Would you like to inspect the original subtitles? These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated: What we're seeing in Gaza and Lebanon and Iran right now It's a natural extension of a machinery of death and destruction spiraling out of control from the status quo of unbridled unfettered unregulated militarism the US military is the world's largest institutional polluter 800 to a thousand bases around the world every base is a story of contamination look at Gaza all of these concrete structures pulverized into powder toxic powder It's so Glaryingly obvious and especially today as we're seeing the ecocide in Iran the intentional destruction and targeting of oil depots It's not siloed to Iran. Pollution has no borders This is gonna affect everyone on earth when you wrap in the legacy contamination of Agent Orange nuclear radiation It's a whole other subject matter of just what the US military has done so far But then when you actually unpack that statistic, how is it the largest institutional polluter? It's the oil purchases 270,000 barrels of oil per day That's just to maintain the arsenal most of it's going to the Air Force which vastly outweighs any other country combined I mean one Boeing Pegasus which is basically a remote gas station that flies around the US has more than triple the rest of the world combined one of these flight missions would be equivalent to about a hundred years of an American driving around and then you realize oh god it gets so much bigger than that What about the lifecycle emissions? What about the extraction of rare earth minerals to? Ship all of this weaponry to produce all of this weaponry to build all of this weaponry and then the application of the machinery war When you destroy a forest all the emissions that are released when you destroy a very carbon intensive material concrete look at Gaza All of these concrete structures pulverized into powder toxic powder that is not counted right the hospitals That are used to care for the wounded of the people who are maimed their lives destroyed from these bombing campaigns Those emissions are not counted and then of course the rebuilding from the same people who profit off of this destruction Who caused the destruction and then they profit off of the rebuilding efforts? That is not counted in the emissions It completely becomes unquantifiable and we're just talking about the emissions None of these emissions are counted at any of these global climate conferences Bill Clinton pushed for this exemption for the military in the first climate conference in Kyoto in 1997 and militaries all around the world have been exempt from all their respective national totals ever since One thing that I realized when we were making this film is that the emissions are just one part of the story the toxic waste and dumping into the open atmosphere just to maintain and clean this military arsenal is Absolutely Unbelievable none of this even takes into account the great power competition the proxy forces the NATO machinery That's all a front for us power and because of the US military dominance and belligerents You have countries like Russian China reacting militarily to build up their arsenal in a response To the US for decades the environmental movement has basically been positioned on the backdrop of neoliberalism the ruling class has essentially co-opted the environmental movement and Monetized it sold it back to us to make it seem like the onus is on the consumer that if we just shop right We can somehow save the environment and of course they're not going to point to the military as the perpetrator So instead they're trying to point to the military as the solution right to further securitize and militarize the world It's been removed from this conversation about environmentalism because people don't want to point to who's really responsible for this We think that if we recycle if we compost if we do our due diligence as individuals Somehow it will make a dent but unless we look at the collective Right unless we understand why this is happening Who's responsible and how it needs to stop how the US military is actually enforcing this Unsustainable insane fossil fuel infrastructure at the barrel of a nuclear-armed gun. We're never gonna solve the problem Something that's been so obvious for me as someone who really cares about the environment as an anti-imperialist Journalist to see the wanton destruction the eco-cidal nature of the devastation of the US imperialism that it wreaks around the world It's always been inseparable and I've always been so confused Why no one has synthesized this and no one has really called attention to what is so Glaryingly obvious and especially today as we're seeing the eco side in Iran the intentional destruction and targeting of oil depots It's not siloed to Iran. Pollution has no borders. This is gonna affect everyone on Earth and it's not just an environmental issue It's a labor issue. It's our blood sweat and tears. That's being parasitically Sucked into a war machine So this is an issue that affects all of us on Earth and every facet no matter what you care about You are invested in producing this apparatus that subjugates the planet for the longest time the US military Establishment has been very honest about climate change They don't agree with the Trump administration that climate change is not real. They've been very actively preparing For climate change so they've tried to gear their propaganda to actually say that there are stewards of the environment We are committed to reducing the impact of our activities and products on the environment Introduced cleaner technologies and develop innovative ways of working. This is our future They've tried to gear their propaganda to say come fight with the military so we can actually respond to climate change Of course when you look at what the plan is to do that. It's hybridizing broadly fighting vehicles It's slapping solar panels on infrastructure Around the world. It doesn't make a dent. You cannot green a global military empire that runs on oil You can ask why has no one brought this up? Why is no one addressed this in the halls of these cop conferences? Of course activists and independent scientists have tried to create parallel Conferences they've tried to draw attention to this out in the streets But why are these politicians unwilling to address the elephant in the room? militarism well, it's the same reason why none of this is ever questioned in the news Why is it just accepted that we need a military empire that nato is an imperative? Why are these things just accepted as truths? That are never questioned at all. There's no creativity or imagination outside of what we have This is what's been deemed normal These conferences or it's just a feel-good pat on the back to just say we're doing something by talking about this This is why trump is such a shock to so many people because it just rips that mask off of this notion of a benevolent empire That's working on behalf of somehow the collective good american dominance in the western hemisphere Will never be questioned again. We're taking billions and billions of dollars worth of oil And it'll be hundreds of billions of it'll be trillions of dollars drill Baby drill. It's all been a farce It's the law of the jungle and it's death and these cop conferences have basically just given a mask To this ugly unvarnished truth. This is not going to save us from what we know is coming There's this kind of contradiction where the military poses as this ubiquitous Hive mind where it's impenetrable You can't get anyone to sit down and answer any basic questions, but at the same time they're dumb They didn't google me. They let me into these spaces where i'm getting in front of generals commanders CIA officials asking them questions that no one else is because they simply are stupid and they never expect Journalists to do their jobs for example one of the commanders who's at a panel talking about arctic dominance, right? Air superiority over the arctic and i ask him why do you think that the u.s Has the right to have superiority over the arctic and he's just like i never said that They try to self rationalize and justify how insane it all is and you can see that Some of them have never even thought about these things Some of them have never even questioned the motives or even the premise of the things that they're a part of and that's really disturbing You can see the matrix glitching real time. So a lot of journalists work for access. They're status quoists They're imperialists they're zionists they get into this work because they are true believers of the system And that's why they ascend to the tops of these institutions And so the people that these military brass are used to being around Are access journalists to exist to bolster weapon systems to revel in the military industrial complex And that's what's most disturbing about this is getting into these spaces and realizing that the journalists around me Don't do their jobs one of the more curious aspects of the military is how it operates like a for-profit corporation So it has to continue the surplus that has to continue necessitating why it needs a bigger budget Every single year even though the u.s. With draws from places like afghanistan. Why is the military budget continuing to grow? To these outrageous I mean this year they're asking for 200 more billion dollars on top of an already trillion Dollar military budget. How is this possible? Well because every time that the military is deployed out somewhere like afghanistan and the bases in iraq They don't bring the weapons back with them. What they do instead is they blow them up on site They call it the million dollar minute. This is the million dollars worth of ammunition bombs bullets You name it and they blow it up into these massive explosions out in the middle of the desert and they think it's cool And they do it because if they didn't do it, they wouldn't get the same amount of money the next year And so they have to waste Every single thing that they have to justify why they need it again bullets don't expire After a year. So this is the madness of the machinery of the military industrial complex There's no thought whatsoever on the environmental impact of blowing all this up the human impact going into the water The air the soil what is all of that toxic chemicals doing to the people who live in those areas and this is done Several times out on every deployment as an advocacy journalist someone who considers the notion of unbiased journalism An objectivity a dead notion very unrealistic. I've always worn my heart on my sleeve I've always given a very raw unfiltered accounting Of what I see and I've always advocated for a humanist approach And so because of this I've always gone right to the source Who's suffering who's suffering as a result of my government's policies around the world? Who's suffering as a result of this toxic military contamination? Even if you disagree with the thesis even if you believe An empire you have to understand how this is affecting you how it's affecting everything you know and love Every person on earth is impacted by this Even if you are in the military if you're a veteran they're killing you too. So that's why we chose to portray just that raw human emotion the people whose stories deserve to be told And for me as the storyteller I needed to establish my credibility Not only as a journalist who's been working on these issues for decades, but also as a parent As a mother as someone who has a vested stake in the habitability and future of this planet I have to go all in and I have to show you that even if you disagree with my politics That's not what this is about and that's not what we're fighting for for all of us in the last couple of years Gaza has really changed us So many people's lives tens of millions of people around the world who were completely radicalized and their minds were open And they became completely changed and transformed by their connection To our palestinian brothers and sisters living through this hell The worst conditions that you can put on a people that we've been forced to watch through our technological devices We sit and we watch this like a reality show kids being blown apart every day But here's the hope and here's the resilience is that our brothers and sisters in palestine are having kids They're having babies They're having beautiful children and they're carrying on that legacy of resilience and militant hope and optimism Because they love life They love life that much that they want to carry it on in the most horrific conditions imaginable So how dare we not do everything In our power to carry on that legacy of resilience of love of community of solidarity All the characteristics that make us human that the ruling class is trying to strip us of every single day As we brain rot and give our most precious commodities to the same people who create and profit off of this destruction It's up to us to find what's human again, right? To look each other in the eye and say We are the same. We are the same as the iraqi child with congenital heart failure as a result of our toxic contamination there We are the same as the palestinian child playing in the rubble trying to find hope and meaning And what he's been given the hope that I find today is the tens of millions of people around the world and sustained action With an international lens of solidarity for palestinians Understanding that their collective liberation is intrinsically tied to all of ours That understanding that I've never seen present an american society in my 41 years of life People realizing how everything's connected how capitalism is the current that's causing all of this We're no longer siloed into our individual struggles or identity politics We understand how existential this is and we understand that we need collective agency that we need to work together To fight it. That's the beauty. That's what makes life worth living and that's what they are terrified of They're terrified of us getting out of our silos and connecting with each other Look these monsters have taken so much from us, but there's so much that they haven't taken right There's so much love and beauty out there. There's so much nature left to preserve There's so much that I want to show my children That we have to fight for we have to fight for it because we have no choice We have no choice We have to Now this is urgent if you care about independent media if you care about stories like this You must support it. Please go to patreon and support double down news today without your help and support News like this wouldn't exist. We need you all hands on deck 14730