Hello and welcome to Colonial Outcast, the anti-imperialist podcast that is going to be turned inward on the Imperial Corps to Los Angeles, specifically the Palisades.

Well, at the time I was writing this intro monologue, it was basically just the Palisades.

Now it's expanded to a number of other locations.

It's getting increasingly out of hand, which we'll talk about shortly,

you know, and they burned to the ground. Literally, it looks, the palisades look like Gaza. So weird,

but not really. Climate change, corporate interests and corruption, government sabotage of its own

institutions in order to push for privatization, all brought to you by the same

class of political and corporate elites at the pinnacle of which sits techno-feudalist bros like

Elon Musk, who are happily shilling taxpayer money for foreign wars and the complete devastation

of Gaza and the cleansing of West Bank. And look, the reason I bring this into California

is it's all

connected by the same system, unchecked and unregulated capitalism and imperialism.

2025 is going about how we thought it would go, but we're in week two of the new year.

And I'm already kind of exhausted like we we might even

have to title this episode pistachio wars with Iran prison labor and wildfires the unchecked

dystopia of 2025 and that title as you'll see is apt because pistachio production, wars with Iran, the wildfire, and prison slavery is all connected by this wonderful thing we've got going on here in America.

So let's get into it.

I'm your host, Greg Stoker, Mark Wayne.

Couldn't be here tonight, but we've got some great guests who are able to hop on last minute.

Asad Shalub, host of Habibi House podcast, linked below in the description, which I was just on

last Friday in L.A. This is his second appearance on Colonial Outcast. First time was, I believe,

an episode regarding his experience with the 2006-11-Lebanon

...