saw almost identical types of rallies and demonstrations that were amongst the most antisemitic he had ever witnessed. These events led him to speak out in support of Israel, while he was still in London, and scheduled to speak to Muslim audiences as an interfaith leader. He said that his speaking engagements were immediately cancelled, and the Shia leaders who had once engaged him began to curse him and tell him they regret ever befriending him. Following October 7th, Dr. Orr wrote; “What I felt most was that the Church there was very weak. And that weakness carried a cost. That disorientation deepened when I watched American and European universities erupt days later with the same slogans and emotional choreography. It was then I realized I was witnessing the expression of a coherent transnational worldview, not a series of isolated events.” On antisemitism and how support for Israel is weaponized against Jews, Dr. Orr has written; Antisemitism persists not only because it is protected, but because institutions and cultures continue to choose it for its usefulness. It offers a ready explanation for failure, resentment, and moral unease. It allows societies under strain to direct judgment outward while preserving a sense of righteousness. And it does this by rendering Jews abstract enough to blame and unreal enough to disregard.When Israel is a symbol, every Israeli action is interpreted negatively, because symbols are judged by their natures, not by circumstances. When Israel uses force, it is not responding to a threat, but revealing its nature. When it exhibits restraint, it is merely biding time, and accused of cruelty by inaction: there is no space for tragedy, since tragedy exists only when two legitimate claims are in conflict, and Israel is denied legitimacy from the outset. Intent is always presumed, and never examined. Condemnation is not a conclusion, but a premise. “Dr. Orr looks at how antisemitism operates in today's political, media, and activist spaces—not just as hatred, but as a system that adapts and hides in plain sight—and how Islamist movements and narratives play a role in spreading it in the West. He brings a clear, evidence-based perspective to topics that are often misunderstood or deliberately blurred. Tim is the author of six books, including his forthcoming Antisemitism Is More Than Hatred—It's a System: How It Works, Why It Persists, and How It Adapts to Every Age.” He is currently offering an online course titled: Architecture of Antisemitism: Structure. not Just Hatred -VIN News Watch the video interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f6bE6bTKiE Alan Skorski Reports 29JAN2026 - PODCAST

Michael Germi is a former Muslim that was born in Iran into a Shia Muslim family. In this setting he learned to practice Islam by praying 5 times a day toward Mecca. He fasted during Ramadan. He practiced self-mutilation for the cause of Allah. He migrated to Australia in 2006 and in 2009 placed his trust in Jesus Christ. He later moved to the States where he now proclaims the Gospel to Islamic nations. He has written several Farsi Christian books and desires to plant churches around the world where Persians are scattered. Iran is in upheaval. Since December 28th millions of people have been protesting against the regime. Merchants have taken to the streets, and the elderly who have been going with no salary are joining them as well as nurses, teachers, women, teenagers and many others. They have called out for the return of the Crown Prince of Iran, Reza Pavlavi. They have shouted, "This is the final battle; Pahlavi will return." and "This year is the year of blood; Ayatollah will fall." The Ayatollah has gone to great efforts to keep the rest of the world from knowing what has taken place. There are reports that the leadership of Iran has used snipers, the revolutionary guard and even chemical weapons to quell the unrest. News accounts have reported the massacre of many. There have been calls for new leadership in Iran as clerics demand executions. Recently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared, "We broke the back of the rioters. The day of the successful crackdown will be remembered as a day of celebration for years to come." Our guest today is from Iran and knows all too well the authoritarian power of the Ayatollah and the threat of this Islamic regime.

Michael Germi is a former Muslim that was born in Iran into a Shia Muslim family. In this setting he learned to practice Islam by praying 5 times a day toward Mecca. He fasted during Ramadan. He practiced self-mutilation for the cause of Allah. He migrated to Australia in 2006 and in 2009 placed his trust in Jesus Christ. He later moved to the States where he now proclaims the Gospel to Islamic nations. He has written several Farsi Christian books and desires to plant churches around the world where Persians are scattered. Iran is in upheaval. Since December 28th millions of people have been protesting against the regime. Merchants have taken to the streets, and the elderly who have been going with no salary are joining them as well as nurses, teachers, women, teenagers and many others. They have called out for the return of the Crown Prince of Iran, Reza Pavlavi. They have shouted, "This is the final battle; Pahlavi will return." and "This year is the year of blood; Ayatollah will fall." The Ayatollah has gone to great efforts to keep the rest of the world from knowing what has taken place. There are reports that the leadership of Iran has used snipers, the revolutionary guard and even chemical weapons to quell the unrest. News accounts have reported the massacre of many. There have been calls for new leadership in Iran as clerics demand executions. Recently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared, "We broke the back of the rioters. The day of the successful crackdown will be remembered as a day of celebration for years to come." Our guest today is from Iran and knows all too well the authoritarian power of the Ayatollah and the threat of this Islamic regime.

******Support the channel******Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenterPayPal: paypal.me/thedissenterPayPal Subscription 1 Dollar: https://tinyurl.com/yb3acuuyPayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9lPayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpzPayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9mPayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao ******Follow me on******Website: https://www.thedissenter.net/The Dissenter Goodreads list: https://shorturl.at/7BMoBFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/Twitter: https://x.com/TheDissenterYT This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/ Dr. Michael Cook is Class of 1943 University Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He is the author of several books, with the latest one being A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity. In this episode, we start by talking about the Caliphate from the 7th to the 9th century, and how it spread across the Middle East, Iran, North Africa and Spain. We also talk about Muslims in China, and the Muslim world in the Middle Ages compared to Europe. We then discuss the Ottoman empire, Muslims in India and Southeast Asia, and Muslims in Africa. Finally, we talk about the Muslim world in the present day, the impact of Western countries on the Middle East, and the divide between Sunni and Shia Muslims.--A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: PER HELGE LARSEN, JERRY MULLER, BERNARDO SEIXAS, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, COLIN HOLBROOK, PHIL KAVANAGH, SAMUEL ANDREEFF, FRANCIS FORDE, TIAGO NUNES, FERGAL CUSSEN, HAL HERZOG, NUNO MACHADO, JONATHAN LEIBRANT, JOÃO LINHARES, STANTON T, SAMUEL CORREA, ERIK HAINES, MARK SMITH, JOÃO EIRA, TOM HUMMEL, SARDUS FRANCE, DAVID SLOAN WILSON, YACILA DEZA-ARAUJO, ROMAIN ROCH, DIEGO LONDOÑO CORREA, YANICK PUNTER, CHARLOTTE BLEASE, NICOLE BARBARO, ADAM HUNT, PAWEL OSTASZEWSKI, NELLEKE BAK, GUY MADISON, GARY G HELLMANN, SAIMA AFZAL, ADRIAN JAEGGI, PAULO TOLENTINO, JOÃO BARBOSA, JULIAN PRICE, HEDIN BRØNNER, DOUGLAS FRY, FRANCA BORTOLOTTI, GABRIEL PONS CORTÈS, URSULA LITZCKE, SCOTT, ZACHARY FISH, TIM DUFFY, SUNNY SMITH, JON WISMAN, WILLIAM BUCKNER, PAUL-GEORGE ARNAUD, LUKE GLOWACKI, GEORGIOS THEOPHANOUS, CHRIS WILLIAMSON, PETER WOLOSZYN, DAVID WILLIAMS, DIOGO COSTA, ALEX CHAU, AMAURI MARTÍNEZ, CORALIE CHEVALLIER, BANGALORE ATHEISTS, LARRY D. LEE JR., OLD HERRINGBONE, MICHAEL BAILEY, DAN SPERBER, ROBERT GRESSIS, JEFF MCMAHAN, JAKE ZUEHL, BARNABAS RADICS, MARK CAMPBELL, TOMAS DAUBNER, LUKE NISSEN, KIMBERLY JOHNSON, JESSICA NOWICKI, LINDA BRANDIN, VALENTIN STEINMANN, ALEXANDER HUBBARD, BR, JONAS HERTNER, URSULA GOODENOUGH, DAVID PINSOF, SEAN NELSON, MIKE LAVIGNE, JOS KNECHT, LUCY, MANVIR SINGH, PETRA WEIMANN, CAROLA FEEST, MAURO JÚNIOR, 航 豊川, TONY BARRETT, NIKOLAI VISHNEVSKY, STEVEN GANGESTAD, TED FARRIS, KEITH RICHARDSON, HUGO B., JAMES, JORDAN MANSFIELD, AND CHARLOTTE ALLEN!A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, TOM VANEGDOM, BERNARD HUGUENEY, CURTIS DIXON, BENEDIKT MUELLER, THOMAS TRUMBLE, KATHRINE AND PATRICK TOBIN, JONCARLO MONTENEGRO, NICK GOLDEN, CHRISTINE GLASS, IGOR NIKIFOROVSKI, AND PER KRAULIS!AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, MATTHEW LAVENDER, SERGIU CODREANU, ROSEY, AND GREGORY HASTINGS!

Kate Adie introduces stories from Syria, Lebanon, Chile, Pakistan and France.Sectarian violence has erupted again in Syria, this time between Druze and Bedouin communities, leaving hundreds of people dead. The country's interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, blamed the violence on ‘outlawed factions' and has vowed to protect the Druze. Though as Jon Donnison heard in the Druze-majority town of Suweida, locals are also blaming government forces for the violence.Meanwhile in Lebanon, thousands of Alawite Syrians - the same Shia Muslim sect of the former President Bashar al-Assad - have fled across the border in recent months to escape a previous bout of sectarian violence which broke out back in March. Emily Wither travelled to Tripoli where she met young Alawites looking to define themselves beyond the Assad regime.In Chile we visit a ghost town in the Atacama Desert as it's brought back to life for one day a year. Former residents of Chuquicamata return to where they once lived for an annual party - though the former mining town is now too polluted for humans to live in. Robin Markwell paid a visit.In the Pakistan province of Punjab, authorities have launched a crackdown against people keeping big cats like lions and tigers as household pets. The BBC's Pakistan correspondent Azadeh Moshiri joined wildlife rangers on a raid on an illegal big cat farm.And we're in Marseille where a group of eminent restaurateurs have come together to protect the heritage of a much-treasured French dish - Bouillabaisse. Rob Crossan went to sample a bowl, to see if it lives up to the hype.Series Producer: Serena Tarling Production Coordinators: Sophie Hill & Katie Morrison Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

In March of 1925, the state of Tennessee passed a bill banning the teaching of evolution in public schools. A century later, the Scopes “Monkey Trial” still resonates in modern cultural debates over religion, education, and parental rights. Also: today's stories, including questions over the future of nonproliferation after the U.S. and Israel's bombing of Iran; NATO members' agreement to more than double their defense spending; and a look at Ashoura, an annual 10-day religious ceremony among Shia Muslims. Join the Monitor's JJ Wahlberg for today's news.

Michael Germi is a former Muslim who was born in Iran into a Shia Muslim family. In this setting he learned to practice Islam praying 5 times a day toward Mecca. He fasted during Ramadan. He practiced self-mutilation for the cause of Allah. He migrated to Australia in 2006 and in 2009 placed his trust in Jesus Christ. He later moved to the States where he now proclaims the Gospel to Islamic nations. He has written several Farsi Christian books and desires to plant churches around the world where Persians are scattered. Iran has a population that is ten times larger than Israel. It's land mass is also many times larger than Israel. According to worldData.info, Iran is 96.5% Muslim. Its primary language is Persian. It's citizens are low-income and deal with high inflation. Most importantly, it's a nation and people greatly in need of the Gospel. Michael's biggest fear while living as a Muslim in Iran was the thought of going to hell. So what circumstances caused him to move from Islam to Christ? What is Michael's burden for Iran and the Persian people? What does it mean to be a Christian in Iran? Michael explains all this and more when the political, economic and spiritual aspects of Iran take center stage on this fascinating edition of Crosstalk.

Michael Germi is a former Muslim who was born in Iran into a Shia Muslim family. In this setting he learned to practice Islam praying 5 times a day toward Mecca. He fasted during Ramadan. He practiced self-mutilation for the cause of Allah. He migrated to Australia in 2006 and in 2009 placed his trust in Jesus Christ. He later moved to the States where he now proclaims the Gospel to Islamic nations. He has written several Farsi Christian books and desires to plant churches around the world where Persians are scattered. Iran has a population that is ten times larger than Israel. It's land mass is also many times larger than Israel. According to worldData.info, Iran is 96.5% Muslim. Its primary language is Persian. It's citizens are low-income and deal with high inflation. Most importantly, it's a nation and people greatly in need of the Gospel. Michael's biggest fear while living as a Muslim in Iran was the thought of going to hell. So what circumstances caused him to move from Islam to Christ? What is Michael's burden for Iran and the Persian people? What does it mean to be a Christian in Iran? Michael explains all this and more when the political, economic and spiritual aspects of Iran take center stage on this fascinating edition of Crosstalk.

Table of Contents: Updated Group Prayer–List of Current Event Prayer Points–Part 1 The Newly Elected New York City Mayor Mohran Mamdani is a Shia Muslim, a Socialist and very dangerous man–He openly encourages the one million Muslims of New York City to take over positions of power Mayor: City council – Education – Law enforcement…

In this episode of Thinking Islam, Dr Zoheir Esmail is joined by Dr Muhammed Reza. Tajri to explore the complex intersection between Shi'a Muslim identity and LGB experiences through the lens of sociology. Drawing from his unique position as an insider-researcher, Dr Tajri unpacks the lived realities of Shia Muslims grappling with non-normative sexualities, revealing critical tensions between religious belonging, psychological wellbeing, and community silence. Through deep discussion, the episode highlights the pressing need for more awareness, empathy, and informed pastoral care in Shia communities. From spiritual suffering and domestic rejection to the jurisprudential discourse on homosexuality, Dr Tajri's research brings fresh insight into one of the most underexplored yet urgent conversations in contemporary Islamic studies. Dr Tajri is a lecturer and head of the Department of Islamic Sociology and Contemporary Studies (DISCS). With a background in both traditional seminary studies and academic research, his work focuses on Muslims in the UK, contemporary Shi'ism, gender, and religious authority.

Lama Al Sword is a Saudi Arabian former Shia Muslim who sought asylum in the UK after leaving her faith. Born into a minority Shia community in a small Saudi town, she defied societal and religious constraints to forge her own path. A doctor by profession and a stand-up comedian by passion, Lama uses humor to shed light on her experiences as a queer ex-Muslim. She challenges taboos, amplifies marginalized voices, and fosters conversations on identity, faith, and freedom.X: https://x.com/lamaswordcomedy

In this special Eid al-Ghadir episode, Sayed Ali Radhawi is joined by Sheikh Mustafa Akhound to discuss Wilaya, the responsibility of parents, building a Shia identity from a young age, and how to raise children prepared to serve Imam al-Mahdi (AJ). Together, they explore the teachings of the Ahlulbayt (as) and highlight Imam Ali (as) as a role model in tarbiyyah. A must-watch for Muslim parents, future parents, and anyone passionate about raising the next generation of unapologetically Shia Muslims.

In this episode of After Maghrib, we sit down with Sayed Zafar Abbas to explore the provocative and pressing question of religious pluralism through a Shi‘i theological lens. Is Islam's finality compatible with the salvation of others? Can divine justice accommodate those who never encountered the Imamate? We navigate tensions between exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism—drawing from Qur'anic verses, classical scholars like al-‘Allama al-Hilli, and contemporary thought. From metaphysics to modernity, we ask whether the Shia tradition has something unique to offer today's interfaith world. A conversation for seekers, skeptics, and everyone in between.

When Sikh woman Mindy Sanghera meets the love of her life, a Shia Muslim named Sair Ali, they develop a love affair that has her head over heels. But Sair harbors a deep secret and when the truth is revealed, Mindy will do anything in her power to keep their fling going permanently. Go to my sponsor https://aura.com/sinister to get a 14-day free trial and see if any of your data has been exposed. Check out https://www.squarespace.com/SINISTER to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code SINISTER. Main channel: https://www.youtube.com/@bozevstheworld 2nd true crime channel: https://www.youtube.com/@bozebutshorter 3rd non-true crime channel: https://www.youtube.com/@bozesbreakroom Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Born under the Samanid dyansty and living through the rule of the Ghaznavid dynasty in Tus located north Iran, Ferdowsi is author of the epic Shahnameh (“The Book of Kings”) of 50,000 lines taking 30 years to compose. The work is of central importance in Persian heritage. Q1. Ferdowsi was born in 940CE and died around 1019CE at around 80 years old. He lived under the Ghaznavid dynasty who at their height ruled territory spanning modern day Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Tell us about the cultural context in which he was born. Q2. Ferdowsi was born into a family of dehqan landowners. He has an elegy to an adult son inserted into the Shahnameh. He is characterised as both a Shia Muslim but also a deist. What else do we know about his life? Q3. Ferdowsi began work on the Shahnameh around 977 and received patronage from sultan Mahmud of the Ghaznavid dynasty. Give us an overview of the Shahnameh and how readers in translation should approach it. There are also many beautifully illustrated editions too. Tell us about those too. Q4. If people want to learn more about Ferdowsi and his Shahnameh, what resources and translations would you recommend. Q5 Finally before we end, give us a sample of the Shahnameh in the original Persian and translation. Ali Hammoud: https://x.com/AliHammoud7777 https://alihammoud7.substack.com/ 

Meet Dr. Mostafa Salari Rad, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at the New School in New York City. Born in Iran in a Shia Muslim practicing family, he always had an interest in philosophy, psychology, social science. He wondered why people behaved the way they did, why countries developed the way they did, and later, as a high school student in Japan, when he was the only person observing Ramadan, he started asking deeper questions about the self control he had to exert to fast, as Ramadan asked of him, from sunrise to sunset. Perhaps the first time, Dr. Rad questioned, why am I doing this? Why isn't anyone else doing this? What does this ritual mean? When Dr. Rad decided to pursue a PhD in psychology, he focused his research on the fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which the vast majority of the 1.8 billion Muslims worldwide observe. He wanted to find out more about the psychological, behavioral, and social benefits of fasting, and he especially wanted to better understand the self-control Ramadan requires. Listen and learn more.     •     Read the transcript of this episode     •     Learn more about Dr. Rad's research     •     Subscribe to Stories of Impact wherever you listen to podcasts     •     Find us on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube     •     Share your comments, questions and suggestions at info@storiesofimpact.org  Supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation

Farshid Rezaee is a former Shia Muslim who was radically changed by the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. He has a powerful testimony and will be sharing his insights concerning how to share the Gospel with Muslims. Website: https://www.radicaltruth.netDonate: https://www.radicaltruth.net/donate

This stream technically consists of 2 debates within one stream: First half (Debate #1): Are The Shia Muslim? Second half (Debate #2): Should Sunnis Ally with Shia? LINKS TO GUESTS: @MuslimSkeptic Dr. Tallha's links: Twitter @TalAbdulrazaq Instagram @the.war.journal YouTube https://youtube.com/@TheWarJournal Dr. Sam's YouTube channel is: https://www.youtube.com/@DrAzma and X: https://x.com/WissamAzma At Modern-Day Debate (MDD), our vision is to provide a neutral debate platform so everyone has their fair shot to make their case on a level playing field. Consider joining our Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/ModernDayDebate ) or our channel as a member. Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ModernDayDebate __________________________________________________________________ Modern Day Debate Discord: https://discord.gg/ModernDayDebate _______________________________________________________________________________ RULES FOR CHAT -Chats flagrantly disrespectful toward speakers will receive a warning. *Attack the ideas instead of the person. -Chatters continuing the disrespect after a warning will be banned. -Chatters violating YouTube TOS are banned immediately. ______________________________________________________________________________________ DISCLAIMER The views shared by guests on Modern-Day Debate are not necessarily representative of the views of Modern-Day Debate, James, or any university he has or has had any affiliation with.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

"We tried so many shelters, and we were like rejected. It's like, it's not for migrants, it's not for migrants!” Lebanon is caught in a devastating conflict between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, a powerful Shia Muslim political party and armed group. Critical infrastructure, including hospitals, residential buildings, and shelters, has been destroyed, displacing over a million people across the country. Among those most affected are Lebanon's roughly 250,000 migrant domestic workers, primarily from African and Asian countries including Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and Sierra Leone. Many of these workers, who were already living in precarious conditions under the Kafala system which leaves them heavily reliant on their employers, have now been made homeless and are desperately seeking shelter, food, and safety. For Africa Daily, Muthoni Muchiri speaks with Mariam Bai Sesay, a former domestic worker and Enu, the deputy director of Egna Legna Besidet, an organisation that provides legal aid, housing assistance, and food relief to the workers.

In this episode of Connecting the Dots, I dive into how U.S. foreign policy impacts major conflicts in Ukraine, China, and the Middle East. Rather than simply telling you what to think, my goal is to provide context and analysis so you can form your own conclusions about these complex issues. We'll look at the roots of the Ukraine conflict, the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, and how these events ripple across Europe. I also examine U.S. military aid to Israel and its implications for the Gaza conflict, touching on questions of international law and diplomacy. Additionally, I explore the effects of significant events, like the deaths of Hassan Nasrallah and Qasem Soleimani, and what they mean for long-term stability in the region. Join me as I connect the dots and invite you to critically assess how U.S. policy shapes the global landscape today.   Find me and the show on social media. Click the following links or search @DrWilmerLeon on X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Patreon and YouTube!   Hey everyone, Dr. Wilmer here! If you've been enjoying my deep dives into the real stories behind the headlines and appreciate the balanced perspective I bring, I'd love your support on my Patreon channel. Your contribution helps me keep "Connecting the Dots" alive, revealing the truth behind the news. Join our community, and together, let's keep uncovering the hidden truths and making sense of the world. Thank you for being a part of this journey!   Wilmer Leon (00:01): Hey folks. Look, when you understand what's happening in Ukraine, when you understand what's happening in China as it relates to the United States trying to start a war with China over Taiwan, when you look at the latest developments the Middle East, you have to ask yourself this. And has President Biden become a victim of his own rhetoric? Has he fallen into his own trap? Let's talk about this, Announcer (00:41): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Wilmer Leon (00:49): Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon and I am Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they happen in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historic context in which they take place. So today, looking at Ukraine, looking at China, looking what's happening in the Middle East, I decided that I would just take a few minutes and just give you some extemporaneous just off the top of the head kind of stuff. No guests on this segment. Y'all are just stuck with me. So let's start here. In his last address to the United Nations as President Joe Biden said, I recognize the challenges from Ukraine and Gaza to Sudan and beyond. War, hunger, terrorism brutality, record displacement of people, a climate crisis, democracy at risk, strains within our societies, the promise of artificial intelligence and its significant risks. The list goes on. (02:00): Well, when you start to unpack that knapsack, when you really pay attention to the list of things, the litany of conflicts and tensions that Joe Biden just articulated, you have to ask yourself this. He mentions Ukraine, who started the conflict in Ukraine? Why did it start? Well, it started in 2014, during the Obama administration went with what was known as the Maidan Coup. The United States went in. In 2014, Victoria Newland led the effort overthrew the democratically elected government of Victor Jankovich, and installed a Nazi based Ukrainian nationalist government led by the current President, Volodymyr Zelensky. It escalated during the Biden administration and it has become a full-blown military conflict that President Biden refuses to settle. In fact, one of the most recent speeches given by Vice President Harris talking about the Ukraine, she said, the Russian proposal is not a peace deal. It is not a settlement. (03:30): She said, it is a surrender. Well, if you look at the data, it is a surrender because the Ukraine has lost, they hardly have any artillery shells left. Just about all of their tanks have been blown to smithereens. The F-16's that they've just received, some of them were blown up before they even made it off the runway. And you have US generals saying that the F sixteens that the United States and NATO sent are no match for the Russian Air Force. Their army is totally depleted. They've had to go to their prisons, empty their prisons, and send prisoners to the front. They have what are called press gangs that are scouring the Ukrainian countryside kidnapping men of age, sending them to the front. (04:35): It's over, it's over. The fat lady just ain't sung yet. That's really what you're looking at in Ukraine. It's over, but they just haven't blown the whistle. So yeah, it's going to be a surrender. You might as well, you might as well fire up the USS Missouri resurrect Emperor Hirohito from World War II and have Ukraine surrender the same way Japan had to because that's the way this has gone. September 26th, 2022, a series of underwater explosions and consequent gas leaks occurred on three or four pipelines of the Nord Stream pipeline in the Baltic Sea. This occurred during and based upon the Sy Hersh reporting tells us that this was conducted during the Biden administration. The Biden administration blew up three of the four pipelines of the Nord Stream pipeline, which provided natural gas from Russia to Germany and Germany was the distribution point for low cost natural gas throughout Europe. (05:59): And since 2022, what has happened to the economy of Germany and what has happened to other economies of European countries? They've been decimated because they now are forced to buy natural gas from the United States because the United States blew up their pipeline cutting off their access to Russian natural gas. Why? Because if you remember, when the Ukraine conflict started, president Biden told us what we're going to turn the rubble into rubble. Y'all remember that We're going to turn the ruble into rubble. Has that happened? Not at all. In fact, the rubble, the rubble, the ruble, which is the currency in Russia, is now one of the most stable currencies in the world. The Russian economy is in the top five economies in the world. Why? Because the United States was not able to bring about regime change in Russia through the Ukraine conflict. The United States was not able through its sanctions regime to bring about crippling sanctions on the Russian economy. (07:18): They have been able to find workarounds, and they have been able to continue to engage in international business all around the world. Look at the BRIC's meeting that's about to take place in Russia. You've got China. Well, the BRIC's, the acronym for what? For Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. And now you have a number of other countries that are joining this economic cooperative, and they are finding workarounds around the sanctions that the United States is imposing on all of these countries. In terms of Gaza, who's funding the genocide in Gaza, the Biden administration, of course, president Biden in May of 2024 said, he said what he would halt some of the shipments of American weapons to Israel, which he acknowledged had been used to kill civilians in Gaza. If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a major invasion in the city of Rafa, well, Netanyahu did it. Biden did not honor his word. He still sent those weapons to Israel. And what do we find now? (08:47): $8.7 billion on their way of weapons and military aid are now on their way to Israel. Citizens have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of the bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers. Biden said this on CNN to Aaron Burnett back in May of 2024, civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they Israel go after population centers. He said that to CNN, and he still sends weapons to Gaza. He said, I made it clear that if they go into Rafa, and they haven't gone into Rafa yet, if they go into Rafa, this was May of 2024. I'm not supplying the weapons. They've been used historically to deal with Rafa to deal with the cities that deal with that problem. Where are we now? Four months later, Israel said in September, it had secured an $8.7 billion aid package from the United States to support its ongoing military efforts and to maintain a qualitative military edge in the region. (10:20): Folks for the United States to send military weapons into Israel violates international law. It violates American law. It violates the Arms Export Control Act. It violates American law for the United States government to send weapons to countries that are in the midst of oppressing their own people. Look up the arms. Export Control Act. $8.7 billion of your hard earned tax dollars are being sent to Israel to support genocide. This package includes three and a half billion dollars for essential wartime procurement, what they call essential wartime procurement, which has already been received and earmarked for critical military purchases. What does that mean? Well, in common parlance, we'd call that a money laundering scheme. So the United States sends $8.7 billion or earmarks or tags or identifies $8.7 billion for Israel for military weaponry. And what then happens? Well, that money goes to Lockheed Martin, that money goes to Boeing, that money goes to Raytheon. (11:52): That money goes to what Dwight Eisenhower told us in his 1959 farewell address to the American people, the military industrial complex. So the United States Funds genocide is backing the extermination, the elimination, the removal of innocent Palestinian people while American arms manufacturers make billions and billions of dollars. Oh, and by the bye, president Biden also said he's sending another $8 billion to Ukraine. So that's 8 billion to Ukraine. That's 8.7 to Israel. That's $16.7 billion, and they're sending almost 600 million to Taiwan. That's $17 billion in just one month that the United States is sending for militarism and the United States isn't being attacked. We're not under threat. (13:17): 8 billion to Ukraine. Ukraine is the proxy of the United States. The Ukraine is the proxy of NATO. Volodymyr Zelinsky, the president of Ukraine, he tried to negotiate a settlement with Vladimir Putin in April of 2022, right after two months after the damn thing started. And right as they were reaching an agreement, the United States had the former British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, go to Ukraine and tell Zelensky, under no circumstances is the West going to accept a peace deal with Russia. Go figure. And now Kamala Harris says, oh, we won't tolerate this proposed peace plan because the peace plan is surrender. You had the opportunity in 2022 to bring a peaceful resolution to the conflict that you started, but you ignored it. You ignored it. Your hubris got in the way. Your ego got in the way. You were blinded by your ego to the realities that were right before you on the ground, and you ignored the opportunity. And now what has Russia done? They just keep saying, y'all want to drag this out? We'll keep fighting. When we keep fighting, we keep taking territory, and when we take territory, we don't give it back. (15:08): So yeah, it's going to be surrender. It's going to be surrender. The question simply becomes, how much of an ass whooping do you want to take? So now back to the Middle East. According to Middle East Eye on September 27th, Israeli fighters, they carried out a series of massive airstrikes on Beirut southern suburbs in what appeared to be the most intense bombardment of the Lebanese capitol. Since the 2006 war, at least 10 explosions rocked the capitol's southern suburbs, a densely populated area, colloquially known as Dahiyeh, with large clouds of blacksmith rising over the city. The result of that attack, Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nala, was assassinated. (16:08): Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, was assassinated by the way, in violation of international law. Aaron Mate wrote one week after Israel began its US back campaign in a rampage in Gaza last October, Biden was asked by CBS news if fueling a Middle East conflict on top of the proxy war in Ukraine was more than the United States could take on at the same time. Basically, Hey, you're fighting wars on multiple fronts, and anybody that understands military history will tell you the more fronts you open up. This is my commentary, not mate, the more fronts you open up, the bigger problems you're going to have. What was Biden's answer to that question about is the United States taking on more than it can manage at the same time? No, Biden said, and he was incredibly indignant when he said it, we're the United States of America, for God's sake, the most powerful nation in the history, not in the world, in the history of the world. Not only does the US have the capacity to do this, Biden said, we have an obligation. We are the essential nation. And if we don't, who does? (17:38): Joe, you're reading your own press clippings, Joe, you're caught up in your own rhetoric, Joe. You've fallen victim of your own trap. It had overlooked comment. Biden gave his blessing not only to an Israel scorched earth campaign in Gaza, but Lebanon as well for Israel. Biden said, going in and taking out the extremists in Hezbollah up north along with Hamas down south is a necessary requirement. But what you got to understand, when you look at Hamas in the South, when you look at Hezbollah in the North, when you look at Ansar, Allah in Yemen, when you look at Iran, these are the forces of resistance. (18:43): They are resisting the occupation of historic Palestine. This isn't anti-Semitic rhetoric, it's fact. There's a reason why that area is referred to as the occupied territories. They don't use that language a lot in today's parlance because the West has now clearly come to understand that that narrative, that language contradicts the narrative that they're trying to present. But there's a reason why in the international criminal court, in the international Court of justice, in all kind of parliaments, in all kind of countries all over the world, they're referred to as the occupied territories. Who is the occupier? The Zionist government of Israel? Who is the occupied the Palestinians international law tells us? So when Vice President Harris steps to the podium at the DNC convention and says, Israel has the right to defend itself, nay, that's not true. When Joe Biden steps to the podium and says, at the un, Israel has the right to defend itself. That's not true. When Netanyahu steps to the podium and says, Israel has the right to defend itself, that's not true because international law is very clear. The UN is very clear. (20:53): The occupier, in this case, the Zionist government of Israel, does not have the right to defend itself against the interaction or the response by the occupied. In this instance, the Palestinians international law is, here's a very simple analogy. I can't walk into your house armed or unarmed, but I can't walk into your house armed, threaten you and your family, have you resist my aggression? And then I claim self-defense. I can't do it. It won't pass the laugh test. It won't pass the giggle test. It won't pass the smell test. I can't do that. I cannot walk into your home, take over your home, have you resist my aggression, shoot you in the process, and then claim I was defending myself. It's the same thing that's going on right now in the occupied territories. (22:25): So this isn't me being pouring haterade on Vice President Harris or Joe Biden. No, this is just the facts. So getting back to the recent assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces, they reportedly used 2000 pound bunker busting bombs supplied by the United States in the attack that in the assassination of Hassan Raah, they leveled several apartment buildings. They killed dozens of people. I mean scores with others still being believed, trapped in a rubble, which means you're going to have, they leveled a whole damn neighborhood. They leveled a neighborhood to kill one guy. (23:27): And here is an incredibly interesting revelation to all of this. The Lebanese foreign minister now says that Hassanah Raah agreed to a ceasefire, a 21 day ceasefire right before the IDF assassinated him. Abdullah Habib, the Lebanese foreign minister says, Naah agreed to the US and French proposal for a 21 day ceasefire. He said that to on CNN to Christian Yama aur. They told us that Mr. Netanyahu agreed to this. And so we also got the agreement of Hezbollah on that. And you know what happened after that? They assassinated the man. So let's trace this back. If the reporting is true, and I believe that it is Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah was ready to accept the proposed ceasefire, which by the way, the US via Vice President Kamala Harris and a number of others, president Biden claim that they're desperately working on a ceasefire. You've heard him say this, we are desperately working on a ceasefire. We are desperately working on a ceasefire. We're doing everything in our power to come up with a ceasefire. So the US and France propose to Hezbollah a 21 day ceasefire. (25:38): Nasra says, okay, not only will there be a ceasefire in Lebanon, as in between Lebanon and the Zionist colony of it, settler colony of Israel, that ceasefire also has to apply to Gaza as well. There will be a cessation of violence across the landscape because after all, why is Hezbollah fighting the IDF in defense of Hamas, in defense of the Palestinians? Why is Ansara Allah in Yemen sending missiles into Tel Aviv and other parts of Israel? Why is Ansara Allah, why have they shut down the Red Sea and not allowing Israeli flagged or ships that are delivering goods or receiving goods from Israel from the Zionist colony to transit the Red Sea in support of the Palestinians? So you can't have a ceasefire with Lebanon and not with Palestine. That wouldn't make any sense. (27:07): So the story is Hassan Nasrallah was told Netanyahu has agreed the United States and France, everybody's in sync. We can now work towards the ceasefire 21 day ceasefire. And what happens? They assassinate it. And this is what Netanyahu said at the un, his words last week, knowing he said this, knowing that they were going to assassinate the man to speak for my country to speak for the truth. And here's the truth. Israel seeks peace. Israel yearns for peace. Israel has made peace and will make peace again. Yet we face savage enemies who seek our annihilation, and we must defend ourselves against them. (28:17): That's what he said last week at the un. Israel seeks peace. Israel yearns for peace. If that is true, then why did you assassinate the guy you were negotiating with for peace after you had received the message that he agreed to your proposal? Yet we face savage enemies. So you are negotiating for a peace deal. You're on the verge of accomplishing a ceasefire, which can then get you to a peace deal, and you assassinate the guy you're negotiating with, who's the savage Bebe, you or them, and you claim that these savages seek your annihilation. Oh, show me evidence where they have been the aggressor. And please don't give me this noxious BS about October 7th because this conflict did not start on the 7th of October of 2023. That's just revisionist history. This conflict started damn near 80 years ago. October 7th was just the latest iteration of the Palestinians saying enough. October 7th was just the latest iteration of the Palestinians defending themselves. (30:22): And I go back to international law. The oppressed have the right to resist oppression and the oppressor through any means at their disposal. So please, Kamala Harris, don't tell me that this started October 7th. Please, governor Waltz, don't say at the vice presidential debate that this started on October 7th. Spare me of that bs. Spare me of that revisionist history because you're lying. And I say you're lying because you're wrong. You know you're wrong, and you are intentionally perpetrating a lie. So I ask Netanyahu again, who, by the way, his real name, his family name, his grandfather's name before his grandfather immigrated from Poland to Palestine was Milikowsky His family name is not Netanyahu. The family name is Milikowski. (31:40): They're Polish. They're European. They're not Arab. Remember, Jesus was a Palestinian Jew with skin of burnt bronze and hair of lambs wool, kind of like this. They weren't Polish, they weren't French, they weren't Russian. They're Palestinian. That's why it's called the occupied territory. Again, I digress. Nasrallah was ready to accept the proposed ceasefire and the US and Israel assassinated him. Go back to this past July. Hamas' top political leader, Ishmael Heah, was assassinated in Tehran. He was attending the installation of the Iranian president who was Ishmael Haniyeh. He was not a terrorist. He was not a military leader. He was the head of the political wing of Hamas. Understand Hamas has basically two factions. They have a military faction and they have a political faction. They started as a political group, but only when they were compelled to develop a military response to the genocide and oppression that the Zionist government of Israel was imposing upon them in the West Bank. And in that concentration camp called Gaza, did they develop a military response. But Ishmael was not part of the, he was a negotiator. (33:43): He was in the process of negotiating a ceasefire slash peace deal with Israel and the United States. And what did they do? Assassinated him. They assassinated the man. But Netanyahu stands before the world at the United Nations and says, he's speaking for truth. Israel seeks peace. Israel yearns for peace. That's what he said. Who's the savage? Joe Biden, who's the savage? BB Netanyahu. BB Milowski. Nasrallah was ready to accept a ceasefire. You assassinated him. Haniyeh was negotiating a ceasefire. You assassinated him. Let's switch gears. January 3rd, 2020. Remember General Soleimani, Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian major general who was assassinated by an American drone strike near Baghdad international airport in Iraq. Donald Trump pushed the button on Soleimani. (35:14): Why was Qassem Soleimani in Iraq? He had been lured there under the false pretense of a peace negotiation. The Saudis trying to make peace with the Iranians. You've got Sunni Muslims in Saudi Arabia. You've got Shia Muslims in Iran trying to find peace between the two. He General Soleimani was brought to Iraq under the pretext of bringing letters of negotiation between the two governments. False pretense. It was a lie. He was there on a peace mission and was assassinated. I'm connecting some dots here, folks. Are you starting to see the picture? I'm connecting some dots here, folks. Are you starting to see the picture? (36:39): Why is this going on? Oh, by the way, so Soleimani goes to Iraq. They assassinate him under the pretense of a peace deal. China steps in. And what does China do? China brokers a peace deal between who? The Saudis and Iran. So months later, the deal does get done. Even though Soleimani was assassinated, Donald Trump pushed the button on him at the behest of the Zionist government of Israel. But Netanyahu Millikowski wants to stand before you stand before the world and say, Israel yearns for peace, but these savages seek our annihilation. I ask again, Bebe, who's the savage? Joe Biden, who's the savage? Y'all tell me. (37:55): So what do we have? Well, at least in terms of the Middle East, we have Iran responds to the assassination of Haniyeh and a number of other incursions aggressions that they have been incredibly measured and incredibly calculating. And so they send some missiles into Israel, but they were very, very careful. They selected military targets, and most of the military targets that they selected were the targets that were either a, well, primarily, I won't even go to a, and let me just say they were responsible for the assassination of keeping these names in my head is a bit challenging of Hassan Nasrallah. So they decimated some F-35's at an Air Force base in near Tel Aviv. (39:23): They didn't strike any civilian centers, even though Israel has strategically placed a lot of its military, its intelligence operations and whatnot in densely populated civilian spaces. See, they're not like Israel. Israel blows up a whole damn neighborhood with 2000 pound bunker busting bombs. Israel didn't do that. They could have done that. They didn't. And they were very clear in explaining why, because they said, we aren't going to attack civilians. Also, the Holy Quran guides them in their tactics for war. They are guided as Muslims. They are guided by the Quran in terms of what is allowable in war and what is not. That is why, for example, they haven't developed a nuclear program because in their mind, by their belief, too many innocent people will be affected by the action. And when they get into a it kind of eye for an eye kind of deal, when they get into a conflict, they deal with those involved in the conflict. They don't have this idea of collateral damage. They don't sit back and calculate, well, our enemy is here, our target is here, and there are so many civilians in on the periphery, and we have an acceptable number of those that we can exterminate and still call it fair. They don't operate like that. (41:22): Their guide, the Holy Quran dictates how conflict will be managed. So that's why, for example, they sent a message to Iran and said, we are about to strike. They let 'em know they didn't have to do that. They let 'em know. See, people are making a huge mistake by confusing restraint with fear, whether it's Russia, whether it's China, whether it is Iran, because they have been so measured in their responses. They haven't just gone all out blast because that's not their tactic, that's not their way. They have a different understanding of time and what Dr. King called the moral arc of history, because their cultures are thousands of years old, unlike the United States. That's the new kid on the block. (42:30): So they have a totally different concept of time. So the adage, you have the watches, but we have the time. So they're not going to be baited into a knee jerk reaction to an attack. They're going to sit back, step back, evaluate the landscape, and then they retaliate on their terms, on their timeline through their methods. And that's why, for example, when I think it was when Hania was assassinated, the United States went to Iran and said, don't retaliate, don't respond. And Iran told Joe Biden, no, no, no, no, no, no, Joe, we got to respond to this. But understand, here's what we will do. And this is what they said. Here's what we will do. We will strike military targets. We won't strike civilian targets. And the military targets that we select will be those targets that we're responsible for engaging and planning the action that we are responding to. And here's the key that you all need to understand. They also said, Joe, once we respond, we will consider the matter settled. (44:04): Once we respond, once we retaliate, we will consider the matter settled unless you or them engage in further action. If you do that, then we are going to have to handle that business. We're going to have to do what we got to do. So they are, and I'm I'm speaking about the resistance in general. They are incredibly measured because not only do they have tactics, they have strategy. See what you see playing out from the Israeli side. There's no strategy here. There's no strategy, there's no plan. There's no long-term methodological. I think that's proper pronunciation plan. (45:08): They're just out there shooting first and asking questions later. They have tactics, but no strategy. So that takes you to the adage, if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there. I mean, they know Annihilation, they know genocide is what they're after. But in terms of a planned, calculated strategy doesn't exist. That's why it's so hard for people to make sense out of what's happening. People keep going, what the hell are they doing? Why are they doing this? You don't know. They don't know. You don't know. They don't know. So look, that's kind of where we are now. (46:11): Israel is talking about, oh, the response is going to be horrific. Oh, the response is we are going to have a ground invasion into Lebanon. Well, they tried that and they're getting their butts kicked. They got their butts kicked. Israel got their butts kicked the last time they tried it in 2006. Israel tried to go into Lebanon in 2006, got their asses handed to 'em, and Hezbollah has only gotten stronger and smarter and even more determined if that is possible. I remember when George W. was getting ready to go into Iraq and Minister Farrakhan, and I guess I'll end with this. And Minister Farrakhan was trying to convince America that this was going to be a fool's errand. In fact, he called it the precipitant of greater tragedies to come. And one thing that he said to George W. in an open speech and letter, he said, you can't win this with your technology. (47:45): He said, the first week you got this, he says, your technology and your missiles. He said, the first week you got it, he said, but eventually you're going to have to bring your soldiers in here. And when you do that, they got something for you. He said, because you've never fought a soldier with the heart of a Muslim. He said, you're fighting God in a man. And so when you look at what the resistance is all about, when you look at what Hamas is all about, when you look at what Hezbollah is all about, when you look at what Ansar Allah is all about, do you know what anah means? (48:45): Servants of God. Would did Minister Farrakhan say you're fighting God in a man? That's not rhetoric. That's not rhetoric. My very rough limited understanding Ansar Allah means, and these are the folks in Yemen. You all know him as the Houthis servants of God. And where did that come from? When the prophet Muhammad may peace be upon him was in that region in what is now Yemen. There were a group of people that assisted him and protected him during his travels in, what were they called? Ansar Allah. So they have a history, long history of being anah servants of God. So when you have a people that have taken on that identity, this is who we are, this is what we do, you put them up against a group of 18, 19, 20-year-old Israelis that have been conscripted into military service because they are obligated by law to serve three or four years in the military. And so really all they're trying to do is get the hell out of town alive so that they can check that mark off of the list and say, okay, I did what I was supposed to do. I served my country. You put them kids up against these folks. (50:42): Sad day in Mudville, boys and girls. So I can tell you, when Casey came to bat, it was a sad day in Mudville. So hey folks, look, I thank you all for listening to my rant. Take some time, research what I've said, because what you'll find, I'm telling you all the truth. Thank you all for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wilmer Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Please follow and subscribe, leave a review, share the show, follow me on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. And remember, this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge because talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter here on connecting the dots. I'll tell you this. I ain't joking. I ain't playing. I'm just saying, Hey, see you allall again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Woman Leon. Have a great one. Peace. I'm out Announcer (51:53): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.  

Hassan al-Qazwini is one of the most prominent Muslim leaders in America. The Dearborn, Michigan-based Imam has been an American citizen since 1998 and considers the United States to be the best country in the world to be a Muslim. However, he argues that Israel exerts an undue influence -- to put it mildly -- on our politics and has made him and the American Muslim community irate. We ask him about what it's like to live in America's Arab-majority city, how he will vote this November, what he thinks of his Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims, AIPAC's influence on American politicians, and more. Timestamps: 0:00 - Trailer 1:12 - Inside the Mosque 2:35 - IMAM INTRO 3:57 - Sunni vs. Shia Differences 10:30 - What is Dearborn community like? 13:40 - Iran's influence 18:08 - Imam goes off on Israeli War 24:25 - Who the Imam will vote for 26:47 - "Jihad capital of the US" WSJ piece 28:12 - Why we support Israel 30:30 - AIPAC's influence 32:35 - HEATED debate on Israel 42:10 - Rashida Tlaib being pro-LGBTQ 45:45 - Imam on the Republicans 49:40 - Why Muslims hate America 55:15 - Palestine's future 57:30 - Can they live together? 1:00:00 - Future of Dearborn, MI We look forward to hearing your thoughts on this interview. It was fiery at times, and you may vehemently disagree with some of what the Imam said about Israel, America, and other subjects. But it's important to hear his perspective, and We the 66 believes that more conversation is the answer, not less. Comment thoughts below or email us at wethe66@rocanews.com.

Today's episode, we explore Dr. Hormoz Shariat's remarkable journey from a devout Shia Muslim during the 1979 Iranian Revolution to becoming a leading Christian evangelist. Often called the "Billy Graham of Iran," Dr. Shariat shares how his initial dissatisfaction with Islam and his wife's conversion to Christianity led him to embrace the gospel, eventually founding Iran Alive Ministries. We'll discuss the impact of his satellite TV ministry, bringing Christian teachings into millions of Iranian homes despite government restrictions. We'll also touch on the broader religious awakening in Iran, the complex geopolitical landscape, and biblical prophecies relating to Iran and Israel. Join us for an insightful conversation about faith, transformation, and the powerful role of the gospel in changing lives and societies. Tune in for an episode filled with inspiration and hope.   Learn more about The Joshua Fund. Make a tax-deductible donation. The Joshua Fund Stock provided by DimmySad/Pond5   (00:03) Pastor Hormoz Shariat leads Iran Alive Ministries. (04:24) Guest's conversion from radical Islam to Christianity. (07:20) Pre-revolution, Muslims weren't anti-US or Israel. (12:02) Iranian gospel broadcaster interview, Jeremiah 49 discussed. (13:56) Educating Christians globally about God's plan for Israel. (17:16) God loves you, reaches out, three steps. (19:08) Struggled with Sermon on the Mount, then inspired. (23:40) God favors Israel. Let's align actions with beliefs. (29:18) Joel Rosenberg thanks the team and listeners.   Verse of the Day: Jeremiah 49:38-39 - I will set my throne in Elam, says the Lord, and I will destroy its king and officials. 39  But I will restore the fortunes of Elam in days to come.     I, the Lord, have spoken! Related Episodes:Iran's Attack on Israel: Unpacking the Implications with Joel Rosenberg #179What Does The Bible Say About Iran? #74Danger Ahead? Mike Pompeo on Biden, Iranian Bomb & Israel #67What is God Doing in The House Of Islam? An Interview w/ David Garrison #9 Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Get ready for a game-changing episode of Connecting the Dots! Dr. Wilmer Leon and Caleb Maupin dive into the seismic shifts happening worldwide—where the U.S. is no longer the sole superpower and what that means for our future. They explore a growing movement challenging America's global influence and break down what the 2024 election could mean for the future of U.S. politics. If you care about where our country is headed, this is a must-listen. Don't miss out on insights that could change how you see the world!     Find me and the show on social media. Click the following links to find @DrWilmerLeon on X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Patreon and YouTube!   Hey everyone, Dr. Wilmer here! If you've been enjoying my deep dives into the real stories behind the headlines and appreciate the balanced perspective I bring, I'd love your support on my Patreon channel. Your contribution helps me keep "Connecting the Dots" alive, revealing the truth behind the news. Join our community, and together, let's keep uncovering the hidden truths and making sense of the world. Thank you for being a part of this journey!   Wilmer Leon (00:00:00): As we are living through a pivotal moment in world history, the shift from a unipolar to a multipolar world, anti-imperialism is at the core of this global movement as the US is at the center of this global shift. How did anti imperialism take hold in the us? Let's find out Announcer (00:00:27): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge. Wilmer Leon (00:00:35): Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon and I am Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they happen in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which these events take place. During each episode, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between these events and the broader historical context in which they take place. This enables you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live. On today's episode. The issue before us, the issues before us, are the shift from a unipolar to a multipolar world. How is this happening and what does it mean? As well as the developing 2024 US presidential political landscape to help me work through these issues. Let's turn to my guest. He's an author, independent journalist, political analyst and reporter for RT, and his latest book is entitled “Out of the Movement to the Masses, Anti-Imperialist Organizing in America”. And he's also the author of Kamala Harris and The Future of America, an essay in Three Parts. He is Caleb Maupin, my brother. Welcome back! Caleb Maupin (00:01:53): Sure. Glad to be here. Wilmer Leon (00:01:55): So first of all, your thoughts on my introduction, is that a hyperbole or is that a fairly accurate description of the dynamics that we find ourselves dealing with? Caleb Maupin (00:02:13): Trying to stop the rise of a multipolar world would be a lot like trying to stop the sun from rising in the morning, maybe trying to stop gravity. That's the way the world is moving. But our leaders are committed to trying to keep the world centered around Wall Street and London and they are going to fail. The question is how much of a cost in terms of human lives, in terms of the economy, in terms of political repression, are we going to have to endure before they come to the terms of reality, which is that we're going to have a world where there are other centers of power and countries trade with each other on a different basis. So I would agree with you, Wilmer Leon (00:02:54): And so as we look at this changing dynamic from the unipolar to the multipolar, we've got China, we have Russia, we have India. There are a number of countries that over the years have been targets of American sanctions, regimes and all other types of pressure from the United States. With all of that or from all of that, we now have the rise of the BRICS nations, we've got Brazil, we've got Russia, we've got India, we've got China, we've got South Africa, and now what about how many, I've lost track now about 15 or 17 other countries that have joined this organization, this economic organization, which also seems to be an anti imperialist organization. Caleb Maupin (00:03:49): Sure. I mean, if you understand imperialism in the economic sense, imperialism is a system rather than a policy, right? Kind of layman's terms imperialism is when one country is mean to another country or attacks another country. But we're referring specifically to imperialism as an economic system when the world is centered around financial institutions, trusts, cartels and syndicates centered in the Western countries that dominate the world through the export of capital, sending their corporations all over the world to dominate the economies of developing countries, to hold back economic development, to keep countries as captive markets and spheres of influence. That process whereby countries are prevented from lifting themselves up, from electrifying, from building modern education systems, developing modern industries, developing their own economies, and just kind of used to dump the excess commodities of Western countries and have their economy dominated by a foreign country and a foreign monopolies and big corporations from another country from the west. (00:04:55): That process refers to, that's what I mean when I say imperialism. I'm referring to a global economic setup, and that economic setup is on its way out. And that's been pretty clear and a lot has gone on, went on in the 20th century to kind of erode imperialism. And in the 21st century, imperialism continues to be in the decline, and there is this new economy rising around the world, centered around the two U superpowers, Russia and China. They are kind of at the center, the linchpin of a global network of countries, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba. But then there's even other countries that are willing to trade and are kind of on the one hand friendly to the United States, but on the other hand are happy to work with Russia or China if they give them a better deal. The shape of global politics is changing, the world is changing, and this is just something we need to embrace. The world is not going to be centered around the West as it was for so long during the age of colonialism and sense. Wilmer Leon (00:05:54): In fact, what we're finding out is that on the 27th and the 28th of August, Moscow is hosting the sixth annual, the sixth International Municipal BRICS Forum. And what might surprise a lot of people is there are delegations from 126 countries that are expected to take part, more than 5,000 participants from 500 cities around the world. This isn't getting very much attention or coverage here in the western media, but folks need to understand, as we talked about the shift from the unipolar to the multipolar, this is a perfect example of that shift isn't happening, that shift HAS happened. Caleb Maupin (00:06:45): Sure. When I was at the Valdi Discussion Club in Sochi, Russia in the mountains near the city, I saw Ael Togi, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, and he pointed out that in the Eurasian subcontinent and outside of the Western countries, this is like a golden era. The amount of electrification that's going on, the amount of roads and railways that are being constructed, I mean, there is a whole exploding new economy happening in the world. And I saw that when I was at the Yalta Economic Forum in Crimea in 2018, and other people have seen it when they go to the Vladi Stock Economic Forum in the Russian Far East. People have seen it with the Belt and Road Initiative and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that China is building. There is this whole new economy in the world now that is focused on development and growth, building power plants, building schools, building universities, building hospitals, and it's a really, really big part of the global economy. And our leaders are being very foolish by trying to just barricade it and blockade it and oppose it because they're locking the United States out of that economic growth. When somebody's growing economically, they have more money to spend, they have more products they can buy, and we could be benefiting from this new economy that's rising, but instead, our Western leaders are committed to maintaining their monopoly at all costs. And so we are getting locked out of an explosion of growth. It's just a very, very mistaken approach. Wilmer Leon (00:08:18): And I want to, with that intro shift to shift to your book out of the movement to the masses, anti-imperialist organizing in America, because as I said in the intro, one of the major elements I believe of this shift from the unipolar to the multipolar is anti imperialism. And you write in the second paragraph of your introduction, what made the Communist party USA important was that it was the first anti-imperialist organization to take hold in the country. There were certainly anti-war organizations such as Mark Twain's, anti-Imperialist League. There had been pacifists and socialists like Eugene Debs, who opposed War on a Class basis, but the Communist party of USA was founded on the ideological breakthroughs of the Bolshevik Revolution and Russia specifically the teachings of Vladimir Lenin. So I wanted to use this book out of the Movement to the Masses, which is a textbook, and wanted to start the conversation with what motivated you to write this book and what motivated you to write this as a textbook? Caleb Maupin (00:09:33): Well, it's important to understand that I think the ultimate interest of we the American people is in a society free from imperialism. I don't think that helping ExxonMobil and BP and Shell and Chevron dominate the global oil markets really benefits American working people in the long run. There might be some short-term bonuses, but those things are fading and that there is a long Wilmer Leon (00:09:57): Short-term bonuses such as, Caleb Maupin (00:09:59): Well, we've had a higher standard of living at least in the past, but that standard of living is in decline, and the future of the United States is not in this decaying western financial system. It's in a new order where we're trading with countries on the basis of win-win cooperation. And the reason I wrote the textbook is because I wanted people to be aware of the fact that there has been a strong anti-imperialist movement in this country, and that we can learn from these struggles of the past and these organizations that existed and what they achieved as we figure out in our time how we can build an anti-imperialist movement to rescue our country from the nightmare of the emerging low wage police state and the drive toward World War iii. And I mean, really, you don't have anti imperialism as we understand it, right? You don't have the rise of Russia and China. (00:10:50): You don't have the bricks. You don't have any of that without the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. That was a pivotal moment. That was a country that broke out of the Western imperialist system during World War I and started on an independent course of development. And it came out of the Bolshevik started out as part of the Marxist movement. Marxism was the ideology of the labor movement, right? The worker versus the employer. But there was a division in the labor movement increasingly between wealthy labor union bosses and higher paid skilled trade jobs that increasingly became supporters of empire and supporters of their country, colonizing countries in Africa and countries in Asia, et cetera. And the lower levels of the labor movement of more oppressed workers, the American Federation of Labor, the A FL was the big labor federation in the United States. And the people who started it, like Samuel Goer's, they were socialists or Marxists, but they were not anti-imperialist. (00:11:55): And by the time World War I came along, the A FL was a union that largely was for whites only. Most of the unions that were part of it banned black people from joining, banned people not born in the United States from joining, banned people who did not speak English as their first language from joining. And they were big supporters of World War I when it happened. And there was a divide in the labor movement and Marxism that had been the ideology of the labor movement got very much divided. And you had parties like the British Labor Party, the ruling party of Britain today. It originated as a Marxist party of labor organizers, but it became a pro imperialist party. Well, Bolshevism and the people who took power in Russia, the Bolsheviks, they were a breakaway from the Marxist movement that had developed this new theory of imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. (00:12:48): And they said, we're not just fighting against regular capitalism. We're fighting against the monopolistic capitalism of Britain and France and Germany and America, and that means that we support nations, right? Originally, Marxists and the labor movement said, there are no nations workers of the world unite. It's just the workers versus the bosses. No borderers in our struggle. Well, Lenin says, actually, we do support nations in their fight against imperialism. And after the Bolsheviks took power in Russia, one of the first things they did is they called a conference in Baku in Azerbaijan. And at that conference, they invited all kinds of people from all over the world and they said, we will support you as long as you're fighting imperialism. And one of the people that came to that conference and was given military support by the Bolsheviks was the Amir of Afghanistan. And the Amir of Afghanistan was a conservative monarchist. (00:13:40): He was not a Marxist, not a socialist of any stripe. He was a conservative monarchist, a very conservative Muslim, but the Bolshevik said, you're fighting imperialism and so and so, we support you. And he gave them support. And many people around the world were inspired by the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist message that the Bolsheviks had, which was kind of a breakaway from the standard Marxist movement. The understanding was we're not just fighting capitalism, we're fighting against imperialism, and we support nations and colonized people of all different classes, workers, capitalists, whoever who are struggling against imperialism. That is the basis of this new movement that we are trying to build. And the Communist Party of the United States was the incarnation of that movement, and that's why it was embraced by many different sections of the population, most especially the black community in America, because they viewed black people as a colonized people, an oppressed nation within US borders. Marcus Garvey had been leading the black nationalist movement in the United States, the Back to African movement, and many black people saw African-Americans as a colonized people within the US borders. And the Communist Party agreed with that, and that was a winning point that they had with many people in the United States. And the Communist Party was supportive of anyone around the world who was struggling against British American or French imperialism. Wilmer Leon (00:15:04): And as we look at that history and we bring it forward to the current moment and the Russia phobia that we find ourselves subjected to, I submit, and please if I'm wrong, correct me that one of the things that's at the crux of this Russia phobia is the fact that America is an imperialist nation and a neo-colonial power, and Russia has the Soviet Union and then into Russia has been anti-colonialism, which is one of the reasons why we find now Russia gaining so much traction with countries on the continent of Africa. Caleb Maupin (00:15:53): Well, I got to tell you, just a few weeks after the special military operation in Russia began a couple of years ago, I was in New York City with Tanner, 15 of my friends, and we were marching around with American flags and Russian flags chanting, Russia is not our enemy, Russia is not our enemy. And we chanted this in Union Square, and then we went up to Grand Central Station, we marched around Grand Central Station chanting that, and while we were doing that, we got thumbs up from a lot of different people. Now, many people did not agree with us, but the people who did give us thumbs up, many of them were people that were not from the United States. New York City is a big international center. You have the United Nations that's there. You have Wall Street that's there. And I would say the majority of the people who gave us thumbs up and gave us support were from the continent of Africa. (00:16:40): They were people from West Africa, from Nigeria. They were people from South Africa. And that the economy of Africa is very tied in with the Russian economy, and Russia provides fertilizer to many countries. Russia has partnerships with many countries to help them develop their state run mining industries or their state run oil and natural gas industries. So support for Russia on the African continent is widespread. Now, this doesn't match the narrative of liberals. Liberals would have us believe that Russia is a white supremacist country, and that's why they rigged the elections in 2016 to get white supremacist. Donald Trump elected, and that just does not match reality. The Soviet Union, which modern Russia is built on the foundations of the Soviet Union, was the best friend of anti-colonial and liberation movements on the African continent, and those relationships still exist. When I was in Russia, I sat down with people from various African countries. (00:17:43): I sat down with people from Namibia. Well, the ruling party of Namibia is the Southwest People's Organization, which was a Soviet aligned, Soviet funded organization that fought for Namibia to become independent. The ruling party of South Africa, the African National Congress was armed and funded by the Soviet Union. If you go to Ghana, the man who created modern Ghana was Kwame Nkrumah, who was a big friend of the Soviet Union and was called himself an African socialist and developed his own interpretation of the Marxist philosophy that was specific to the African continent. I mean, there was Julius Nire, there was Gaddafi who built Libya into the most prosperous country on the African continent. There are just so many examples of how Russia is intimately tied in with the struggle against colonialism on the African continent with the struggle of African countries to pursue their own course of development. (00:18:43): And that is rooted in the foundation of the Bolshevik Revolution. And the Bolshevik ideology, which I will emphasize was a break with the standard Marxist view. Marx himself, he believed that the first communist revolution would happen in Germany, and it would be the European countries that had the communist revolution first because they were the most advanced. And it was Lenin who came along and said, well, actually, that's wrong. The center of revolutionary energy is going to be in the colonized and oppressed countries of the world. And the working class in the imperialist homeland is largely being bought off, and it's going to be the division between what we now some academics talk about the global north and the global south. It's going to be that division that brings socialism into the world. And that is kind of the defining aspect of what Lenin taught. And as much as the global anti-imperialist movement is not explicitly Marxist Leninist in the Soviet sense, they don't exactly follow that Soviet ideology. That understanding of imperialism and what happened in the 20th century with the Soviet Union, with later the Chinese Revolution, the Vietnamese revolution, the Cuban Revolution, all of that laid the basis for what exists today. And that understanding is important, and that's why I wrote this textbook. Wilmer Leon (00:19:55): And to your point about all of these myths and stories and fictions about Russia being involved in our election and all of this other foolishness, mark Zuckerberg just wrote a letter to Jim Jordan saying that he apologizes for having purged stories from Facebook regarding the Hunter Biden laptop and some of the other stories, because he has now come to understand that that whole narrative was not Russian propaganda as the FBI had told him, he now has come to understand that those stories are true. And I bring that up just as one data point to demonstrate how so much of this rhetoric that we've been hearing, so much of this propaganda that we've been hearing about China being involved in our elections and Russia being involved in our elections, and Iran, mark Zuckerberg, the head of Facebook, just sent a letter to Jim Jordan laying all this out, that it was bs. It was a fiction created by the FBI, Caleb Moin. Caleb Maupin (00:21:14): Well, we've been through this before, right after the Russian Revolution, just a few years later in London, in Britain, there was a scandal called the Enovia of letter. And the British people were told, oh my goodness, the Russians are meddling in our elections. They're trying to get the Labor Party to win the election. And Lloyd George, who was the conservative military leader, was playing up the idea that the Labor Party was being funded and supported by Russia, and they held up this piece of paper they said was the smoking gun. It was the proof, the Enovia letter, this letter supposedly from the Russian government official of Enovia to the Labor Party. Well, it was later proven to be a complete hoax. It was fake, right? But that was happening back in the 1920s. And we've been through this over and over and over again. When Henry Wallace ran for president, he was the vice president under Roosevelt, and then when Truman was president, he ran against the Democrats as they became a pro-war party, the party that was leading us into the Korean War, et cetera. (00:22:12): He ran as an independent candidate in 1948, and they acclaimed his campaign was a big Russian conspiracy, and it was a communist conspiracy. There's a whole history of this and the FBI, if you look at the number of investigations they've done into supposed Russian influence in American elections, it's endless, but it's always a hoax, right? American elections happen because of events in America, not because of Russia. However, there is no question that many people in the United States do want peace, and they do want peace with the Soviet Union or with modern Russia, and they may vote for candidates who they think are more likely to bring about that peace, but that's not a conspiracy. That's doing what you're supposed to be able to do in a democracy expressing yourself at the ballot box. And what they're really worried about is Americans thinking wrong. They're really worried about not having a monopoly over the information that we receive. They're really worried about us questioning what we're told and not marching in lockstep behind their agenda of war and dividing the world into blocks and isolating certain countries. And this story has happened over and over and over again in American politics. We've been through it so many times. Wilmer Leon (00:23:25): Final point on this, I don't want to get back to the book. As you just said, events happen in American elections due to America. Well, all of this chicken little, the sky is falling and the world is interfering in our elections. Well, there was a story in the New York Times about what, three months ago, about APAC spending $100 million to unseat what they consider to be left-leaning Democrats, whose position on Israel was not consistent with the Zionist ideology. I'm going to say that again. This was in the New York Times. I'm not making this up. This is an anti-Semitic dialogue. It was in New York Times APAC spending $100 million on primary campaigns to remove Democrats that they consider to be anti-Israeli. What happened in New York with Jamal Bowman? That's what happened in Missouri with, what's her name? I think she's in St. Louis, the Congresswoman. I'm drawing a blank on her. Anyway, and they were successful in a number of campaigns. So we're running around chasing ghosts, chasing Russian ghosts, and Chinese ghosts when the real culprits are telling you right upfront in the New York Times what it is they're doing and why it is they're doing it. With that being said, you can either respond to that or how did you organize your textbook and why is it organized in the manner in which it is? Caleb Maupin (00:25:16): Well, I went over like case studies of three different anti-imperialist movements or organizations in the United States. I started with probably the most successful, which was the Communist Party of the United States, which at one point had a huge amount of influence During the Roosevelt administration, they entered an alliance with Roosevelt, and in the late 1930s, the Communist party controlled two of the city council seats in New York City. They had a very close ally in the US Congress representing Harlem named Veto Mark Antonio. They also had a member of Congress in Minnesota who was their friend and ally and read their newspaper into the congressional record. They had meetings at the White House with President Roosevelt. On multiple occasions, members of the Communist Party or the Young Communist League were brought to the White House to meet with Roosevelt, and they led the CIO, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, which was a new labor federation they had created as an alternative to the American Federation of Labor. (00:26:14): And they were a very influential group in the labor movement among intellectuals in Hollywood. And they put forward an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist message, and their successes are worth studying. There were certainly mistakes that were made, and they were very brutally crushed by the FBI in the aftermath of the Second World War with the rise of McCarthyism. But there were studying then from there, I talked about the Workers' World Party, which was a Marxist Leninist political party that really came into prominence in the late sixties and really kind of peaked in its influence during the 1980s. And they were a party that took inspiration, not just from the Soviet Union, but from the wave of anti-colonial movements that emerged. They were sympathetic to Libya and Gaddafi. They were sympathetic to North Korea and others, and they did a lot of very important anti-war organizing, building anti-war coalitions. They were very close to Ramsey Clark, the former US Attorney General who left the Lyndon Johnson administration and became an international lawyer and an opponent of the International Criminal Court in his final years and such. (00:27:17): And then I talked about the new communist movement of the 1970s, which was a number of different organizations that emerged during the 1970s that were trying to take inspiration from China. They wanted to take guidance from the Chinese revolution. China had argued that the Soviet Union had kind of abandoned the global anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggle. They felt it was holding back revolutionary forces, but China was at that point presenting itself as a bastion of anti imperialism. And so there were a number of new political parties formed during the 1970s that modeled themselves on China. And all three of these case studies, all three of these groups made big mistakes, but also had big successes. The most successful was the Communist Party prior to it being crushed by the FBI during the McCarthy period. All of them had big successes and were able to do big important things, and I studied all of them. (00:28:08): And then from there, the fourth chapter talked about divisions in the ruling class, and why is it that we see, at this point, we're seeing a big all-out fight between Donald Trump and those who oppose him. And when you talk about the Watergate scandal and you talk about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, what was really going on behind closed doors? And then in the final chapter, I tried to kind of take from all of that what we could take and what we could learn when trying to build a movement in our time. One thing I made a point of doing in the book is that every chapter is accompanied by a number of original texts from the period discussed. I have a number of texts from the Communist Party, from the Workers' World Party, from the new communist movement of the 1970s, so that we can hear from the horse's mouth, so to speak, what these people were preaching and what they believed as they were building their organizations. Wilmer Leon (00:29:01): So how does this history, how relevant is this history you just mentioned Donald Trump? How relevant is this history to where we find ourselves today with our politics? Caleb Maupin (00:29:15): I would argue it's extremely relevant. And if you look at Roosevelt and who opposed him, and if you look at the Kennedy assassination, and if you look at the Watergate scandal, there has always been a divide among the American elite between what you can call the Eastern establishment, the ultra rich, the ultra monopolies, the Rockefellers, the DuPonts, the Carnegies that are now at this point aligned with Silicon Valley, the tech monopolies, bill Gates and Jeff Bezos and others. There's always been a divide between these entrenched ultra monopolies and a lot of lower level rich people who are not part of the club and feel that those entrenched monopolies are kind of rigging things against 'em. And I quote, there's a very good text called the Anglo-American Establishment by Carol Quigley that talks about this divide. I think he was one of the first people to talk about it. (00:30:06): But then from there, you also have a great book by Carl Oglesby called The Yankee and Cowboy War that talks about this and specifically applies that analysis to what went on with the Watergate scandal, with the assassination of JFK and the political crisis in the 1960s and seventies. And I would argue that in our time, this is the fight that kind of defines things when we talk about trying to build a movement against colonialism and imperialism in the United States, these lower level capitalists would gain if America had paved roads, if America had a stronger economy, and if we were doing business with the countries around the world that are growing right now in alliance with China, right? If we were trading with them and some of that wealth was flowing into our economy, we would be benefiting. However, it is the ultra monopolies that are very much tied in with the intelligence apparatus, the people who brought us, Henry Kissinger, the people who brought us z, big new Brozinsky. (00:31:01): They are determined to keep the United States at the top and keep Western imperialist this financial system at the top of the world at all costs, even if that means kind of playing a long geopolitical game and if it means dramatically decreasing the standard of living and kind of collapsing the domestic economy of the United States. And so when Trump talks about America first and his supporters rail against globalists, this is really what they're getting at is the lower levels of capital are fighting against the Eastern establishment. And that creates an opening for those of us who want to build an anti-imperialist movement in this country to intervene. And I talk about that, and unfortunately, it seems like really since the 1970s and since kind of the end of the 1960s and seventies, political upsurge, much of the left has kind of just deteriorated into being the foot soldiers of that Eastern establishment. (00:31:56): They see those lower level capitalists as being the most hawkish and warlike as being the most anti-union and the most authoritarian. So they think, okay, we're going to align with the Eastern establishment against them. And I argue that that's not the correct approach because right now it is those lower level capitalists who feel threatened, and it is among them that you found support for Julian Assange that you find interest in being friendly with Russia and with China and anti-establishment sentiment, you find opposition to the tech monopolies and their censorship. And that really we're in a period where those of us who are anti-imperialist need to pivot into trying to build an anti-monopoly coalition. And that's what the Communist Party talked about at the end of the Second War as the Cold War got going, as they were being crushed by the FBI, they said their goal was to build an anti-monopoly coalition to unite with the working class, the small business owners, even some of the wealthy against the big monopolies in their drive for war. (00:32:54): And I would argue that's what we should be aiming to do in our time, is build an anti-monopoly coalition. And that's what I've pulled from that textbook and from that history going over what has been done and what has been successful and that the Communist Party really gained from having an alliance with Roosevelt that was very strategic on their part. And I would argue that similar alliances are necessary, but the main thing is that there needs to be a network of people that are committed to building anti-imperialist politics in America. We need a network of people who can work together, who can rely on each other and can effectively carry out anti-imperialist operations. And there are examples of this. I'm about to go to Florida to support the Yahoo movement, the Yahoo movement, the African People Socialist party. They are an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist organization, and they're doing it. And if you go to St. Louis, Missouri, and if you go to St. Petersburg, Florida, Wilmer Leon (00:33:50): Who, Cory Bush, I'm sorry, her name you said St. Louis, Cory Bush, sorry, is the other congresswoman that was defeated by the, sorry, I had to get it out. Go ahead. Okay. Caleb Maupin (00:34:01): But you'll see the huge community centers that they've built, the farmer's markets that they've built, I mean, they have built a base among the African-American community in these two cities where they are providing services to people while teaching an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist ideology. Now, I don't necessarily agree with their entire approach on everything, but I see why they're being targeted because they are laying the foundations of building a broader anti-imperialist movement. And what they are doing is a great model to look at. They are building a base among the population. The title of the book is Out of the Movement to the Masses. I've been going to anti-war protests, and I've been going to socialist and communist spaces, and very rarely did I ever encounter the African People's Socialist Party, but they were organizing where it counted not in these kind of obscure academic bohemian spaces. (00:34:54): They were organizing in communities and they were providing real services, and they were building community centers and having classes for pregnant mothers and having organic farmer's markets. And they were doing things among the masses of people, not among the, so-called movements of people that like to read books about communism or whatever. And that is why they're being targeted, because they are actually building the kind of movement that needs to be done. They're doing what the Communist Party did during the 1930s. They're doing what the new communist movement of the 1970s attempted to do and was pretty unsuccessful because of global circumstances, et cetera. They are doing what needs to be done to build a real anticolonial movement. And that's kind of what I'm in the text is we have to have a reevaluation and we have to figure out how we can reach the bulk of the American people and not confine ourselves to kind of left academic and intellectual spaces. Wilmer Leon (00:35:50): Is it too simplistic to, when you look at this battle between the elites, is it too simplistic to categorize it as the financials versus the industrialists? Caleb Maupin (00:36:01): Yes. It's a little bit too simplistic because there is a lot of financialization, a lot of the lower levels Wilmer Leon (00:36:07): Of capital. Caleb Maupin (00:36:09): Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's not exactly right, but you're pointing to a certain trend that there is one faction that favors economic growth because economic growth will mean more money for them. There's another faction that is not concerned about economic growth so much as they're concerned about maintaining their monopoly. And in order to maintain their monopoly, they need to slow down growth around the world, and they're actually pushing degrowth or slow growth economics. So that's probably the primary divide is pro-growth and anti-growth, right? You would think that every businessman would be pro-growth, but the ultra monopolies that are heavily involved in finance at this point, they're blatantly talking about degrowth as a way to stay at the top. Wilmer Leon (00:36:51): In fact, one of the ways that they maintain their position is through consolidation. One of the ways that the banks control their monopoly is by buying smaller banks and bringing the or. So that's just one example. Caleb Maupin (00:37:10): Sure, sure. I mean, we live in a time where at the end of the day, the issue is technology is that it is human labor that creates all wealth, right? It is only human labor that creates value at the end of the day, and it is the value that workers create that lays the basis for the profits that capitalists can make, et cetera. And we are in a period where the technological revolution is reducing the role of workers at the assembly line. There's a lot of jobs that are no longer in existence because of technological advancement. And in a rational society that would be great. But in our society where profits are in command, that's leading to an economic crisis. Great example is self-driving cars, self-driving cars should be a great thing. It should be great that this job called driving this chore, this human labor of driving cars is no longer necessary. (00:38:02): But if they introduce self-driving cars, you would immediately in this country have millions of truck drivers unemployed, millions of Uber drivers unemployed, millions of traffic court employees unemployed. You would have riots in the streets. And Andrew Yang talked about how if self-driving cars came to the United States, we would have a society-wide crisis of unemployment and chaos like we never seen. How is that rational? Why should technological advancement lead to greater poverty? And that is the problem that we are facing. Human creativity and brilliance has outstripped the narrow limits production organized to make profit. We need a rationally planned economy so that economic growth can continue and technological advancement leads to greater prosperity for all Wilmer Leon (00:38:46): That sounds like China. Caleb Maupin (00:38:47): Yeah. And China, by controlling their economy and by having the state assigned credit based on their five-year plans and having state controlled tech corporations that are in line with the Communist party's vision, they're able to continue having growth despite having technological advancement. And that's ultimately what we need to have. And that is what Marx wrote about. One of the writers I quote extensively from is a brilliant thinker from the new communist movement named Nelson Peery and his autobiography, black Radical, which is very good, talks about his involvement in the Communist Party and then getting kicked out of the Communist Party and FBI infiltration of the Communist Party and then starting the Communist Labor Party during the 1970s. But also his very important book that he published before he died, I believe in 2004, called The Future Is Up To Us, which really gets into this contradiction of technology leading to impoverishment. (00:39:42): And he's saying this like during the Bush administration before ai, before any of what we're saying now he's laying out how this is going to lead to a big economic crisis that's going to necessitate a new economic system. Nelson Period is a brilliant thinker who had this kind of understanding. I also draw from Fred Goldstein, from Sam Marcy from some of the other writers who said the same thing. But this has always been kind of the understanding is that technological advancement should not lead to impoverishment, it should lead to greater prosperity. I often quote, there's an old story called the coal miner's riddle, the coal miner. He's sitting in his house with his son. The son says, father, why is it so cold in the house? And he says, because I can't afford to buy any coal. And he says, well, why can't we afford to buy any coal? (00:40:30): And he says, because I lost my job at the coal mine. I was laid off. And he says, father, why were you laid off from the coal mine? Why did you lose your job? He says, because there is too much coal. That's capitalism, but that's not rational. It's poverty created by abundance. I keep hearing our politicians talk about a housing shortage. Have you heard this? A housing shortage in America, there's no housing shortage. I live in New York City, there's four empty apartments for every homeless person. There's millions of empty housing, there's no housing shortage in America. There's a shortage of affordable housing black, because the national economic system, Wilmer Leon (00:41:06): BlackRock bought up a lot of the housing stock and instead of putting those houses back on the market, they held those homes off the market and then put 'em out for rent. So in many instances, it's not a matter of oh, $25,000 credit to those first time home buyers allegedly to lower the price of housing or to make housing more affordable. No, all that's going to do is raise the price of houses by $25,000. What you need to do is get that housing stock that BlackRock has as bought up and put that on the market, make that available. Because if you look at the Econ 1 0 1 supply and demand, you put more houses on the market, chances are the price of houses is going to decline. Caleb Maupin (00:42:02): Absolutely. Absolutely. When we talk about imperialism and we talk about anti-imperialist movements, one great example is the situation with Yemen, right? Yemen right now, this is one of the poorest countries in the world, and right now, this country that has a big movement called the Houthis or Anah, they're shaking the world. But if you go and listen or read the sermons or the founder of the Houthis movement, Hussein Al Houthis, what he's fighting for is economic development because he points out that Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world, but yet it has a huge amount of oil. It has a huge amount of arable land to grow food, but the people there are very, very poor. And the Houthis movement that is now at this point, stopping ships in the Mediterranean and standing with the Palestinians and sending drones to the Indian Ocean and just shaking the world. (00:42:56): That was a movement of very, very poor people in one of the poorest countries in the world that demanding to take control of their natural resources and take control of their economy. My understanding of imperialism and such very much had a lot to do with the fact that in 2015, I participated in a humanitarian mission attempting to deliver medical aid to Yemen after the upsurge of 2015 when the Houthis movement and their revolutionary committee took power, I went on a ship from the Islamic Republic of Iran with the Red Crescent Society, and we tried to deliver medical aid to Yemen, and we were blocked in doing so. And reading about this anti-colonial movement that was formed in Yemen, a very religious Shia Muslim movement, demanding economic development, demanding, taking control of their resources, reading about that was very inspiring in the aim of building an anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movement in the United States. (00:43:54): Now to see what the Houthis are doing as they're blocking ships to support the Palestinians as they're withstanding us attack, this is a movement of impoverished people fighting for their economic development and fighting to build a new country. This is a mass anti-colonial movement that is worth studying. And the fact that they align themselves with Russia and China, they're not blocking ships from Russia, they're not blocking ships from China. They are blocking ships from Israel and any country that trades with them, that shows you that this global anti-imperialist movement that is about mobilizing millions of people to fight for their rights, this global movement has a real strength. Wilmer Leon (00:44:34): Let's shift now to the 2024 presidential election. We've come out of the Republican Convention, we've now come out of the Democratic Convention and the Democratic Party convention, and Donald Trump was shocked when Joe Biden stepped down, Kamala Harris stepped in. That has changed the dynamic, at least in terms of the dialogue, and we're starting to see some shift in the numbers. Your thoughts on where we are now with this landscape. Caleb Maupin (00:45:09): I think that Kamala Harris is a completely manufactured candidate. She was created by the people who brought us the Hillary Clinton State Department when it was made clear that Hillary Clinton couldn't run for president once again in 2020, all of Hillary Clinton's financial backers put their money behind Kamala Harris. She was not popular with the American people, but yet powerful forces twisted Joe Biden's arm and put her on the ticket as vp. She has not been popular or successful as vp, but she is the candidate that the forces that are committed to regime change and all out efforts to oppose Russia and China at all costs. She is the one that they have invested the most in supporting. And I don't think she's going to win. I think that Trump will win the upcoming election. And that doesn't mean everything about Trump is good or I endorsed Donald Trump. (00:46:03): I'm just telling you that I think Trump is going to win. But I also believe that there are very powerful forces that see Kamala Harris as their best bet at getting what they want, which is more regime change wars, more destabilization around the world. I did write a book in 2020 about Kamala Harris four years ago, and I thought it was very odd that right after she got the Democratic nomination, this book that had been on sale for four years on Amazon suddenly got removed from Amazon. And for seven days my book was banned from Amazon and then restored with no explanation seven days later. I thought that was very, very odd. It raised a lot of eyebrows, but it also points to the amount of power the tech monopolies really have. It seems like everything was being done to support Kamala Harris. What I also thought was interesting is that in my book, I talked about Tulsi Gabbard and how Tulsi Gabbard kind of represents forces in the Pentagon that are really worried about another Arab Spring and what Kamala Harris and the Hillary Clinton State Department forces people like Samantha Power, people like Anne-Marie Slaughter, what they might engineer if they come back to office. (00:47:11): My book highlighted Tulsi Gabbard as being kind of a faction that is opposed to Kamala Harris. And the very same day that my book was pulled from Amazon, Tulsi Gabbard was added to the Quiet Sky's terrorism watch list by the American government. When she tried to board a plane, she found out she was accused of being a terrorist. And I thought that was interesting as well. And it just kind of points to, and there was all kinds of weird stuff going on in terms of social media and Google searches that was being manipulated around that time. But the book that I wrote about Kamala Harris and who has backed her and the ties that she has getting pulled from Amazon, it was interesting to see the timing, Wilmer Leon (00:47:52): The position of the Democratic Party as it relates to Gaza. And I was at the DNCI was also at the RNC conventions, but there were protestors in Chicago demanding a change in the US policy as it relates to the genocide in Gaza. Then you had uncommitted delegates that were able to have a sit-in at the DNC right outside the front door of the entrance to the United Center, demanding that a pro-Palestinian spokesperson be added to the speaker's list. And none of that was agreed to. In fact, it was basically dismissed summarily. So your thoughts on the dangers that the Democrats are playing with taking that position as it relates to the general election? Caleb Maupin (00:48:55): Well, if the Democrats are going to win this election, they're going to need lots of votes in Minnesota, lots of votes in Wisconsin and lots of votes in Michigan. And what do all three of those states have in common? Those swing states, Wilmer Leon (00:49:06): Large Arab populations. Caleb Maupin (00:49:08): That's right. Lots of Muslim Americans, lots of Arab Americans, and with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris giving a blank check to Israel to do what they're doing. I think it's very unlikely to see those folks lining up to vote for them. Now, Kamala Harris has made some noise about this or that, but she's basically the president already. If she was going to do something, she could do it right now. I mean, she's the vice president, but Joe Biden doesn't seem to be as actively involved in the political running of the country as some people might expect. That said, I will say that Donald Trump, I mean his position on Israel Palestine, I mean, is pretty reprehensible, and he continues to play up the idea that Kamala Harris and the Democrats are somehow anti-Israel, which they are not. What I think is interesting though, and I noticed that it seems like anti-Israel voices in the Trump camp, they may not be on the front stage, but they do have a lot of influence. (00:50:03): And I'm not saying all these people are doing what they're doing for necessarily good reasons, but I noticed when Elon Musk was interviewing Donald Trump in the chat, it just exploded. And all over Twitter, it exploded. The phrase, no war on Iran that came from Nick Fuentes. Now, Nick Fuentes is somebody that I don't agree with on many, many things and find a lot of his views and just his presentation style to kind of reprehensible and gross, but he, for his own reasons says no war with Iran. I also noticed that Candace Owens, who is a conservative and was very pro-Israel at one point, she was not pro-Israel enough. Now she's kind of moved for interesting reasons that are very different than anything I would say. She's moved into an anti-Israel direction and she has also got a lot of people in the Trump camp who listen to her and she is making noise, no war in Iran and urging Trump supporters not to support Israel. And this points to the fact that opposition to Israel, I think is much more widespread in both parties than anyone wants to recognize. (00:51:07): It's an element of the emperor has no clothes. Both parties pretend that everyone in their camp just supports Israel. But anyone who talks to a typical Democrat, you were at the Republican Convention and the Democrat Convention, and you could probably confirm that opposition to what Israel is doing is boiling beneath the surface, amid both political parties and amid all sections of this country. And that there is a lot of growing outrage about the influence and power of Israel and American politics, even among people who might support Israel otherwise, but just don't appreciate the arrogance and grip that they seem to have over policymaking. Wilmer Leon (00:51:46): And some people just help me understand why, but some people just have a problem with genocide. It's a bit os there are growing groups, Republicans for Harris, and there are those who are positing that this is because she's a stooge of the elite and this represents how she who's truly backing her. What about the argument that many of those in those types of organizations see her as an opportunity to reclaim the Republican party by getting rid of Donald Trump? And it's almost a any port in the storm kind of mentality, they see her as the stalking horse. If they can back her, if she can defeat Trump, they then can, the old school, the traditional Republicans can regain control of their party. What say you Caleb Opin? Caleb Maupin (00:52:58): Well, I would say that the Bush era Republican party is gone. It's never coming back. And Donald Trump is a symptom of that. And that's very clear. And that Donald Trump's recent embracing of Tulsi Gabbard and RFK, that indicates that Donald Trump is taking his campaign in an anti-establishment direction. Now, that doesn't mean that he's going to necessarily do good things as president. That just means that he's increasingly realizing that his appeal is to people that are opposed to the establishment. And I think that means the establishment is going to fight him a lot harder. There's no question about that. And that there are your regular traditional neo-conservative Republicans, my country, right or wrong, if you don't like it here, move to some other country, support the military, support the wars, support America dominating the world, and showing the world about our great American way of life. (00:53:51): Those folks are increasingly finding the Republican party to not be their home. And this is all very interesting. I noticed in Kamala Harris's DNC speech, she attacked the Republicans for denigrating America. And that made me smile because it reminded me of what I always heard about the far left, right? It was the far left. They hate America. They're always saying things are bad. Why are you always running down our country? And a lot of things that Kamala Harris said in her speech almost sounded like Neoconservatism. She attacked Donald Trump for meeting with Kim Jong-Un. She said he was cozying up to tyrants and being friendly with tyrants. And it seemed to me like there was very much the Republican Party, I believe over time is going to become more of a catchall populist, anti-establishment party, whereas the Democratic party is more and more becoming the party of the establishment of the way things are supposed to be. I think that what I would call the late Cold War normal in American politics is being flipped. It used to be the Republican party was the party of the establishment, and the Democrats were the party of opposition. Not very sincere opposition in many cases, but they were the party of, if you didn't agree with what you're supposed to think necessarily, if you're a little more critical, you become a Democrat. Well, Wilmer Leon (00:55:05): If you were proc civil rights, if you were pro-environment, if you were anti-war, that's where you went. Caleb Maupin (00:55:12): Yeah. And I think it's being flipped. And that doesn't mean that Republicans and the MAGA base that are talking a certain way are sincere at all. That just means who they're appealing to. The Republican party has an anti-establishment appeal more and more every day. The Democratic party has a ProE establishment appeal. And I think this Republicans for Harris is a great example of that. Wilmer Leon (00:55:32): So as we move now, spiraling towards November 5th, you've already said you believe that Donald Trump is going to win the election. One of the things that I find very, very telling, and I check it every day when you go to the Harris website, there's still no policy positions stated. There's no policy tab. In fact, when I asked that question a couple of times at the DNCC, I was told, oh, you don't understand. She hasn't had time. There hasn't been. I said, wait a minute. She ran for president four years ago. So she had to have, we hope she had established some policy positions as a candidate. She was the vice president going on four years now, we hope during those four years she could have figured out some policy and it's now been almost a month. You can't tell me that she couldn't pick up the phone and call a bunch of people in the room and say, Hey, I need policies on education, on defense, on the economy, on these five positions. I need policy in 10 days. Go get it done. Caleb Opin. Caleb Maupin (00:57:00): Well, I think there are three possible outcomes for the election. In my mind, probably the worst case scenario would be Kamala Harris winning. And I think that would be followed by a number of, there'd be chaos in the streets. A lot of Trump supporters will not accept it as a legitimate election. And I expect there will then be a big crackdown on dissent, and I expect there'll be a lot of provocations, et cetera. And that will be used by the establishment to crack down on dissent. Wilmer Leon (00:57:26): Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. And people need to understand the crackdown on dissent has already started by looking what's being done to who's being platformed from social media sites. Look at what's happening to folks who are getting arrested, the guy that started Instagram and all of these folks, the three Scott Ritter, your book taken off of taking all of these things are data points to support your position that the crackdown on descent has already started? Caleb Maupin (00:58:02): No, I mean the Biden administration has already indicted. Sue me, Terry, who was the top advisor to Obama and Bush on South Korea. And I mean the fact that she's been indicted as a foreign agent of South Korea just because South Korea wants to have mattered negotiations with North Korea. I mean, it looks like blatant retaliation. Wilmer Leon (00:58:22): And South Korea is an ally. Caleb Maupin (00:58:23): Yeah, their closest friend in Washington dc Sumi Terry has now been accused of being a foreign agent. She's facing decades in prison. I mean, this is craziness. This is a top CIA person who's been a top advisor on career matters. So that would be kind of what I think the worst case scenario would be. The most likely scenario is that I think Donald Trump will win. But all the negative things about Trumpism will amplify. I think the pro-Israel stuff, the pro-police stuff, the anti-immigrant stuff will amplify Wilmer Leon (00:58:55): Project 2025. Caleb Maupin (00:58:56): Yeah, the government will try to, the powers that be will try to ride the wave of Trumpism to push forward their own agenda, which is not good But I do think there is a third possible scenario, which is a real long shot. It's a real long shot, which is that Donald Trump takes office in a completely defensive position. And under those circumstances, he may be compelled to do a lot of good things because he's just at odds with the establishment and needs popular support. So much so we shall have to see. But those are my three predictions. But in all of those circumstances on anti-imperialist organization, a network of people that are committed to anti imperialism and building a new America beyond the rule of bankers and war profiteers is going to be vitally important. And at the end of the day, what really matters is not so much who is in office, it's what the balance of forces is in the country and around the world, and what kind of movement exists, what kind organizations. (00:59:58): There are people that are involved in the political process and to change the world and taking responsibility for the future of their country. And I wrote the book as a textbook for the Center for Political Innovation. My organization as we try to do just that, as we try to build a network of people who can rely on each other and build an anti-imperialist movement in the United States to support the Hru three, to study these ideas to be out there. That is one thing we aim to do. If Donald Trump wins the election, one thing that we aim to do is and intend to get that picture of Donald Trump shaking hands with Kim Jong-un and get it everywhere and say that this election is a mandate that the peace talks on the Korean Peninsula should continue. And that could be a way to nudge the discourse toward a more peace oriented wing of Trumpism. (01:00:46): That's one thing that we intend to do. We have other operations that we intend to carry out with the aim of nudging the country in an anti-colonial direction. One thing that I think is very important is Alaska, right? Alaska is right there close to Russia and there's the bearing Strait that separates Russia and Alaska and Abraham Lincoln had the idea of building a bridge to connect Alaska to Russia. And a lot of great people have had the idea of doing that since. And I think popularizing the idea of building a world land bridge to connect Alaska to Russia and pivot the US economy toward trading with the Russian Far East and with the Korean Peninsula and with China that could nudge the world and a direction of Multipolarity pivot away from Western Europe and towards the World Land Bridge and the bearing Strait and all of that. (01:01:36): So there are various things that we can do to try and influence discourse, but I must say the explosion is coming, right? I mean, you can feel it rumbling in the ground. The avalanche is going to pour, the volcano is going to go off. It's only a matter of time. Those of us who study these ideas and understand things, we have the job not of making the explosion come, but rather of trying to guide it in the right direction. The conditions in this country are getting worse. Americans are angry at the establishment. Things are going to change. But what we hope to do is guide that change and point it in a good direction toward a better world. And that's all we can really hope to do. I quote Mao the leader of the Chinese Revolution. He said The masses are the real heroes and at the end of the day, it will be the masses of the American people and their millions who determine what the future of this country will be. I think they are going to awaken and take action. The question is only what type of action will that be? And I think guys like you and I have a role to play in shaping what kind of action they might take when they do awaken. Wilmer Leon (01:02:39): Well, thank you for putting me in that group. And if we are able to build a bridge across the bearing strait between Alaska and Russia, I'm sure Sarah Palin will be the first one. Should be operating the toll booth. My brother. Alright, my brother Kayla mopping. Man, thank you so much for being my guest. Thank you so much for joining the show today. Caleb Maupin (01:03:05): Sure thing. Always a pleasure Wilmer Leon (01:03:07): Folks. Thank you so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Woman Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, follow us on social media. The Patreon account is very, very important. That helps to support the effort. You can find all the links below in the show description and remember that this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge talk without analysis is just chatter. And we don't chatter here on connecting the dots. See you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Wilmer Leon. Have a great one. Peace. I'm out Announcer (01:03:50): Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.    

To help you improve your English, we will look at a news clip from Al Jazeera explaining how President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan may somehow intervene in the conflict that is going on with Israel and Palestine. There will be no "boots on the ground," but maybe Türkiye will supply technology and armed drones.

Kanwal Hassan, a Pakistani artist based in Hong Kong, is a Shia Muslim who grew up in Swat. Growing up as a religious minority in Pakistan, Kanwal faced challenges on a daily basis - from discrimination at school, colourism, to receiving death threats. She joins Proudly Asian to talk about her experience living in Hong Kong as an ethnic minority, and how she experienced more racism back home in Pakistan than in Hong Kong. Follow Kanwal on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kavl_h/ ---------------------------------------- Stay Connected with Proudly Asian: Website - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠proudly-asian.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠instagram.com/proudly.asian⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Youtube - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠youtube.com/@proudlyasianpodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tiktok.com/@proudly.asian⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Support us - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ko-fi.com/proudlyasian⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Email us - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠proudlyasianpodcast@gmail.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/proudlyasian/support

Why would a radical Shia Muslim become a follower of Christ? Mohamad Faridi was born and raised in a devout Muslim family in the country of Iran. After years of faithfully following the Muslim faith, and joining the Islamic Revolutionary Guard in Iran, his goal ultimately became to be a martyr in Jihad. This all changed after a divine encounter with Jesus Christ. Please check out and consider sharing his story. CHECK OUT: IranChristians.org SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/@UCyET-IJoR6h2ocTv08qun7Q READ: Forsaking My Father's Religion (https://amzn.to/3wR3WN3) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

Michael Germi is a former Muslim, born in Iran into a Shia Muslim family. In this setting he learned to practice Islam praying 5 times a day toward Mecca. He fasted during Ramadan. He practiced self-mutilation for the cause of Allah. He migrated to Australia in 2006 and in 2009 found faith in Jesus Christ. He later moved to the U.S. where he now proclaims the Gospel to Islamic nations. He's written several Farsi Christian books and desires to plant churches around the world where Persians are scattered.--Michael began with some history of Iran as they moved from conditions under the Shah to rule by the Ayatollah. He describes how he grew up learning the Qur'an and Islam, not by choice, but by force and how he was taught he'd go to Hell if he didn't abide by-practice the Islamic traditions.--The focus eventually switches to the helicopter crash that took the life of 63 year old Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and other high ranking officials. Raisi was known as the -Butcher of Tehran- and the -Hangman of Tehran-, having massacred thousands of Iranians. Funeral services will run over several days. --As the broadcast moves along you'll hear Michael as he comments on how this will affect the political situation in Iran due to the fact that Raisi was the potential successor to the current Supreme Leader. He also comments on the reaction of the people to the death of Raisi, whether an Iranian official might have caused the helicopter crash, what we know about the current vice-president, Michael's passion for reaching people in Iran with the Gospel message and much more.

Michael Germi is a former Muslim, born in Iran into a Shia Muslim family. In this setting he learned to practice Islam praying 5 times a day toward Mecca. He fasted during Ramadan. He practiced self-mutilation for the cause of Allah. He migrated to Australia in 2006 and in 2009 found faith in Jesus Christ. He later moved to the U.S. where he now proclaims the Gospel to Islamic nations. He's written several Farsi Christian books and desires to plant churches around the world where Persians are scattered.--Michael began with some history of Iran as they moved from conditions under the Shah to rule by the Ayatollah. He describes how he grew up learning the Qur'an and Islam, not by choice, but by force and how he was taught he'd go to Hell if he didn't abide by-practice the Islamic traditions.--The focus eventually switches to the helicopter crash that took the life of 63 year old Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and other high ranking officials. Raisi was known as the -Butcher of Tehran- and the -Hangman of Tehran-, having massacred thousands of Iranians. Funeral services will run over several days. --As the broadcast moves along you'll hear Michael as he comments on how this will affect the political situation in Iran due to the fact that Raisi was the potential successor to the current Supreme Leader. He also comments on the reaction of the people to the death of Raisi, whether an Iranian official might have caused the helicopter crash, what we know about the current vice-president, Michael's passion for reaching people in Iran with the Gospel message and much more.