Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 2: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 2: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 2: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 2: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 2: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 2: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 2: you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 3: Welcome, dick it up and here a podcast that's occasionally
Speaker 3: hijacked by the Supreme Court because a bunch of fun
Speaker 3: a lucky dipshit's rule us all. I'm your host, me
Speaker 3: along with.
Speaker 4: Me as James Hi man, I'm excited to be hijacked.
Speaker 4: If they're like a pirate situation is like Samuel alta
Speaker 4: Liker one leg and a patch coming in hijacking.
Speaker 3: They are not cool. To be fair, I've made a
Speaker 3: mistake here because the Supreme Court justices are not cool
Speaker 3: enough to take up a piracy that is that is
Speaker 3: a grand and noble tradition dating back millennia.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we've been compulsory. I what's it colled civil asset
Speaker 4: forfeited by the Supreme.
Speaker 3: Yeah, theft bad. So originally this is gonna be an
Speaker 3: episode about how messed up Clarence Thomas is and Samuel
Speaker 3: Alito's wives are, because, oh my god, are they a
Speaker 3: bunch of right wing fanatics. We haven't really covered it
Speaker 3: on this show. But then this episode got hijacked by
Speaker 3: a bunch of other Supreme Court news. So we're gonna
Speaker 3: talk a bit about Samuel Alito's wife, will We'll put
Speaker 3: off Clarence Thomas's qan on wife for another day. But yeah, so,
Speaker 3: so this is gonna be a sort of random episode
Speaker 3: of the sixteen million pieces of Supreme cour We're not
Speaker 3: even getting gatch to them all. There's Supreme Court news
Speaker 3: that like we can't even cover, there's too much of it.
Speaker 3: But yeah, let's start with the MEPhI pristone case. So okay,
Speaker 3: I think people we've talked about MEPhI pristone before on
Speaker 3: the show, and you know, there's been a widely sort
Speaker 3: of dreaded case where a group called the Alliance for
Speaker 3: Hippocratic Medicine been trying to see the FDA.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the amount of these fucking pretend medical organizations, I'm sorry,
Speaker 4: I'm deready. The episode that's like the American College of
Speaker 4: Pediatrics is another one, like.
Speaker 3: Hey, wait till you find out who these people actually are,
Speaker 3: because it's amazing. And two, I think you haven't seen
Speaker 3: any of these legal arguments right now. Oh I'm hoping
Speaker 3: that we get to Bohemian Grove. That's the only thing
Speaker 3: I've followed from a Supreme Court. Amazingly, Supremeia, the Bohemian
Speaker 3: Grove did not make the cut.
Speaker 4: Amazingly Damn. Okay, I'm ready for some high tear shit.
Speaker 4: I'm so excited. You are about to see some shit.
Speaker 4: You are about to see what I genuinely believe to
Speaker 4: be the worst legal arguments ever made in a court
Speaker 4: of law. And like I say this having watched like
Speaker 4: probably four I listen to probably forty hours of Alex
Speaker 4: Jones trial depositions from different trials, and I genuinely believe these.
Speaker 3: To be the worst legal arguments anyone has ever made.
Speaker 3: So all right, I'm I'm going to quote from an
Speaker 3: article on the Nation here, no Elias, So this is
Speaker 3: this is about who the Alliance for Hypocratic Medicine is.
Speaker 3: Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine is a mismash of anti abortion
Speaker 3: doctors nurses and dentists, yes, dentists, amazing though none of
Speaker 3: them have ever prescribed the pill, claimed that they are
Speaker 3: being they have been harmed by its existence. Their theories
Speaker 3: of standing weight range from comical to inapt to offensive
Speaker 3: to contemptible. They include arguments such as, doctors who do
Speaker 3: not perform abortions are harmed when they have to work
Speaker 3: in the emergency room where alleged complications from the abortion
Speaker 3: pill arise. And by the way, we should mention this.
Speaker 3: By the way, so part of part of this whole
Speaker 3: thing is that there's been the right has been trying
Speaker 3: to like make up this fake argument that this abortion well, okay,
Speaker 3: mess of person can be used for a number of things.
Speaker 3: But they've been trying to make up arguments that like
Speaker 3: there's like scary side effects with fake studies, and like
Speaker 3: even the right wing court was like this is bullshit.
Speaker 3: So so again they're saying that again, having a doctor
Speaker 3: who has to do work in a place where there's
Speaker 3: fake side effects that aren't happening, they're saying this is
Speaker 3: this is an injury. The second one obstetricians who do
Speaker 3: not perform abortions are harmed because they feel complicit in
Speaker 3: the abortions that take place, even if they are not
Speaker 3: a part of the procedures. What the fuck? Literally, one
Speaker 3: of the justices was like, what do you mean a
Speaker 3: complicit Are you handing them a bottle of water or
Speaker 3: something like, I'm.
Speaker 4: The the abortion clinic. That's what I do. I'm on
Speaker 4: the hydration team. Fucking Planned Parenthood.
Speaker 3: Medical staff are hard via complicity. Also and four and
Speaker 3: this is the best one, this one, I rando. People
Speaker 3: who do not perform abortions nonetheless suffer from quote unquote
Speaker 3: aesthetic injury of being deprived as seeing pregnant people jiggle
Speaker 3: around was sore bad. This is also this is a
Speaker 3: direct call from the thing. I'm not making this theory up.
Speaker 3: This is what Fifth Circuit Judge James Hoe wrote with
Speaker 3: upholding the ban on mephipristone.
Speaker 4: Okay, what the fuck like? What this is like that
Speaker 4: they're being deprived of the say, this is like a
Speaker 4: kink thing. They can't see pregnant people.
Speaker 3: No, no, it's a parent Apparently. The theory is that
Speaker 3: being able to see pregnant people is like good and
Speaker 3: healthy for you or something, and if you don't do it,
Speaker 3: And there's there's another one. There's another one that that
Speaker 3: wasn't in this article, but that wasn't some other things.
Speaker 3: Is that I one of their other cases is that
Speaker 3: doctors enjoy working with unborn patients, and then this is
Speaker 3: this is an injury to them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you may want to examine your fucking
Speaker 4: social skills, but but.
Speaker 3: Your fucking dentists are being like, I can't work on
Speaker 3: the teeth pregnant people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've been deprived from doing fetus orthodontics,
Speaker 4: and therefore I will take it to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 4: What a wild fucking case. Whate incredible system that this
Speaker 4: made it to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 3: Okay, the absolute funniest part about this, the like right
Speaker 3: wing dipshit lawyer for the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine is
Speaker 3: Josh Halley's wife.
Speaker 4: I didn't juste halle like like Popular Front salute to
Speaker 4: the January sixth people. Yeah that little yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 4: will not use an adjective that we cannot broadcast.
Speaker 3: Okay, and so sort of, I mean, not that surprise.
Speaker 3: So people who are following the trial, I think expected
Speaker 3: this well, they expected probably like a sevent too or
Speaker 3: an eight one. But this was a nine to Oh no, wait,
Speaker 3: this is bullshit, Like I think, I think, you know.
Speaker 3: So there's been a lot of like good coverage about
Speaker 3: the sort of legal aspects here, and I guess we
Speaker 3: should we should before we go for that, we should mention.
Speaker 3: So what this ruling does, like effectively is that, Okay,
Speaker 3: so there's not going to be a national ban of
Speaker 3: MEPhI pristone. However, comma the states that have outlawed MEPhI pristone,
Speaker 3: it's that doesn't change anything there. So there are still
Speaker 3: a lot of people who cannot access this drug, who
Speaker 3: cannot access their life saving medical care because they're ruled
Speaker 3: by a bunch of fucking right wing bigots and like
Speaker 3: Christian extremists, et cetera, et cetera. But this case has
Speaker 3: established something extremely important, which is that there is actually
Speaker 3: a legal limit to the amount of bullshit you can do,
Speaker 3: even if you are a right wing lawyer who like
Speaker 3: the court agrees with like Josh Holly's wife used to
Speaker 3: be a clerk for Justice John Roberts. So she was like,
Speaker 3: she's like embedded, embedded in this whole right wing ecoism.
Speaker 3: She's one of the big sort.
Speaker 4: Of right yeah, yeah, yeah, grooming her for success.
Speaker 3: But these people final for like the first time ever
Speaker 3: made made a set of legal argument's sole bullshit. Even
Speaker 3: the Supreme Court was like, what the fuck? And I think,
Speaker 3: I think, okay, so this is this is where we're
Speaker 3: going into sort of MIA's kind of like bullshit theory here.
Speaker 3: But the reason this was thrown out was that, Okay,
Speaker 3: so this is the part that's like obviously real. So
Speaker 3: in American law, I mean, I think this is true
Speaker 3: of most legal systems. I don't know any that don't
Speaker 3: function like this. But in order so, in the US,
Speaker 3: it is very easy to sue someone. You can sue
Speaker 3: someone over twenty dollars. It's in the constitution. It fucking rules.
Speaker 3: It's very funny. We are extremely ligitious country. But you
Speaker 3: need you need what you need something called standing to
Speaker 3: sue in order to do this. There's some kind of
Speaker 3: complicated parts of this that you know, evolve around jurisdiction
Speaker 3: and what court blah blah blah. But the important thing
Speaker 3: is that someone has to have done an injury to you.
Speaker 3: And this this is the part when this entire case
Speaker 3: fell apart because they could not find a single person.
Speaker 3: But that's suffered an actual injury from members time.
Speaker 4: Yes, outstanding, just incredible stuff, like yeah, yeah, well, I
Speaker 4: mean that's because they could sue on behalf of unborn people.
Speaker 3: Mea, it didn't work, well, I mean to for this,
Speaker 3: this one technically wasn't this This one was on behalf
Speaker 3: of like of the dentists and dentists and ship. But okay,
Speaker 3: I think I think that there's been an important legal
Speaker 3: standing here because so you know, we we have covered
Speaker 3: on this show the case three h three Creator versus Alenis,
Speaker 3: which is the one where the Supreme Court ruled that
Speaker 3: is legal to discriminate against queer people on religious grounds
Speaker 3: as long as your business is quote unquote creative and
Speaker 3: it's like a speech act. That that's the one where
Speaker 3: it's a cake one, right, uh no, this is a
Speaker 3: wedding website one. This this is this is the more
Speaker 3: recent one that was like some woman was like I
Speaker 3: was forced to make a wedding website for a gay person. Now, okay,
Speaker 3: so what we talked about in that case is that importantly,
Speaker 3: this never happened. This woman was never forced to make
Speaker 3: a website for a gay person, right, like that that
Speaker 3: never happened. But you know, the court. The court still
Speaker 3: upheld that and like let them, you know, like like
Speaker 3: let them basically institute a bunch of like insane you know,
Speaker 3: like potentially like states can institute a bunch of like
Speaker 3: insane laws. Now about this, but okay, So, so what
Speaker 3: we have in in the wedding website case is you
Speaker 3: have a real person who a fake injury happened to,
Speaker 3: and that apparently is good enough for standing for if
Speaker 3: you're a right wing like activist for the Supreme Court,
Speaker 3: you can have a real person that an injury did
Speaker 3: not happen to you, but they can imagine an injury
Speaker 3: that could have happened to them, and that's good enough.
Speaker 3: Now there's an important legal president of being set here,
Speaker 3: which is that, Okay, again, nothing has to actually have
Speaker 3: happened to You can make up what happened to you,
Speaker 3: but you have to have a an actual person who
Speaker 3: would injury could have happened to. And b you could
Speaker 3: have a fake injury, but if the injur was real,
Speaker 3: it would have to be a real injury. Like so
Speaker 3: so you could you could you can march up the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court with a person who said I was thrown
Speaker 3: into a volcano because of Woke. And obviously they weren't,
Speaker 3: they weren't thrown into a volcano. But you know, you
Speaker 3: you could have Woke outlawed because they said they were
Speaker 3: thrown into a volcano because of Woke. But what you
Speaker 3: can't do, apparently, the actual line is you have no person,
Speaker 3: right is you are a group of people who are
Speaker 3: suing who have said that because of Woke, someone somewhere
Speaker 3: like hypothetically it might become impossible to flap your wings
Speaker 3: and fly, And that's apparently because no, no, no, that's not
Speaker 3: true though, because the the sarlac pit could conceivably you
Speaker 3: you could build a sarlac pit, right right, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's like if you're you're the fake injury you're imagining
Speaker 3: if it were real, like would have to be a
Speaker 3: real injury. What you can't do is have is not
Speaker 3: have a person and then also have the injury you're
Speaker 3: talking about not be a real injury even even if
Speaker 3: it did happen, which is what's happening in this case.
Speaker 3: So that's the line that has been drawn in the
Speaker 3: sand for conservatives is like you absolute clowns, like we
Speaker 3: are going to let you break every single law, but
Speaker 3: the thing you're pretending happened, if it actually did happen,
Speaker 3: has to has to be a real injury. So this
Speaker 3: is the light of the sand that's been drawn by
Speaker 3: a huge democracy. Yeah. I mean also, like, I mean,
Speaker 3: obviously there's some sort of poison pill stuff in this
Speaker 3: that's kind of more legally complicated that we're not going
Speaker 3: to really get into. Me. There's some stuff in here
Speaker 3: that because this is a Kavanall ruling, right, So there's
Speaker 3: some stuff in here that like is kind of is
Speaker 3: basically Kavnall being like, Okay, if you want to do
Speaker 3: this again, but like bring a real case, Like here's
Speaker 3: how you might be able to do it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, where he like coaches him through. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 4: there's like a little bit of that.
Speaker 3: And there's some stuff here basically trying to make it
Speaker 3: harder for civil rights groups to like do cases where
Speaker 3: like they have one of their people pose as a
Speaker 3: right someone trying to buy a house or whatever. So
Speaker 3: those are some stuff. This ruling is still fucking over
Speaker 3: some people's civil rights. Like less you think the Supreme
Speaker 3: Court did something good, but we have now established the
Speaker 3: Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine standard of fake injury. H do
Speaker 3: you know what else? Do you know what else will
Speaker 3: give you fake injuries but not real injuries?
Speaker 4: What can we say categorically that that's I mean, what
Speaker 4: if we get like black rifle coffee, right, that could
Speaker 4: do an injury to your to your gut?
Speaker 3: I guess, I guess we can't say that we Okay,
Speaker 3: do you know what else? We cannot make any promises about?
Speaker 4: Would that be the products and services to support this show?
Speaker 3: It is and we are back. So speaking of products
Speaker 3: and services, there was also a very bad Supreme Court
Speaker 3: ruling in a case about the National Labor Relations Board
Speaker 3: and Starbucks. So I don't know if we I don't
Speaker 3: think we specific covered this. We've covered a lot of
Speaker 3: cases on this show of people being fired in retaliation
Speaker 3: for stars we covered a different case of a worker
Speaker 3: being fired in retaliation for yougan organizing from Starbucks.
Speaker 4: But great stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But so this specific case the NLRB National Labor
Speaker 3: Relations Board, if your opponent like breaks labor law or
Speaker 3: for example, firings firing so one in retaliation for union
Speaker 3: organizing is in fact our violation of labor law. If
Speaker 3: this happens, you can file something called an unfair labor practice.
Speaker 3: Eventually you go before the National Labor Relations Board and
Speaker 3: they make a decision. But one of the things that
Speaker 3: the NLRB can do, because this process takes in an
Speaker 3: extremely large amount of time, and if this process goes
Speaker 3: into like the regular courts, is going to take years
Speaker 3: and years and years, and during that time you're still
Speaker 3: going to be fired. So you know, one of the
Speaker 3: things that the NLRB can do is issue and ask
Speaker 3: a judged issue an injunction to force uh to Like, basically,
Speaker 3: a judge can tell Starbucks like, no, fuck you, you are like,
Speaker 3: until this core case is resolved, you have to rehire
Speaker 3: this person. And so basically what happened Starbucks sued over this.
Speaker 3: I got to the Supreme Court, and the question that
Speaker 3: basically came to, like what standard of evidence does the
Speaker 3: NLRB have to have that this worker's rights are being
Speaker 3: violated before they conditioned an injunction? The Supreme Court said,
Speaker 3: it has to be like a really high standard, which
Speaker 3: is bullshit. This was an eight one decision, UHL. So
Speaker 3: it's not that's the thing. So okay, this this this
Speaker 3: is important here this is being reported as an eight
Speaker 3: one decision it's actually not because Katsia Brown Jackson filed
Speaker 3: a concurring opinion with slightly like slightly better logic but
Speaker 3: also still bad logic about this, so effectively, this was
Speaker 3: a nine to zer agreement with Starbucks with like slightly
Speaker 3: differing like reasons for concurring. Right. So yeah, and this
Speaker 3: is you know, as as I told James yesterday, this
Speaker 3: is in fact definitive proof that cop that workers are
Speaker 3: not cops CO workers, because if this were a decision
Speaker 3: about cops, it would be nine zero in the other direction. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so this is very bad. It's already like almost impossibly
Speaker 3: difficult to get the National Labor Relations Board to intervene
Speaker 3: to stop the shift from happening. It can happen, it's
Speaker 3: just a really really long process, and they almost never
Speaker 3: file any of these injections in the first place. I'm
Speaker 3: going to read a quote from the APA that I
Speaker 3: disagree with. The NLARB requested fewer than twenty injunctions last year,
Speaker 3: but they serve as a powerful deterrent against firing workers
Speaker 3: trying to unionize, said Sharon Block, a professor at Harvard
Speaker 3: Law School and a former member of the NLRB, with
Speaker 3: a stricter standard in place to win the reinstatement of
Speaker 3: fired workers, more companies may feel empowered to crack down
Speaker 3: on unionization efforts. Miss Block said, now all offense to
Speaker 3: miss Block. I think the fact that you were on
Speaker 3: the fucking NLRB and you weren't out there trying to
Speaker 3: fucking organize unions makes you, in fact, not a particularly
Speaker 3: good person to ask about how effective the NLRB's efforts
Speaker 3: have actually been here, because I like the number of
Speaker 3: people I know personally unrelated to any of the work
Speaker 3: that I do, who have been fired. Your retaliation for
Speaker 3: union organizing is extremely high. And yeah, like, obviously this
Speaker 3: is gonna make it. You know, this is gonna make
Speaker 3: companies more like like more willing to do it. But
Speaker 3: it's not like the completely half assed efforts that the
Speaker 3: NLRB was making before. We're actually like really seriously deterring
Speaker 3: companies from firing you, right, like.
Speaker 4: We have other It's not like there are no other
Speaker 4: tools at the disposed of organized labor to respond to
Speaker 4: a retaliatree something like this, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the best way to get your boss not retaliated
Speaker 3: against you is to be well organized enough that if
Speaker 3: they fucking try this. You breathe that, you bring your
Speaker 3: shout to a stop, and I have seen that work, right, Like,
Speaker 3: it is possible to get people reinstated. It's it's hard,
Speaker 3: but you know you probably have a better shot of
Speaker 3: like doing it by being well organized than you do
Speaker 3: with the fucking NLRB ever getting to your case. So
Speaker 3: you know, I like, and you know, I don't want
Speaker 3: to be completely doom and gloom about this because it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, like you can still definitely organize unions, right, Like,
Speaker 3: this hasn't made it impossible to like do any of
Speaker 3: this stuff. It's just that the legal apparatus is weighted
Speaker 3: towards the boss, and the counteraction to legal apparatus being
Speaker 3: weighted towards the boss is you and how well organized
Speaker 3: you are. So we're going to go from that to
Speaker 3: what this episode was originally supposed to be about, which
Speaker 3: is a Preme Court wives. Yeah, and again, we were
Speaker 3: gonna do war of this, but we're.
Speaker 4: Making reality TV show about it instead.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's nuts, Okay. So the current big story
Speaker 3: basically is that Samuel Alito's wife can't stop flying deranged
Speaker 3: right wing flags.
Speaker 4: I do love a flag person.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so okay, Samuel Alito, Like, okay, So the story
Speaker 3: that has been run within the media, and again it's
Speaker 3: not clear how true any of this is Samuel Alito.
Speaker 3: So we're gonna talk about a bunch of deranged right
Speaker 3: wing flags that've been flying outside the house of Alito property.
Speaker 3: Samuel Alito claimed that this is his wife and he
Speaker 3: has nothing to do with it. Now do we the
Speaker 3: public trust the word of a Supreme Court justice? And
Speaker 3: I think the answer I'm not going to give you
Speaker 3: the answer for you, but I'm I'm gonna lay that
Speaker 3: out in front of you. So all right. So the
Speaker 3: first one of these was she flew an upside down
Speaker 3: US flag, which I had always remembered as being an
Speaker 3: anti war thing. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think the Chuds have tried to take it back, like, yeah,
Speaker 4: very sad. Yeah, they're doing it because of course Joe
Speaker 4: Biden is destroying the constitutional republic and say they're signaling
Speaker 4: for help from other Chuds.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Originally it was a like January sixth, the US
Speaker 3: lection has been stolen thing.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah? Yeah. I still someone flying the thin blue
Speaker 4: line flag upside down the other day. Unclear if they
Speaker 4: had to fuck the police flag as well. So, like
Speaker 4: I guess once I saw that the situation was clarified,
Speaker 4: but I was like, is this incredible? Is a cop
Speaker 4: in danger? Like what's happening?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 3: And by the way, the other thing I want to
Speaker 3: point out about this is that there are like a
Speaker 3: bund there are a bunch of journalists who knew about
Speaker 3: this like in twenty twenty one and then just sat
Speaker 3: on it and didn't talk about it until like this
Speaker 3: series the fuck is wrong with you? Yeah, and this
Speaker 3: is this is this is this is why I refused.
Speaker 3: I like, I largely refuse to call myself a journalist
Speaker 3: because these people are fucking hacks and frauds who just
Speaker 3: sit on the stupid thing for their fucking book releases. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, those people don't know to be called jeneralists, right,
Speaker 4: it's pathetic. Like your job as a journalist is to
Speaker 4: hold power to account and if you're not doing that
Speaker 4: because you want to sell more books or yeah, grift university.
Speaker 3: And again, this would have been fucking useful to know
Speaker 3: in that actual like in the in the because because
Speaker 3: in the immediate aftermath of January sixth, there was an
Speaker 3: actual sort of a desire to do something about it,
Speaker 3: and maybe if if you know, people had fucking know
Speaker 3: that the wife of a Supreme Court justice was fucking
Speaker 3: flying the shitty ass flag again probably actually a Supreme
Speaker 3: Court justice, like was flying this shitty ass the electu
Speaker 3: was stolen flag. So that's part one of the flag news. Now.
Speaker 3: Apparently partially what's going on is she's been getting into
Speaker 3: a bunch of fights with her neighbors who fucking hate
Speaker 3: her because she's an asshole, and she's.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, if you live within eyesight of her house,
Speaker 4: I will ship you one big a do crime flag.
Speaker 3: They they apparently have been doing that ship and trolling, controlling,
Speaker 3: which is fucking heroes. Hero Get how how mad this
Speaker 3: made her later, But one of the other flags that
Speaker 3: she's been flying is a flag I had forgotten about,
Speaker 3: which is the do you know the Appeal to Heaven flag?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, yes, unfortunately I do may because I drive
Speaker 4: around East County, San Diego.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, A little tree flag for those who are not familiar,
Speaker 4: little pine tree on a white background. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So okay, So this flag has been taken up by
Speaker 3: so it's it's been spread around basically, writing is kind
Speaker 3: of more generally now, but it was it was originally
Speaker 3: sort of reaped. This is a revolutionary war flag that
Speaker 3: nobody has flown in like two hundred years, but it's
Speaker 3: been taking back up by the New Epostolic Reformation, which
Speaker 3: is like the guys oh boy, oh boy. Okay, So
Speaker 3: they're a juror, like a deranged Christian nationalist like organization
Speaker 3: of churches that has combined the most deranged principles of
Speaker 3: the most deranged Christian sect, which is to say, Pentecostalism,
Speaker 3: Charismatic Christianity, and like a very specific kind of insane dominionism,
Speaker 3: and they have combined all of them together to form
Speaker 3: like the super ideology that's like it's it's it's the
Speaker 3: fucking like it's it's, it's it's the it's the dragon
Speaker 3: ball z fusion of like literally the worst parts of
Speaker 3: every insane right wing Christian ideology. And so they have
Speaker 3: come out with the belief that like they have been
Speaker 3: basically chosen by God to like seize control of the
Speaker 3: US and into a theocracy.
Speaker 4: Okay, they're like the power ranges of of Christian chads.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, Like it's like Marjorie Taylor Green's involved with
Speaker 3: like Larry Leo is one of the big Federalist Society guys,
Speaker 3: like also was flying this flag, and the Federal Society
Speaker 3: has funneled a bunch of money to like a bunch
Speaker 3: of like right wing legal cases and stuff. So this
Speaker 3: is this is very good.
Speaker 4: So you used to see it a lot in the
Speaker 4: Pacific Northwest among that kind of white separatist Christian Yeah,
Speaker 4: like inward on their plate carriers a lot and stuff.
Speaker 4: That's kind of what I associate it with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is this has been like like last year,
Speaker 3: this was flying over Samuel Alito's beach house. So great
Speaker 3: things out thing here.
Speaker 4: Fuck me.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So there's there's also a third piece of of
Speaker 3: missus Alito flag news, which is that so she got
Speaker 3: Project veritosed by a little documentary filmmaker. They like did
Speaker 3: a sting operation, like when it bought a ticket to
Speaker 3: one of her dinners are pretended to be a conservative
Speaker 3: and filmed her. And I'm gonna read this quote from
Speaker 3: from Rolling Stowe that's about like what she said. You
Speaker 3: know what I want? Miss Alito says, I want a
Speaker 3: sacred Heart of Jesus flag because I have to look
Speaker 3: across a lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month.
Speaker 3: Referencing her husband, miss Alito said, he's like, oh, please,
Speaker 3: don't put up the flag. I said, I won't do
Speaker 3: it because I'm deferring to you. But when you are
Speaker 3: free of this nonsense, I'm putting it up and I'm
Speaker 3: gonna send them a message every day, maybe every week.
Speaker 3: I'll be changing the flags. They'll be all kinds. I
Speaker 3: made a flag in my head. This is how I
Speaker 3: satisfy myself. I made a flag as white and yellow
Speaker 3: and orange flames around it, and in the middle is
Speaker 3: the word of begonia in Italian means shame virgona v
Speaker 3: e r g og na virgona shame, shame, shame on you.
Speaker 1: She adds.
Speaker 3: So she's so mad about gay people that she's making
Speaker 3: up flags in her head that's gonna fly to own them.
Speaker 4: Homophobic vexillology. That's uh, that's it's a new level of
Speaker 4: fucking like having your brain broken by gay people existing.
Speaker 3: It's nuts.
Speaker 4: Do you know what hangs over my head like a
Speaker 4: flag that says shame?
Speaker 3: Is it?
Speaker 4: Is it?
Speaker 3: The price of services? Is what this podcast is?
Speaker 4: The obligation to pivot to adverts.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, So there is one last part of this
Speaker 3: story that hasn't been getting any coverage at all that
Speaker 3: I'm very alarmed about because and maybe it's the thing
Speaker 3: I should have I should have led with. Okay, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna read you this, and I am going to ask
Speaker 3: you for a conceivable, possible alternative explanation. That is not
Speaker 3: that is not. Samuel Leo's wife is openly saying she
Speaker 3: is a Nazi. Quote when Windsor, Windsor is the name
Speaker 3: of the filmmaker who did the like sting. When Windsor
Speaker 3: tells Miss Alito she's being persecuted in and depicted as
Speaker 3: a convenient stand in for anybody who's religious, the Justice's
Speaker 3: wife gets quieter and her tone turns more serious. Look
Speaker 3: at me, Look at me. I'm German. I'm from Germany.
Speaker 3: My heritage is German. You come after me. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: give it back to you, and there will be a way.
Speaker 3: It doesn't have to be now, but there will be
Speaker 3: a way. They know. Don't worry about it. God, you
Speaker 3: read the Bible. Psalm twenty seven is my psalm mine,
Speaker 3: Psalm twenty seven. The Lord is by God and by
Speaker 3: Rock of whom shall I be afraid nobody.
Speaker 4: Now, Wow, Yeah, a lot of real emphasis on being German.
Speaker 3: What possible? Genuinely, I defy anyone to come up with
Speaker 3: a possible explanation of what the sentence. Look at me,
Speaker 3: Look at me. I'm German, I'm from Germany. My heritage
Speaker 3: is German. You come after me, I'm gonna give it
Speaker 3: back to you. What possible? She is just straight up
Speaker 3: saying I am a German Nazi. And this is something
Speaker 3: that fucking media has access to, and no one is
Speaker 3: leading with a story that says Samuel Aleto's wife says
Speaker 3: that she's a Nazi. I'm going insane. I fuck it,
Speaker 3: We're we're, we're. I've actually banged my microphone. We're fucking
Speaker 3: leading this episode with the title Samuel Aleto's wife admits
Speaker 3: she's a Nazi and other Supreme Court news because fuck them,
Speaker 3: someone's gotta do this. This is insane, This is nuts.
Speaker 3: What the fuck this is?
Speaker 4: This is a bizarre thing to say, like to so much.
Speaker 4: She knew to this passing with the journalists.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, she thought that they were a conservative activist.
Speaker 3: So what's happening here, I think is like like basically
Speaker 3: like kind of in private, like like in conservative circle,
Speaker 3: she's trying to say old people that like no, like
Speaker 3: I'm a fucking Nazi, like I'm down with you fucking right.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, it's sort of they're not saying the thing,
Speaker 4: but saying to sing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like like it it's like it's it's not even
Speaker 3: dog whishing, it's just very openly telling selectives of people
Speaker 3: like hey, this is where I stand. So that is
Speaker 3: not good. And again this guy is one of the
Speaker 3: one of the unelected people who can at any moment,
Speaker 3: moment strip any right from you for effectively any reason.
Speaker 3: So that's great, Yeah, great, wonderful.
Speaker 4: I'm still yeah, mind boggled at this, Like yeah, I
Speaker 4: mean even if yeah, we're German, what are you gonna do,
Speaker 4: Like you have a two for two l rate in world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're gonna lose a third.
Speaker 4: More, get yours you again, get get divided in half?
Speaker 4: Have you given to Russia? Like what.
Speaker 3: It is? Like we we have not done much coverage
Speaker 3: of how insane Germany has gotten right now, but like
Speaker 3: like there are like there are entire mobs of like
Speaker 3: people in dance clubs chanting Germany is for Germans, like
Speaker 3: the eight Like there their Nazi party is like about
Speaker 3: to take control.
Speaker 4: Disband a number of like police and special force units.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, the Nazis. Yeah yeah, what's not this all
Speaker 4: Nazis like that. You can be a Nazi in the
Speaker 4: German police force care that much. But it's because they
Speaker 4: were specific They keep on specifically getting caught, either with
Speaker 4: kill lists of politicians or with the planned to overthrow
Speaker 4: the government. Yeah yeah, so like you know, so so
Speaker 4: we we like this, this, this is this is my
Speaker 4: Like Germany is the one country on earth that would
Speaker 4: be improved by an American occupation and then being split
Speaker 4: into like thirty five like every single country in the
Speaker 4: world gets their one square mile of Germany to rule
Speaker 4: over that. This would significantly improve Germany as a country.
Speaker 4: I love that. Yeah, turn it turned it into the
Speaker 4: model Uan.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So from our plan to make Germany an international
Speaker 3: occupied territory.
Speaker 4: At Cott Atcott to Germany, there we go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we need to talk about there's even more. Just
Speaker 3: as Thomas bullshit. I thought there was only going to
Speaker 3: be one Justice Thomas story, and then a second Justice
Speaker 3: Thomas story broke as I was writing the script. So okay,
Speaker 3: So the Senate Judiciary Committee finally sort of got off
Speaker 3: its ass and decided to look at Justice Thomas's like
Speaker 3: obvious brea money from Harlan crow and a bunch of
Speaker 3: other mega donors, and they found lo and behold, Thomas
Speaker 3: took three more undisclosed private jet flights of Harlenklowro. Again,
Speaker 3: these people are just like obviously taking bribe money. No,
Speaker 3: Congress won't do anything. Dick Durbin will issue a strongly
Speaker 3: worded statement. Who he's the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee,
Speaker 3: will offer a strongly worded statement do nothing. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: if anything is going to be done to the Streame Court,
Speaker 3: it's going to be done by you, not by the
Speaker 3: fucking Congress that you dominantly elect. Uh, because they just
Speaker 3: don't give a shit. We also learned, so do you
Speaker 3: remember were you on the Clarence Thomas episodes.
Speaker 4: I know, I didn't think I was.
Speaker 3: Oh no, yeah, that might have been a me and
Speaker 3: garre one. Yeah. So one of the things that we
Speaker 3: learned was that Harlan Crowe had paid an unbelievable amount,
Speaker 3: like like hundreds of thousands of dollars to send Thomas's grandnephew,
Speaker 3: who he was like quote unquote raising like a son
Speaker 3: and send him to like expensive private schools.
Speaker 4: So normal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so so we learned to we learned today or
Speaker 3: like like maybe two days ago that Thomas So okay,
Speaker 3: so that this kid that like he had like raised
Speaker 3: as a son, they just like completely So someone like
Speaker 3: some some media people like caught up with his son
Speaker 3: who's now in jail pending charges. Yeah, and his his
Speaker 3: his he's not going to be fucking bailed out by
Speaker 3: Justice Thomas who apparently like lost interest in him when
Speaker 3: he reached high school and just shipped him off to
Speaker 3: a boarding school. And then we always at boarding school, he
Speaker 3: got he got expelled for failing a drug test and
Speaker 3: they just like sen him back to his mom and
Speaker 3: cut him off. And he's talked to him like once
Speaker 3: or twice in the last fourteen years. Fucking So that's great,
Speaker 3: real piece of shit.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, what having Clarence Thomas as a as
Speaker 4: a as a patental figure in your life. That's to
Speaker 4: a motherfucker I can't imagine.
Speaker 3: So yeah, like I I true, I truly feel bad
Speaker 3: for this guy. Uh yeah, yeah, fuck Clarence Thomas. Finally
Speaker 3: to round up the Supreme Court news literally there like
Speaker 3: the board. Like in the morning, the script was like
Speaker 3: done right, and then again I wake up and there's
Speaker 3: breaking new Supreme Court has struck down Federal Bureau of
Speaker 3: Tobacco and Firearms thing banning bump stocks. So I'm gonna
Speaker 3: ask you to talk about bump stocks because I think
Speaker 3: I know what they are. But I'm not a gun person.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I'm happy to happy to be the token
Speaker 4: Cis white guy to talk about guns here. Yeah, So
Speaker 4: the ATF under Donald Trump, for a long time, the
Speaker 4: ATF it explicitly said that bump stocks were not machine guns.
Speaker 4: After the Las Vegas shooting, in which one was used
Speaker 4: the bump stock with the rules of machine guns, they
Speaker 4: kind of pivoted.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: What it bump stock is for those who are not familiar,
Speaker 4: It's a device that kind of uses the recoil of
Speaker 4: the weapon to kind of re fire. So basically it
Speaker 4: allows you to fire much more quickly, right. But crucially,
Speaker 4: the trigger is going forward and back, unlike a machine
Speaker 4: gun where you hold the trigger to the rear right
Speaker 4: and the gun continues to fire. It's sort of you
Speaker 4: can look up. I think it's probably much easier if
Speaker 4: you can see it. But it's kind of a device
Speaker 4: that connects the stock and then the pistol grip of
Speaker 4: the weapon, and then it bounces back and forward, and
Speaker 4: in doing so moves the finger back and forward. You
Speaker 4: can also bump fire a gun without one, which is
Speaker 4: just I just don't want to describe how to do that,
Speaker 4: but if you probably know already, there are videos on
Speaker 4: YouTube like like, it's not not a thing that's illegal,
Speaker 4: I don't think, but neither of these are particularly effective.
Speaker 4: It's kind of a range toy thing, like it's a
Speaker 4: way to quickly turn money into noise. I don't think that.
Speaker 4: Like they were massive craze, like a lot of these
Speaker 4: gun things right there, there are like five big accounts
Speaker 4: on YouTube, which set the fact that whatever they're craze, Like,
Speaker 4: gun people are very much like like like preteens, you know,
Speaker 4: you know, when you're in school and suddenly everyone's got
Speaker 4: a fucking yoyo and if you don't have a yo yo,
Speaker 4: you're a complete weave and then fuck your yoyo. It's
Speaker 4: Pokemon cards. Yeah, that's the that's a lot of the
Speaker 4: firearms industry. So like these were a big craze and
Speaker 4: then they kind of weren't, and specifically when when the
Speaker 4: Donald Trump ATF banned them, right, a lot of people
Speaker 4: were like, oh, you don't need them any way. They
Speaker 4: find that they're they're useless. Like they definitely allow you
Speaker 4: to fire fire quicker, and you can have the gun
Speaker 4: in your in your shoulder, which you can't do when
Speaker 4: you're regularly bump firing it, but they're not. It's not
Speaker 4: the same as a machine gun in terms of effectiveness
Speaker 4: in my opinion. So yeah, now you can buy one
Speaker 4: again if you really want one. In certain states. I'm
Speaker 4: sure that there are state laws. I'm sure California still
Speaker 4: bands him, but well you can't have a pistol grip
Speaker 4: on your semi automatic rifle in California unless it's mad glove.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I don't think it's a big deal, Like
Speaker 4: I'm looking right now, and of course, like you know
Speaker 4: NBC and ship, it's like the end of the world
Speaker 4: is nigh. Everyone now has a belt fed machine gun.
Speaker 4: Not really, it's not. That's not kind of what they do.
Speaker 4: You can fire faster, but I don't think it's it's
Speaker 4: going to make a meaningful change in the lethality of firearms,
Speaker 4: and civilians have access to Some couple use it as
Speaker 4: an excuse to be to be a fucking coward like
Speaker 4: they were a uvalde, right, But we can't control that.
Speaker 4: I think it does signal, like post Bruin, right, which
Speaker 4: was a concealed, carried decision, a willingness of the court
Speaker 4: to go after the ATF.
Speaker 2: They didn't.
Speaker 4: There's a thing called I think it's called a Chevron
Speaker 4: It's not a Chevron rule. Is it a Chevron doctrine?
Speaker 4: Chevron doctrine, right, Yeah, where like essentially that they they're
Speaker 4: telling lower courts not to challenge legislatives or like opinions.
Speaker 4: The ATF is not itself a law making body, but
Speaker 4: it can appine on what laws mean, but those can
Speaker 4: be challenged in courts. They didn't touch the Chevron doctrine
Speaker 4: with regards to the ATF here, but I think we
Speaker 4: will see other cases. Three D printed gun cases, for instance,
Speaker 4: go up to a Supreme Court and probably get a
Speaker 4: favorable decision for gun rights. There's there's, there's this Supreme
Speaker 4: Court and the big ones, the ones that would make
Speaker 4: a meaningful difference at least to people in restricted states,
Speaker 4: would be assault weapons bands like we have in California.
Speaker 4: And magazine capacity bands like we have in California, right,
Speaker 4: So California, a lot of other states limit you to
Speaker 4: ten rounds. California, you kind of have a pistol grape
Speaker 4: on a semi automatic rifle and some other features and
Speaker 4: less the magazines locked to the weapon. It requires disassembly
Speaker 4: to reload. So those would make a meaningful difference to
Speaker 4: gun rights for people in those states. This I think
Speaker 4: is that big of a deal personally, Like, look, look,
Speaker 4: fucking people are all over the place with fully automatic
Speaker 4: locks because they bought a little three printed switch on
Speaker 4: like either online or I like apparently people are buying
Speaker 4: them on the alley Express, which is fucking unwise because
Speaker 4: it's coming into the country and like a customer's going
Speaker 4: to look at that. Yeah, but I've seen that in
Speaker 4: court cases. But yeah, this is not that, you know,
Speaker 4: like people are making auto sears for AAR fifteens or
Speaker 4: court cases about that too. I don't think this is
Speaker 4: that big of a deal, but it may be indicate
Speaker 4: that we will see other other changes in firearm legislation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes sense. I think that's our wrap up
Speaker 3: Supreme Court news. I don't know it's possible some other
Speaker 3: bullshit drops at the end of today. But yeah, this
Speaker 3: has been recorded on Friday, the whatever, the fourteenth, So
Speaker 3: if there's if if, if the Supreme Court has done
Speaker 3: more bullshit, I'm sorry we didn't get to it, but
Speaker 3: that that that's all we got for Supreme Court today. Yeah, Flags, friends, Yeah,
Speaker 3: my fly fly funnier Flags.
Speaker 1: Welcome to it could happen here. I am Sophieleckerman. I
Speaker 1: am the executive producer of all of Cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: and I didn't have time to touch grass today, so
Speaker 1: this is the closest I'm going to get to that.
Speaker 1: And here with me leading the conversation will be James
Speaker 1: Stout And also here is one of my favorite people
Speaker 1: on this entire planet, Alli Conger, James, take it away.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Sophie. Magnificent intro. As Sophie said, we're here
Speaker 4: today to talk about grass. So no really grass, but
Speaker 4: it just like plants in general. I wanted to do
Speaker 4: an episode on having a little garden because I think
Speaker 4: it is a thing that would make people happy, and
Speaker 4: also it's a way to have food for yourself. It's
Speaker 4: not free, but once the plants keep growing, you don't
Speaker 4: have to pay any more for the food, so it's
Speaker 4: a nice thing to do. I enjoyed to grow plants
Speaker 4: and I wanted to share that with you. Do you
Speaker 4: have little gardens, Molly and Sophie.
Speaker 5: Yes. Oh so, I moved to a new apartment last year,
Speaker 5: and in sort of a rare and strange arrangement, my
Speaker 5: first floor apartment has like a little dirt patch's I
Speaker 5: think it was originally supposed to be where the HVAC
Speaker 5: units are, because it's like walled off by this sort
Speaker 5: of tall wall. It's this ten foot by ten foot pit,
Speaker 5: but the HVAC units are not there. So that's where
Speaker 5: I grow my tomatoes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or is currently a fruit garden. I have a
Speaker 1: bunch of things starting in pots. I've got a lemon tree.
Speaker 1: I've got a mandarin tree, which I'm really excited about.
Speaker 1: I grew a mandarin tree when I lived in California
Speaker 1: and then gifted to my dad and then he gifted
Speaker 1: it to a friend of his and it's still doing
Speaker 1: really well, so that's nice. I have a boys and
Speaker 1: berry plant. I have what did I just buy? I'm
Speaker 1: trying to think I just bought another fruit thing. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's like some citrus hybrid thing. So My porch is
Speaker 1: filled with fruit things that should live for a very
Speaker 1: long time. And then my friend Sarah is on a
Speaker 1: gardening kick and so anything else we grow in her
Speaker 1: yard and she's growing literally everything that's good.
Speaker 4: Love to grow everything. Yeah, so if you want to
Speaker 4: grow everything, if you're listening and you're thinking, I would
Speaker 4: like to be like Sophia money and grow vegetables and trees.
Speaker 4: Trees are hid, especially if you're a renter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you have to start them in a pot and
Speaker 1: then depending on climate, I bring mine inside during the
Speaker 1: cool times and I have them under a grow bulb.
Speaker 1: It's not a quick commitment.
Speaker 4: No, Yeah, it is an undertaking. And yeah, if you
Speaker 4: want to let them grow big, then you either have
Speaker 4: to get giant pots or put them in the ground.
Speaker 4: Did they put them in the ground?
Speaker 1: Which is hard when most people in this country can't
Speaker 1: afford to buy a home.
Speaker 4: Yes, it is. It sucks. And then you don't want
Speaker 4: to be giving things to your landlord for free because
Speaker 4: fucking yeah. Well, let's talk about things that you can
Speaker 4: do in a smaller timeframe than trees. So I've just
Speaker 4: got a few bullet points here. We're going to go
Speaker 4: through them and you can interrupt me with your experiences
Speaker 4: or question, should you have any, But if you're making
Speaker 4: a little guiden for yourself, obviously you're going to have
Speaker 4: to start out with choosing a spot for your garden.
Speaker 4: And it depends, I think, on where you live. So
Speaker 4: if you're like on the fifth floor and you don't
Speaker 4: have access to any ground yard garden soil, that could
Speaker 4: be your windowsill, right, it could be your balcony if
Speaker 4: you have a balcony. All you really need is somewhere
Speaker 4: that has good access to sunlight. All the other stuff
Speaker 4: you can bring in yourself.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: You can bring the soil yourself, You can bring the
Speaker 4: water and all the nutrients that your plants need. But
Speaker 4: obviously I guess you could make the sunlight. In my kitchen,
Speaker 4: I have a little arrow garden which has its own
Speaker 4: little UV light bulb, and you can use those to
Speaker 4: grow some stuff. Or people have maybe some other hydroponic
Speaker 4: gardening experience. They have done.
Speaker 5: Elaborate setups for their tomatoes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you remember that. I think it was like
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen when everybody's relative gave them one of those
Speaker 1: like indoor herb garden kits that don't oh the arrow garden.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yah, the air garden.
Speaker 4: I have one of those. They work.
Speaker 1: No no, no, no no, not the expensive arrow garden one,
Speaker 1: but the knockoff ones.
Speaker 5: Everybody doesn't want to one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everybody got one of those, and then you saw
Speaker 1: them elsewhere.
Speaker 5: And that sort of commodification is so silly, right, because
Speaker 5: to grow like a little pot of basil, you don't
Speaker 5: need stuff. You don't need to buy a thing windowsill.
Speaker 1: I can't grow basil. I really we're not compatible.
Speaker 4: Interesting.
Speaker 1: I love basil. I use it constantly. I try to
Speaker 1: grow it. I kill it every time.
Speaker 4: What way is it dying?
Speaker 5: It just wilts.
Speaker 4: Basil doesn't like its feet in the water. It has
Speaker 4: to have quite dry soil.
Speaker 1: It wilts. So then I'll try again and i'll ignore it.
Speaker 1: It wilts. I'll try it again, and i'll give it
Speaker 1: a little bit of water. It wilts. I'll try it again.
Speaker 1: I'll give it a lot of water. It wilts. I'll
Speaker 1: try it again, and I guess how it ends.
Speaker 4: It wilt.
Speaker 5: I have an abundance of it because I'm constantly topping it.
Speaker 5: Because you want to top your basil all the time
Speaker 5: so that it branches instead of flowering. So when I
Speaker 5: top it, I'm like, why, I don't want to waste this.
Speaker 5: I'll root these and I have, like, you know, seven
Speaker 5: hundred basils.
Speaker 1: Well it's me.
Speaker 4: Maybe Molly could send one to Sophie and we could see.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you're welcome to some of my basil.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because pesto's one of the greatest things that's ever
Speaker 1: happened to anybody.
Speaker 4: Mm hm Oh you need this a little pine nut,
Speaker 4: pine tree, I guess, and some basil and a little
Speaker 4: sheep and you can make pecorino cheese. There you go,
Speaker 4: and then yeah, and some manchovies.
Speaker 5: Of course, you just need your own sheep.
Speaker 4: Yeah, everyone should have.
Speaker 1: Well, Anderson would have the best time hurting one.
Speaker 4: Sheep that the poor sheep were probably not.
Speaker 1: I pictured it. It's really funny.
Speaker 4: You can't just have one sheep. They need friends. Sheep
Speaker 4: are not a solitary animal, so yeah, you'd have to
Speaker 4: go several.
Speaker 1: Well, Anderson will hurt them all.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we'd love to see that. All right. So if
Speaker 4: you've selected your spot right where you have access to sunlight,
Speaker 4: the next thing you need is a vessel. So during COVID,
Speaker 4: lots of people started gardens. Not that we are not
Speaker 4: also in COVID right now, right, but during the lockdown
Speaker 4: twenty twenty, when everyone was working from home for the
Speaker 4: first time, people started their little guidance, and I think
Speaker 4: lots of folks who didn't start back then or you
Speaker 4: moved house since then, Like people just built lots of planters,
Speaker 4: often in that area between the pavement and the road,
Speaker 4: which has an that I've forgotten. Now.
Speaker 5: Oh, that's one of those things that has a different
Speaker 5: name in every region of the US, and wherever you go,
Speaker 5: if you're calling it the wrong thing, people look at
Speaker 5: you like you're an alien.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know what that's called in California.
Speaker 5: I think in New Jersey they call it the Devil's Strip.
Speaker 2: For real.
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure we're going to.
Speaker 4: Call it the devil Strip in this podcast because that's
Speaker 4: a better name than I could come up with. If
Speaker 4: you're gardening in the Devil's Strip, that sounds like a
Speaker 4: euphemism for growing weed, like when people call it the
Speaker 4: Devil's Letters. Yeah, you're growing your Devil's letters and the
Speaker 4: Devil Strip. That's a good place to build a planter,
Speaker 4: right generally, like you should be able to obtain lumber
Speaker 4: for that somewhere like, I don't think you should be
Speaker 4: paying for lumber in this day and age. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: they're pretty easy to build, right if you are building
Speaker 4: a planter some considerations, you probably shouldn't stain the inside
Speaker 4: of the lumber that you're using. There's stuff in there
Speaker 4: that you probably don't want it if you intend to
Speaker 4: eat the plants. I think it's a pretty bad idea.
Speaker 4: Or to get lumber which is pre treated. Right, if
Speaker 4: you get some think which is naturally resistant to rotting,
Speaker 4: like a hot like redwood or something like that, that's
Speaker 4: going to last a bit longer, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you should be able to find some
Speaker 1: kind of cedar or redwood around. I agree with your
Speaker 1: assessment that you should not have to pay for that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: although it's not something that if you have like a
Speaker 1: good local hardware store, it's not something that's super expensive.
Speaker 1: But price it before you buy it, that is what
Speaker 1: I'll say.
Speaker 5: And it's certainly cheaper to just buy the wood than
Speaker 5: it is to buy like a pre made wooden plant.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: The mark upon that is crazy.
Speaker 1: Incredibly overpriced for something that you would find at a
Speaker 1: big box store.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And crap too, there was one in one place
Speaker 4: I live that was like maybe a quarter of an
Speaker 4: inch thick, and like it dovetailed together, but then like
Speaker 4: the dovetails kind of bulged out when they got too
Speaker 4: wet and it was not a good figure. Don't don't
Speaker 4: buy one, build one. If you have decking screws in
Speaker 4: two by fours, you can build your own planetary. Doesn't
Speaker 4: degree require a high level of carpentry knowledge. And you're
Speaker 4: gonna have to put some soil in your planter, right,
Speaker 4: You could grow plants in like leka likers like the
Speaker 4: clay composite. Have you seen this little balls? Yeah, but
Speaker 4: I think I have. Yeah, just to start off with,
Speaker 4: we'll we'll start with soil because it's the easiest thing
Speaker 4: to access. I think in lots of cities you can
Speaker 4: get free compost if you go to the tip. I
Speaker 4: don't know if that's the case where you guys live,
Speaker 4: but here you can get free compust if you go
Speaker 4: to the tip.
Speaker 1: I'm unfamiliar with that, but now I'm like, wait, can
Speaker 1: we do that because we should?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 5: Have I been missing out on free dirt because I've
Speaker 5: I've been paying for dirt?
Speaker 4: Okay, Yeah, this is a huge life act. Do you
Speaker 4: have those green bins where you put like compostable rubbish.
Speaker 5: Of course, Oh no, we don't.
Speaker 4: So if he lives in Portland, yeah, I like I
Speaker 4: live in Portland, of course. Okay, So if you have that,
Speaker 4: I'm guessing your municipality is composting it, right, which would
Speaker 4: mean that it has a large amount of compost, at
Speaker 4: least in San Diego. I would be blown away if
Speaker 4: San Diego was leading the way and giving residents any
Speaker 4: think other than more cops for their taxpayer dollars, we
Speaker 4: can get free. I have a pickup truck. I think
Speaker 4: I can get too pick up trucks full of compost.
Speaker 4: You have to go and shovel it yourself right into
Speaker 4: your truck, and obviously you have to have some kind
Speaker 4: of vehicle to transport it. But it's a good way
Speaker 4: to get free soil, especially if you're like doing a project. Often,
Speaker 4: if you're planting vegetables in your garden, right, the soil
Speaker 4: that you're planting them into might not be good quality
Speaker 4: top soil, right. That top soil might have been taken
Speaker 4: away when you're building's constructed, or you might have all
Speaker 4: kinds of aggregate waste sort of mixed in there right,
Speaker 4: gravel and stuff like that, it might not be the
Speaker 4: best quality growing soil. So if you can going to
Speaker 4: getting some of the free compost is the move. What
Speaker 4: I like to do when I'm starting a little garden
Speaker 4: and I've got my soil is to do a soil
Speaker 4: chemistry test. Have you guys done soil chemistry tests?
Speaker 1: I have.
Speaker 5: My style of gardening is more just kind of vibing out, okay.
Speaker 1: More of a violides based hey Portland. As free compost is.
Speaker 5: I get information overload really fast. When I first started
Speaker 5: my little garden, I thought like, I'm go do some googling.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna do some researching. I'm gonna go to the
Speaker 5: Agricultural Extension website and learn about my local soil. And
Speaker 5: then like, once i have seventy tabs open and I'm
Speaker 5: trying to consume the information, I was like, you know what,
Speaker 5: plants grow outside. They'll be fine, They'll be fine.
Speaker 3: It is true.
Speaker 4: There is a lot you can do and a lot
Speaker 4: that you don't have to do when it comes to
Speaker 4: gre own cliants. My mother was a lecture in agricultural Therefore,
Speaker 4: I'm bound to get a little home test kit and
Speaker 4: test today do you know what the three essential nutrients are?
Speaker 4: We turn it into a quiz format for plants.
Speaker 5: Nitrogen, yeah, a different element.
Speaker 4: That's correct. H These are things, These are real things.
Speaker 1: All I can think of is fat, that's right, salt, fat, acid, heat.
Speaker 4: If your plant isn't hitting its macros, it will not
Speaker 4: get swollen exactly. One of the things about.
Speaker 5: I'm feeding much imatos creatine?
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's why they're hench as fun.
Speaker 1: Are we talking like magnesium?
Speaker 4: Close? U? That two is an element?
Speaker 5: I had nitrogen though, that's right, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Molly is yeah, Muddy got that one right. I was
Speaker 4: trying to do it like a ratio. I couldn't work
Speaker 4: it out.
Speaker 1: Nitrogen phosphorus, Okay, I was like almost there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're very close with magnesia.
Speaker 5: Are you growing a gardener blowing up a federal building?
Speaker 4: James Porque, Nola's do Molly, I'm growing a guarden for
Speaker 4: legal and truth based reasons. I'm growing a guard You
Speaker 4: want nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Those are your three essential nutrients.
Speaker 4: There are fifteen other nkroen nutrients. I guess that plants
Speaker 4: need vitamins. Yeah, the little you know omega threes for
Speaker 4: their joints. They need MP and K in different ratios
Speaker 4: depending on different plants.
Speaker 1: Right, Molly and I are like, we're here to talk
Speaker 1: about plants. Why are we in chemistry? What's happening?
Speaker 5: James? I buy a bag that says Tomato food and
Speaker 5: there's a picture of a cartoon tomato on it. That's
Speaker 5: what I know you're doing.
Speaker 1: Great.
Speaker 4: You can't go wrong with looking at the picture on
Speaker 4: the thing. I use this technique for all kinds of things.
Speaker 4: It's why I don't buy Quaker oats anymore. Very disturbing.
Speaker 4: So you're going to seek to have the soil chemistry
Speaker 4: that suits the plants that you want to grow. Right,
Speaker 4: You can't really like improve your soil unless you know
Speaker 4: where you're starting from. So you're going to look at
Speaker 4: the NPK and the pH and then going from there.
Speaker 4: When you're buying commercial fertilizers, you can normally see the
Speaker 4: balance or sit on the bag or sit on the website, right,
Speaker 4: and you're trying to augment that soil to get the
Speaker 4: soil chemistry you want to grow the plants that you
Speaker 4: want to eat, or maybe not eat, maybe just have.
Speaker 4: You can also add organic matters to your soil. If
Speaker 4: you're doing that, like, you're just gonna have to like
Speaker 4: test and test again kind of think, because when your cowshits,
Speaker 4: you don't get a bag which then gives you the
Speaker 4: amount of nightgen phosphorus and potassium.
Speaker 5: That's why I buy the cowshit in a bag.
Speaker 4: James, Wow, that's a great business idea.
Speaker 5: No, they sell it a lows.
Speaker 4: They said it lows cowshit in a bag. Okay, maybe
Speaker 4: that is a wonderful time to take a break for advertisements.
Speaker 5: Hopefully one of the advertisers is Shit.
Speaker 4: In the Bag, Shit in a Bag. Longtime supporter of
Speaker 4: the show, I please enjoy this advert for shit in
Speaker 4: the Bag. We are back. We've returned from discussing things
Speaker 4: that we could pretend we're shit in a bag, which
Speaker 4: we're not going to share with you. You'll have to guess. Okay,
Speaker 4: So I like to use chicken manure for mine, but
Speaker 4: you do have to rot it down right. If you're
Speaker 4: putting manure on your soil, it'll burn it if you
Speaker 4: just dump it straight on there. You can't just literally
Speaker 4: dump shit into your soil. This hopefully is not used
Speaker 4: to anyone.
Speaker 5: Got to age it like a fire. Wine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. It does improve with age. Buttlet up, cork
Speaker 4: it and put a vintage on it and then rotate
Speaker 4: it every few years so it doesn't get sediment in
Speaker 4: the bottom. If you can get a compost here and
Speaker 4: you can go after making your own compust, it's a
Speaker 4: fun thing to do. You get one of the barrel
Speaker 4: composters that you turn.
Speaker 5: I have one of those.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 5: Because my dirt patch is like not really supposed to
Speaker 5: be a garden. I don't have a lot of room
Speaker 5: for a compost. Heap love a compost, eat better way
Speaker 5: to do it. But because I just have patio space,
Speaker 5: and I have one of those big plastic compost tumblers,
Speaker 5: and I love it. It works pretty good, pretty fast.
Speaker 5: I was lucky enough last year. This was not intentional.
Speaker 5: I did not invite them. But I have black soldier
Speaker 5: flies in my compost. Do you know those little guys? Hmm,
Speaker 5: they're like pretty long, shiny black flies. But their larva
Speaker 5: are these like little grubs, And so I open my compost,
Speaker 5: it was like, who the hell are all these grubs?
Speaker 5: But black soldier fly larva just devour organic matter and
Speaker 5: so they break down They break down your compost really fast.
Speaker 5: I love them so much that I just bought some
Speaker 5: he gave in the mail today. I got a box
Speaker 5: in the mail today that said, like caution, live bugs.
Speaker 5: I dump dump tho little babies in my tumbler.
Speaker 4: Nice. Yeah, hope they thrive there.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, they love it in there.
Speaker 4: Yeah. We had some love I didn't know what they were,
Speaker 4: but we had a compost heat that I moved a
Speaker 4: couple of years ago. When I moved it, the chickens
Speaker 4: had probably the best day of it, just chasing around people.
Speaker 5: Farm Black Soldier fly as chicken feed so that you
Speaker 5: can have this coole setup where you're growing them on
Speaker 5: purpose and then they sort of fall down the tray
Speaker 5: and the chickens eat them. I don't have any chickens yet.
Speaker 5: I think my apartment neighbors would not like that.
Speaker 4: Fuck fuck them moneys to play rage against the machine
Speaker 4: as you install your chicken cube.
Speaker 5: I mean the dogs would love it. Buck has met
Speaker 5: a chicken before, and in his mind it is like
Speaker 5: the rawest chicken, right, Like this is the most tempting.
Speaker 4: Treat of the forbidden dog treat, the raw nugget. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and then they give chickens could be pretty mean.
Speaker 1: Hey, Reese, featherspoon is a national treasure.
Speaker 4: Yeah, raised featherspoon is. She is not a mean chicken.
Speaker 4: She was just sitting on my lap earlier before we recorded.
Speaker 4: She sees a friendly chicken. She does. So if there
Speaker 4: is blood on me, she will attack even me her
Speaker 4: father and friend. So if you don't have any manure,
Speaker 4: that's fine.
Speaker 5: You can make your own dirt at home. I recommend it.
Speaker 1: It's great.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can. It's very fulfilling to take like waste
Speaker 4: and turn it into something useful. You can do it
Speaker 4: on a city scale like Portland does, or you can
Speaker 4: do it on a home scale, which is fun and
Speaker 4: it's always nice to you know, reduce your amount of
Speaker 4: shit there, especially if they don't compost, Like if you
Speaker 4: don't have a green bin. It's less shit going into landfa,
Speaker 4: isn't it. So that's always a good thing. So now
Speaker 4: you've you've got your vessel and you've got your soil,
Speaker 4: and you're going to have to decide about your plants. Right.
Speaker 4: One great resource to consult it's a USDA Plant Hardiness matter.
Speaker 4: Have you guys been browsy.
Speaker 5: Know your zone?
Speaker 4: Baby m yep?
Speaker 1: You have to or else you could just be committing
Speaker 1: plant masker.
Speaker 5: I mean there's a lot of debate right now in
Speaker 5: the in the community about the rezoning, the rezone, the
Speaker 5: USDA Plant Hardiness Map. Yeah, Like my mom buys all
Speaker 5: of her bulbs from this bulb farm and they put
Speaker 5: out a notice saying like, we are not using the
Speaker 5: revised map or we're sticking the original, We're not changing
Speaker 5: the catalog.
Speaker 4: Yeah, being a trad but for the USDA.
Speaker 5: Plant return to tradition.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm a USDA Plant hardness believer. And the climate
Speaker 4: is changing, so the ship that your grandparents grow might
Speaker 4: not work for you if you have colder winters, especially
Speaker 4: right if the winter's getting colder where you are, that
Speaker 4: might be difficult for your plants. Yeah, so consult that map.
Speaker 4: The map isn't going to tell you what to grow
Speaker 4: so much as what can make it through your winters,
Speaker 4: and so it's a good place to start. You're also
Speaker 4: going to want to think about plants that you can
Speaker 4: fit into your space. Right. If you want to grow
Speaker 4: yourself as sequoia, that's cool, but you know, if you're
Speaker 4: operating with a balcony, it's probably not going to be
Speaker 4: Maybe you can make a bond size coir that that
Speaker 4: was your thing, but you needed to plant that will
Speaker 4: fit with your space, right, definitely, If you want to
Speaker 4: grow plants that you want to eat, think about things
Speaker 4: that are high yielding, right, and perpetual spinach is a
Speaker 4: great one. If you're like a first timer. Perpetual spinach
Speaker 4: you can cut and come again, so you pick some
Speaker 4: and a bit more cums and bit more cums. You
Speaker 4: don't have to like harvest it all at one time.
Speaker 4: Tomatoes are a classic, right. You can even grow them
Speaker 4: straight in one of those grow bags. Just cut a hole,
Speaker 4: put tomatoes in. If you've got enough depth, you can
Speaker 4: do root vegetables, so things like carrots, turnip, swedes, you
Speaker 4: can get of course potatoes or a classic you can
Speaker 4: make a potato tower if you wanted to. A great
Speaker 4: way to have lots of potatoes in a relatively small space.
Speaker 4: So choose something that will also grow depending on the
Speaker 4: amount of climate window you have. Right, So, if you
Speaker 4: have short summers and you have something that needs a
Speaker 4: lot of sunlight to grow, you want something that will
Speaker 4: grow and mature in the amount of time you have
Speaker 4: right before the weather turns to shit again and it's
Speaker 4: too cold for that plant. Something that's suitable for the
Speaker 4: climate you have. Like I just harvested some winter giant
Speaker 4: spinach because I agree that of the winter and it's
Speaker 4: very hardy and doesn't need quite as much sunlight. That
Speaker 4: was very good. And I'm about to start having my
Speaker 4: early girl tomatoes, which they arrive earlier than you're conventional tomato.
Speaker 4: Like there's a tomato for everything, wherever you are, whatever
Speaker 4: you need, Like, that's a tomato for you.
Speaker 5: It's overwhelming. So like last year, like I said, I'm
Speaker 5: doing this five space, right, So I went to the
Speaker 5: garden store and I just picked out a couple of
Speaker 5: tomato plants that had names like that were funny.
Speaker 4: I think that's a great strategy.
Speaker 5: Right, that's very valid. But this year I was a
Speaker 5: little more selective. Right, So I grew fewer tomatoes this
Speaker 5: year because I think last they were a little too
Speaker 5: close together. It was a little overwhelming, a little busy
Speaker 5: in there. I want to do more cucumbers this year,
Speaker 5: so I only have five tomato plants. I have two
Speaker 5: different cherry tomatoes, have a Cherokee purple. Oh gosh, who
Speaker 5: are the other guys? The other ones were just names
Speaker 5: I thought were interesting. I did it again. But the
Speaker 5: great thing about tomatoes is on the little tag it'll
Speaker 5: say how many days to maturity? Yes, so like you
Speaker 5: don't have to guess, you don't have to do a
Speaker 5: lot of homeworker research. It'll stay right on the tag,
Speaker 5: like eighty five days to harvest.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Going to the garden entry, they're going to sell
Speaker 4: stuff that's suitable for the climate you're living in, right,
Speaker 4: and then yeah, you can see how long it will
Speaker 4: take to harvest. Ideally you could space them out, right,
Speaker 4: so you don't just have a g lot of tomatoes
Speaker 4: and then no tomatoes for the rest of your life
Speaker 4: or the rest.
Speaker 5: Of the year producing, especially if you get indeterminates.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they will keep producing, you can, uh.
Speaker 5: I mean they'll keep producing till the first frost. Yeah,
Speaker 5: so we had cherry tomatoes through November last year.
Speaker 4: Awesome. Wow, I thought you guys got cold.
Speaker 5: We're seven b But Charlotte s Fel's kind of in
Speaker 5: a valley, so it stays warmer a little longer.
Speaker 4: Nice. Yeah, it's San Diego is of course, you can
Speaker 4: almost have this stuff yet.
Speaker 5: Around eternal summer.
Speaker 4: Well, we have winters now. The last two winters have
Speaker 4: been very wet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I had to have a bit of a learning
Speaker 1: curve coming from California to Oregon within the different climates.
Speaker 1: And I have to say that with the things that
Speaker 1: I had in parts, bringing them inside with girl bulbs
Speaker 1: has been or older weather has been pretty successful for
Speaker 1: me at keeping things alive. Yeah, they're not as fruitful obviously,
Speaker 1: but they do not die.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a wind. If you're in Portland or somewhere
Speaker 4: feather North and like you know that your plant won't
Speaker 4: make it through the winter, that's a strategy, right. You
Speaker 4: can have a place set aside, you bring it in.
Speaker 4: You can have a grow bolb.
Speaker 1: And honestly a lot of lamps. They sell bulbs that
Speaker 1: are grow bulbs that can go directly in the lamps
Speaker 1: you already have, so you don't need to buy anything fancy.
Speaker 1: The bulbs are pretty expensive and they're sold at most
Speaker 1: local hardware stores, so you're really spending like five dollars
Speaker 1: on a bowlb instead of spending you know, thirty dollars
Speaker 1: on some fancy contraption.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, my mom has a shoplight. You know, this is
Speaker 5: like a metal lamp seah clip, It's just a cheap
Speaker 5: shoplight that she clips onto a shelf to shine at
Speaker 5: her plants. Her version of oh.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that guy, Sofie's demonstrating audio listeners.
Speaker 5: Her empty nesting has involved a whole grow situation like
Speaker 5: there's no dining room at my parents' house anymore. There's
Speaker 5: nowhere for us to eat when we go home to
Speaker 5: the dining is a greenhouse. I love like tropical plants
Speaker 5: that have to live inside in the winter. She's got
Speaker 5: like a bougainvilla that's like ten feet tall that comes
Speaker 5: in the house in the winter.
Speaker 4: Amazing.
Speaker 1: I just bought some bougain via that I have in
Speaker 1: a pot right now, because I grew up with bougainvia
Speaker 1: in California, and I finally found a nursery that had
Speaker 1: it in an Oregon and I was like home.
Speaker 5: I always thought it was a potted plant until I
Speaker 5: saw it outside in a tropical environment.
Speaker 3: It's not a potted plant, not a part of.
Speaker 4: It, not in San Diego. It is a plant that
Speaker 4: will take over your guarden.
Speaker 1: Sorry, James, we've gone off the rails. Back to what
Speaker 1: you're saying.
Speaker 4: It's okay, yeah, returning to the rails. I did want
Speaker 4: to plug native seed search. I love native seed search
Speaker 4: for finding different and exciting seeds and preserving indigenous people's
Speaker 4: horticultural traditions and like lifeways. I have grown lots of
Speaker 4: seeds from native seed search with great success. And it's
Speaker 4: cool in a world of increasingly like monocultural agriculture to
Speaker 4: preserve something that is part of one's culture. Zapatistas will
Speaker 4: also send you corn. I'm sure anyone on the left
Speaker 4: who's over thirty years old is very familiar with zapatis
Speaker 4: to corn, I'm sure. But for the youth among us,
Speaker 4: you can order corn from the zapatistas that actually comes
Speaker 4: from somebody in San Diego who will send you some
Speaker 4: of this sort of heritage variety corn. And you're preserving
Speaker 4: this corn in a world where corn is increasingly commercialized. Right,
Speaker 4: things like Monsanto have a lockdown on some of these
Speaker 4: corn varieties. Right, they're like patented varieties. Right, even if
Speaker 4: you don't sew them, they're sort of invading the genome
Speaker 4: of these indigenous corn types. So keeping these varieties alive
Speaker 4: is a cool thing to do. I used to do
Speaker 4: this when I was like sixteen. This is like early activism.
Speaker 4: Me was like growing some zappetis to corn in my parents' greenhouse.
Speaker 4: But that's the thing you can do if you want
Speaker 4: cool corn.
Speaker 5: I think it's important too to look up what's native
Speaker 5: to your area, and not just because it is you know,
Speaker 5: the right thing to do, but it'll grow better where
Speaker 5: you live. The pollinators will be attracted to it where
Speaker 5: you live. I was just looking up like here in Virginia,
Speaker 5: the Department of Wildlife Resources will sell you native seeds
Speaker 5: for your area at a pretty good affordable rice. So like,
Speaker 5: look up what wants to live where you are growing it. Yeah,
Speaker 5: totally a lot of things, like ornamental garden plants are
Speaker 5: highly invasive and destructive to your local habitat. So things
Speaker 5: that might look really nice in your yard are destructive
Speaker 5: to your environment.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a big thing where it's probably a big
Speaker 4: thing everywhere, but like in California, and we talk about
Speaker 4: like invasive mustard. Right when you see these big yellow
Speaker 4: hillsides in California, that's an invasive plant. Of course, there's
Speaker 4: the climate changes. What is indigenous to one area may
Speaker 4: no longer be suitable for growing there, And that's definitely
Speaker 4: happened with some plants. I'd get a lot of plants
Speaker 4: as well from Desert Survivors, which is a little nursery
Speaker 4: in Tucson, Arizona, where I like to go and buy
Speaker 4: desert plants because I do not like to have plants
Speaker 4: that are extremely thirsty for water. This is my transition
Speaker 4: to our watering segment. You need to water your plants.
Speaker 4: This is something that people probably know that some tips
Speaker 4: for watering. You want to water your plants regularly and consistently.
Speaker 4: Plants can get stressed if you have a lot of water,
Speaker 4: then no water, then a lot of water. Again. If
Speaker 4: you're using a vibe space watering strategy, you might be
Speaker 4: causing your plant excessive stress. So I like to water
Speaker 4: my plants morning or evening because in the heat of
Speaker 4: the day you're going to lose more to evaporation. If
Speaker 4: you're really going for it, you can set up a
Speaker 4: drip feeder, which is a pretty cool system where the
Speaker 4: lots of little lines and they just drip water onto
Speaker 4: your plants. Those are a really great way to irrigate.
Speaker 4: You can also do what I often do, which is
Speaker 4: drink a lot and then use your plants as an
Speaker 4: excuse for doing that. By taking the little glass bottles
Speaker 4: and making plant waters out of them as you fill
Speaker 4: them up and then basically shove them in the ground
Speaker 4: as long as you can get a good plug of
Speaker 4: soil in the end of the bottle.
Speaker 5: And misunderstood where you were going with that. I thought
Speaker 5: you were pissing on your vegetables.
Speaker 4: Nope.
Speaker 5: So I've heard of putting urine in your compost tumbler,
Speaker 5: something about the urea and the nitrogen. But I don't
Speaker 5: think you're suposed to piss right on the tomatoes.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: I was trying to understand what Molly's the gig face
Speaker 1: was really.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Money's baffled by this bottle idea.
Speaker 5: I don't pee on my garden. Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 5: sort of street facing. I think it would be sort
Speaker 5: of loud and lascivius.
Speaker 1: For the record, Yeah, Molly does not pee on her garden.
Speaker 4: I want everyone to know that Money's not a guden per.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 5: But watering is a big issue for me, right, So,
Speaker 5: because it's not supposed to be a garden there there's.
Speaker 4: No hose as a water source.
Speaker 5: There's no external like spigott for me to hook up
Speaker 5: a hose too. There's so I have to use a
Speaker 5: two gallon watering can that I fill in my bathtub
Speaker 5: and then take out one at a time, and so
Speaker 5: you know you're supposed to, like the equivalent of one
Speaker 5: inch of water per week is about average for a
Speaker 5: little vegetable garden, which is like zero point six gallons
Speaker 5: per square foot. So for my ten foot by ten foot,
Speaker 5: I'm looking at sixty gallons a week. So every other
Speaker 5: day fill up my watering can you know, ten or
Speaker 5: twenty times. It's an endeavor, good work, It's an endeavor.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a commitment to the plants. You could like
Speaker 4: do a hose and run out your window from the tap.
Speaker 5: I looked into it. So for people who live in
Speaker 5: apartments and have a lot of house plants, there's like
Speaker 5: an adapter you can get for your kitchen sink that
Speaker 5: you can screw a hose onto. But I do not
Speaker 5: have the right kind of faucet for that.
Speaker 4: Disappointing. I bet someone listening has a solution for Molly's plants.
Speaker 1: But first it's time for advertisements.
Speaker 5: I hope it's an advertisement for pissing outside.
Speaker 4: That would be great. I would read the advert for
Speaker 4: pissing outside.
Speaker 1: I just feel like that's what we're missing the.
Speaker 5: World is a toilet.
Speaker 4: Surely like Jocko or someone has done a like pissing outside,
Speaker 4: Jordan Peterson that they've done sunning your balls, they must
Speaker 4: have done pissing outside.
Speaker 5: So if you ask the people that make the shi
Speaker 5: Wi a failed sponsor the.
Speaker 1: Show, sure.
Speaker 4: We are back and we are now going to talk
Speaker 4: about and your versus perennial plants, a topic play know
Speaker 4: many of you have been wondering about. Would one of
Speaker 4: you like to explain? I'm sure you're familiar with annuals
Speaker 4: and perennials, which one of you like to take on
Speaker 4: the task of explaining them to our listeners?
Speaker 5: Sophie, what annuals just live for the one growing season.
Speaker 5: Perennials will come back next year, is the short of it.
Speaker 1: I definitely could have answered that, Well.
Speaker 4: You didn't, did you, Surpi?
Speaker 5: So your tomatoes are annuals. Allegedly my halapenna is supposed
Speaker 5: to be a perennial. She did not make it rip.
Speaker 4: We've had a couple of peppers over winter. I have
Speaker 4: a thie bird chili that made it from a couple
Speaker 4: of winters. Now, it'll depend a little bit on where
Speaker 4: you are as well, if they'll make it through the w.
Speaker 5: And I think I should have pruned it back earlier
Speaker 5: before the frost. I think they winter better if you
Speaker 5: prune them back. It was parted. I could have sunk
Speaker 5: the pot in the soil so the soil temperature would
Speaker 5: remain more constant, but I didn't do that. I about
Speaker 5: a new one.
Speaker 1: I respect that.
Speaker 4: So some other things to consider. I'm going three things
Speaker 4: that you might need to add as your guide growth
Speaker 4: would be like frames for plants that creep or plants
Speaker 4: that climb. Some tomatoes will need a frame. For Molly's cucumbers,
Speaker 4: you're going to need a frame.
Speaker 5: Oh, I got a little a frame for my cukees
Speaker 5: this year. But I hate tomato cages. Those you've seen them,
Speaker 5: the round little at the bottom when they get there,
Speaker 5: the horrible round wire cages. They're ugly, they're hard to store.
Speaker 5: They live in an apartment. What I'm going to do
Speaker 5: with that the other eight months out of the year.
Speaker 5: So what I did last year is a technique called
Speaker 5: Florida weave, where you use posts and twine and you
Speaker 5: sort of so you have the posts along the row
Speaker 5: and then you between the posts you weave the twine
Speaker 5: on either side of the plants, and it worked really
Speaker 5: well until my tomatoes became ten feet tall because I
Speaker 5: bought five foot posts. But it was good in theory.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's how commercial tomatoes are grown.
Speaker 5: It was much more affordable than buying like something large,
Speaker 5: because I just went to tractor supply and bought Actually,
Speaker 5: the steaks I bought are for putting up electric fences,
Speaker 5: so they have clips every few inches along the post
Speaker 5: for so convenient to clip the wire into. So I
Speaker 5: used that to hold onto the twine and they were
Speaker 5: like a buck fifty apiece. So it's a much more
Speaker 5: affordable and more storage friendly. So Florida weave them great idea.
Speaker 4: Love that, Yeah, I love that. Someone gave me a
Speaker 4: load of bamboo and I just made frames out of
Speaker 4: that and just it's fun to do a little a
Speaker 4: frame hitch and make little frame and then you can
Speaker 4: just collapse it right because the a frame hitch, it
Speaker 4: relies on the spreading of the bottom to give it attention.
Speaker 4: So you just you bring them together again and you
Speaker 4: can store it over the winter.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So there are a lot of solutions out there
Speaker 5: that don't involve buying a fifty dollars contraption. It blows
Speaker 5: you know, like, don't feel like you have to invest
Speaker 5: a lot of money in like objects and gadgets and things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think generally, Actually, there's a lot of shit
Speaker 4: that's marketed at trying to get your plants to grow,
Speaker 4: and like, the chances are if your plants you're having
Speaker 4: not as much success as you would hope. They're not
Speaker 4: getting enough light, they're not getting enough water, or they're
Speaker 4: not getting enough nutrients, or too cold or too hot
Speaker 4: for them.
Speaker 5: You don't need a big gadget.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you don't need to buy a thing. And it
Speaker 4: is one of those areas where you can find for
Speaker 4: useful information on the internet. So if you're struggling with
Speaker 4: a certain plant, there is almost certainly someone who's already
Speaker 4: had that struggle and you can find their solutions. There
Speaker 4: are some pretty good websites for searching up that stuff.
Speaker 4: The last thing I wanted to cover was pruning and
Speaker 4: weeding and pest management, which can be a bit of
Speaker 4: a mission. Right now, I'm fighting a uphill struggle against
Speaker 4: some gophers. They have targeted me. You have to shoot
Speaker 4: this is a problem. I live in a relatively built
Speaker 4: up area, I am a person who grew up in agriculture.
Speaker 4: I know how to manage pests. But unfortunately all the
Speaker 4: things that I would have done are felony crime.
Speaker 5: Big government is interfering with your urban farm.
Speaker 4: Once again, the boot of the man is on my neck.
Speaker 5: I am at war with the squirrels here. That's weird.
Speaker 5: They didn't mess with me last year, I guess because
Speaker 5: you know, we had just moved in and they saw
Speaker 5: the dogs and they were concerned about the dogs. But
Speaker 5: this year they're feeling bold and they are digging holes.
Speaker 5: Every day. They're digging holes. They are burying peanuts in
Speaker 5: my garden, and I keep pulling peanuts out of the.
Speaker 2: I have a fucking peanut problem too.
Speaker 5: I'm not Jimmy Carter. I'm not farming peanuts.
Speaker 1: They're not afraid of Buccanatto.
Speaker 5: I guess because last year they didn't get got so
Speaker 5: this year they're feeling.
Speaker 1: Like Henderson keeps the squirrels at bay. They know their
Speaker 1: place and that it is her yard.
Speaker 4: A buccanotto on patrol though. Are they able to access
Speaker 4: the pit?
Speaker 5: No, the pit is like not accessible to dog, but
Speaker 5: like sometimes you know, they're out on the patio barking.
Speaker 5: But the solution that I have found because apparently I'm
Speaker 5: not allowed to shoot them a cayenne pepper.
Speaker 1: Yes, cayenne pepper is a great solution.
Speaker 5: I bought like several pounds of cayenne pepper in bulk,
Speaker 5: and I just sprinkle it on all of the surfaces,
Speaker 5: like on the surface of the soil along the wall
Speaker 5: around the pit because they don't want to like walk
Speaker 5: in it and smell it, So it keeps them off
Speaker 5: the wall so they don't end up down in the
Speaker 5: pit to dig.
Speaker 1: I do the same. You get some that some chili oil,
Speaker 1: a little bit of water, you put a spray bottle,
Speaker 1: and he just keeps a lot of bugs away as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, mace your plants.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Unfortunately I don't sprinkle into the wind.
Speaker 4: Oh no, Yeah, I've done the same thing. Money. I've
Speaker 4: maced myself trying to do that.
Speaker 5: As my strawberry start to ripe and I'm thinking, like
Speaker 5: maybe I should stop macing the strawberries.
Speaker 4: No, just grow mace strawberries. Then you'll be immune. If
Speaker 4: you ate enough of them, you could become like the Hulk.
Speaker 4: You know, they spray you and you just get strong.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm doing mithrittism with police brutality.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I love that for you, like the guy who
Speaker 4: lets his snakes bite him a little bit all the time,
Speaker 4: and yeah, but for cops, I love that. There are
Speaker 4: lots of solutions to this which don't evolve like spraying
Speaker 4: your plants with a butt kind of round up or
Speaker 4: round up will probably kill them. But other pesticides, right,
Speaker 4: like don't splay your plants is round up might kill
Speaker 4: you as well. But yeah, you have to first ascertain
Speaker 4: what pest you're dealing with, right, So for the gophers,
Speaker 4: one of the things you can do is, you know
Speaker 4: construction netting. It's like chicken wire bit thinner. Yeah, you
Speaker 4: can put that because the roots of the plant can
Speaker 4: still get through that. So you put that at the
Speaker 4: bottom of your planter, right where it sits on the soil.
Speaker 4: The roots of the plant can still get through, but
Speaker 4: mister gopher cannot missus gopher, non binary gopher can't get
Speaker 4: through their netting, just like a physical block. I've heard
Speaker 4: people say that cat litter is something you can sprinkle
Speaker 4: and they think are cats around. You can also just
Speaker 4: make a little house for a cat that doesn't have one,
Speaker 4: so that it comes and lives near your plants. We
Speaker 4: had that for a while. The little neighborhood cat came
Speaker 4: in to stay and it kept the rat problem to
Speaker 4: a minimum. You can use things like have you seen
Speaker 4: the ultrasound gopher preventors.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I can't use one of those because they think
Speaker 5: it would bother the dogs, right like you would bother
Speaker 5: other small mammals.
Speaker 4: I have one that I got on Jeffrey Bezos his
Speaker 4: website that are not in fact ultrasound. They're very much
Speaker 4: just regular sound, and I think Alas missold those, so
Speaker 4: they're worth trying. They are all sort of non lethal
Speaker 4: methods as well.
Speaker 5: You can get a plastic owl, yes.
Speaker 4: You can't if you've got a bird problem. You can
Speaker 4: also get bird netting if they're eating your berries, And
Speaker 4: I would suggest that you can get a variety of
Speaker 4: plastic animals.
Speaker 5: Actually, my mom has a coy pond, and so she
Speaker 5: got a plastic heron to scare away the real heron
Speaker 5: that eats the fish. And my dad misunderstood the purpose
Speaker 5: of the heron, right, it was a functional plastic bird.
Speaker 5: It was to scare away the real bird that eats
Speaker 5: the fish. And so he thought like oh, like we
Speaker 5: like fake birds now, and so he very lovingly bond
Speaker 5: a bunch of like different fake plastic birds for the yard.
Speaker 1: Oh that's so endearing.
Speaker 4: Yeah it's adorable, but it.
Speaker 5: Does not keep the heron away. Yeah, he's eating the fish.
Speaker 4: Maybe need a more intimidating plastic heron. Keep buying until
Speaker 4: you find.
Speaker 5: The one, you know, a really buff one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, buff one that's giving the middle finger because
Speaker 4: birds do that. H charns do that and they're buff
Speaker 4: like that.
Speaker 1: What other pest management things do we recommend? Oh?
Speaker 5: I love knee oil for thrips and.
Speaker 1: Aphids, sneem oil rules.
Speaker 5: I don't put any poison on my plants because I'm
Speaker 5: I'm against it. But I have a spray bottle that
Speaker 5: I put a little bit of knee oil and a
Speaker 5: little bit of down dish soap in and then mostly
Speaker 5: just hot water. After that, shake that bad way up
Speaker 5: and spray them down.
Speaker 4: Lady buds are a great one, Lady bugs for the
Speaker 4: Americans in the audience.
Speaker 5: The only thing I use like is is like, it's
Speaker 5: not really a poison, it's a bacteria. I don't know,
Speaker 5: debatable buy these bacillisitringiensis. I use that to keep the
Speaker 5: caterpillars away.
Speaker 1: There's also like a lot of different plants you can
Speaker 1: plant with your crops to help keep pests at bay,
Speaker 1: you know, thinking like you know a lot of herbs
Speaker 1: which you would want to grow anyways, like mint and
Speaker 1: rosemary and lavender and cat nip, and then also Merrygold's
Speaker 1: always good lemon gras as to Trunella grass.
Speaker 5: A coplant marigolden basil with my tomatoes.
Speaker 4: It looks nice. Also, I wanted to mention pruning. Yes,
Speaker 4: you do want to be pruning your plants with tomatoes.
Speaker 4: You want to pull off the suckers, right If you
Speaker 4: imagine your tomato is like a V, and then a
Speaker 4: third sprout coming up from the middle of the V.
Speaker 5: Because you should see what Jess is doing with his
Speaker 5: hands right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for the several thousand people who are not in
Speaker 4: the room, making a V with my hand and then
Speaker 4: an extra finger in the middle of the V. I
Speaker 4: can't do this without making myself laugh now.
Speaker 5: My, but yeah, pull off the suckers.
Speaker 4: You're generally gonna want to prune your plants, right, This
Speaker 4: will encourage them to fruit instead of just growing.
Speaker 5: Yes, especially with your herbs. You want to top your
Speaker 5: herbs because once they go to seed, they stop growing.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Oh they taste like ass.
Speaker 1: Cut your rosemary often.
Speaker 4: Give it a trim. People get really scared about pruning
Speaker 4: or pollidding. If you've got a tree, you poll add it.
Speaker 4: But it's really not that scary. Again, like depending on
Speaker 4: your plant, you'll find some good videos on YouTube.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The last thing I wanted to talk about is rotating
Speaker 4: your crops. Oh yeah, did you learn about this in
Speaker 4: school that we did or is this just a British.
Speaker 5: They cheat you guys about crop rotation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was not in any of my classes.
Speaker 4: Really, you didn't have a three field system.
Speaker 1: No, I learned that from like some nice YouTuber.
Speaker 4: Okay, well there's a niche for you there of your
Speaker 4: British person teach American people shit, they should have learned
Speaker 4: in school.
Speaker 1: On YouTube, it's going to take a long time. That's
Speaker 1: a long program.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're overestimating our education system. So you can rotate
Speaker 4: your crops. So if you're growing the same thing in
Speaker 4: the same soil every year, it's going to pull the
Speaker 4: same stuff out every year, right, unless you're replenishing your soil,
Speaker 4: which you want to do if you've got your annual
Speaker 4: plants right, you do want to errate your soil. Turn
Speaker 4: it over. You can get a soil aarator's controversial. You
Speaker 4: don't believe in soil aeration.
Speaker 5: It's controversial.
Speaker 4: My belief is you should augment and erate your soil,
Speaker 4: or you can rotate your crops right, which what you're
Speaker 4: doing there is not growing the same thing every year.
Speaker 4: And crucially, what you want to include in a corp
Speaker 4: rotation is a nitrogen fixing plant, which is to say,
Speaker 4: a laguminous plant.
Speaker 5: The squirrels are actually trying to help me by planting
Speaker 5: those peanuts.
Speaker 4: Yes, I guess peanuts are in l Agome. I'd never
Speaker 4: thought that from a country where peanuts wouldn't grow.
Speaker 5: I guess I should apologize to the squirrels.
Speaker 4: Yep, little farming squirrels. I like to do peas. They're
Speaker 4: a lagome. A lentil. Everyone loves a lentil. It's kind
Speaker 4: of fun to grow a little lentil, do you yes,
Speaker 4: I remember you said it's on Twitter. This is incredible
Speaker 4: to me.
Speaker 5: It's because biding into a lentil, the way that surface
Speaker 5: tension breaks when you bite it. To me, is exactly
Speaker 5: how I imagine it would feel to bite into an
Speaker 5: engorged tick.
Speaker 4: Just reading about someone who bit a tick.
Speaker 1: I just decided I am anti lentil, just based on that.
Speaker 4: We can't allow money to ruin lentil. Lentils are your friend.
Speaker 5: I know they're great. They are a great source of
Speaker 5: non meat protein, but I can't do it.
Speaker 1: Apparently, I no longer can do it.
Speaker 4: Either cook them enough and there's not the surface engine,
Speaker 4: or get split once you know the red lentils that
Speaker 4: are split, and then you won't have the tension.
Speaker 5: I can do that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, okay, we've agreed on I'm like fifty percent
Speaker 4: lentil by mass if I didn't have lentils, so, I
Speaker 4: don't know if I would make it, make a big
Speaker 4: thing on lentils every single Sunday and then I eat
Speaker 4: them most of the week.
Speaker 5: It never even occurred to me, like what does a
Speaker 5: lentil plant look like? Which part of the plant is
Speaker 5: the lentil?
Speaker 4: It's the seed. I think there's the lagume.
Speaker 5: It's the that sounds labor intensive to harvest.
Speaker 4: It's not too bad. It's kind of fun. Because lentils
Speaker 4: play such an important role in my life. I like
Speaker 4: to grow them. It's fixing a n ogen back. We
Speaker 4: could put any laguminous plant right, it would fix a
Speaker 4: nitchen back in your soil. And if you rotate those
Speaker 4: through and even leave your soil fallow for a while
Speaker 4: so they don't grow anything, right, if you have a
Speaker 4: space to do that, rotating your around, right, so you
Speaker 4: have like a fallow and then something else and then
Speaker 4: the goom, and then you just rotate them around every year.
Speaker 5: I just have the pit.
Speaker 4: You could segment off the pit. You could do pit
Speaker 4: quarters and you could rotate them around. You could have lentils,
Speaker 4: you could have tomatoes, basil and the little fallow patch
Speaker 4: for the dogs to run around.
Speaker 3: It.
Speaker 1: Just let you say tomatoes and basils entire time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm so glad, thank you, Thank you for not
Speaker 4: making me feel feel bad.
Speaker 1: I was thinking it. I want you to know, but
Speaker 1: I kept I held it in like a winner until
Speaker 1: the very end.
Speaker 4: So yeah, the very end.
Speaker 5: My grandmother says, tomato.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Good Americans do.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Really, the ones that I've met, I feel like they're
Speaker 4: either doing it. Sometimes people will meet me and then
Speaker 4: start talking like me incredible, it's not at all. It's
Speaker 4: really weird when you notice someone changing their vowels. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's very weird. I don't know if this happens to everyone,
Speaker 4: and it's just a thing that happens to British people.
Speaker 4: So yeah, that's my message for you. Grow plants. Do
Speaker 4: not start speaking like me or anyone. Don't parrot people's
Speaker 4: action to just talk to where you talk. It's it's fine, but.
Speaker 5: Just like, don't overthink it. Just put some plants in
Speaker 5: the dirt. Try it out. The worst that can happen.
Speaker 5: It doesn't work, it's okay.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're not very exprected. I get seeds, grow them
Speaker 4: up from the seeds.
Speaker 5: And never buy cut basil from the grocery store. You know,
Speaker 5: you spend six dollars with that little plastic blister pack
Speaker 5: of leaves. Don't do it. It's cheaper to buy the
Speaker 5: whole plant and then you have unlimited basil.
Speaker 1: Unless you're me who can't grow lest you're Sofia.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, just Sophie, Please go ahead and buy
Speaker 4: cut basil.
Speaker 1: No, I'll just steal some from my friends who know
Speaker 1: how to grow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's another thing you can do. Steal.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's the other thing. Steal plants from your friends,
Speaker 1: bring your friends cuttings, share your plants with friends.
Speaker 5: I don't consider it stealing to snap off little cuttings
Speaker 5: or seed heads.
Speaker 1: No, like I don't either.
Speaker 5: No. My fanny pack is full of like mysterious seed
Speaker 5: heads that I popped off of plants, and so I
Speaker 5: put in the dirt because I couldn't remember what they were.
Speaker 1: That's also like a really fun game.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think these are cosmos. We'll find out.
Speaker 4: Get some seeds and trade them with your friends and
Speaker 4: everyone gets a mystery plant. Be a fun thing to do.
Speaker 5: And don't forget to grow a flower too. Yeah, grow
Speaker 5: a nice flower, attract some beans.
Speaker 4: Grow some pollinators. This is a weird little anecdote to
Speaker 4: end on. So beyond the company who make the protective
Speaker 4: combat uniform for the US military, they also make some
Speaker 4: really nice clothing that I buy for work stuff. Sometimes
Speaker 4: I get afraid of being on fire, so I like
Speaker 4: to buy fire retardant stuff. And they send a little
Speaker 4: tag with all of their clothing. So you're buying your
Speaker 4: like fire retardant base layer to or under your plate
Speaker 4: carrier when you're working and It comes with a little
Speaker 4: tag that has plant seeds in it, and if you
Speaker 4: plant the tag, flowers will grow.
Speaker 5: That's beautiful.
Speaker 4: It's wonderful, isn't it. Yeah, it's very nice. And for
Speaker 4: that reason line, they're my favorite purveyor of fireproof uniforms.
Speaker 5: Oh and get a sun hat. If you're outside gardening,
Speaker 5: get a big floppy sun hat. It really helps you
Speaker 5: get in the zone and it also protects you from
Speaker 5: the sun.
Speaker 4: It's a great tape. I think we shouldet end with that. Bye,
Speaker 4: by a sun.
Speaker 1: Hat, by a sun hat, wear sunscreen and listen to
Speaker 1: sixteenth minute of Fame, our newest Cloze media podcast hosted
Speaker 1: by Jamie loftus.
Speaker 4: Ah.
Speaker 5: Wow, so true, so true. Yeah, listen to it.
Speaker 1: Wow, gardening wearing a sun hat and sunscreen.
Speaker 5: I did that this morning.
Speaker 3: That's what I was doing this morning.
Speaker 4: So we had to know.
Speaker 1: Oh, Mollie, such a legend.
Speaker 5: I was propagating my basil tops in my little sun
Speaker 5: hat listening to show.
Speaker 1: All right, the podcast has ended very well.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to you.
Speaker 5: It could happen here in a daily podcast about the
Speaker 5: widening cracks in society threatening to swallow. I am once
Speaker 5: again your occasional host Molly Conger, joined today by your
Speaker 5: friend and mine, Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: Yeah, friends of all people, how are you doing, Molly.
Speaker 5: Reilly started things off, I hurt my feelings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, you and I have been buddies
Speaker 2: for a while. We're a special kind of friend that
Speaker 2: can only exist in the era of signal loops because
Speaker 2: we met in twenty twenty and then since then the
Speaker 2: bulk of our socializing has been one or the other
Speaker 2: of us being like, so, this fucked up thing happened
Speaker 2: to me on the internet.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's friends at the end of the World's.
Speaker 2: Friends at the end of the world. Yeah, watching the
Speaker 2: long slow slide together.
Speaker 5: Well, today I've got sort of an update on the
Speaker 5: ongoing cases against the Nazis who invaded my local college
Speaker 5: campus seven years ago. I see, it's sort of because
Speaker 5: it's some messy story and the end result is nothing.
Speaker 5: So we finally got a case to trial and nothing changed.
Speaker 5: So for listeners who aren't keeping tabs on my local
Speaker 5: county court's effort to apply an old anti clan law
Speaker 5: to a Nazi rally that happened a lifetime ago, just
Speaker 5: a quick reminder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, long time ago.
Speaker 5: This is about the August eleventh, twenty seventeen, torch march
Speaker 5: held at the University of Virginia on the eve of
Speaker 5: the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. I've done a.
Speaker 2: Couple This is not the rally. This is not the
Speaker 2: precise like the rally where there was the James Alexfield
Speaker 2: did his vehicle based terrorist attack. This was the thing
Speaker 2: that happened before that.
Speaker 5: This was the appetizer, right, This was the night before
Speaker 5: they all got together and held their torches. And so
Speaker 5: I've done a couple episodes about these cases, and I've
Speaker 5: been writing about them in my newsletter, The Devil's Advocate.
Speaker 5: So if you want a deeper dive into the cases
Speaker 5: more generally, that is available elsewhere. So in the year
Speaker 5: and change since these cases started getting filed, we've seen
Speaker 5: eleven guys charged under this sort of obscure Virginia law
Speaker 5: that makes it a felony to burn an object with
Speaker 5: the intent to intimidate. It's based on an old anti
Speaker 5: clan law criminalizing cross burning. But back in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 5: a couple of clansmen got into some trouble for burning
Speaker 5: some crosses. And I'm trying to break myself up the
Speaker 5: habit of getting really deep into these sort of tangential
Speaker 5: pieces of history that underlie a story, because it turns
Speaker 5: out that's my special interest and not actually great podcasting.
Speaker 5: But the long and the short of it is, Virginia's
Speaker 5: cross burning statute had to be amended. The original law
Speaker 5: banned it outright, with this sort of built in assumption
Speaker 5: that like, obviously, if you're burning across you're trying to
Speaker 5: communicate a certain kind of threat. But the law didn't
Speaker 5: actually say that. It just made it illegal to do it.
Speaker 5: And so the act itself of burning the cross under
Speaker 5: the old law was prima facia evidence of intent to intimidate,
Speaker 5: and the courts ultimately found that that's unconstitutional. So in
Speaker 5: two thousand and two, the General Assembly amended the law
Speaker 5: and they just added in some specific language that you
Speaker 5: have to be doing it with a specific intent, right,
Speaker 5: you have to be doing this to intimidate someone. Again,
Speaker 5: that's kind of implied, but the implication was not sufficient,
Speaker 5: so they changed it.
Speaker 3: I know that sounds like some really.
Speaker 5: Like c span level like boring shit, like legislative history
Speaker 5: is not why you're here, But I promise that's going
Speaker 5: to pay off. Right, So the law doesn't specify what
Speaker 5: you're burning. It's not just crosses, it's any burning object,
Speaker 5: but it does say you have to be doing it
Speaker 5: with a particular intent and in a way.
Speaker 2: Could you theoretically smoke a cigarette in an aggressive manner
Speaker 2: and violate this law?
Speaker 5: However, the Nazis lawyers keep asking that, and I don't
Speaker 5: know the.
Speaker 2: I feel like the answer is I have to see
Speaker 2: great minds think alike.
Speaker 5: I feel like every one of these guys lawyers has
Speaker 5: been like, what if I flicked a cigarette at you?
Speaker 2: And it's like, I mean, well, flicking as I would
Speaker 2: say that that's clearly a sort because you can actually
Speaker 2: hurt someone with it, but like just smoking it, right,
Speaker 2: like with that tex.
Speaker 5: Right, Like if I'm smoking a cigarette while harassing you.
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, yeah, be like you're going to go
Speaker 2: up like this cigarette, bro, and then I light this cigarette?
Speaker 2: Like is that if I violated it?
Speaker 3: I mean, I.
Speaker 5: Guess maybe, But it's all sort of contextual, right, So
Speaker 5: the language of the law is what it is. You
Speaker 5: could try to bring that case, I'm not sure that
Speaker 5: it would work. So you bring an object specifically in
Speaker 5: a way that would make somebody feel like you're gonna
Speaker 5: hurt them, right, so placing someone in fear of injury
Speaker 5: or death. But since that change was made in two
Speaker 5: thousand and two, nobody's ever actually been charged with it. So,
Speaker 5: like many laws, like Virginia's prohibition on trying to incite
Speaker 5: a race war, that is apparently a class four felony.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Thomas Jefferson might have had a hand in that law.
Speaker 2: That's scance.
Speaker 5: Actually it's from nineteen fifty and I'm really interested in
Speaker 5: the legislative history. I'm gonna ask a law librarian. But
Speaker 5: again I'm lost again. I'm lost again. So this has
Speaker 5: just been sitting on the books for twenty years, waiting
Speaker 5: for somebody to try it, and so last year somebody
Speaker 5: tried it. Last year, somebody finally put the law to
Speaker 5: the test and started charging the guys who participated in
Speaker 5: that torch march. And what better application of this law, right,
Speaker 5: I can't think of a clearer example. The torches, they're
Speaker 5: on fire, they're chanting blood and soil, they're throwing Hitler's salutes,
Speaker 5: they're attacking people. And of the eleven men charged so far,
Speaker 5: five have already pled guilty. Four of those have already
Speaker 5: been sentenced, all receiving active sentences of a year or less,
Speaker 5: and they've actually already completed those sentences. Only half of
Speaker 5: those guys actually went home from here, though, and then
Speaker 5: the little aside Tyler Dyke served a few months here,
Speaker 5: and then he got picked up by the US Marshalls
Speaker 5: on federal charges for the insurrection. William Fears served a year,
Speaker 5: and he actually just got picked up the other day
Speaker 5: by a county in Pennsylvania. It's an old bench warrant.
Speaker 5: He's been in jail so many times in so many
Speaker 5: states for the last twenty years that they've actually been
Speaker 5: having trouble getting a hold of him for violating his
Speaker 5: probation fifteen years ago. They let him off on probation
Speaker 5: for lying on a firearm application in two thousand and five,
Speaker 5: but then he kidnapped a college freshman and stabbed her
Speaker 5: in the face, which I think was a probation violation,
Speaker 5: And by the time they got around to bringing him in,
Speaker 5: he was already back in prison for strangling a different woman.
Speaker 5: Again another digression. Sorry, So, even though we've had five
Speaker 5: guilty please, we still hadn't actually seen this case taken
Speaker 5: to trial, so we know five defendants looked at the
Speaker 5: evidence and thought, oh, yeah, well it's a video of
Speaker 5: me committing that crime. We still didn't know what a
Speaker 5: jury would make of it. And this month Jacob Dix
Speaker 5: took his case to trial, and we still don't actually
Speaker 5: know what a jury would make of it, because it
Speaker 5: ended in a mistrial. After twelve hours of deliberation over
Speaker 5: the course of two days, which was significantly longer than
Speaker 5: they actually spent hearing the evidence, the jury was deadlocked.
Speaker 5: They had eight not guilty votes, three guilty, and one
Speaker 5: person who didn't have an opinion either way. A source
Speaker 5: tells me the jurors all agreed not to make any
Speaker 5: public statements or to discuss what happened in the deliberation room,
Speaker 5: so we don't know for sure what the debate was
Speaker 5: like in there. But I sat through the trial, and honestly,
Speaker 5: I know what kind of case I would have put
Speaker 5: on right. So obviously, obviously I believe a guilty verdict
Speaker 5: is achievable in this case. But given what I saw,
Speaker 5: I'm surprised even as single juror voted guilty. There's nothing there.
Speaker 5: But before I tell you about the three days I
Speaker 5: wasted sitting on a wooden bench in a courtroom un
Speaker 5: to use for clan meetings. Let's hear from some advertisers.
Speaker 2: Ah, speaking of the Nope, nope, ads, Ah, we're back.
Speaker 2: What a what a time to be alive.
Speaker 5: We are alive. The trial started on June fourth, and
Speaker 5: it did not go well. I've written about this at
Speaker 5: greater length in my newsletter if you want some background
Speaker 5: on why the case ended up with a special prosecutor.
Speaker 5: But basically, the judge fell for a Nazi conspiracy theory
Speaker 5: and that's where we ended up. So the case goes
Speaker 5: to try good. Yeah, you know, I I have a
Speaker 5: problem with the system in Virginia of these substitute judges.
Speaker 5: So we had to bring in a substitute judge. And
Speaker 5: it's just retired guys. So they take cases if they
Speaker 5: feel like it. They don't yea, so they.
Speaker 2: Just add yeah, just just ad hoc judging. Sure that
Speaker 2: seems good.
Speaker 5: Hey, there's a retire age for a reason, Like, I
Speaker 5: don't know that you're keeping up with the case law. Anyway,
Speaker 5: we had a substitute judge and a special prosecutor, So
Speaker 5: the case goes to trial with an out of town prosecutor.
Speaker 5: And because of how late in the game this motion
Speaker 5: was granted. And there's the speedy trial clock. They had
Speaker 5: a pretty limited amount of time to get up to
Speaker 5: speed after being assigned the case to prepare for trial.
Speaker 5: So they didn't know the case. They don't know the
Speaker 5: local cops, they don't know the witnesses, they're not familiar
Speaker 5: with the clerk of court here, just the basic procedural stuff.
Speaker 5: This is not their home turf, and they don't really
Speaker 5: have any investment in this case. This isn't something that
Speaker 5: they chose to charge. It's just assigned to them. And again,
Speaker 5: this is the first time this law has ever been
Speaker 5: put in front of a jury, so there's no playbook here, right.
Speaker 5: They can't sort of look to how this usually goes
Speaker 5: and just do that. The real problem, though, is something
Speaker 5: that's not unique at all. A prosecutor is desperate for
Speaker 5: a good victim. They want something that is clean and uncomplicated.
Speaker 5: They want to be able to show the jury a
Speaker 5: little morality play with good guys and bad guys and
Speaker 5: no messy stuff. They don't want the story to have
Speaker 5: any elements that could snag on a juror's ideas about
Speaker 5: the world. So instead of telling a story about anti
Speaker 5: fascists being attacked by fascists, which is what happened, they
Speaker 5: shaped their case around testimony from a bystander.
Speaker 2: Oh good, the most reliable kind of testimony.
Speaker 5: Yeah, now, I remember I promised that boring stuff about
Speaker 5: the statutory requirement of intent would pay off. Right, Well,
Speaker 5: I'm not sure the prosecutor understood that well. And if
Speaker 5: I were to tell you that something was making me
Speaker 5: feel intimidated, you know, generally, sort of colloquially speaking, I'm
Speaker 5: saying I'm afraid. I'm being made to feel timid. Is
Speaker 5: the root of the word, right, I am uncomfortable. I
Speaker 5: am afraid. But it means something really specific here. It
Speaker 5: doesn't just mean being afraid in conjunction with that language
Speaker 5: about placing someone in reasonable fear of bodily injury or death.
Speaker 5: We're not talking about feeling afraid. We're talking about the
Speaker 5: legal idea of a true threat. So a true threat
Speaker 5: is something that is not free speech. It is conduct
Speaker 5: and expression that is no longer protected by the First Amendment.
Speaker 5: And I'm I'm not going to go to bat here
Speaker 5: for the First Amendment. I'm not going to defend this
Speaker 5: sort of like libertarian idea that actually it's good and
Speaker 5: healthy for a society that people can march around playing
Speaker 5: junior Stormtrooper. But you know, technically they can right loader
Speaker 5: hate it.
Speaker 2: That's not what we're talking about it. It's the difference
Speaker 2: between saying I think the government should round up and
Speaker 2: kill this group of people, which is absolutely protected speech,
Speaker 2: and saying I am going to murder you tonight in
Speaker 2: your home at this address, which you theoretically can get
Speaker 2: in trouble for, although a lot of times people don't.
Speaker 5: You know, in my experience, people who see that to
Speaker 5: me don't get in trouble. But I'm not sure that's. Yes,
Speaker 5: it's a legal thing.
Speaker 2: It's mainly they get in trouble when they do that
Speaker 2: two FBI agents, as that one Trump fan did after
Speaker 2: Hunter Biden's conviction.
Speaker 5: Or there's been a rash lately of people getting picked
Speaker 5: up after they leave a voicemail at a congressional office.
Speaker 5: Don't leave a threat in a voice, Okay, don't don't that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Wyatt, what are you? What are you doing? How
Speaker 2: do you think this is going to work out? People
Speaker 2: are cooked?
Speaker 5: So a lot of people are learning lately what a
Speaker 5: true threat is right. So you know, up until that point,
Speaker 5: there's a lot of shit you could do that sucks.
Speaker 5: You can march around and be a little Nazi with
Speaker 5: your pals, but what you cannot do is engage in
Speaker 5: conduct that constitutes a true threat. And I think drawing
Speaker 5: that line in a really clear way for the jury
Speaker 5: was what this case should have been about. I think
Speaker 5: they needed to hold the jury's hand through that, you know,
Speaker 5: and say, you know, the defense is making this a
Speaker 5: free speech case. And if it had stopped here, if
Speaker 5: it had stopped at this point, you know, show them
Speaker 5: where it stopped, where it changed. But they didn't do that,
Speaker 5: and they left that line really blurry because the problem
Speaker 5: is the point at which that line was crossed was
Speaker 5: when that march encircled the small group of counter protesters, right,
Speaker 5: So they spent half an hour marching and then they
Speaker 5: got to where they were going, and that's when it
Speaker 5: crossed the line. You know, they lit their torches, they marched,
Speaker 5: they chanted. It was obviously intended to evoke Nazi Germany.
Speaker 5: You know, they're saying blood and soil Jews will not
Speaker 5: replace us. It's a real Hitler vibe and a lot
Speaker 5: of people who are on the fence about the prosecutions
Speaker 5: are looking at that and saying, well, yeah, like that's disgusting,
Speaker 5: But isn't that free speech? And it is. Most of
Speaker 5: that was right, So most of that conduct was not
Speaker 5: against the law. You know, if you saw that, you
Speaker 5: might feel afraid. People did, and that makes sense. It
Speaker 5: was very alarming to see. It might make you feel unsafe,
Speaker 5: and it could and definitely did eventually evolve into a
Speaker 5: situation where people are unsafe. But seeing them pass by
Speaker 5: doesn't actually put you in a position where you might die,
Speaker 5: I mean not right at the moment anyway, Right, You know,
Speaker 5: the law doesn't really extend to the idea that this
Speaker 5: is part of a larger societal shift that ends violently.
Speaker 5: You know, this existential thread of the rise of fascism
Speaker 5: doesn't constitute a true threat in the immediate sense under
Speaker 5: the law.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, A guy, a dude in a similar situation in
Speaker 2: DC in twenty twenty stabbed a person and got off
Speaker 2: because it was very clear that he like, when you
Speaker 2: are surrounded.
Speaker 5: That's true threat, right, that you are in imminent danger. Right,
Speaker 5: And it wasn't just a person that was Jeremy, I know, yeah,
Speaker 5: that way. That was Jeremy Bertino.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite stabbings.
Speaker 5: Yeah, just a weird turn of events for Jeremy because
Speaker 5: the month before he got stabbed it was, oh gosh,
Speaker 5: it was one of the other Proud Way rallies in DC.
Speaker 5: I was surrounded by a group of proud boys that
Speaker 5: he was commanding, right, and so I was in that
Speaker 5: the same position, and I was getting a little nervous
Speaker 5: because they were starting to, you know, get my face
Speaker 5: and touch me and try and move me around. Jeremy
Speaker 5: actually meet them. Stop. You know, you don't chivalry. You
Speaker 5: don't got to hand it to Jeremy. But I think
Speaker 5: he knew it would have been bad for them if
Speaker 5: they stabbed me.
Speaker 2: Little did he know, Yeah, he would be there, whereas
Speaker 2: the guy who stabbed him was in block and such.
Speaker 5: Yeah, just a strange, strange twist of history for Jeremy.
Speaker 5: Now he states, witness m hm, anyway, where were we
Speaker 5: We could cut some of that. I'm out of it today.
Speaker 5: We're both in a bad way right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think everyone's always in a bad way these days.
Speaker 2: That's it's worth acknowledging. I can't sleep anymore. You're frazzled, like,
Speaker 2: welcome to twenty twenty four. It's fine, We're doing as
Speaker 2: well as either a presidential candidate.
Speaker 5: I had to wait until the recess in the city
Speaker 5: council meeting yesterday to go outside and check on the
Speaker 5: drive by on my block, Like things are going good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, things are things are solid? Uh yeah?
Speaker 5: Should I just take the whole paragraph.
Speaker 2: From the top, sure, yeah, started.
Speaker 5: Because I don't even know where to re starve. Okay.
Speaker 5: It wasn't until the march encounter the counter protesters that
Speaker 5: there was truly intentional intimidation that placed them in fear
Speaker 5: of injury or death. The people who were trapped, and
Speaker 5: I mean that literally all avenues of escape were close
Speaker 5: to them. The march formed a circle around them that
Speaker 5: was ten men deep. Those were the victims of this crime.
Speaker 5: They were beaten and punched and kicked and pepper sprayed.
Speaker 5: It were shoved and hit with lit torches. They thought
Speaker 5: they would die. But those people are complicated, aren't they right?
Speaker 5: Those people were Antifa, they were activists, they were believers
Speaker 5: in Black Lives Matter, they were communists, the anarchists, right,
Speaker 5: queer people, trans people, people of color, people who attend
Speaker 5: protests and have attended more since they were people who
Speaker 5: hated Nazis. There were people with skin in.
Speaker 2: The game, people whose existence is inherently politicized, and thus
Speaker 2: attempts to destroy them can't just be seen as a
Speaker 2: human being being assaulted. They have to be seen as like, well,
Speaker 2: is the thing that they believe and my opinions on
Speaker 2: it as a judge a mitigating factor.
Speaker 5: Right, It's messy, it shouldn't be, but it is right.
Speaker 5: These were people who believe that we have a duty
Speaker 5: to each other to stand in the way of the
Speaker 5: march of fascism, and that night that's literally what they did.
Speaker 5: And that's murky for a prosecutor. What if the jury
Speaker 5: doesn't like that, What if, maybe just a little bit
Speaker 5: they deserved it?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 5: Does the law really still protect you if you make
Speaker 5: a choice a jury doesn't understand. And so the prosecutor
Speaker 5: chose to rest this case on the shoulders of a
Speaker 5: young woman whose front door the march past that night
Speaker 5: on its way to the scene of the crime. As
Speaker 5: a young Jewish woman alone in her room that night,
Speaker 5: she was terrified to hear the approaching Nazi march. She
Speaker 5: took off a necklace in a ring bearing symbols of
Speaker 5: her faith and hid them before she fl at her
Speaker 5: home and fear. She was absolutely a victim of white
Speaker 5: supremacist terror. But I do not think she was a
Speaker 5: victim under the language of this statute. And I want
Speaker 5: to be so clear about that, right. I'm not saying
Speaker 5: what happened to her was okay, or that it's her
Speaker 5: fault that the case was presented this way. She was subpoena,
Speaker 5: she gave the testimony she was required by the law
Speaker 5: to give, and she gave it well. And she's obviously
Speaker 5: deeply traumatized by this. And so when I say she's
Speaker 5: not a victim of the crime, when I say that
Speaker 5: the fear that she felt does not meet this legal standard,
Speaker 5: I don't mean anything other than that there are far
Speaker 5: more ways to harm a person and a community than
Speaker 5: have been contemplated by our part time General Assembly. But
Speaker 5: under this statute, being frightened, however reasonable, that is, however
Speaker 5: serious she felt that fear is not the same as
Speaker 5: being placed in reasonable fear of death or bodily injury.
Speaker 5: I think her testimony could have been really valuable as
Speaker 5: a supplement to this overall presentation, because she was very emotional.
Speaker 5: I think it was very moving for the jury, but
Speaker 5: it didn't move the needle legally, And I think it
Speaker 5: was a really perilous foundation on which to try to
Speaker 5: construct a case. But you know, it would not be
Speaker 5: a perilous course of action for you to take, Robert
Speaker 5: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: It would be perilous if I didn't get this ad
Speaker 2: break in because Sophie has a taser now, so let's
Speaker 2: just let's just move right along.
Speaker 5: Does it ever stop feeling dirty to do that?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: I mean, you know what, what doesn't feel dirty these days, Mollie.
Speaker 2: What feels clean probably buy I pay so much in
Speaker 2: taxes and that always feels dirty. Like I know where
Speaker 2: they're going. I see the celebrities signing the bombs they
Speaker 2: helped pay. I don't feel good about anything. We're back,
Speaker 2: and you know, here's a free ad, Molly. I found
Speaker 2: out where I can buy the really good mace. I
Speaker 2: learned about this mace the right way to learn about mace,
Speaker 2: which is I had it used on me and was like, wow,
Speaker 2: that mace was much more debilitating than normal mace.
Speaker 5: You've got a free samples.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got a free sample from two different federal agencies,
Speaker 2: and it it knocked me at a commission for about
Speaker 2: a half hour each time, which is pretty good for mace.
Speaker 2: It's called silver Bullet and it's a like a ten
Speaker 2: percent OC two percent CS. I maybe mixing those up mix,
Speaker 2: but you're not supposed to be able to buy it
Speaker 2: if you're not law enforcement. But it's not illegal. So
Speaker 2: I finally just found a website that doesn't doesn't check,
Speaker 2: and now I've got the good mace. I don't really
Speaker 2: know what to do with it.
Speaker 5: But does it actually have silver in it? Will it
Speaker 5: also kill germs?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: No, no, I have to use my anti microbial silver
Speaker 2: wound dressings for that, but I do have some of those.
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ always useful to have molly important stuff.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm glad you got yourself a little treat. I
Speaker 5: think that's import in these days, a little treat, Yeah,
Speaker 5: sort of. One of my guiding principles in this increasingly
Speaker 5: awful world is if you can get a little treat,
Speaker 5: you should get a little treat.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of my guiding principles is like, whenever I
Speaker 2: decide I'm depressed and I'm going to like do retail therapy,
Speaker 2: just just a pick up a new kind of weapon,
Speaker 2: a kind of weapon I don't have already. I got
Speaker 2: a rungu the other day, which is a kind of
Speaker 2: stick that you beat people with. You know, I'm making
Speaker 2: sure that I'm like diversified my portfolio.
Speaker 5: I was thinking more like sometimes at Kroger they have
Speaker 5: a new flavor of chips. But your thing's cool too.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, it's good. It's good. Chips can be a
Speaker 2: weapon anyway. But let's move back to the subject.
Speaker 5: Back to the courthouse. Right, the defense in this case
Speaker 5: was right about one thing. I mean, they didn't say
Speaker 5: very much. They didn't actually put on a case. They
Speaker 5: put on no evidence and no witnesses. But he spoke
Speaker 5: a few times, right, the attorney, He spoke a few times,
Speaker 5: And in his closing defense attorney Peter Fraser said he
Speaker 5: didn't have to put on a case because the prosecutor
Speaker 5: made his case for him. The counter protesters could not
Speaker 5: be intimidated.
Speaker 3: Now that means what.
Speaker 5: He said, right, the counter protesters in this case, they
Speaker 5: couldn't be intimidated because they opted into this. The protesters
Speaker 5: brought this on themselves, their mere presence in this public space,
Speaker 5: expressing their right to protest was a waiver of their
Speaker 5: right to safety, and they consented to whatever happened after that,
Speaker 5: and they couldn't be victims of anything. Right. They wanted this,
Speaker 5: They chose to be there, they knew the Nazis were coming,
Speaker 5: and the prosecutor's failure to rebut this, to actively push
Speaker 5: back against the idea that entering this space was some
Speaker 5: sort of agreement to mutual combat, right, that the failure
Speaker 5: to push back on that at all can only be
Speaker 5: seen as an agreement they allowed. The court and the
Speaker 5: defense and the judge himself said, well, no one was hurt,
Speaker 5: and they failed to call witnesses who hurt because people
Speaker 5: were hurt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that seems like a massive, like disqualifying oversight.
Speaker 5: They you know, they could have sometimes.
Speaker 2: Especially with anarchists defendants, that could be hard to get
Speaker 2: people who are willing to testify. But I imagine you can
Speaker 2: find some people in this case.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: So the thing is is I acknowledge that there are
Speaker 5: many of the victims and many of the witnesses who
Speaker 5: have chosen not to participate in this process. Right. First
Speaker 5: of all, I'm not saying it would be good if
Speaker 5: this happened, but technically you can subpoena them anyway.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: There are people in this case who would have cooperated
Speaker 5: had they been called. People like Alan Groves, who in
Speaker 5: twenty seventeen was a dean at UVA who was burned
Speaker 5: by the flames, or UVA librarian Tyler McGill, who suffered
Speaker 5: a catastrophic stroke after being struck in the neck by
Speaker 5: a torch.
Speaker 2: Free advice there, folks, Free advice there.
Speaker 5: Prosecutors, they subpoened, but did not call my own friend God,
Speaker 5: one of the counter protesters there that night, who's testimony
Speaker 5: about being pepper sprayed put Christopher Cantwell in jail. They
Speaker 5: did not call Devin Willis or Natalie Romero, who were
Speaker 5: plaintiffs in the civil lawsuit and have already proven their
Speaker 5: ability to testify with incredible courage and clarity about being
Speaker 5: kicked and punched as they were trapped by the wall
Speaker 5: of flames. In the civil trial, Devon recalled the moment
Speaker 5: he realized he had been doused in lighter fluid. He
Speaker 5: thought that they were going to burn him alive. He
Speaker 5: was nineteen years old, and he testified that all he
Speaker 5: could think about was that he had so much to
Speaker 5: live for and he had to find a way out
Speaker 5: and Natalie. She testified about being trapped, about how small
Speaker 5: she felt at the center of the screaming mob, and
Speaker 5: that she thought she would be burned to death as
Speaker 5: she covered her face and her head from the rain
Speaker 5: of fists. And she described that she didn't really understand
Speaker 5: the effects of pepper spray. She was a college student,
Speaker 5: she'd never been pepper sprayed before. When she got home
Speaker 5: that night, she sat down on her shower to cry,
Speaker 5: just trying to process the experience of nearly being killed
Speaker 5: by a crowd of Nazis, and the hot steam reactivated
Speaker 5: the chemical irritants, burning her eyes and skin all over again.
Speaker 5: They didn't call the people who were hurt, and they
Speaker 5: let the jury think that there were none and the
Speaker 5: only actual witnessed No, you go ahead.
Speaker 2: That's just I just it's such a dereliction of duty.
Speaker 2: Like it's such a frustrating Like it's not hard, Like
Speaker 2: this is not secret information that you're privy to because
Speaker 2: of your deep Antifa connections. You can just like google this.
Speaker 2: This is like thirty minutes of reading to have a
Speaker 2: couple of those names.
Speaker 5: At least the Federal Court transcripts of this testimony exist,
Speaker 5: they're free. I already paid for them.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: And at one point when the judge said this was
Speaker 5: outside the presence of the jury when the judge said it,
Speaker 5: but the judge said, we don't want know one was hurt.
Speaker 5: And I'm sitting in the courtroom next to someone who
Speaker 5: was hurt, and I'm just like, I embarrassed to be
Speaker 5: in this room with these people who are behaving this way.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: The only actual witness to and victim of this crime
Speaker 5: that they put on the stand at all was Emily Gresenski,
Speaker 5: and this was not her first time on the witness
Speaker 5: stand in that courtroom. She also testified against Christopher can't
Speaker 5: well for pepper spraying her that night, and she handled
Speaker 5: it well, she's testified before. She's good at it, unshakable.
Speaker 5: But a witness can only answer the questions they're asked.
Speaker 5: A witness can't put on their own evidence. A witness
Speaker 5: can't tell you a story. A witness can't do anything
Speaker 5: other than give short answers to questions. Right, So even
Speaker 5: the best witness is only as good as the questions
Speaker 5: they're asked. And they failed to elicit from her the
Speaker 5: most important part of the story what actually happened at
Speaker 5: the statue. So a lot of the evidence they put
Speaker 5: on with her on this I don't want to get
Speaker 5: too law in order about this, right, but you can't
Speaker 5: just put on evidence, right, you have to have a
Speaker 5: witness on the stand to testify to it. You can't
Speaker 5: just show stuff.
Speaker 2: It's not a conversation, Like somebody can't just like raise
Speaker 2: their hand in the middle of this and be like,
Speaker 2: well I got actually I actually did get hurt at
Speaker 2: that thing. Like, that's not the way court cases were.
Speaker 5: And so they used much of Emily's time on the
Speaker 5: stand to show two videos. One was a video she shot,
Speaker 5: so it makes sense to have her testify to this
Speaker 5: video that she recorded, right. So she was live streaming
Speaker 5: from the very beginning right down where they were preparing
Speaker 5: and lighting the torches, and then she was following them
Speaker 5: along on the march, just sort of documenting what was occurring.
Speaker 5: And that's what she thought she was there to do, right,
Speaker 5: She's just documenting that this march is taking place. She's thinking, Oh,
Speaker 5: they're going to give some speeches. I'll record the speeches
Speaker 5: so people can sort of see what this event was about.
Speaker 5: She did not go there intending to become trapped and assaulted, right,
Speaker 5: So much of her time on the stand was sort
Speaker 5: of answering questions about this video as it played, But
Speaker 5: they also had her answer questions about a video that
Speaker 5: was recorded from inside the march, and I'm not I'm
Speaker 5: not sure how effective it was to just show thirty
Speaker 5: minutes of video of guys walking, and the defense leaned
Speaker 5: really heavily into the idea that, well, obviously she wasn't scared.
Speaker 5: Look at her, right, So she's clearly not intimidated. She's
Speaker 5: really close to this march recording it. And without a
Speaker 5: concrete theory of the case that establishes that, well, no,
Speaker 5: this isn't where the crime is happening, right these guys
Speaker 5: walking isn't the crime. She's not intimidated yet, that's that's
Speaker 5: not happening right now. So without that sort of concrete
Speaker 5: explanation for the jury that the crime occurs at the end,
Speaker 5: they might take away from that that will, oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: she doesn't really seem scared here, right, that this whole
Speaker 5: part where she's walking and narrating, she doesn't really seem scared.
Speaker 5: And leaving aside the finer philosophical point that you can
Speaker 5: be brave even if you're scared. Her testimony was really
Speaker 5: clear here she wasn't afraid for her life. Then she
Speaker 5: testified that she arrived at the plaza where the statue
Speaker 5: stands before the marchers did. Right, So they are marching
Speaker 5: through UVA grounds and it ends in this sort of
Speaker 5: plaza out in front of the rotunda where a statue is,
Speaker 5: and she got there before the march did, and she
Speaker 5: saw that the group of counter protesters was very small,
Speaker 5: and she knew what was coming, right. She watched these
Speaker 5: guys get ready. She watched them put on their helmets
Speaker 5: and their weighted gloves and their brass knuckles and lighting
Speaker 5: their torches, and you guys are wrapping their hands like
Speaker 5: they're getting ready for an mma fight. So she knows
Speaker 5: what's coming and they don't. And so she looks at
Speaker 5: this small group of young people and she's afraid for them.
Speaker 5: She's afraid for their safety. She feels a duty to
Speaker 5: these people. They're mostly college students, and because you can
Speaker 5: be brave even if you are scared, she stayed with them,
Speaker 5: and once they were surrounded by this increasingly violent mob.
Speaker 5: Once she was live streaming her own assault. Of course
Speaker 5: she was in fear of bodily harm. She was being harmed, right,
Speaker 5: There's not a debate about whether someone might be in
Speaker 5: fear of bodily harm. You're watching them get harmed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but if you aren't scared of that, then it
Speaker 2: doesn't like that. That's I guess kind of the problem.
Speaker 2: It should be like, would an average like a normal
Speaker 2: person consider this to be an objectively threatening situation?
Speaker 4: And that is the standard.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is not a crime that actually requires a
Speaker 5: complaining victim to say I did feel this way. It's
Speaker 5: a really it's what's called a reasonable person standard. Right,
Speaker 5: So what a reasonable person in this situation feel this way?
Speaker 5: The answer is yes, okay, a reasonable person would be afraid,
Speaker 5: afraid of getting hit in the face.
Speaker 2: Yes, I would say so.
Speaker 5: And there was a lot of argument pre trial in
Speaker 5: this case and some of the others that like, well,
Speaker 5: you know, what does that even mean? What does it
Speaker 5: mean for a reasonable person to be afraid? I mean,
Speaker 5: that is a valid philosophical conversation, but it is not
Speaker 5: a valid rebuttal to the idea of this charge, because
Speaker 5: that is the standard for many of the of the
Speaker 5: statutes in our code, right, that like it. It's the
Speaker 5: legal standard for assault.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: But again, much of the time she's on the stand,
Speaker 5: they're just showing thirty minutes of people walking, and there
Speaker 5: was so little time spent showing what happened when they
Speaker 5: got there. They could have shown the jury the moment
Speaker 5: of the video where at the top of the steps
Speaker 5: to the rotunda, right, So they're at the top of
Speaker 5: these stairs looking down at that plaza below, and these
Speaker 5: counter protesters are just coming into view to the for
Speaker 5: the first time for the marchers, and Daniel Borden looks
Speaker 5: down and sees them and yells, you're out numbered, Antifa,
Speaker 5: watch out, leftists, scum. And now it matters that that's
Speaker 5: Daniel Borton because Daniel Borden was with Jacob Dix. They
Speaker 5: came together their friends from back home in Ohio. Daniel
Speaker 5: bordon is a name you might remember because the following
Speaker 5: day he nearly beat a young black man to death.
Speaker 5: So you know, he's looking down into the plaza and
Speaker 5: seeing these people and stating the intent, right, He's saying, like,
Speaker 5: you know, watch out, like I see you. There's more
Speaker 5: of us than there are of you. You better watch out.
Speaker 5: That is intimidation, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Seems like it. If I'm the judge, the case has
Speaker 2: been made.
Speaker 5: But they did not. I'm not though they didn't highlight
Speaker 5: this portion of the video. They just this long, uninterrupted
Speaker 5: presentation of video evidence without any sort of discussion of
Speaker 5: what any of these moments meant. Because moments after that,
Speaker 5: after Daniel Borden yells you're outnumbered Antifa, he shouldered a
Speaker 5: shoulder with Dix. A few seconds later, they're walking clockwise
Speaker 5: around the statue. They're starting to form that circle, that
Speaker 5: ring that would trap the counter protesters in. Borden looks
Speaker 5: at Dix again and says, why can't we confront them?
Speaker 5: And then they continue to walk side by side, taking
Speaker 5: their place in that ring of men closing off any
Speaker 5: path to safety. And you can see in photos that
Speaker 5: Jacob Dix is face to face with some of the
Speaker 5: counter protesters. He's not just in this sort of mob
Speaker 5: of people, in this sort of nebulous zone. He's in
Speaker 5: the inner ring of people who are choosing to physically
Speaker 5: trap the counter protesters. That is the intent that they
Speaker 5: needed to show the jury, and they didn't rebut the
Speaker 5: conjecture that he was only here because he loves Confederate statues, right,
Speaker 5: he has Confederate heritage. He cares about the monuments.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is like prosecuting a drunk driver and having
Speaker 2: having a breathalyzer test and just not introducing it into evidence,
Speaker 2: being like, nah, I'm just going to be like, you know,
Speaker 2: vibes wise, it seems like he was probably drinking. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what it was. It was so irresponsible.
Speaker 5: The vibes were bad, and they were the vibes were bad,
Speaker 5: but that's not the legal standard.
Speaker 2: Vibes are terrible, but that's really not what you should be.
Speaker 2: You have a much better case to make based on
Speaker 2: the evidence easily available to you.
Speaker 5: If there was if none of this evidence existed, if
Speaker 5: this was all they had, maybe don't take it to trial.
Speaker 5: But this evidence was right there for them, the moment,
Speaker 5: the moment where they're looking down the steps that's in
Speaker 5: the video they played.
Speaker 2: I feel like there were at least six different people
Speaker 2: the prosecutor could have just like emailed and they would
Speaker 2: have basically put together the whole case for this person.
Speaker 5: It's just so available, right, you know. So the defense says, well,
Speaker 5: you know, he has Confederate heritage. You see here because
Speaker 5: of the statues. They could have rebutted that by showing
Speaker 5: the jury his discord posts where he was helping organize
Speaker 5: housing for at least eighty other Unite the Right attendees
Speaker 5: at a group of airbnbs which he called the Eagles
Speaker 5: Nest and from which he was helping organize rides to
Speaker 5: the rally in what they were calling Nazi uber. That's
Speaker 5: not about your Confederate heritage, is it. The Eagle's Nest
Speaker 5: was like Hitler's vacation house for people who aren't up
Speaker 5: on their their Hitler lore.
Speaker 2: Yeah they're hit Lore. If you will, they're hit Lore.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not proud of it, but that happened.
Speaker 5: That took me out for a second. And they didn't
Speaker 5: show him attending the Nazi rally in Pikeville in April
Speaker 5: of that same year. There was a photograph of him
Speaker 5: standing shoulder to shoulder with members of the Traditionalist Worker
Speaker 5: Party right arm extended a forty five degree angle, palm down.
Speaker 5: I think that says something about why he was there, right,
Speaker 5: And they didn't show his discord post about how he
Speaker 5: was getting really hyped about the rally, writing nothing can
Speaker 5: replace the feeling you get at a white nationalist rally.
Speaker 5: I don't know the evidence exists, right, and once you
Speaker 5: get to the base of the statue, that intimidation element
Speaker 5: required for the charge is clear. We know people were
Speaker 5: in reasonable fear of bodily harm because their bodies were harmed.
Speaker 5: The evidence of intent is not hard to find. The
Speaker 5: marchers saw the small group of counter protesters as they
Speaker 5: descended those stairs. They saw them from above, and they
Speaker 5: chose to proceed and surround them, Knowing they va outnumbered them.
Speaker 5: They hooted and cheered, screaming We're coming for you. As
Speaker 5: they encircled the statue. There were assigned marshals for the march,
Speaker 5: directing people in a clockwise fashion around the statue to
Speaker 5: form the circle. This was not an organic event, and
Speaker 5: as the ring closed, Richard Spencer's bodyguard, a now former Woburn,
Speaker 5: Massachusetts police officer, John Donnelly, can be heard in one
Speaker 5: video saying that we need to fill in over here
Speaker 5: to block these guys off. This was an intentional act.
Speaker 5: The defendant himself is visible in these videos as he
Speaker 5: moves down the steps, across the plaza and winds his
Speaker 5: way around the statue, and as the fighting breaks out,
Speaker 5: he holds his position in the inner ring of torch
Speaker 5: bearers who have these people trapped, unable to escape the violence.
Speaker 5: It doesn't matter that he did not commit these acts
Speaker 5: of violence. He was holding the line that trapped people
Speaker 5: inside of it, and his intent in that moment is inescapable.
Speaker 5: But the jury doesn't know that. It's just an incredible failure.
Speaker 2: Honestly, Yeah, yeah, I'm glad the case got thrown out.
Speaker 2: Is it possible that the next person to be prosecutor
Speaker 2: in this will have an IQ that rises above room temperature?
Speaker 5: So I asked several lawyers about some of the finer
Speaker 5: points of what happens with the mistrial, and I got
Speaker 5: different answers from all of them, because this is sort
Speaker 5: of like everything in this case is just a little
Speaker 5: bit fucked up.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: We have a substitute judge, we have a special prosecutor,
Speaker 5: we have a mistrial. We've just like so many things
Speaker 5: that kind of mess it up a little bit. In
Speaker 5: the event of a mistrial, the prosecutor has the option
Speaker 5: to try the case again, Right, That's always the case.
Speaker 5: There's a mistrial, the prosecutor can say, eh, I'm gonna
Speaker 5: let it go. I'm just gonna let it go, or
Speaker 5: they can say no, we're gonna bring it again. We're
Speaker 5: gonna bring it again, and they don't have to bring
Speaker 5: it the same way. They can bring in different evidence,
Speaker 5: different witnesses. It's sort of a mulligan for everybody. Right
Speaker 5: what's not one hundred percent clear is whether the same
Speaker 5: special prosecutor tries it again or if it sort of
Speaker 5: goes back to Roulette. Several lawyers agreed that it would
Speaker 5: be the same prosecutor. I believe her office is under
Speaker 5: that impression. So right after the mistrial was declared, Shannon Taylor,
Speaker 5: the special prosecutor, said she does plan to try it again.
Speaker 5: That could just be bravado. It's unclear. There's a hearing
Speaker 5: date set for August for there's still some pending motions
Speaker 5: in the case, and so the funniest part is is
Speaker 5: that there's still a pending motion to dismiss from the defense.
Speaker 5: So technically, even if the prosecutor says, yes, I'm bringing
Speaker 5: this case again, I'm doing it, the judge could be like, actually,
Speaker 5: I'm dismissing it. So it could go a lot of
Speaker 5: ways right now, but at this point I'm not super
Speaker 5: hung up on the particularities of this defendant, right, I
Speaker 5: think this mistrial teaches us something sort of more generally
Speaker 5: about these cases and the other torch cases specifically obviously,
Speaker 5: but I think more generally, what does it look like
Speaker 5: for criminal charges to be a roadblock in the path
Speaker 5: of people involved in white supremacists organizing? You know, at
Speaker 5: the end of the day, whether or not some guy
Speaker 5: from Ohio serves four months of a six month sentence
Speaker 5: on a classic felony, it doesn't really matter, right, Like,
Speaker 5: this isn't this isn't an important.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's whether or not anyone is actually scared off
Speaker 2: from organizing.
Speaker 5: Right, Like not to use the language of the prosecutor.
Speaker 5: You know, the master's house, the master's tools, this, that,
Speaker 5: and the other.
Speaker 2: But part of part of cotton to that logic, right,
Speaker 2: be honest.
Speaker 5: I mean he used those tools for a reason, right.
Speaker 2: But yeah, he used those tools for a reason. Like
Speaker 2: if you couldn't bring down the master's house with the
Speaker 2: master's tools, then what were all of those formerly t
Speaker 2: Czarist troops doing overthrowing the government with rifles the czar
Speaker 2: gave them?
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: But you know, part of what prosecutors talk about when
Speaker 5: they talk about charging, Maybe not these cases in particular,
Speaker 5: but just generally speaking, is that bringing cases is intended
Speaker 5: as a form of deterrence for everybody, right, that what
Speaker 5: happens to this guy is not the most important. But
Speaker 5: maybe some other guys see this and think, maybe that's
Speaker 5: not a good idea. And so I think in some
Speaker 5: of these cases, though, you can see, you know, maybe
Speaker 5: that this charge is interrupting a more significant pattern of behavior. Right,
Speaker 5: So nailing Thomas Rousseau on a felony would obviously change
Speaker 5: the trajectory for Patriot Front. I don't know if that
Speaker 5: would I don't know what that looks like at the end,
Speaker 5: but it certainly changes the trajectory. So Thomas Rousseau is
Speaker 5: set for trial in the fall. So he has been charged,
Speaker 5: and I think that will be an interesting case to
Speaker 5: follow because he has the same lawyer. And you know,
Speaker 5: if they end up charging Jason Kessler, that would just
Speaker 5: be really funny. You know, there's a lot of possible
Speaker 5: outcomes here. If they'd arrested these guys in real time
Speaker 5: that night, maybe the rally the next day would be different.
Speaker 5: If the cases had been brought six years ago. You know,
Speaker 5: maybe certain arcs of history would have bent differently. It
Speaker 5: would have broken some momentum, or discouraged some movement activity,
Speaker 5: or broken bonds between people who met there. Some of
Speaker 5: the guys who were there and could have been charged
Speaker 5: in real time went on to do some real damage
Speaker 5: in their personal lives and their communities. But I'm not
Speaker 5: sure that's a basket I want to put my eggs into. Right,
Speaker 5: if a court case takes a fascist out of the game, right, right,
Speaker 5: that's some kind of harm reduction, But it's not something
Speaker 5: you could count on, and honestly, it doesn't consistently reduce
Speaker 5: harm in the long run. You just can't get lost
Speaker 5: in the sort of what ifs of you know, what
Speaker 5: if the system worked better to actually help us, because
Speaker 5: it doesn't. That was never on the table. It's not
Speaker 5: like I'm saying, you know, well, we needed a conviction
Speaker 5: in this case because the courts are the ones who
Speaker 5: are going to protect us by putting this man in jail. Briefly, right,
Speaker 5: That's that's not the case. I think the lessons are
Speaker 5: immediately instructive to the prosecutor who tries the next one. Obviously,
Speaker 5: you know, watching the game tapes play better next time.
Speaker 5: You know, if they're going to put these cases on,
Speaker 5: they need to do it properly. I would rather see
Speaker 5: this not happen at all than watch it get fumbled
Speaker 5: like this, because that's just a victory for.
Speaker 2: Them, right right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And it's a sharp reminder that the courts are
Speaker 5: not equipped to interrupt fascism or rein in white supremacy.
Speaker 5: That is not what they were built for. That it's
Speaker 5: not what this tool does. You are trying to screw
Speaker 5: it in with a hammer, because faced with a really
Speaker 5: clear opportunity to do that, the prosecutor shied away from them.
Speaker 5: You know, the state is not the secret weapon that
Speaker 5: is going to stop fascism for us or protect us
Speaker 5: from the fascists who want to stop us from stopping them.
Speaker 5: You know, at best, it is a banana peel on
Speaker 5: their Mario Kart track. You know, it is interesting to
Speaker 5: watch this play out, but I don't think it is
Speaker 5: some I don't think this will bring any sort of repair. Yeah,
Speaker 5: but it might ruin some guy's day, and I'll be
Speaker 5: there when it happens.
Speaker 2: I you know, I don't think it's worthless obviously. I think,
Speaker 2: in fact, one of the things I will point out
Speaker 2: since this is kind of ending on a doomer. And
Speaker 2: I think the I think the legal one lot that
Speaker 2: was launched by the survivors shall we say mm hm
Speaker 2: at Charlottesville against organizers and whatnot is a big part
Speaker 2: of why a lot of that most of that crew
Speaker 2: stopped being relevant, Like it did in fact damage them.
Speaker 2: Now did it disrupt and stop fascism nation?
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 2: Of course not. That was never in the cards, right,
Speaker 2: Like you're talking about trends and forces that are too
Speaker 2: big for a handful of very dedicated leftists to stop
Speaker 2: by suing some asshole. But like, you know, one thing
Speaker 2: people get wrong a lot is saying like, oh, you know,
Speaker 2: when a fucking what's his name got punched, that really
Speaker 2: uh knocked him out of public life. And it's like, no,
Speaker 2: Charlottesville came after that fucker got punched, Like it was
Speaker 2: the series of court cases that ruined his life really
Speaker 2: to an extent.
Speaker 5: And I think there's an important conversation to be how
Speaker 5: about what it means to win, right, Because if you're
Speaker 5: a lawyer, if you're a prosecutor, winning is really black
Speaker 5: and white. You you know, win a judgment, you win
Speaker 5: a conviction, but That's not how I view the courts
Speaker 5: as a tool in this process. Right That, like winning
Speaker 5: a conviction or actually getting paid out that judgment, that's
Speaker 5: not the victory we're looking for, right That, this is
Speaker 5: a tool for sort of chiseling away, and no single
Speaker 5: step gets you there. So I wouldn't say that these
Speaker 5: cases are not useful or they're not interesting. And that's
Speaker 5: why this isn't a huge disappointment, right that, Like what
Speaker 5: happens to any of these individual people isn't the point.
Speaker 5: This is just part of a process.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I don't know, keep that in mind as
Speaker 2: you look at this stuff, like, because it's very easy
Speaker 2: to look at one case and just be like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's doomed. There's no point in trying any of this.
Speaker 2: It's like no. The actual the law fair that people
Speaker 2: have launched in response to Charlottesville has been a successful action, like,
Speaker 2: if you want to look at it kind of in
Speaker 2: military terms, it has been an offensive that has broadly
Speaker 2: achieved a number of its goals.
Speaker 5: The Assigns by Kessler lawsuit against the Unite the Right organizers,
Speaker 5: it's sort of established this playbook that's now being used
Speaker 5: by others. There are similar similarly structured lawsuits now being
Speaker 5: filed against other white supremacist groups, against White Lives Matter Ohio,
Speaker 5: against Patriot Front, and it is effective, and again not
Speaker 5: in the sense that the lawsuits will extract you know, money, judgments.
Speaker 2: Well that everyone's going to go to fucking prison, but
Speaker 2: it makes their lives miserable. Yeah. I just don't want
Speaker 2: people to walk away being like, well, there's no point
Speaker 2: in fighting this way, because there actually is. It works
Speaker 2: very well. It's just not a silver bullet. It's not
Speaker 2: a sports Ugly and messy and hard. And I will
Speaker 2: end at least by saying, you know, I know we
Speaker 2: have a lot of anti electoralist type people here. The
Speaker 2: one place you absolutely should vote, if that is a
Speaker 2: thing where you live, is elections for local judges, because
Speaker 2: that is a great way to at least reduce the
Speaker 2: odds that your friends go to prison. I know people,
Speaker 2: I have people I love who are not in prison
Speaker 2: because the judge they happened to draw wasn't a piece
Speaker 2: of shit. And you're really, you're really just hurting yourself
Speaker 2: if you don't, if you have the option to pick
Speaker 2: a judge who sucks less, and you don't try to
Speaker 2: that's where I land on that ship.
Speaker 5: There's a lot that we can do, and none of
Speaker 5: it's going to do it all. But Yep, in the meantime,
Speaker 5: I will continue spending whole days on that horrible wooden
Speaker 5: bench and I'll let you know how it goes.
Speaker 2: Yep, thank you Molly for continuing to engage with a
Speaker 2: system that is not very fun to engage with the
Speaker 2: necessary too. Well, everybody, that's the episode, good to hell,
Speaker 2: We love you. What's warring my crimes? This is it
Speaker 2: could happen here a podcast about things falling apart. And
Speaker 2: you know what all the kids these days you're talking
Speaker 2: about is war crimes. That was me being kind of liathe,
Speaker 2: but they actually are because you know what's continuing to
Speaker 2: happen to Gaza. More people than probably that I can
Speaker 2: recall in recent memory are talking about like war crimes,
Speaker 2: what it means to commit war crimes violations of international law,
Speaker 2: which is good because that's an important thing to be
Speaker 2: talking about. The downside of it is, as is often
Speaker 2: the case when people talk about things on the Internet,
Speaker 2: a lot of people are talking about war crimes and
Speaker 2: don't actually know what that means. So I figured, let's
Speaker 2: talk about like what war crimes is be do. And
Speaker 2: I'm going to bring on James Stout, fellow war crimes watcher,
Speaker 2: to talk with me about what war crimes be James,
Speaker 2: what's your favorite war crime?
Speaker 3: My favorite?
Speaker 4: That's a difficult one, isn't it because I'm yeah.
Speaker 2: Because I asked in the best season a doctor who
Speaker 2: you know it is.
Speaker 4: Yeah. What I like to do with reference to war
Speaker 4: crimes is I wake up, right, and I sort of
Speaker 4: you know, you're just waking up. You get your phone
Speaker 4: off the charge, you there, and then you look and
Speaker 4: there's message on telegram. But that's how that's how I
Speaker 4: consume war crimes, just a random If it's on telegram,
Speaker 4: there's a forty percent chance it's a violation of the
Speaker 4: eighteen sixty four Geneva Convention or the subsequent Geneva Conventions.
Speaker 2: Yes, so I wanted to do this because I do
Speaker 2: think that one of the things that is unfortunate kind
Speaker 2: of about the colloquial way in which, like the positive
Speaker 2: side of the way social media has impacted the coverage
Speaker 2: of conflicts, is that we are now seeing like for
Speaker 2: the first time, this is not the first time Israel
Speaker 2: has killed a shitload of Palestinians. This is the first
Speaker 2: time that like a really substantial majority of the American
Speaker 2: populace has been like and that's bad. Yeah, And that
Speaker 2: owes a lot to the way in which information is
Speaker 2: spread on social media. One of the downsides of that
Speaker 2: is because this is happening in kind of a colloquial diction,
Speaker 2: people are not always super accurate in a term like
Speaker 2: war crimes in particular, often gets used to mean like
Speaker 2: anything I don't like that happened in a war. And
Speaker 2: there are a lot of things that happen like war
Speaker 2: is bad, and everything that happens in war nearly everything
Speaker 2: is really bad. But most of the things that happen
Speaker 2: in war are not war crimes. And I believe me,
Speaker 2: I'm not setting us up to say that, like Israel
Speaker 2: is not committing war crimes in Gaza, they are. I
Speaker 2: actually have a lot of issues with other kinds of
Speaker 2: conflicts and things that happen in conflicts that get discussed
Speaker 2: as if they were war crimes that I think Muddy's
Speaker 2: the issue We're going to be talking trying to make
Speaker 2: it clear like what international law actually covers and what
Speaker 2: kind of that coverage means. And all that stuff, so
Speaker 2: that hopefully, you know, people can have a little bit
Speaker 2: more information going forward when they try to talk about
Speaker 2: like is this something that's just bad that happens in
Speaker 2: war versus is this a war crime, because that actually
Speaker 2: matters when it comes to, you know, the theoretical idea
Speaker 2: of a rules based international order in prosecuting this stuff.
Speaker 2: So the first thing we have to get into is
Speaker 2: the idea that, like, war crimes are a pretty recent conception.
Speaker 2: The idea that like there would be a thing that
Speaker 2: you could do as a country that the international community
Speaker 2: would come in and have beef with does not go
Speaker 2: back very far, right, Yeah, we are talking the eighteenth century,
Speaker 2: So really the last two hundred years has been when
Speaker 2: this really all started to get codified. We start with
Speaker 2: the Geneva Convention in eighteen sixty four. There are several
Speaker 2: Geneva conventions. In nineteen forty nine, there's I think two
Speaker 2: more in nineteen seventy seven. You also have the Hague
Speaker 2: Conventions in eighteen ninety nine and nineteen oh seven, and
Speaker 2: these are all so part of what that should suggest
Speaker 2: is that like, even within the kind of the realm
Speaker 2: of codified war crimes law, it's kind of been a
Speaker 2: slap dash catches catch can a fair right. Like, people
Speaker 2: have come together and made rules that were largely based
Speaker 2: on the shit that either had just happened or that
Speaker 2: they thought was about to happen. And one of the
Speaker 2: consequences of this is that the actual legislation about like
Speaker 2: what is and isn't illegal to do in war is
Speaker 2: really uneven. A great example of this would be the
Speaker 2: idea of dumb dumb bullets. Right. This is a thing
Speaker 2: that you get kind of around the turn of the century,
Speaker 2: which is so bullets, most bullets that are used in
Speaker 2: war are what are called full metal jacket, right, And
Speaker 2: that just means that there's a copper generally jacket around
Speaker 2: the lead bullet and there's not like a hole in
Speaker 2: the middle or whatever like a modern Like if you
Speaker 2: go up to a police officer and take his gun,
Speaker 2: which is very easy and safe to do legally, that
Speaker 2: was a joke, you will notice that all of the
Speaker 2: bullets in that gun have like a little divot in
Speaker 2: the middle of them, right, And the purpose of this
Speaker 2: divot is so that when the bullet hits a person,
Speaker 2: it transfers more of its force into the meat of
Speaker 2: that person's body. This is the same with any bullet
Speaker 2: that like someone carries for self defense generally, and this
Speaker 2: is actually a safety device in a way because bullets
Speaker 2: like this do not penetrate as much. And you don't
Speaker 2: want bullets that you're using in like an urban area
Speaker 2: for self defense to penetrate as much because that increases
Speaker 2: the risk that if you miss or if you hit
Speaker 2: that person, that it goes through them and hits something else. Right,
Speaker 2: But there was an understanding around the turn of the
Speaker 2: century that these bullets, which initially were not manufactured. Soldiers
Speaker 2: would literally like cut like crosses in the tops of
Speaker 2: their bullets.
Speaker 4: I used to do this when I was a child.
Speaker 4: I would spend a lot of time shooting rabbits. It
Speaker 4: was kind of my thing that I did when I
Speaker 4: was a kid, and we used to dumb dumb that
Speaker 4: rifle pede.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And there's this there was this understanding that
Speaker 2: developed that this should be illegal because it causes additional harm. Now,
Speaker 2: the specific I think this is like like line twenty
Speaker 2: or something from the Geneva Convention. But it's employing weapons,
Speaker 2: projectiles and material and methods of warfare which are of
Speaker 2: a nature to cause superfluous injury or a necessary suffering,
Speaker 2: or which are inherently indiscriminate in violation of the International
Speaker 2: Law of Armed Conflict. Provided such weapons, projectiles and material
Speaker 2: and the methods of warfare are the subject of a
Speaker 2: comprehensive prohibition are included in annex to this statute by
Speaker 2: an amendment in accordance with the relevant anyway, So you're
Speaker 2: not supposed to employing employed bullets which quote flatten or
Speaker 2: expand easily in the human body, such as bullets with
Speaker 2: the hard envelope which does not entirely cover its core
Speaker 2: or is pierced with incisions. You're not supposed to employ asphyxiating,
Speaker 2: poisonous or their gases and all analogous liquids, materials or
Speaker 2: devices that one obviously came about as a result of
Speaker 2: the horror in World War One, right, people start using
Speaker 2: a lot of these poisoned gas weapons, and it's decided
Speaker 2: by the international community that that absolutely should not be
Speaker 2: allowed to be done. You're not allowed to employ poison
Speaker 2: or poisoned weapons. Now, most people can see look at
Speaker 2: that and be like, well, yeah, I mean, hollow points sound,
Speaker 2: extramine poison sounds extramine gas sounds extramine. You shouldn't be
Speaker 2: able to use those extra meine weapons in war. But
Speaker 2: and I don't have a problem with trying to limit
Speaker 2: horrifying weapons, But we still allow, for example, artillery shells
Speaker 2: that are meant to create huge amounts of shrapnel that
Speaker 2: are their whole purpose is to cause grievous wounds to
Speaker 2: a large number of people in a large area. And
Speaker 2: from where I'm standing, I don't think that like that's
Speaker 2: less horrible than a hollow point. I actually think that's
Speaker 2: probably a lot worse than a hollow point. Yes, Yeah,
Speaker 2: So one of the first things that you get when
Speaker 2: you look at what our war crimes is they're not
Speaker 2: actually all like things that you morally should have an
Speaker 2: issue with. Like, really, if you are looking at all
Speaker 2: of the weapons employed in war today, there's no reason
Speaker 2: a hollow point should frighten you, Right, there's so many
Speaker 2: worse weapons right now. On the other hand of that,
Speaker 2: poison gas is much worse than the vast majority of
Speaker 2: weapons that are used in war today, And I think
Speaker 2: it's good that that's a crime. Yeah, doesn't stop people
Speaker 2: using it, doesn't stop like Bashar al Assade, Right.
Speaker 4: End of the show. I was just thinking about barrel bombs.
Speaker 4: I don't know if barrel bombs are specifically prohibited, and
Speaker 4: they are not, there would be a way to do
Speaker 4: that really, that just a barrel stuff would explos.
Speaker 2: Well, because I mean they were invented by Israel. Actually,
Speaker 2: I think forty seven is the first U It might
Speaker 2: have been like fifty yeah, but I believe it was
Speaker 2: forty seven was the first recorded use of Because if
Speaker 2: you have planes and you have reliable access to planes,
Speaker 2: but you know, can't reliably manufacture advanced like rockets and
Speaker 2: shit to shoot from them, a barrel bomb's very easy
Speaker 2: to make. You're basically just taking a fifty gallon drum
Speaker 2: and filling it with gunpowder and shrapnel, right, Like, I
Speaker 2: mean it's a little more complicated than that, but yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the Huntern Memba have started using them as sair
Speaker 4: access to Russia munitions drives up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's you know, again, that's one of those
Speaker 2: things where it's like that's not technically a war crime
Speaker 2: other than that if you it can be if you're
Speaker 2: like using it indiscriminately in a civilian like against civilians.
Speaker 2: But like also they basically no one ever gets prosecuted
Speaker 2: for doing that.
Speaker 4: So yeah, yeah, right, this is the case with many
Speaker 4: of these things.
Speaker 2: And again, like barrel bombs can be legal, hollow points can't.
Speaker 2: That doesn't really make sense. It's also like I will say,
Speaker 2: I've witnessed at least one war crime in person that
Speaker 2: I really didn't feel like was a war crime, which
Speaker 2: when I was embedded with the Iraqi Army, they tear
Speaker 2: gasket an Isis sniper to get him out of his
Speaker 2: position so they could kill him, and that's definitely illegal.
Speaker 2: And also, of all of the things I saw done
Speaker 2: in that war, like the fact that somebody threw a
Speaker 2: tear gas grenade did not upset me over much, right,
Speaker 2: Like the fact that I was watching apartment buildings get
Speaker 2: blown up by Apache helicopters really upset me a lot
Speaker 2: more than a little bit of tear gas.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's one of these like very sort of like, yeah,
Speaker 4: if you want to take the strict legalistic definition, yeah,
Speaker 4: that was a war crime. Yeah, you any war crime
Speaker 4: that was committed that day maybe yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So anyway, I let I want to get into
Speaker 2: some of this in a little bit more of an
Speaker 2: organized fashion. But first let's let's have a little bit
Speaker 2: of an ad break.
Speaker 4: Ah.
Speaker 2: So we're back and we're talking about war crimes. So
Speaker 2: I want to just kind of go through and with
Speaker 2: some commentary. Straight up, Lee re a large chunk of
Speaker 2: the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Article eight,
Speaker 2: which largely defines war crimes as that term has a
Speaker 2: meaning in a legal sense, and it defines war crimes
Speaker 2: as grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of twelfth August
Speaker 2: nineteen forty nine, namely any of the following acts against
Speaker 2: persons or property committed against the provisions of the relevant
Speaker 2: Geneva Convention. These include wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment,
Speaker 2: including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering, serious injury to
Speaker 2: body or health, extensive destruction and appropriation of property not
Speaker 2: justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly,
Speaker 2: compelling a prisoner of war or other protected person to
Speaker 2: serve in the forces of a hostile power. Wilfully depriving
Speaker 2: a prisoner of war or other protected person of the
Speaker 2: rights of fair and regular trial, unlawful deportation or transfer
Speaker 2: or unlawful confinement, and taking of hostages right and you'll notice,
Speaker 2: among other things, a lot of that is stuff that
Speaker 2: you can find Israeli soldiers doing at TikTok, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, streaming themselves doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean particularly the clear not maybe not the clearest,
Speaker 2: but one that comes up to me just because of
Speaker 2: some stuff I've seen of like soldiers posing with like
Speaker 2: stolen canes from gosms who presumably were disabled and no
Speaker 2: longer have their canes for whatever terrible reason. Like these
Speaker 2: kind of like joking photos. That's a destruction and appropriation
Speaker 2: of property. Right, you have a lot of videos of
Speaker 2: soldiers like going through people's property, taking stuff, destroying stuff
Speaker 2: like those are war crimes you are not as a soldier. Obviously,
Speaker 2: property will get destroyed in gunfights, it can get just
Speaker 2: like so there's part of why it's kind of hard
Speaker 2: to this stuff is not prosecuted as much as it
Speaker 2: ought to be. But you are not supposed to just
Speaker 2: fuck with people shit as a soldier. That is legal,
Speaker 2: you know. Is it one of the war crimes that
Speaker 2: is probably least prosecuted and most common. Absolutely, I think
Speaker 2: that that is very fair to say.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Look, Boris Johnson stole stuff from Saddama Saint's Palace
Speaker 4: in right, right, you know, like he's yet to be
Speaker 4: called today, that.
Speaker 2: Would be one of those, Like I don't know, I
Speaker 2: don't like Boris Johnson, but also I don't have a
Speaker 2: problem with anyone stealing from Saddam Hush.
Speaker 4: Exactly specifically, Yeah, of all the bullshit he's done.
Speaker 2: But this is I mean, that's one of those because
Speaker 2: I would say a lot of soldiers I know who
Speaker 2: have been and maybe didn't even realize themselves that what
Speaker 2: they were doing was committing a war crime. But just
Speaker 2: like you're in somebody's house, they are gone, they ran,
Speaker 2: and like you wind up fucking with shit like it happens.
Speaker 2: I think what we're seeing, I think willfully is kind
Speaker 2: of an important term here, right, And I think that's
Speaker 2: really what we've seen very clearly in a lot of
Speaker 2: these IDF tiktoks, right, is people taking glee in the
Speaker 2: destruction of property. And I think that's very easy to
Speaker 2: prove as a war crime.
Speaker 4: I think anyone can make a moral distinction right between.
Speaker 4: Like I was recently in Rajava and I was talking
Speaker 4: to some friends and they were talking about how they
Speaker 4: a lot of people died in ied blasts because they
Speaker 4: were going into buildings to try and get food or tea, right, sugar. Yeah,
Speaker 4: there's a distinction between going into the kitchen of abandoned
Speaker 4: building and taking some some sugar or whatever rice.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Then Yeah, these guys going through women's underwear rulers taking
Speaker 4: pictures with their underwear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I know some some US Marines who like
Speaker 2: happened upon a cigarette factory during the invasion. I had
Speaker 2: like the uncut cigarettes that are like five feet long,
Speaker 2: and they just started like smoking up on them. I
Speaker 2: guess that's destruction of property. Probably not going to be
Speaker 2: my priority as the ICZ, but it also doesn't seem
Speaker 2: like the clearer stuff is their priority. So I don't know.
Speaker 4: Free my man with the five foot cigarette? He did? Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 5: So.
Speaker 2: Other war crimes include intentionally directing attacks against the civilian
Speaker 2: population as such, or against individual civilians not taking part
Speaker 2: in hostilities. There's a video going around right now man
Speaker 2: in his fifties in Gaza who was working a market
Speaker 2: stall and was shot by an Israeli drone just executed.
Speaker 2: There's no way to describe that other than intentionally directing
Speaker 2: an attack against a civilian, not to making direct part
Speaker 2: in hostilities. That is a war crime. That's one example
Speaker 2: of I mean, that's just the clearest video that I
Speaker 2: saw recently.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, I heard from people who listen. I think
Speaker 4: I think this was in the episode, but when we
Speaker 4: talk to our friends at PK Guy that they were
Speaker 4: talking about one of the members of their group was
Speaker 4: recovering bodies from a bombed building and was shot by
Speaker 4: a quad coptail like not like a drone, like ten
Speaker 4: thousand feet in the air, dropping a missile like a drone. Yeah,
Speaker 4: like in the air, firing.
Speaker 2: A drone like you can buy at a fucking best
Speaker 2: Buy that's been modified. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that shoots like it shoots a rifle, like just
Speaker 4: like a soldier to shoot a rifle where the operator
Speaker 4: is looking and seeing that person and pressing a button
Speaker 4: to fire bullet. It's not collateral damage. It's deliberate civilians.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, continue from that list of war crimes.
Speaker 2: Intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects, that is, objects which
Speaker 2: are not military objectives. A great example of this that's
Speaker 2: been happening in Gaza in particular is destruct to mosques, right,
Speaker 2: very clear, civilian objects. Now, there are exceptions. For example,
Speaker 2: one thing that does sometimes happen. I don't think it happened.
Speaker 2: It certainly have not seen evidence of it happening often
Speaker 2: in most of the places where there are attacks on mosques,
Speaker 2: but like periodically, like if somebody, if a fighter, a
Speaker 2: military unit sets up inside a mosque or right, or
Speaker 2: a church or whatever, which happened in World War Two
Speaker 2: a lot, Right, you would have like churches used as
Speaker 2: strong points because they're well made buildings. You can attack that, right,
Speaker 2: Like it's not like magical, right, Like you can't suddenly
Speaker 2: not attack soldiers who are shooting at you from a church.
Speaker 2: But you are not supposed to intentionally direct attacks against
Speaker 2: civilian objects that are not military objectives, intentionally directing attacks
Speaker 2: against personnel installations, materiel units, or vehicles involved in a
Speaker 2: humanitarian assistance or peacekeeping mission in accordance with the Charter
Speaker 2: of the United Nations, as long as they are entitled
Speaker 2: to the protection given to civilians or civilian objects under
Speaker 2: international law of armed conflict. Best example of this from
Speaker 2: Gazzer recent would be those World Kitchen employees and their
Speaker 2: bodyguards who were essentially murdered by the Israelis. Right, very clear,
Speaker 2: internationally recognized humanitarian assistance very clear war crime if you
Speaker 2: can prove it was intentional. I'm sure there's you know,
Speaker 2: that's a court case, right, but I think pretty clear.
Speaker 2: And then there is intentionally launching an attack in the
Speaker 2: knowledge that such attack will cause incident at loss of
Speaker 2: life or injury to civilians, or damage to civilian objects,
Speaker 2: or widespread, long term and severe damage to the natural environment,
Speaker 2: which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete
Speaker 2: and direct overall military advantage and dissipated. This is one
Speaker 2: of the top things that is a war crime that
Speaker 2: never gets punished because it is so hard, because that
Speaker 2: it seemed like most I would say, most of what
Speaker 2: I have seen planes do in war seems like it
Speaker 2: falls under this where it's like, wow, that's a lot
Speaker 2: of environmental damage, a lot of incidental loss of life
Speaker 2: and injury, but is it excessive in relation to the
Speaker 2: concrete and direct overall military advantage. Well, the people ordering
Speaker 2: those air strikes would say no, right, and like yeah,
Speaker 2: And that is one of those things where it's like, well,
Speaker 2: I know what looks like crime to me, Yeah, But
Speaker 2: could I win an ICC case about that?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: I want to actually move over to talk about Ukraine
Speaker 2: here because I think that that number one doesn't happen
Speaker 2: enough on the left, and I think there's some really good,
Speaker 2: clear examples of Russian war crimes here, because one thing
Speaker 2: that you're not allowed to do is quote attacking or
Speaker 2: bombarding by whatever means towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which
Speaker 2: are undefended and which are not military objectives. And both
Speaker 2: of those last two points make it very clear that
Speaker 2: the Russian military committed war crimes against Ukraine from March
Speaker 2: fourth to March thirty first, twenty twenty two, when they
Speaker 2: occupied the town of Buka, which was about it is,
Speaker 2: about thirty kilometers north of Kiv. This is one of
Speaker 2: the best, probably the best documented Russian war crime in
Speaker 2: Ukraine at the moment. And I'm not saying that this
Speaker 2: is only it's not nearly the only, it's just like
Speaker 2: a particularly well documented example. As of this point, you know,
Speaker 2: we're almost two years past when Buka got liberated. The
Speaker 2: bodies of more than a thousand civilians have been discovered
Speaker 2: in the Buca region. At least about six hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty people are known to have been executed by the
Speaker 2: Russian army and these our pretty hideous mass executions. A
Speaker 2: lot of people were held for a week or two
Speaker 2: prior to being executed. There's significant evidence of torture of
Speaker 2: beatings of civilians before their summary execution. And yeah, it's
Speaker 2: a very clear example of a war crime. Like, I
Speaker 2: don't know how else to say it. I will read
Speaker 2: a quote from this Human Rights Watch article that interviewed
Speaker 2: some funeral home workers in Buka. Another funeral homeworker, Sergei Makyuk,
Speaker 2: who helped collect bodies, said that he personally collected about
Speaker 2: two hundred bodies from the streets since the Russian invasion
Speaker 2: began on February twenty fourth. Most of the victims were men,
Speaker 2: he said, but some were women and children. Almost all
Speaker 2: of them had bullet wounds, he said, including around fifty
Speaker 2: whose hands were tied and whose bodies had signs of torture.
Speaker 2: Bodies with hands tied strongly suggests that the victims had
Speaker 2: been detained and summarily executed. And that's a I mean,
Speaker 2: a thousand pitce a hideous war crime, right, Like, that's
Speaker 2: a mass killing of civilians in a crucially there's no
Speaker 2: argument and one way in which civilians always die are
Speaker 2: killed in war, and it's not usually a war crime
Speaker 2: because it generally happens while there's gun fights going on,
Speaker 2: while you're carrying, and you can claim like, well, look,
Speaker 2: you know, you can't stop bullets from going through buildings,
Speaker 2: you can't stop people from getting hit by a shrapnel.
Speaker 2: You're fighting in a city. Civilians are going to die.
Speaker 2: This is a very clear case of this town was occupied,
Speaker 2: there was not resistance ongoing in it, and they were
Speaker 2: mass executing civilians. That's illegal. You're not allowed to do
Speaker 2: that theoretically, if international law means anything. Now, I do
Speaker 2: want to get to another case of a war crime
Speaker 2: that are a thing that people call a war crime
Speaker 2: that isn't a war crime. And this we're actually going
Speaker 2: to go back to the Iraq the first Iraq war. Desert.
Speaker 2: Before you go to desert storm, let's go to these ads.
Speaker 2: All right, we're back, James. What do you know about
Speaker 2: the Highway of Death?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 4: I know a little bit about the Highway of Death.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Let's a throwback, isn't it.
Speaker 2: It's a throwback. I hear it described by particularly leftists
Speaker 2: on the internet a lot as a US war crime. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and as a spoiler, it's not it's ugly, it's really hideous.
Speaker 2: It's like a horrifying thing.
Speaker 4: But it's just war, right, And it was combatants fighting combatants.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was combatants killing retreating combatants, which people think
Speaker 2: sometimes shouldn't be allowed. But it doesn't really make sense
Speaker 2: for that to not be allowed if you just like
Speaker 2: know what war is. And I'm going to talk about
Speaker 2: why here, and like I'm not trying to justify this
Speaker 2: because nothing in war make it does. Like, you don't
Speaker 2: justify it, just is it a thing that happens, right, Like,
Speaker 2: it's all hideous. If you've been through it, you see
Speaker 2: in humanity every second. But one of the things that
Speaker 2: you learn if you study war on an academic level
Speaker 2: is that a massive part of it is retreating. Like
Speaker 2: all the time, all throughout history, armies retreat, regroup, and
Speaker 2: then carry out additional offensives.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: That is war in a nutshell, right, And so when
Speaker 2: armies are retreating, you're allowed to keep killing them, and
Speaker 2: in fact, that's the norm. And most soldiers, up until
Speaker 2: the modern era, the vast majority of combat debts we're
Speaker 2: during retreats.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: This is the primary way in which soldiers are killed.
Speaker 2: This is when they're retreating, right, And so what actually
Speaker 2: happened is in August, so obviously August of nineteen ninety,
Speaker 2: the US leads a coalition against the Iraqi Army who
Speaker 2: have invaded and occupied Kuwait illegally. You know, one of
Speaker 2: my stances on this is that Iraq very clearly violated
Speaker 2: international law and they didn't have been allowed to occupy Kuwait. Now,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of things about like US involvement in
Speaker 2: Iraq prior to this that are you could say extenuating,
Speaker 2: including the fact that like we had kind of pushed
Speaker 2: them to invade Iran and then played both sides of
Speaker 2: that conflict, and that was part of what Saddam was
Speaker 2: pissed about. But that doesn't justify it in Kuwait being occupied, Right,
Speaker 2: You can't just get mad and invade somewhere unless you're America.
Speaker 2: Unless you're America, which we're going to do to Iraq
Speaker 2: not much longer after this, But in this case, you know,
Speaker 2: we're more or less on the on the better side
Speaker 2: of things, right, and we basically immediately throw the Iraqi
Speaker 2: Army into a full fledged retreat. This culminates in late
Speaker 2: February nineteen ninety one with a huge number of Iraqi
Speaker 2: soldiers and military vehicles jammed up on a convoy on
Speaker 2: Highway eighty, which is the highway that connects Iraq to Kuwait.
Speaker 2: And what we do is we use our planes to
Speaker 2: blow up vehicles on both ends of this convoy of
Speaker 2: like three thousand vehicles, which then traps thousands and thousands
Speaker 2: of soldiers inside these walls of fire, so we can
Speaker 2: spend ten hours bombing them. And this is fucking hideous.
Speaker 2: The event is memorialized, and this is part of why
Speaker 2: people think of it as a war crime in a
Speaker 2: picture by a photojournalist of the corpse of an Iraqi
Speaker 2: soldier hideously burned, frozen in time as he tried to
Speaker 2: flee his flaming tank, and that picture you can find it.
Speaker 2: It's I mean, it's horrible. It's a great example of
Speaker 2: why war is bad and we should do less of it.
Speaker 2: And it is, you know, it's one of those things.
Speaker 2: A lot of US soldiers who participate in this feel
Speaker 2: uncomfortable with it, feel like they are unnecessarily killing a
Speaker 2: large number of people. And you can make that case.
Speaker 2: You can make a case and I'll listen to it
Speaker 2: that this was hideously evil, but it's not a war crime.
Speaker 2: Right now, Sodam's going to make that claim, arguing that
Speaker 2: his soldiers are trying to peacefully withdraw, But there's like
Speaker 2: a definition of that, and what the Iraqis were doing
Speaker 2: didn't meet it. What actually happened is that the Iraqi
Speaker 2: army made contact with the US army and then they
Speaker 2: went into a retreat. They were attempting to leave the
Speaker 2: area after losing a fight, and they had not formally surrendered.
Speaker 2: And there's nothing an international law that makes it illegal
Speaker 2: to kill soldiers who happened to be withdrawing, right. A
Speaker 2: great example of this would be nineteen forty four during
Speaker 2: the Battle of Normandy. There are reports of retreating German
Speaker 2: soldiers shot by US soldiers and there was debate at
Speaker 2: the time as like, well, is this a violation of
Speaker 2: the Geneva Conventions, right? And the conclusion that was generally
Speaker 2: reached in is that you shouldn't kill an enemy who
Speaker 2: is number one not in combat and number two surrendering,
Speaker 2: And there is kind of a blurry line between that
Speaker 2: and retreat. But again, the vast majority of soldiers killed
Speaker 2: in war are killed running away, right, Like that's just
Speaker 2: kind of how I mean, that's changed a bit in
Speaker 2: the modern era, but like this is I think more
Speaker 2: falls under one of those things where everyone sees this
Speaker 2: as a nightmare, because it is a nightmare. Those random
Speaker 2: Iraqi conscripts did not deserve to burn to death in
Speaker 2: this Charnel house we created on the Highway eighty. And
Speaker 2: also like, well, that's just what war is, man.
Speaker 4: You think we didn't do that.
Speaker 2: To the Nazis. You think the Nazis didn't do that
Speaker 2: to the fucking Russians, you think like you think that
Speaker 2: hasn't happened to every war, Like that's just what war is, man,
Speaker 2: That's why we shouldn't do it. It's really bad.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's fucked. The things are allowed to do a
Speaker 4: fucked so you think you're not allowed to do Like, yeah,
Speaker 4: we did do some things in the specifically in that incident,
Speaker 4: which are now I didn't think they're war crimes, but
Speaker 4: like they used cluster bombs on the Highway of tests. Yes,
Speaker 4: it's a separate agreement. It's not part of THEMA Convention, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a separate agreement. And like
Speaker 2: obviously things have like at our doctrine and kind of
Speaker 2: internet like has changed as a result of that, in
Speaker 2: part because like a lot of American soldiers were like,
Speaker 2: I really didn't feel good about this. My kid doesn't
Speaker 2: seem like this was necessary at all. Yeah, and I
Speaker 2: don't think it was necessary, right, Like, I don't think
Speaker 2: it was needed to do this to beat I think
Speaker 2: the Iraqi army was already beaten. But the question isn't
Speaker 2: wasn't necessary? The question is was this not something that
Speaker 2: is generally acceptable in war? And it is because war,
Speaker 2: Like again, blowing, like making exploding pieces like giant boxes
Speaker 2: filled with shards of metal in order to wound hundreds
Speaker 2: of people at a time is acceptable in war, right,
Speaker 2: Like it's.
Speaker 4: Bad, Yeah, bad things happening. We should have it if
Speaker 4: we can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So let's continue our list of things that be
Speaker 2: war crimes. One of them is making improper use of
Speaker 2: a flag of truce. So you're not allowed to like
Speaker 2: pretend to surrender or pretend to try to negotiate and
Speaker 2: then start shooting. That's a war crime. Actually, you're not
Speaker 2: allowed to transfer parts of the population of the civilian
Speaker 2: population of a territory you occupy to other parts of
Speaker 2: your territory, which the Russians have done in Ukraine. They
Speaker 2: have been taking particularly Ukrainian children and moving them to
Speaker 2: elsewhere in Russia, adopting them out to the families. That
Speaker 2: is a war crime.
Speaker 4: Turkey's done it in Aphree.
Speaker 2: Turkey does a hell of a lot of this, right,
Speaker 2: They've done a lot of that in Afrin. Yes, as
Speaker 2: you said, and obviously these really well I mean these
Speaker 2: really military. We're actually going to talk about their abduction
Speaker 2: and imprisonment of Palestinians because that also violates that arguably
Speaker 2: violates this. But there's a separate segment of the Roman
Speaker 2: statues that violates. And then intentionally directing attacks against buildings
Speaker 2: dedicated to religion, education, art, science, or charitable purposes. I'm
Speaker 2: thinking about historical monuments, hospitals. Very easy to find examples
Speaker 2: of that in Gaza.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Again, the little bit of wiggle room here is like
Speaker 2: if they're being occupied as like an enemy HQ, which
Speaker 2: is basically what everyone claims when they bomb hospitals.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: The US has done this a lot too, like we have,
Speaker 2: especially in Afghanistan. We had a number of hospitals and
Speaker 2: it was always like, well we thought.
Speaker 3: There were some guys there.
Speaker 2: We were trying to write and Russia and Israel both
Speaker 2: have extensive histories doing this. During the Syrian Civil War,
Speaker 2: Russian planes back in the ASAD regime regularly targeted medical
Speaker 2: facilities in Aleppo at least twenty seven times from fall
Speaker 2: of twenty fifth to the winter of twenty sixteen. More recently,
Speaker 2: Russia has targeted hospitals in Kherson. Per this Guardian article quote,
Speaker 2: since December twenty two, the Russian army has been bombarding
Speaker 2: Karsan from dug in positions on the nearby left eastern
Speaker 2: flank of the Knipro River. It has attacked civilian infrastructure,
Speaker 2: including schools, private residential houses, hospitals and the railway station.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it's pretty hideous, like these are systematic attacks.
Speaker 2: The Cinema for in Information Resilience has documented fourteen separate
Speaker 2: attacks over six months between December of twenty twenty two
Speaker 2: and May of twenty twenty three, striking hospital facilities several
Speaker 2: times with the apparent purpose of degrading their capacity to
Speaker 2: continue to serve the civilian population. The targeting of hospitals
Speaker 2: has also been utterly endemic to Israeli activities in Gaza.
Speaker 2: In November of twenty thirteen, they killed at least twelve
Speaker 2: people in attacks on the Indonesian hospital in bit Lahia, Gaza,
Speaker 2: and basically every medical facility in Gaza has been targeted,
Speaker 2: and more than twenty of the thirty five hospitals in Gaza,
Speaker 2: Gaza have at this point been taken out of service
Speaker 2: due to damage. The most famous of these was the
Speaker 2: Alshifaha Hospital, which held dozens of premature babies, thirty one
Speaker 2: of whom had to be evacuated after weeks of losing
Speaker 2: power to their incubators and being fed a formula mixed
Speaker 2: with poisoned water. Eight infants died at least I'm sure
Speaker 2: that number is higher before evacuation. This is obvious war crime, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, A friend Taraklubani, who I've interviewed the show before,
Speaker 4: was in the was working with the premature babies at
Speaker 4: that time. Yeah, you can find infuse with him. It's
Speaker 4: just it's like, I would not recommend reading it venless
Speaker 4: you want to traumatize yourself. Is honestly one of the
Speaker 4: most horrible things I've ever had to see about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's nightmarish stuff, and I mean a lot of
Speaker 2: these are right. The Rome statues continues with committing outrages
Speaker 2: upon personal dignity and particular humiliating the degrading treatment. And
Speaker 2: my god, there's a lot of examples of that from Gaza.
Speaker 2: Committing rape, sexual slavery, and forced prostitution, forced pregnancy as
Speaker 2: to find an Article seven paragraph too, and forced sterilization
Speaker 2: or any other form of sexual violence also constitutes a
Speaker 2: great breach of the Geneva Conventions. Utilizing the presence of
Speaker 2: a civilian or other protected person to render certain points,
Speaker 2: areas or military forces immune from military operations, So using
Speaker 2: civilians as shields, right, if you're hiding military forces among
Speaker 2: a civilian populace, you know that is also a war crime.
Speaker 2: Intentionally directing attacks against buildings, material medical units, you know,
Speaker 2: that's supposed to be illegal. Starvation for starvation of civilians
Speaker 2: is supposed to be illegal. And conscripting or enlisting children
Speaker 2: under the age of fifteen years old into the national forces,
Speaker 2: which I've noticed that, you know, when I would report
Speaker 2: on the YPG, some of the people that I reported
Speaker 2: on that were like seventeen and people like using child soldiers.
Speaker 2: You can enlisted the British Army at sixteen.
Speaker 4: That's not legal, Yeah, you seventeen year olds have always
Speaker 4: been allowed to do war. Yeah, I think they don't
Speaker 4: deploy them, right, certainly not sixteen year olds, right, yeah,
Speaker 4: But then the yeah, pea, and it's I've often women
Speaker 4: at she's off in the witepga, right, because they've come
Speaker 4: from abusive homes, and they also make an FM not
Speaker 4: to deploy I understand, yes, yes, but you are theoretically
Speaker 4: you're allowed to deploy sixteen year olds, right, yeah, so
Speaker 4: at least as regards international law. So and then of
Speaker 4: course we get to kind of some of the some
Speaker 4: of our our final war crimes, which you know, I
Speaker 4: haven't gone over a comprehensive list, but this gives you
Speaker 4: a good list of the things covered, you know, between
Speaker 4: the various different statutes and international agreements. Violation to life
Speaker 4: in person in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel
Speaker 4: treatment and torture, committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular
Speaker 4: humiliating or degrading treatment, which is maybe the most common
Speaker 4: by numbers thing that I see happening at Gaza. Right, certainly,
Speaker 4: not like as it does, you know, the killing is
Speaker 4: much more offensive, but like there's so many examples of
Speaker 4: like outrages upon personal dignity, you know, the taking of hostages,
Speaker 4: the passing of sentences, and the carrying out of executions
Speaker 4: without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court. And
Speaker 4: then you get to paragraph two, there's a note like
Speaker 4: after this all of this stuff that like, you're not
Speaker 4: supposed to do violence to life in person, committing outrages
Speaker 4: upon personal dignity, taking hostages, doing summary executions. And then
Speaker 4: there's a note that like, this does not apply. This
Speaker 4: applies only to armed conflicts and not situations of internal
Speaker 4: disturbances and tensions such as riots, isolated and sporadic acts
Speaker 4: of violence or other acts of a similar nature, which
Speaker 4: is fun to me because it's like the international agreements
Speaker 4: like well, I mean, countries can do this to their
Speaker 4: own people if they want, right, Like, that's not a problem,
Speaker 4: you know, go, which I guess is probably we're in
Speaker 4: a gray area with some of what Israel does to
Speaker 4: Palestinians here because like one of the things that has
Speaker 4: been happening for a long time is continue to happen,
Speaker 4: as there are presently ninety five hundred at least Palestinians
Speaker 4: from the occupied West Bank in captivity prior to October seventh,
Speaker 4: that was just fifty two hundred people, so this escalated
Speaker 4: significantly after that. Most of these were people who had
Speaker 4: been arrested before for stuff literally like waving a flag
Speaker 4: or like posting on social media in sympathy with Gaza.
Speaker 4: Fifteen of these people have died since October seventh. A
Speaker 4: number of them have been tortured and beaten. This is
Speaker 4: the kind of thing that could be a war crime,
Speaker 4: except for again, you have that little note that like
Speaker 4: this doesn't apply to internal disturbances in the West Bank,
Speaker 4: you can say that that's an internal disturbance, right, which
Speaker 4: is you know, shit, yeah, yeah, I don't love that.
Speaker 4: That's the way that that works. And yeah, it's it's
Speaker 4: one of those things. And another thing, you know, to
Speaker 4: be fair here, one thing I should note, because we're
Speaker 4: about to talk about the actual ICC investigation that's going on,
Speaker 4: the taking of hostages is a war crime. So it's
Speaker 4: there's been a lot of talk about because there's been
Speaker 4: disinformation about how many civilians did Hamas kill, right, like.
Speaker 2: How many we had that bleak period. If we were
Speaker 2: arguing looking at dead babies and arguing where those babies
Speaker 2: beheaded or their heads just come off because they burnt
Speaker 2: to like, Hamas definitely committed war crimes, and we know
Speaker 2: that because they admitted to them. Because they the Hamas
Speaker 2: does not deny that they took hostages. That's a war crime.
Speaker 2: Right Again, should you be as offended by the taking
Speaker 2: of hostage as the killing of thirty five thousand people
Speaker 2: from the sky? Well, no, But I would also say
Speaker 2: that the taking of hostages is not like tear gassing
Speaker 2: a sniper. I think that that's bad. You shouldn't take
Speaker 2: civilian hostages. Yeah, that makes sense as a war crime
Speaker 2: to me. Now this kind of leads us to the
Speaker 2: crux of our discussion, which is like, should you actually
Speaker 2: care about what a war crime is and isn't?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: And I'm going to argue yes, even though, as we've
Speaker 2: made the case here, it's not a perfect thing. This
Speaker 2: is not a perfect Whether or not something is a
Speaker 2: war crime does not make it a perfect measure of morality.
Speaker 2: I don't think a soldier tossing a tear gas grenade
Speaker 2: and a sniper because they don't want to get shot
Speaker 2: by a sniper is like a thing that is horrifying
Speaker 2: to me. And I do think that, for example, the
Speaker 2: use of shrapnel shells is horrifying to me, having seen
Speaker 2: what happens to people when they get gutted by shrapnel.
Speaker 2: I don't think those are good, and I know what
Speaker 2: I think is a worse thing to do. But even
Speaker 2: with that taken into account, I think that a lot
Speaker 2: of this does matter, and that it is good that
Speaker 2: the ICC has recently announced a set of warrants both
Speaker 2: against Benjamin Netanyahu and against three Hamas leaders, right. And
Speaker 2: I saw some people saying when this got announced that
Speaker 2: there were like these warrants against these Hamas leaders alongside
Speaker 2: net Yahoo and his defense minister Yo have gallant that like, oh,
Speaker 2: they're both sides in it. No, Hamas took hostages. If
Speaker 2: the ICC is going after Israel for its clear and
Speaker 2: obvious war crimes, we know that Hamas took hostages. It's
Speaker 2: not wrong that the ICC would issue a warrant there.
Speaker 2: That's their job, right, And I think that that actually
Speaker 2: it's kind of important to do that because if you don't,
Speaker 2: the Israelis are going to be like, well, they took hostages.
Speaker 2: That's definitely a war crime. The ICC is invalid because
Speaker 2: they're not prosecuting this.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: The reality is that not only has Israel is now
Speaker 2: Israel kind of gearing up to go to war with
Speaker 2: the International Criminal Court, that they have been doing that
Speaker 2: for years prior to the to October seventh, right, and
Speaker 2: in fact, a couple of years ago, I think in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, the ICC launched an investigation into Israeli
Speaker 2: actions in Gaza.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: This started when the former prosecutor of the ICC, Fatu Bensuda,
Speaker 2: made the call to like yes, start a formal investigation,
Speaker 2: and that culminated a couple of weeks ago in the
Speaker 2: ICC issuing an arrest warrant for Benjamin Nan Yahoo. And
Speaker 2: when that process started, there is evidence that the former
Speaker 2: head of the Massad, the guy who was running the
Speaker 2: massade at the time, Yo C. Cohen, made contact with
Speaker 2: an ICC prosecutor and basically threatened him. And I'm actually
Speaker 2: I'm going to read a quote from a Guardian article here.
Speaker 2: Cohen's personal involvement in the operation against the ICC took
Speaker 2: place when he was the director of the Massad. His
Speaker 2: activities were authorized at a high level and justified on
Speaker 2: the basis the court posed a threat of prosecutions against
Speaker 2: military personnel. According to a senior Israeli official. Another Israeli
Speaker 2: source briefed on the operation against Bensuda said that the
Speaker 2: massad's objective was to compromise the prosecutter or enlist her
Speaker 2: as someone who could cooperate with Israel's demands. A third
Speaker 2: source familiar with the operation said Cohen was acting as
Speaker 2: Netanya Who's unofficial messenger. Cohen who was one of Netanya
Speaker 2: Who's closest allies at the time, and it is emerging
Speaker 2: as a political force in his own right, and Israel
Speaker 2: personally led them as sod's involvement in an almost decade
Speaker 2: long campaign by the country to undermine the court. According
Speaker 2: to account shared with ICC officials, he's alleged to have
Speaker 2: told her, you should help us and let us take
Speaker 2: care of you. You don't want to be getting into
Speaker 2: things that could compromise your security or that if your family,
Speaker 2: which is very much mob shit, right like, it couldn't
Speaker 2: be more mob shit. And it's like, I don't actually
Speaker 2: think that is a war crime. I don't even know,
Speaker 2: because I guess they didn't even think anyone would do that,
Speaker 2: right like that, you would just like, hey, you know,
Speaker 2: we could break your fucking legs, you know, misprosecutor a
Speaker 2: lady like we the Masad. I don't even know that
Speaker 2: that because, at least from my reading over of the
Speaker 2: Rome Statutes, that's not listed. Maybe they should add that
Speaker 2: one in there. But yeah, this has been a brief
Speaker 2: overview of what be a war crime. I hope you
Speaker 2: find this helpful in your discussions of what be a
Speaker 2: war crime. But I do kind of want to end
Speaker 2: on the note again, does any of this matter? What's
Speaker 2: going to Well? No, do I think that, like Benjamin
Speaker 2: Natanyaho's going to actually be taken to Denhag and fucking chains.
Speaker 2: I mean maybe someday. Actually, I don't think that that's impossible.
Speaker 2: I don't think we should give up hope for that,
Speaker 2: and this is a necessary precursor to that. And I
Speaker 2: think it's good. I think the evidence that this is valuable.
Speaker 2: If you actually, if you want my best case for
Speaker 2: why this matters, Israel spent ten years previous to the
Speaker 2: announcement of this warrant running devoting Masad resources to an
Speaker 2: undergrand campaign to sabotage and threaten the ICC. That means
Speaker 2: they see this as a threat. They consider prosecutions like
Speaker 2: this to be dangerous to them. And that means you
Speaker 2: should at least passively support what the ICC is doing here.
Speaker 2: Right net Yahoo's regime considers this a threat to their operations,
Speaker 2: to what they're doing in Gaza, and I think that's
Speaker 2: enough of a reason to think that it's good.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if they think it's going to stop them murdering civilians,
Speaker 4: then yeah, it's good that we don't need to beat
Speaker 4: around the bush too much. Like anyway, Yeah, it would
Speaker 4: be nice to see someone who wasn't from Africa prosecuted
Speaker 4: at the Hague.
Speaker 2: That would be Hey, yeah, they got those serbians, right,
Speaker 2: I did get they got a couple of serbs.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's true.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, yeah, let's throw an Israeli or too and
Speaker 2: there and yeah some of those some OSK guys. I'm like,
Speaker 2: look something, let's try to do something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, maybe maybe let's let's make a statement that
Speaker 4: it's bad to murder and kidnap civilians, it's bad to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. We're very critical of the idea
Speaker 2: that there ever was a rules based international order, but
Speaker 2: I think we should try that sometime.
Speaker 4: It's been nice to have some rules.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway, James, anything else to add before we cut
Speaker 2: out of here.
Speaker 4: Don't engage in war crimes.
Speaker 2: Don't commit a war crime. Yeah, don't commit a war crime.
Speaker 2: Avoid that if you can.
Speaker 4: Don't engage in war, if you didn't have to, really.
Speaker 2: Try to avoid war. Because one of the things reading
Speaker 2: through this, I think about all the things I've seen
Speaker 2: that I'm like, well, I could argue that that was
Speaker 2: a war cry. You know, they happen a lot, it
Speaker 2: turns out, or at least edge cases, are most of
Speaker 2: the things you see in war. Yes, anyway, we're done. Hey,
Speaker 2: We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
Speaker 2: now until the heat death of the universe.
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