Speaker 1: 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: Sometimes there is a topic that is too big for
Speaker 3: just one podcaster. Sometimes a simple medical podcaster, a simple
Speaker 3: wartime journalist can't handle a topic on their own. They
Speaker 3: need to combine forces. A special team up has to happen.
Speaker 3: And that, my friends, is what's happening today on this
Speaker 3: special crossover edition of the House of Pod And it
Speaker 3: could happen here in hop Ich Hoppitch special myself, doctor
Speaker 3: cave Hote Hope I'm saying there correctly, and James Stout
Speaker 3: are going to be talking to you, along with two
Speaker 3: very special guests about what's happening out there in the protest,
Speaker 3: What risks the protesters are facing, what health concerns we
Speaker 3: have for them, how they can best prepare and more.
Speaker 4: James, Hey, buddy. Hey, it's nice. Nice to be podcasting
Speaker 4: with you again.
Speaker 5: You really enjoy our team ups here, our special Marvel
Speaker 5: team ups that we do.
Speaker 4: It's a fait, it's a fun one. You're my favorite collaborator.
Speaker 5: Covey. Hey, I'm going to.
Speaker 3: Take that as total sincerity, even though I'm not entirely sure.
Speaker 3: So I thank you for that. Yeah, because I think
Speaker 3: that sounded sincere enough. I like these I like the
Speaker 3: me too.
Speaker 5: I do too.
Speaker 3: Let's introduce our guests. We have some very special guests.
Speaker 3: I will actually ask you guys to introduce yourselves. Let's
Speaker 3: start with you, Miriam. Can you tell us a little
Speaker 3: bit about who you are and what your background in
Speaker 3: this field is.
Speaker 6: Sure, Hi, I'm Miriam, she or they pronouns. My background
Speaker 6: in the field of podcasting is that I'm with the
Speaker 6: collective Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, which puts out the
Speaker 6: podcast Live Like the World Is Dying, as well as
Speaker 6: the podcast Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness and the spectacle.
Speaker 6: And my experience in the field of what I think
Speaker 6: we're here to talk about today is that I've been
Speaker 6: a street metic for over a decade, which means I've
Speaker 6: treated a lot of injuries on people who've been messed
Speaker 6: up by interactions with police.
Speaker 3: I mean, we're going to talk about this more, but
Speaker 3: my first question is, is it pretty much ninety percent
Speaker 3: or more violence from the police that you encounter. Do
Speaker 3: you ever encounter anything else, like violence amongst protesters themselves
Speaker 3: or something else that happens along the way, or is
Speaker 3: it solely what you're experiencing is treating violence from the
Speaker 3: side of the police.
Speaker 6: So that's a good question. It is mostly violence from police.
Speaker 6: Sometimes it is violence from non state affiliated or or
Speaker 6: at least not on duty fascists so you know, you're
Speaker 6: proud boys, you know, other people like that, or just
Speaker 6: generally sort of hostile right wing actors. Sometimes it is also,
Speaker 6: you know, sort of underlying medical stuff more so, like
Speaker 6: somebody has been out at the march all day and
Speaker 6: they didn't bring their medication with them and so they're
Speaker 6: having a seizure, and you know, then there's also environmental stuff.
Speaker 6: You hate, stroke, your hypothermia, you're I was running to
Speaker 6: catch up with the march and I stepped off the curb,
Speaker 6: weird ow, you know, stuff like that. But in terms
Speaker 6: of violence, yeah, it's it's mostly coming from the cops.
Speaker 6: I've I've certainly never seen a friendly fire incident of
Speaker 6: violence amongst amongst protesters. I'm sure it could happen, but
Speaker 6: but I have not seen it. I've seen people that
Speaker 6: I'm in the streets with or wherever with attacked by
Speaker 6: by people who wish them harm, who are people from
Speaker 6: the state or you know, like I said, not currently
Speaker 6: on duty as cops, but you know, basically cops.
Speaker 3: No, I'm digressing too far, and I need to introduce
Speaker 3: her other guests. But I have another follow up question
Speaker 3: and I need to ask. I'm so curious, Please, have
Speaker 3: you ever had to take care of, say, someone on
Speaker 3: the other side who's been injured.
Speaker 6: So as anybody who works in any kind of emergency,
Speaker 6: you know, medical response will tell you. Anybody who's an
Speaker 6: a MT or even anybody who's like a lifeguard, the
Speaker 6: first thing you do before you approach a patient is
Speaker 6: established scene safety. So if a Nazi has been hurt,
Speaker 6: it is not safe for me to approach that patient
Speaker 6: because there's a Nazi over there.
Speaker 3: I see, Okay, I think I'm picking up what you're
Speaker 3: putting down on that one.
Speaker 5: So it has not happened.
Speaker 6: Yeah, anybody who is acting as a street medic is
Speaker 6: acting under what called good Samaritan laws, you know, which
Speaker 6: protect you from any kind of bad outcome. If you
Speaker 6: start taking care of somebody, you know, start helping somebody
Speaker 6: out in the streets based on whatever train you have,
Speaker 6: you know. Same thing like if if somebody collapses at
Speaker 6: a bus stop and you start doing CPR based on
Speaker 6: the Red Cross class you took, that's good Samaritan stuff.
Speaker 6: Same way, it does not obligate you to intervene, especially
Speaker 6: in approaching somebody who is actively seeking to do you harm.
Speaker 6: So I would not consider that within my within my lane.
Speaker 5: Understood.
Speaker 3: Well, let's introduce our second guest. We have doctor Richard Pharaoh,
Speaker 3: who is a doctor in the Los Angeles area and
Speaker 3: is a family practice physician.
Speaker 5: May I call you Richard? Uh? Yeah, you may? Okay,
Speaker 5: very good, Richard, welcome to the show. Thank you very much.
Speaker 7: Gotty, it's a pleasure to be on. You know, you
Speaker 7: kind of mentioned it already. I'm Kelly Medicine. I've also
Speaker 7: experienced in street medicine in the LA area. Also, you know,
Speaker 7: this is obviously something that's really important to me right now,
Speaker 7: given everything that's been going on. In the city and
Speaker 7: also important for me just giving the fact that I'm
Speaker 7: a Latino, I'm a proud Coaster, Rikan Cuban, and just
Speaker 7: that's part of the huge reason why I'm in medicine.
Speaker 7: So I'm really happy to have an opportunity to talk about,
Speaker 7: you know, the ice protests and the stuff that's been
Speaker 7: going on to protect our community.
Speaker 3: That's great to hear. Can you tell us a little
Speaker 3: bit about what you've been involved with recently down in
Speaker 3: Los Angeles?
Speaker 7: So I as far as what I've been involved in
Speaker 7: in Los Angeles, you know, I've been coordinating with some
Speaker 7: of my colleagues who I knew from residency and just
Speaker 7: other colleagues just who are all involved in social justice,
Speaker 7: as well as the CIR, the Physicians Union, you know,
Speaker 7: who are engaged in trying to like provide medical support
Speaker 7: to the protests in the area. So I've had experience
Speaker 7: working on some of the protests that have occurred both
Speaker 7: in LA and OC.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's really good to hear.
Speaker 4: I think people will have been spending a lot of
Speaker 4: time like watching footage the protests right in the last
Speaker 4: I know what we weekend now, fuck knows, it seems
Speaker 4: like a long time. I haven't been sleeping very much.
Speaker 4: Give or take eight to twelve years.
Speaker 6: Time has meant nothing. Yeah, March of twenty.
Speaker 4: Twenty, yes exactly, yea, it is sixteenth or twenty twenty,
Speaker 4: and here we are. I people would have seen a
Speaker 4: lot of people get hurt, right, And I like, as
Speaker 4: a journalist, like I was in La last week, you
Speaker 4: kind of tend to get towards the more violent end
Speaker 4: of things because that is our job. Most people who
Speaker 4: go to protest don't get hurt, right, And I don't
Speaker 4: want people to like hear anything we're saying today and think,
Speaker 4: oh God, I'm going to get fucked up, because most
Speaker 4: people don't get fucked up. And like my stunts, You
Speaker 4: don't fight fascist because you think you're going to win
Speaker 4: or you think you might not get hurt. You fight
Speaker 4: fascist because they are fascists. And sometimes people do get hurt.
Speaker 4: So let's talk about the ways that people get hurt.
Speaker 4: Either of you is welcome to answer this, but like,
Speaker 4: what are some of the common mechanisms of injury that
Speaker 4: you see when you are out there street mega King,
Speaker 4: when when the cops are out there hurting people.
Speaker 7: I would say that like in terms of the things
Speaker 7: that we would typically see. I just want to start
Speaker 7: off by saying, like, absolutely, we're not out there just
Speaker 7: because we know that we're going to be successful in
Speaker 7: any type of advocacy. If that was the case, then
Speaker 7: we wouldn't have that many people, you know on that front.
Speaker 7: You know a lot of people know that it's you
Speaker 7: might be losing ground, but you're not there because you're
Speaker 7: trying to when you're doing it because you know that
Speaker 7: you want to be on the right side of history.
Speaker 7: You want to do the thing that you believe to
Speaker 7: be morally right. As far as like the type of
Speaker 7: injuries that you would typically see, I think in order
Speaker 7: to answer this question, I would kind of break it off.
Speaker 5: Into two sections.
Speaker 7: Like you have mainly protests that have not evolved into
Speaker 7: violent confrontations with law enforcement, and you have protests where
Speaker 7: things like you know, for instance, right control agents have
Speaker 7: been deployed in like the like the non you know,
Speaker 7: dangerous side of things, Like you might have the kind
Speaker 7: of stuff that you would encounter in any sort of
Speaker 7: major events. You know, you're gonna deal with dehydration, You're
Speaker 7: going to deal with people who are like in in
Speaker 7: overcrowded areas that might you know, accidentally fall hit and
Speaker 7: trip over one another. In those kind of circumstances, you know,
Speaker 7: when we enter into the space where you know, riot
Speaker 7: control agents are being involved, the quote unquote less lethals
Speaker 7: non lethals, which I'm going to kind of go into later,
Speaker 7: is a bit of a non uh a misnomer. In
Speaker 7: those circumstances, we look at like chemical exposure to things
Speaker 7: like to your gas. You know, there's a lot of
Speaker 7: different ways that that manifests that type of exposure, and
Speaker 7: we can kind of get into that a little bit
Speaker 7: as well. And then also we have you know, projectile
Speaker 7: weapons like rubber bullets, you know, flash bangs, those type
Speaker 7: of things that you might encounter, you know, like sort
Speaker 7: of blunt trauma to people's bodies.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you'd like to add Miriam.
Speaker 6: I mean, first of all, like you're doing great out there.
Speaker 6: Good for you for out there. It's a hell of
Speaker 6: a time. There's regional variation, I think to some of
Speaker 6: the stuff that we see. So I am based in
Speaker 6: New York City. You know, not all of this the
Speaker 6: work I've done has been in New York City, but
Speaker 6: most of it has and in New York city. We
Speaker 6: don't have tear gas. They just don't do it here
Speaker 6: because the police found out after deploying tear gas extensively
Speaker 6: during the RNC that the thing about tear gas is
Speaker 6: it gets sucked into vents, and when it gets sucked
Speaker 6: into vents, it gets on all kinds of people in
Speaker 6: the subway and in buildings, and that causes lawsuits. And
Speaker 6: the NYPD does not enjoy that, so they use pepper
Speaker 6: spray instead, because pepper spray is more directed, it doesn't
Speaker 6: linger in the air the same way. You hit the
Speaker 6: people that you are trying to hit, you know, and
Speaker 6: anybody else who's walking by, and also your buddies who
Speaker 6: are standing next to you because you fired into the wind,
Speaker 6: which is always a good time.
Speaker 5: Any such cases, Yeah.
Speaker 6: So many, There's a there's a whole series of what
Speaker 6: we are calling locally peppa pigs, which are it's what
Speaker 6: you think it is. So yeah, we see a lot
Speaker 6: of a lot of pepper sprite. We also, because one
Speaker 6: of the primary weapons of the NYPD are just sheer,
Speaker 6: overwhelming numbers, we see a lot of just direct hands
Speaker 6: on violence, just cops hitting people, punching people, throwing people
Speaker 6: to the ground, we see a lot of very rough takedowns.
Speaker 6: Now if you're you know, acting as a street medic
Speaker 6: and in that situation, you don't get to treat those
Speaker 6: people because if they are taking down by a cop,
Speaker 6: they are then swarmed by many other cops and they
Speaker 6: get taken away. Then that's something that we might see
Speaker 6: when we meet that person later at jail support. But
Speaker 6: the other weapon that we used to see quite a
Speaker 6: bit but haven't in more recent years is the l RAT,
Speaker 6: which is a sound cannon. They do still use it,
Speaker 6: but they use it to like make announcements and annoy people.
Speaker 6: They use it to like make obnoxiously loud announcements, but
Speaker 6: not to blast out people's ear drums, which was sort
Speaker 6: of its weaponized form. We haven't seen that recently though
Speaker 6: police will willie you know, they all carry tasers. You
Speaker 6: don't tend to see a lot of that at protests,
Speaker 6: but it's certainly something that we're constantly aware that they
Speaker 6: have the ability to do. But yeah, it is here.
Speaker 6: It's mostly pepper spray, nightsticks, fists, knees, you know that
Speaker 6: kind of thing.
Speaker 3: I would assume that a lot of what they'd do,
Speaker 3: like for example, tear gas was, to my understanding, first
Speaker 3: developed in World War One really to cause confusion amongst
Speaker 3: the enemy. And what I assume a lot of these
Speaker 3: things that they're using, the sound canons, is to create
Speaker 3: panic and confusion and hopefully get people to run and
Speaker 3: move and in mass, unorganized ways. And I wonder if
Speaker 3: you're seeing crush injuries, if you're seeing injuries related to
Speaker 3: just the people moving and being scattered around and running
Speaker 3: in different directions, is that something that you that you
Speaker 3: have seen in this process, either of you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, just real quick, like to the first thing
Speaker 6: you said, the absolute like the purpose of every police
Speaker 6: weapon is to cause fear. One of the reasons that
Speaker 6: I think they so often use things like to your
Speaker 6: gas and pepper spray when they could simply choose to
Speaker 6: not is like one, because they have it because their
Speaker 6: budgets are outrageous and they have, you know, all the
Speaker 6: weapons they could ever dream of, and why not you know,
Speaker 6: well we have it. But I think that the other
Speaker 6: reason they use it is because it does freak people out.
Speaker 6: It scares people, and so you know a lot of
Speaker 6: people have had like a big dude shove them before.
Speaker 6: You know, that's like not a super unfamiliar situation. It's
Speaker 6: not a great situation. People don't like it, but they
Speaker 6: kind of they're familiar with it. They're familiar with the
Speaker 6: concept getting sprayed by a mysterious chemical that makes you
Speaker 6: feel a thing you've never really felt before. That's a
Speaker 6: lot scarier. And you don't know what's in it. You
Speaker 6: don't know what's on your body, you don't know why
Speaker 6: it hurts the way it hurts like. You just know, like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 6: I mean, I guess, I guess this is what tear
Speaker 6: gas feels like. I guess this is what pepper spray
Speaker 6: feels like. Yeah, it's frightening, and yeah, people absolutely get
Speaker 6: hurt running away it makes it difficult to see. Like
Speaker 6: squeezing your eyes shut is like a very immediate reaction.
Speaker 6: So people run, They lose whoever they were at the
Speaker 6: action with, they get separated from their group, they get disoriented,
Speaker 6: they may be having trouble breathing. They may be panicking
Speaker 6: because they're having trouble breathing. Then they're having trouble breathing
Speaker 6: because they're panicking, you know. So yeah, you do absolutely
Speaker 6: see all of that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, I really want to second what Miriam
Speaker 7: has been saying here. You know, as far as like
Speaker 7: the most common agent that you see in tear gas
Speaker 7: in the United States at this time, it's believed to
Speaker 7: be agents CS and this this is something like you mentioned,
Speaker 7: it was developed right around the time of World War Two,
Speaker 7: and they started like be coming into effect in the
Speaker 7: in the in the late fifties. A point of thought
Speaker 7: for this is it was actually made legal for use
Speaker 7: in warfare in the nineties by the Geneva Convention. So
Speaker 7: you don't see the US or other armies like using
Speaker 7: this on soldiers, but we're using it in protests.
Speaker 5: Well you don't.
Speaker 6: You don't necessarily see the US military following the Geneva Convention.
Speaker 5: Okay, well we can. That's a fair point. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Of the wars of law, the TAA gas is one
Speaker 4: that it is walls of law. Those of wool people
Speaker 4: do be using TA gas sometimes, but yeah, they shouldn't be.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you're right.
Speaker 3: Is first in the Geneva Conventions in nineteen twenty five,
Speaker 3: but then nineteen ninety seven specifically it was prohibited. The
Speaker 3: thought behind that is they did it because they didn't
Speaker 3: want someone to get one gas and not know exactly
Speaker 3: what it was. And then use the really nasty stuff
Speaker 3: like sirin gas, et cetera. And the reason our police
Speaker 3: are able to do it on our protesters is because
Speaker 3: they're pretty confident that our protesters don't have it would
Speaker 3: use siren gas, so they feel they feel free to
Speaker 3: use it at our Yeah. But speaking of sound canons
Speaker 3: and disturbing noises being shot into your ear holes commercials,
Speaker 3: we'll be right back.
Speaker 5: All right, we're back. We should talk about noxious gases.
Speaker 4: There has been this persistent rumor, I don't just mean
Speaker 4: in the last link ten days, there's been a persistent
Speaker 4: rumor every time that people have been taar gused that
Speaker 4: this time the cops are using super tear gas, special
Speaker 4: tea gas, cancer ta gas. To be clear, like the
Speaker 4: effects of tear gas on people, especially to my understanding,
Speaker 4: like people who menstrate, are fucking long term and nasty.
Speaker 4: So let's just address like what are the reagents in
Speaker 4: tag gas and what are some of the outcomes we
Speaker 4: can expect short term and long term? And then do
Speaker 4: we suspect that the cups are using super tags this time?
Speaker 7: Well, I guess in terms of like the agent, like
Speaker 7: we kind of mentioned it a little bit ago, agencs
Speaker 7: the more complicated long name, oh chlora benze laden melanitril.
Speaker 5: So this is actually.
Speaker 7: It's so that's absolutely the kind of thing you talk
Speaker 7: about in dinner conversations. But the compound itself, it's actually
Speaker 7: not in a gas form. It's actually a solid. It's
Speaker 7: a crystalline substance that's released that's aerosolized after any type
Speaker 7: of like explosion from you know, a grenade or canister,
Speaker 7: and it's as far as you know the types of
Speaker 7: things that you will experience. It takes effect in the
Speaker 7: first twenty sixty seconds of contact with the body. It's
Speaker 7: a nucleophilic substance, so that means it will adhere to tears,
Speaker 7: it will adhere to moisture on your skin, like sweat,
Speaker 7: any type of like saliva or mucus, and like the
Speaker 7: first things you'll typically notice are the tearing, the redness, burning,
Speaker 7: blurred vision in your eyes. Specifically on your skin, you
Speaker 7: could develop burns or rash. A contact dermatitis has also
Speaker 7: been associated with a development of this on your skin,
Speaker 7: burning irritation in your mouth. You can also develop running nose.
Speaker 7: The more kind of more serious, long term effects that
Speaker 7: can be more systemic you can actually develop shortness of breath, wheezing,
Speaker 7: or chest tightness. You can also develop nausea or vomiting
Speaker 7: if you ingest much of it while you're in the
Speaker 7: protest and you kind of already brought it up as well. Unfortunately,
Speaker 7: we don't have a lot of systemic research that has
Speaker 7: been done on the impacts of agents like CS that
Speaker 7: are in tear gas on people, but we have a
Speaker 7: couple of things that have come up about pregnancy outcomes.
Speaker 7: We do see increased rates of uter and cramping, menstrual bleeding,
Speaker 7: breast tenderness, and delayed menstrual ramping as well in pregnancy.
Speaker 7: We also don't know how well it crosses into breast milk,
Speaker 7: so you know, it's this kind of challenging question and
Speaker 7: the CDC is official like stance on it is this
Speaker 7: idea that like they don't believe that it crosses. But again,
Speaker 7: we don't have that research, so we can't know for sure.
Speaker 4: Great cool, good thing to be fogging Live city blogs with.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, we don't know everything it does, so probably
Speaker 6: some of it is fine.
Speaker 3: You know, James, when you're mentioning how it keeps coming
Speaker 3: up and there's these concerns of there being.
Speaker 5: Like a cause and cancer.
Speaker 3: We have no proof of that right now, but I
Speaker 3: mean we really don't know, so it is a little
Speaker 3: concerning long term, especially journalists like yourself who are exposed
Speaker 3: to it a lot, so that that is something I
Speaker 3: would love to see.
Speaker 5: But I mean, how you're going to study it? Who
Speaker 5: going to find that? Yeah, I mean I don't know.
Speaker 5: Rfka Junior might who knows.
Speaker 3: It might be like we're not funding real research anymore
Speaker 3: like vaccine.
Speaker 4: So we get on the right pubcosts, we can probably
Speaker 4: make that happen.
Speaker 3: So before we move off of the gas, let's just
Speaker 3: talk about, yeah, treatment of it and what you what
Speaker 3: you will do out there in the field someone comes
Speaker 3: to you, and let's try to address some of the
Speaker 3: most common misconceptions about what you should be treating or
Speaker 3: how you should be treating.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I'm so ready to go. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 6: Since forever, there have been like rumors that there are
Speaker 6: these I think because of sort of the way that
Speaker 6: it is mysterious, like the cops have these, like you know,
Speaker 6: containers of this awful poisonous, magical potion that they spray
Speaker 6: on you, and then we have to find the antidote.
Speaker 6: So things that I have heard as being good for
Speaker 6: tear gas and pepper spray include raw onion, lemon juice,
Speaker 6: apple cider, vinegar, Coca cola, avocado.
Speaker 5: Delicious, it sounds sounds.
Speaker 6: A nice great actually, and then the classic milk as
Speaker 6: well as maylocks. My personal favorite is when somebody like
Speaker 6: jumps into correct somebody on milk and it's like no, no, no,
Speaker 6: actually it's milk of magnesia, not regular milk.
Speaker 5: So oh you got to get it from which.
Speaker 6: Is what you actually do is flush out the eyes
Speaker 6: with water. I mean, that's it. That's the only thing.
Speaker 6: It's water. The number of things that should go into
Speaker 6: a human eye are basically water and any any medicine
Speaker 6: that is designed for the human eye. And saline solution,
Speaker 6: I guess you know. And definitely you could do an
Speaker 6: eye flush with saline. It's just that if you have
Speaker 6: saline in your bag, it weighs just as much as water,
Speaker 6: and you can't drink it when you get tired.
Speaker 5: You can, and way you can, but it's.
Speaker 6: Not recommended and you can't refill it from a tap.
Speaker 3: You can drink anything, James, if you're not a cow,
Speaker 3: but if you have.
Speaker 6: A bottle of water, you can do a bunch of
Speaker 6: eye flushes, and then when it starts to run low,
Speaker 6: you can refill it from a tap because that has
Speaker 6: water in it too. It's very readily available water in
Speaker 6: most places. And all of the other things that are
Speaker 6: out there that people will tell you should use, you
Speaker 6: should not use. I have never seen any good evidence
Speaker 6: that any of them are better than water at getting
Speaker 6: pepper spray or cheer gus out of your eye. All
Speaker 6: of them are kind of predicated on this idea that
Speaker 6: there's like a chemical reaction you are trying to affect.
Speaker 6: And then that is sort of further based on the
Speaker 6: idea that the reason this stuff hurts is because it
Speaker 6: is acidic. Because I think people think, like, what's a
Speaker 6: chemical that burns acid?
Speaker 9: Right?
Speaker 6: These are not acidic. That is not how they work.
Speaker 6: They are chemical irritants. And you don't want an acid
Speaker 6: base reaction in your eye anyway.
Speaker 5: You want to be doing chemistry experiments in your eye.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you actually usually wear goggles when you do chemistry experiments.
Speaker 6: I'm not like a chemist.
Speaker 3: But memium water sure is great, But what about all
Speaker 3: that fluoride you're getting into your eyeballs.
Speaker 5: Okay, have you thought about that.
Speaker 6: That'll prevent eye cavities, Richard?
Speaker 5: Anything else to add to that.
Speaker 7: I know, I think you hit the nail on the head,
Speaker 7: and I think that when I look at what physicians
Speaker 7: typically recommend in terms of response to your gas, I
Speaker 7: always think back on the doctor Glockham fleckin thread that
Speaker 7: became very popular on Twitter. I'd be very interested to
Speaker 7: hear what your thoughts are.
Speaker 5: We're on that.
Speaker 7: Miriam I think like one of the things that tended
Speaker 7: to come from from that particular thread because he does
Speaker 7: have experiences as an ophthalmologist. He mentioned washing your eyes
Speaker 7: with baby shampoo and rinsing copiously. I think like the
Speaker 7: challenge with that is obviously, like what Miriaman mentioned. One,
Speaker 7: water saline are the better options for for irrigating your eyes,
Speaker 7: especially after exposure. For one, the fact that it's you know,
Speaker 7: you never know what else, like it's it's better to
Speaker 7: avoid any other type of irritants that you could, you know,
Speaker 7: be exposed to your eye. Also the fact, like we
Speaker 7: already mentioned, the fact that the agents into your gas
Speaker 7: there they're nuclear filth, meaning they're they're attracted to water.
Speaker 7: So by using water itself. You are effectively going to
Speaker 7: help to irrigate it. And you know, we typically recommend
Speaker 7: anywhere upwards and twenty minutes for that type of exposure.
Speaker 7: And then as far as I'm not sure if you
Speaker 7: mentioned milk already, Maria.
Speaker 5: Milk counts me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we can't mention it enough eyeball cheese.
Speaker 5: We cannot mention eyeball cheese.
Speaker 9: And what.
Speaker 8: Is the.
Speaker 7: Let's let's think about what the context of where we
Speaker 7: are in a protest. It's very typically outdoors for many hours,
Speaker 7: usually in summertime. Exactly kind of like the idea of
Speaker 7: putting this you know, this this culture on people's eyes, like.
Speaker 5: I think yogurt, actually yogurt.
Speaker 7: You may as well, you may as well go and
Speaker 7: get some Greek yogurt and pour it on your eyes, so,
Speaker 7: you know, he really gets back to the idea of
Speaker 7: like constant irrigation. Clean water is perfectly fine. If you
Speaker 7: have water at the protests, usually the best thing to
Speaker 7: do is have the types of water bottles that have
Speaker 7: like a flip off cap, so that way you can easily,
Speaker 7: you know, pour it over their face and then recap
Speaker 7: it for later use on someone else or yourself I
Speaker 7: think the other thing too that's really important to discuss is,
Speaker 7: you know, because it's this solid aerosolized substance, it can
Speaker 7: sometimes adhere to your clothing, So you know, there's a
Speaker 7: couple of different approaches.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 7: Physicians for Human Rights has a PDF that I strongly
Speaker 7: encourage anybody who's listening to a review if you find
Speaker 7: yourself in the position of either being a protester at
Speaker 7: a protest or being a medic at a protest, they
Speaker 7: recommend if you've been exposed to your gas to hang
Speaker 7: your clothing afterwards in a heavily ventilated place for up
Speaker 7: to forty eight hours. If you're not able to do that,
Speaker 7: placing your clothing in a plastic bag, including your shoes,
Speaker 7: outside and not mixing it with any of your other
Speaker 7: non exposed clothing is the ideal response afterwards.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll add when doctor Glockinflecken was on our show
Speaker 3: talking about this back during George Floyd, we discussed it
Speaker 3: and the other thing that he recommended, and he is
Speaker 3: actually not just a very very funny internet person, he's
Speaker 3: also a very good ophthalmologist. And he also recommended initially
Speaker 3: when it happens soon as you can blink rapidly. That
Speaker 3: really helps in the sate the tear response. You're still
Speaker 3: gonna need water, but it's going to help start get
Speaker 3: that jump starter for you, and it's going to require
Speaker 3: a lot of water. About one to two leaders is
Speaker 3: generally what people will say. So it's hard to have
Speaker 3: that much with you on hand when you're out there protesting,
Speaker 3: but if you're able to, I feel like water is
Speaker 3: one of the more important things you can bring with you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So to the thing about the baby shampoo. First
Speaker 6: of all, Yeah, I think the recommendation with that is
Speaker 6: to wash the skin around the eyes with the baby shampoo,
Speaker 6: not not directly in the eyes, but that that's like
Speaker 6: a less harsh way of removing the chemicals from the
Speaker 6: skin there, because you would definitely wash skin with soap
Speaker 6: and water, but I could see maybe using like a
Speaker 6: gentler soap directly around the eyes. That makes sense as
Speaker 6: far as like my technique with doing an eyeflush in
Speaker 6: the streets, a continual twenty minute irrigation just is not feasible.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 6: Sometimes at big actions, you know, medics will set up
Speaker 6: clinic space, says Tens, stuff like that, and occasionally very
Speaker 6: Occasionally you can do the like true gold standard of
Speaker 6: eye irrigation, which is twenty minutes of continual saline irrigation,
Speaker 6: where you like have a bag of saline like in
Speaker 6: a hospital and you plug it into a nasal canula
Speaker 6: and you tape that to the bridge of the nose
Speaker 6: and just let the person lie down. That works, but
Speaker 6: like it's just not feasible in most street situations. So
Speaker 6: what I do is I will basically I'll put on gloves.
Speaker 6: I will get consent, because you know, anytime you're treating
Speaker 6: somebody who's been brutalized by the police, you are like
Speaker 6: you are treating an assault victim, and you should prioritize
Speaker 6: their consent as much as you can. So I, you know,
Speaker 6: do a quick like, hey, what's up. My name's Miriam,
Speaker 6: I'm a medic. Can I help you. I guide them
Speaker 6: out of the area of immediate danger if they can't see,
Speaker 6: and then I flush first one eye twice, and then
Speaker 6: I have them blink a whole bunch, and then the
Speaker 6: other eye twice, and I have them blink a whole bunch,
Speaker 6: and then they're usually able to open their eyes and
Speaker 6: navigate safely on their own. Sometimes they need another round
Speaker 6: with that, especially if I didn't you know, if I missed,
Speaker 6: you know, if it's dark and there things are moving
Speaker 6: around and I miss the eye or something. But usually
Speaker 6: that gets enough out that they are going to be
Speaker 6: able to navigate the situation. And because they are tearing
Speaker 6: a lot, that's part of the flush too, right, the
Speaker 6: body is doing that on its own and flushing too
Speaker 6: much with water. I think in that initial moment, you're
Speaker 6: just washing away tears at that point, so doing like
Speaker 6: a first round of like forceful of forceful flush. You know,
Speaker 6: you're really like using a forceful stream to push the
Speaker 6: chemicals out. And then Okay, their eyes are open, they're
Speaker 6: still in pain, and like that's just gonna last for
Speaker 6: a while. Your eyes are going to continue to hurt,
Speaker 6: and like that sucks. You've been harmed. Somebody did a
Speaker 6: harmful thing to you, and you are going and to
Speaker 6: continue to have pain for a little while. But if
Speaker 6: you can see that, your immediate danger is reduced and
Speaker 6: you can get out of there, and you can, you know,
Speaker 6: in a calmer moment, maybe do another couple eye flushes.
Speaker 6: Maybe you know, use soap and water on the face,
Speaker 6: clean up a little bit and like be a little
Speaker 6: bit happier with how you feel. But my priority in
Speaker 6: the immediate moments after somebody's been spread is to like
Speaker 6: help them so that they can get out of there
Speaker 6: if they need to, because they probably do.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, speaking of things that will make you tear up,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I'm terrible commercials stay tube will be right back, beautiful.
Speaker 4: All right, we are back, and I guess let's talk
Speaker 4: about rubber bullets of various impagnations, and then let's talk
Speaker 4: about how people actions people can take to keep themselves
Speaker 4: a little bit safe. Right, understanding that you are not
Speaker 4: the one who gets to choose if violence arrives at
Speaker 4: your protest. The cops are. And we're recording this on Sunday,
Speaker 4: like date in June, and people had their big No
Speaker 4: Kings March yesterday. They were largely like extremely nonviolent, and
Speaker 4: they still got attacked by the cops in La. So
Speaker 4: let's talk about impact munitions.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: One thing we didn't mention actually was pepper balls. I've
Speaker 4: had the a combo, yeah right, I've had the ill
Speaker 4: fortune and receiving some pepper balls in the balls. Oh yeah,
Speaker 4: very uncomfortable. Cops will try and shoot you in the groin.
Speaker 7: I had a colleague who encountered this just a few
Speaker 7: days ago.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry they fucking like, there's no.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it happens with such frequency that you'd have to
Speaker 4: be really trying to believe that it was an accident.
Speaker 4: So let's talk about things that can hit you, right,
Speaker 4: if we start with pepper balls and then move on
Speaker 4: up to like what people call rubber bullets, which I
Speaker 4: think baton rounds is like a more technical description of
Speaker 4: what they are, or marker rounds for a big foam
Speaker 4: or rubber things that hit you. Sometimes they leave a
Speaker 4: little puff of chalk on you, and theory like that
Speaker 4: identifies you for the cops to arrest you. I guess
Speaker 4: in practice it's just another thing that they can use
Speaker 4: to smash into you. But let's talk about some of
Speaker 4: the things that the cops can shoot from their little guns.
Speaker 4: Bean backgrounds is another one, right, that comes out of
Speaker 4: a shotgun, and it's what it sounds like, right, It's
Speaker 4: a bean bag traveling very fast. Somebody here in San
Speaker 4: Diego lost their eye to one of those in twenty twenty.
Speaker 4: But let's talk about some of these impact munitions and
Speaker 4: like what the potential risks are for people there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that.
Speaker 7: I mean, just the one point I want to bring
Speaker 7: up in terms of these they're often called in the
Speaker 7: media non lethal or quote unquote less lethals. Yeah, and
Speaker 7: I think that what's really important to recognize, and you
Speaker 7: kind of already hinted do with James, people have been
Speaker 7: killed with rubber bullets, plastic bullets.
Speaker 5: We actually have.
Speaker 7: Amnesty International did a report in twenty twenty three that
Speaker 7: you know, showed that over the course of about five years,
Speaker 7: you know, dozens of people have died as a result.
Speaker 5: Of the use of rubber bullets.
Speaker 7: We showed that between nineteen seventy two to nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 7: just in Ireland, sixteen people were killed. In Palestine, between
Speaker 7: eighty seven and ninety three, twenty people died just from
Speaker 7: the use of rubber bullets. And you know, that's reports.
Speaker 7: We don't know how many in truth actually were impacted
Speaker 7: by that.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I would also add to the British Medical Journal back
Speaker 3: in twenty seventeen looked at about two thousand little bit
Speaker 3: or two thousand people who had been affected by these projectiles,
Speaker 3: and three percent actually did cause immediate mortality and then
Speaker 3: fifteen percent was long term chronic injury or illness or
Speaker 3: some sort of being maimed from the event. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: you're exactly right. It's pretty significant, especially with the number
Speaker 3: of these that are shot. You know, they don't have
Speaker 3: to keep record about how many of these they shoot.
Speaker 3: So Actually, one other question I have for you, Richard,
Speaker 3: that you could help answer to one in LA did
Speaker 3: you see them shooting these things and you would kind
Speaker 3: of allude to that you felt that they were actually
Speaker 3: directing them towards you. Did you feel that, being there
Speaker 3: as a medical professional, that you were being targeted.
Speaker 7: I myself was fortunate and not hit by a rubber bullet.
Speaker 7: From witnessing my colleagues who were actually there present at
Speaker 7: this protest, they themselves were hit with HERR bullets below
Speaker 7: the navel. He had previous experience from an earlier protest
Speaker 7: that week where he had actually been struggling. The thing
Speaker 7: he told me that I remember is like, I'm never
Speaker 7: going to one.
Speaker 5: Of these things.
Speaker 7: I'm prepared again. Yeah, because he did have that situation
Speaker 7: where he was kind of hit closer to the groin,
Speaker 7: So we ended up wearing I remember he was wearing
Speaker 7: a kind of a fanny pack for this particular protest
Speaker 7: that we were at, and you could very clearly see
Speaker 7: the dust marks, like the chalk marks of their bullets
Speaker 7: struck on this on his on his fanny pack. Yeah,
Speaker 7: you know, it's it's it's definitely something that we noticed.
Speaker 7: Many of the other medics at this event commented that
Speaker 7: they had been previously struck or targeted once they the
Speaker 7: police began firing rubber bullets. As far as we we,
Speaker 7: fortunately we didn't see anybody who was struck, you know,
Speaker 7: closer to the face. But there were reports after the
Speaker 7: No King's protest yesterday that you know, several people had
Speaker 7: been struck in the eye or on the forehead. There
Speaker 7: was one picture, i think earlier from earlier this week,
Speaker 7: that one of the reporters in downtown La had been
Speaker 7: struck with a non lethal foam round directly in his
Speaker 7: forehead and it was this you could see this very clear,
Speaker 7: enormous wealth the size of like a grapefruit, Yeah, and bleeding,
Speaker 7: and it was it was you know, very clearly like
Speaker 7: aiming above at the face.
Speaker 5: In these cases.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there was a huge number during the Chilean protests
Speaker 6: in twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, eye injuries were huge. There
Speaker 6: were hundreds. There's a there's a club somewhere of journalists
Speaker 6: who've lost eyes to rubber bullets. I think they call
Speaker 6: themselves the Cyclops Club or something. They're writers, they you know.
Speaker 6: But yeah, like, these things are incredibly dangerous, and eye
Speaker 6: injuries especially are really common. They are less lethal only
Speaker 6: in that it is less likely to kill you than
Speaker 6: being shot with live ammunition. But like most things are
Speaker 6: less likely to kill you than live ammunia.
Speaker 5: Grizzly barry is less likely to kill you.
Speaker 3: My friend Rebecca Watson says, you know, samurai blade is
Speaker 3: less lethal than AK forty seven, but it's still not
Speaker 3: something you want them to have to use against you.
Speaker 4: Ideal if you weren't being attacked doing what is a
Speaker 4: constitutionally protected rate in the US. Hey, everyone, I just
Speaker 4: wanted to record a little pick up here to explain
Speaker 4: a little bit more I guess about forty millimeter and
Speaker 4: thirty seven millimeter less lethal projectiles. They are sometimes called
Speaker 4: baton rounds that I saw baton round written on the
Speaker 4: Safari land thirty seven millimeters one, but they are not
Speaker 4: the same as the baton rounds. You will have seen
Speaker 4: British military using in Northern Ireland. Most of the modern
Speaker 4: ones that I am aware of are not designed to
Speaker 4: be skipped off the ground, albeit there deserately are, or
Speaker 4: at least were rubber bullets that were designed to be
Speaker 4: skipped off the ground at one point. The use of
Speaker 4: a bullet made of rubber that's fired out of a
Speaker 4: conventional rifle is very rare. In the United States, there
Speaker 4: are things called simmunitions, which are munitions fire out of
Speaker 4: a conventional rifle using a different bolt, and they are
Speaker 4: generally used for simulated force on force training. You can
Speaker 4: think about it like going paintballing, but with regular guns
Speaker 4: orbit with a bolt that makes it so you can't
Speaker 4: load live ammunition into that gun while it's set up
Speaker 4: for simmunitions. Those will use extensively. I believe in Columbia
Speaker 4: identified some simmunition casings. I've not seen those used by
Speaker 4: police anywhere in the United States. What the LAPD uses
Speaker 4: is a forty millimeter exact impact round. It has a
Speaker 4: plastic body and a sponge nosed and that is designed
Speaker 4: to be point of an point of impact right, so
Speaker 4: shot at someone like you would.
Speaker 5: Shoot a gun at somebody.
Speaker 4: There are other leslethos in use even in LA I
Speaker 4: saw a thirty seven millimeter Safari land round. I saw
Speaker 4: FN three H three's, which is like seventeen millimeter. I
Speaker 4: saw pepper balls, various different versions of leslethal munitions, but
Speaker 4: most of the ones that I'm aware of in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty five are designed for point of a point of impact.
Speaker 4: They're also extremely dangerous, and as we've said here, they
Speaker 4: can kill you. It's wanting to clarify that, So like, yeah,
Speaker 4: these things are dangerous, right, like they have caused serious
Speaker 4: injury or death. Let's assume for a minute that like
Speaker 4: the folks listening have not attended many actions before, right
Speaker 4: that they are right, they're younger or like they just
Speaker 4: haven't been in that world in that part of their life,
Speaker 4: and they've seen what's happening recently, and they're pissed off
Speaker 4: and they want to attend, but they're afraid, right, and
Speaker 4: they want to know what they can do, what they
Speaker 4: can bring, how they can prepare themselves in the understanding
Speaker 4: that like, it isn't one hundred percent safe because the
Speaker 4: cops can decide to attack you whenever they want. What
Speaker 4: can people bring? How can people prepare to be as
Speaker 4: safe as they can be.
Speaker 6: Bring water, I mean not just the eyeflushes, but like
Speaker 6: bring snacks and water. Like you're going to be out
Speaker 6: there for a while, you need to keep yourself going.
Speaker 6: You need to keep your friends going. Bring friends like
Speaker 6: be there with somebody who is going to watch your back,
Speaker 6: somebody who knows a number for like your emergency contact,
Speaker 6: you know, if you get grabbed stuff like that, especially
Speaker 6: if you're new to the It's like, try not to
Speaker 6: run alone.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, even if it's like just hooking up
Speaker 4: with people when you get there.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I've been at a protest that was starting to
Speaker 6: look scary and a woman turned to me and said,
Speaker 6: I'm here alone. Are you here alone? And I said yeah,
Speaker 6: and she said, now we're here together, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: which is beautiful.
Speaker 4: It's a good place to make friends.
Speaker 7: It's a very like honest feeling to have. I mean,
Speaker 7: you're seeing for the problem for many people is probably
Speaker 7: the first time that you're seeing someone aiming a project
Speaker 7: out at you and am aiming a firearm at you
Speaker 7: and firing. So yeah, you know, there's a good reason
Speaker 7: to feel worried. That's like the fact that we have
Speaker 7: to worry about that in this country period is you know,
Speaker 7: it's very chilling. I think that, you know, Miriam mentioned
Speaker 7: it bringing friends is really important. Something else that like
Speaker 7: we've talked about in circles in LA I think is
Speaker 7: like really understanding going in What is the amount of
Speaker 7: risk that you are willing to take entering into these
Speaker 7: spaces I think is extraordinarily important. I think of my
Speaker 7: colleagues who were at the UCLA protests earlier during the
Speaker 7: Palestine movement. Yeah, they kind of asked the question like
Speaker 7: they kind of framed it in like green light, yellow light,
Speaker 7: red light, Like in terms of green meaning like I'm
Speaker 7: okay with you know, whatever risks might be involved, like
Speaker 7: as far as like what my understanding of what this
Speaker 7: protest could entail, yellow being like I'm I'm not prepared
Speaker 7: to go so far as to be arrested, but I'm
Speaker 7: willing to be present on record if necessary, serve as
Speaker 7: a witness for my other colleagues who are going to
Speaker 7: be in this space. Red meaning you know, I'm not
Speaker 7: necessarily prepared at this point to go that far. I
Speaker 7: don't I want to support, but I also don't want
Speaker 7: to get arrested. And I think it's important to like,
Speaker 7: you know, recognize that not necessarily shame other people in
Speaker 7: terms of like where they're at in this.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, understand Yeah, absolutely, because because everybody comes at
Speaker 10: this from different places.
Speaker 7: I think it's really important, like when you're in these
Speaker 7: spaces to like, you know, kind of understand the risk
Speaker 7: of the other people who are alongside you, because if
Speaker 7: you're a medic and you're trying to treat other people
Speaker 7: and then you have all of a sudden you're by
Speaker 7: yourself because the other people are like, well, I you know,
Speaker 7: this is what I sign up for out Yeah, that
Speaker 7: is also scary, even if you're you know, you're very
Speaker 7: willing to be there.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: So I think just having those conversations and planning more
Speaker 7: than anything, planning, planning, and planning is extraordinarily important.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think that's very well said, great points, and everyone
Speaker 3: has a different level of risk. And just to be
Speaker 3: totally clear for our listeners, there was over two thousand
Speaker 3: different protests yesterday and there was the minimal amount of
Speaker 3: violence and they were all peaceful. For the protesters were
Speaker 3: the vast, vast, vast majority peaceful and things went fine,
Speaker 3: and some like the one I attended was actually kid friendly,
Speaker 3: so there was it was a safe place. But particularly
Speaker 3: in certain places, there's always a small chance, if not large,
Speaker 3: and depending on the police presence there, that things could
Speaker 3: go the wrong way, and it is something to keep
Speaker 3: in mind. So I particularly like your point regarding everyone
Speaker 3: has a different level of risk and that's okay, you're
Speaker 3: still contributing.
Speaker 5: I'm not.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm not a place myself where I'm planning
Speaker 3: on getting arrested. That's just not something I want to do.
Speaker 3: But I would like to protest that I would like
Speaker 3: to support.
Speaker 5: In along those lines.
Speaker 3: What are ways that other people who have medical backgrounds
Speaker 3: could potentially contribute or support.
Speaker 7: You in terms of the ways that like medics can
Speaker 7: you know, respond in these situations. I think for me,
Speaker 7: I have you know, a box of medical equipment that
Speaker 7: I want to go to bring on site, like I'm
Speaker 7: obviously like and said, I'm bringing water because that's going
Speaker 7: to be foremost like my most useful tool to help
Speaker 7: anybody who's going to be affected by things like that,
Speaker 7: like to your desk, you know, as far as other
Speaker 7: things like having extra masks, I think is really really important,
Speaker 7: you know, because it's a huge way of reducing respiratory
Speaker 7: exposure to the aerosols that are going to be in
Speaker 7: the air. And then eye protection, eye protection, eye protection. Now,
Speaker 7: the thing about like, you know, we've seen different types
Speaker 7: of protection for your eyes that are effective. We've seen
Speaker 7: goggles being used like the ones that you would you
Speaker 7: would see in a lab. They're not actually effective unless
Speaker 7: you close the sides the vents with tape because otherwise
Speaker 7: the aerosols actually can still get inside the mask and
Speaker 7: irritate your eyes. So if you are going to be
Speaker 7: like bringing that type of eye protection, it's important to
Speaker 7: think about that. There's like some higher end, you know,
Speaker 7: more effective tools that provide both eye protection and helping
Speaker 7: to filter particles. Just using a basic goggle mask with
Speaker 7: the vents covered in an N ninety five for just
Speaker 7: about anybody, I think is a useful tool. So having
Speaker 7: those types of supplies for people who need them is
Speaker 7: helpful for sure.
Speaker 6: And as far as like a really low risk thing
Speaker 6: that people with medical training can do is show up
Speaker 6: to jail support, because that's like that is a huge
Speaker 6: way you can help not just people who are arrested,
Speaker 6: but anybody coming out of jail is by doing jail support,
Speaker 6: and what that entails is hanging out where people get released.
Speaker 6: People will usually bring food, drinks, clothes, shoelaces. People often
Speaker 6: get out without shoelaces, belts, and like a couple of
Speaker 6: you know, extra layers of clothes if people get let
Speaker 6: out and it's cold, and check out people's injuries. Often
Speaker 6: people will be taken to the hospital during processing if
Speaker 6: they have something that the police can't ignore. But people
Speaker 6: often get released with injuries and it can be really
Speaker 6: good to have somebody there who can evaluate them. Honestly,
Speaker 6: it's often just giving them like a judgment call on
Speaker 6: do you think this needs somebody else to take a
Speaker 6: look at it, you know, in a professional environment, or
Speaker 6: can I put some ice on it and go home?
Speaker 6: Type thing. And almost everybody getting out of jail has
Speaker 6: handcuff injuries if they were arrested in a mass arrest
Speaker 6: because in mass arrest situations, cops tend to use the
Speaker 6: plastic zip tizes, which can get incredibly tight, even more
Speaker 6: so than metal handcuffs, which have a little bit a
Speaker 6: little length of chain. They strain the shoulders, especially larger people,
Speaker 6: especially if somebody has a bag on their back. Cops
Speaker 6: will often cuff them in such a way that the
Speaker 6: bag pushes on their hands and makes the cuffs increasingly tight.
Speaker 6: And having a medical professional or a street medic or
Speaker 6: even somebody who's like just there to like take a
Speaker 6: look and be like, yeah, man, I see that that's
Speaker 6: really fucked up that they did that to you. I'm
Speaker 6: so sorry can be useful. Having somebody there to witness
Speaker 6: and acknowledge and to document. If somebody is planning on
Speaker 6: doing something with that, you know, then that's important too.
Speaker 6: So if you cannot be arrested, find out what's happening
Speaker 6: with jail, support and go support them because that's chill,
Speaker 6: that's calm now. I mean, there are no guarantees in
Speaker 6: this world but now, but it is far more likely
Speaker 6: to be chill and calm. Yeah, and you can hang
Speaker 6: out and eat snacks. Oh and this is the one
Speaker 6: situation where medically speaking, bring cigarettes. People want cigarettes when
Speaker 6: they get out of jail, and they deserve a fucking cigarette.
Speaker 6: Is it good for them?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 3: I know, I just am sorry. I hate cigarettes so much.
Speaker 3: I listen. I'm not going to say you can't, but
Speaker 3: I will never give someone a cigarette. It goes against
Speaker 3: things I just can't listen. There's certain lines I will
Speaker 3: draw as a doctor. One I have to help everybody
Speaker 3: even if I don't like them. Two, I can't give
Speaker 3: them cigarettes even if I like them. So I just can't.
Speaker 3: Those are two things I can't bring myself to do.
Speaker 3: The cigarette one really adjusts me crazy, but I get it.
Speaker 6: In that case, maybe bring some cards for whatever your
Speaker 6: local public transit is, or failing that, you know, have
Speaker 6: some cash on hand to send people home in a
Speaker 6: taxi or have somebody who standing by with a car
Speaker 6: to help people get home. Stuff like that that's really
Speaker 6: important for jail support, perhaps even more than a cigarette.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I would add that.
Speaker 4: Another thing you can do if you're medically like a
Speaker 4: medical professional. Especially it's helped other people learn really big
Speaker 4: sic skills. You don't even have to be at a protest, right,
Speaker 4: it could be a week later. There are medical professionals
Speaker 4: who do street medic training. You can teach people stop
Speaker 4: the bleed in a day and potentially save someone's life.
Speaker 4: And so if it's something that you you know, are
Speaker 4: skilled enough to teach, and you need to be honest
Speaker 4: about whether you're skilled enough to teach that or not,
Speaker 4: you know if you've watched a for you YouTube videos
Speaker 4: and you're not, that's something you could use to really
Speaker 4: help other people who are who are going to be
Speaker 4: there at a time when you're not comfortable or safe
Speaker 4: being there. I guess for the end of the show
Speaker 4: to wrap up, if people are just attending to be
Speaker 4: fucking mad and there are a lot of people who
Speaker 4: are fucking mad right now, what should they bring? And
Speaker 4: if people want to access training right like, what are
Speaker 4: some some resources that you would suggest. What are some
Speaker 4: types of training in terms of like first aid that
Speaker 4: people can access, so that people should access if they're
Speaker 4: the thinking of attending these things and they're worried.
Speaker 7: I mean, I think in terms of the type of
Speaker 7: first aid that you need to be really conscious of,
Speaker 7: especially in any any type of like event where you're
Speaker 7: going to be with a lot of people and you're
Speaker 7: going in as a medic. And this isn't just for protests.
Speaker 7: I think it's for any type of event. We do
Speaker 7: live in a world where unfortunately there is a lot
Speaker 7: of mass shootings. Even if they're firing rubber bullets, we
Speaker 7: don't know who else may also attend, who may also
Speaker 7: be going with the intention of being violent, So I
Speaker 7: mean you mentioned it yourself, stopped the bleed. Having basic
Speaker 7: understanding of how to what types of on the field.
Speaker 7: First aid should be done. For individuals who have got
Speaker 7: received a gunshot wound, I think is really important if
Speaker 7: they've been struck by a car. We've already seen earlier
Speaker 7: this this weekend that there were shootings in I believe
Speaker 7: in a couple of different cities. It's I'm missing which
Speaker 7: one unfortunately happened, but I do know of at least
Speaker 7: one report of a tesla being driven into a crowd
Speaker 7: of protesters this weekend, So it was, Yeah, if.
Speaker 6: I get killed by a tesla, I'm going to be
Speaker 6: so fucking mad.
Speaker 5: Indignity.
Speaker 3: That is actually the thing that concerns me the most
Speaker 3: most protest is some actor coming in from outside to
Speaker 3: do something like that. That part really does concern me,
Speaker 3: especially because so many of these are, are, like I mentioned,
Speaker 3: kind of family friendly, and they should be. I think
Speaker 3: families for the most part, should be able to come
Speaker 3: to these things. So that is something that I'm always
Speaker 3: constantly on the lookout for.
Speaker 4: Yeah, cause fucking scammy, like I experienced car bombs in
Speaker 4: my career, but also just like cause. Driving into crowds
Speaker 4: of course undult damage and Americans do be loving large
Speaker 4: cause and the cops won't stop them.
Speaker 5: Like, at least in La.
Speaker 4: My experience with the cars were kind of in and
Speaker 4: out the whole time, and that did not make me
Speaker 4: feel secure.
Speaker 7: We had one individual who was stood in front of
Speaker 7: a van that was carrying ice agents and that person
Speaker 7: essentially got run over them in that situation, I know
Speaker 7: they were not at all stopping for.
Speaker 4: That because it's a big risk, Like I guess with
Speaker 4: that in mind, one thing I think about sometimes and
Speaker 4: these things is like you don't want to be going
Speaker 4: into this, like like traumatizing yourself by doing this. But
Speaker 4: a degree of situational when is to include what are
Speaker 4: my points of cover and what are my ways out?
Speaker 5: Is good to have.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it helps, It helps me feel safeer anyway.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And that's another huge reason to always run with
Speaker 6: a buddy, right because if you're running with a buddy especially,
Speaker 6: I mean I think I personally think that if you
Speaker 6: are doing medical stuff, you should always have a buddy
Speaker 6: just because if you're going to be stopped and like
Speaker 6: somebody's got to watch your back and like it's and
Speaker 6: you know you might need a second opinion. You can
Speaker 6: call in that buddy for a consult. You know, the
Speaker 6: Medic collective that I that I run with On really
Speaker 6: big action days, we'll put together like little bingo cards
Speaker 6: that will distribute to all the Medic buddy pairs as
Speaker 6: a situational awareness game. So like, if we're all rolling
Speaker 6: out to this, you know, to a big, big action,
Speaker 6: we'll put like they'll be squares for like a cop
Speaker 6: who clearly is not awake, or your ex or you know,
Speaker 6: a person who forgot sunscreen, or you know, just just
Speaker 6: things to look out for. Yeah, and I think honestly
Speaker 6: like making a little bit of a game like that
Speaker 6: if you're going to be out all day can be
Speaker 6: kind of fun. And it also makes you keep looking.
Speaker 6: It makes you not just look down at your feet
Speaker 6: as you as you march another mile, you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Please, a's another great reminder. Please prepare for the weather,
Speaker 3: prepare for the elements. Bring water, bring sunscreen, bring hats,
Speaker 3: all that stuff.
Speaker 4: Sunscreen can trap the chemical irritant next to your skin.
Speaker 4: I like to wear a sun hoodie like you can
Speaker 4: get hoodies with a SPF. I am a palass person,
Speaker 4: right some of you can see.
Speaker 5: Me for listeners. It is indeed true.
Speaker 6: I was gonna say, is that sun hoodie? Why you
Speaker 6: in no way have a watch tan?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, friends, trends can see my absolutely brutal tan
Speaker 4: right now, absurdly white. When I was a bike racer,
Speaker 4: I used to have the logos of my sponsors burned
Speaker 4: into my back and that was cool and normal. That's unsettling,
Speaker 4: yeah right, yeah, yeah, that was a political moment for me. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 4: I like to wear sun hoodie because sunscreen it can
Speaker 4: trap irritants against your skin. But if it's a creamy kind, right,
Speaker 4: I think after point it absorbs and it doesn't. But
Speaker 4: I've definitely experienced that kind of paste on your skin
Speaker 4: kind of situation. Interesting, some of the nalist like injuries
Speaker 4: I've seen have been heat related at protests. If you're
Speaker 4: organizing a protest, don't send it straight up a fucking hill,
Speaker 4: like I just don't let like like go easy on people.
Speaker 4: You know, the people will be bringing a lot of
Speaker 4: stuff and they have science and stuff like the might
Speaker 4: whether comfy shoes, like could go easy on them with
Speaker 4: the with the hill climbing, and then because you're doing
Speaker 4: it in the middle of the day often as well,
Speaker 4: like you know, don't hurt people, Richard. I know you
Speaker 4: were going to mention somebody else.
Speaker 7: The thing I was trying to mention this is this
Speaker 7: is less so for i'd say ems non physician individuals. Actually,
Speaker 7: before the podcast, I had a chance to talk with
Speaker 7: one of the regional vice presidents for CIR, the Physicians
Speaker 7: Union that I was formerly a part of when I
Speaker 7: was in my.
Speaker 5: Residency, Kayla.
Speaker 7: She has a lot of experience being involved in protests
Speaker 7: and street medicine, and the thing that she likes to
Speaker 7: mention is like, physicians have a tendency to want to
Speaker 7: do a lot in a moment, and so Miry mentioned
Speaker 7: situational awareness. I think situational awareness is extremely important. Being
Speaker 7: able to know when you have the time to do
Speaker 7: a certain intervention versus when it's time to get this
Speaker 7: person out of here and to a safer place, I
Speaker 7: think is like very very important. Yay, so less does
Speaker 7: more in these situations, is what I would say, is
Speaker 7: pretty important.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, Well.
Speaker 4: The thing I do like as a journalist primarily not
Speaker 4: a visual one, I often work with photographers right as
Speaker 4: a two person team. I have been a photographer protest
Speaker 4: in the past, and your world is very small than
Speaker 4: that viewfinder, and it's kind of the same. If you're
Speaker 4: helping someone right who's injured, that becomes your whole shit.
Speaker 4: I will have my physically have my hand on my
Speaker 4: photographer a lot of the time on their back right,
Speaker 4: and if they need to start moving backwards, I am
Speaker 4: going to start moving them backwards. Obviously, you don't want
Speaker 4: to leave someone who's hurt, but like if you're the buddy,
Speaker 4: it's good to be that close to the person who's
Speaker 4: providing care so that you can have a way out
Speaker 4: if you need to have a way out.
Speaker 3: This was so incredibly useful and helpful and insightful. We
Speaker 3: appreciate both of you coming on. Let's close up here.
Speaker 3: What I would like to do is not only plug
Speaker 3: something for yourselves, but what I'd like to hear and
Speaker 3: our listeners actually enjoy, is to hear something that's bringing
Speaker 3: you some joy in these times. Some piece of media, art, film, book, podcast, anything,
Speaker 3: you name it, a good restaurant that you really love.
Speaker 3: You want to give a shout out to whatever it is,
Speaker 3: something that's bringing you a little bit of joy. So
Speaker 3: let's do those two things. Marian, Let's start with you.
Speaker 3: What can we plug and what's something that's bringing you
Speaker 3: some joy?
Speaker 6: So thank you for having me on. This was delightful.
Speaker 6: So I will plug Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, which
Speaker 6: is the collective that I'm a part of. You can
Speaker 6: find us at Tangled Wilderness on Blue Sky and Instagram
Speaker 6: and nowhere else. And we have a website which is
Speaker 6: Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. We have a Patreon, all
Speaker 6: that stuff. But the main thing I want to tell
Speaker 6: you about those guys over there is that James and
Speaker 6: I did a podcast recently for the show Lives Like
Speaker 6: the World is Dying on protest health and safety, and
Speaker 6: we go really in detail on specifics of gear, specifics
Speaker 6: of first aid techniques, and I think people should maybe
Speaker 6: check it out if they're if they're going to be
Speaker 6: out there.
Speaker 5: We'll put it in the show note.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because we're professional podcasters like that.
Speaker 4: You can crazy on it to make it happen here
Speaker 4: if you'd like to find the show notes.
Speaker 5: Right. Wait, Miriam, So what's the thing that's bringing you joy? Oh?
Speaker 5: I have remember that, Joey.
Speaker 6: I'm familiar with the concept. I have been rewatching the
Speaker 6: Shira and the Princesses of Power cartoon.
Speaker 5: Wow, nice, love it. What about Jim? She is outrageous.
Speaker 6: You know they didn't read make that as an overtly
Speaker 6: queer Netflix series, so I have had less exposure to it.
Speaker 6: But you know, cartoon sword lesbians can't argue with it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that sounds pretty awesome, all right, Rachel? What about you?
Speaker 7: As far as something to plug, A huge pleasure of
Speaker 7: being able to work on Blue Sky helping to put
Speaker 7: together the med Sky feeds. So if you're on Blue Sky,
Speaker 7: be sure to subscribe to our labeler so that way
Speaker 7: you can get your medical specialty on your accounts and
Speaker 7: you can get your posts on one of our forty
Speaker 7: different feeds. And then also as a Latino, I can't
Speaker 7: leave the podcast without mentioning also we are working on
Speaker 7: Latin Sky and it's the amount of latinidad and joy
Speaker 7: that I've been seeing on that feed over the last
Speaker 7: few days, despite the pain, it's been very inspiring. So
Speaker 7: I think that's like the plug that I want to
Speaker 7: put out there. And as far as the thing that
Speaker 7: brings me joy right now, I like I was torn.
Speaker 7: I heard it like a bunch of people have already plugged,
Speaker 7: and or so.
Speaker 5: I'm not gonna plug, and or you can.
Speaker 7: You Yeah, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna give some
Speaker 7: love to Ryan Coogler's Sinners, which.
Speaker 5: Is easily one of them movies.
Speaker 7: I have seen in at least the last five years.
Speaker 7: It is an extraordinary movie. Every everything about that movie.
Speaker 5: Is like art.
Speaker 7: I just hope that Ryan Cooler can just make original
Speaker 7: movies for the rest of his life and that he
Speaker 7: doesn't have to like be stuck doing franchise stuff, because
Speaker 7: when he's just given a canvas, he he makes beautiful,
Speaker 7: beautiful art.
Speaker 5: Yeah, right on, right on.
Speaker 3: That's for so James, what about what about you?
Speaker 5: What we plug? What can you plug? For you? What
Speaker 5: can I plug?
Speaker 4: That was a hot dog guy who went on the
Speaker 4: freeway in Los Angeles when everyone else went on the freeway.
Speaker 4: So that person's a fucking hero. I would let you
Speaker 4: know if you're if you're in the I'm vegan, so
Speaker 4: you know, maybe the bun. But for the rest of you,
Speaker 4: get after it. You know you can. You can listen
Speaker 4: to my podcast. You may be already are It could
Speaker 4: happen here if you haven't listened. It would mean a
Speaker 4: lot to me if you had listened to the podcast
Speaker 4: I made in the Daddian Gap last year when I
Speaker 4: traveled with migrants who were on their way to the
Speaker 4: United States. Those people and those their stories are really
Speaker 4: important to me. So if you would listen to one
Speaker 4: thing I ever made, it would be that you can
Speaker 4: find it by searching Dadien where Dreams Die, and then
Speaker 4: it could happen here podcast and it will come up
Speaker 4: unless you're using a really shit search engine a Google
Speaker 4: has been even more fucked by AI. And then, in
Speaker 4: terms of stuff that gives me joy, recently, I have
Speaker 4: been listening to like the music of the anti apartheid movement. Again,
Speaker 4: I kind of when I was a very young person,
Speaker 4: my sort of first exposure to activism was through people
Speaker 4: who had resisted apartheid in South Africa, and they were
Speaker 4: very inspiring to me, and they still are very inspiring
Speaker 4: to me. I listened to that music with them, right,
Speaker 4: Like apartheid, to be clear, ended when I was eight
Speaker 4: years old, but like it was cool because it seemed
Speaker 4: like at that point the good guys were winning, right,
Speaker 4: and so here we fucking are Anyway, I listened to
Speaker 4: that because it.
Speaker 5: Reminds me that they always lose in the end.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I enjoy like like the Specials and Eddie
Speaker 4: Grant and even the incredibly eclectic sun City album.
Speaker 5: Great choices, Great choices.
Speaker 3: And for if you happen to be listening on the
Speaker 3: House of Pod, you've heard James come and talk about
Speaker 3: the Darien Gap. That was a really amazing story and
Speaker 3: it resonated with a lot of listeners, and you should
Speaker 3: listen to the full multi part series that he put
Speaker 3: out on that if it's so much better, So please
Speaker 3: do that for me. If you happen to be listening
Speaker 3: on it could happen here. Listen to the House of Pod.
Speaker 5: You like it.
Speaker 3: You'll hear James and lots of people you already know
Speaker 3: love and meet some new people. And you'll hear us
Speaker 3: make fun of medical grifters in the wellness community and
Speaker 3: that sort of.
Speaker 5: Thing as well members of the Cabinet. And I can't
Speaker 5: believe it. Yeah boy.
Speaker 3: As for the thing that's bringing me joy, I recently
Speaker 3: had a chance to expose my kids on a long
Speaker 3: drive to the work of Jeff Buckley, who is for
Speaker 3: you younger listeners out there, you may not know who he
Speaker 3: was because he unfortunately passed away when he was only thirty.
Speaker 3: But he was really a once in a generation talent
Speaker 3: who was a voice. His songwriting transcended different genres. There
Speaker 3: was rock, there's jazz, there was folk. He could span
Speaker 3: a vocal range that just really is amazing. And you
Speaker 3: only had one studio album, Grace, but it is amazing
Speaker 3: and highly recommend that or really any of his live album's,
Speaker 3: Mystery White Boy, They're all fantastic. His cover of Leonard
Speaker 3: Cohen's Hallelujah is the best version of it in my opinion.
Speaker 3: I will fight you. I will fight you. If you
Speaker 3: say rufus waynewright better, I will physically fight you. So
Speaker 3: it's just raw and beautiful and I hope you guys
Speaker 3: check it out if you haven't already. Last thing I
Speaker 3: will plug June twenty eighth, if you happen to be
Speaker 3: in the Bay Area, my band will be playing at
Speaker 3: the Hotel Utah in San Francisco. It is one of
Speaker 3: my favorite places to watch or play music and it's
Speaker 3: just super fun. Come up and say hi, and we'll
Speaker 3: chat and we'll maybe share a drink.
Speaker 5: If we have time. Okay, thank you all so much.
Speaker 5: Thanks James. This was fun. Huh, Yeah, that was fun.
Speaker 5: It was beautiful. I had a nice time. Let's do
Speaker 5: it again.
Speaker 11: Okay, bye, hello, and welcome to it could happen here.
Speaker 5: I'm here once again with it's James again.
Speaker 1: Great to talk to you again, James.
Speaker 5: Yeah, likewise, glad to be here.
Speaker 1: You know, I spend a lot of time thinking about
Speaker 1: the world and how it works and all that jazz,
Speaker 1: and I.
Speaker 5: Assume you do as well.
Speaker 4: I do, yeah, yeah, increasingly worrying about the word.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This place, this home is quite the puzzle. And much
Speaker 1: like a puzzle, it has been carved up and divided
Speaker 1: in so many different ways, sliced, labeled, ranked, and measured
Speaker 1: from all kinds of different angles. And that's really what
Speaker 1: I'm interested in talking about today, the different ways that
Speaker 1: we try to explain the differences we see on the
Speaker 1: global stage. So going from the concept of civilized and primitive,
Speaker 1: to the East and West binary, to the imagined communities
Speaker 1: called nations, to the clash of quote unquote civilizations, to
Speaker 1: the concept of first, second, and third worlds, to the
Speaker 1: development spectrum, to the global North and global South, then
Speaker 1: finally to the core and the periphery. So we have
Speaker 1: a lot of ground to cover in this episode.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I really like this stuff. Like as a historian,
Speaker 4: like we're always kind of forced into certain divisions, right,
Speaker 4: Like even when you apply to you to your funding,
Speaker 4: right like you're normally in like a geographical area, or
Speaker 4: like you're trying to shoehorn something that's just interesting into
Speaker 4: one of these boxes that gets funding. And I think
Speaker 4: like often that impacts how we see the world, so
Speaker 4: we have to write with that goal.
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely. I find the way that we approach the
Speaker 1: telling of history so fascinating And in another life maybe
Speaker 1: I would have been historia.
Speaker 4: I never I can recommend it. Yeah, yeah, it's I
Speaker 4: enjoy the doing of history. It's the doing of academia
Speaker 4: that I don't enjoy so much.
Speaker 1: So I suppose as a historian, I'm going to ask
Speaker 1: you a discomforting question. Great, would you consider yourself civilized
Speaker 1: or primitive?
Speaker 5: Oh? That's a fun one.
Speaker 4: I don't know, Like I don't like that binary because
Speaker 4: I think it's it's a value statement, right, And I think,
Speaker 4: like James Scott talks about this, Actually this is a
Speaker 4: really interesting I've had this. James Scott right talks about
Speaker 4: the idea of people who exist outside of the state
Speaker 4: being labeled as primitive by the state. It's in the
Speaker 4: art of not being governed, and that that's sort of
Speaker 4: the narrative there. The inherent message is that the state
Speaker 4: is the final and superior form of human organizing and
Speaker 4: people who have chosen to exist outside it are not
Speaker 4: because they chose to, but because they haven't made it
Speaker 4: there yet. And of course Scott problematized that suggests that
Speaker 4: maybe it's a choice, not a failure to accede to
Speaker 4: that civilization. And it's a concept that like young Burmese
Speaker 4: fighters have echoed back to me, I don't.
Speaker 5: Think they're aware of James C.
Speaker 4: Scott if I'm being honest, but they they will say
Speaker 4: to me, like when, because when they left the cities
Speaker 4: to live with the ethnic revolutionary organizations there, they had
Speaker 4: always been told that the reason those people lived outside
Speaker 4: of the Burmese state was because they were primitive, violent,
Speaker 4: But then they came to live and fight alongside them,
Speaker 4: and they were like, no, these are a family. They
Speaker 4: were brothers and sisters and siblings, and like they want
Speaker 4: the same thing as us, Like they're not primitive, they
Speaker 4: just don't want the state. So I guess in that sense,
Speaker 4: I would want to be labeled as primitive too. I
Speaker 4: think the primitive people are doing cool shit and then
Speaker 4: the civilized people are not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean that's one of I think one
Speaker 1: of the one you're in Global binary is one of
Speaker 1: the oldest. Yeah, you'd hear that sign of that kind
Speaker 1: of just position or civilized and primitive or civilized and barbarians.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, in ancient Rome you see that distinction between
Speaker 1: the civilized Roman citizens and the barbarian other.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in that instance, and in a lot of instance,
Speaker 1: it's just used as this ideological tool.
Speaker 5: Just at superiority. Definitely. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Like, I think we have to be really careful as
Speaker 4: his story about these assumptions that we make. It's always
Speaker 4: we love to make a lot of assumptions about revolutions too,
Speaker 4: And I would wager that I've attended more revolutions and
Speaker 4: many of my academic colleagues, and I think many of
Speaker 4: those are grounded in the truths that people accept as
Speaker 4: truths without ever testing them. And like, I think this
Speaker 4: sort of civilized barbarian one, it's kind of the same
Speaker 4: like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a classic one. I mean, do you know
Speaker 1: where the word barbarian even comes from.
Speaker 4: Isn't it the language thing? Like, because I didn't speak
Speaker 4: is it Latin? They were just going like bar ba?
Speaker 5: Is that right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's because of what you know, Rome did this
Speaker 1: all the time, where they just borrowed, will say, from
Speaker 1: what the Greeks were doing. Yeah, so in Greek, barbaros
Speaker 1: meant anyone who did not speak Greek. Okay, as the
Speaker 1: Romans just kind of took that and expanded to talk
Speaker 1: about anybody who wasn't on their whole wave of urban
Speaker 1: planning and you know, codified legal systems, the philosophy, the
Speaker 1: education they are at, all of that stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Barbarians didn't have those those refinements, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, but of course the relationship between the two
Speaker 1: is not so simple, right because the later on in
Speaker 1: Roman history, as you'd know, Barbarians quote unquote were incorporated
Speaker 1: slowly into the state and became very useful armies and
Speaker 1: a reserve full of labor and all these different things
Speaker 1: for what Roman was trying to do with the expantship.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and luckily contemporary American right has been very normal
Speaker 4: about that, and it isn't using that for like it's
Speaker 4: sort of eugenic eugenic agenda right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very very much eugenics VI these days.
Speaker 4: Yeah, where my father lives is right on the border
Speaker 4: between England and Scotland and you can visit Hadrian's Wall.
Speaker 4: I rode my bike all along it a couple of
Speaker 4: years ago.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah.
Speaker 4: It's like a fun edge of empire kind of thought experiment,
Speaker 4: like you beyond this line of the barbarians or uncivilized
Speaker 4: people today, it's like unremarkable, like like it's literally it
Speaker 4: keeps some people sheep in their fields at points along.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like some stones kind of piled on top of
Speaker 4: each other and it's kind of an unremarkable novelty. But
Speaker 4: it's funny to think that at one point there was
Speaker 4: this binary world, right and they felt that the outside
Speaker 4: was so dangerous to them that they had to provide
Speaker 4: a physical barrier, something we're still doing.
Speaker 1: Indeed, and as we're speaking of walls, by the way,
Speaker 1: this reminds me of another major empire where this sort
Speaker 1: of dichotomy was a curtain. You know, it wasn't just
Speaker 1: taking place in the Mediterranean bull you had and of
Speaker 1: course ancient China.
Speaker 5: This whole identity.
Speaker 1: Constructed around these moral and cultural and political ideals.
Speaker 5: Of course, you had the.
Speaker 1: Whole Confucianism, Taoism, a legalist thought all shape and what
Speaker 1: it meant to be, you know, conducting yourself properly and
Speaker 1: in a civilized manner. And so those who did not
Speaker 1: ascribe to those ideals would have been people who were
Speaker 1: labeled barbarians, often the people on the other side of
Speaker 1: the Great Wall.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we are the United States is literally doing the
Speaker 4: exact same thing, right, Like we're building a giant wall
Speaker 4: and labeling other ring the people on the other side
Speaker 4: of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you definitely see the genealogy there. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: think there's a closer genealogy we could draw upon for
Speaker 1: that particular reference, though, which is how later European empires
Speaker 1: would appropriate the Roman civilized Baberian binary to justify their
Speaker 1: assimilation and extermination and colonialism.
Speaker 4: Definitely one of the things I I like to do,
Speaker 4: even with the you know, the United States and it's
Speaker 4: in formal empire, right, Like I love to show my
Speaker 4: students cartoons, like political cartoons, like there's one of the
Speaker 4: White Man's Burden, which like distill.
Speaker 5: You know, sometimes the picture is worth a thousand words.
Speaker 4: But it distills that whole binary so well in it
Speaker 4: in a way that seems like repugnant to most of
Speaker 4: my students today. I guess, I don't know, maybe maybe
Speaker 4: folks are moving back that way, but like the imagery
Speaker 4: and the distinction between the way or even like Lewis
Speaker 4: and Clark when they're addressing the indigenous people they meet
Speaker 4: and calling them children, right like like this this binary
Speaker 4: distinction is so it's so apparent, and like, I don't know,
Speaker 4: it seems so outlandish, I think to most folks today, maybe,
Speaker 4: but then we do similar things, I guess in uh,
Speaker 4: you know, it just slightly most subtle ways sometimes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. I mean when you look at what was
Speaker 1: taking place with the Enlightenment and that whole development of
Speaker 1: this particular order, it's deeped in these particular values with
Speaker 1: the European culture was the ideal standard, and everything that
Speaker 1: did not measure up to that standard was barbarical. Primative
Speaker 1: is just that has never really gone away, you know,
Speaker 1: and it continues to be used to justify the domination
Speaker 1: of Western powers, particularly in the way that they've instilled
Speaker 1: these European norms and practices across the world when it
Speaker 1: comes to things like relation to the land, when it
Speaker 1: comes to things like the divisions between people, between genders,
Speaker 1: all these things, all these attitudes that are now so widespread,
Speaker 1: originated from in part, this elevation of one above the other.
Speaker 1: And speaking of I mentioned that we'd western there, and
Speaker 1: that's really another way that we've sort of maintained this
Speaker 1: binary in a different course of pain, although it's not
Speaker 1: quite the same. So there's this sort of lingering framework
Speaker 1: of the notion of the East and the west. Right
Speaker 1: in the ancient times, it was China versus Rome. These
Speaker 1: days it's probably China versus America.
Speaker 5: China really is that old?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and okay, this is probably a very probably
Speaker 1: very gen z reference for me to make. But I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've seen these edits circulated on social
Speaker 1: media of the Chinese president Chichin Ping going like buzzer Beijing,
Speaker 1: and then there's like a whole bunch of like skyscrapers
Speaker 1: and like like hardcore like electronic music edited to show
Speaker 1: like all these advanced ones, and people in the comments
Speaker 1: are saying things like be China do nothing win.
Speaker 5: I have not seen those.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's definitely dating me a little bit in
Speaker 1: terms of my social media diet. But yeah, just seeing
Speaker 1: the dynamic between China, or between the East and the West,
Speaker 1: the Orient and the Occident, to use an older term,
Speaker 1: it's just another way that we've created this sort of
Speaker 1: boundary between people that either on one side or the other,
Speaker 1: there's a necessary tension between the two.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: This concept of the Orient and Orientalism is something that
Speaker 1: would side identified famously as something that was constructed by
Speaker 1: the West as an exotic, irrational, decadent, and dangerous place.
Speaker 1: And so that whole dualistic narrative was then put into
Speaker 1: the imperial project to legitimizet domination and to position the
Speaker 1: East as a passive subject without a voice of their
Speaker 1: own and constant need of Western intervention and guidance. So
Speaker 1: this West becomes this sort of stage for modernity and
Speaker 1: science and region and progress, this whole idea of the
Speaker 1: protagonist of history and the orients the East. They're the primitive,
Speaker 1: I guess, side of that binary. Although unlike the civilized
Speaker 1: primitive binary or civilized barbarian binnary of old I think
Speaker 1: while there could have been racial components to it in
Speaker 1: the past, this one is more explicitly racial and geographic
Speaker 1: in its division, because I mean, in ancient Rome, anybody
Speaker 1: could essentially become a Roman citizen. You know, it wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily racially, you know, pure area and sense that a
Speaker 1: lot of New Nazis and stuff today like to look
Speaker 1: back at that period as you had a quieter diversity
Speaker 1: of phenotypes in the Roman Empire. But you know, when
Speaker 1: you come to this orient and occident dichotomy, it's it's
Speaker 1: very much racialized. You know, a lot of times when
Speaker 1: people talk about the Western Wold, it really tends to
Speaker 1: be I guess a more politically correct way of seeing
Speaker 1: the White Wold. Yes, at least in my observation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, definitely that's often the subtext.
Speaker 1: Because I mean that's something I've always struggled with, pin
Speaker 1: and down right, because why isn't Brazil considered part of
Speaker 1: the West? You know, why isn't Mexico considered part of
Speaker 1: the West?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 4: What will we west of? Like? Like what it's not
Speaker 4: even it's not the Western hemisphere like as you say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean Western Fami to say is more straightforward,
Speaker 1: but is it? Because there are too many colored people
Speaker 1: in Mexico and in Brazil.
Speaker 4: It seems to be, right, like, it's not even countries
Speaker 4: strongly from Western Europe was strongly impacted by settler colonialism
Speaker 4: from Western Europe. Because the entirety of Latin America is impact.
Speaker 1: And they should be included, but they're not.
Speaker 5: That they're not.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and it yeah, it's I've always struggled with
Speaker 4: that one. Other than the neoliberal, capitalist white countries. It's
Speaker 4: it's it's what people don't want to say.
Speaker 1: And Japan sometimes yeah yeah, Japan, yeah yeah, Amber of
Speaker 1: the Club.
Speaker 4: Yeah, or like sometimes also not Spain. This is a
Speaker 4: particular like bug Bury, I guess of Spanish history.
Speaker 1: Really, I don't think I've seen enough one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for years, like literally you would be excluded from
Speaker 4: European history, like like Africa starts at the Pyrenees.
Speaker 5: It's a sort of phrase that needs to be used. Hilarious.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like I guess it compounded because Spain was so
Speaker 4: isolated under Franco, right, but like, yeah, that this they
Speaker 4: called it the black legend that like Spain does not
Speaker 4: belong to Europe and and it's not again it's racialized, right,
Speaker 4: it's because Spain had this exchange with the Muslim world right,
Speaker 4: and like that that culture deeply impacted Spanish culture. And
Speaker 4: even after the Conquista, it's like it's like you know,
Speaker 4: the French historian, so we're just like, nah, you guys
Speaker 4: are tainted, like you, you don't get to come back.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a similar situation with the territory. So
Speaker 1: the former Artoman Empire as well, technically part of Europe
Speaker 1: and yet you know, maligned in some way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, a little bit less than Still, it's like
Speaker 4: you'll have too much, too much Turkish to watch Muslim influence.
Speaker 5: You all got a.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you need like a thousand years to decompress before
Speaker 4: we let you back in.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean honestly, if the Pope wasn't based in Italy,
Speaker 1: I'm sure Italy would have a similar dynamic. I mean,
Speaker 1: Italy is a recent construction, right in terms of as
Speaker 1: a country. Ye, but only look at the two Sicilies
Speaker 1: for example, that was under North African rule for a
Speaker 1: significant period of its history. But let me not get
Speaker 1: too far off track. One way, we're one more tangent,
Speaker 1: and that is I'm far from being a Dungist by
Speaker 1: any means, or a Maurist or anything of that nature.
Speaker 1: But there is something to be said for the way
Speaker 1: that the East of the Orient has been sidelined, marginalized,
Speaker 1: treat it us lesser than for so long, and now
Speaker 1: they're at a point where their geopolitical sway has to
Speaker 1: be respected.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm not.
Speaker 1: Rooting for them by any means. I'm not one of
Speaker 1: those people is like, yeah, multipolar world. I would rather
Speaker 1: we have no poles, you know, as an anarchist.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I do know what you mean.
Speaker 1: But it's like it's a bit of shodding for it,
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is, you know, ironic in a
Speaker 4: but yeah, not necessarily in a good way. Like I've
Speaker 4: just seen Ji Jimping meeting with Minan Plang, the dictator
Speaker 4: of Miamma today, and I'm like, I'm not excited for
Speaker 4: that pole of the world.
Speaker 5: Not at all, not at all. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel the same way about the way that the
Speaker 1: Sahel Federation has kind of kicked out France. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: stickt to France. But also military huinteras.
Speaker 4: You know, Yeah, yeah, like the rebranded Wagner Core now.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, and the the collaboration close collaborations Russia. But
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of this thing is really a
Speaker 1: lot of these relationships, these geopistical relationships are so opportunistic.
Speaker 1: It's all opportunistsm Yeah. End of the day, they don't
Speaker 1: really they're not really necessarily guided by principles.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like the difference I guess between like, for instance,
Speaker 4: I you know, I've been thinking a lot about anarchist
Speaker 4: at war, right, and people go and fight in other
Speaker 4: people's to depend other people, right, like like the the
Speaker 4: people who went to Rajava to fight, people who went
Speaker 4: to Mima to fight. Like there's a difference between doing
Speaker 4: something out of a sense of solidarity and doing something
Speaker 4: get root opportunitiesm And like that always shows itself in
Speaker 4: the end.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean the Wagon Group's involvement in Africa is the
Speaker 1: most blatant capitalists dravn opportunism.
Speaker 4: Yeah. These people are not there for the anti colonials
Speaker 4: that are like.
Speaker 5: Standing with the oppressed peoples of the world. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like watching the Battle of Algaeis and setting off
Speaker 4: to immediately liberate the people of Africa.
Speaker 1: Literal mercenaries right yeah. Yeah, But getting back onto the
Speaker 1: main topic, talking about all these ways we divvy up
Speaker 1: the world out of the linguistic and cultural and geographical
Speaker 1: differences that we observe around us came this concept of nations, right.
Speaker 1: Nation as an idea also came out of the European
Speaker 1: imagine nation. It's commonly defined and it's usable by today.
Speaker 1: But it's commonly defined as a large community of people
Speaker 1: who share common identity, often through language, culture, history, and
Speaker 1: sometimes ethnicity. Then who usually inhabit a specific geographic territory
Speaker 1: with its own political organization. The communations without states as
Speaker 1: simply a cultural community for people feel a collective belong
Speaker 1: and then share that snee. But nations are as we know,
Speaker 1: mostly tied up with states today, hence nation being used
Speaker 1: as a synonym for country.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is one of my bug bears. I guess
Speaker 4: is an academic like I tried to develop this concept
Speaker 4: of Catalan nationalism that like at the time was inherently
Speaker 4: anti fascist, I think or was trying.
Speaker 5: To be like that.
Speaker 4: It ain't now like this. It's a very Catalan right now.
Speaker 4: And yeah, I do still find it hard when people
Speaker 4: say nation is the of state, especially Americans, Like, it's
Speaker 4: very hard, right because state is like a subset of
Speaker 4: the state here, like the sort of motive division of
Speaker 4: the federal state. So it can be hard to explain
Speaker 4: those differences.
Speaker 1: And as you mentioned, this sort of way that the
Speaker 1: Catalan nationalism has shifted it really I think gets to
Speaker 1: the whole weakness of the nation idea. So Benick Anderson
Speaker 1: famously called nations imagined communities because the community exists as
Speaker 1: a collective fantasy. You know, they imagine a deep comradeship
Speaker 1: with people who they've never met, and this fantasy has
Speaker 1: boundaries not just about who is included, but also famously
Speaker 1: who is excluded. And this fantasy is not necessarily something
Speaker 1: that is automatic or natural as we tend to see
Speaker 1: it today, But it's really the rise of things like
Speaker 1: print capitalism, with the mass production of books and newspapers,
Speaker 1: and that's what really shaped the standardization and formalization of
Speaker 1: these imagined communities through the creational like common cultural reference
Speaker 1: and a shared sense of history. And then of course
Speaker 1: you had the nation idea further being developed by liberal
Speaker 1: revolutions and through the shared experience of clu your rule.
Speaker 1: You know, we're subject populations with mobilized nationalism to claim
Speaker 1: self determination.
Speaker 5: Yeah, definitely like it. I'm sure.
Speaker 4: The only I'm trying to remember I borrowed this from
Speaker 4: someone but the idea of like identity entrepreneurs is one
Speaker 4: I like, like it's when religion loses its claim on
Speaker 4: universal truth, specifically in Europe.
Speaker 5: That's like a market for identity that is open.
Speaker 4: And the creation of nations is like, to my mind,
Speaker 4: like a bourgeois project, right Like, it's an entrepreneurial endeavor
Speaker 4: that they seek to create something, a benefit from it
Speaker 4: and like it yet to a agree that's turned against them,
Speaker 4: it's still an entrepreneurial endeavor, right Like. Still, you could
Speaker 4: be creating a nation which wants to kick France out
Speaker 4: of Morocco, right that that nation may not have space
Speaker 4: for everyone who inhabits that territory of Morocco. Like it's
Speaker 4: still it's a sort of for some people.
Speaker 1: Construct absolutely absolutely, I think the elite intellectual current of
Speaker 1: nationalist movements can go under stated. You know, oftentimes what
Speaker 1: stirs up the masses toward that specific direction, because I mean,
Speaker 1: the masses will revolt against their conditions, But what sort
Speaker 1: of directs it in that national independence direction? And this
Speaker 1: concept of nation is tends to be that sort of
Speaker 1: elite intellectual current. I often look at the history of
Speaker 1: and Tobago as a reference point see is that's where
Speaker 1: I come from.
Speaker 5: The whole process of.
Speaker 1: Nation building is always ongoing, and we are in a
Speaker 1: position where there's an effort, there's very strong efforts to
Speaker 1: both push for a nation building but also recognize our
Speaker 1: divergent pasts, you know, because we have this sort of
Speaker 1: almost equal in population Indo Trinardian and Afrotrianardian populations, and
Speaker 1: then a mixed population as well, and then you have
Speaker 1: some Chinese and Syria and Lebanese and Venezuela and Filipino
Speaker 1: and all these different groups come into Trinidad, and because
Speaker 1: of that colonial past, their tensions is between those groups
Speaker 1: and things are still play out to this day. But
Speaker 1: while those tensions are played ound, there's also an effort
Speaker 1: to construct a unity through an allegiance to the nation
Speaker 1: of trinand Tobago to create a sense of national identity.
Speaker 1: And as a very young country, it's still quite difficult
Speaker 1: to do. I can imagine, especially in the United States,
Speaker 1: it might have been a similar situation where you have
Speaker 1: all these different European populations and different populations from around
Speaker 1: the world who are in the US, and there hasn't
Speaker 1: quite yet been a fully built up American identity yet,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of those tensions are still kind
Speaker 1: of playing out, and so it takes a couple of
Speaker 1: generations for there to be a sense of American identity
Speaker 1: that arises.
Speaker 5: Out of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, Trinidad being one a younger colony and two
Speaker 1: only recently becoming independent in nineteen sixty two, it hasn't
Speaker 1: had enough time yet at I suppose develop that patriotism
Speaker 1: that America is so known for. And so you still
Speaker 1: see a lot of people continue to have allegiances to
Speaker 1: the ancestry, to their heritage, even before they have any
Speaker 1: sort of sense of connection to the country. Concept of truead.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the American would be interesting because the people who
Speaker 4: did the American Revolution might often call themselves English, right like,
Speaker 4: And it's this kind of post hawk nationalism that has applied,
Speaker 4: right like, they did begin constructing a nation, but after
Speaker 4: they after they gained the apparatus of the state, right like.
Speaker 4: And sometimes they'll talk about their freedoms in terms of
Speaker 4: English freedoms, which they themselves are not granted, right that
Speaker 4: they don't have the same freedoms as English people in
Speaker 4: England when they are a British colony. This concept of freedom,
Speaker 4: they will elucidate like it, and like so much of
Speaker 4: it is based on like English common law. Right, they
Speaker 4: didn't necessarily see themselves as distinct. That comes later. And
Speaker 4: like the US, one is interesting because they have to
Speaker 4: develop this kind of civic nationalism. M I guess France
Speaker 4: has said two of course, but like France is probably
Speaker 4: the og there.
Speaker 5: But like this.
Speaker 4: Idea, like you've subscribed to these ideals, therefore you're an
Speaker 4: American because they're like this this nation constructed by people
Speaker 4: from all over Europe.
Speaker 5: For the most part.
Speaker 4: The phrasing is universal, but the implementation is not. Right,
Speaker 4: it's also a country where people own other people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think, I mean, like I was saying earlier,
Speaker 1: it does help in our struggle for autonomy and independence
Speaker 1: from clune On rule to have this construct other nation, right,
Speaker 1: but it also obscures a lot of the real material
Speaker 1: divisions and society, you know, between the wing class and
Speaker 1: the elites. And so you have this national identity that
Speaker 1: is constructed by intellectual and you know, economic elites, and
Speaker 1: it's overlaid on a population that doesn't really have us
Speaker 1: see in that construction. And so these nationalist projects will
Speaker 1: try to downplay or suppress differences in conflicts. And but
Speaker 1: as part of why nationalism so often lends itself to fascism,
Speaker 1: because fascism is an outgrowth of this idea of nation
Speaker 1: where they promote this vision of national unity and stifle
Speaker 1: class conflict and create a collusion of classes that pushes
Speaker 1: aside of people who don't fit within their concept of
Speaker 1: the nation.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I often think, like when I'm talking to my
Speaker 4: undergrads about nation, Like the most distinct way I could
Speaker 4: say is like the salient we through both space and time, right, Like,
Speaker 4: it's the people you identify with, it's the us, and
Speaker 4: fascism weaponizes us against the rest of humanity or against
Speaker 4: us mostly like against escapegoat group who become them. Right,
Speaker 4: and then like the nation is for us, the state
Speaker 4: is for us, it's not for them, Thus they must
Speaker 4: be exterminated.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 5: It's an obvious outgrowth of nationalism.
Speaker 1: Hence xenophobia, hence anti semitism, anti blackness, anti indigenuity, all
Speaker 1: these prejudices. I mean, And that's the thing about nationalism.
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily consistent because you'll say, all people from
Speaker 1: this land, you know, we should desay to be United
Speaker 1: except for those people who are also from this land.
Speaker 1: They don't get to count, you know, they are perpetual outsiders.
Speaker 1: They don't share the true culture. They aren't part of
Speaker 1: our destiny. So even if they're legally citizens or legally
Speaker 1: a long term residents, or they haven't residents there for
Speaker 1: a long time the entire lives for generations or if
Speaker 1: the case may be, they don't count. They're outside forever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, they can never assent to like a sort
Speaker 4: of higher status of being one of us. British people
Speaker 4: like to mobilize this one a lot, right, Like you
Speaker 4: can be British, but.
Speaker 1: You can never be English.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I forget who coined that coined the phrase cricket nationalism,
Speaker 4: but it's just particularly kind of ridiculous, Like, oh, if
Speaker 4: you know, if there's a Test match between Britain and
Speaker 4: Pakistan and Britain Trinidad Tobago, who do you support? Like
Speaker 4: is that, like are you really going to make that
Speaker 4: the core of your national identity? Like the cene qua
Speaker 4: non of being British is like which flag you take
Speaker 4: to the cricket match? Like it's particularly ridiculous and if
Speaker 4: it doesn't reflect exclusion, right, people aren't taking their flag
Speaker 4: to the cricket match because like that's the core of
Speaker 4: the entity. They're just like, yeah, well kind of I
Speaker 4: get treated differently because of my ethnic boundary, like makeup
Speaker 4: right ethnic presentation. So I guess you guys don't like me,
Speaker 4: so like they'll be funny when we kick your ass cricket,
Speaker 4: like it's the cause of arrow points in the wrong direction.
Speaker 1: I guess I can imagine I will not be bringing
Speaker 1: any flags to any cricket match because because I don't
Speaker 1: attend cricket matches, I'm not not too big of a
Speaker 1: fan of cricket.
Speaker 5: It can't be doing it.
Speaker 1: I stick to my football, and I say football in
Speaker 1: the international sense.
Speaker 4: Good, yeah, yeah, I can't stand around long enough to
Speaker 4: play cricket, to be honest.
Speaker 1: As we're talking about national liberation, these struggles often took
Speaker 1: place in the context of the Cold War, right, which
Speaker 1: is where we get this other sense of this other
Speaker 1: framework for divving up the world now. Growing up, I
Speaker 1: was always told that, you know, trant Tobago is a
Speaker 1: third world country. I had a social studies textbook, and
Speaker 1: I taught first world, second world, third world, But I
Speaker 1: didn't teach first world second World, third world in the
Speaker 1: context of the Cold War, because I grew up in
Speaker 1: a post Cold War world and these terms came from
Speaker 1: the Cool War but persisted after the Cold War. So
Speaker 1: what happened I was taught we have third world because
Speaker 1: we are still developing. We're not at that intermediate stage
Speaker 1: development where we could see the second world, and we're
Speaker 1: not at that first world level of developed and like America, right.
Speaker 9: And.
Speaker 1: That's that's a smaller side for me. But I've always
Speaker 1: found it mildly irritated when I see people use this
Speaker 1: famous social media catchphrase or America is a third World
Speaker 1: country in a Gucci belt.
Speaker 5: I haven't seen now on the yet. That's annoying.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've seen similar sentiments, this idea all America's
Speaker 1: third world, American.
Speaker 5: Stud world, Yeah, I have.
Speaker 1: Like, it's just annoying to me yet, So one, it
Speaker 1: completely divorces the concert of the third world from its actual
Speaker 1: origins and to it. Also, I think reflects that kind
Speaker 1: of a blindness to what's happened in the rest of
Speaker 1: the world, in the countries that are actually considered third
Speaker 1: world and the differences between them, you know, for everything
Speaker 1: that we can express frustrations about in the US anybody
Speaker 1: in the third world, I think, and I've when I
Speaker 1: when I've visited the US, I've seen it with my
Speaker 1: own eyes. You know, there's still things there that Americans
Speaker 1: might take for granted that are just not that would
Speaker 1: never be taken for granted in another context. And I see,
Speaker 1: of course the divisioncy in America's version of the First
Speaker 1: World versus you know, some of the European Social Democracy's
Speaker 1: version of the First World. So I get that frustration,
Speaker 1: you know, the lack of free health care and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, investment in infrastructure and all that. But
Speaker 1: let me just get into the background behind the tomb.
Speaker 1: Right as we step into the Cool War, you have
Speaker 1: this concept of the three world model that came after
Speaker 1: World War Two. The pre war status cool was over
Speaker 1: and you had new conflicts on the horizon. And to
Speaker 1: the film, first World originally described the capitalist block led
Speaker 1: by the United States and Western Europe, were capitalist markets, liberals,
Speaker 1: and rock see an economic progress was celebrated. And then
Speaker 1: you had the Second World block, which referred to the
Speaker 1: communist bloc led by the Soviet Union, where what I
Speaker 1: would consider state capitalism and centrally planned economies shape their societies.
Speaker 1: So in the First World yet countries like the US, Australia,
Speaker 1: Africa today might be shocking. You know, Iran was even
Speaker 1: considered part of the First World block during the Cool War.
Speaker 1: That might be shocking now because when we think of
Speaker 1: some of these countries like, oh, those are third World countries.
Speaker 1: Those are undeveloped countries. They aren't at the developed level
Speaker 1: of the West yet. But in the context in which
Speaker 1: has three World model originated, these were countries that explicitly
Speaker 1: aligned themselves with the policies of the United States and
Speaker 1: its allies as capitalist nations against the Soviet Bloc. And
Speaker 1: the Soviet Bloc you had, of course countries like China
Speaker 1: and Vietnam, Laos, Ethiopia, Yeah, and Huba, all these different
Speaker 1: countries align themselves explicitly with the Soviet Union. Then the
Speaker 1: third World and where the third will concept came in
Speaker 1: was with all the countries that stood against picking aside. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of these were former colonies and nations that
Speaker 1: chose not to side completely with either. And so this
Speaker 1: whole concept, this whole idea of the non aligned movement,
Speaker 1: it really kicked off thanks to the joining of the
Speaker 1: Indian Prime Minister, the Canayan president, the Indonesian president, and
Speaker 1: the president of the United Arab Republic, alongside Yugoslavia and
Speaker 1: so all these countries who all had very different economic
Speaker 1: arrange ones Yugoslavia famously was kind of doing its own
Speaker 1: thing compared to a lot of the other countries associated
Speaker 1: with socialism. India and Ghana they were also kind of
Speaker 1: doing their own thing, kind of a mix trance. Tobago's
Speaker 1: also considered part of the non aligned movement, and so
Speaker 1: these classifications at the time, these were geopolitical and all
Speaker 1: political ideology is not necessarily economic development. So technically speaking,
Speaker 1: the terms shouldn't even be relevant us today. I mean,
Speaker 1: the Cold War of the twentieth century is over. But
Speaker 1: over time the narrative began to twist. You know, so
Speaker 1: because you didn't pick a side, you didn't pick the
Speaker 1: red team or the blue team, you didn't pick the
Speaker 1: First World of the Second World, this narrative developed where
Speaker 1: or you didn't pick a side, you're politically independent, so
Speaker 1: you're poor, you're chaotic, your failed state, all these different things.
Speaker 1: And of course there were incidents in part influenced of
Speaker 1: course by state actors in the US and state actors
Speaker 1: in the Soviet client block would have contributed to this outcome,
Speaker 1: But over time you get this sense of or the
Speaker 1: third World is failure. All these states were trying different
Speaker 1: path of development, different approaches to governance from either of
Speaker 1: the two camps, mixed hybrid approaches, but in the end
Speaker 1: that's just this just got them stuck with the label
Speaker 1: of underdevelopment and at having them being seen as lesser.
Speaker 1: Now today people don't use food world as much as
Speaker 1: they use developing, at least in you know, the more
Speaker 1: above board discourse. But that division also has its own implications,
Speaker 1: right the developed countries versus the developing countries. It's kind
Speaker 1: of a softer sorts of version of the same thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's kind of gentle, Yeah, the same shit.
Speaker 1: What those terms do implicitly, it's like, you know what,
Speaker 1: you're fish in water, so you can't recognize water. It's
Speaker 1: hard to recognize these things, these ideological impulses when we're
Speaker 1: submerged in them. If you take a step back, you realize, oh,
Speaker 1: these terms developed and developing, they have very heavy implications.
Speaker 1: And the implication is that there's a single linear path
Speaker 1: to progress modeled after Western cap that all societies are
Speaker 1: progressing towards through industrialization, through consumerism, through the ALMIGHTGP growth,
Speaker 1: and so development to your underdevelopment becomes a tool of intervention.
Speaker 1: It becomes a way to mask imperial interests with the
Speaker 1: sort of the nair of oh, we're just kind of
Speaker 1: helping you out.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like we move from your savage you're primitive, so
Speaker 1: you're just not developed yet, but theory will help you out.
Speaker 1: And that's how you get the whole sort of IMF
Speaker 1: and World Bank, introductions of models of debts and policy
Speaker 1: conditions and metrics and all these different things to sort
Speaker 1: of shape these countries into client states, states that can
Speaker 1: be used to further Western development. The Cold War is
Speaker 1: technically over now, as I said, so I suppose we've
Speaker 1: reached the end of history, as the famous saying goes,
Speaker 1: but not exactly. In the only nineteen nineties, Samuel Huntington
Speaker 1: came up with a thesis to explain the conflicts that
Speaker 1: would define the post Cold War world and as we
Speaker 1: entered into the twenty first century, and so he argued
Speaker 1: that the future of global conflict would not be defined
Speaker 1: by competing ideologies or economic systems, but by cultural fault lines.
Speaker 1: In his nineteen ninety three article in Foreign Affairs, which
Speaker 1: Lates expanded into his nineteen ninety six book The Clash
Speaker 1: of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, Huntington
Speaker 1: predicted that the primary source of conflict in a new
Speaker 1: era would be between distinct civilizations. His model would have
Speaker 1: pointed to clashes between the West and other groups Islamic nations,
Speaker 1: the Confucian East, and of course set up this sense
Speaker 1: that the West is this pinnacle of rationality and modernity
Speaker 1: and all these others in competition with the fantastic, amazing West.
Speaker 1: And I always like to call out some of these
Speaker 1: strange ways that he has divided the world.
Speaker 5: Right, So sub Saharan.
Speaker 1: Africa is all grouped up into the African camp, all
Speaker 1: of North Africa, the Middle East, into West Asia, all
Speaker 1: of that is considered part of the Islamic civilization. Forget
Speaker 1: all the differences between any of them. By the way,
Speaker 1: Indonesia it's also part of the Islamic block. You have
Speaker 1: the Sinic or the Confucian block that includes China, both Koreas, Taiwan,
Speaker 1: and Vietnam, except for the parts of China that are
Speaker 1: under the Buddhist camp, such as Tibet, So Tibetan is
Speaker 1: kind of carved up on its own as its own camp.
Speaker 1: Mongolia is also under the Buddhist camp.
Speaker 5: Thailand and all.
Speaker 1: These others in Southeast Asia considered part of the Buddhist camp. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you have the Latin American block, which is
Speaker 1: everybody part of Latin America and even people who are
Speaker 1: not technically Latin America and are kind of swept in there.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to be a by the base of
Speaker 1: the map that I saw on the Wikipedia article on
Speaker 1: the subject.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I found that map. Now it's some.
Speaker 1: Very busy are divisions, and we used to cut up
Speaker 1: this will we have the Western rule versus the Orthodox world,
Speaker 1: which includes Kazakhstan and Greece and Ukraine and Russia all
Speaker 1: under that civilizational banner.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Philippines is somehow part Islamic, part Western, and part Sinic.
Speaker 1: It's a very unusual blend.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And then he's just got like Japan, it's just hanging
Speaker 4: out there by itself.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention especial Japan is kind
Speaker 1: of it's the one thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it literally says Japanese.
Speaker 4: I've forgotten about that, and then he goes on to
Speaker 4: freak out about like the like Latin world as he
Speaker 4: sees it, like fucking dividing the United States right like
Speaker 4: in his his is it called like who we are
Speaker 4: or where we are or something his book about migration
Speaker 4: in the United States m it was after Clash of
Speaker 4: civilizations he wrote this book about like how the like
Speaker 4: I think I don't know quite remember how he termed it,
Speaker 4: like this, he us Latino or Hispanic or something else,
Speaker 4: but like that that that population increasing in the United
Speaker 4: States will like divide the United States into two fundamentally
Speaker 4: opposed civilizations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he has some interesting compulsion. Yeah, And unfortunately
Speaker 1: his thesis found its voice following the events of nine
Speaker 1: to eleven partitions and media. These people were taking his
Speaker 1: ideas to kind of justify the one and terror that
Speaker 1: would unfold. It also creates sort of cultural device that
Speaker 1: settle into place at home will not create but shape
Speaker 1: those cultural divides as you create the sense of oh,
Speaker 1: if there's if we're experience in a clash of civilizations
Speaker 1: right now, then this flood couldn't quote of people from
Speaker 1: another civilization is a threat to the vision. It's something
Speaker 1: that needs to be targeted and fought against. Yeah, and so,
Speaker 1: in a sense, his classicalizations is kind of a repackaging
Speaker 1: of a lot of the binaries and divisions we've spoken
Speaker 1: of what before. You have elements of nationalism, you have
Speaker 1: elements of civilized versus barbarian, you have elements of East
Speaker 1: and West, the Cold War dichotomies. All of that kind
Speaker 1: of comes together in this neat package. Finally, we enter
Speaker 1: the twenty first century, and they are two very popular
Speaker 1: ways that we now categorize the world. People tend to
Speaker 1: use the phrases global North and Global South as a
Speaker 1: softer or more politically correct alternative to develop developing or
Speaker 1: first and third world. It's considered less loaded, more neutral sounding,
Speaker 1: and it's originally popularized via UN frameworks and the brand line,
Speaker 1: which is done in nineteen eighty, which drew a literal
Speaker 1: line across the globe, separating the wealthier North from the
Speaker 1: poorer self. To be clear, though, despite the geographical language,
Speaker 1: it's not literally about hemispheres. Australia is considered part of
Speaker 1: the Global Nor and Mongolia is considered part of the
Speaker 1: global South, but generally speaking, the global salt refus the
Speaker 1: post colonial regions and the global North refoos the wealthy,
Speaker 1: industrialized countries of the world. To me, again, it's not
Speaker 1: really a flawless framework. It has all the same binaries
Speaker 1: and smoothing over of complexities of internal class divides between
Speaker 1: For example, ritually it's in the global South and poor
Speaker 1: communities in the North. It gives impression that entire countries
Speaker 1: share unified class experience, I think. I think it also
Speaker 1: has the potential to obscure inequality between South South relations.
Speaker 1: So yes, two countries may both be a part of
Speaker 1: the Global South, but there could be a massive power
Speaker 1: differential between them that you know, set them up for
Speaker 1: interventions and equal treaties, and also sort of different sorts
Speaker 1: of medaline. For example, Saudi Arabia, at least in one
Speaker 1: map that I saw, is considered part.
Speaker 5: Of the Global South.
Speaker 1: But as we know, Sauy Arabia is famous first medline
Speaker 1: across Africa and the Middle East. It's interventions, it's financing
Speaker 1: of different conflicts across the region. Now I get why
Speaker 1: the term is used. It creates a sense of shared struggle,
Speaker 1: especially in anti imperialist and climate justice spaces. But I
Speaker 1: think it has weaknesses. You know, and how we construct
Speaker 1: solidarity on that basis.
Speaker 5: Yeah right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the other and final system that I wanted to
Speaker 1: mention that has gained popularity these days is world systems theory,
Speaker 1: which is actually older than class civilizations. It came out
Speaker 1: of Immanuel Wallastein's work during the Cold War and he
Speaker 1: kind of stood out and said that he was rejecting
Speaker 1: the three world system and the simplistic country by country
Speaker 1: development models. Instead he created this world systems theory that
Speaker 1: saw capitalism as a single global system, not a patchwork
Speaker 1: of individual national economies, on labor roles, on commodity flows,
Speaker 1: and on power concentration. And I think in an even
Speaker 1: more globalized world it makes the most sense. So to
Speaker 1: wall Esteem, they have three different zones of the global economy.
Speaker 1: You have the core, which as you know, have strong
Speaker 1: states financial capital, tech heavy industries controlled over global institutions,
Speaker 1: and they tend to exploit the labor and resources of
Speaker 1: the periphery, while export and high value goods and debt
Speaker 1: structures and the periphery of the countries that tend to
Speaker 1: have weaker institutions, extractive or career economies, reliance and export
Speaker 1: and raw materials debt defendency and structural adjustment policies, and
Speaker 1: they often dump in grounds for pollution, waste and arms
Speaker 1: from the global North. The semi periphery are then considered
Speaker 1: under his model, the countries that mediates between the core
Speaker 1: and the periphery. These are industrialized and economies with mixed
Speaker 1: labor and capital exports. They sometimes exploit others while being
Speaker 1: exploited themselves. These include countries like Brazil, India, Mexico, Turkey,
Speaker 1: and South Africa, and they tend to seal as the
Speaker 1: buffers that stabilize the system while chasing core status.
Speaker 5: I think this model is very dynamic.
Speaker 1: It could be more dynamic, but it does have the
Speaker 1: capacity to highlight the systemic interdependence of this glocal system,
Speaker 1: that one region's wealth is contingent on another's dispossession. It
Speaker 1: makes it very useful for understanding that, you know, poverty
Speaker 1: is not some religious happens, it's land is very clearly
Speaker 1: structured and developed by the wealth of the North. And
Speaker 1: I think also with the corporate free model, you see
Speaker 1: the sense of a one way flow where value and
Speaker 1: labor goes from the periphery to the core, but there
Speaker 1: is another direction that flew goes right because the migrants
Speaker 1: from the perifree, they go to the core. They fill
Speaker 1: precurious rules and core economy is like care work and
Speaker 1: agriculture and logistics, and so they almost become an important
Speaker 1: periphery within the core. And their absence from the periphree
Speaker 1: also deprives the perifhree. Hence the phenomenon of brain drain,
Speaker 1: where people are siphered the way as label and the
Speaker 1: and the educated population tends to leave, you know, their
Speaker 1: countries of origin. But I say, I'm saying it's not
Speaker 1: just a one way flow because you also have that
Speaker 1: sense of diaspora and diasporic networks that kind of reverse
Speaker 1: the flow. Remittances for some countries can be a significant
Speaker 1: chunk of their national income. I think the Philippines is
Speaker 1: a classic example of this. Some of the Caribbean countries,
Speaker 1: either historically or presently, we're very dependent on remittances from
Speaker 1: their diasporic populations sending money back home. Lebanon is another example,
Speaker 1: Salvador is another example. They become key part of the national GDP,
Speaker 1: that sort of relationship of my creatia. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: think what I want to do with this corporate free model,
Speaker 1: or this core prefree semi prefer model is expanded. And
Speaker 1: one of the ways that I found very useful to
Speaker 1: do so comes from fellow podcaster shout out to Elija
Speaker 1: j Ayub. Yeah, I read an article of his that
Speaker 1: was on the anarchist libraries called the periphery has no
Speaker 1: time for binaries. This very crucial point, and I coulte
Speaker 1: we are as peripheral to the global selt regimes crushing
Speaker 1: us as they are perceived to be by the Western
Speaker 1: think tanks and foreign ministers who view their imagined space
Speaker 1: as the center of the world. China and Russia and
Speaker 1: Iran are peripheral to the West, and any and all
Speaker 1: activists in China and Russia and Iran a peripheral to
Speaker 1: their governments. So I kind of like this sense of
Speaker 1: not just looking on the country level, but looking at
Speaker 1: particular populations, populations within countries the relationships between them, bringing
Speaker 1: that class dynamic. Yeah, with between populations more prominently.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like if you look at the like the example
Speaker 4: I'm familiar with, relate like the what we could look
Speaker 4: at Kurdistan or meen right, there are ethnic groups within
Speaker 4: that country that are subject to colonialism by the core
Speaker 4: groups within that country, right, like asides Arab belt stuff
Speaker 4: for the Boma majority using classic colonial divide and rule
Speaker 4: tactics right now against the rahiner in Themma. And like,
Speaker 4: I think it doesn't make sense to see that whole
Speaker 4: country is peripheral, right, Like that binary doesn't function when
Speaker 4: like the salient colonial violence happening, especially in the MMA,
Speaker 4: it's happening within the Anma, but it doesn't make any
Speaker 4: less salient. And like the experience of colonialism is still violent.
Speaker 4: And if we only use this like state level binary,
Speaker 4: we will totally miss.
Speaker 1: That exactly exactly, And I think it's important to be clear.
Speaker 1: Obviously I've rejected a lot of these frameworks in covering them.
Speaker 1: You won't see me using the civilized primitive binary anytime soon.
Speaker 1: But some of these concepts can be useful.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 5: They do shape the way that we view the world,
Speaker 5: how we.
Speaker 1: See ourselves the imperfect, of course, but because they're trying
Speaker 1: to map onto reality, and reality is a shifting beast.
Speaker 1: But I think it's good to have some sense or
Speaker 1: some language to understand the inequality and podynamics present in
Speaker 1: the world. So we can reclaim these frameworks, so we
Speaker 1: can reject them. You know, we could use them for
Speaker 1: solidarity or for division. But the question I want to
Speaker 1: leave us with the wrap of this episode is how
Speaker 1: do we build a world where these divisions are no
Speaker 1: longer descriptive or relevant? And that's all I have for today,
Speaker 1: or power to all the people.
Speaker 5: Peace.
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to take it up. And here I'm
Speaker 1: Andrew Sage and I'm back with James.
Speaker 5: It's me again. Welcome back. Yeah, good to be here.
Speaker 1: Great to have you once again, offer you to have me.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure the dynamic is here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, MEI it's nice to be together.
Speaker 1: It's an egalitarian dynamic. You know, we're both having each
Speaker 1: other in a sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, we're sharing this podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think there are a lot of concepts that
Speaker 1: it's good to grasp to get a sense of how
Speaker 1: this world works. Kind of continuing from the previous episode
Speaker 1: where we spoke about all the different ways that we
Speaker 1: can divide up the world and understanding the world and
Speaker 1: so on. Today's sort of pursuit of that endeavor. I
Speaker 1: wanted to get into a particular concept that is so
Speaker 1: benign yet supervsive in this system, and it's the idea
Speaker 1: of externalization. Do you get what I mean by that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, like making people of things other.
Speaker 1: Yes, But specifically, I think I want to address how
Speaker 1: capitalism persists by pushing harm onto the other, Yeah, onto
Speaker 1: the someone or something else, shifting the costs of particular actions,
Speaker 1: either environmentally, socially, or economically. I think the easiest example
Speaker 1: I could point too is how a company may choose
Speaker 1: to save on disposal costs by dumping their waste into
Speaker 1: a river, which can thus poison the water supply, the ecosystem,
Speaker 1: and the health of all those human and non human
Speaker 1: lives who rely upon or live near that river. Do
Speaker 1: you have another example you could probably point to? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there are lots of them.
Speaker 4: One of them that I think of a lot is
Speaker 4: like how in the US, rightly, products that we can't
Speaker 4: recycle or that we can't landfill, we will literally ship to.
Speaker 5: Somewhere else to be dumped.
Speaker 4: Like, our consumption creates so much excess and so much waste,
Speaker 4: and we can't be confronted with that waste, so we
Speaker 4: tip it to places where people consume less.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's uh, I mean you see, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've seen, ay the footage of some of these places,
Speaker 1: their whole costs of fast fashion waste for example in Africa,
Speaker 1: or just eweiste leaching into the soil. It's really quite tragic.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I remember someone on net once was telling me that
Speaker 4: like one of the things that children did where they
Speaker 4: had come from was they would pick through e waste,
Speaker 4: specifically charging cables to get the copper out. M M.
Speaker 4: This would result in them having like these terrible injuries
Speaker 4: to their fingers because they were like prying the cables apart,
Speaker 4: and you know, over time they would get little pieces
Speaker 4: of both shards of metal EMBD in their fingertips.
Speaker 5: Town.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's terrible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's pretty pretty grim condemnation of a way of consuming.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's messed up.
Speaker 1: It's messed up, and I think when you see that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff, it's hard to unsee it. When you
Speaker 1: see that impact on't the world, it's hard to unsee it.
Speaker 1: But that's part of how this concept thrives, this externalization thrives,
Speaker 1: it's by obscuring itself. Yeah, so that's what we kind
Speaker 1: of want to do with this episode, get up a
Speaker 1: full breadth of its history, its present, and its apparent
Speaker 1: future so that we can not see all the different
Speaker 1: ways that this occurs. Now, this pass and on of
Speaker 1: courts may have always been an option on the table,
Speaker 1: but we can see that a lot of traditional economies
Speaker 1: did not go that route because traditional economies were often
Speaker 1: human economies, as David Greeber used the term in Debt,
Speaker 1: the first five thousand years, you know, these were economies
Speaker 1: focused on human relationships. They were embedded in kinship and
Speaker 1: land and customs and obligation and reciprocity. So what you
Speaker 1: owed was really financial. It was to you enable your elder,
Speaker 1: your clan plan itself, and so you could not really
Speaker 1: avoid the costs of your actions on others, because that
Speaker 1: was at the center of it all others. But the
Speaker 1: transition to capitalism was a shift in what the economy was.
Speaker 1: It enforced the idea that everything is or should be,
Speaker 1: up for sale. The economist called Polani called it the
Speaker 1: Great Transformation, when land, labor, and money were turned into
Speaker 1: fictitious commodities, treated as if they were products for sale.
Speaker 1: Plenty saw the modern state and the capitalist market economy
Speaker 1: as a package deal. Graybot also made this very clear
Speaker 1: in Debt as well. For this new kind of economy
Speaker 1: to take hold, people had to change how they thought
Speaker 1: about work and trade and relation with each other. And
Speaker 1: see in the world, those conditions had to be created
Speaker 1: by the state, so you could look at how electritional
Speaker 1: economies and commons had to be disrupted to force the shift.
Speaker 1: In England, you had people pushed off of common land
Speaker 1: that they had use for centuries, and they had no
Speaker 1: choice but to sell their labor to survive and go
Speaker 1: into the factories. We have to remember that he never
Speaker 1: started in the factories. That actually started in the colonies.
Speaker 1: This dispossession of people and from place started through that
Speaker 1: colonization process. Already amplify through that colonization process extracting the
Speaker 1: wealth of people or of labor, of land, of resources
Speaker 1: from one place to concentrate it to another to displace
Speaker 1: people and land and costs and secluialism was capitalism sort
Speaker 1: of training ground for externalization. You plunder a little bit
Speaker 1: over here, you profit a little bit over there. And
Speaker 1: this is really where we get to the core of
Speaker 1: capitalist externalization. With the shifting of the costs. On a
Speaker 1: small scale that looks like the river pollution example. From
Speaker 1: the global scale, it looks like what will steam is
Speaker 1: getting into with world systems theory how the wealth and
Speaker 1: stability the coronations depends on the exploitation of the periphery.
Speaker 1: So slavery and genocide and ecological ruin, all of these
Speaker 1: are costs that create the wealth that the core enjoys,
Speaker 1: but it's made invisible to that core because when you're
Speaker 1: part of an ongoing relationship with community, with land, with ecology,
Speaker 1: with people, the actions have consequences that matter, They reverberate,
Speaker 1: you can feel them, and that demands a level of
Speaker 1: responsibility on your part. But when you take the things
Speaker 1: that have been woven into relationship and turn them into
Speaker 1: plain old transactions, those transactions can then offload the costs,
Speaker 1: offload the consequences, make them someone else's problem. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: cloven is very affordable now, but it's affordable because somebody
Speaker 1: somewhere was underpaid and overworked. The smartphone. It's convenient, it's useful, successible,
Speaker 1: but it's parts of mind and the dangerous conditions. You know,
Speaker 1: your food solicious, nutritious, not exactly affordable these days, but
Speaker 1: it's picked by hands that cannot afford that same meal.
Speaker 1: So the harms of these systems, the harms of these actions,
Speaker 1: of this level of consumption doesn't cease to exist, it's
Speaker 1: just externalized, so it could be rendered invisible to one
Speaker 1: point of view. Yeah, and it's not something that can
Speaker 1: be set up without a fight. You know, people would resist.
Speaker 1: Enclosures were met with resistance, colonizations met with resistance, and
Speaker 1: even to the workers strike, you know, people do fight back.
Speaker 1: It's not just this sweeping and nevitable process. But because
Speaker 1: of the collaboration between state and capital, that collusion of
Speaker 1: status and capitalist interests, the whole system has managed to
Speaker 1: persist thus far. It's a very formidable forward dealing with
Speaker 1: So we can set it back here and there, but
Speaker 1: we have not defeated it yet. Yeah, and I say yet,
Speaker 1: because you know, as we get into there are ways
Speaker 1: to loosen its script. I think what's fascinating about capitalistic
Speaker 1: externalization today is just how much it has skilled and
Speaker 1: got more sophisticated in terms of the work that makes
Speaker 1: the world run. The most essential label is often the
Speaker 1: most invisible and undervalued and precurious labor. You know, where
Speaker 1: we're talking about the work that's necessary to clothe ourselves,
Speaker 1: the work that's necessary to feed ourselves, the work is
Speaker 1: necessary to build infrastructure such as in the Gulf States
Speaker 1: where you have litual modern slavery taking place to build
Speaker 1: up those countries where they're talking about gig work, transportation
Speaker 1: to livery that sort of thing, or reproductive work stuff
Speaker 1: like what it's called housewifery or domestic labor. Should you
Speaker 1: think of other examples as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I like the one you gave about your cell phone, right,
Speaker 4: like those rare earth materials. Like it's not some like
Speaker 4: safe mining operation bring serves out.
Speaker 5: Of the ground.
Speaker 4: It's human hands in dangerous conditions that kill people.
Speaker 1: Exactly, poisons people. It's it's not even necessarily a quicker death,
Speaker 1: it's often a slow, yeah, lifelong death.
Speaker 4: And it poisons that part of the world for generator.
Speaker 4: Like we could stop right now, and it would take
Speaker 4: generations for the damage to stop, exactly.
Speaker 1: That's the thing about destruction, right, destruction can be very quick,
Speaker 1: as the rebuilding that can take.
Speaker 5: A long time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you look at how quickly Gazo has been flattened,
Speaker 1: this is how long it's going to take to recover
Speaker 1: from that.
Speaker 5: It's like nine and d yeah, yeah, yeah, like it.
Speaker 4: I mean I'm very familiar with that particular example, right,
Speaker 4: Like how quickly you can destroy something with a bomb
Speaker 4: from an aeroplane, and how hard people had to work
Speaker 4: to build it. In October of twenty three, I was
Speaker 4: in Kurdistan and like, I know how hard people work
Speaker 4: to build it, Jaba, right, to try and build a
Speaker 4: little island of democracy without the state in a place
Speaker 4: where the state has been weaponized against tons of different
Speaker 4: ethnic groups who are not Arab, and even against Arab
Speaker 4: people who didn't agree with the state's particular.
Speaker 5: Wine a thing.
Speaker 4: And one night, you know, like the power station's gone,
Speaker 4: they bombed while I was there, like an oxygen bottling
Speaker 4: plant for people who need supplemental oxygen, either temporarily or permanently,
Speaker 4: and like it's gone now. And now to build that
Speaker 4: back up in a world where you are largely alienated
Speaker 4: from the system of states in capital, right, you're trying
Speaker 4: to build stuff back up as much as you can
Speaker 4: from networks of solidarity and ingenuity, and that takes years.
Speaker 5: And yeah, yeah, but it's not visible, and.
Speaker 1: That's not even getting into the emotional and mental tool
Speaker 1: of something like that.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh that can be a setback as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when I've been talking about sources, we're talking about Yeah,
Speaker 1: that loss. Yeah, that that that pain.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Yeah, the pain.
Speaker 1: Made even worse when the skilled people, skilled workers who
Speaker 1: were responsible for upkeeping such something like that also wiped
Speaker 1: up by that same bomb. Makes it all the more
Speaker 1: difficult to recover.
Speaker 4: Yeah, or drawn away right by the conditions of becoming
Speaker 4: a livable So you have this like brain drain, where
Speaker 4: people who have skills that are considered to be commercially
Speaker 4: valuable have.
Speaker 5: An opportunity to leave.
Speaker 4: The people who who don't have those have the opportunity
Speaker 4: to stay or don't have your opportunity to leave, I guess,
Speaker 4: like or even like, you know, the US made a
Speaker 4: bit a different version of externalization, I guess. But like
Speaker 4: the US made a big thing of how it defeated
Speaker 4: the Islamic state in you know, twenty nineteen, I guess.
Speaker 4: I can't remember when the last Atlan Alba goose was,
Speaker 4: I think twenty nineteen, But like we externalized it off
Speaker 4: florid the cost of that's yeah, the dying part, like
Speaker 4: the Yeah, US pilots did a whole lot of killing,
Speaker 4: but the dying part that, yeah, we externalized that right
Speaker 4: to Kurdish and Arab and as Syrian fodder. Yeah, to
Speaker 4: people who would whose lives didn't matter. Yeah, Like I
Speaker 4: remember a time standing in a cemetery there, just looking
Speaker 4: at lines and lines of graves, and I just left
Speaker 4: the house of someone who's thirteen year old son was
Speaker 4: killed in a drone strike and just thinking, like, each
Speaker 4: of these is a mother burying her child. That like,
Speaker 4: we essentially asked for the most part, right, like, to
Speaker 4: do that. We said, hey, what you guys do the
Speaker 4: dying part because we don't want to like it kind
Speaker 4: of sucks, sucks for the United States and Britain in
Speaker 4: Iraq and Afghanistan, so we'd like someone else to die now.
Speaker 4: And then you know, here we are a few years later,
Speaker 4: right and like the night before, Turkey has been bombing
Speaker 4: the place where I'm looking at these graves, and the
Speaker 4: US a doing shit to help, right Like, even though
Speaker 4: these people had like made this massive sacrifice, the US
Speaker 4: wasn't like, yeah, we're your friends. It's not a friendship relationship,
Speaker 4: you know, Like it's it's like you said, it's an interaction, okay,
Speaker 4: like a yeah, purchase more than a solidarity based thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And once again we really see that core externalized
Speaker 1: and its costs onto periphery and We see that both
Speaker 1: in the sense of on the global stage between countries
Speaker 1: or between populations cores and peripheres, but even internally within countries,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned in the previous episode talking about that
Speaker 1: divide between the core and the periphery where you have
Speaker 1: but a lot of people have called the economies biggest trick,
Speaker 1: you know, your socialized failures and privatize profits. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight with the financial crash, people
Speaker 1: were evicted, but the balance got built out and the
Speaker 1: early stages of COVID corporations got relief, gig workers were exposed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, in the process of austerity resulting from neoliberalism,
Speaker 1: social services get cut in order to balance the books,
Speaker 1: but there's never any consideration of or let's trike cutting profits.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and that's one thing that can never go down.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, exactly, I think or even like within you know,
Speaker 4: we all all food come from the soil at some point,
Speaker 4: right that, Like I can't tell you how many people
Speaker 4: I know that my family are in agriculture, right, who
Speaker 4: have died or.
Speaker 5: Lost limbs on farms.
Speaker 4: It's the same is true if you're in the mining industry, right, Like,
Speaker 4: that's not something that's visible. You know, you don't like
Speaker 4: go to the supermarket and bite your bread, right, and
Speaker 4: you don't think that someone got their arm in the
Speaker 4: combine harvester when they were doing the field that went
Speaker 4: to the flower that major loaf of bread that costs
Speaker 4: one dollars ninety cents, and now the person doesn't have
Speaker 4: an arm.
Speaker 5: It's invisibilized. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the same thing when you see like
Speaker 1: these natural disasters taking place right, floods or burnings, right
Speaker 1: when when California is on file and when Pakistan is
Speaker 1: completely flooded out. Those are the consequences of the actions
Speaker 1: of corporations, of the actions of this entire global economic system.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, the corporations are getting carbon credits to continue
Speaker 1: doing what they will always do it. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: and so the actual consequences of what they're doing, they're
Speaker 1: paying for carbon credits, but the actual consequences of what
Speaker 1: they're doing are being paid for by the communities that
Speaker 1: are displaced by the consequences of this climate change.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And we never talk about when we talk about migration, right,
Speaker 4: like that's a great The climate change is a great
Speaker 4: example that we don't talk about how the bulk of
Speaker 4: people coming to the United States are coming from the
Speaker 4: place is most heavily impacted by climate change.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 4: Like I was in the Marshall Islands a few years ago,
Speaker 4: and there will be no more Marshall Islands within our lifetime, yeah,
Speaker 4: because of the consequences and massive corporations have made. But
Speaker 4: like they don't have any agency. It made me really
Speaker 4: like it was hard because they're doing stuff like they
Speaker 4: use a to get it to get around the atolls, right,
Speaker 4: they use little like two strikeout boards, and they're trying
Speaker 4: to build solar canoes instead and solar boats so that
Speaker 4: it's it's cleaner energy, right, Like less than a percent
Speaker 4: of a percent of the world's carbon emissions come from
Speaker 4: the Marshall Islands, and they're like trying their hardest to
Speaker 4: do their part to reduce their emissions, but like they
Speaker 4: can't make the impact that needs to be made to
Speaker 4: stop the sea levels rising. And arguably, like when the
Speaker 4: world had a chance to do so, like you see
Speaker 4: them speaking at the United Nations and then the UN
Speaker 4: being like the line has to go up.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 5: That means your island does to sink.
Speaker 1: And that's why you know, reform is not in can
Speaker 1: be enough, because this is how the system is designed.
Speaker 1: It's designed to push risk downward and outward, onto the
Speaker 1: working class, onto the global south, and onto the next generation.
Speaker 1: Because that's another dimension of externalization. Right time, even our
Speaker 1: future gets externalized in a sense. You know, all of
Speaker 1: our resources are limited or finite resources that can used
Speaker 1: up now at an increase in velocity.
Speaker 5: Right. Yeah, the national debt.
Speaker 1: Of some countries is being something further and further into now.
Speaker 1: Right the emissions the center of all those emissions now
Speaker 1: fossil fuels, you know, all that stuff, because we don't
Speaker 1: have to do the consequences, so the future don't have
Speaker 1: to do the consequences as the system digging its own grave,
Speaker 1: because even though the system needs stability, it will sacrifice
Speaker 1: future stability for present profits. It will sacrifice nature, which
Speaker 1: is the basis of the economy. It will sacrifice nature
Speaker 1: to the economy in service of the economy. It will
Speaker 1: treat natures disposable and infinite and something external to the
Speaker 1: way that we run things as if as if it's
Speaker 1: not going to catch up to us, and so as
Speaker 1: collapse will accelerate, as the consequences become more apparent on
Speaker 1: the sacrifice zones of the periphery. The powers that beyond
Speaker 1: interested in fixing it. You know, they're going to fortify
Speaker 1: themselves against it through border patrols, through climate walls, through
Speaker 1: militarize disaster response. They're going to double down.
Speaker 4: Yeah, make it harder and harder to see the consequences
Speaker 4: of a excessive consumption of capitalism, like until the levy breaks,
Speaker 4: I guess literally or metaphorically.
Speaker 1: Yep, literally or metaphorically. And I want people to keep
Speaker 1: in mind who are listening. You know, this Qan periphery
Speaker 1: is und just the periphery out there, it's also the
Speaker 1: periphery within that we're talking about in terms of consequences,
Speaker 1: the internal dumping grounds, whether it be you know, indigenous reservations,
Speaker 1: or the neighborhoods of black and round people, or the
Speaker 1: prisons that often serve as the holding tanks for discontent
Speaker 1: and for poverty and for all the nasty consequences that
Speaker 1: society doesn't want to deal with because of the way
Speaker 1: society has been structured.
Speaker 4: Yeah, or just like under the bridge near your house,
Speaker 4: you know, like like we.
Speaker 1: Exactly treat exactly like.
Speaker 4: San Diego has this particular legisative initiative, which I find
Speaker 4: like obviously it's fucked, but also like it's very so
Speaker 4: it's so obvious, like they they passed to think on
Speaker 4: a camping there where they're going to make it illegal
Speaker 4: to be.
Speaker 5: Unhoused on the sidewalk.
Speaker 4: You're like, it's a bad and it's band against camping
Speaker 4: on the sidewalk, right, And all it does it doesn't
Speaker 4: provide housing for people, and that it doesn't solve the issue.
Speaker 4: It moves people. Our cities very hilly and we have
Speaker 4: lots of canyons in which they can't build. It moves
Speaker 4: people into these canyons.
Speaker 5: Wow, and it.
Speaker 4: Just makes the same people invisible, right, Like that's the
Speaker 4: goal that the goal is not to provide any form
Speaker 4: of solution. It's just to move these people away so
Speaker 4: they don't have to be poor in public. And so
Speaker 4: the people who who use homes as a vehicle for
Speaker 4: wealth creation, not as a place for humans to live,
Speaker 4: don't have to see the consequences of their actions.
Speaker 1: Exactly. It's all about what they want, right, I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, in a sense, depending on how you look
Speaker 1: at it, any one of us can be a core
Speaker 1: and any one of us can be a periphery. You know,
Speaker 1: to our rulers, we are all the periphery that they
Speaker 1: can push their consequences onto. In another sense, you know,
Speaker 1: I am part of the periphery, and do you are
Speaker 1: part of the core, James? And in another sense, you know,
Speaker 1: I might be considered part of the core in my
Speaker 1: own country in some ways because of my class position,
Speaker 1: because of my educational background, because of some of the
Speaker 1: ways that I can be insulated, whereas you know, other ways,
Speaker 1: you know, you might be the periphree in the United States,
Speaker 1: to the core, to the elites, to the ruling class.
Speaker 1: And so this isn't to diminish the very real differences
Speaker 1: between the global core and the global periphery. It's also
Speaker 1: make it clear to those of you in the global
Speaker 1: core that you should be in solidarity with that global
Speaker 1: periphery because their consequences are ultimately your own. You know,
Speaker 1: ultimately we are all the ones who are going to
Speaker 1: be holding the costs, cleaning the mess, surviving the fallout.
Speaker 1: And then it's nothow tough. It is because when you
Speaker 1: live with a system that is based on externalization harm,
Speaker 1: you can end up lashing out on others as well.
Speaker 1: You know that that that logic, that systemic logic becomes
Speaker 1: it o an lies, become as part of how you
Speaker 1: navigate even your relationships. But we don't have to accept
Speaker 1: that way of doing things. The periphery, regardless of which
Speaker 1: prefer you're referring to, does hold the potential for change.
Speaker 1: And so you know, in the beginning, when we were
Speaker 1: speaking of externalization of economic and the economic dimension specifically,
Speaker 1: it's important to understand capitalism relies on these flowers, these
Speaker 1: very smooth flows of labor, energy, and resources and data
Speaker 1: from periferrey to core however you define those terms, and
Speaker 1: so when we interrupt those flows, even briefly, we can
Speaker 1: shake those foundations. And that sort of approached, that effort
Speaker 1: to interrupt, is really part of what social revolution is about.
Speaker 1: It's how we make the changes that we want to see. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I speak a social revolution as not some
Speaker 1: flashy one time event or moment in history, but as
Speaker 1: an ongoing process, as something that is taking place right
Speaker 1: now at different levels, in different ways all over the world.
Speaker 1: And so we can speak of the things we do
Speaker 1: to oppose the current system, like these strikes and blockades
Speaker 1: that have taken place around the world, the indigenous land
Speaker 1: defense struggles that are taking place around the world, they
Speaker 1: rent strikes and mutual aid that have taken place around
Speaker 1: the world. And then beyond that sort of opposition, talking
Speaker 1: about the things we do to propose and alternative to
Speaker 1: construct the kind of world and the kind of life
Speaker 1: that we need so we don't have to rely on
Speaker 1: these systems anymore, that exploit us, to make these systems obsolete,
Speaker 1: to build the cooperatives, to build work a control, collectives
Speaker 1: and disaster response outside of the state, to sort of
Speaker 1: crack the system, and to create in those cracks the
Speaker 1: space where a different system, a new life can grue. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to not become one big machine or one centralized struggle
Speaker 1: or movement, but to multiply and interconnect and adapt to
Speaker 1: the niche circumstances we're all dealing with, like my celium,
Speaker 1: you know, like the mushrooms.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that technology, Like it's sort of you're like
Speaker 4: opening a crack thing paraphrases Zappatista texts right like and
Speaker 4: they have this either just phrase I like from Supermandente Marcos.
Speaker 4: That translates just like, we don't have to change the
Speaker 4: world because we're building another one right now, and you
Speaker 4: know you don't have to we don't have to conquer.
Speaker 4: Like there's this obsession on the left with like revolutionists,
Speaker 4: like you said, like an act that occurs at a
Speaker 4: point in.
Speaker 1: Time capital r revolution.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, as opposed to like building the world where
Speaker 4: the things that we don't wish to see become irrelevant
Speaker 4: through our actions every day. Like you use the example
Speaker 4: of people being an house, which I mentioned before, right,
Speaker 4: Like the way we build a world where those people
Speaker 4: aren't externalized is by not externalizing those people. Like you know,
Speaker 4: it's not hard to do. You probably talk to human
Speaker 4: beings every day anyway. Just continue to do that, you know,
Speaker 4: take your neighbor a sandwich, and like that's the revolution
Speaker 4: that you can build slowly, and maybe it's not as exciting.
Speaker 4: It's like, you know, the one way you I've attended
Speaker 4: the revolutions where people fight against the state, but you
Speaker 4: still have to do the hard work. You still have
Speaker 4: to do that, like day to day building of a
Speaker 4: different way of relating to one another, even in those
Speaker 4: revolutions where things change quickly and violently exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and I mean even before we get to
Speaker 1: that point you know, to be able to change the
Speaker 1: way relate to each other. It starts with mindset, It
Speaker 1: starts with shifting our realm or possibility is, you know,
Speaker 1: not necessarily killing the memes of capitalism, and I mean
Speaker 1: memes in the sensor. Richard Dawkins originally use the term
Speaker 1: as these cultural ideas that persist, that spread, that adapt
Speaker 1: It's difficult to kill those those memes, but you can
Speaker 1: replace them with better memes. And so replacing and popularizing
Speaker 1: those memes, those ideas, you are challenging the idea that
Speaker 1: you know rest is laziness, you know, challenging the idea
Speaker 1: that you know the end goal is profit, that there's
Speaker 1: no other system besides Catholics, and that that's something better
Speaker 1: isn't on the horizon. Shift in that sense reality, I
Speaker 1: think is a very important part of the struggle, and
Speaker 1: with every act, because I think ideas have to be
Speaker 1: accompanied by act. With every act, I think it helps
Speaker 1: to break the spell, to cut off, to put an
Speaker 1: end to that externalization. Because even though capitalists and will
Speaker 1: continue to try to push its arm outward and downward,
Speaker 1: are we and away from view, we can continue to
Speaker 1: challenge it inwardly, to push our struggle upward and to
Speaker 1: center our struggle in the center of view so we
Speaker 1: can see it, so that we can feel us, and
Speaker 1: so that we can act against it. And that's all
Speaker 1: I have for this episode. All forward to all the people. Peace.
Speaker 9: This is it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. Today
Speaker 9: I'm joined by Mia Wong. I am reporting from the
Speaker 9: beautiful and side People's Republic of New York City, and
Speaker 9: we are Zoe back. It is Clover Dimes Squares on
Speaker 9: Suicide Watch. Zomentum is sweeping the nation. Zoronimum Donni has
Speaker 9: won the Democratic primary for the mayor of New York City,
Speaker 9: beating veterans sexual harasser Andrew Cuomo. It was it was
Speaker 9: quite a night in New York last night. We are
Speaker 9: recording this Wednesday morning. The final ranked vote will be
Speaker 9: done in about a week, but Cuomo has conceded the
Speaker 9: race to Zoron, who has declared a pretty decisive victory.
Speaker 12: It's been very funny seeing the dashing weeping of the
Speaker 12: Quotmo camp has been very funny. New York has officially
Speaker 12: been upgraded from a Tier two to a Tier one
Speaker 12: point five. Chinese City given give it another decade, it'll
Speaker 12: it will have entered Chinese civilization.
Speaker 5: The vibes are good. The vibes are good. Well.
Speaker 9: The only difference is that now we will have an
Speaker 9: actually communist government in a city instead of the fake
Speaker 9: state capitalist governments of the Chinese mega.
Speaker 12: City objectively more communists to one point five chety city government.
Speaker 5: An American bogeeli.
Speaker 12: Uh.
Speaker 5: It was. It was a pretty exciting night in New
Speaker 5: York last night.
Speaker 9: I and many people were not expecting a clear result
Speaker 9: so soon. I think Cuomo conceded around ten to thirty
Speaker 9: as the boat was still coming in, but it was
Speaker 9: pretty clear that Zoron did a like very very impressive,
Speaker 9: very impressive sweep, really solid turnout across the boroughs, just
Speaker 9: to like get a sense of like where we were at.
Speaker 9: Like I got to announce to a pretty pretty large
Speaker 9: room full of trans people at the Metropolitan Bar that
Speaker 9: Cuomo conceded to Zoron, and Zoron has won. And I
Speaker 9: had not felt better in months. It was really in
Speaker 9: big rating Is was like the first like ray of
Speaker 9: hope in a political sense that I've that that it's
Speaker 9: been like so deeply felt. Nothing ever happens. Camp Is
Speaker 9: Is is finally finally taking.
Speaker 13: It so jover for nothing ever happens the shear, the
Speaker 13: sheer like joy and excitement being in like a room
Speaker 13: of like one hundred, one hundred queer people, as as
Speaker 13: as Cuomo gets defeated and so on securing the primary,
Speaker 13: it was it was just infigurating.
Speaker 9: In many ways, this feels a lot bigger than even
Speaker 9: like AOC's win a few years ago. And it feels
Speaker 9: so much more real than like the Sanders campaign really
Speaker 9: ever did, because New York is such as like as
Speaker 9: such a condensed concentrated area. Now it has not quite
Speaker 9: like an inevitability but of a pretty a pretty strong
Speaker 9: certainty of of what's going to happen come November in
Speaker 9: the general election.
Speaker 12: Yeah, And I think the thing that's maybe in some
Speaker 12: ways the biggest deal about this is that New York
Speaker 12: was like the capital of the giant sort of right
Speaker 12: wing backlash inside the Democratic Party to twenty twenty. Yeah, right,
Speaker 12: like this is the city that elected Eric Adams in
Speaker 12: twenty twenty one.
Speaker 5: Right, like it just.
Speaker 12: Straight up a cop is ruled for like four years
Speaker 12: by just like this unhinged, corrupt alliance of like fucking
Speaker 12: real estate developers and like unhinged right wing billionaires and
Speaker 12: the cops who ran this really really effective sort of
Speaker 12: politics of like the demonization of unhoused people and like
Speaker 12: anti immigrant politics, and the shift right in this in
Speaker 12: the Neu Democratic Party like single handedly shifted the entire
Speaker 12: country to the right. You could literally see where the
Speaker 12: New York media market was in the twenty twenty two elections.
Speaker 12: You could see on the map who was getting the
Speaker 12: news because it was so right wing. And that's just broken.
Speaker 12: That whole thing, Like this place was just which was
Speaker 12: like the capital of of the kind of revolution broke
Speaker 12: and that whole tide like you can it's you know,
Speaker 12: in the same way that like Hunters Thompson talked about
Speaker 12: how you could see like you could see them with
Speaker 12: the tide of the sixties broke standing in Vegas, Like
Speaker 12: sitting here right now, you can see the place where
Speaker 12: the tide of that right wing surge in New York broke.
Speaker 12: And it was last night we saw their high points. Yeah,
Speaker 12: they couldn't elect the fucking sexual predator. That was as
Speaker 12: far as they could go.
Speaker 5: A Cuomo too, Like like.
Speaker 9: I know some people are slightly annoyed about like the
Speaker 9: outsized influence of the New York mayoral election, affecting everybody
Speaker 9: who's like online and cares about politics in the United
Speaker 9: States and even even abroad. But this is like not
Speaker 9: not only as New York, like the biggest city in
Speaker 9: the country. This is like more so a representative battle
Speaker 9: for the future of the party and like what the
Speaker 9: future of democratic politics, not just the Democratic Party but
Speaker 9: literally like like democracies and like what the future of
Speaker 9: politics in this country is going to be is kind
Speaker 9: of emblematic over how this race went. Are we going
Speaker 9: to go back to like the same old establishment dem
Speaker 9: Party stuff, Clinton's Cuomos, Obama, Biden Harris, or are we
Speaker 9: actually going to legitimately chart a new course forward to
Speaker 9: counter this fascist element taking power across the country and
Speaker 9: against nearly all odds and like thirty million dollars, the
Speaker 9: underdogs actually would and pulled it off really strongly, And
Speaker 9: this really is like the battle for the future of
Speaker 9: the party. Early turnout was massive for this primary. In
Speaker 9: the final three days of early voting, we saw like
Speaker 9: the youngest demographic of voters come out in high high numbers.
Speaker 9: One quarter of early voters were first time Democratic primary participants.
Speaker 9: And young voters between the ages of twenty five and
Speaker 9: thirty four made up the largest share of early turnout.
Speaker 9: And this was all up against the entire forces of
Speaker 9: the Democratic Party establishment coming together in the past few months,
Speaker 9: just specifically to stop Mamdani from taking the primary election.
Speaker 9: There was twenty five million dollars of super pac funding
Speaker 9: behind Andrew Cuomo, which is the largest in New York
Speaker 9: City mayoral history. This pack was backed by Michael Bloomberg,
Speaker 9: Door Dash, Bill Ackman Trump funder and this pack allowed
Speaker 9: Cuomo backers to spend three times as much money than
Speaker 9: what Quomo's actual campaign legally can. In comparison, Mamdanie's pack
Speaker 9: had just one point two million dollars plus five hundred
Speaker 9: thousand in anti Cuomo spending from the Working Families Party.
Speaker 9: In an attempt to seal the deal, the Cuomo team
Speaker 9: got the coveted Bill Clinton endorsement, really really forming like
Speaker 9: the Toucher's alliance with Cuomo and Clinton, Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton.
Speaker 5: There's one more sex pens for you to endorse. It's
Speaker 5: time for you to endorse Donald Trump. What world job
Speaker 5: that like?
Speaker 9: That that really was like emblematic of like the type
Speaker 9: of democratic party that Mamdani was up against, right, and
Speaker 9: the one that working people of New York and people
Speaker 9: around the country we're hoping might finally get defeated after
Speaker 9: it's won one over on Sanders for the past like
Speaker 9: eight years, and last night it finally happened.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 12: And I also want to say, like this is not
Speaker 12: just when we're talking about the sort of political apparatus
Speaker 12: to the Democratic Party being deployed in support of Cuomo.
Speaker 12: It wasn't just like the DoorDash guys like bringing out
Speaker 12: their checkbook. It was like the actual internal political machines
Speaker 12: of a whole bunch of very very important and influential
Speaker 12: local and sort of mid level political officials through their
Speaker 12: entire political machines behind Cuomo and then got fucking rolled
Speaker 12: in ways that are just absolutely hysterical. Entire political machines
Speaker 12: basically just got annihilated trying to stop this.
Speaker 9: It was.
Speaker 12: It reminds me in a lot of ways of like
Speaker 12: the way that like a bunch of the old machines
Speaker 12: broke in in Chicago with with Brandon Johnson were like
Speaker 12: you had like Mike Madigan making one last appearance the
Speaker 12: most powerful figure in Illinois politics for thirty years and
Speaker 12: just gets crushed in that election. So this was both
Speaker 12: a money efforts and a we're using our political machines
Speaker 12: on the ground to try to do this, and they
Speaker 12: fucking lost.
Speaker 5: And it rules.
Speaker 9: They were photo shopping images of Zoron to make him
Speaker 9: look more brown and muslimah. They were making its beard longer,
Speaker 9: they were making his skin and his hairy darker. Like,
Speaker 9: they were pulling out all the stops and it didn't work.
Speaker 12: It was like Clinton two thousand and eight, like Barack
Speaker 12: Hussein Obama, like burther conspiracy shit. Yeah, like, that's the
Speaker 12: last time I remember this party being this racist, like
Speaker 12: very specifically in these lines.
Speaker 5: And it failed, and it didn't work. It failed.
Speaker 9: We'll talk about some of the actual results and Zoron's
Speaker 9: campaign itself after this break. All right, we are back.
Speaker 9: It's a beautiful sunny day in New York. It's actually
Speaker 9: way too hot. There's a massive heat wave going through
Speaker 9: the entire East coast. New York has been like one
Speaker 9: hundred degrees the past few days. Thank god, it was
Speaker 9: one hundred degrees on the day of the election. It
Speaker 9: kept all those Cuomo supporters home. We're calling him Mandate
Speaker 9: of Heaven Mandani, good stuff. So let's let's let's talk
Speaker 9: about the actual results so far. So as as of
Speaker 9: this morning, Wednesday morning, we got ninety three percent of
Speaker 9: the vote in on the first rank, Mondanni has forty
Speaker 9: three point five percent versus Cuomo's thirty six point four
Speaker 9: and Zoran ally brad Lander with eleven point three followed
Speaker 9: by a whole bunch of others. Now, really, as soon
Speaker 9: as like numbers started coming in, like after the early vote,
Speaker 9: which which we expected would lean in favor of Zoran,
Speaker 9: but after more and more results started coming in, Manhattan
Speaker 9: started to looking more and more orange. And that's the
Speaker 9: that's color at the times as using for Zoron. And
Speaker 9: this was the first like sign for me that Zora
Speaker 9: might be having a pretty good night, because people were
Speaker 9: expecting that, you know, pretty big chunks of Manhattan and
Speaker 9: certainly like Staten Island in the Bronx would be would
Speaker 9: be going towards Cuomo decisively, or at least if this,
Speaker 9: if this was going to be Cumba's night, that's what
Speaker 9: we would be seeing. And that's not what happened. The
Speaker 9: northern tip of Staten Island leaning towards mom Donnie and
Speaker 9: really most of Manhattan except for the Upper west Side
Speaker 9: and the Upper east Side went to Zoron. And that
Speaker 9: is like super super I guess, like surprising, but like
Speaker 9: positive surprise, like surprisingly, this is this is like this
Speaker 9: is great. Yeah, like a really really strong night.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 12: One of the most interesting trends of this was that
Speaker 12: Mandanny just just absolutely annihilated like every Asian district up
Speaker 12: up fifteen, up fifteen and not Okay, so you would
Speaker 12: kind of expect this in South Asian districts. He went
Speaker 12: into a bunch of what are generally pretty conservative, like
Speaker 12: like Chinese districts and like Queens and shit, and just
Speaker 12: fucking rolled them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Like in like South Brooklyn.
Speaker 12: Like a very very powerful sort of like right wing
Speaker 12: Chinese political machine like went to war against him, just annihilated.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 12: The Asian vote in general had kind of been trending
Speaker 12: right in the last half a decade based on sort
Speaker 12: of like anti immigrant shit, anti homeless shit and all
Speaker 12: of that. Just like instantly pivoted.
Speaker 9: Everything's out of astoria in Queens just just full full
Speaker 9: zor On. Yeah, and like just rolled these districts.
Speaker 12: And I think this is a thing where I think
Speaker 12: We're gonna talk more about the ice stuff later, but
Speaker 12: I genuinely think part of what we're starting to see
Speaker 12: here is like.
Speaker 9: Brad Lander, who the MVP brad Lander honestly like like
Speaker 9: a critical part of this who knows to him like absolutely,
Speaker 9: like we certainly have different opinions on some key issues,
Speaker 9: but he really pulled out the stops to make sure
Speaker 9: that Cuomo does not get in, yeah, and helped him
Speaker 9: defend against them pretty pretty horrific yeah, is homophobic attacks.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and like, and that alliance I think was actually
Speaker 12: was really really important because it meant that the kind
Speaker 12: of like left flank of the liberals and the progressives
Speaker 12: and sort of social democrats weren't fighting each other, which
Speaker 12: has been what's happening and like fucking every other city
Speaker 12: is that these two factions go to war and then
Speaker 12: like just the fucking sex predators win the election because
Speaker 12: of it, and shere you get a very very important
Speaker 12: strategic alliance that allows a bunch of people to vote
Speaker 12: for Mamdani who wouldn't have. And this this sort of
Speaker 12: alliance that they've forged here was just like stunningly successful,
Speaker 12: basically like outperformed expectations basically everywhere. I think this is
Speaker 12: also a kind of decisive anti ice thing because both
Speaker 12: Mamdanni and Lander have been actually straight up on the
Speaker 12: front lines of like anti ice stuff. Lander famously got
Speaker 12: arrested for trying to get in the way of a
Speaker 12: just hideously illegal disappearance of Uffish constituents and got fucking
Speaker 12: arrested for it. And I think that stuff we're seeing
Speaker 12: the political impacts of everyone being like, holy shit, they're
Speaker 12: trying to deport like every nu migration in this country.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Madanni up six points with the Hispanic up five with
Speaker 9: white plus fifteen Asian. Quomo is is up eighteen percent
Speaker 9: with the black vote.
Speaker 5: And Quomo like underperformed there too, he did underperform.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 9: One thing that's interesting is the medium income levels. Madani
Speaker 9: did better with middle class and high income vote middle
Speaker 9: class up ten, high income up thirteen, whereas Cuomo did
Speaker 9: better up thirteen with lower income, Which I mean, this
Speaker 9: is like some classic We see this a lot in
Speaker 9: like national elections, where like people vote against their own interests.
Speaker 5: This is weird.
Speaker 9: This is like what the Republican Party gets so much
Speaker 9: of their support from. So this is also like education
Speaker 9: bracket difference.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and I think some of it also is like
Speaker 12: a lot of the voters who would have voted vandor
Speaker 12: and would not have supported Mondani like were given permission
Speaker 12: to back him, and that boosted his vote share a lot.
Speaker 9: Yes, But like in terms of like why lower income
Speaker 9: is swinging towards Cuomo, Yeah, specifically people making under fifty
Speaker 9: k year swinging more towards Cuomo, even though Zoran is
Speaker 9: running a campaign specifically for those people that is also
Speaker 9: largely up in the bronx.
Speaker 12: I will also say, like, the other thing that's very
Speaker 12: weird about the way these are tabulated is because it's
Speaker 12: it's tabulated by area, not by the actual people, yes, correct,
Speaker 12: which means you can get these things where like you
Speaker 12: see this Trump sometimes where like it looks like he's
Speaker 12: doing really well in like a district with like a
Speaker 12: really with like really low median income. But what's happening
Speaker 12: is like every single rich person in that district voted
Speaker 12: and then no one else did. Yeah, So the numbers
Speaker 12: are a bit weird when when when you're looking at
Speaker 12: these sort of like priestin counts. Yeah, votes, but yeah,
Speaker 12: it's it's been a I don't know it's a it
Speaker 12: is a constant trend in the Bara Ohough, I guess
Speaker 12: this is everything that was actually very very different from Chicago,
Speaker 12: where in Chicago it was like basically pure income line
Speaker 12: for Brandon Johnson, the sort of like vaguely left person.
Speaker 9: There is like New York is a very like middle
Speaker 9: class city in a lot of ways, Like there's a
Speaker 9: lot of people in the middle class bracket, a lot
Speaker 9: of people in the lower class bracket as well, but
Speaker 9: in terms of like like medium income levels, there's like
Speaker 9: a huge, huge number of like middle class voters. Specifically,
Speaker 9: like the vote map for the for the middle income
Speaker 9: is so much bigger. I think it is worth highlighting
Speaker 9: what made Zorn's campaign special right, Like people are probably
Speaker 9: pretty familiar with like the slick videos, which yeah, he
Speaker 9: was really good at making videos. He is a great communicator,
Speaker 9: probably his biggest, like biggest strength is his ability to
Speaker 9: be like personable and is of just a pretty good
Speaker 9: public speakers, great at communication. His mom's a relatively well
Speaker 9: known filmmaker, and not super surprising that he put he
Speaker 9: put a lot of work into making sure his like
Speaker 9: online TV ads were like top notch. One of the
Speaker 9: more unique things that he did is a huge focus
Speaker 9: on multi language outreach, which like, obviously New York is
Speaker 9: a city of like dozens and dozens and dozens of languages,
Speaker 9: and the Quoto campaign did not focus on that, but
Speaker 9: this was a huge, huge focus of Zoron's campaign. Like,
Speaker 9: when you signed up for phone banking, you got to
Speaker 9: go through a massive dropdown menu of languages to phone banking,
Speaker 9: and Zoron himself was like speaking multiple languages. On the
Speaker 9: campaign trail, he had a huge, huge volunteer ground game.
Speaker 9: It was canvassing door Knox phone banking. My apartment had
Speaker 9: people stop in multiple times in the past week alone.
Speaker 9: The biggest focus of his campaign itself was a focus
Speaker 9: on affordability. I want to Play a ad that started
Speaker 9: running on TV and online about two weeks ago. This
Speaker 9: is one of his less personal ads, right, like as
Speaker 9: opposed to his ads where he's like talking around New
Speaker 9: York talking to people, like addressing straight to camera, that
Speaker 9: kind of stuff, which is kind of in the staple
Speaker 9: of his campaign. So like, this ad is not that
Speaker 9: it is more like a classic political ad, but I
Speaker 9: think it still hits really hard. And this one like
Speaker 9: kind of brain wormed itself. Into my head because of
Speaker 9: how like concise it is, and it hits so many
Speaker 9: things that even because of the last like general election,
Speaker 9: right like the twenty twenty four presidential It reflects the
Speaker 9: things that a lot of voters are concerned about, which
Speaker 9: is affordability, even if that means they will vote against
Speaker 9: their interests and vote in support of these like crazy tariffs.
Speaker 9: But I'm going to play this thirty second ad here.
Speaker 5: There is a myth about this city.
Speaker 8: It's the lie that life has to be hard in
Speaker 8: New York. I believe we can guarantee cheaper groceries, we
Speaker 8: can raise the minimum wage, we can freeze the rent
Speaker 8: for more.
Speaker 5: Than two million tenants and.
Speaker 8: Build hundreds of thousands of affordable homes. It city government's
Speaker 8: job to deliver that. We are done settling for less.
Speaker 5: Are you ready for a city we can.
Speaker 12: Afford a.
Speaker 5: Rising?
Speaker 1: Went Thromlicus.
Speaker 9: So that was the main app that's been going across
Speaker 9: TV the past two weeks. This is this is his
Speaker 9: like final final push, and it addresses this like a
Speaker 9: conception of New York that's definitely been in my mind
Speaker 9: ever since I was a kid. I always thought this
Speaker 9: is a thing you can only live in if you're
Speaker 9: you know, very rich, if you're well off, and like,
Speaker 9: upon visiting here for the first time, I just realized
Speaker 9: how much that isn't true, how much this is like
Speaker 9: actually a working class city. How many people keep this
Speaker 9: massive like concrete machine running who do not live in
Speaker 9: like a Manhattan pent house. Obviously, and yes it can
Speaker 9: be challenging, but we've like almost abandoned this place as
Speaker 9: like a zone of combat, as like a place to
Speaker 9: actually like build like an affordable, an affordable, stable life.
Speaker 9: And to see a candidate just directly address this is
Speaker 9: so invigorating. He ran on freezing the rent, free buses,
Speaker 9: a pilot program for city run grocery stores, free to
Speaker 9: low cost childcare, raising minimum wage, and he didn't cave
Speaker 9: or waiver on controversial issues, or apologize or redact for
Speaker 9: past statements. He got really good at deflecting when people
Speaker 9: asked him about like previous statements out about how you know,
Speaker 9: the NYPD is terrible. He did really good about moving
Speaker 9: towards talking about how NYPD should not be handling people
Speaker 9: in like mental health crises, how there should be other
Speaker 9: public safety workers who can help people in distress who
Speaker 9: are not the NYPD and just a very very slick
Speaker 9: job handling some like massive, massive amounts of anti woke attacks,
Speaker 9: referencing like the twenty twenty era of politics. Let's go
Speaker 9: on a break and then talk about his acceptance speech
Speaker 9: and the reaction from the National Democrat and Republican parties. Okay,
Speaker 9: we are so back. So the past few months, Democrats
Speaker 9: have been asking this question like, how do we how
Speaker 9: do we reach young voters, how do we reach the
Speaker 9: young white to male vote. We need like a Joe
Speaker 9: Rogan of the left, all these types of crazy things.
Speaker 9: And you had this guy Zord who started to get
Speaker 9: massively popular with young people, including young young men, and
Speaker 9: that you saw this entire party mobilized to stop him,
Speaker 9: to suppress any any movement that Zora was able to make.
Speaker 5: And David Hogg, who is currently also being.
Speaker 9: Rap fucked by the Democratic National Committee, has been campaigning
Speaker 9: with Zoran the past few weeks, and he he said
Speaker 9: a few days ago, quote, the same establishment that is
Speaker 9: spending millions to destroy Zoron will say in a few
Speaker 9: months that we need to spend millions on polling and
Speaker 9: testing to win back young people. Open your goddamn eyes.
Speaker 9: It's free and yeah, he's right, this is the solution.
Speaker 9: The solution is staring them in the face and they
Speaker 9: were wanting to stop it.
Speaker 12: Yep, young people are begging you to co opt them,
Speaker 12: and they won't do it because they know what they
Speaker 12: would rather have Nazis and one percent higher taxes.
Speaker 5: They want to be co opted.
Speaker 9: And like actually fight for something, like actually have something
Speaker 9: to strive for, and like that's something that the Democrats
Speaker 9: have been so resistant to the past eight years. Like
Speaker 9: even even Joe Biden's campaign wasn't like fighting for anything,
Speaker 9: it was to like return to normal. Kamenthris's campaign wasn't
Speaker 9: really fighting for anything either. It was just to stop
Speaker 9: Donald Trump. And this is like this campaign wasn't just
Speaker 9: about beating Cuomo. It was also about like envisioning an
Speaker 9: actually positive future of the city. And I was legitimately
Speaker 9: surprised that Cuomo conceded so early on. In his speech,
Speaker 9: he said, quote, tonight was not our night, Tonight is
Speaker 9: his night. He deserved it.
Speaker 5: He won.
Speaker 9: And from the moves that Komo's making, it seems like
Speaker 9: he's probably not going to run as an independent in
Speaker 9: the general like he maybe have been planning to if
Speaker 9: it was closer. It does not seem to be going
Speaker 9: that direction. It seems like he's kind of realized that
Speaker 9: his career is finished.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he got rolled. Go back to the suburbs. Motherfucker.
Speaker 9: Ugh Chuck Schumer called Soharan Wednesday morning and posted quote,
Speaker 9: I've known Zora Mamdnnie since we were together to provide
Speaker 9: a debt relief for thousands of leaguered taxi drivers and
Speaker 9: fought to stop a fracked gas plant in a Storia.
Speaker 9: He ran an impressive campaign that connected with New Yorkers
Speaker 9: about affordability, fairness, and opportunity. I spoke with him this
Speaker 9: morning and I'm looking forward to getting together soon. Alkim
Speaker 9: Jeffries said, congratulations is Zar Mumdanni on a decisive primary victory.
Speaker 9: As having been, Mumdannie ran a strong campaign that relentlessly
Speaker 9: focused on the economy and bringing down the high cost
Speaker 9: of living in New York City. We spoke this morning
Speaker 9: and planned to meet in central Brooklyn shortly. The top
Speaker 9: dogs are bowing down.
Speaker 12: All these Chuck Schub retreats are just straight up Please
Speaker 12: don't primary me because AOC is going to beat him
Speaker 12: by thirty.
Speaker 9: He's gonna get primary like he's done. Who did you
Speaker 9: get obliterated? But I was expecting slightly more resistance, And
Speaker 9: it seems like parts of the Democrats have like realized
Speaker 9: that this actually is the future of the party now
Speaker 9: and there's no use fighting anymore.
Speaker 5: This is the way to go.
Speaker 9: Yes, it goes against what all like the consultants are saying,
Speaker 9: right to be like, you know, the Democrats went too woke,
Speaker 9: we went too far to the left.
Speaker 5: We have to return to the center.
Speaker 9: Even though that's what we've been doing for the Democratic
Speaker 9: Party for eight years. This election shows how much of
Speaker 9: that is like a complete bullshit lie that no, it's
Speaker 9: not about going too far left, it's about actually wanting
Speaker 9: to fight for something real. And I'm kind of surprised
Speaker 9: that the these these two top dogs are giving in
Speaker 9: to the zmentum.
Speaker 12: I think also, and this is the thing like some
Speaker 12: one of my friends brought up, is that like mom
Speaker 12: Downy like isn't really like aoc no, no, no, this
Speaker 12: is something like very very important for like New York politics,
Speaker 12: which is like he's not like I'll be politically he is,
Speaker 12: but like he's not a complete outsider to New York politics.
Speaker 12: All these people know him they know him from like
Speaker 12: legislative shit right, and he has like relationships with them
Speaker 12: in a way that would be very very different if
Speaker 12: if he was, like I don't know, just like some
Speaker 12: like a complete outsider who'd been like a protest leader
Speaker 12: or whatever.
Speaker 5: He has he has proven himself.
Speaker 12: He has like tense relations but like yeah, but like
Speaker 12: he like these people know him, and that's something that
Speaker 12: can matter a lot in terms of like how these
Speaker 12: reactions play out and in terms of like how desperate
Speaker 12: they are to stop him.
Speaker 9: The Attorney General of New York was making like Obama
Speaker 9: two thousand and eight references, being like this, this was
Speaker 9: the energy in New York last night. And I wasn't
Speaker 9: around for the two thousand and eight presidential election. I
Speaker 9: mean I was alive, I just don't remember because I
Speaker 9: was also in Canada. But it did feel pretty exuberant
Speaker 9: last night walking around Brooklyn. And like this absolutely still
Speaker 9: is like a rejection of the Democratic Party establishment. That's
Speaker 9: what these results show. And we have to like claim
Speaker 9: a firm victory now, like hard line with with with
Speaker 9: with such a strong fist that like any potential fuckery
Speaker 9: in the future, whether it's from like other Dems or
Speaker 9: from the Republicans, like from Trump right, like they're obviously
Speaker 9: willing to arrest the New York City controller. So like
Speaker 9: any potential fuckery needs to look so much worse. People
Speaker 9: have to close ranks around zor On like immediately and
Speaker 9: like strengthen him. He needs to be like the face,
Speaker 9: like if they're going to take this guy down, he
Speaker 9: needs to be like the face of everything for like
Speaker 9: the next while.
Speaker 12: We're sort of seeing like slightly smaller sharks, like trailing
Speaker 12: around the wake of the shark. Like you were talking
Speaker 12: about the Democratic Turnyan General Leatitia James, who gave a
Speaker 12: really really compelling speech, like I actually think she's like
Speaker 12: a better speaker.
Speaker 5: Than any of the people involved in this race.
Speaker 12: And she is like she has one hundred percent primary
Speaker 12: in the governor, like not one hundred percent, but like
Speaker 12: probably primary in the governor next year. Like this is
Speaker 12: you know, like people, people are sort of people have
Speaker 12: been flocking around this for a while and I think,
Speaker 12: I don't know, this is this is some real doesn't
Speaker 12: take a weatherman to see which way the winds are
Speaker 12: blowing shit Like they are, Yeah, they are, they are.
Speaker 12: They are living in fear they are, they are bending
Speaker 12: the knee, they are et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 5: Very funny.
Speaker 9: And now the Republican Party is going to be on
Speaker 9: the attack. The baton's being passed from establishment Dems to
Speaker 9: the Republicans to.
Speaker 5: Try to take down.
Speaker 9: Zoron, or at least paint Zoron as this new like
Speaker 9: radical face of the Democratic Party, like like racism levels
Speaker 9: are gonna They're gonna reach never before seen heights. It's
Speaker 9: gonna be like Post nine to eleven all over again.
Speaker 9: The National Republican Congression Committee is already calling Zoron the
Speaker 9: new face of the Democratic.
Speaker 5: Party, which yeah, he should be.
Speaker 9: That's not like fucking bring it if you want, just
Speaker 9: like a breath of fresh air, I would recommend watching
Speaker 9: some financial news from from Wednesday morning.
Speaker 12: Oh it's so good, Hot commy summer Baby, hot commed Sumner.
Speaker 5: Who I Am.
Speaker 9: Executions in Central Park are about to begin.
Speaker 12: The Workers Republic is established, the Commonwealth of Labor rules.
Speaker 9: We're waiting for Chairman mcdani to make the final call.
Speaker 9: Lists are being made.
Speaker 5: Only you can ford the Soviets seize your workplaces. At
Speaker 5: the time is now. I do want to play a
Speaker 5: brief click from c NBC.
Speaker 9: If you've seen where what Batman is up against in
Speaker 9: Gotham and what the guy running for mayor is up against.
Speaker 5: That's what it reminds you.
Speaker 9: They're taking Wall streeters and make him walk out onto
Speaker 9: the ice in the East river as and hope and
Speaker 9: then they fall through.
Speaker 2: I mean there is a class warfare.
Speaker 5: That's so what's happened here? I think it's a rich type.
Speaker 5: There's a division within the Demo. Whoa, that's right. There
Speaker 5: is a division. The revelation baby.
Speaker 9: Eat the Wrench. There is a division of the Democratic Party.
Speaker 5: Walked them out onto the ice. We're sending him onto
Speaker 5: the ice.
Speaker 9: Is all on hand in hand with the Bain and
Speaker 9: Chilly and Murphy are gonna be.
Speaker 5: Sending them on to the hunts and the spirit of
Speaker 5: occupy lives. Oh my god.
Speaker 9: Bill Ackman Cromo and Trump Backer said quote, I was
Speaker 9: a bit depressed when I woke up this morning, but
Speaker 9: now I'm optimistic. I have a great idea on New
Speaker 9: York City, and I will share it as soon as
Speaker 9: I can. We are looking into legal issues. Good luck,
Speaker 9: good luck, Bill, have fun out there.
Speaker 5: Oh no, they're good. Wait, this is they're just gonna
Speaker 5: do persperas in Agane who cares. Oh no, bring it,
Speaker 5: bring it. I will say like this this coverage, like
Speaker 5: I like, people don't.
Speaker 12: Understand how one hints coverage is going to be. Like
Speaker 12: in Chicago when when when Brandon Johnson won the election,
Speaker 12: Brandon john is like significantly to the right of mom Donnie.
Speaker 12: Right when Brandon Johnson won the election, the Chicago press
Speaker 12: went so insane that all of them pretended to be
Speaker 12: pro immigrant. Oh yeah, Like, do you understand how unhinged
Speaker 12: the press has to get here because like like one
Speaker 12: of Johnson things that he was like fucking over like
Speaker 12: immigrants here, and he was like this immigrant the shelters
Speaker 12: are putting put in where substandard and people are getting sick,
Speaker 12: and like we had the best coverage of immigration issues
Speaker 12: under Biden in the country because specifically that was the
Speaker 12: thing the reason to attack him.
Speaker 9: I'm super curious what the Times is gonna do because
Speaker 9: like they've also pulled out all the stops the past
Speaker 9: the past few weeks to try to to try to
Speaker 9: stop Zoran.
Speaker 5: It's gonna be unhinged.
Speaker 9: The winds blowing in his direction now though, like I
Speaker 9: don't know what they're gonna do.
Speaker 12: I don't know, Like I think that specific class of
Speaker 12: people is just going to hate him until the end,
Speaker 12: Like I think. I think, like like David Brooks is
Speaker 12: going to be writing college about how there are like
Speaker 12: pagrams going on like on this streets, Like Brett Stevens
Speaker 12: is gonna be like I don't know, they're going to
Speaker 12: go to call it like super Lebanon, Like it's gonna
Speaker 12: be like levels of unhinged no one's ever seen before.
Speaker 9: Now, speaking of the Times, Obama's tree strategist was quoted
Speaker 9: in a New York Times article Wednesday morning, quote, there
Speaker 9: is no doubt that Trump and Republicans will try and
Speaker 9: seize on him as a kind of exemplar of what
Speaker 9: the Democratic Party stands for. The thing is, he seems
Speaker 9: both principled and agile and deft enough to confront those
Speaker 9: sorts of confrontational plays. I do want to read off
Speaker 9: from a Fox News screenshot this morning, showcasing Zoron's horrific,
Speaker 9: terrifying communist platform, which includes housing freezing rent, building afford
Speaker 9: level housing, creating city owned grocery stores whoa fair, free buses,
Speaker 9: raising the minimum wage to thirty dollars by twenty thirty
Speaker 9: and LGBTQIA plus protections expanding and protecting gender affirming care citywide,
Speaker 9: making NYC and lgbtq a I plus the sanctuary city
Speaker 9: and trump proofing NYC to end ice cooperation. Hell yeah,
Speaker 9: thank you, thank you Fox News for that, for that
Speaker 9: great list of reasons.
Speaker 5: It's to like Zaran Mamdani, I think.
Speaker 12: I think I think it's actually genuinely really important. She's
Speaker 12: like the only Democratic candidate in fucking ages who actively
Speaker 12: campaigned on like putting more funding in the trans healthcare
Speaker 12: like sixty five million dollars of funding.
Speaker 5: Yeah, fucking being pro trans wins.
Speaker 12: Being anti trans gets your ass kicked back to the suburbs.
Speaker 5: Like fucking Cuomo, eat shit, eat shit.
Speaker 12: Your Democratic strategists fuck off and die eat shit. You
Speaker 12: will be the ones in the fucking graves that you
Speaker 12: were digging for us, Like, fuck off, we have dunk
Speaker 12: your electoral grapes.
Speaker 9: This is why when I was at this like trans
Speaker 9: open mic at Metropolitan last night, like the whole room
Speaker 9: just like lit up in cheers, because yeah, like we've
Speaker 9: been we've been dealing with the past like six months.
Speaker 9: This idea that like trans writes is like the thing
Speaker 9: that's killing Democratic paulics and fucking know it isn't.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and Quo Quoto Cuoto read as a fucking transphobe
Speaker 12: because he is, and it didn't work. This is the
Speaker 12: joint feminist transgender victory over the forces of the turf
Speaker 12: sex predator.
Speaker 5: Fuck them.
Speaker 9: To wrap up my stuff here, I do want to
Speaker 9: play one minute from Zorn's acceptance speech, which I think
Speaker 9: uh speaks for itself.
Speaker 5: And it's where the mayor will use their power to.
Speaker 14: Reject Donald Trump's fascism, to stop mass ice agents from
Speaker 14: deporting our naghbor.
Speaker 5: I to covered our.
Speaker 8: City as a model for the Democratic Party, a party
Speaker 8: where we fight for working people with no apology. A
Speaker 8: life of dignity should not be reserved for a fortunate fuel.
Speaker 8: It should be one that city government guarantees for each
Speaker 8: and every New Yorker. If this campaign has demonstrated anything
Speaker 8: to the world, it is that our dreams can become reality.
Speaker 9: I sure hope this is the model for the Democratic
Speaker 9: Party going forward. Via you wanted to close on a
Speaker 9: sad note.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I was really depressed this entire night because I
Speaker 12: remember feeling a lot like this in like twenty twenty
Speaker 12: three in Chicago.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because this happened in Chicago. Yeah, well not this,
Speaker 5: but a version of this. Yeah.
Speaker 12: Like obviously Brandon Johnson was like significantly to the right
Speaker 12: of like everything that's been happening in New York. Like
Speaker 12: not he wasn't like a right winger, but he was
Speaker 12: like you know, like the local DSA had conflict with
Speaker 12: him from other stuff. But like, you know, I remember
Speaker 12: feeling like this and then one year later, like swat
Speaker 12: teams like deployed by the mayor that.
Speaker 5: He claimed he didn't send.
Speaker 12: We're beating up art students outside like literally in the
Speaker 12: middle of downtown for trying to have a Palestine encampment.
Speaker 12: And you know, like my bitter cynical personally got rap
Speaker 12: fucked by the mayor's office.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like Citicis, I'm on, this is like it's gonna
Speaker 5: be weird. There's gonna be a lot of shit that
Speaker 5: sucks this.
Speaker 9: This guy is like advocated defunding the police and is
Speaker 9: attacked like the NYPPD for years. Yeah, and now he's
Speaker 9: intensively going to be in charge of it, and he's
Speaker 9: he's not gonna be able to abolish the NYPD like
Speaker 9: that that's not gonna happen. No, So there's gonna be
Speaker 9: a degree of like you know, moratl like crisis. He's
Speaker 9: gonna have to work against some of the things that
Speaker 9: he stated he believes in.
Speaker 12: Yeah, And on a structural level, there's there's a really
Speaker 12: significant problem here, which is that, like the moment you
Speaker 12: become the leader of a capitalist city, right, it becomes
Speaker 12: your job to keep the economy running. And the problem
Speaker 12: is that like keeping keeping a capitalist economy running means
Speaker 12: you have to your job is now maintaining growth for
Speaker 12: for this economy, right, and maintaining growth through the economy
Speaker 12: means figuring out how how to have corporation continue to
Speaker 12: make more and more money. And that's not compatible with
Speaker 12: being a socialist. And everyone who has ever tried to
Speaker 12: like deal with this crisis you either like you have
Speaker 12: two pass it's like one you become a capitalist, right,
Speaker 12: and we see this fucking all over the place, right,
Speaker 12: it's like you know, it's it's it's Barcelona and Caboo
Speaker 12: coming into power, which is like this sort of like
Speaker 12: left wing council kind of like books to Nite thing,
Speaker 12: and then they immediately start like evicting migrates right or
Speaker 12: two or two, you actually do the thing. You do
Speaker 12: the thing you do, you do the actual socialism, and
Speaker 12: we fucking we like you know this is this is
Speaker 12: the beginning of the end of fascism in a way
Speaker 12: where we see a fundamental change in the structure of
Speaker 12: our economic system and that can be the outcome of this,
Speaker 12: but we have to build it, not him, like.
Speaker 9: And I think the most he's gonna be able to
Speaker 9: do is provide a bit of a safer zone for
Speaker 9: us to operate in in New York.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah, he's going to be introducing more like social democratic policies,
Speaker 9: Like he's gonna make the city like financially easier to
Speaker 9: live in. Yeah, things will suck less, which is good.
Speaker 9: He is going to to the end of his power
Speaker 9: fight against Trump's.
Speaker 5: Efforts to deport your.
Speaker 9: Neighbors, and like, that is so much better than both
Speaker 9: what Cromo would do and Eric Adams, who is actively
Speaker 9: collaborating with the Trump administration. So this man's not going
Speaker 9: to actually be the least algae. He's not actually going
Speaker 9: to be the guy that ushers in the Red Revolution,
Speaker 9: which is not even something I necessarily want. But I
Speaker 9: think what he can do is make this an actually
Speaker 9: better place to live right now, and specifically make it
Speaker 9: a better place to live as the national politics in
Speaker 9: this country are controlled by a fascist and a cabinet
Speaker 9: full of fascists.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and he can make the largest city in the
Speaker 12: country the rock upon which the tide of fascism breaks and.
Speaker 9: That matters, that does well, that doesn't for us today,
Speaker 9: greatest city in the world.
Speaker 5: Cheer one point five Chinese City. Let's go.
Speaker 2: Oh, who's got ed?
Speaker 5: That's not how we start these episodes.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's how we're starting this one, Garrison, it's already begun.
Speaker 9: Welcome to Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening
Speaker 9: in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it
Speaker 9: means for you.
Speaker 2: That's right, motherfuckers.
Speaker 9: That's Robert Evans. I'm Garrison Davis. I'm also joined by
Speaker 9: Mia Wong and James Stout. This week we are covering
Speaker 9: the week of June eighteen to June twenty five.
Speaker 2: That's right, a good week where nothing but good things happened.
Speaker 2: Assuming you are someone who manufactures thirty pound gravity utilizing
Speaker 2: bunker busting bombs.
Speaker 5: Thirty pound that's quite a small one.
Speaker 2: Thirty thousand, thirty thousand, that's thirty thousand. Sorry. Anyway, we're
Speaker 2: talking about Iran. We're gonna start with Iran. We're gonna
Speaker 2: start with Iran's nuclear program, and I think we should start.
Speaker 2: We need to start by giving the kol Zone media
Speaker 2: cool kid's guide for how to enrich uranium.
Speaker 12: Oh no, I don't want to get arrested robbers, now, Mia,
Speaker 12: it's not illegal to tell people how to enrich uranium.
Speaker 2: Google will do it, and I assume they're correct. Robert,
Speaker 2: it is legal for white people to do this. I
Speaker 2: don't know if it's legal for.
Speaker 5: Me to do this.
Speaker 2: It's okay, it's okay, it's okay. Look, if I've learned
Speaker 2: one thing, it's that it's okay for white people to
Speaker 2: talk about any kind of bomb on the internet. So
Speaker 2: we'll be fine. I'll be fine. That's what matters, Robert.
Speaker 5: Do I have kidnapping insurance? Do we have an extraction
Speaker 5: team for me when I go to ice prints? We don't.
Speaker 2: We have an extraction team, but it's not the cool
Speaker 2: kind anyway. So let's talk about how to make nukes.
Speaker 2: Because one thing you'll constantly hear whenever the US or
Speaker 2: Israel talks about Iran's nuclear program, is that they're just
Speaker 2: three to eight months away, right or weeks away. This
Speaker 2: is what you'll hear sometimes just technically if you three
Speaker 2: months is a number of weeks away whatever.
Speaker 5: And they've been saying this for longer than I've been alive.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing, it's technically correct, not in a way
Speaker 2: that like is correct in the way they are trying
Speaker 2: to push it, but in a way that is like
Speaker 2: literally correct, which is that Iran paused their nuclear program
Speaker 2: in two thousand and three. The current Ayatola has not
Speaker 2: given the command to start it up again. There is
Speaker 2: no evidence that it is currently operative. Back in March,
Speaker 2: US military intelligence the DA concluded that there was no
Speaker 2: indication Iran had decided or attempted to restart their nuclear program.
Speaker 2: That said, it has been true since two thousand and
Speaker 2: three that they are potentially about three months or so
Speaker 2: away from having a nuke because of the way that
Speaker 2: making nukes work. So in order to make the standard
Speaker 2: kind of nuclear weapon that we're talking about here, you
Speaker 2: need a bunch of enriched uranium, right, and there's two
Speaker 2: kinds of uranium. There's two thirty five and there's two
Speaker 2: thirty eight, and naturally they always show up together, and
Speaker 2: there's always a lot more two thirty eight than two
Speaker 2: thirty five, and two thirty eight is fucking bullshit. If
Speaker 2: you're trying to make yourself a bomb, right, you want
Speaker 2: the two thirty five. And I'm not going to go
Speaker 2: into a ton of detail about like how you do this,
Speaker 2: but because of just the nature of how uranium two
Speaker 2: thirty five and two thirty eight work, they're chemically identical,
Speaker 2: so you can't use chemical reactions to separate them, right,
Speaker 2: So you can't use any of the easy ways that
Speaker 2: you would like separate one from the other in order
Speaker 2: to constant trait the kind of uranium that they want.
Speaker 2: The only way to actually do that is by using
Speaker 2: a centrifuge, which is, in short, uses the magic of
Speaker 2: spinning in order to separate out the uranium that you
Speaker 2: want from their uranium that's not very useful to you.
Speaker 2: And Iran has a substantial quantity of like sixty percent
Speaker 2: enriched uranium, which is basically one step away from ninety percent,
Speaker 2: which is like what you need to actually build the
Speaker 2: bomb that they need. And they've had a shitload of
Speaker 2: this uranium sitting around for a while, right, because it
Speaker 2: keeps well, and theoretically, if they were to start their
Speaker 2: program up again, it would be theoretically possible to enrich
Speaker 2: it in fairly short order to the concentration that you need,
Speaker 2: right and at that point, once you have a sufficient quantity.
Speaker 2: And you'll hear slightly different numbers, but generally agreed that
Speaker 2: they have a sufficient quantity of uranium that is fairly
Speaker 2: enriched that if they were to finish the they can
Speaker 2: make somewhere between like eight to ten warheads with it, right,
Speaker 2: like something somewhere in that vicinity, and they could have
Speaker 2: a functional warhead within a matter of weeks after enriching,
Speaker 2: because enriching the uranium is the hard part. Once you've
Speaker 2: done that, it's very easy to make a nuclear weapon, right,
Speaker 2: sufficiently skilled people could do it with like fairly minimal
Speaker 2: technology if they like. Getting the rich uranium is the
Speaker 2: hard part. So it's technically true that Iran is that,
Speaker 2: you know, close to having a weapon they have been
Speaker 2: since two thousand and three. But the more important part
Speaker 2: of the story is that they have not been working
Speaker 2: on a weapon, and there's no evidence even for the
Speaker 2: DEA concluded in March that they were not actively working
Speaker 2: on a nuclear weapon. So what's actually been going on
Speaker 2: here is that while the Ayatola has not reauthorized the
Speaker 2: program in quite some time, pressure has been It's been
Speaker 2: generally agreed by people watching, you know, Iranian politics, that
Speaker 2: pressure has been building on him in order to reauthorize
Speaker 2: the program.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: There's a good CBS News article on this that notes
Speaker 2: that the US Intelligence Community assessment stated that there was
Speaker 2: an erosion of a decades long taboo on discussing nuclear
Speaker 2: weapons in public, brought on by all of the pressure
Speaker 2: against Iran by Israel.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: In other words, the more Israel and the United States
Speaker 2: threaten and actually do bomb Iran, the more public support
Speaker 2: there is, and the more acceptable it comes to talk
Speaker 2: about restarting the program, right, because continuing to bomb and
Speaker 2: attack them makes the case very strongly that well, we
Speaker 2: probably need one of these fucking things, right, because otherwise
Speaker 2: they're simply not going to stop. And that's been the
Speaker 2: lesson of the twenty first century, which is, if you
Speaker 2: are a country that has beef with the United States
Speaker 2: or any other nuclear power, the safest thing to do
Speaker 2: is get a nuke and then get more nukes as
Speaker 2: quickly as possible, right, So that's the situation that we're in.
Speaker 2: Iran has not moved any closer to having a nuclear
Speaker 2: weapon over the last twenty some years, but because they've
Speaker 2: got this uranium, you can always technically say, well, they
Speaker 2: could be months away.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: So this all leads us up to last week's strikes
Speaker 2: on Iran. These were using a wing of B two bombers. Actually,
Speaker 2: there was quite a few aircraft involved. Prior to the
Speaker 2: bombing attack, there was a lot of discussions like the
Speaker 2: United States preparing for much more extensive action in Iran
Speaker 2: because we flew all of these different, like refueling planes
Speaker 2: all around the world, and we're like setting up very
Speaker 2: clearly this like massive set of infrastructure to refuel and
Speaker 2: keep a bunch of planes in the air. Now, the
Speaker 2: reality is that all of these refueling planes and whatnot
Speaker 2: were part of this bombing mission, and the bombing mission
Speaker 2: did not just include the seven bombers that actually struck Iran,
Speaker 2: but another wing of B two bombers that flew in
Speaker 2: the opposite direction as part of a feint, as well
Speaker 2: as fighter jets and reconplanes that were necessary to help
Speaker 2: set up and protect the whole apparatus that we were
Speaker 2: setting up to get these seven B twos to the
Speaker 2: target area. Right now, the actual mission was about thirty
Speaker 2: seven hours, which is not the law longest mission B
Speaker 2: two cruis have flown. That was forty four hours, and
Speaker 2: it was over Afghanistan in two thousand and one. And
Speaker 2: keep a pin in that because we will be talking
Speaker 2: about how successful that mission was, because there's some similarities
Speaker 2: between it and what was done in Iran. Now, the
Speaker 2: B twos that we flew over Iran were armed with
Speaker 2: these big thirty thousand pound bunker busting bombs, and well,
Speaker 2: we'll talk about these as well in a while, but
Speaker 2: I want to I found out there's a very interesting
Speaker 2: article on a CNN Politics by Michael Williams that interviews
Speaker 2: one of the guys who was part of the longest
Speaker 2: B two mission, that mission over Afghanistan, who talked about
Speaker 2: like what you have to do in order to carry
Speaker 2: out a mission like this. And I want to bring
Speaker 2: it up because, you know, in the middle of this
Speaker 2: very shameful episode for the United States, it reminds me
Speaker 2: of what makes me proud of this country and what
Speaker 2: makes me proud of this country is our tendency to
Speaker 2: dose bomber pilots with massive quantities of amphetamines so that
Speaker 2: they can be absolutely spun off their asses when bombing
Speaker 2: a foreign country. And that's exactly how you get bomber
Speaker 2: teams over to a country like Iran for thirty seven
Speaker 2: hours of flight time. Is everybody is prescribed amphetamines and
Speaker 2: they are high as shit. They are pissing in ziploc
Speaker 2: bags full of kitty litter. They've got a chemical toilet
Speaker 2: in the back. They're just spun off of their asses,
Speaker 2: pissing into cat litter. And that's that's how strikes like
Speaker 2: this are managed, which I think is beautiful.
Speaker 9: Yeah, except for the whole you know, Trump starting a
Speaker 9: little war aspect of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, sure, the massive civilian casualties are always a.
Speaker 4: Tragedy, Yeah, the death eminicent people.
Speaker 2: But you know it also, it was from fighter pilots
Speaker 2: that we get a swinger culture. And it's from fighter
Speaker 2: pilots and swinger culture that we get popularized amphetamines in
Speaker 2: the United States. And without that, you know, I don't know,
Speaker 2: we actually probably wouldn't miss out on much that was
Speaker 2: very good.
Speaker 5: But the seventies would have been different. Value was lost.
Speaker 5: Might have been better, Yeah, it might have been better.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I feel like Jefferson airplane wouldn't have
Speaker 2: been as good. But maybe they'd be close something else. Yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe they'd been called something else. So the primary munition
Speaker 2: that these B twos were supposed to be dropping over Iran,
Speaker 2: and the whole reason why the United States was needed
Speaker 2: because Israel had carried out a bunch of strikes on
Speaker 2: Iranian nuclear facilities. But basically, Iran, being intelligent, knew that, like, well,
Speaker 2: they're going to bomb these facilities like as long as
Speaker 2: they exist, and it's very difficult to get like these
Speaker 2: centrifugias made, right, Like that's the hardest part of getting
Speaker 2: a nuclear weapon is getting the equipment that will allow
Speaker 2: you to enrich uranium. And so it's very precious and
Speaker 2: you can't you don't just have you can't just remake
Speaker 2: it super easily. So Iran buried this shit, right. They
Speaker 2: had a number of different sites which were hit by
Speaker 2: both the US and Israel, the most deeply buried of
Speaker 2: which was a place called at a place called Fourdoh,
Speaker 2: and the actual facilities were buried underneath like the ridge
Speaker 2: of a mountain beneath ninety meters or about three hundred
Speaker 2: feet of rock. Right. And we have this tendency in
Speaker 2: the West in part because of generations of like military
Speaker 2: industry propaganda, and in part because the Air Force really
Speaker 2: wants you to believe this that bombs are a lot
Speaker 2: more powerful than they are now. Bombs are great at
Speaker 2: blowing up buildings that are just hanging around on the
Speaker 2: surface of the earth, and they're great at killing people.
Speaker 2: They're great at killing civilians, people who are not you know,
Speaker 2: armored or defended against them. They're awesome at that. You know,
Speaker 2: what bombs suck at is going more than a couple
Speaker 2: of feet below the earth. They're terrible at it. Even
Speaker 2: really big bombs, even the scariest bombs we've ever made,
Speaker 2: absolute dog shit at getting through, especially like stone and rock.
Speaker 2: And so Israel was like, we don't have the capacity,
Speaker 2: we don't have the technology to actually like crack a
Speaker 2: facility like fourd oh. The only thing that can is
Speaker 2: these bombs that can only be carried by the Bee two,
Speaker 2: which are these thirty thousand pounds bunker busters.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: And the question that comes up then is like, Okay,
Speaker 2: well this four doah is ninety meters. It was beneath
Speaker 2: ninety meters of rock. How deep can these GBU fifty sevens,
Speaker 2: these massive ordnance penetrator bombs, which had not been used
Speaker 2: in combat before? How deep can these fuckers go?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: That seems like a simple question. You will usually see
Speaker 2: most of the graphics on the news will show that
Speaker 2: it penetrates sixty meters right or two hundred feet, and
Speaker 2: then it detonates, right, which you could do damage to
Speaker 2: a facility that's buried deeper. Right, If you're detonating it
Speaker 2: like sixty meters down and it goes down ninety meters,
Speaker 2: that explosion could do enough extra damage. It could damage
Speaker 2: a facility that's just like another thirty meters below.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Theoretically, however, that doesn't tell the full story. And I'm
Speaker 2: very indebted in this part to an NPR article by
Speaker 2: Joff Brumfel, who did actually like the math. Right, So
Speaker 2: we figured out a long time ago when we started
Speaker 2: bombing things, there's like a mathematical equation to how far
Speaker 2: a bomb that's a given weight and dropped from a
Speaker 2: given height and has a given explosive payload can penetrate
Speaker 2: through different kind of substrates right that you can just
Speaker 2: kind of plug that equation in. And yeah, I want
Speaker 2: to quote from Jeff's article right now, because it does
Speaker 2: a very good job of like looking at kind of
Speaker 2: why this was sort of a dogshit plan from the start.
Speaker 2: I went back to take a look at the math
Speaker 2: from those early studies and I found it was actually straightforward.
Speaker 2: The so called penetration equations have existed since the nineteen
Speaker 2: sixties and depend on a limited number of factors, including
Speaker 2: the shape of the nose cone, the weight and diameter
Speaker 2: of the weapon, the speed at which it hits the ground,
Speaker 2: and crucially, the type of earth it gets dropped on.
Speaker 2: It depends enormously on the kind of rocks, as Raymond
Speaker 2: Gene Laws, the professor at the University of California, Berkeley
Speaker 2: and one of the original authors of the two thousand
Speaker 2: and five National Academic Study and Earth Penetrators. When I
Speaker 2: ran the calculations using a key equation from that study,
Speaker 2: I found that the GBU fifty seven could go up
Speaker 2: to eighty meters underground if it was dropped in salty clay.
Speaker 2: In medium strength rock, things looked far different. The GBU
Speaker 2: fifty seven could only go around seven point nine meters
Speaker 2: beneath the earth, So that's not nearly the sixty meters
Speaker 2: that you're seeing claimed on most and it's nowhere close
Speaker 2: to ninety, right, And there's a good amount of data
Speaker 2: we already have. Trump obviously claimed as soon as we
Speaker 2: did this bombing run, because we dropped a fairly heavy
Speaker 2: cluster of these bombs, twelve on four to zero. And
Speaker 2: Trump's claim was that, like, yeah, it was completely destroyed.
Speaker 2: His press secretary said, when you dropped twelve thirty thousand
Speaker 2: pound bombs with perfect precision on a target, there's only
Speaker 2: one result, complete destruction. And that's not true even if
Speaker 2: you just like look at the past of us using
Speaker 2: these weapons. I mentioned earlier that two thousand and one
Speaker 2: mission to Afghanistan that was us trying to blow up
Speaker 2: that's purported like cave fortress that bin Laden had.
Speaker 10: You may have seen the diagram in Tora Bora, and
Speaker 10: we didn't. It didn't work because it's really hard for
Speaker 10: all of our technological might, it's very hard to blow
Speaker 10: up something buried under rock, Like it doesn't matter how
Speaker 10: many of these giant bombs.
Speaker 2: You have, We're shit at it. Right now, there's still
Speaker 2: some debate. The DIA assessment says that basically, we did damage,
Speaker 2: but it was at most maybe enough to knock them
Speaker 2: back by eight months, and probably less than that. Right,
Speaker 2: it's kind of debatable, and we don't have perfect data
Speaker 2: on this, right, I don't know that Iran has perfect
Speaker 2: data on this, because one thing we can confirm is
Speaker 2: that the bombing sealed the intro, so it's possible they
Speaker 2: can't get into Ford Oh quite yet. Right, Like, there's
Speaker 2: going to be some work needed to do to be
Speaker 2: able to get these facilities if they were to do that,
Speaker 2: which again they were not based on US military intelligence,
Speaker 2: were not doing prior to the bombing, but based on
Speaker 2: satellite imagery, it does not look like there's not really
Speaker 2: good evidence that we did any kind of significant damage.
Speaker 2: There's some reports that some centrifugias were damaged, but those
Speaker 2: reports state that other centrifugias were intact. So it's one
Speaker 2: of those things where like there's not any strong evidence.
Speaker 2: And in fact, the DIA's report suggests that, like, the
Speaker 2: damage done was fairly minimal, given the extreme cost of
Speaker 2: this operation and the brags that the administration has been
Speaker 2: making that like they totally destroyed these facilities, right, right,
Speaker 2: We simply did not totally destroy these facilities. Now, it's
Speaker 2: a little too early to say so precisely, like how
Speaker 2: bad is this? Right, But you know again, that's kind
Speaker 2: of the early data is that, like the DIA assessment says,
Speaker 2: we set them back maybe a few months at most.
Speaker 2: One of the fun things about this is that Iran
Speaker 2: moved their uranium prior to the bombing, right, Like, you
Speaker 2: can't really move these giant centrifuges or these big underground facilities,
Speaker 2: but you can take the uranium and you can just
Speaker 2: drive at places and we don't know exactly where they
Speaker 2: hit it. The head of the IAEA, which is the
Speaker 2: International Atomic Energy Commission, has already come out and said, like,
Speaker 2: I have no idea where Iran's uranium is. And it's
Speaker 2: the job the IAEA's job is to account for every
Speaker 2: fucking gram of uranium held by every country in the world. Right,
Speaker 2: they are supposed to know at all times where it is.
Speaker 2: And he's like, I have no fucking idea, Like, we
Speaker 2: don't know where it is, and we don't know how
Speaker 2: much damage is double, we don't know where this is.
Speaker 2: There is at least one report stating that Iran's plan
Speaker 2: was basically load this up into the trunks of a
Speaker 2: bunch of cars and park them in public parking lots
Speaker 2: because they probably they're not going to bomb a public
Speaker 2: parking lot outside of like a store, which is really funny,
Speaker 2: actually fair, The US might do that.
Speaker 4: A Israel will send me bomb a fucking pokin they
Speaker 4: hit a press, which parking there's so yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 4: they'll pray a show game, right like they will send
Speaker 4: hundreds of trucks and vans from every location.
Speaker 5: Yeah right, they'll send way more.
Speaker 2: It's it's just the funniest thing in terms of it
Speaker 2: also points out how doomed efforts like this are where
Speaker 2: you just like, well, with our technology and our fancy
Speaker 2: stealth bombers, we clearly we should be able to figure
Speaker 2: this out. And it's like, nah, we're just gonna park.
Speaker 2: We need one hundred cars. We'll bring in six hundred
Speaker 2: cars and we'll park them randomly all around the country.
Speaker 2: Fuck you, what are you gonna do? Bomb every parking lot? Like,
Speaker 2: it's very funny quote.
Speaker 5: From parking lot bombed? What are you gonna do? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Anyway, that's uh, what's going on with us? Bombing Iran
Speaker 2: and so again very expensive. Yeah, probably did not do.
Speaker 4: Much Trump the Doves strikes again the peace maker they
Speaker 4: calling them the peace maker.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll talk about the peace bullshit after this. We
Speaker 2: should throw to ads first.
Speaker 5: Thank you note from Grumman for sponsoring this segment.
Speaker 2: We're back. So like the fourd Oh nuclear enrichment facility,
Speaker 2: Trump is between a rock and a hard place with
Speaker 2: with this whole carrying out illegal stripes on a sovereign
Speaker 2: nation thing. I'm a jig in that he came. He
Speaker 2: came to power a large part by promising I'm not
Speaker 2: going to do a World War three. I'm not gonna
Speaker 2: All these democrats are crazy warmongers, but not old Donnie t.
Speaker 2: You know, you can you can trust me to be
Speaker 2: a peacemaker. And then he fucking bombs around, which is
Speaker 2: kind of a major escalation, right, So, and we're not
Speaker 2: gonna There's been people arguing with this have happened under
Speaker 2: Kamala Yaddiya. I don't, I don't, I don't give a shit.
Speaker 2: I don't really shit it's happening now. Fucking fuck off,
Speaker 2: Like it's not it's not worth talking about that. We're
Speaker 2: talking about what's happening, which is that this is a
Speaker 2: major escalation. But Trump has had to He's kind of
Speaker 2: been hedging between like, yeah, look at how fucking cool
Speaker 2: our weapons are. We fuck them up so bad, and
Speaker 2: also and now it's time for peace. We have to
Speaker 2: stop the violence. Why don't you guys come to the table.
Speaker 2: Let's all be friends, and getting pretty pissed at the
Speaker 2: Israeli government, Yes, because he announced a ceasefire, and Iran
Speaker 2: was like, after striking back and hitting US bases in
Speaker 2: a number of countries, was like, okay, we're done. Like
Speaker 2: we did the thing we had, we did the face
Speaker 2: saving thing. We have to launch missiles after youbamas. We
Speaker 2: can't not do that. Yeah, but we did it. We
Speaker 2: got our strike off, and we're not going to continue
Speaker 2: if you guys don't continue, right, And Trump was like,
Speaker 2: I did it. I made peace. Look at look at
Speaker 2: how good I am. And then Israel immediately starts carrying
Speaker 2: out more straits and Trump is, are we gonna play
Speaker 2: the audio of it cursing on TV because it's very good.
Speaker 2: Here's here's Trump being confronted about this, Like, within hours
Speaker 2: of this Israeli strikes.
Speaker 5: You know what we have.
Speaker 14: We basically have two countries that have been fighting so
Speaker 14: long and so hard that they don't know what the
Speaker 14: fuck they're doing.
Speaker 5: Do you understand that?
Speaker 2: So that's a pissed off man, and he's pissed off again.
Speaker 2: I do think people are generally wrong when they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: Trump's much better on Israel because he can confront net Yahoo.
Speaker 2: That hasn't really proved to be the case yet. But
Speaker 2: unlike Biden, Trump clearly doesn't care about Like he's willing
Speaker 2: to be pissed at net Yahoo.
Speaker 5: And he was really pissed in this openly, like yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2: Openly, very yeah, because again he's hanging a lot on
Speaker 2: like nobody would dare go back to war when I
Speaker 2: said they were at peace? Right, Like that's that this
Speaker 2: is like an ego thing for him more than anything.
Speaker 2: He certainly doesn't give a shit about the human cost
Speaker 2: of any of this. But yeah, and so that's where
Speaker 2: we are right now. Are we done? Will there continue
Speaker 2: to be more strikes and retaliation strikes. Something's gonna happen.
Speaker 2: It's not done, right, none of it's done. No. But
Speaker 2: you know, also, Iran's not stupid, right, This is a
Speaker 2: country that has been in these circumstances and in variations
Speaker 2: of this conflict for a long time, and they are
Speaker 2: neither foolish nor suicidal. So they're not going to be
Speaker 2: completely reckless here, right, Like I think you're seeing and
Speaker 2: what you've seen is pretty calculated responses where they are
Speaker 2: aware of how much they think they can push when
Speaker 2: and where, right, And so I, you know, I think
Speaker 2: we're likely to like I don't know that. I think
Speaker 2: the escalation ladder is in like a runaway state. I
Speaker 2: don't see that evidence right now. But this is not
Speaker 2: the end of this, right, Yeah.
Speaker 5: So something we got news of today in the last
Speaker 5: this is Wednesday. We got this in the last.
Speaker 12: Hour or so, is that Trump like send on TV
Speaker 12: the thing that you're not actually supposed to say, which
Speaker 12: is that the US and Iran coordinated to have the
Speaker 12: Iran shoot these bases. Oh my god, it's like okay,
Speaker 12: like they like we literally went on TV and said, quote,
Speaker 12: you saw that working vessels were shot at us the
Speaker 12: other day, and Iran was very nice. They said we're
Speaker 12: gonna shoot them at one at one Okay, I said,
Speaker 12: it's fine.
Speaker 5: Everybody evacuated.
Speaker 12: Not the basis Like obviously the US has always done this,
Speaker 12: but like we've never had the president go on TV
Speaker 12: and just say, yeah, we let Iran shoot empty military.
Speaker 5: Basis, Yeah we worked it out with them. Yep, yep.
Speaker 2: This highlights something that's so interesting when I when I
Speaker 2: say this, I don't mean to ignore the fact that
Speaker 2: real people are dying, like particularly in Iran. It's horrifying,
Speaker 2: But there is a massive degree of this at the
Speaker 2: at the the nation state level that is kfa right,
Speaker 2: and that that proves it like Iran is like okay,
Speaker 2: look k.
Speaker 5: FAE with the cost of like yeah, thousands of lives,
Speaker 5: people will die. Yeah, it's it's it's dick measuring.
Speaker 2: The fact that iron is only to talk with you
Speaker 2: us about like okay, what can we strike that's not
Speaker 2: going to escal things for you, like yeah, we'll pull
Speaker 2: you know whatever. And also that's to a degree that
Speaker 2: was going on with the strikes on Iran, right where
Speaker 2: they got enough of a warning that they were able
Speaker 2: to move their physical material right Like this is there,
Speaker 2: which is not to say that like things are like
Speaker 2: copasetic and friendly, but everybody's got everybody, but Israel has
Speaker 2: like a vested interest in things not escalating to much
Speaker 2: even the Trump administration, right has a vested interest in like,
Speaker 2: there's a line we don't want to cross because we
Speaker 2: just don't see any like benefit in it, right, and
Speaker 2: that is that is a part of what's going on here. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 2: that's probably enough talk about Iran and news and stuff.
Speaker 2: But anyway, remember, folks, you too could be a nuclear
Speaker 2: power if you can just figure out how to make
Speaker 2: a functional centrifuge and get a shitload of uranium. You know,
Speaker 2: it's not that hard.
Speaker 4: It just comes out of the ground, depending on what
Speaker 4: that ground.
Speaker 2: Is, depending on where that ground is.
Speaker 4: Should you talk about immigration, sure, all right, I love
Speaker 4: immigration sadly, but Congress does not agree with you.
Speaker 2: They rarely do, James, they rarely do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that is one of the things they say about
Speaker 4: Robot Evans. I want to start, actually with a little
Speaker 4: no disclaimer rant. Almost every day for the past six months,
Speaker 4: someone has sent me a tip saying that ice are
Speaker 4: rating a hospital. This has happened almost every month for
Speaker 4: the past ten years. I have received this tip thousands
Speaker 4: of times. To my knowledge, it has never been true. Nonetheless,
Speaker 4: this rumor persists, and especially among people who might be
Speaker 4: newer to migrant advocacy or newer to observing immigration enforcement.
Speaker 4: What is happening in one hundred percent of these cases
Speaker 4: that I have looked into, is the customs of Border
Speaker 4: Protection or ICE or some other immigration detention agency is
Speaker 4: taking somebody who is in their custody to the hospital,
Speaker 4: and then that person is getting treatment, and then they
Speaker 4: are released again to that immigration agency. Normally, those immigration
Speaker 4: agents can't enter non public areas of the hospital i e.
Speaker 4: Treatment rooms, but they can into public areas i e.
Speaker 5: Lobbies.
Speaker 4: This rumor, which continues to spread, which I've seen people
Speaker 4: including journalists sharing on social media, kills people right. I'm
Speaker 4: aware of one incident in which someone was having a
Speaker 4: medical emergency and didn't want to go to hospital, a
Speaker 4: medical emergency which could very well have killed them within hours,
Speaker 4: and didn't want to go to hospital because they had
Speaker 4: heard that ICE was at the hospitals. I understand that
Speaker 4: people are coming to this with varying levels of experience.
Speaker 4: It's cool, it's great that people are showing up for migrants,
Speaker 4: but people need to exercise caution around this because it
Speaker 4: is not harmless to spread that rumor unless you are
Speaker 4: absolutely certain that it is true.
Speaker 5: It hurts people and I.
Speaker 4: Keep seeing it and I think it's important to say
Speaker 4: something about it, including two other journalists. Okay, with that said,
Speaker 4: let's start with some good news about immigration. ICE agents
Speaker 4: in San Diego scattered from the San Diego Court when
Speaker 4: the newly appointed San Diego Bishop Michael Farm, who is
Speaker 4: himself a refugee. He was an accompanied miner from Vietnam,
Speaker 4: entered the court to accompany people to their immigration hearings.
Speaker 4: Bishop Farm was joined by Taha Hassane. I'm saying that
Speaker 4: correctly of the Islamic Center of San Diego and our
Speaker 4: Lady of Guadaloupe Church, Pastor Scott Santa Rossa. They say
Speaker 4: they're going to keep doing this quote as needed. So
Speaker 4: this is actually one of the very few things, at
Speaker 4: least in court houses, seems to have worked.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: We've covered this in previous weeks that what is happening
Speaker 4: is that the government is dismissing the case against people
Speaker 4: and then immediately detaining them and forcing them to fight
Speaker 4: for their asylum well detained.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: This has been happening all across the country. San Diego
Speaker 4: is the only place I'm aware of where religious leaders
Speaker 4: right from across the religious community are accompanying migrants to
Speaker 4: their detention hearings. So we saw Brad Lander doing this
Speaker 4: in New York politician, but this is the only instance
Speaker 4: I'm aware of where clerics are doing it, and it
Speaker 4: seems to have worked. It seems to have in this
Speaker 4: incident or in these instances, prevented ICE from detaining people.
Speaker 4: And like, I'm not a religious person myself, but I
Speaker 4: will say that I respect this. I think this is
Speaker 4: this is cool. I've reported before, I spoke a lot
Speaker 4: about Jesuits in the Darien Gap and the how impressed
Speaker 4: and in awe of their work with migrants I am.
Speaker 4: And I think this is another example of people organizing
Speaker 4: with groups and they might not normally organize with but
Speaker 4: that having really beneficial results.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: This huge win for the woke Marxist pope as well.
Speaker 4: It's always good to see.
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 4: Hell yeah, huge win for Marxism this week. Yeah, generally
Speaker 4: a big week for Marxism in other years. A district
Speaker 4: court has ordered another man, Geordian, Alexander Melga Saint Maron,
Speaker 4: returned from El Salvador. He's Salvadorian, but he was removed
Speaker 4: thirteen minutes after a court order barred his removal and
Speaker 4: thus he was removed in violation of that court order right,
Speaker 4: and the District Court has ordered him returned. I'm not
Speaker 4: aware if he's being returned yet. On Wednesday, we shall see,
Speaker 4: I guess, because the Supreme Court has allowed the Trump
Speaker 4: administration this week to continue removing migrants to countries which
Speaker 4: are not specifically noted on their removal orders. We spoke
Speaker 4: about this before, in the case of the attempt of
Speaker 4: the DODA to remove people to South Sudan. We've spoken
Speaker 4: about it in terms of removing people to El Salvador
Speaker 4: who are not themselves salvad are in right. This isn't
Speaker 4: really deportation, and I think rendition is a more accurate
Speaker 4: way to describe it. And it will certainly result in
Speaker 4: people facing hardship and more likely than not, people facing
Speaker 4: torture and probably being killed.
Speaker 5: It is a disaster.
Speaker 4: It was a very short and unsigned order, and the
Speaker 4: justices that it wasn't a final decision right, that they
Speaker 4: paused the Massachusetts District Court ruling, which had in turn
Speaker 4: paused the process. So the process is now ongoing again.
Speaker 4: It's worth noting that the Massachusetts District Court ruling didn't
Speaker 4: stop them doing it, it allowed them a meaning attempt
Speaker 4: at expressing their reasonable fear of torture.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: Three justices dissented, so to Mayor, Kigan and Jackson. So
Speaker 4: to Mayor wrote the descent, I'm going to quote from
Speaker 4: it here briefly, apparently quote the Court finds the idea
Speaker 4: that thousands will suffer violence in far flung locales more
Speaker 4: palatable than the remote possibility that a district court exceeded
Speaker 4: its remedial powers when it ordered the government to provide
Speaker 4: notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and
Speaker 4: statutorily entitled. As she pointed out, the government was seeking
Speaker 4: relief from this order in Supreme Court, but had also
Speaker 4: been openly flouting here right. This flouting of lower court
Speaker 4: orders lines up with a res Ruvenni, a DOJ lawyer
Speaker 4: who was fired for I guess not following the DOJ
Speaker 4: line in the Aberdegogavcia case. He filed a whistleblower complaint
Speaker 4: in Congress this week that the NAT has seen. You
Speaker 4: can read the whole article in the show notes, but
Speaker 4: in there you can hear Emil Bouvet, who's he was
Speaker 4: Trump's personal Laura in twenty twenty three. Trump is now
Speaker 4: nominated him to be a judge, but he tells DOJ
Speaker 4: lawyers that they need to be open to responding fuck
Speaker 4: you to court orders. The allegations in a whistleblower complaint
Speaker 4: are pretty concerning, right in terms of the ability of
Speaker 4: the courts to stop the DOJ doing anything. I would
Speaker 4: urge you to read it. It's going to be linked
Speaker 4: in the show notes. We don't really have time to
Speaker 4: summarize all of it here, but I think I think
Speaker 4: the fuck you comment summarizes it pretty well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and speaking of things that you should buy, here's ads.
Speaker 2: We're back, And since we've just done ads, let's let
Speaker 2: James give an ad for something that's not a product
Speaker 2: or service but as better yeah things, if you have
Speaker 2: any money left.
Speaker 4: After investing in all the wonderful goal their appetites to
Speaker 4: want to sell you. One of the people who we
Speaker 4: have interviewed on this show extensively, who came into the
Speaker 4: Artistrates through Acumba and who provided us with a really
Speaker 4: in depth account of his immigration detention, has let me
Speaker 4: know that he is struggling to find a lawyer and
Speaker 4: pay for a lawyer. So far, he's been taking care
Speaker 4: of all of his legal paperwork himself, which is very admirable,
Speaker 4: but obviously, like many migrants, he understands his chance of
Speaker 4: the success will be much much better with a lawyer,
Speaker 4: something he himself is struggling to pay for right now
Speaker 4: whilst also supporting a family. If you would like to help,
Speaker 4: the link for that is www dot GoFundMe dot com
Speaker 4: slash f slash Standing with our Family. It will also
Speaker 4: be the first link in the sources for this episode,
Speaker 4: so if you're listening on your podcast app, you can
Speaker 4: scroll down to the show to find it that click
Speaker 4: it and help out if you'd like to.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 9: I think it's time for Gahre's good news round up,
Speaker 9: and let's start with some actually like fantastic news. My
Speaker 9: mood Khalil has been released after one hundred and four
Speaker 9: days in ice custody.
Speaker 5: He missed the birth of his first child.
Speaker 4: Was it his first time meeting his child? Did he
Speaker 4: get to meet his child?
Speaker 2: I think he'd gotten one visit where he got to
Speaker 2: meet his kid, if if I'm remembering directly, it's still
Speaker 2: kind of about two thirds of the way through his detainment.
Speaker 9: But now he is back in New York as his
Speaker 9: case will continue. This is a good step in the
Speaker 9: fight against disappearing people for political differences.
Speaker 5: Like, this is important.
Speaker 9: This is possibly like the one of the most important
Speaker 9: national pieces of news. That's still a developing story right now.
Speaker 2: I've seen some responses that are like, yeah, so after
Speaker 2: one hundred and four days of being illegally detained and
Speaker 2: you know, a guy finally got released, this is still
Speaker 2: a bad thing, And like that's true, this is a
Speaker 2: bleak story. But like it's actually kind of like foolish
Speaker 2: to not acknowledge this as a significant win, right, Like,
Speaker 2: it's important.
Speaker 5: They did not want to release him.
Speaker 9: They wanted to keep him, Yeah, forever, they did not
Speaker 9: want to release him.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is good. This is a good thing, and
Speaker 2: it's proof that it is worth fighting because you can win.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Like every.
Speaker 4: Day he's not in jail and that he's with his
Speaker 4: family is a better day.
Speaker 5: Yes, is a win. Yeah, it's a victory. Yes.
Speaker 9: Also some good news in New York it is so
Speaker 9: clover Soran Mamdani won the Democratic primary for the mayor
Speaker 9: of New York City Tuesday night.
Speaker 5: This is quite exciting.
Speaker 9: I got to announce to a massive room full of
Speaker 9: trans people that Cuomo conceded to Zoron, and I have
Speaker 9: not felt better in months.
Speaker 5: It was like one of the one of the one
Speaker 5: of the.
Speaker 9: Brightest rays of hope that we've had, and a rejection
Speaker 9: of like the old Democratic Party establishment. Yes, Zoron had
Speaker 9: to beat like thirty million dollars of super pac funding
Speaker 9: against him. He mobilized the youth vote in ways we've
Speaker 9: never seen before in New York. A quarter of early
Speaker 9: voters for first time that Democratic primary participants. Zoron ran
Speaker 9: a very very solid campaign with slick videos online and
Speaker 9: on TV, multi language outreach, fifty thousand like on street volunteers, canvassing,
Speaker 9: door knocks, phone baking, and a distinct focus on affordability,
Speaker 9: including freezing rent, free buses, pilot program for city run
Speaker 9: grocery stores, free to low cost childcare, raising minimum wage,
Speaker 9: and resisting Trump's efforts to use ice to deport New Yorkers.
Speaker 9: Myself and Mia did a full episode yesterday if you
Speaker 9: want to have a more in depth look at the
Speaker 9: New York mayor roal primary.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: We should also note here that per acbs New York
Speaker 2: inner with former Governor Cuomo. He has stated that he
Speaker 2: is considering running against Mom Donnie as an independent, So
Speaker 2: we'll see how that goes. We might get to see
Speaker 2: Cuomo lose twice in a year, which would be pretty funny.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, honestly, I would be surprised if he
Speaker 9: actually decides to run in the general. A lot of
Speaker 9: like like Ackman is going behind Adams. It seems they're
Speaker 9: certainly going to be targeting from like Republicans and maybe
Speaker 9: even some den like establishments.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, sure definitely.
Speaker 9: So to like remove Zoran as like a viable candidate,
Speaker 9: they're going to pull out some crazy like red scare
Speaker 9: communist shit from the fifties. Absolutely, they might try to
Speaker 9: remove his legal status as a citizen, like they're gonna
Speaker 9: pull out the stops. But this is like after the
Speaker 9: twenty twenty four election. This is like the first first
Speaker 9: like clear look at what a new Democratic Party could
Speaker 9: look like. And right now is the face of Zorrong.
Speaker 9: Yeah that's all I have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, it's nice to see a win again.
Speaker 2: It's like the Mahud Khalil thing, right, It's it's nice, absolutely,
Speaker 2: like this is this is good things can happen now?
Speaker 2: Does this mean is this a part of a fucking
Speaker 2: progressive wave that's sweeping the country. Does this prove that,
Speaker 2: you know, being pro Palestine and pro trans is the
Speaker 2: best electoral strategy in one hundred percent of districts? Now,
Speaker 2: like this is this is New York. We like, this
Speaker 2: is one election, but it's like good news and it
Speaker 2: it I think it there's a very solid possibility that
Speaker 2: we will see this as like part of a growing
Speaker 2: trend that when candidates are actually left wing and unabashedly so,
Speaker 2: when they don't try to tack to the middle, when
Speaker 2: they don't try to embrace you know, a hodgepodge of
Speaker 2: like contradictory policies in order to please some sort of
Speaker 2: like farcical median theoretical median voter, that they do better.
Speaker 2: I do think that, like maybe that's what we'll see.
Speaker 2: But you know, obviously one election in New York City
Speaker 2: is not a one one primary in New York City
Speaker 2: isn't enough to prove that like this is going to
Speaker 2: be the same kind of thing we see nationwide.
Speaker 5: I mean, but it did show how to mobilize like
Speaker 5: a huge number of like young people and like a
Speaker 5: lot of a lot of like young men, which which
Speaker 5: the Democratic Party has been like whining about for the
Speaker 5: past few.
Speaker 2: Months, terrible about Yeah, and that's a big.
Speaker 9: Deal, Like how do we reach out to the young
Speaker 9: men in this country? And like Zoron showed you how
Speaker 9: to do this, it's actually fighting for like real things
Speaker 9: that make your life better.
Speaker 2: You can get people excited about your candidacy. If you're
Speaker 2: standing for something and getting people excited, it's even more
Speaker 2: important than just being like, well, this theoretically polls the best,
Speaker 2: because if you do take all the positions that poll well,
Speaker 2: but nobody gives a shit and you don't have any
Speaker 2: kind of excitement or the ability to build like a
Speaker 2: grassroots ground game, then you'll do worse. Like if you
Speaker 2: have that behind you, if you have all that enthusiasm,
Speaker 2: you can make less popular positions more popular. That's how
Speaker 2: politics works, right, Look at Trump, you know, like the
Speaker 2: whole everyone's always wondering like how does he get away
Speaker 2: with all these things that were forbidden for so long?
Speaker 2: Is because he had a lot of enthusiasm behind them,
Speaker 2: and that wave allowed him to push a bunch of boundaries.
Speaker 5: And like that's how it works.
Speaker 2: It can work the other way too, if you try,
Speaker 2: if you're not just gutless if you're not a fucking shumer.
Speaker 12: So in less good news and the less good news,
Speaker 12: I mean really really horrible news, terrible news. Yeah, So
Speaker 12: last week we got the results of the United States
Speaker 12: versus Gremetti. I think most trans people have been expecting
Speaker 12: that this was going to be really bad, but it was.
Speaker 12: It was I guess technically not as bad as it
Speaker 12: theoretically could have been, but this ruling was. There's a six'
Speaker 12: three ruling that Upholds tennessee's yeah ban on gender affirming
Speaker 12: care for. Minors that ban IS i mean just like hideously.
Speaker 12: Illegal it's like very obviously ces. Discrimination The Supreme court
Speaker 12: gave genuinely LIKE i had a friend described, as like
Speaker 12: we're just in Pure calvin ball, Land like it's if
Speaker 12: you read the, decision it's fucking.
Speaker 5: Nonsense it's. Gibberish that also.
Speaker 12: Makes it hard to figure out what's gonna do because
Speaker 12: the legal reasoning is just so unbelievably.
Speaker 9: Nonsense like it leaves it it leaves in place the
Speaker 9: twenty twenty ruling on sex discrimination in the workplace for
Speaker 9: trans people, intact but it invents this new justification that
Speaker 9: you can discriminate against trans people if you're discriminating against
Speaker 9: gender dysphoria as a diagnosis specifically not necessarily them being,
Speaker 9: trans but but the ability to treat gender.
Speaker 5: Dysphoria, yeah it's it's really really fucking.
Speaker 12: Weird i'm probably gonna do like a full episode looking
Speaker 12: at like like bringing into actual legal people to talk
Speaker 12: about with degal. Impacts you're going to be this is really.
Speaker 12: Bad this means that like twenty five states bans on
Speaker 12: gender firming care go into.
Speaker 5: Effect. Yeah one of the.
Speaker 12: Worst parts of, this right is that you, know and
Speaker 12: this is this is one of the biggest issues with
Speaker 12: like targeting and trans kids in, general is that just
Speaker 12: the structure of the family and if childhood makes it
Speaker 12: really hard to help these kids because they're significantly more
Speaker 12: isolated than. Transadults, right it's harder for trans kids to find.
Speaker 12: Community it's harder for the community to find, Them. Yep
Speaker 12: and because of the structures in place, here like they
Speaker 12: are denied the autonomy to keep. Living and if their
Speaker 12: parents decide to just be like fuck, you we're just
Speaker 12: doing we're going to do conversion therapy on you by
Speaker 12: refusing to let you, transition they can do, that and
Speaker 12: it's extremely hard to resist.
Speaker 2: It, yeah the root of so much, AUTHORITARIANISM i would, argue,
Speaker 2: like the absolute core of the fascist movement is the
Speaker 2: idea that parents own their. Children, yeah and that like
Speaker 2: that is the most that is the single most important
Speaker 2: property right that, exists is your ownership of.
Speaker 4: Kids i'm going to, say it's bed time if we
Speaker 4: ready get to the core of, it isn't, It, Robert,
Speaker 4: yeah it's.
Speaker 9: No robert's go in full like no future queer, Theory
Speaker 9: LIKE I i agree with.
Speaker 2: You, no he's, Right, no this is THE i don't
Speaker 2: think this is even debatable as someone who has raised.
Speaker 2: It it's this and it's it's not a simple, problem
Speaker 2: right because like kids are not adults and shouldn't like
Speaker 2: have full autonomy about, choices like you, know because they'll
Speaker 2: they don't understand the world. Fully there's a degree to
Speaker 2: which kids need to be like.
Speaker 9: Guided, yeah you should stop a child if they're gonna
Speaker 9: walk into the street and get hit by a, bus right,
Speaker 9: yeah like grab a fire or.
Speaker 2: If they only want to eat candy for, dinner, Right,
Speaker 2: like that's there are. Limits but the idea that like
Speaker 2: and so parents own their, kids they're like that that
Speaker 2: is just it's pure poison and it's killing us.
Speaker 4: All and like more, broadly like guys who hate that
Speaker 4: kids are the fucking full front.
Speaker 5: Of fascism right.
Speaker 4: Now like, Yeah Elon musk Bought twitter because he hates his, Daughter,
Speaker 4: yes more more than if any any other. Thing like
Speaker 4: it's uh, yeah it's a repugnant. Ideology it's just.
Speaker 5: Gusting. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway we'll do some sort of more detailed look
Speaker 2: at this that like that at some, point BUT i
Speaker 2: think we've you, know covered the.
Speaker 12: News, YEAH i, MEAN i think the last the last
Speaker 12: THING i want to say about that is like if
Speaker 12: your trends AND i know this was a bigger thing
Speaker 12: and the immediate wake of last, week but keep.
Speaker 2: Living yeah, yeah, yeah stay. Alive maybe get a passport
Speaker 2: because you can do that right. Now there's a lot
Speaker 2: of benefit even if you're not going to, travel if
Speaker 2: you don't have the money to, travel there's a lot
Speaker 2: of benefit in having that.
Speaker 5: Id.
Speaker 12: Yeah, yeah we're all going to see the sun rice
Speaker 12: together like we, are and it's going to be.
Speaker 9: Beautiful but do you know who won't is a man
Speaker 9: From norway who will probably never be seeing The United
Speaker 9: states ever.
Speaker 2: Again, god oh my, God, Okay, Garrison.
Speaker 9: So to finish this, episode we're going to talk about
Speaker 9: the one deportation we're kind of allowed to laugh. At
Speaker 9: not because the guy is. Bad the guy seems perfectly,
Speaker 9: fine but the circumstances around the deportation are so. Bizarre
Speaker 9: it's wild shit and it Affects. Norway so it's you,
Speaker 9: know it's like, Whatever garrison Anti norwegian, ACTION o no
Speaker 9: offense To. Norway i'm just, like it's it's not like
Speaker 9: this guy's getting deported to a place where he's in.
Speaker 4: DANGER i love You, norwegians even If garrison.
Speaker 2: Doesn't this is not a guy who's going to. Suffer
Speaker 2: he's not going To South, suda, beer life threatening or.
Speaker 2: Whatever he's.
Speaker 5: Fine.
Speaker 9: YEAH A norwegian man was coming to The United states
Speaker 9: for vacation and at the border check point AT i Think,
Speaker 9: newark he was questioned and handed over his. Phone on the,
Speaker 9: phone porter agents found a photoshopped picture of BABY JD
Speaker 9: v sorry of bald BABY jd. Vance yeah, yeah and
Speaker 9: for this, reason BABY jd denied entry into into The
Speaker 9: United states and deported back to Your.
Speaker 5: Thomas country On.
Speaker 2: Earth. Anyway said photo has now been shown in The
Speaker 2: Irish parliament because we live in it's beautif the world's.
Speaker 9: Beautiful they're Deporting norwegians for Jd vance. Memes, now this
Speaker 9: is the level that we're, At like The party Of
Speaker 9: Free speech deporting people who has have Jd vance memes
Speaker 9: on their.
Speaker 12: Phone, like on the one, HAND i think you can
Speaker 12: make the argument that fascism has always been this, stupid
Speaker 12: like google Google mussolini's headquarters and look at that.
Speaker 5: Building is this? Dumb but, like good, lord LIKE i,
Speaker 5: just oh my, GOD i have personal.
Speaker 12: Vanity there's such fucking tiny babies about. It like that's,
Speaker 12: like that's like the really defining characteristic of this era
Speaker 12: of fascism is that if you make fun of them
Speaker 12: the tiniest, bit it is the worst consequences they've ever
Speaker 12: stuffed in their entire, lives and they fucking lose their
Speaker 12: mind that everyone doesn't fucking love.
Speaker 9: Them, yeah they they're they're fully like willing and like
Speaker 9: desire to use the complete might of the states to
Speaker 9: uh to step on anyone who dares defy their, authority
Speaker 9: even even when that defiance is manifested through having a
Speaker 9: picture of baby Jd vance with a bald head like,
Speaker 9: that that is too. FAR i DON'T i don't know
Speaker 9: what else to say about bald BABY Jd.
Speaker 2: Fance you, know get get a, tattoo get a full
Speaker 2: facial tattoo or like a bin afflet.
Speaker 5: Denaturalized for YOUR jd events back.
Speaker 2: Tattoo you can't punish you not for a. Tattoo, no it,
Speaker 2: is it.
Speaker 9: Is it is funny how much vans in the border
Speaker 9: patrol do not understand the barber strikes that in. Effect
Speaker 9: this picture is now. Everywhere it shows how how HURT.
Speaker 9: Jd fance is by these, photoshops even though he's tried
Speaker 9: to laugh along in the.
Speaker 4: Past, Yeah i'd love to, know like how is there
Speaker 4: a directive that has come? Down like no streams did
Speaker 4: some like office and field operations, guy.
Speaker 9: Did they send it up To Stephen miller with like Hey,
Speaker 9: steven is this?
Speaker 5: Okay it seems like, no, no, no.
Speaker 4: It's somewhere a take offence on behalf Of Vaughan's like
Speaker 4: that could be very.
Speaker 5: LIKELY i think that is.
Speaker 2: What, Happened like that all of the data suggests that's what.
Speaker 4: Happened roberts talked about this like working towards the furor stuff.
Speaker 4: Before but like we're seeing a version of that, here, Right, like.
Speaker 9: Oh, YEAH i mean like all of the current border
Speaker 9: agents are Like trump cultists, essentially like they're they're the
Speaker 9: most evil people you will you will ever.
Speaker 4: MEET i, mean of the of all the federal, agencies,
Speaker 4: right IT'S cbp that has had the lowest vaccination. Rate
Speaker 4: they're playing One american use in their break, Rooms, like,
Speaker 4: yeah they are more ideologically sympathico with what's happening THEN
Speaker 4: i would imagine most OTHER feds. Are, yeah, certainly LIKE
Speaker 4: ice are pretty much in lockstep with The trump. Administration,
Speaker 4: yeah if you want to HELP, AMOS i guess don't
Speaker 4: send A. Jd vynce baby, meme but you can send
Speaker 4: your money again to GoFundMe dot com slash f slash
Speaker 4: standing with our. Family they'll be in the show notes,
Speaker 4: Too and if you would like to contact, us you
Speaker 4: can do so using proton, mail which is only encrypted
Speaker 4: end to end if you are sending from an encrypted
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Speaker 4: field and sending an email to. Us that, way we
Speaker 4: do read them. All we don't respond to them, all
Speaker 4: but all of them get.
Speaker 5: Read we reported the. News, oh we reported the.
Speaker 1: News.
Speaker 2: Hey we'll be Back monday with more episodes every week
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