Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 2: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 2: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 2: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 2: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 2: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 2: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 2: you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 3: Hello, and welcome to It could happen here. I'm Andrew
Speaker 3: Siege as soon as andreism on YouTube, and I'm here
Speaker 3: with me. It's James, And honestly I shouldn't see welcome
Speaker 3: to it could happen. Yeah, I shouldlready see welcome to
Speaker 3: it is happening here, because I mean, just just a
Speaker 3: second with you, James, how are you doing. You're safe?
Speaker 4: I'm okay, Yeah, I'm safe. Right now. We are living
Speaker 4: through wild times in the United States. Every day is
Speaker 4: a new hell.
Speaker 3: Indeed, indeed, and although I'm not in the US, the
Speaker 3: flames of that hell definitely lack the rest of the
Speaker 3: world in weis big and small.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they definitely do. I was just talking to people
Speaker 4: in Syria yesterday and like the alavis Ala white whenever
Speaker 4: you want to call a levees, so if you want
Speaker 4: to say it, are facing quite substantial persecution currently, and
Speaker 4: like one of the larger refugee accepting countries in the
Speaker 4: world just isn't doing that anymore unless you're a white
Speaker 4: South African of course, and like that has these massive
Speaker 4: trickle down effects for everywhere. It's just one example of
Speaker 4: how America so goes, the US so goes the world.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Indeed, indeed, and not just in Syria, are the flames
Speaker 3: of conflict tearing up with the part I think most
Speaker 3: people I now know what the situation in Palestine, the
Speaker 3: way that Israel was carrying on to genocide there. You know,
Speaker 3: the Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the civil war in Myanmar,
Speaker 3: in Sudan, the you know, struggle between India and Pakistan
Speaker 3: over Kashmir and the kashmir people who are you know,
Speaker 3: left on the on the wayside. You know, the Tamil
Speaker 3: genocide yep, taking place some in Sri Lanka. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's so many things happening across the world right now,
Speaker 3: it's really difficult to keep up.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the friends in me Emma would prefer the framing
Speaker 4: of revolution to civil war. They're pretty explicit about that.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, you're right, you're right, you're right, I should
Speaker 3: be using that that terminology.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not it's not appropriate everywhere. But in their case,
Speaker 4: there has been a civil war since forty eight, and
Speaker 4: it's a substantial change with the twenty twenty one revolution.
Speaker 3: Right right, right, right, Yeah, thank you for that correction.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, of course.
Speaker 3: I think now is a really good time to have
Speaker 3: a general, almost strategic discussion on anti war struggle, and
Speaker 3: so today I really want to look at how we
Speaker 3: can come to the propaganda around war, the actions that
Speaker 3: are possible to take against militarism at home, and we
Speaker 3: could build solidarity across oceans and borders. So to understand
Speaker 3: how to actuate against war, we first need to agitate
Speaker 3: against militarism. And those who don't know, militarism is the
Speaker 3: belief or policy that the nation should maintain a strong
Speaker 3: military and be prepare to use it aggressively to defend
Speaker 3: or promote its interests. It often involves glorifying military virtues
Speaker 3: and ideals, and prioritizing military strength and readiness above other
Speaker 3: aspects of society such a basic Google definition. My copy
Speaker 3: of the Anarchist Encyclopedia is the English version, which is aberged, sadly,
Speaker 3: but the original French has the full unabridged Anarchist Encyclopedia.
Speaker 3: So with a bit of shaky online translation magic and
Speaker 3: managed to pull its definition of militarism as well. Miltarism
Speaker 3: is a system that consists of having and maintaining military personnel.
Speaker 3: It's essential and avoult goal is a preparation for war.
Speaker 3: The recruitment of a standing army in the organization of
Speaker 3: the cageris of reserve army. The accumulation that put it
Speaker 3: in place turn into the state of service of ever
Speaker 3: more modern, more perfected war material. In short, is the
Speaker 3: preliminary organization of war. All are the implications of that, well,
Speaker 3: all over the world, I think we can see, you know,
Speaker 3: the consequences of statism, the might makes right, pursuit of conquest,
Speaker 3: the fighting wars abroad or at home, for the strategic interests,
Speaker 3: ideological commitments, resource claims, whatever the case may be. The
Speaker 3: rivalries within the ruling class, and how that pleas out,
Speaker 3: and how it's that that blows back on all of
Speaker 3: our faces. You know, the profits the military industrial complex
Speaker 3: which keeps this whole system chuning on, you know, the
Speaker 3: blood of innocence. Of course, the longstanding consequences and continued
Speaker 3: work of colonialism. And of course the way is that
Speaker 3: militarism gets turned inward with this suppression of strikes, of activism,
Speaker 3: of popular unrest. When the now militarized police aren't enough,
Speaker 3: they often bring in the military itself and reports. With militarism,
Speaker 3: we also have the narrative component, you know, the building
Speaker 3: of patriotism that so plans the seed of fascism. States
Speaker 3: can survive without militaries. It is true the state typically
Speaker 3: depends upon some effort or some attempt at monopoly on
Speaker 3: the legitimate use of violence within the territory by some definitions.
Speaker 3: But the states which do not have militaries often can
Speaker 3: do so because they've outsourced the military functions to another state,
Speaker 3: and or because they have other systems in place to
Speaker 3: control descent, to develop a certain degree of social condition
Speaker 3: and pacify the population.
Speaker 4: I'm just trying to think of states that are militaries
Speaker 4: like in my experience, I guess you have like the
Speaker 4: Panama right doesn't have a military, it has the Center Front,
Speaker 4: which are like the frontier Protection I guess, but essentially
Speaker 4: like a militarized border patrol. And they do have marines
Speaker 4: and stuff as well, I guess, so they kind of
Speaker 4: do have a military, but it's a kind of a
Speaker 4: renaming exercise more than anything.
Speaker 3: Indeed, the same thing of having a militarized police, but
Speaker 3: it's not a military technically.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, having a militarized coast guard and it's not a
Speaker 3: military technically, you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah. You have the countries like the Republic the Marshall Islands,
Speaker 4: which just outsources its militarization to the United States, right
Speaker 4: like the US. Well, I think that is a distinct thing.
Speaker 4: The people in the Marshall Islands have seen the horrors
Speaker 4: of war very closely and also the danger of militarization,
Speaker 4: right like, the United States nuked the Marshall Islands, a
Speaker 4: country with which it had no quarrel, with which it
Speaker 4: was not at war, just to practice in case it
Speaker 4: needed to in Nuk, a country with which it did
Speaker 4: have a quarrel. I guess the legacy of that is
Speaker 4: very obvious and continues to this day there. But if
Speaker 4: marshal Ly's people wish to join a military. They can
Speaker 4: join the US military, and the US guarantees the security
Speaker 4: and theory that it's it's yeah, it is again distinctly.
Speaker 4: For instance, if you join the US military in the
Speaker 4: Marshall Islands wish to access your veterans benefits, the easiest
Speaker 4: way to do so is to take a five hour
Speaker 4: flight to Hawaii. Like, like, they don't have any any
Speaker 4: any benefits for victual veterans there. So I guess in
Speaker 4: that case, like maybe it does give people a different
Speaker 4: relationship to like state violence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's I mean, obviously different places to have different
Speaker 3: histories as to how they came to those arrangements. But
Speaker 3: you definitely see our relationship between colonialism and the outsourcing
Speaker 3: of military functions.
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3: Now, historically anarchists have been anti militarists. The encyclopedias call
Speaker 3: this aspect of the anarchist struggle, the aim to disqualifying militarism,
Speaker 3: to denounce it's terrible and painful consequences, to combat the
Speaker 3: warlike and barracks for distigmatize and dishonor war to a
Speaker 3: ball the regime of the armies, so abolish and militarism
Speaker 3: looks like material relief from the oppression military violence, the
Speaker 3: redirection of resources that go toward military toward instead things
Speaker 3: that actually benefit the lives of everyday people, you know,
Speaker 3: the reduction of pain and suffering throughout the world, the
Speaker 3: abolition of borders which so often are the motivating force
Speaker 3: behind military exercise. And while no anarchist to deny that
Speaker 3: armed struggle is necessary for defense, it's not the same
Speaker 3: as having an imperialistic or hierarchical ambition toward you know,
Speaker 3: power over towards dominating populations of people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this reminds me of the discussion that happened in
Speaker 4: the CNT and Spain in the nineteen thirties previous to
Speaker 4: the Civil War. Even before that, right where they there
Speaker 4: was a very profound, an obvious discussion on like how
Speaker 4: to defend their evolution, how to defend communities whilst maintaining
Speaker 4: anti militarism. And that's why we didn't see like there
Speaker 4: was not a like standing army beyond you had affinity groups, right,
Speaker 4: and then you had like defense committees of six six
Speaker 4: to eight people, and those people like took on the
Speaker 4: role of organizing for a potential violent like in order
Speaker 4: to defend the community right, like to use violence to
Speaker 4: defend the community against violence. But even as it became
Speaker 4: clearer and clearer that Spain was like spiraling towards conflict,
Speaker 4: they resisted the idea of establishing and I think more
Speaker 4: militarized than that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think so core. It's been a really
Speaker 3: good place to look at for really some experiments or efforts,
Speaker 3: so ideas would have played out, strategies would have played out,
Speaker 3: and I think it's really important to take those experiments
Speaker 3: and see how we can iterate on them. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: build upon them, because I mean what I've always admired
Speaker 3: that we've carried on this anti militarist torch. It's very
Speaker 3: important to remember the landscape has changed from war times past.
Speaker 3: You know, we're not in World War times anymore. You know,
Speaker 3: the strategies and the discussions and the approaches that may
Speaker 3: have worked back then, it doesn't work this in the
Speaker 3: same way now. You don't even have to declare war
Speaker 3: officially anymore. In this day and age. You can just
Speaker 3: say that, oh, you're doing a special military operation, or
Speaker 3: you can just send billions of dollars of aid to
Speaker 3: a country that you want to support, and even troops
Speaker 3: to the countries want to support, and technically you have
Speaker 3: un declared warrior. Yeah, and you know, not only that,
Speaker 3: you also get to unleash generational trauma and poison upon
Speaker 3: generations of people. But it's okay because you're going after
Speaker 3: some terrorists. You know, you just get to push money
Speaker 3: and supplies towards this camp or that and whether the
Speaker 3: US is concerned and at least used to have to
Speaker 3: seek congressional approval, but as we see, that's not really
Speaker 3: a thing now, especially post nine eleven. You know, back
Speaker 3: in the day, people thought putting pressure on the elected
Speaker 3: officials through protests probably enough, and you know there's the
Speaker 3: b to be had to the extent to which that
Speaker 3: worked for situations like the Vietnam War. But as we've
Speaker 3: seen with this song and Dance again and again and again,
Speaker 3: the protests are not hitting like they used to. You know,
Speaker 3: the response to the protest has been so it's routine
Speaker 3: at this point. You know, you just send the police
Speaker 3: to bash the heads in or bet to get the military,
Speaker 3: because the movers and the shakers on the people who
Speaker 3: can actually be reached with these protests, you know, and
Speaker 3: no matter how peaceful we proclaim our protests to be
Speaker 3: we're talking about moneyed interests here. You know, a military
Speaker 3: industrial complex that has to have lyne go up, you
Speaker 3: know who, Yeah, doesn't have to give a down about
Speaker 3: some people walking on the road. You know, the system
Speaker 3: has grown since the nineteen tens, the nineteen fourteen years.
Speaker 3: It has grown in such size and complexity to the
Speaker 3: point where you know, you don't have to care necessarily
Speaker 3: about a single movement part about a single action of protests.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and the two kind of combine. And like what
Speaker 4: we're seeing in the United Kingdom right now, right like
Speaker 4: there's the complete dismissal of protests and this like I'm
Speaker 4: thinking a better word than imprecise, but like the vagueness
Speaker 4: of the definition of terrorism has allowed the government of
Speaker 4: the United Kingdom, in combination with the absence of a
Speaker 4: Bill of Rights in the United Kingdom, right to just
Speaker 4: be like, oh, Palestine Action and terrorists like you are
Speaker 4: the same as the Islamic State, because Palestine Action undertook
Speaker 4: it in non violent direct action. Right, But it's ludicrous
Speaker 4: to suggest that that that was terrorism and that it
Speaker 4: doesn't mean any reasonable definition of the term. But yet,
Speaker 4: where we were in a stage now where governments can
Speaker 4: declare anyone the enemy without any particular oversight, and that's
Speaker 4: the logical conclusion of two decades of this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean to an extent, that has always been
Speaker 3: the case. I think what's different now is that they're
Speaker 3: not even really attempting to hide behind any sort of
Speaker 3: consistent principles or consistent standards, you know, because even back
Speaker 3: back then, you know, the nartists are being called terrorists
Speaker 3: and being m m true, you know, chastised for that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess also, like our class system is more
Speaker 4: entrenched than it ever has been in a sense, I'm
Speaker 4: just thinking, like, wars are not fought by the mass
Speaker 4: of middle class, and like the people who become senators
Speaker 4: for the most part, right, I mean, in the US
Speaker 4: and downs, senators will have done military service. It can
Speaker 4: sort of boost their career opportunities. I get that, But
Speaker 4: like it is not for the most part, the sons
Speaker 4: of the of the people who who start the wars
Speaker 4: who die in the wars.
Speaker 2: Right, it's indeed people of.
Speaker 4: A different class in a way that even in a
Speaker 4: distinct way from the era of the World wars. Right,
Speaker 4: when when large numbers of people of the middle class,
Speaker 4: especially maybe not the very privileged people that like did
Speaker 4: die in those wars. And I think like the memory
Speaker 4: of the First World War probably did have some impact
Speaker 4: on like the reticence of some politicians to dive into
Speaker 4: the second one. But we don't really have that now.
Speaker 3: Indeed, so we criticize this particular approach of the protest,
Speaker 3: and I know that the inavertable question is, so what
Speaker 3: can we even do at this point? And you know,
Speaker 3: this is why I consider it very important to take
Speaker 3: a step back and look at what is actually keeping
Speaker 3: the system going right, and what's keeping the system going
Speaker 3: is and has always been labor right. Not to say
Speaker 3: that labor and labor struggles to be all and and
Speaker 3: all of our politics, but it is to say that
Speaker 3: if we want to make a significant impact, that is
Speaker 3: what we have the greatest control over our labor. And
Speaker 3: so when I talk about things we can do to
Speaker 3: affect change, I always had to take it back to
Speaker 3: the ongoing process of social revolution. The things you do
Speaker 3: to oppose and the things you do to propose, you know,
Speaker 3: on the opposing side of things, that includes counter messaging.
Speaker 3: You know, even though we may not have the resources
Speaker 3: of mainstream media or government communications, We have weight of mouth,
Speaker 3: we have trust between ourselves, and we have alternative media
Speaker 3: that can be, especially in this day and age, just
Speaker 3: as powerful if sparked right, especially considering the fact that
Speaker 3: the general center and the populist sentiment has, whether coming
Speaker 3: from a leftist direction or a right dist direction, the
Speaker 3: general sentiment has been moving toward anti establishment poll of sics.
Speaker 3: The anti establishment sort of momentum is what's growing right now,
Speaker 3: and the issue of course being that sometimes that anti
Speaker 3: establishment momentum can be hijacked, such as what Trump did,
Speaker 3: you know, to get himself elected the first time he
Speaker 3: rode that wave and you know, this whole Epstein situation,
Speaker 3: we may see that foundation of his base potentially crumbling
Speaker 3: apart a bit. But we have to look at what
Speaker 3: is actually motivating people right now and how they can
Speaker 3: be reached. An alternative media with an anti establishment mess
Speaker 3: message is I think one of the better ways to
Speaker 3: do so, you know, wherever you see it.
Speaker 2: He needs to be out.
Speaker 3: There, you know, on social media or through a the
Speaker 3: avenue is calling out the ridiculous Cassius bellues used to
Speaker 3: manufacture consent for war. You know, to be wary of
Speaker 3: potential forced flags can be used as a justification for
Speaker 3: military action to consistently poke holes in the narratives that
Speaker 3: have allowed you know, nationalists and and xenophobic sentiments to
Speaker 3: become the force that they have become today, and of
Speaker 3: course even engaged in that message, and of course ty
Speaker 3: not to let campus infect your counter message in either.
Speaker 3: You know, that's how you get people who are you know,
Speaker 3: they gung, who are about a free Palestine, and then they
Speaker 3: start when they ask them about Ukraine, all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: it's actually really complicated. It's actually the fault of the
Speaker 3: US and the EU and na too, and not Russia,
Speaker 3: even though Russia is the one who actually invaded and
Speaker 3: is actively killing people in distrial infrastructure as we speak, right.
Speaker 3: I Mean, there's conversation to be had about the US
Speaker 3: and EU and about NATO obviously, but it's very.
Speaker 4: Clear, Yeah, it's very uncomplicated who's.
Speaker 3: Actually killing people right now?
Speaker 4: You know, Yeah, there is one country which is taking
Speaker 4: children right and trying to like re educate them give
Speaker 4: them to families in Russia, which is committing murders of civilians.
Speaker 4: Like we don't have to like resort to like ten
Speaker 4: year geopolitical trajectories to say that it's wrong and it
Speaker 4: should be opposed exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: And also I want to make this point about counter
Speaker 3: messaging because it's a consistent gripe I've had, In fact,
Speaker 3: one of the main reasons I started my channel in
Speaker 3: the first place. With your comment message in whether it's
Speaker 3: in person or on the internet or wherever, does stay
Speaker 3: perpetually on the back foot, you know, the words don't
Speaker 3: just counter message? Yeah, you know, right now, And it's
Speaker 3: what irritates me so much. The right wing sets the conversation. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, you have people they say, oh, we want
Speaker 3: to talk about critical race theory, and then everybody's talking
Speaker 3: about critical race theory because they talk to or they
Speaker 3: want to target trans people, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: we have to scrabble to respond to all their erroneous
Speaker 3: and ridiculous claims about trans people. That comets messages is important,
Speaker 3: is important, but it cannot be all that we do, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and this is a bit how to let feel. But
Speaker 3: you know, of course I'm not the one who is
Speaker 3: partialty liketoral approaches. But you can see some of that
Speaker 3: not just counter message in but also actively messaging taking
Speaker 3: place with Zora Mum. Danny's strategy, you know, when you
Speaker 3: look at how he speaks, how he addresses some of
Speaker 3: the badly the arguments are made against him. His rhetorical
Speaker 3: strength and popularity in part lies on his refusal to
Speaker 3: carry on the conversation on the enemies too, you know,
Speaker 3: so they will go at him for something and he's
Speaker 3: going to spit it right back around owned to talking
Speaker 3: about the things that it's just really matter to people
Speaker 3: to set the conversations to get people to respond to that,
Speaker 3: because all other response is toward him have been trying
Speaker 3: to distract from his actual messaging and his ability to
Speaker 3: steal on message as something I find really admirable, despite
Speaker 3: you know, my concerns about the investment of energy and
Speaker 3: electoral strategies.
Speaker 4: Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, there are certain things we can
Speaker 4: admire about these people if we don't agree with everything.
Speaker 4: And I do think like in that sense, something I
Speaker 4: think about a lot with like messaging and countermessaging, especially
Speaker 4: around war. It's like I spent some time in the
Speaker 4: Anes and what people call Java, and like one of
Speaker 4: the framings that I've consistently seen and it's mostly in
Speaker 4: like the lib leaning mass media, I guess is that
Speaker 4: people went to Rejaba to fight against IS or Dash
Speaker 4: or Isis, whatever you want to call it, right, and
Speaker 4: like in doing so, that is how the revolutionary Jarba
Speaker 4: is not understood by most people, right, and they have
Speaker 4: taken the power away from it in their framing of it,
Speaker 4: because people didn't just go. Some people did go. Justify
Speaker 4: I s right that there. They went because they saw
Speaker 4: what I was doing. They understood its inhumane and they
Speaker 4: wanted that to stop, and that's admirable. But people also
Speaker 4: went because they saw what people were building in Rajava
Speaker 4: and they thought that was beautiful and they wanted to
Speaker 4: defend it, and that's admirable too. And sometimes the messaging
Speaker 4: around specifically ra Java, Mi and Mar to an extent
Speaker 4: right there international volunteers there too, and of course that
Speaker 4: like folks from the Amma who have picked up weapons
Speaker 4: who never thought they would, and they didn't just do
Speaker 4: it to oppose the Hunter. They did it because like
Speaker 4: in there, despite all the horrible things about war then
Speaker 4: and like it should be avoided at all costs. In
Speaker 4: the conflict, they have built liberated spaces and they've experienced freedom,
Speaker 4: they have experienced how that feels and they've built a
Speaker 4: revolution that is beautiful in spite of the war, not
Speaker 4: not because of it, and they want to defend that.
Speaker 4: And I think that's a messaging that we should we
Speaker 4: should consider, right, like, because the messaging that everything has
Speaker 4: to be against something bad always sort of it presupposes
Speaker 4: that that they can't have been something good, and in
Speaker 4: some cases there has been something good, and like, we
Speaker 4: won't fully understand what was happening there unless we understand that.
Speaker 4: And I think we should push back on that messaging
Speaker 4: what we see it, especially in the great legacy media.
Speaker 3: Absolutely absolutely, and that really connects to the you know,
Speaker 3: the other aspect of the social revolution paradigm, because it's
Speaker 3: not just about a pousion and so it's proposing that
Speaker 3: that's something different. Yeah, and that is often far more
Speaker 3: energizing than simply talking everything that's wrong with the world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3: And I think also for those who maybe have concerns
Speaker 3: about the risks of oppositional messaging, there's another area where
Speaker 3: you can direct your energy to support the opposition without
Speaker 3: necessarily actively being involved in it, you know, because it's
Speaker 3: not enough to just oppose the system. You have to
Speaker 3: build something else, and you could be part of that
Speaker 3: building something else. You know, swim a message and you
Speaker 3: want to be able to redirect people's energies to the
Speaker 3: actual frustrations and interests, you know, to re center the
Speaker 3: conflict and the lens on the actual divisions of society,
Speaker 3: such as class, to make money interests known. And you know,
Speaker 3: even though it's never been easy to be anti war,
Speaker 3: you know, especially in the center of empire, and in
Speaker 3: many ways, technologies today have empowered much greater repression. You know,
Speaker 3: in Russia, individual and mass protests are met with severe oppression,
Speaker 3: massive finds, sentences, et cetera. In the US you can
Speaker 3: face police brutality, censorship, even deportation. And in Israel, well,
Speaker 3: I haven't seen or heard anything from the Israeli populus
Speaker 3: in terms of resisting what Israel is doing to the Palestinians.
Speaker 3: But I know that those who do stand against the
Speaker 3: mandatory conscription do face jail time for their refusal. So
Speaker 3: it's not easy to be anti war, especially in militarized
Speaker 3: and empire building territories. I get that stress and that worry,
Speaker 3: that opposition is still necessary, but there's other things. But
Speaker 3: we can we do it than just message it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You know, there are things that take on less risk,
Speaker 3: such as building an alternative, and there are things that
Speaker 3: take on more risks. Now protests, even peaceful protests, are
Speaker 3: no longer risk free endeaverts. And I know what most
Speaker 3: people hear about, you know, we need to push back.
Speaker 3: They hear, okay, that's all going to as a protest. Honestly,
Speaker 3: we could use a bit more imagination in this day
Speaker 3: and age. Like I said, the protest is not hitten
Speaker 3: like I used to. It's become like a pressure valve
Speaker 3: or a tool of passification that could be tolerated for
Speaker 3: a time and then met with repression the moment it's
Speaker 3: time to wrap it up. And they have a couple
Speaker 3: of reasons why protests are not you know, able to
Speaker 3: do as much. You know, they have the moneyed interests.
Speaker 3: You know, they can end up being divided according to
Speaker 3: various arguments of a strategy. And I'm sorry to say this,
Speaker 3: but protests as of late haven't accomplished very much besides
Speaker 3: getting people mutilated or jailed or worse in the past
Speaker 3: few years. And in fact, a lot of the resources
Speaker 3: that could be spent you know, building alternatives are being
Speaker 3: spent instead on you know, paying people's bonds and getting
Speaker 3: people out of jail, prison, relieve that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Not to say those things are not necessary, you know,
Speaker 3: don't leave your comrades to trot and jail. But I
Speaker 3: think we need to consider the free data that we've
Speaker 3: basically been giving away to the relaying class in the
Speaker 3: form of pictures, names, addresses, identifying data that they can
Speaker 3: be used to repress or dis erupt or infiltrate protesters
Speaker 3: and protesting organizations down the line, as James Herod and
Speaker 3: synother James. As James Herod wrote in the Weakness of
Speaker 3: our Politics of protest, we have been getting some of
Speaker 3: these critiques of protests from He says, thus, instead of
Speaker 3: powerfully concentrate in our mental and physical energies on solving
Speaker 3: this problem to eliminate this obstacle to defeating capitalism, we
Speaker 3: are taking to the streets once again, mainly protested, merely
Speaker 3: incased in what is basically mindless active end quote. Later,
Speaker 3: he says, it's easy to agree on what to protest against.
Speaker 3: The list of things that need to be stopped on
Speaker 3: the capitalism is long, so long, in fact, we don't
Speaker 3: even need to agree, there's plenty to choose from, so
Speaker 3: just pick something that suits you. Perhaps this is why
Speaker 3: I meant so many activists got involved in protesting. It's
Speaker 3: not so easy though, to figure out what we want
Speaker 3: to replace capitalism with, to work out convincing arguments about
Speaker 3: how it will possibly work, and they set about creating
Speaker 3: such a social world, especially since so little energy has
Speaker 3: been devoted to the task end quote. And you know,
Speaker 3: I get why protests are popular. You know, as he says,
Speaker 3: it has a low barrier to entry. You just have
Speaker 3: to show up. And in a society that has been
Speaker 3: so deliberately atomized, where mass collective action has we made
Speaker 3: so difficult, protests has become pretty much a very easy
Speaker 3: avenue to get those things done. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 3: protests can work in Sydney instances for limits any goals.
Speaker 3: But I think that those uses are diminishing dyd in
Speaker 3: the cost benefits analysis.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm just thinking about Like there was a letter
Speaker 4: Georgi or wil wrote to one of his readers on
Speaker 4: the subject of anti fascism, where all Well was lamenting
Speaker 4: that the anti fascism that he was encountering in England.
Speaker 4: Right in between his participation in the Spanish Civil War
Speaker 4: and the Second World War was always centered on hate,
Speaker 4: and like it's sort of an idea. We get the
Speaker 4: two Minutes of Hate later in nineteen eighty four, right,
Speaker 4: but maybe it comes from here, And like it never
Speaker 4: proposed an alternative. It just said it pointed to something.
Speaker 4: It said bad, something I've tried not to do in
Speaker 4: my journalism, right. It is very often we do this
Speaker 4: with a journalists too. We point something and say bad,
Speaker 4: and we don't look for the ways that it could
Speaker 4: become better. And so like protesting could become such an
Speaker 4: identity for people like you see it. I'm just thinking
Speaker 4: of like every time I get sent a link to Instagram, right,
Speaker 4: which is a platform m I don't really participate on,
Speaker 4: but I will look at things and they'll be like, oh,
Speaker 4: San Diego protest news, San Diego protester, so cow protester,
Speaker 4: And like, I think we should resist that being an
Speaker 4: identity because we want to build something beautiful as well
Speaker 4: as oppose what is bad. And if we don't have
Speaker 4: something beautiful to propose, what are we doing out there?
Speaker 3: Exactly exactly? And you know there's room for protests. I
Speaker 3: don't want to give off the impression that there isn't.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You know, but for all the lovely talk about peaceful protests,
Speaker 3: that works when there's an actual threat backing up those protests.
Speaker 3: You know, you don't just do the peaceful protest. You know,
Speaker 3: Gandhi didn't single handedly win India's independence by march and peacefully. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, there has to be something back, and it's
Speaker 3: up or else it's going to be very easy to
Speaker 3: ignore and suppress. Yeah, And I think that protests should
Speaker 3: not be our default right now. They are our default,
Speaker 3: and I think they are better uses of our collective time, energy,
Speaker 3: and resources, even though protests are very easy compared to
Speaker 3: some of the things that are more necessary right now.
Speaker 3: You know, but if protest is where your dead set
Speaker 3: on funneling your energy, I would just say that you
Speaker 3: should at least learn de arrest strategies. You know, there
Speaker 3: are resources online to get some information on that ond
Speaker 3: arrest strategies. You can look it up. But if it's possible,
Speaker 3: if you see the situation playing out, you know, trying
Speaker 3: not to sit by and let your comrades get pulled away,
Speaker 3: you know, it is very possible the numbers on your
Speaker 3: side to prevent the police from harassment targets and taking
Speaker 3: away people. You know, there's other stuff you can do
Speaker 3: as well, besides protests that I keep alluding to, because
Speaker 3: you know, sadly the media is no longer you know,
Speaker 3: a safe space to share things and depth in some cases.
Speaker 3: But just remember the key is actual disruption. You know,
Speaker 3: the media will not be with you, It'll be trying
Speaker 3: to get my factor consent on everything that you do,
Speaker 3: manufacturer consent against any action taken on the things that
Speaker 3: you do. And the only way to counteract that is
Speaker 3: to maintain relationships on the ground, to maintain actual local solidarity.
Speaker 3: Because once you have those local relationships and that local solidarity,
Speaker 3: there's no amount of things that the media can do
Speaker 3: the media could stir up that can prevent the people
Speaker 3: who see that you're on their side, see that you're
Speaker 3: stand up for them, to turn attention right. What problem
Speaker 3: happens is when you don't have any relationships, you don't
Speaker 3: have any networks, you don't have any community building, You
Speaker 3: just doing stuff. The messaging is unclear. You know, That's
Speaker 3: where I think the media could really pounce on that.
Speaker 3: I would also say, you know, sabotage you know, hit
Speaker 3: their pockets. And the main thing, the thing that I've
Speaker 3: alluded to earlier, is to strike, you know, to organize
Speaker 3: strikes to use the labor power. Workers power still comes
Speaker 3: from a participation in production and the threat of withdrawing
Speaker 3: our participation. We have to realize that in this time
Speaker 3: we'll live an in even the effectiveness of strikes have
Speaker 3: come on the threat in two ways. The first way
Speaker 3: is that the permanence of employment is not what it
Speaker 3: used to be. And with the rise and spread of AI,
Speaker 3: you know, you have to ask yourself how long will
Speaker 3: strike since certain fields be effective anymore. You know, I
Speaker 3: have my doubt that EI will ever reach a point
Speaker 3: where it can replace people. But honestly, for a lot
Speaker 3: of these companies, they don't necessarily care about whether it's
Speaker 3: capable of replacing people or not. They will still try
Speaker 3: and use it to replace people. So we have to
Speaker 3: be cognizant of the fact that this is the direction
Speaker 3: they're pushing things in, and we have to be able
Speaker 3: to stand up against that. Before we reach a point
Speaker 3: where between AI and you know, the nature of temporary
Speaker 3: work of the gig economy, it becomes was harder and
Speaker 3: harder to organize ourselves.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The other thing that I've noticed that has made strikeing
Speaker 3: so difficult and that we have to be aware of,
Speaker 3: is the pacification of the domestication of unions. Right, there
Speaker 3: was a time historically where unions were a powerful, influential,
Speaker 3: revolutionary even for us such as not the case today unfortunately. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, they have some legislation put in place that
Speaker 3: many unions are terrified of crossing. Every I has to
Speaker 3: be dotted, every ts to be crossed, and so the
Speaker 3: things that would actually make union action the most effective
Speaker 3: after the things that unions nowadays will refuse to do,
Speaker 3: sympathy strikes, general strikes, and so, what can we do
Speaker 3: if we are in an industry where the union is
Speaker 3: collaboration with management, with union is utterly reformist to the
Speaker 3: union review U is to actually step up and represent
Speaker 3: the people supposed to represent it. And this is where
Speaker 3: historically wildcat illegalist strikes have had to come into play.
Speaker 3: Strikes that do not depend upon legality, that do not
Speaker 3: sit back and wave per mission, that carry far more risk,
Speaker 3: of course, that are far more difficult to organize, but
Speaker 3: are going to be necessary if we want to liberate
Speaker 3: ourselves from this constant capitulation toward the machine. In the
Speaker 3: article Striking against the Work War Machine by Jeff Schant
Speaker 3: and PJ. Lily, this head quote wartime strikes and sabotage
Speaker 3: party because they're illegal and unsanched of nature, bring rank
Speaker 3: and file workers together outside of union structures. Workers have
Speaker 3: to make crucial decisions work for this strike directly in
Speaker 3: face to face meetings or on the picquet lines. Bureaucrats
Speaker 3: who are left to their fundamental role of broken with
Speaker 3: the bosses can be relegated to the sidelines, and such situations.
Speaker 3: In Germany in nineteen seventeen, illegal strikes helped us sweep
Speaker 3: the union structures right out of workplaces. Strikes increasingly took
Speaker 3: on an anti union as well as anti boss character,
Speaker 3: with wildcats occurring in crowing numbers throughout the Armistice and beyond.
Speaker 3: So I wanted to of course pull on this example
Speaker 3: because this is not a unique issue. Right Even historically,
Speaker 3: where unions have stood against the struggle of workers, against
Speaker 3: WAW or against you know, actually defending the class interests,
Speaker 3: the rank and file have had to organize themselves accordingly.
Speaker 3: So that's also something to keep in mind. And last,
Speaker 3: but not least. I just wanted to see to Stroy
Speaker 3: briefly on the proposed side of the social revolution equation
Speaker 3: when it comes to anti war struggle, and as usual,
Speaker 3: this is going to take solidarity materially, not just saying
Speaker 3: that we stand in sor diarity with such and such
Speaker 3: and such, actually share an aid, share a notes, support
Speaker 3: and refugees and going fully there, because this, I think
Speaker 3: is where a lot of our energy needs to be
Speaker 3: right now. Our efforts to oppose are going to be
Speaker 3: for the most part, to us as long as we
Speaker 3: don't have an underlying structure that we are building upon
Speaker 3: that we are seken to defend and to Expand you know,
Speaker 3: we are not at a position right now where we
Speaker 3: pose much of a threat yet, and we also have
Speaker 3: to consider that merely posing a threat is not going
Speaker 3: to liberate us by itself. So I wanted to consider,
Speaker 3: as we, you know, wrap up this episode, what you
Speaker 3: can do to put forward out all seriative to actually
Speaker 3: try to create the new social arrangements that we think
Speaker 3: should replace capitalist, statist, militarist order. And this is something
Speaker 3: that I talk about on my channel, of course, I
Speaker 3: talk about building the commons, building alternative media, well sense
Speaker 3: of the economy and developing all powers or drives and
Speaker 3: our consciousness and so you can check that out if
Speaker 3: you'd like. Unfortunately, this is it is happening here and
Speaker 3: don't forget. You could check out the YouTube, the picture
Speaker 3: on et cetera. All power to all the people.
Speaker 6: Peace, Hello everyone, and welcome to it could happen here.
Speaker 6: My name is Daniel Kurd. I'm a writer, analyst, and
Speaker 6: researcher of Palestinian and air politics. I'm an associate professor
Speaker 6: of political science and a senior nonresident Fellow at the
Speaker 6: Arab Center Washington. Today we'll be speaking with Charity, the
Speaker 6: policy lead for Oxfam. Our discussion will cover oxtam's work
Speaker 6: in occupied passing in territories and the current crisis in
Speaker 6: a distribution we are recording end of July July twenty seventh,
Speaker 6: twenty twenty five. NPR reported in May of this year
Speaker 6: that Gaza has already reached Phase four of the Integrated
Speaker 6: Food Security phase classification. The IPC just coordinated out of
Speaker 6: the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and an organization called
Speaker 6: the Famine Early Warning Systems Network.
Speaker 7: So what does this all mean?
Speaker 6: Phase four means emergency as NPR rights in there may
Speaker 6: report hardships deepen, food gaps widen, and people resort to
Speaker 6: really extreme forms of coping. So the Famine Early Warning
Speaker 6: Systems Network does not have a presence in Gaza at
Speaker 6: the moment. This is their best guess. Phase five is
Speaker 6: when they declare a famine. We're seeing very terrible images
Speaker 6: in the media and on our phone screens about the
Speaker 6: level of deprivation in Gaza at the moment because aid
Speaker 6: has been blocked off by the Israeli government.
Speaker 7: Writing for Al Ja Zero just a few.
Speaker 6: Days ago, former UN official Munzakhrane accuses the UN of
Speaker 6: not declaring famine despite overwhelming evidence, because he says officials
Speaker 6: are worried about their careers and possibly worried about antagonizing
Speaker 6: the US. But regardless of whether it's Phase four or
Speaker 6: Phase five, the situation in Gaza is dire. In July
Speaker 6: twenty seventh today, when we're recording, there's reporting that there
Speaker 6: might be air drops, that the trucks on the Egyptian
Speaker 6: border are moving towards Gaza, after the Israeli government has
Speaker 6: received a lot of pressure over the ongoing aid crisis.
Speaker 6: But of course that may be too late for many gazas.
Speaker 6: As I said, we're speaking with Bush today, who will
Speaker 6: talk to us about her work from the vantage point
Speaker 6: of ox Jam.
Speaker 7: Bush, thank you so much for joining us, Thanks for
Speaker 7: having me.
Speaker 6: So let's begin with first describing Oxfam's work and occupied
Speaker 6: Palsitate territories.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sure, we've been here since nineteen fifty six. We have
Speaker 1: offices in Ramala and Jerusalem and Gaza and also was
Speaker 1: originally set up as an organization to fight famine, you know,
Speaker 1: the first kind of famines that we've seen globally. That's
Speaker 1: the originally why Alxlam was got to set up. And
Speaker 1: then so a lot of its programming is around water
Speaker 1: and sanitation, food security, lively goods, working with farmers. A
Speaker 1: big part of our program is water and sanitation, helping
Speaker 1: for example, farming communities, providing them with irrigation pipelines. You know,
Speaker 1: it could be agricultural inputs needed for growing their crops.
Speaker 1: It could be technical support to farmers to support them
Speaker 1: and growing, for example, vegetables. How do you grow crops
Speaker 1: of vegetables around date trees? You know, So it's kind
Speaker 1: of that kind of work in terms of the food
Speaker 1: security component of that we have a big part of
Speaker 1: our work is with women's organizations, women's cooperatives, women's farming
Speaker 1: cooperatives as well.
Speaker 7: Especially in the West Bank.
Speaker 1: And then a lot of a lot of work with
Speaker 1: kind of the relevant ministries and relevant trade unions on
Speaker 1: for example, agricultural insurance, so getting you know, trying to
Speaker 1: get insurance for farmers in case their crops or are
Speaker 1: are ruined or sabotaged or damaged for example by settler violence,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So there's kind of like a piloting kind
Speaker 1: of program where we're looking at the potential of providing
Speaker 1: insurance to the farming sector here and palastline. Other things
Speaker 1: could be could look like, you know, small grants to
Speaker 1: start a small kind of business women for example, ceramics,
Speaker 1: women's cooperatives and farming. I mean, so a lot of
Speaker 1: it worked like this, and most of our operations are
Speaker 1: actually run through partners. So we have about ninety partners
Speaker 1: kind of across the OFFI fied filesting territory, and about
Speaker 1: eighty to ninety hoard of our operations are actually completely
Speaker 1: implemented through partners. But of course after seventh of October,
Speaker 1: our programming really drastically kind of shifted to fully humanitarian
Speaker 1: where you know, we are now basically providing high eigiene kits,
Speaker 1: food parcels, some agricultural inputs as well. Where we could
Speaker 1: you know, set in Gaza, it looks like setting up latrines,
Speaker 1: hand washing, state like mobile stations. It can be like
Speaker 1: water trucking. I mean, it's it's changed, you know, depending
Speaker 1: on the access that we've had. So for example, since
Speaker 1: March this year, we've not been able to enter anything
Speaker 1: because of Israel's full total siege on Gaza, so nothing
Speaker 1: kind of entered. So our operations look like psychosocial support
Speaker 1: to women, young girls and shelters, trucking water from one
Speaker 1: area to another where we've felt like these communities potentially
Speaker 1: needed water or had a little access to water. It
Speaker 1: could look it looked like a cash for work. We
Speaker 1: do a big, big, big, big part of our both
Speaker 1: now in the West Bank and in Gaza is providing
Speaker 1: cash for work. So for example, we have daily workers
Speaker 1: that will remove solid waste with their bare hands unfortunately
Speaker 1: because there's no materials to remove waste in Gaza. But
Speaker 1: then they would receive like kind of daily daily rates
Speaker 1: in order to get paid and then there's like cash
Speaker 1: vouchers for the most vulnerable, where they can you know,
Speaker 1: have a voucher in a store and they can you know,
Speaker 1: purchase items that we've read for example with the store
Speaker 1: owner to that you know, people can purchase with our
Speaker 1: with our kind of cards.
Speaker 7: So it's very.
Speaker 1: Versatile, versatile and especially in last years, had to adapt
Speaker 1: and change, you know, very quickly and flexibly depending on
Speaker 1: the situation what's available in the markets.
Speaker 7: But that's kind of like what our programming looks like
Speaker 7: across the territory.
Speaker 6: Yeah, thank you for explaining that, and it brings me
Speaker 6: to I mean, you touched on it a little bit,
Speaker 6: but it brings me to a second question that I
Speaker 6: think is important for listeners to to understand is how
Speaker 6: has the war in post October seventh really impacted that
Speaker 6: the restrictions that the really government is imposing.
Speaker 7: So we know there's a stage in Gaza, but also
Speaker 7: in the West Bank.
Speaker 6: Absolutely there is so much happening. How has that impacted
Speaker 6: Oxygen's work. It's completely restricted.
Speaker 1: US and not just US, it's all of the international
Speaker 1: kind of sector, including UN agencies.
Speaker 7: I mean, we know what they did with in Owa.
Speaker 7: We'll maybe explain that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll all, I mean Israel, the Government of Israel's
Speaker 1: kind of attacks or let's say, attacks on the humanitarian
Speaker 1: civic space. It's been a long standing policy of THEIRS
Speaker 1: and started well before seventh of October. It's gotten just
Speaker 1: you know, much tighter, much more restrictive since. But you know,
Speaker 1: this goes back decades. I would say kind of the
Speaker 1: most notorious development in shrinking space we call it shrinking
Speaker 1: space is twenty twenty one when they declare six organizations
Speaker 1: Palestinian civil society organizations mostly are human rights organizations that
Speaker 1: some of the most notorious and well known human rights
Speaker 1: organization where they're designated as terrorists organizations. So that was
Speaker 1: kind of the first big you know where many of
Speaker 1: those partners, those six partners were actually partners of international organizations.
Speaker 1: So you know, we found ourselves kind of advocating for
Speaker 1: continuing our support to these six despite the designation by Israel.
Speaker 1: Never you know, and there was never, of course evidence
Speaker 1: provided by the Israeli government as to what evidence they had,
Speaker 1: why would they deem these organizations terrorist organizations? But you know,
Speaker 1: they continued to operate under very very difficult circumstances. Their
Speaker 1: offices were rated, their assets were confiscated, but you know,
Speaker 1: they're still operational and we're still certainly supporting them. And
Speaker 1: of course, you know shrinking space or the restrictions on
Speaker 1: humanitarian civic space, it translates into, you know, into so
Speaker 1: many different restrictions. It could be you know, restrictions on permits,
Speaker 1: restrictions on what crossings you're able to use as a
Speaker 1: humanitarian you know, whether you can go through that crossing
Speaker 1: or another.
Speaker 7: It can be visa restrictions.
Speaker 1: And we started seeing that these are restrictions even before
Speaker 1: the war. And after the war, of course everything kind
Speaker 1: of changed and now we're facing and I'm talking more
Speaker 1: about like legal restrictions in terms of our work, and
Speaker 1: then I can talk more about like the siege and
Speaker 1: the actual blockade of humanitarian aid in Ta Gaza, which
Speaker 1: is you know, effectively completely restricted in our operations and
Speaker 1: has dismantled really the humanitarians sector in its entirety and
Speaker 1: has reverberating impacts to the rest of the terrritory. But
Speaker 1: for us, I think the first kind of sign of
Speaker 1: turmoil was when there was already a decision but nothing
Speaker 1: had been kind of formally communicated of a new registration
Speaker 1: process for international organizations that started already in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: where the civil Administration announced to our respective organizations that
Speaker 1: there will be a new registration procedures Israeli Simple Administration,
Speaker 1: Israeli Civil Administration. And so it was only kind of
Speaker 1: ten months later that the criteria was kind of presented
Speaker 1: to us, and only a year later that the criteria
Speaker 1: actually came into effect. But in that time where they
Speaker 1: were announcing these new measures, there were lots of visa denials.
Speaker 1: Permits of course, were completely non existent for humanitarians. So
Speaker 1: for example, you know, I had a permit to Gaza
Speaker 1: for six months, that of course stopped. All of our
Speaker 1: staff in the West Bank had permits to travel both
Speaker 1: to Gaza and in Israel. Those stopped on the seventh
Speaker 1: of October, and say, and vice versa. Are our colleagues
Speaker 1: in Gaza who had permits to come to Israel to
Speaker 1: travel through the Allen b Bridge because of course, you know,
Speaker 1: policies don't have an airport, so they have to travel
Speaker 1: through ALLENB to travel through Ammen.
Speaker 7: Those also stopped.
Speaker 1: So that's one other kind of like you know, measure
Speaker 1: that was taken against international organizations. And then when the
Speaker 1: new registered rules were made public and the criteria was
Speaker 1: made public, there was a new there's a new ministry
Speaker 1: set up called the Ministry of Dyspora and something Affairs,
Speaker 1: I know, Dyspora Affairs. I forget the full name of
Speaker 1: the ministry, but it's it's an interministerial committee that you know,
Speaker 1: it's made of basically thucks. You know, if you look
Speaker 1: at the background of some of these people that are
Speaker 1: in the committee, I mean, you know, it's and they
Speaker 1: are now deciding of.
Speaker 7: The registration of international organizations.
Speaker 1: And the criteria is onerous, it's political, it's big, and
Speaker 1: you know, even even it crosses some of our red
Speaker 1: lines in terms of organization.
Speaker 7: I mean, one of one of the I think the most.
Speaker 1: Contentious criteria is submitting staff lists and all of the
Speaker 1: information of our staff to the Israeli authorities, which is
Speaker 1: something we never had to do before. It's not something
Speaker 1: that is actually in any other context, It's not abnormal
Speaker 1: for an authority or country or states to ask, you know,
Speaker 1: who is your staff working for this organization you're seeking
Speaker 1: registration from. But obviously because of the you know, unrecedented
Speaker 1: number of humanitarian workers that have been targeted and indiscriminately
Speaker 1: targeted as well. In Gaza, we've got more than four
Speaker 1: hundred humanitarian workers killed. At this point, we are unable
Speaker 1: to submit our staff lists because of you know, we
Speaker 1: have no guarantees of protection. Even though we have guarantees
Speaker 1: under protect you know, international law, this is not applied
Speaker 1: when it comes to Gaza and in Israel's conducts, and
Speaker 1: it's in the hostilities against humanitarian workers in humanity in space.
Speaker 1: So that's one of the criteria. But there's also other
Speaker 1: criteria where, for example, we would be revoked our registration
Speaker 1: or not re registered if we are seen to support
Speaker 1: some of the designated organizations that were designated early on,
Speaker 1: which most of our organizations do. So many of us
Speaker 1: are facing about to face basically being deregistered in Israel
Speaker 1: and losing our presence in Jerusalem, which is you know,
Speaker 1: has such a big implications, not because you know, we're
Speaker 1: so desperate to have presence in Jerusalem, but because it
Speaker 1: says a lot about what the future of East Jerusalem means.
Speaker 1: Because you're moving aener wha, you're removing the INGOs, and
Speaker 1: you're moving all the program and the support that goes
Speaker 1: to organizations that are operating in Jerusalem, providing legal services
Speaker 1: to people that are losing their homes, that are getting
Speaker 1: their homes demolished on a daily basis, legal services for
Speaker 1: settler attacks that happen also in East Jerusalem, and school
Speaker 1: provision of school services, educational items, educational activities, summer caps,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, et cetera, et cetera. The list
Speaker 1: goes on that will be removed. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: you know, it's working now in parallel with the annexation
Speaker 1: kind of plan that Israel has been threatening and implementing
Speaker 1: at the same time, so you know, everything is moving
Speaker 1: towards this annexation. It also has fast implications because many
Speaker 1: of our organizations operate in areas C because the most
Speaker 1: vulnerable communities you know, are in area and so we always,
Speaker 1: you know, we as part of our programming is obviously
Speaker 1: reaching the most vulnerable Palestinians and those that need to
Speaker 1: help and support the most and so annexing areas CE
Speaker 1: and de registering at the same time de registering us
Speaker 1: from Israel means that we will also have very a
Speaker 1: lot of difficulty assing these communities and accessing areas see
Speaker 1: as we mention here in organizations, we've not had visas
Speaker 1: for international staff for since the.
Speaker 7: Beginning of the war.
Speaker 1: And then when you look at you know, Gaza, so
Speaker 1: this is kind of like looking at the West Bank
Speaker 1: and what is how it's evolving in the West Bank.
Speaker 1: But then you know the fact that we would be deregistered,
Speaker 1: would effectively need that we cannot operate in Gaza. Need
Speaker 1: because you have to have an Israeli registration in order
Speaker 1: to be able to bring goods in inside Gaza. And
Speaker 1: so if you're deregistered, you can't bring in goods into Gaza.
Speaker 1: This tribulation of the humanitarians civic spaces is all encompassing
Speaker 1: in Gaza. Of course, it looks like our materials have
Speaker 1: been systematically and deliberately denied, rejected, delayed, you know, over
Speaker 1: the course of the last twenty months. But of course,
Speaker 1: adding it's worse since March second, when Israel imposed it's
Speaker 1: total sea jong Gaza and basically has completely sidelined the
Speaker 1: un IGOs and policy in the civil society. And since
Speaker 1: then we've not been able to enter anything in Gaza,
Speaker 1: and I doubt that we will be able to enter
Speaker 1: anything moving forward, especially that the registration kind of window
Speaker 1: ends in September. Beginning of September, that's when we'll finally
Speaker 1: know who is going to be registered who's not. But
Speaker 1: I expect for an organization like OXBAM, it's part of
Speaker 1: the registration process. It's very vague, so we don't know
Speaker 1: how they will apply it. But there's something about basically
Speaker 1: calling again, you know, calling out or speaking out or
Speaker 1: calling for accountability of individual soldiers and members.
Speaker 7: Of the IDEF. So what that means I don't know.
Speaker 1: But we call for accountability every day because it's part
Speaker 1: of our mandate or not just an operational organization, where
Speaker 1: a rights based organization, and so we have a mandate
Speaker 1: to also you know, where we witness violations of human
Speaker 1: rights or of international law, it is our mandate to
Speaker 1: speak out on it. And so there's no operations without that.
Speaker 1: So that's where we're at right now. It's an incredibly
Speaker 1: difficult space. It is of course deliberate. This is a
Speaker 1: deliberate policy of Israel. That is, you know, it's carried
Speaker 1: out against the kind of human humanitarians, civic space for years.
Speaker 1: It's also there's another law, there's a law that's against
Speaker 1: Israel a human rights organization where it will start taxing.
Speaker 1: It's really human rights organization that are receiving foreign funding
Speaker 1: by fifty to eighty percent or something like that. So
Speaker 1: it's just it's it's you know, it's deliberate, it's thematic.
Speaker 1: We have been the only ones in Gaza that have
Speaker 1: been able to actually report independently on what's happening in Gaza,
Speaker 1: like the humanitarians happen, not even the journalists, because of course,
Speaker 1: you know, I can argue that, yes, Palestine journalists are independent,
Speaker 1: but you know, the most of the world would probably
Speaker 1: disagree with that. So really, I mean the independent kind
Speaker 1: of eyes and the neutral eyes, or let's say part
Speaker 1: impartial eyes, I won't say neutral happened the humanitarians and
Speaker 1: UN agencies. Sidelining us means that we'll also see a
Speaker 1: reduction of quality reporting on what's actually happening in Gaza.
Speaker 7: So it's terrifying.
Speaker 6: It's an attack on our ability to even understand the
Speaker 6: level of the problem. Absolutely that is being left in
Speaker 6: the wake of this war, which of course is ongoing.
Speaker 6: But also I think it's really important. I mean, the
Speaker 6: things you just described, I think it's really important for
Speaker 6: listeners to understand this the AID question, the question of
Speaker 6: these humanitarian organizations and what's happening to them, whether it's
Speaker 6: the registration through the Ministry of Daspreaffairs.
Speaker 7: And I think combating anti Semitism is its full name.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 7: That's Lacky should have red.
Speaker 6: So yeah, I mean there are so many problems with
Speaker 6: this ministry and it has been even internally criticized by
Speaker 6: by Tel Aviv University for.
Speaker 1: Example, Yeah, or even at see members of the government itself.
Speaker 1: By the way, I think there was a there was
Speaker 1: something about somebody in Israel government not attending the intermn
Speaker 1: is Serial Committee meeting, you know, because it was wanting
Speaker 1: to be associated to it.
Speaker 7: So yeah, it's a very problematic committee.
Speaker 6: But I mean if this kind of committee is responsible
Speaker 6: for registering Internet you know, international organizations and humanitarian organizations,
Speaker 6: then there's all the blockade of AID. All of these
Speaker 6: are parts of the same ethnic cleansing strategy that what
Speaker 6: we're seeing in Gaza, whatether you want to call it
Speaker 6: ethnic cleansing or genocide.
Speaker 7: You know, people are being eradicated.
Speaker 6: We're seeing large scale displacements in the West Bank, and
Speaker 6: as you mentioned, if these organizations also stop existing in Jerusalem.
Speaker 6: We'll see Jerusalem next, not piecemeal the way that we've
Speaker 6: been seeing it possible, absolutely, you know, a more aggressive way.
Speaker 6: And so I really think it's important to kind of
Speaker 6: underscore for listeners that this is part and parcel of
Speaker 6: an annexation and ethnic cleansing plan that people from the
Speaker 6: Religious Zionist Party have been saying since the early twenty tens.
Speaker 6: Bazilos Motrich, finance minister today had the decisive plan that said,
Speaker 6: you know, you either surrender or transfer, and we're at
Speaker 6: that level.
Speaker 7: They are transferring, they are making sure that that happens,
Speaker 7: and they are in the West Bank as well.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's quiet and all eyes aren't Gaza,
Speaker 1: but I mean we've seen displacement of entire communities in
Speaker 1: the last few weeks only, let alone the largest numbers
Speaker 1: have forcibly displaced Palestinian since nineteen sixty seven in the
Speaker 1: West Bank this year and in the refugee camps that
Speaker 1: have been attacked exactly, so you know, and again, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, you can look at the history of smear
Speaker 1: campaigns against Ohawa by these really authorities. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: just in itself. You know the services that ohwa provide.
Speaker 1: You know, we have to re emphasize like education, health services,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, shelter, oh no, what provides key
Speaker 1: services that the Pelstine authority is none to respond to?
Speaker 1: What is going to happen to all of these people
Speaker 1: when you know and already know what So listeners, electricity
Speaker 1: cut off and real love.
Speaker 7: This is our lives. Yeah, so we might have to
Speaker 7: restart some of that answer, that's fine. Yeah, So did
Speaker 7: you want to pick up where you lost up?
Speaker 2: I was, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean the point is is that this is you know,
Speaker 1: a long standing policy by Israel. It's just like very
Speaker 1: much accelerated like every other policy if there is when
Speaker 1: it comes to you know, forcible displacement, collective punishment, you know, detensions.
Speaker 1: I mean, everything is at a record high and accelerating
Speaker 1: so quickly with this. You know, right wing, far right
Speaker 1: wing government that's you know, has zero checks and balances,
Speaker 1: zero nobody holds them accountable to anything, and so you
Speaker 1: know they're able to get away with all of this.
Speaker 1: So I mean, my my sense is that you know,
Speaker 1: very soon you will no longer see kind of the
Speaker 1: long standing organizations that have been here for decades that
Speaker 1: have very much understood the context very well and have
Speaker 1: understood that it's impossible to do the work that we
Speaker 1: do without also bearing witness and speaking out on what
Speaker 1: we're witnessing. And I think the UN and it's in
Speaker 1: that way, you know, even the United Nations, where in Pelsline,
Speaker 1: has made sure that the States committed to that mandate
Speaker 1: because of how important it is to speak out on
Speaker 1: what you're seeing around you. I think like that's purely
Speaker 1: I think, like, you know, we're the only ones that
Speaker 1: are able to witness and record independently what we're seeing
Speaker 1: on a daily day basis. And I think the UN
Speaker 1: has been incredible in keeping a record of that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think they started recording in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: so it's like eighteen years now almost of monitoring violations
Speaker 1: all across the territory. And if it wasn't for the
Speaker 1: work that the UN has done in that, we wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to say that there is a genocide being
Speaker 1: carried out in Gaza, or that the risk of ethnic
Speaker 1: cleansing has risen exponentially in the West Bank. The reason
Speaker 1: why we're able to say this is because we're able
Speaker 1: to see the patterns and the data, and you know,
Speaker 1: you can contest the data. But you know, even you
Speaker 1: were talking about the IPC, the IPC is not even
Speaker 1: reflective of what's really happening, and they say it themselves.
Speaker 1: But you know, of course the media the way the
Speaker 1: media kind of focuses on what the results because you know,
Speaker 1: you only have time for sound bites. But if we
Speaker 1: read the IPC alerts, it's clear that one they're always delayed,
Speaker 1: so they're always talking about a time that's already passed
Speaker 1: and we're way, we won't beyond that. And two it
Speaker 1: says that it doesn't have access to Gaza. But look
Speaker 1: at the testimonies, you know, just like just reading the
Speaker 1: testimonies that some of our organizations have recorded in the
Speaker 1: last week, just talking about our own colleagues and how
Speaker 1: they're facing starvation themselves. I mean, I think the testimonies
Speaker 1: speak to themselves on what is happening, guys. And I
Speaker 1: don't need the IPC to tell me that there's a
Speaker 1: classification four or five. It's never going to declare famine
Speaker 1: when it's not there, Like, there's never going to be
Speaker 1: a time where the IPC because that's not even the
Speaker 1: role of the IPC.
Speaker 7: The role of the IPCs not to declare FAM and
Speaker 7: the role the IPC is just.
Speaker 1: To collect the data and publish the data and then
Speaker 1: it's the role of the UN or another international body
Speaker 1: to do so. So we're not going to see if
Speaker 1: I'm at declaration because we don't have access, and so
Speaker 1: you know, we're not going to be able to say
Speaker 1: that with confidence because the IPC is never going to
Speaker 1: be able to publish that data.
Speaker 7: But I don't think it matters.
Speaker 1: I think what matters is what we're seeing on the ground,
Speaker 1: what's being reported, and you know, I mean it's undeniable
Speaker 1: really by the pictures themselves. I mean that the videos
Speaker 1: and the pictures that are coming out of guys are
Speaker 1: just speak for themselves really. So it's definitely unprecedented times
Speaker 1: for us, and it's going to be a very very
Speaker 1: interesting and frightening, terrifying here to be frank.
Speaker 6: Yeah, No, I mean, as I said at the beginning,
Speaker 6: and there are of course critiques as of the limitations
Speaker 6: of the UN, but this idea that they are wanting
Speaker 6: organizations as a condition of registering them to somehow not
Speaker 6: bear witness to what is happening and not to write
Speaker 6: reports about what's happening. It's a way of hobbling the
Speaker 6: ability of actually creating policies, like if you want to
Speaker 6: talk about famine, or if you want to talk about poverty,
Speaker 6: as OXGM does, how could you solve it without talking
Speaker 6: about the root cause? In every way, in every direction,
Speaker 6: the Israeli government is attempting to hobble the ability of
Speaker 6: international organizations of the Palestinians themselves to be able to
Speaker 6: solve the root causes of these problems. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I mean it will have to be fine, creative ways,
Speaker 1: just like you know, our Pulstinian Civil Society partners that
Speaker 1: you have been also designated have had to find, you know,
Speaker 1: ways to continue doing their work. But you know, I
Speaker 1: mean even them, you know, they've lost funding, They've had
Speaker 1: to reduce their operations, They've had to reduce their field
Speaker 1: officers that go to the field and do this work.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I I it's it's so uncertain, but
Speaker 1: I think the fact that many of these organizations have
Speaker 1: been here for so long understand so deeply the context.
Speaker 1: I think organizations will also do whatever they can in
Speaker 1: order to ensure that they continue the important work here
Speaker 1: and find ways to continue to work.
Speaker 7: I don't know how.
Speaker 1: It's really a new time for us, like we've never
Speaker 1: been there before, so we don't know what it looks
Speaker 1: like how we're going to be able to continue our work,
Speaker 1: but we're committed to that, so we will find, you
Speaker 1: know whatever. I don't want to say loophole because you
Speaker 1: know there are none, but we'll find whatever way.
Speaker 7: To continue to continue kind of.
Speaker 1: Being here and being present and remain remaining present because
Speaker 1: I think it's also part of our commitment to the
Speaker 1: work that we've been doing in OPT for decades.
Speaker 7: So yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 6: Think maybe we should end on a discussion about the
Speaker 6: Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. I mean, I've already mentioned it in
Speaker 6: a previous episode, so I encourage listeners to look into that,
Speaker 6: but I you know, I think it's important we discuss
Speaker 6: what is this foundation and what is the impact has
Speaker 6: had on people in Gaza and on international organizations that
Speaker 6: are already doing this work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, the GHF for Gaza Humanity and Foundation slash GHF.
Speaker 1: I don't like talking about it as such because it's
Speaker 1: the issue, of course, is that's one of the issues.
Speaker 7: But GHF is part of many actors, okay, and it's
Speaker 7: not GHF.
Speaker 1: GHF is a facade for many actors that you know,
Speaker 1: the US and Israeli's isn't as really planned. And I
Speaker 1: don't think we need to we cannot, you know, I
Speaker 1: know there's US military actors in GHF at you know,
Speaker 1: the border and shooting at people. But this isn't a
Speaker 1: really plan, okay, and we have to dub it as such.
Speaker 1: This plan actually came into We started hearing about this
Speaker 1: plan a year and a half ago. It was maybe
Speaker 1: May last year we saw the General Islands plan on
Speaker 1: what they wanted to do in the north when they
Speaker 1: started the ethnic cleansing campaign in the north of Gaza
Speaker 1: where they besieged the north and tried to force everybody south.
Speaker 1: The idea then was already they had already were already
Speaker 1: hearing about something called humanitarian bubbles. And the bubbles are
Speaker 1: the sites of what it's what's what's become the sites. Right,
Speaker 1: But this idea of what has been floating around for
Speaker 1: more than eighteen months. It's just that nothing kind of
Speaker 1: transpired until May. I guess that's when May the operation started.
Speaker 1: So it's really launched. This as an authorization mechanism. This
Speaker 1: is how it was originally kind of and that would
Speaker 1: expand basically Israeli military control over how aid enters, moves
Speaker 1: within and is distributed inside Gaza. And of course I
Speaker 1: mean that and on its own is a clear attempt
Speaker 1: to instrumentalize humanitarian aid. So you know, and I think
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's very important to clarify. You know,
Speaker 1: our organizations we operate and there's extremely rigorous standards and
Speaker 1: mechanisms where we're ensure the aid is not diverted. And
Speaker 1: I think a diversion, you know, it's been talked about
Speaker 1: like Hamas eight divers A diversion exists everywhere. Its exists
Speaker 1: in every crisis we work in. Like it's something that
Speaker 1: is part of you know, crisis mode, like this is
Speaker 1: where when there's a crisis, when there's chaos, that's where
Speaker 1: there's space for informal actors to start popping up. So
Speaker 1: it's a symptom of every crisis around the world. And
Speaker 1: so you know, it's not just a Gaza thing. So
Speaker 1: we have totalcols on how we can ensure that a
Speaker 1: diversion doesn't happen in operations. And of course as humanitarians,
Speaker 1: we would never accept military or profit driven intermediaries overriding
Speaker 1: what we call principled aid delivery, because it basically means
Speaker 1: that you're expanding military control over aid operations by an
Speaker 1: actual party to the conflict you know, which, of course,
Speaker 1: risks that aid will never reach the most vulnerable you know,
Speaker 1: of course at a time when it was most needed.
Speaker 1: So from our perspective, there is no scenario where we
Speaker 1: would accept any attempts to militarize and privatize humanitarian aid,
Speaker 1: whether it's a GAZO or anywhere else, because such actions
Speaker 1: actually biolate international humanitarian law, but also they undermine the
Speaker 1: core principles of humanitarian law, which are in partiality, independence,
Speaker 1: in humanity. These are principles that guide all of our work.
Speaker 1: And of course, what is the most dangerous about this
Speaker 1: model is not only the massacres that have occurred near
Speaker 1: daily at these food distribution sites run by the GJEP
Speaker 1: and other actors. It's it's set such a dangerous precedent
Speaker 1: where occupying powers around the world will now be able
Speaker 1: to dictate the terms of aid based on their political
Speaker 1: agendas and their military goals. That is what's effectively now
Speaker 1: happened is that if it's happened in gays of why
Speaker 1: can it not happen in Uganda and d Orski and Sudan?
Speaker 1: And I want to also take it a little back.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the peer. The peer last year is
Speaker 1: exactly the same.
Speaker 7: It's the same thing. It's an international.
Speaker 1: Company called Fogbow run by former US military veterans and
Speaker 1: soldiers and others, other actors that you know, spent three
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty million dollars on a floating pier that
Speaker 1: brought virtually nothing in and in fact was used for
Speaker 1: one rescue mission, rescue operation by special forces where they entered.
Speaker 1: I think it was the way that camp the refugee
Speaker 1: camp at the time and were able to obviously, yeah,
Speaker 1: rescue hostages, but kill I mean, you know a dozens
Speaker 1: in that operation using the peer, and hence why we're
Speaker 1: like we do not we would distance ourselves and from
Speaker 1: the beginning distance ourselves from the peer.
Speaker 7: There's no difference with the distribution sites.
Speaker 1: It's the same kind of idea that with logistics we
Speaker 1: can we can address a political issue. The issue of
Speaker 1: Gaza is not an issue of logistics. Something you enter
Speaker 1: angios don't know how to do the work policies, So
Speaker 1: tell us the use of society has been responding to
Speaker 1: the civilian needs in Gaza from before the war, right,
Speaker 1: you know, eighty percent of the Gaza population was dependent
Speaker 1: on humanitarian assistance before the war. So, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not that we didn't know how to do it,
Speaker 1: it's that we were prevented from doing it. We were
Speaker 1: deliberately prevented from doing it. So it's a political decision.
Speaker 1: It's not a logistical decision that prevents us from doing
Speaker 1: our work in Gaza. And so branch thing Israel control
Speaker 1: over who receives the aid, where they received the aid,
Speaker 1: and from who has basically turned what is relief what
Speaker 1: should be relieved to the civilian population is actually a
Speaker 1: tool of coorsion because what we saw is massacres, people
Speaker 1: being shot indiscriminately at I mean, we heard doctor Nick
Speaker 1: Maynard yesterday. Yesterday he came back from Gaza a week
Speaker 1: ago where we've heard of children being shot in the
Speaker 1: testicles at these distribution sites, you know, and no one
Speaker 1: he mentioned on the same date he saw half a
Speaker 1: dozen boys with the same injury, sniper shot, sniper shots
Speaker 1: in the testicles at food distribution sites. So what's happened
Speaker 1: now is that what Israel has done is that it
Speaker 1: blurred the line between what humanitarian assistance is, what a
Speaker 1: military objective is, and of course putting the civilian helstine
Speaker 1: civilians and aid workers as well, because aid workers, we
Speaker 1: know some of our colleagues in different organizations that but
Speaker 1: even themselves I've had to go to these food distribution
Speaker 1: sites because there's nothing and we're unable to even support our.
Speaker 7: Own staff at risk.
Speaker 1: And of course, I mean this entire system has eroded
Speaker 1: any protections that are guaranteed to aid workers and humanitarian
Speaker 1: responses under international law and under the Geneva Conventions.
Speaker 7: So it's not only that it killed people and that
Speaker 7: it's harmed Palestinians, but.
Speaker 1: It actually it's also a complete disregard for international law,
Speaker 1: complete disregard of international law. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: I think what people failed to remember is that at
Speaker 1: the same time as this plan of the distribution sites
Speaker 1: was set being set up in the south, at the
Speaker 1: same time Israel every two days was evacuating forcibly displaced,
Speaker 1: saying basically the population towards the south right and in
Speaker 1: less than two months, we've got almost a thousand Palestines
Speaker 1: that were killed. But also and in that movement of
Speaker 1: the population towards the south, because that's the only place
Speaker 1: that they had food, right, So, you know, this is
Speaker 1: not protection.
Speaker 7: This is complete coercion. You know, when you move aid into.
Speaker 1: Fence, supervise spaces under militaries, really military control. Frankly, and
Speaker 1: what we saw from the pictures recalls some of the
Speaker 1: darkest chapters of humanitarian.
Speaker 7: Failure of our history. It's not protection, it's coercion.
Speaker 1: And you know, no countries, nobody should ever support a
Speaker 1: model that is basically treating civilians as prisoners. And that's
Speaker 1: not what humanitarian aid is about. Humanitarian responses have to
Speaker 1: be guided by international law. It has to remain voluntary,
Speaker 1: it has to be grounded in the dignity of the people,
Speaker 1: and it has to be delivered impartially not shaped by
Speaker 1: Israel's occupation or israel siege or Israel's military control. So
Speaker 1: not only has this scheme reinforced military control over the
Speaker 1: God's ship, it has completely dehumanized posts by design, like
Speaker 1: Palasinians are only worth a box of food. That's that's
Speaker 1: what basically essentially What has happened is that we have
Speaker 1: reduced a humanitarian response that addresses hospitals, medical care, water sanitation,
Speaker 1: wastewater shelter. It goes right to dignity, to a box
Speaker 1: of flour. You know that you can get killed getting
Speaker 1: or you get killed. And not only that, it's the
Speaker 1: first come, first serf. You know, it's whoever's the strongest.
Speaker 1: It's the survival of the fittest. That's not what a
Speaker 1: humanitarian aday is about. We're supposed to meet the most vulnerable.
Speaker 1: We need to reach the pregnant moms, the people with
Speaker 1: di stabilities, the number of record number of amputees in Gaza,
Speaker 1: the record number of disabled people than Gaza right now.
Speaker 5: Children.
Speaker 1: Half of Gaza are children. They are part of some
Speaker 1: of the most vulnerable sections of society. Age should be
Speaker 1: going to them. They don't have They shouldn't have to
Speaker 1: come to us walk for you know, I mean some
Speaker 1: people have said twenty kilometers they've had to walk to
Speaker 1: go to these distribution sides in the middle of the
Speaker 1: night in sand dunes. They have to duck because otherwise
Speaker 1: they might get shot by sniper shot. And then when
Speaker 1: the gates of hell open of these you know, fence zones,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call them. I don't even like
Speaker 1: calling them distribution sites because they're not distribution sizes. It
Speaker 1: implies that there's some sort of like system to it.
Speaker 1: There's no system. It's literally the gates to hell. And
Speaker 1: then everybody flows into the you know, floods, and we've
Speaker 1: heard of people carrying knives to protect themselves because they're
Speaker 1: getting looted because's not enough of course food.
Speaker 6: And then there are gangs that are being weaponized by.
Speaker 8: The stop you know so.
Speaker 1: And actually what I what I was saying to people
Speaker 1: is that actually, what GDHF has created is created the
Speaker 1: perfect it's the perfect recipe for armed gangs and a
Speaker 1: diversion to occur.
Speaker 7: Like it's actually like providing the perfect environment.
Speaker 1: For these informal actors, gangs, criminals to prosper to you know,
Speaker 1: this is you're creating that kind of environment.
Speaker 6: Because let's just be very directed. This is not about
Speaker 6: aid no, of course not no, It's not coercion. It's
Speaker 6: about coercion. I mean, as you mentioned from the very beginning,
Speaker 6: it was about sequestering Palestinians.
Speaker 1: And they said it actually and by the way they
Speaker 1: said it, it's really work. Cabinet has said that, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's like we have to take things that face values.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they said it, they've been seeing it for the
Speaker 1: last year. We just you know, waited until it happened
Speaker 1: on the ground to be able to now say it
Speaker 1: and confirm it. But this was their plan from the beginning,
Speaker 1: and there was nothing implied. It was very explicit, right, no,
Speaker 1: I mean, very very.
Speaker 6: Clear, and it really frustrates me personally because you know,
Speaker 6: Arab media of Palestinian journalists, Palestinians on the ground testimonies
Speaker 6: would would say, we're being arrested at these sites, they're
Speaker 6: using facial recognition, they're very much politicizing AID And it
Speaker 6: took forever for us to be even be able to
Speaker 6: say it, to be able to even be able to
Speaker 6: report on it, until Western media sources confirmed yesterday a
Speaker 6: number of children were released saw that from being arrested
Speaker 6: at the at these age sites, and I couldn't mention
Speaker 6: that in things that I wrote because they didn't believe
Speaker 6: Kalestinian testin I mean.
Speaker 1: The GHF contractor themselves themselves have admitted to what is
Speaker 1: happening and everything that we've been seeing and saying and
Speaker 1: you know and warning. I mean, you know, I'd like
Speaker 1: to say as well. I mean, I want to I
Speaker 1: want to underscore actually, humanitarians have been underlining this very
Speaker 1: very explicitly to everybody since before they were even set.
Speaker 1: So you know, I can see for the clear conscience
Speaker 1: that we did what we needed and we could you know,
Speaker 1: what we could do, and we did warn that this
Speaker 1: would happen and this would be the result, and now.
Speaker 6: Here we are right. No, I mean, it's it's absolutely important, Pauline.
Speaker 6: So I want to mention to listeners that I will
Speaker 6: put in the show notes a lot of you know,
Speaker 6: these citations that you reporting that close to a thousand
Speaker 6: people have died at these sites. The doctor Nick Maynard,
Speaker 6: speaking to Channel four News in Britain about what he saw.
Speaker 6: I also want to point listeners to a volume that
Speaker 6: was released called Suppressing Dissent, edited by Zaha Hassan and h. A. Hellier,
Speaker 6: because full disclosure, I do have a chapter in that book,
Speaker 6: but it's about the shrinking civic space prior to October
Speaker 6: seventh and the dynamics that we have we have seen,
Speaker 6: you know, basically playing out at this point. Thank you
Speaker 6: so much, Bushel for coming and speaking with us under
Speaker 6: such severe circumstances and explaining I think really succinctly the
Speaker 6: dangers of this moment, because what is happening in Gaza
Speaker 6: will change the world.
Speaker 7: It will change everywhere, and.
Speaker 1: It already is I think, you know, I would tell
Speaker 1: listeners go look at AP's article on fog Bow and
Speaker 1: Uganda and Soudan. Remember you're seeing it. It's not even
Speaker 1: that it will change the world. We're already seeing the
Speaker 1: precedent that Gaza has set for other humanitarying crises and
Speaker 1: for these military actors and private contractors to profit from
Speaker 1: misery like that's that's essentially what is happening.
Speaker 5: That's happening.
Speaker 1: So you know, I would also direct you to that
Speaker 1: article from AP that came out a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: ago about the same companies operating in Gaza and you know,
Speaker 1: being complicit in the atrocities that we're seeing unfolded Gaza
Speaker 1: now operating in other contexts and prices humanitearing.
Speaker 7: Crises really terrible breaking world.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Well, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: And thanks Dan, thank you, and hopefully see you soon
Speaker 1: and talk to you soon.
Speaker 7: Take care.
Speaker 4: Hello everyone, and welcome to the podcast. It's Media Today,
Speaker 4: and I'm very lucky to be joined by Bryce from
Speaker 4: No More Deaths And what we're going to talk about
Speaker 4: today is this really excellent piece of data visualization and
Speaker 4: research that depicts a very sad topic, which is the
Speaker 4: deaths of migrants entering the United States. And Bryce, I
Speaker 4: know he's done a lot of work on this, So
Speaker 4: welcome to the show.
Speaker 5: Bryce, thank you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're welcome.
Speaker 4: I guess maybe we can start off. I'm looking at
Speaker 4: this data visualization on a map right now, and we'll
Speaker 4: have links in the show notes for other people who
Speaker 4: want to look at it. Can you explain, like what
Speaker 4: this data set is?
Speaker 9: Yeah, So we collected through a bunch of different sources,
Speaker 9: medical examiners, Justices of the Peace, SHERIFFISAL partner CBPS owned data,
Speaker 9: just a bunch of data on individual micrant deaths along
Speaker 9: the US Mexico border. And so this is different data
Speaker 9: through each source, but generally we tried to get a
Speaker 9: lot of demographic data, location data, posit death than at
Speaker 9: least some form of the instagram laertive to kind of
Speaker 9: get a little bit of the context on how you
Speaker 9: produce people guide.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if people are looking at the map.
Speaker 4: They can see various colored dots, right, and they can
Speaker 4: click on that dot and that will give them the
Speaker 4: fiscal year the border trail sector. In some cases you'll
Speaker 4: see like the type of death, maybe a gender and age,
Speaker 4: things like that. I know, looking at it, like it's
Speaker 4: one of those things that maybe is more emotionally difficult
Speaker 4: to view if you're more familiar, Like I can look
Speaker 4: at these dots and I can think of places I've been.
Speaker 4: I can even think of that the day I was there,
Speaker 4: and it's quite it's impactful to see that all these
Speaker 4: people have died in places I know so well. Perhaps
Speaker 4: we can explain, like the scale of this is huge, right,
Speaker 4: do you know how many exactly how many data points
Speaker 4: there are on here?
Speaker 9: I think there's something like solve a thirteen thousand. Yeah,
Speaker 9: it's fast, which overall is like not a great sort
Speaker 9: of liking a cater of how many people have actually
Speaker 9: died or even know how many people could be reported
Speaker 9: to have diet just because the Texas dated all is
Speaker 9: so wonky.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's get into that. Then let's talk about maybe
Speaker 4: the sources for this data, and then maybe perhaps how
Speaker 4: your estimates are much high even with some of the emissions,
Speaker 4: Like the data that you have tends to show under reporting,
Speaker 4: So like can you explain first, like where does this
Speaker 4: data come from and how how did you get it?
Speaker 4: You were saying the Texas numbers are lower, but can
Speaker 4: you explain how like there are these multiple jurisdictions and
Speaker 4: how you can't just like ask someone for this information.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's your people were able to disask for it.
Speaker 9: Well, generally it all comes from formal public records requests
Speaker 9: from medical examiners. When we're lucky because medical examiners usually
Speaker 9: have really good, reasonly shapable data.
Speaker 5: So so we did for San Diego County.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're very good.
Speaker 9: Pima County are the stated in Mexico, al Paso. Other
Speaker 9: places have a coroner that are associated with or sheriff department,
Speaker 9: and that's usually a little dice year they're a little more.
Speaker 5: Reluctant to give up records.
Speaker 9: The Imperial County or Yuma County and then Texas it's
Speaker 9: just like a medical legal nightmare. So there's if smaller
Speaker 9: counties don't have medical examiners, they just had Justices of the.
Speaker 5: Peace, which are part of like the courts, and.
Speaker 9: They'll go out and investigate deaths and if an autopsy
Speaker 9: is needed, they'll send it off to another county to
Speaker 9: get an autopsy. There's a huge amount of counties in
Speaker 9: Texas like this. So that data all came from this researcher,
Speaker 9: Stephanie Luister from the University of Texas Austin, who is
Speaker 9: working on a different project, but was gracious enough to share.
Speaker 5: Everything that she had collected.
Speaker 9: But that was like just a huge amount of work
Speaker 9: physically going to each of these counties looking at what
Speaker 9: vapor records from justices of the peace, writing down all
Speaker 9: that data. There's some that comes from like Sheriff's department,
Speaker 9: some that comes from various other sources, so the Texas
Speaker 9: data and some for example, Wegg County Medical Examiner. They
Speaker 9: don't give up their data to anybody, and there's a
Speaker 9: lot of issues with them potentially like not having actually
Speaker 9: performed autopsy on a lot of autopsies on a lot
Speaker 9: of migrants, and there's some potential bookcases about that going on.
Speaker 5: But yeah, so.
Speaker 9: Texas is really messing and a lot of it you'll notice,
Speaker 9: like Texas has.
Speaker 5: A lot of the purple dots.
Speaker 9: Yeah, the purple dots on their location data from Border
Speaker 9: Patrols database.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and so that ends in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 9: So we have data possible needs in border patrol over
Speaker 9: not location data. Yeah, and so a lot of Texas
Speaker 9: on that being that's just the Border patrol data unless
Speaker 9: we have love specific access to that place. Is Justice
Speaker 9: to the Pace data. It's so the Texas data is
Speaker 9: pretty limited for about reason.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can see a sort of very few red dogs,
Speaker 4: which which are your your other data sources like in
Speaker 4: Texas aside from it, So maybe Brooks County you're able
Speaker 4: to get Justice to the Peace data there because yeah,
Speaker 4: the density is profound.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's just the So it's the Brooks County Checks
Speaker 9: Department that actually puts together that data, and they're really
Speaker 9: keen on the whole thing. Okay, And partially it's because
Speaker 9: the data exists, but partially it really wills just to
Speaker 9: reach fluster death in that area because of a checkpoint
Speaker 9: south of there where people will get dropped off south
Speaker 9: of the checkpoint pipe around and it's just like massive,
Speaker 9: massive open grade yard in Brooks County.
Speaker 4: Jeez. Yeah, I don't think I spent much time in
Speaker 4: that part of Texas, but certainly, like some of these
Speaker 4: other ones that I'm much more familiar with. Let's talk
Speaker 4: about the CBP data, right, you mentioned it there. One
Speaker 4: of the things you've found was that CBP has a
Speaker 4: systemic issue with undercounting deaths, right, yeah, So where does
Speaker 4: that come from?
Speaker 9: So I've heard from I guess for years Humane Borders
Speaker 9: and Pema County Medical Examiner has been documenting this since
Speaker 9: at least twenty fourteen. The major undercount on Border patrols data.
Speaker 9: But something I've here a lot is just that it's
Speaker 9: cases where border patrol wasn't personally involved in the search,
Speaker 9: and that they had changed their counting system to only
Speaker 9: be counting in cases where they were involved.
Speaker 5: And I think that may account for some of it.
Speaker 9: But in order to compare these deaths, border patrols data
Speaker 9: is just really gnarly and messy, and that there's typos,
Speaker 9: there's no spelling. States are wrong, ages are wrong, genders
Speaker 9: are wrong. So you really, in order to compare them,
Speaker 9: you really have to go person by person, go down
Speaker 9: the list, find the death and in order patrol database,
Speaker 9: look at the Medical Examiner data on time to matches
Speaker 9: person by person. So because we have so much of
Speaker 9: the incident narratives from the medical examiners. We can actually
Speaker 9: tell when Border patrol was involved, and so we mark
Speaker 9: when border patrols involved when they're not involved, and then
Speaker 9: when that case doesn't actually get counted by Border patrol, okay,
Speaker 9: and it doesn't actually really line up.
Speaker 5: There's not a huge correlation there.
Speaker 9: I mean, there is some correlation, like older skeletal remains
Speaker 9: things like that often won't get counted, but generally there
Speaker 9: are a lot of cases where they directly involved, where
Speaker 9: even they were the first responders on the scene to
Speaker 9: a distress call or any number of things, where that
Speaker 9: person will end up in Vorda Patrol's database. And then
Speaker 9: other cases where it seems like they had no involvement,
Speaker 9: that person ends up being in Vortical Patrol's database. So,
Speaker 9: I mean, they've been in trouble with the GAO multiple
Speaker 9: times for undercounting or improperly counting or recording these debts,
Speaker 9: and so they have access to medical examiner data. Medical
Speaker 9: examiners send them the data, they just don't use it.
Speaker 9: We often also noticed that the causes that get really
Speaker 9: don't match up in a lot of really specific cases
Speaker 9: like yeah, for Walfalls, for instance, was the most notable
Speaker 9: one see a huge amount of cases that medical examiner
Speaker 9: will say one force trauma, and then border Patrols data
Speaker 9: will say medical examiner and detainment or exposure or any
Speaker 9: number of other things which like for the most part,
Speaker 9: causes the death seem to line up. So the fact
Speaker 9: that these Waalfall deaths it happens to not line up
Speaker 9: is like, you know, I don't want to assume they
Speaker 9: have that intent, although obviously Bordemtrol is bad intent, but
Speaker 9: it seems like it happens regularly enough that it's hard
Speaker 9: to feel like it's not at is somewhat intentional that
Speaker 9: the cases that they're kind of choosing to change the
Speaker 9: couses of death.
Speaker 4: For right, so let's get obfuscates the lethality of the
Speaker 4: border war, right length, it's the amount of people who
Speaker 4: it kills.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean to a huge degree too.
Speaker 9: I mean the fact that Bordertrol's data is kind of
Speaker 9: our only source of data for micrant deaths and then
Speaker 9: specifically for deaths caused by border patrol or like Walfall deaths,
Speaker 9: means that the amount of death that we need the
Speaker 9: public has access to, like Walhall deaths for instance, is
Speaker 9: just a drop in the bucket compared to what's actually happening.
Speaker 9: So all of the research and reporting and all the
Speaker 9: stuff that happens around these CNC related deaths is drawing
Speaker 9: off just like truly false numbers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, and that leads to people drawing bad conclusions.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 4: The other thing that you found is that like that,
Speaker 4: there seems to be an underreporting of in custody deaths, right,
Speaker 4: or an undercounting of people who die in custody. So
Speaker 4: can you explain how you were able to ascertain that
Speaker 4: difference between the in custody death recorded by the Office
Speaker 4: of Professional Responsibility. That's just the ones that you found, right.
Speaker 9: Right, So the opposite Professional Responsibility is all part of CBP,
Speaker 9: and they're supposed to be recording all the saw CBP
Speaker 9: related deaths, including according to the Deaths and Custody Reporting
Speaker 9: Act to like twenty thirteen or whatever it was, army
Speaker 9: destin plustody. There's a really specific definition of what in
Speaker 9: custody means, and so we tried to follow pretty strictly
Speaker 9: what that definition was to kind of make our own
Speaker 9: assessments using the incident narratives.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm curious, what does it mean, like I'm thinking
Speaker 4: about door detention, right, Like, does that count as in custody?
Speaker 9: Yeah? So any only time if a person is in
Speaker 9: the process of being apprehended, if the person has been apprehended,
Speaker 9: if a person has been detained, if the person is
Speaker 9: physically in custody, bordertrol, in a bordertrol vehicle, in a
Speaker 9: cup facility, all those things, who would count as in custody. Okay,
Speaker 9: it's just important because at least one of the cases,
Speaker 9: the border patrol agent involved said the person wasn't in custody,
Speaker 9: he was just detained, which for the purposes of reporting,
Speaker 9: there's actually no difference, right, Yeah, but he said that
Speaker 9: clearly to not have it be labeled as in custody
Speaker 9: death right, and what it seems like that ended up
Speaker 9: not being very able to deserve custody death. So it's
Speaker 9: definitely I think they're they're aware the fact that these
Speaker 9: are being equalted and kind of frown not to have.
Speaker 4: That due to case they have too many of them,
Speaker 4: like uppere Another interesting data interesting is your own word,
Speaker 4: but another data point here was the amount of death
Speaker 4: caused by pursuit, right or in pursuit I guess maybe
Speaker 4: you should just explain, like what pursuit is to people
Speaker 4: if they're not aware.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so there's two kinds of pursuit. We listen at
Speaker 9: the same gear on their database. You can see the difference.
Speaker 9: There's chases on motor vehicle and there's chases on foot. So,
Speaker 9: for example, a person's getting chase through the desert and
Speaker 9: collapses and dies be considered a death either pursuit or EF.
Speaker 9: A person is like in al Paso or San Diego
Speaker 9: or Imperial County more is chased, ends up going in
Speaker 9: a canal or jumping into a canal to escape and
Speaker 9: drowns the idea or chase on foot, and then motor
Speaker 9: vehicle pursuits are Yeah, the person is being chased by
Speaker 9: Border patrol and the glowing passions and people are chilled.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Use of force cases also include some of these chases
Speaker 9: through OPR standards and CVP standards. If spike strips are deployed,
Speaker 9: or if a vehicle is ran by a Border Patrol vehicle,
Speaker 9: that's considered use of force. So that's where a person
Speaker 9: died due to that, we would call that a use
Speaker 9: of force staff. Yeah, so I guess those are the
Speaker 9: two to three different times perceived. That's a great doo.
Speaker 4: And so like, yeah, those are as you say, they're
Speaker 4: broken down the database, right, but in the spreadsheet they
Speaker 4: are combined.
Speaker 8: What does this data show.
Speaker 4: Us about, Like, I guess if we look at the
Speaker 4: last half decade or so, let's go back to like
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen, right, border policy, Like, what does it show
Speaker 4: us about like title eight, Title forty two. We're like
Speaker 4: a little too too close to the Biden assylum band
Speaker 4: to have I guess, like good data on that yet.
Speaker 4: But do you see a clear pattern in like the
Speaker 4: border rhetoric and border quote unquote enforcement and the amount
Speaker 4: of death or the type of death?
Speaker 9: Oh, definitely, Yeah, It's it's immediately clear. I mean even
Speaker 9: Biden's asylum ban, I think there is an immediate effect.
Speaker 9: I mean even just with as a normal desk volunteer,
Speaker 9: we started seeing people crossing the border, crossing the desert
Speaker 9: that just never would have yet made the attempt previously,
Speaker 9: you know, and then started to see as people reported
Speaker 9: the death data too.
Speaker 5: So I think all of that is pretty clear.
Speaker 9: So with Trump's restrictions on asylum, I think the biggest thing,
Speaker 9: honestly was all the metering policies rather than just Tiital
Speaker 9: forty two or like protection protocols or any of that.
Speaker 9: It was just the facts that people weren't allowed to
Speaker 9: access the border country. Yeah, I ended up kind of
Speaker 9: like going around to enter like other places in the
Speaker 9: desert border sort of picked them up.
Speaker 5: That all this started happening.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and so it's kind of like a trickle in
Speaker 9: twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, a little bit more in twenty
Speaker 9: twenty one, and then twenty twenty two you suddenly seen
Speaker 9: just huge amounts of people from countries other than Mexico
Speaker 9: and Central America starting to show up in the data.
Speaker 9: And then also like people who clearly were trying to
Speaker 9: seep asylum showing up in this gap data all the
Speaker 9: way up until it slowed down after you know, the
Speaker 9: end of twenty twenty three, and then but definitely continue
Speaker 9: through through full time of four. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Definitely, Like I speaking from my own experience on the
Speaker 4: border here, we saw the same thing, right, like people
Speaker 4: crossing you wouldn't have seen making that crossing in places
Speaker 4: and times that they wouldn't have crossed, you know, before
Speaker 4: the Biden asylum ban, and like that definitely resulted in
Speaker 4: I mean, there was a weekend September where I think
Speaker 4: five people died. September twenty twenty four, we had a
Speaker 4: heat wave and like it immediately resulted in multiple fatalities
Speaker 4: that like wouldn't have been the case previously. I wonder,
Speaker 4: like what does this data set in terms of like recommendations,
Speaker 4: right in terms of like how we can use this
Speaker 4: data set? Obviously, we're at a time when I when
Speaker 4: I guess the Trump administration like had its complete asylum
Speaker 4: band stayed, but we're back at like people can't in
Speaker 4: good faith like turn up to a port of entry
Speaker 4: anymore and just be like, Hey, I'd like to claim
Speaker 4: asylum and really really hope for the best. Like what
Speaker 4: does this data set tell us in terms of like
Speaker 4: what policies kill more people? And like I guess, like
Speaker 4: like what recommendations arise from the data in terms obviously,
Speaker 4: I guess bit of the recommendation is to have laws
Speaker 4: that allow people to fucking enter this country and claim
Speaker 4: asylum without walking across the desert. But that seems like
Speaker 4: it's too much to ask, So like what do we
Speaker 4: learn in terms of like specific policies that are particularly
Speaker 4: fatal and like the way is that that could be
Speaker 4: mitigated and if it's not already by like water drops
Speaker 4: and search.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that's a hard question, just because talking to the
Speaker 9: older people and the more deaths who've been around since
Speaker 9: like kind of the early years of prevention to the terrence, Yeah,
Speaker 9: they talked about sort of feeling like you know, when
Speaker 9: they were first out there, being like, man, this is
Speaker 9: really unsustainable. It came out here all the time like
Speaker 9: this maybe like a few more years we could probably
Speaker 9: handle and then hopefully this prevention through de terrence thing
Speaker 9: will have like kind of stopped. They'll see like this
Speaker 9: is unsustainable, and then here we are all these years
Speaker 9: later and it's worse than it's at again. Yeah, and
Speaker 9: the original prevention to de terance policy is like this
Speaker 9: strategy of essentially killing people in the hopes, I know,
Speaker 9: people will stop trying to cross the border or something,
Speaker 9: and kind of just is the original thing that it's
Speaker 9: really hard to get away from.
Speaker 5: And yeah, the fact that right now applying the same.
Speaker 9: Strategy of death and suffering to asylum seekers is really horrifying.
Speaker 5: So I think yeah, Number one, open up ports.
Speaker 9: Eventually to allow asylum secret to seek asylum, bring back
Speaker 9: like even the sort of minimum asylum projections that we
Speaker 9: had back then. Other things like how people are dying
Speaker 9: really matters.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 9: So for example, in the Olpasto sector, there was very
Speaker 9: very few deaths in twenty fourteen. The last couple of years,
Speaker 9: it's been the deadliest single small area in the entire border.
Speaker 9: And a lot of that was just because the border
Speaker 9: has just become so militarized that even this like urban
Speaker 9: area where you know, people are dying a mile from town,
Speaker 9: people are dying in town. We I was part of
Speaker 9: the recovery where we this person was on a road,
Speaker 9: had been there for about three days dead. It was
Speaker 9: about forty feet from the busiest the busiest road in
Speaker 9: the entire town. Yeah, and that's just not something that
Speaker 9: really fits in with the ordinary narrative like Prevenual to
Speaker 9: de Terrance, people getting pushed out to these more remote areas,
Speaker 9: and I think just a level of militarization is just
Speaker 9: up to the level that it really is just deadly
Speaker 9: kind of. I mean even yea, all these deaths in
Speaker 9: San Diego, as you know, also do so like all
Speaker 9: these Walfall deaths are pretty much all since like twenty seventeen,
Speaker 9: we're even more recently so the construction of all this
Speaker 9: new border wall. You can point very directly to a
Speaker 9: huge amount.
Speaker 5: Of deaths just caused by walfalls.
Speaker 9: There's the canals in Imperial County and al Paso that
Speaker 9: there a huge amount of people. There's Alpasa right now
Speaker 9: is in the process of revamping their whole canal system.
Speaker 5: Would be a great.
Speaker 9: Opportunity to add some sort of like safety systems in
Speaker 9: place so that people don't die. Yeah, it is all
Speaker 9: the pursue deaths which now are not just being caused
Speaker 9: the border patrol, but also like the Texas Department of
Speaker 9: Public Public Safety now that Operation Lone Star has helped up.
Speaker 9: There's all these things where the kinds of deaths and
Speaker 9: the kinds of people dying and all that stuff has
Speaker 9: changed and increased really drastically in the last few years.
Speaker 5: And you can kind of point to a lot of them.
Speaker 9: But also it's like, yeah, I don't know, it's hard
Speaker 9: to really have any smart thoughts on it. Besides, just
Speaker 9: like boor control is underformable and.
Speaker 4: Just needs to be disbanded entire Yeah, and like this
Speaker 4: whole border regime, right, the whole idea of like an
Speaker 4: iron border that we enforce in a physical space. The
Speaker 4: point of it is to kill people, Like, the point
Speaker 4: of it is to hurt people by having perfectly innocent
Speaker 4: people who you'd be happy to have with your neighbor
Speaker 4: die in the desert. Like that's that is, that is
Speaker 4: the policy goal. Like I'm just looking, like I'm looking
Speaker 4: at Pinto Canyon, which San Diego people will know it is,
Speaker 4: Like it's pretty like, don't if you're listening to this,
Speaker 4: don't go to Pinto Canyon. You might die. It's not
Speaker 4: a place to just go looking around if you're not
Speaker 4: experienced traveling out in the desert. But like, even Pinto
Speaker 4: Canyon is Gnali. But looking along the wall, the wall
Speaker 4: kills way more people than this rugged and difficult piece
Speaker 4: of terrain in the middle of now. Well, it's it's
Speaker 4: things that we have paid a lot of money for
Speaker 4: that kill the most people. And that's pretty brutal to confront.
Speaker 4: One of the other things that you guys were able
Speaker 4: to determine was that like a number of United States
Speaker 4: residents had died right in this data set.
Speaker 2: Yeah, can you explain that for people?
Speaker 5: Totally?
Speaker 10: So?
Speaker 9: Yeah, Like you said, there's people you'd love to have
Speaker 9: as your neighbor dying in all these places, and not
Speaker 9: just that, but your actual neighbor. The amount of people
Speaker 9: whose main residence listed was just in San Diego County,
Speaker 9: in Oceanside, in Bakersfield and Indianapolis, places.
Speaker 5: That we've all been to.
Speaker 9: Yeah, we were able to record for San Diego County
Speaker 9: and a few other counties a lot of where people
Speaker 9: actually lived in some of the circumstances for why they
Speaker 9: were crossing through the desert in the first place. A
Speaker 9: lot of it is people who are very recently deported,
Speaker 9: or who just traveled to Mexico because they had to
Speaker 9: get some paperwork done or wanted to visit family or
Speaker 9: things like this. Just had entire lives in the United
Speaker 9: States and then and then passed away on the way
Speaker 9: back ends of the country. Yeah, including I mean, it's
Speaker 9: really heartbreaking to even see. There's there's a lot of
Speaker 9: cases where the person who actually finds the body or
Speaker 9: recovers the body is not person's family members or their
Speaker 9: spouse or their children, even which only happens because you know,
Speaker 9: Board of Control is generally not that interested in recovering
Speaker 9: bodies or in looking for people who are lost. So
Speaker 9: often Yeah, often it will be yes, somebody's somebody's spouse
Speaker 9: who comes when when it is actually the first person
Speaker 9: on listening.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's very common right for volunteers to be
Speaker 4: alerted VIO. You know, I know some of the certain
Speaker 4: rescue groups are alerted by like Instagram for instance, that
Speaker 4: like someone is missing. Right, It's not like there is
Speaker 4: like despite this being massively overfunded, you can't just call
Speaker 4: and they won't just send out an ambulance like a
Speaker 4: lot of a lot of times it is either the
Speaker 4: family members or like a bunch of volunteers just driving
Speaker 4: out there in the trucks the last night. Like I
Speaker 4: can remember in running into some migrants in like twenty
Speaker 4: twenty three and then being like, hey, there are some
Speaker 4: other people down there and I was like where, how
Speaker 4: do you know? And they found them on a snapchat
Speaker 4: mat wow, and like that that was you know, the
Speaker 4: only thing that maybe said those people's lives And yeah,
Speaker 4: it's pretty brutal to think that like there's still really
Speaker 4: there's no one where there are people you can call,
Speaker 4: I'm help you, But it's not the people who are
Speaker 4: getting billions of dollars. Let's talk very briefly before we
Speaker 4: finish up about desks outside of the United States. I
Speaker 4: see you have some data, Like obviously my familiarity is
Speaker 4: with the Daddy and GAP, which I could like getting.
Speaker 4: I don't think that data exists, but like, I see
Speaker 4: you have a number of data points within Mexico. Can
Speaker 4: you explain like how you came across service and to
Speaker 4: what extent that data is if a toll like representative
Speaker 4: or complete.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so it's not at all representative or complete. It
Speaker 9: all comes from the National Institute of Immigration, the.
Speaker 5: I and M in Mexico.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Two.
Speaker 9: Yes, the warder working people's data are they're like sort
Speaker 9: of like quotun cloth entertain and it were migrants instituted
Speaker 9: by the government of Mexico, New Mexico. And so we
Speaker 9: through the Mexicano Google Eployer, you're able to get data
Speaker 9: from the group of VETA, which throughout the years there's
Speaker 9: been kind of like changing locations of offices.
Speaker 5: So the data we have is just from where their
Speaker 5: offices are.
Speaker 9: So it's usually just sort of like a number of
Speaker 9: deaths for that particular office for that particular year.
Speaker 5: Yes, it's very very limited, and.
Speaker 9: There's many many, many deaths that we then have other
Speaker 9: data to show that doesn't exist here.
Speaker 5: So it's really just planet life.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it shouldn't be taken as any kind of like
Speaker 9: representative sample or it's goodly just the one piece of
Speaker 9: Mexican data that we were able to.
Speaker 5: Quickly put on the map.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 5: We shod get other data.
Speaker 9: From my specific states in Mexico, but we through because
Speaker 9: of time and capacity and just the data itself, we
Speaker 9: were unable to turn back into that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we wouldn't do something with that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think it still remains true that like
Speaker 4: the single deadliest mine of this journey is the United
Speaker 4: States border, at least from this data that you're seeing.
Speaker 4: Did would you say this data still supports that probably?
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Yeah, I just don't want to say, because the
Speaker 9: data is just so bad in so many places, especially
Speaker 9: in Mexico abought.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm thinking of like the Daddy in right, Like
Speaker 4: it's it's very deadly. I've seen people die there, Like
Speaker 4: it's obviously a very very difficult and rugged place. But
Speaker 4: I think comparatively, probably more people die at the US border,
Speaker 4: just because there were more of them and because people
Speaker 4: come like people are Yeah, not everyone has to cross
Speaker 4: a dairy end. Like people can fly to Mexico or
Speaker 4: somewhere further south, right and then come up that way.
Speaker 4: Where if people want to find this data, or perhaps
Speaker 4: there's someone who's like a ninja with with data and
Speaker 4: data visualization and they want to offer to help, like
Speaker 4: where can people find this and how can they reach
Speaker 4: out to no more desks if they'd like to help
Speaker 4: in some way.
Speaker 9: Yeah, So just on the normal desk website you can
Speaker 9: see the report and the map and all that stuff.
Speaker 9: And in there there's a link to the media outreach email,
Speaker 9: which in the next couple of months is my email,
Speaker 9: and just Felker to send send an email there and yeah,
Speaker 9: happy to give greater accents. And right now the data
Speaker 9: is pretty anonymized for privacy and safety. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 9: a lot of the fields that we've kind of talked
Speaker 9: about that don't look here in the public database. So
Speaker 9: happy to share that with researchers, activists, advocacy people, journal.
Speaker 5: US and things like that.
Speaker 9: And also we desperately would out to help, so interested
Speaker 9: in looking at some spreadsheets?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, cool, great, Thank you so much your time
Speaker 4: and for all the work on this I know this
Speaker 4: was a lot of work getting those records, and I
Speaker 4: think it I know it gives us something to point
Speaker 4: to to show how many people this this ball of
Speaker 4: shit is killing totally.
Speaker 10: This is it could happen here, a show about things
Speaker 10: falling apart. I'm Garrison Davis this episode. I'm joined by
Speaker 10: Mia Wong.
Speaker 5: Mia.
Speaker 8: I have some upsetting news.
Speaker 10: Oh no, which is frankly one of the best ways
Speaker 10: to start in this episode and one of the best
Speaker 10: ways to start the show. So I'm pretty sure that
Speaker 10: I found this account called, uh, let's see at Haill Hitler,
Speaker 10: and I think he's posting some things that is a
Speaker 10: little bit fascist.
Speaker 8: Oh wow.
Speaker 10: I have decoded some of at Hell Hitler's communications and
Speaker 10: I have uncovered a secret a secret Nazi code.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 8: This is this is an incredibly unexpected revelation from Hailed Hitler.
Speaker 10: He has posted some pictures in like what I would
Speaker 10: assume is some kind of military uniform that looks like
Speaker 10: I don't know, it's it's some kind of like like
Speaker 10: Germanic military uniform. But I've noticed that there's some runes
Speaker 10: on this uniform, oh, that look very similar to the
Speaker 10: Odal rune. So I'm thinking because of the run, this
Speaker 10: guy might.
Speaker 2: Be a Nazi.
Speaker 8: Thank you for your work, Erison. We can never have
Speaker 8: determined this, that's right, I am. You can find me
Speaker 8: at osen to Defender online and no that doesn't for
Speaker 8: us today, and it could happen here now. So this emisode,
Speaker 8: we're gonna talk about something that's been slowly frustrating me
Speaker 8: the past few weeks, and that is the misapplication of
Speaker 8: dog whistles.
Speaker 10: And let's just get right into it. People have been
Speaker 10: noticing patterns, noticing trends in official communications from the dhs
Speaker 10: gov online accounts, which now is the main way the
Speaker 10: government sends out communications unfortunately, especially on X the Everything app.
Speaker 10: But this, this extends outside of X the Everything after,
Speaker 10: this extends outside of Blue Sky the Internet in general.
Speaker 10: This is about how we understand the messaging of fascists
Speaker 10: and understand how rhetoric and anti fascist like education works
Speaker 10: and ways that I think it's currently being misapplied.
Speaker 8: So bear with me.
Speaker 10: This is gonna be kind of an odd episode, but
Speaker 10: I think I think it's worth it because I don't
Speaker 10: want us falling into the same traps that we maybe
Speaker 10: fell into eight years ago. So let's Let's let's start
Speaker 10: by talking about some communications posted on the internet by
Speaker 10: at DHS gov. A picture of a painting titled American
Speaker 10: Progress by John Gast, captioned a heritage to be proud of,
Speaker 10: comma a homeland worth defending. So on the surface, you know,
Speaker 10: maybe a slightly hashtag problematic sentiment here with a hashtag
Speaker 10: problematic painting or at the very least of painting depicting
Speaker 10: the genocide of Native Americans and Indigenous people specifically with
Speaker 10: like a white supremacist outlook, with this enlarged white woman
Speaker 10: bathed in a white cloak, bringing forth that the tide
Speaker 10: of quote unquote progress as Indigenous people are are forced
Speaker 10: to flee from the edge of the painting.
Speaker 8: It's it's fun because this is a painting we literally
Speaker 8: when they had to explain manifest destiny like colonialism good.
Speaker 8: This is the painting that was in my textbook in
Speaker 8: high school. Is three class like and it is like
Speaker 8: the er, the er colonialism good, genocide good painting.
Speaker 10: Genocide good. That that's what the painting is. But what
Speaker 10: I have found through some hashtag research, there might be
Speaker 10: a hidden code in this in this communication from the
Speaker 10: DHS who already an agency that only has the best
Speaker 10: interests and of really all people who strive for human rights,
Speaker 10: the DHS. So if you count all of the words
Speaker 10: in the tweet, guess how many words there are in
Speaker 10: this tweet? Mea fifteen no, so close, so close, fourteen
Speaker 10: fourteen words in this tweet, which might remind you of
Speaker 10: the fourteen words the Nazi signifier, which I probably just explain.
Speaker 10: Surely most people listening to this is familiar with the
Speaker 10: fourteen words, since it seems everybody thinks they are an
Speaker 10: armchair expert on fascist rhetoric. But the fourteen words we
Speaker 10: must secure the existence of our people and a future
Speaker 10: for white children. This became a popular hashtag dog whistle,
Speaker 10: especially in the past. I would say ten fifteen years,
Speaker 10: usually by implanting fourteen's and usually fourteen eighty eights with
Speaker 10: eighty eight meaning Hale Hitler because H is the eighth
Speaker 10: letter of the alphabet. This became a common Nazi tag.
Speaker 10: You could see this in graffiti, You see this embedded
Speaker 10: into into posts, see this in like Nazi artwork. And
Speaker 10: going back to this DHS post, we cannot only count
Speaker 10: fourteen words in this tweet. This is actually a fourteen
Speaker 10: eighty eight because two of the h's in this in
Speaker 10: this post are capitalized unusually, and that means hal Hitler
Speaker 10: Wow because hc eighth letter.
Speaker 8: Uh huh oh.
Speaker 10: But wait, actually looking at this post again, there's actually
Speaker 10: other words in this tweet that are also unusually capitalized.
Speaker 8: But don't worry.
Speaker 2: Don't worry.
Speaker 10: This is still a dog whistle because those other words
Speaker 10: that are capitalized in the first sentence are the letters
Speaker 10: A and D, which if you convert those into numbers,
Speaker 10: are one in four, so it's actually another fourteen.
Speaker 8: Oh wow, we're doing we're doing numerology. We're doing jamatria,
Speaker 8: where we've become q and on. We're so back.
Speaker 10: So if you cannot tell by my, my, my thinly
Speaker 10: veiled sarcasm in that last section, I think this methodology
Speaker 10: is a little bit silly.
Speaker 8: What are we doing?
Speaker 2: What are we doing here?
Speaker 10: We're converting capitalized letters in the first half of a
Speaker 10: tweet into numbers and then rearranging the order of those
Speaker 10: letters to get a fourteen eighty eight it's literally jerbatria,
Speaker 10: and then also counting the total words in the whole
Speaker 10: suite while still disregarding the capitalizations in the last four
Speaker 10: words for another fourteen What are we doing? How is
Speaker 10: this the piece of evidence that sinks sinks the Trump
Speaker 10: administration and finally proves that they're fascist. You can just
Speaker 10: look at all of the fascist policies the Trump administration
Speaker 10: is enacting. Instead of doing numerology on tweets, people are thinking,
Speaker 10: ha ha ha ha, I have decoded the secret Nazi
Speaker 10: message with AHHD one eight eight fourteen. Nice trigroipers. Meanwhile,
Speaker 10: you can just look at the actual text of the post.
Speaker 10: You can look at the painting. Both of those things
Speaker 10: have an inherent fascist quality. It's literally defending the concept
Speaker 10: of ethnic genocide, of manifest destiny. While the administration, the
Speaker 10: DHS is currently furthering as no nationalist policies.
Speaker 8: They are doing this. This is homeland security, right. I
Speaker 8: don't know if people realize that ICE is a part
Speaker 8: of homeland security, but like, this is the agency that
Speaker 8: is literally rounding people up and sending them to camps.
Speaker 8: We have camps in multiple countries. Now what I say,
Speaker 8: they're being round up and sent to camps. It's genuinely
Speaker 8: unclear whether what I'm talking about is the fucking concentration camp.
Speaker 10: In Florida see cot In nol Salvador.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean I think I think people have now escaped,
Speaker 8: so I can't technically call the Honduras want a death camp.
Speaker 8: But like again there's sending people to South u Dan,
Speaker 8: They're like, they're just doing this, Like what are we
Speaker 8: doing here?
Speaker 10: So this episode I want to focus on how people
Speaker 10: are misusing anti fascist edge, or I would argue they're
Speaker 10: misusing anti fascist education and kind of missing the forest
Speaker 10: for a cardboard cutout of trees, not even trees, kind
Speaker 10: of something that could be a tree if you look
Speaker 10: at it from one angle, but maybe isn't actually a
Speaker 10: real tree. And you don't need to sound like a
Speaker 10: Da Vinci Code conspiracy theorist to point out the obvious,
Speaker 10: like dog whistles don't matter if the regular whistle is
Speaker 10: already fascist. If they're just saying things openly and furthermore
Speaker 10: doing things, what purpose does a dog whistle haen? And
Speaker 10: this is something that we're going to discuss. Are not
Speaker 10: just saying this and closing the episode, We're going to
Speaker 10: get into these And I think part of what's happening
Speaker 10: here everybody is so cooked by the paranoid style of
Speaker 10: American politics. Everyone is so eager to decode the hidden
Speaker 10: messages that we're missing what's right in front of us.
Speaker 10: QAnon has a total victory. Qwanon does not really exist
Speaker 10: in the way that it did in twenty eighteen. That
Speaker 10: the q Andon cult conspiracy theory as like a singular
Speaker 10: cultish project is kind of no more. But q Andon
Speaker 10: has a cultural victory over the entire United States, and
Speaker 10: not just on the right wing, not just on Mega.
Speaker 8: So much of.
Speaker 10: American politics now is litigating who is and is not
Speaker 10: a pedophile, who is and is not trafficking children, who
Speaker 10: can notice which events are staged, who can notice hidden codes,
Speaker 10: who can decode anonymous messages on the Internet, And this
Speaker 10: is what like everything is. And like the real turning
Speaker 10: point I think for the right wing was probably the
Speaker 10: twenty twenty election in like a massive fracture from reality
Speaker 10: in which they think that election was legitimately stolen. And
Speaker 10: obviously there was many events leading up to that which
Speaker 10: contributed to this. Yeah, and I think one of the
Speaker 10: biggest fracture points for liberal was the attempted assassination of
Speaker 10: Donald Trump, with people creating whole new alternate realities that
Speaker 10: that event was staged and because that door is opened.
Speaker 10: Now I am seeing such a massive flood of things
Speaker 10: that I would label as bluing on conspiracy theories, which
Speaker 10: is kind of a nonsense term, but it gets the
Speaker 10: point across. And gonna do a whole piece on bluing
Speaker 10: on very soon. I've been collecting blueing on conspiracy theories
Speaker 10: for a while, but I want to do something specifically
Speaker 10: about this fourteen eighty eight and like secret codes thing,
Speaker 10: because it's so evocative of like, you know, Q drops,
Speaker 10: and it's evocative of, you know, searching for Masonic codes,
Speaker 10: something that American conspiracy theorists have been doing for generations.
Speaker 10: And we're to talk about that more and read a
Speaker 10: little bit of an essay on that topic after this
Speaker 10: ad break, and I will let you know there's gonna
Speaker 10: be two messages in the ad break that if you decode,
Speaker 10: you win a special prize at the end of the episode,
Speaker 10: So make sure you listen to every single second of
Speaker 10: the ad in case you miss the code. Okay, we
Speaker 10: are back, speaking of the paranoid style in American politics.
Speaker 10: I want to quote a few sections to kind of
Speaker 10: frame what I'm talking about here. This was an essay
Speaker 10: written in the sixties by Richard hoff Setter Hofstetter Richard
Speaker 10: Hoffstetter one of the first like modern pieces on American
Speaker 10: conspiracy culture and politics. I'm gonna I have three paragraphs
Speaker 10: here that I that I selected as as being relevant
Speaker 10: to the current the current topic at hand.
Speaker 8: Quote.
Speaker 10: There is a style of mind that is far from
Speaker 10: new and that is not necessarily right wing. I call
Speaker 10: it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately
Speaker 10: evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratory fantasy
Speaker 10: that I have in mind. Nothing really prevents a sound
Speaker 10: program or demand from being advocated in the paranoid style.
Speaker 10: Style has more to do with the way in which
Speaker 10: ideas are believed than with the truth or falsity of
Speaker 10: their content.
Speaker 2: Unquote.
Speaker 10: And I like that section specifically because fourteen eighty eight
Speaker 10: is a real dog whistle. We can see this used.
Speaker 10: There's aspects of people who are trying to search for
Speaker 10: this and trying to search for patterns in the communications
Speaker 10: of an admittedly fascistic government agency that I find like sympathetic,
Speaker 10: like I can under I can understand because yeah, that
Speaker 10: is a real dog whistle. I'm going to continue the
Speaker 10: quote quote the paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy
Speaker 10: in apocalyptic terms. He traffics in the birth and death
Speaker 10: of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values.
Speaker 10: He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly
Speaker 10: lives at a turning point, like religious millinery. Now he
Speaker 10: expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the
Speaker 10: last days, and he is sometimes disposed to set a
Speaker 10: date for the apocalypse. As a member of the avant
Speaker 10: garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it
Speaker 10: is fully obvious to it. As of yet to unaroused public,
Speaker 10: the paranoid is a militant leader. Demand for total triumph
Speaker 10: leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since
Speaker 10: these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens
Speaker 10: the paranoid's sense of frustration. Unquote, Hofstetter is talking about
Speaker 10: something that that me and Robert specifically have have have
Speaker 10: discussed a lot on this show before. How everyone in
Speaker 10: America wants to have access to secret information m h.
Speaker 10: Everyone wants to have the exclusive piece of secret intel
Speaker 10: that will solve everything, and like having having that like
Speaker 10: informational exclusivity in a world of information saturation, right of
Speaker 10: a vortex of like meaningless noise. It's such a romantic
Speaker 10: idea that that I alone have the info or the
Speaker 10: clue to pieces together, and it's my duty to inform
Speaker 10: the masses. It's a very romantic notion, and it's also
Speaker 10: one that is exactly perfectly anti suited for the moment
Speaker 10: we live in, which is actually just a moment where
Speaker 10: everything that is happening is just so clearingly literal, like
Speaker 10: it's all out of the Oden, like what is happening
Speaker 10: with the Trump administration. Okay, In twenty twenty, there is
Speaker 10: a massive uprising to attempt to attempt to fundamentally change
Speaker 10: like the structurally racist nature of the United States, to
Speaker 10: deal with its fucking class inequalities, to deal with the
Speaker 10: structural violence of the state. This was reacted to by
Speaker 10: a massive fascist movement that spent half a decade gaining
Speaker 10: power and then finally took power in the form of
Speaker 10: like a bunch of pissed off petite bourgeois fucking car
Speaker 10: dealers and like literally a billionaire real estate mogul backed
Speaker 10: by the richest tech company guy in the world right,
Speaker 10: and they came together to build fascism. This is the
Speaker 10: most straightforward, like if this is a conception of how
Speaker 10: a fascist takeover works that is so thuddingly literal that
Speaker 10: it defies narrativization because it's just there. There's no subtlety
Speaker 10: to it. They're just saying it. They just want to
Speaker 10: do it, and they're doing it. But everyone is convinced
Speaker 10: that there's like some kind of secret hitting conspiracy and
Speaker 10: it's like, no, they're just doing the thing that they're saying. Yeah,
Speaker 10: you can argue that we have a griper occupied government
Speaker 10: not because of counting words and posts, but because of
Speaker 10: not only who they're bringing on for DOGE, but literally
Speaker 10: Ice in DHS as of today, which I'm recording this
Speaker 10: on Wednesday, I think, because this comes out Wednesday night,
Speaker 10: are copying like Patriot Front style tactics of loading up
Speaker 10: ICE agents in U haul style rentable trucks to do
Speaker 10: hunt down people to assault and kidnap, like they're just
Speaker 10: copying the Patriot Front playbook. Here the ICE director said
Speaker 10: that he wants an Amazon like mass deportation system, calling
Speaker 10: it quote unquote Amazon Prime, but with human beings. They're
Speaker 10: saying this, you can say, listen to the actual words.
Speaker 10: I'm going to read another quote here from the Paranoid
Speaker 10: Style of American Politics essay quote. A final characteristic of
Speaker 10: the paranoid style is related to the quality of its pedantry.
Speaker 10: One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is the
Speaker 10: contrast between its fantasized conclusions and the almost touching concern
Speaker 10: with factuality it invariably shows. It produces heroic strivings for
Speaker 10: evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing
Speaker 10: that can be believed respectable. Paranoid literature not only starts
Speaker 10: from certain mortal commitments that can indeed be justified, but
Speaker 10: also carefully and all but obsessively accumulates unquote evidence. The
Speaker 10: paranoid seems to have little expectation for actually convincing a
Speaker 10: hostile world, but he can accumulate evidence in order to
Speaker 10: protect his cherished convictions from it unquote. And I think
Speaker 10: that gets into the psychological mechanisms on why people are
Speaker 10: doing this Nazi code hunting. It's actually a form of
Speaker 10: self coping. Looking at the horrific state of the federal government,
Speaker 10: looking at the brazenness in which ICE is operating, and
Speaker 10: this is a self preservation mechanism. Someone on Blue Sky
Speaker 10: that I was talking to about this is like arguing,
Speaker 10: like ICE doesn't need to dog whistle, they have no
Speaker 10: reason to.
Speaker 4: Like.
Speaker 10: Dog whistling is for trying to like sneakily get racists
Speaker 10: or fascists into power while signaling to a nationalistic base
Speaker 10: that they are like one of them. Right, But these
Speaker 10: guys are already in power, and the base already knows
Speaker 10: that they're in power. There's no point in dog whistling.
Speaker 10: They're just using ICE to establish an ethno state. They're
Speaker 10: using explicit ethno state rhetoric. In a post from this
Speaker 10: morning which has one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
Speaker 10: eight nine ten words not fourteen ten words, Wow, DHS
Speaker 10: said quote, serve your country, Defend your culture, no undergraduate
Speaker 10: degree required. Defend your culture. It's not about locking up
Speaker 10: criminal migrants. It's about defending a culture from its destruction
Speaker 10: through ethnic demographic shifts. It's they're not trying to obscure
Speaker 10: what they're doing. In the slightest No, And I want
Speaker 10: to return to something else that the Hofstater said that
Speaker 10: in that second paragraph that you read about how like
Speaker 10: one of the central conceits is that, like, you know,
Speaker 10: there's this giant conspiracy that's being unleashed and the American
Speaker 10: public doesn't know anything about it, and like, yeah, you can.
Speaker 10: You know, it is distressing to a large extent, the
Speaker 10: extent to which people just don't know what the government
Speaker 10: is doing. But also like if you look at any
Speaker 10: pulling at all, but anything these people are doing, everyone
Speaker 10: hates it. There isn't like a secret thing you can
Speaker 10: say to convince people that they're that all these people
Speaker 10: are Nazis, because it's like and that's not even a
Speaker 10: particularly useful project because everyone fucking hates them already, Like
Speaker 10: trying to fight this in the realm of sort of
Speaker 10: the accumulation of the evidence of conspiracy instead of in
Speaker 10: the realm of like, hi, i'm your neighbor, you also.
Speaker 8: Fucking hate this. Let's go fucking like do they shoul
Speaker 8: people are doing in la and like follow these fucking
Speaker 8: ice fans around, right, That is stuff that people are doing,
Speaker 8: but it doesn't have the kind of like instant emotional
Speaker 8: gratification and register of trying to like accumulate hordes of
Speaker 8: secret knowledge, so people do it less even though it's
Speaker 8: less effective.
Speaker 10: In my discussion of this, like online on various cursed
Speaker 10: social media sites, I've gotten a lot of pushback to
Speaker 10: my pushback of these tactics and what I what I
Speaker 10: see as a sort of like abuse of anti fascist education,
Speaker 10: right because people, you know, Robert Evans, myself, you know,
Speaker 10: Molly Conger, spent the past eight years trying to actually,
Speaker 10: you know, educate people about like Nazi rhetoric, like in
Speaker 10: like Nazi signals and dog whistles, right, and as an
Speaker 10: attempt to hopefully prevent them from expanding their power. And
Speaker 10: we may have succeeded in education, but we may have
Speaker 10: failed in the prevention.
Speaker 8: Of them seizing power.
Speaker 10: And that also makes me kind of question the effectiveness
Speaker 10: of certain tactics. And it's now very odd to see
Speaker 10: things that we you know, argued for visibility around to
Speaker 10: kind of be used in ways that don't really make sense.
Speaker 10: That it's it's it's kind of like trying to tame
Speaker 10: a monster that you've partially created. And it's so frustrating
Speaker 10: to me because I mean, one person who I was
Speaker 10: lightly arguing about the line was saying, like, this is
Speaker 10: not numerology, and we don't have to be just okay
Speaker 10: with a clear attempt to normalize white nationalist rhetoric. And like,
Speaker 10: first of all, like codes aren't rhetoric, codes or codes,
Speaker 10: And the textual fascist sentence.
Speaker 8: Is the rhetoric.
Speaker 10: What they're actually like saying, which which has like proto
Speaker 10: fascist or fascistic aspects, That is the rhetoric and they're
Speaker 10: doing it. Is there somebody out there in twenty twenty
Speaker 10: five who's gonna finally realize that DHS as an agency
Speaker 10: has fascistic underpinnings via a chronically online Twitter user explaining
Speaker 10: that if you count words and turn certain captize letters
Speaker 10: into numbers, it makes a secret Nazi message. Is there
Speaker 10: one person is going to become convinced to us, No,
Speaker 10: that's not the purpose. So trying to conceptionize this is
Speaker 10: like we have to we have to make sure we
Speaker 10: call out the use of Nazi rhetoric that doesn't apply
Speaker 10: to this specific thing that we're talking about.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and also like I think, you know, like I
Speaker 8: think we sort of kind of just to some extent,
Speaker 8: we've just failed on the normalization from it because again,
Speaker 8: like it's the president of the United States. Yeah, this
Speaker 8: is the official account of the Department of Homeland Security.
Speaker 8: It has already become normalized because they have power. The
Speaker 8: only way to denormalize it is not actually to do
Speaker 8: media critique. It's to like actually oppose them. But that's scary,
Speaker 8: that's scary.
Speaker 10: Repet Marybia, do you know what's easy posting on X
Speaker 10: the everything app Yeah.
Speaker 8: This is how this kind of conspiratorial worldview actually empowers
Speaker 8: the state, because the central conceit of the conspiratorial worldview
Speaker 8: is that there is a nearly all powerful agency that
Speaker 8: controls in apparatus that enables it to basically control any
Speaker 8: events that it wants. Right, this is why I can
Speaker 8: stage things, this is why I can recollection. This is
Speaker 8: why it can like I don't know, like it can
Speaker 8: just like magically like disappear anyone. It can replace them
Speaker 8: with anyone. It can stage any protest movement it wants
Speaker 8: to right. And I think you've seen this a lot
Speaker 8: in the American case, where like I see people who
Speaker 8: are like genuinely well meaning leftists who are convinced that
Speaker 8: if you do anything to resist the American State, you
Speaker 8: will immediately be killed because the American state is all
Speaker 8: powerful and irresistible. And that's just fast just propaganda. Yeah,
Speaker 8: you're falling victim to the panoptic house. Yeah, but but
Speaker 8: it's it's fascist propaganda that fits into the narrative structure
Speaker 8: of conspiracy. And because the state is dangerous, right and
Speaker 8: can hurt you, it's very very easy to you know,
Speaker 8: accumulate structures of evidence that support the emotional sort of
Speaker 8: core of this thing that is just literally fascist propaganda.
Speaker 8: People are resisting the state every day, right, Why is
Speaker 8: ICE fucking doing patriot prayer tactics and fucking like hiding
Speaker 8: people in like fucking U hauls to jump out and
Speaker 8: grab people. It's because when they tried to fucking mass
Speaker 8: we stomped them, right. And when they drive around in
Speaker 8: their cars and you can see them through the window,
Speaker 8: everyone follows them. People can follow them around and alert
Speaker 8: their community members on where ICE is. Like again, mother
Speaker 8: motherfuckers and fucking Lulu Levin shit are like screaming at
Speaker 8: ICE agents when they try to arrest people, like yeah,
Speaker 8: that's the actual condition we're in, and like we get
Speaker 8: regular people.
Speaker 10: And that's why I find some people who would be
Speaker 10: you know, self described as like anti fascists or selfist
Speaker 10: described as leftists almost falling into this trap like more
Speaker 10: so than others. And it's a little bit evident of
Speaker 10: something that like I've described as like the forever twenty sixteen,
Speaker 10: how we're all kind of stuck in the mindset of
Speaker 10: this twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen era and where
Speaker 10: we have this unwillingness to realize that that's not the
Speaker 10: political situation on the ground anymore. We are actually not
Speaker 10: in Charlottesville. This is a different situation. This is twenty
Speaker 10: twenty five. And one other like defense of this, you know,
Speaker 10: code hunting that I've seen people say is, quote, Nazis
Speaker 10: love playing games like this, so it's important that we
Speaker 10: call it out. And another person saying, quote, this is
Speaker 10: a fun little game for their group chats while they
Speaker 10: kill and disappear people, unquote, and like, first of all,
Speaker 10: this is not a game. This is actual people's lives
Speaker 10: are who are being deported, who are being sent to
Speaker 10: foreign prison camps. These are not games. And and I
Speaker 10: think that view of like anti fascist like education risks
Speaker 10: repeating like the Okay symbol debacle right where dog whistles
Speaker 10: end up being created or spread further due to this
Speaker 10: gamified version of like Easter egg anti fascism, It's kind
Speaker 10: of like the Barber streisand effect where you end up
Speaker 10: almost accidentally making them start doing the thing, which Nazis
Speaker 10: always have that like frustrating impulse because they're the little
Speaker 10: bitch boy ideology. I think as a rat, Limit put
Speaker 10: it one of one of my favorite posters, and like,
Speaker 10: I'm not saying that Nazi signposting should be ignored, but
Speaker 10: I think we should be thoughtful and careful of how
Speaker 10: we do it. To recap the Okay symbol thing that
Speaker 10: was invented as like a fake dog whistle to try
Speaker 10: to trick leftists into convincing like the media, and had
Speaker 10: then having the media trying to convinceate with people that
Speaker 10: anyone who uses like the okayhand symbol is secretly a fascist.
Speaker 10: And this scheme worked, and eventually the Oka symbol became
Speaker 10: an actual symbol used for fascists to identify each other
Speaker 10: through this ironic attachment because it was being talked about
Speaker 10: in the news as a secret Nazi symbol, even though
Speaker 10: this whole thing was like invented as like a joke online.
Speaker 10: And I'm afraid I've started to already see a similar
Speaker 10: thing happen with the fourteen words dog whistle, with an
Speaker 10: increased use of the fourteen words and invoking the fourteen
Speaker 10: words among far right accounts, specifically because of this whole
Speaker 10: debacle with the DHS gov account and there a heritage
Speaker 10: to be proud of, homeland worth defending American Progress like
Speaker 10: ethnonationalist posting. And I truly cannot say one way or
Speaker 10: another if that American Progress post had a intentionally embedded
Speaker 10: fourteen words dog whistle inside, I can't. I can't tell
Speaker 10: you that. And the point trying to make is that
Speaker 10: it kind of doesn't matter, but the way we talk
Speaker 10: about dog whistles does matter. And as frustrating as it
Speaker 10: is that sometimes this feels like we're just living in
Speaker 10: the meme where where the Nazi starts shaving his head
Speaker 10: because everyone's calling him a Nazi, that is how Nazis
Speaker 10: work sometimes. And I don't want to play into this
Speaker 10: attention spectacle that they so badly want. But you know
Speaker 10: what I do want right now?
Speaker 8: Is it the process and services that support this podcast.
Speaker 10: Another ad break, that's right, be sure to listen for
Speaker 10: the third and fourth hidden clue in these ads.
Speaker 2: All right, we are back to.
Speaker 8: Briefly take a small tangent here. I think there was
Speaker 8: something very important about like the fact that role stuck
Speaker 8: in twenty sixteen, which was sort of like the peak
Speaker 8: of irony right as a social affect has left us
Speaker 8: really unprepared for now where everything is just sort of like,
Speaker 8: you know, they're just doing it and saying it right, yeah,
Speaker 8: And it's not this sort of like irony pill deniability. Shit.
Speaker 8: They just do it and people are just not prepared
Speaker 8: for that.
Speaker 10: They're able to wage this war kind of on both fronts,
Speaker 10: and I think they are still pushing this. I'm going
Speaker 10: to quote from a friend of the pod rat Limit
Speaker 10: one of my favorite mutes quote prediction, the Nazi salute
Speaker 10: will become common within two years. Right wingers will half
Speaker 10: asset for plausible deniability, mimify the backlash, and then start
Speaker 10: fully doing it quote unquote as a joke to quote
Speaker 10: unquote troll the Libs for being hysterical enough to think
Speaker 10: that they were doing it in the first place. Fascism
Speaker 10: is a little bitch ideology because it's too timid to
Speaker 10: enact as cruelty until it can frame its cruelty as
Speaker 10: retaliation against others for anticipating it, and this has been
Speaker 10: proven right faster than I think what rat limit predicted.
Speaker 10: There's this current trend on x the Everything app where
Speaker 10: white girl aspiring influencers are doing Nazi style salutes and
Speaker 10: trying to mimify the backlash. Several posts going going viral
Speaker 10: of these. Of these like aspiring influencers either at the
Speaker 10: pool or cooking or doing laundry or walking your dog
Speaker 10: while having a your arm in a Elon Musk, my
Speaker 10: heart goes out to you Nazi salute style fashion. Yeah,
Speaker 10: and I think focusing media attention on someone like Musk
Speaker 10: doing a Nazi salute makes sense, right, he is like
Speaker 10: an actual person affiliated with the government. But making a
Speaker 10: whole media blitz about random blue check Twitter girls, maybe
Speaker 10: not so much. Maybe that doesn't have any actual value
Speaker 10: if a random like a random Twitter poster from Missouri
Speaker 10: is trying to garner backlash by doing a Hyle Hitler
Speaker 10: salute in their kitchen next to their instapot.
Speaker 8: I keep coming back to the thing that I wrote
Speaker 8: about the original Loss salute and about the ways that
Speaker 8: everyone you know, like one of the functions of capitalism
Speaker 8: is that everyone has been trained to experience the world
Speaker 8: and think in the image of action instead of like
Speaker 8: actually existing things. That's what I want to talk about next. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 8: let's do this, Let's do this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, go for go for it.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 10: I think part of this focus on on on like
Speaker 10: these hidden codes and even just like these messages online
Speaker 10: is a liberal opposition to the aesthetics of deportation, but
Speaker 10: not necessarily the act itself. It's carrying out deportations in
Speaker 10: a mode that seems not in line with like neoliberal governing.
Speaker 10: And that's I think what a bunch of the backlash
Speaker 10: being focused on the aesthetics of the Trump administration, like
Speaker 10: how they film like gaudy ASMR videos that they post
Speaker 10: from the White House account of deportations and use military planes.
Speaker 10: Those are aesthetic differences, and those differences may be important,
Speaker 10: and they're they're bad, right, It's I'm not saying these
Speaker 10: things are good. Those things are still bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 10: But when that gets focused on slightly more than just
Speaker 10: the pure acti deportation itself, that I think is evident
Speaker 10: of being trapped in this like capitalist realism, being trapped
Speaker 10: in this like like this neoliberal Yeah, the society of
Speaker 10: the spectacle exactly, right, let's like in June, Ice arrested
Speaker 10: thirty thousand people and did eighteen thousand deportations. In May
Speaker 10: it was twenty four thousand arrests in eighteen thousand deportations.
Speaker 10: Since February, the Trump admin has averaged about fourteen thousand
Speaker 10: and seven hundred deportations of month. The highest number of
Speaker 10: deportations ever was in twenty thirteen under Obama, averaging thirty
Speaker 10: six thousand a month. The Biden admin averaged almost thirteen thousand.
Speaker 10: When the Trump administration started using military planes for deportations
Speaker 10: back in January, mainly as an esthetic choice, that triggered
Speaker 10: backlash and rejections from Mexico and Colombia. Mexico refused to
Speaker 10: allow US military aircraft carrying deported migrants to land in
Speaker 10: their country. Colombia also barred two military planes full of migrants,
Speaker 10: but later caved as Trump threatened unitive tariffs. And you
Speaker 10: can see the same thing about deploying military to the border,
Speaker 10: something that Biden also did, but it has a larger
Speaker 10: aesthetic backlash under Trump. Do you have something you want
Speaker 10: to say on this like image aspect? I have some
Speaker 10: quotes from Fisher and that's kind of all I have left.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean it is very fitting of our styles
Speaker 8: of politics that you're going to Fisher here and I'm
Speaker 8: going to Benjamin.
Speaker 10: Benjamin is quoted in these sections that Fisher is pulling
Speaker 10: from as well.
Speaker 8: Yep, yep. So I'll go into the source. I'm not
Speaker 8: going through the fucking cru bullshit like pop marks, this
Speaker 8: bourmois running doc. But no, but like, you know, like
Speaker 8: one of the things that that Walter Benjamin, who people
Speaker 8: genuinely really should read. He's one of the great original
Speaker 8: theorists of fascism, and he fucking died trying to flee
Speaker 8: the Nazis. And one of his arguments was that, you know,
Speaker 8: one of the cores of fascism is the replacement of
Speaker 8: politics with aesthetics, Right, that aesthetics would allow you to
Speaker 8: you know, feels like feel representations of do the action.
Speaker 8: And this is this is an analysis that has been
Speaker 8: sort of like folded through a whole bunch of different
Speaker 8: analyzes of how capitalism functions. Right, this is this is
Speaker 8: one of the three lines of the society a spectacle,
Speaker 8: and it's this real issue that we're dealing with now
Speaker 8: because again kind of in a sense, what has happened
Speaker 8: to everything right, And you can argue to some extent
Speaker 8: that like our channel being called cool zone Media is
Speaker 8: sort of this is that all politics from every side
Speaker 8: has been completely reduced to aesthetics. And completely reducing it
Speaker 8: to aesthetics allows like allows the fascist mode of politics
Speaker 8: to simply draw in a bunch of people who can
Speaker 8: sort of just now passively experience living through these sort
Speaker 8: of through this sort of collection of images and this
Speaker 8: emotional aesthetic. Yeah, and it also is doing the same
Speaker 8: thing to us. But the thing is they have the
Speaker 8: fucking state and we don't, right, And so if you
Speaker 8: don't fucking exit, if you don't exit the sort of
Speaker 8: mirror world of esthetic of sort of like of fucking
Speaker 8: living in images, right, and you know, go do the
Speaker 8: actual shit that the board is talking about in the
Speaker 8: society a spectacle. Were you when all your friends formed
Speaker 8: workers councils and fucking start taking all of the ship
Speaker 8: back from all of the people who were taking it
Speaker 8: from you, You're just gonna live in the fascist nightmare forever.
Speaker 10: I mean, you could look at the union resistance to
Speaker 10: icedy iportations, specifically in LA with russaurant workers that it's
Speaker 10: literally doing that and like I would argue, like now,
Speaker 10: it's not so much that fascism is politics as athetics,
Speaker 10: but especially now, it is an aestheticized politics. And you
Speaker 10: can even see that in so far as its focuses
Speaker 10: on you know, like race and like ethnic purity, like
Speaker 10: blood and soil. That's why they're posting American progress driving
Speaker 10: out the indigenous people with the aryan white lady carrying
Speaker 10: the torch of progress. It is an aestheticized politics on
Speaker 10: like a very pure level. And again, to quote from
Speaker 10: my goat, uh this antigoat quote Mark Fisher in captust
Speaker 10: Realism quote, ultra authoritarianism and capital are by no means incompatible.
Speaker 10: In tournament Camp's enfranchise coffee bars co exist, neoliberals, the
Speaker 10: capitalist realists par excellence have celebrated the destruction of public space,
Speaker 10: but contrary to their official hopes, there is no withering
Speaker 10: away of the state, only a stripping back of the
Speaker 10: state to its core military and police functions. Unquote. This
Speaker 10: is very similar to something that me and Mia talked
Speaker 10: about right as Trump got elected, in terms of the
Speaker 10: state becoming more removed but hostile.
Speaker 8: Yeah, although although I see again I disagree official here
Speaker 8: because the neo liberals understood what they were doing to
Speaker 8: begin with. They were never trying to wither the state away.
Speaker 8: That was just the lies that they told the fucking
Speaker 8: basses Like sure, I mean that's what contrary to their
Speaker 8: official Yeah, yeah, and it's like you know, quote, such.
Speaker 10: A blight can only be eased by an intervention that
Speaker 10: can be no more anticipated than was the onset of
Speaker 10: the curse in the first place. Action is pointless, only senseless.
Speaker 10: Hope makes sense. Superstition and religion the first resorts the
Speaker 10: helpless proliferate unquote. This is part of what I conceptualize
Speaker 10: as this code hunting is almost a form of this
Speaker 10: hopeless superstition. To continue quote, the catastrophe is neither waiting
Speaker 10: down the road, nor has it already happened. Rather, it
Speaker 10: is being lived through. There is no punctual moment of disaster.
Speaker 10: The world doesn't end with a bang. It winks out, unravels,
Speaker 10: gradually falls apart. What caused the catastrophe to occur? Who
Speaker 10: knows its cause? Lies long in the past, so absolutely
Speaker 10: detached from the present as to seem like the caprice
Speaker 10: of a maligned being, a negative miracle, a melidation which
Speaker 10: no penance can ameliorate the turn from belief to aesthetics,
Speaker 10: from engagement to spectatorship is held to be one of
Speaker 10: the virtues of capitalist realism unquote. And yeah, that's what
Speaker 10: me is talking about with Gidebor and society of the spectacle.
Speaker 10: That's a trap that I think a lot of people
Speaker 10: are falling into right now. And though it's arguable that
Speaker 10: living in a liberal contradiction may be preferable to fascist authoritarianism,
Speaker 10: that stullsn't mean it's like good, right, That's not what
Speaker 10: we're arguing here. Fisher then quotes French philosopher Alawn Badu
Speaker 10: quote to justify their conservatism. The partisans of the established
Speaker 10: order cannot really call it ideal or wonderful, so instead
Speaker 10: they've decided to say that all of the rest is horrible. Sure,
Speaker 10: they say, we may not live in a condition of
Speaker 10: perfect goodness, but we are lucky that we don't live
Speaker 10: in a condition of evil. Our democracy is not perfect,
Speaker 10: but it's better than bloody dictatorships. Capitalism is unjust, but
Speaker 10: it's not criminal like Stalinism. We let millions of Africans
Speaker 10: die of AIDS, but we don't make racist nationalist declarations
Speaker 10: like Lamosovich. We kill Iraqis with our airplanes, but we
Speaker 10: don't cut their throats with machetes like they do in
Speaker 10: Rwanda unquote. And already parts of this are slightly outdated.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, because.
Speaker 10: Now, But this is the thing is both are tragedies
Speaker 10: where millions people die, right. One of them is through
Speaker 10: the aesthetics of neoliberalism. The other one is through asthetics
Speaker 10: of racist nationalistic declarations, which the Trump administration is currently
Speaker 10: playing with. That is what they decided to do. Yeah,
Speaker 10: and so the reaction to it is on this aesthetic note,
Speaker 10: not necessarily on this pure actual humanistic opposition to deportations
Speaker 10: as a process that is inhumane that we should not
Speaker 10: allow at all.
Speaker 8: Yeah. I see the logic of this all the fucking time,
Speaker 8: talking to people where like we'll be like, okay, like
Speaker 8: no deportations, and then you get a whole bunch of
Speaker 8: people being like, wow, but what about criminals just like
Speaker 8: some some deportation? What do is this is the structural
Speaker 8: logic of the original like deportation blitz from Trump.
Speaker 10: Creating a class of undesirables that you can then always
Speaker 10: add to and press the border on. Like what Karl
Speaker 10: Schmid talks about this is the structural logic of fascism. Yeah,
Speaker 10: but everyone everyone thinks about deportations this way now, and
Speaker 10: they're mad that Trump is doing it and not Biden.
Speaker 10: But you know, until people actually break through the sort
Speaker 10: of pure opposition to the aesthetics and actually start, you know,
Speaker 10: having a kind of totalizing opposition to the system that
Speaker 10: is doing this, we're just going to be stuck here.
Speaker 10: And this is I think one of the limits of
Speaker 10: using anti fascism as this like aesthetic code hunting, is
Speaker 10: because a few days ago, the ths posted a Woody
Speaker 10: Guthrie song, his song America the Beautiful, with the DHS
Speaker 10: posting the promise of America is worth protecting the future
Speaker 10: of our homeland is worth defending. Notably, everyone in this
Speaker 10: video is all white people, which this sentiment is the
Speaker 10: same thing as the fourteen words, except it has fifteen words,
Speaker 10: so therefore not a Nazi dog whistle. We're safe, guys,
Speaker 10: we're good. I counted the words. There's fifteen of them,
Speaker 10: so you can disregard what the actual text is saying.
Speaker 10: And I think that is like the prime the prime
Speaker 10: contradiction in which I am growing increasingly frustrated So that's
Speaker 10: most of what I have to say about the limits
Speaker 10: of Nazi code hunting and the the aesthetics of superstition
Speaker 10: and the paranoid style in American politics. Mia, do you
Speaker 10: have any any final wise notes?
Speaker 8: The time for Nazi code hunting, if there ever was one,
Speaker 8: has passed. It is now time to end the episode
Speaker 8: right here.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 10: It is related for anything. Oh and if you were
Speaker 10: able to decode the hidden message in the ad break,
Speaker 10: send the contents of the message via email to your
Speaker 10: local congressman to redeem your prize.
Speaker 2: Bye bye.
Speaker 10: This is it could happen here Executive Disorder, our weekly
Speaker 10: newscast covering what is happening in the White House, the
Speaker 10: crumbling world what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis.
Speaker 10: This episode, I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Tout, and
Speaker 10: Robert Evans. Were covering the week of July thirtieth August seventh. Robert,
Speaker 10: what is Texas?
Speaker 2: So the original root word of the state's name is Tejas,
Speaker 2: which means friendship, a thing that no one in Texas
Speaker 2: has ever known because it's the angriest meana state in
Speaker 2: the country. That's that's Texas.
Speaker 10: Garrison up for some stiff competition these days, for some
Speaker 10: stiff competition.
Speaker 8: But it's still it's still holding out, isn't it.
Speaker 4: Everything's bigger in Texas Garrison.
Speaker 2: It's it's famed as being the second or third worst
Speaker 2: state that borders New Mexico. So you know, rarefied company.
Speaker 2: Really it can compete with all of the states bordering
Speaker 2: New Mexico except for Colorado. But the state's bordering New
Speaker 2: Mexico except for Colorado are Oklahoma and Arizona and Texas,
Speaker 2: so not high bars.
Speaker 4: Texas has some of the finest abt and breakfasts that
Speaker 4: I've ever stayed in, that's right, including one with a
Speaker 4: deeply disturbing basement.
Speaker 2: Okay, just because they had one torture based on James.
Speaker 2: So we're talking about Texas right now because a bunch
Speaker 2: of the Democratic state legislators just fled the state for Illinois,
Speaker 2: I believe.
Speaker 4: Is how the name of the state has pronounced yea French.
Speaker 2: It's French. It's French.
Speaker 8: Fact check for a real illinoisan wrongsupposed fact checks by
Speaker 8: really annoyance.
Speaker 2: So when you've got a legislature of pretty much any type,
Speaker 2: at least in the US I'm sure there's other countries
Speaker 2: that don't do it this way. But you need what's
Speaker 2: called a quorum in order to actually do anything, which
Speaker 2: means of the total number of elected members of the legislature,
Speaker 2: you need a certain number of them. Otherwise you can't
Speaker 2: like do anything because there's not enough people there in
Speaker 2: order to actually have it be a valid vote. And
Speaker 2: I probably don't have to explain the reasonings why. There's
Speaker 2: some pretty obvious reasons why you'd want it to work
Speaker 2: this way. But there are, however, some downsides to it.
Speaker 2: You know, potentially you can be depending on whether or
Speaker 2: not your side is doing it. It's a downside or
Speaker 2: an upside, right, which is that if you have a
Speaker 2: side that is the minority in the government and they
Speaker 2: don't want a vote to go through, they can just bounce.
Speaker 2: And if they bounce at the right time, before the
Speaker 2: legislature has been called and like no one's there, then
Speaker 2: you can't get a quorum and nothing can get done.
Speaker 2: And this is big news right now because in order
Speaker 2: to stop a redistricting vote, a bunch of Democratic legislators
Speaker 2: have fled. But this is a thing that has been
Speaker 2: going on for well over a century. And it is
Speaker 2: a thing that both sides of the aisle have engaged
Speaker 2: in with substantial regularity. I'm not an expert on any
Speaker 2: of this. The earliest example I can find if anyone
Speaker 2: doing this is in Texas. And I'm not saying that
Speaker 2: means it's the earliest example of anyone in the US
Speaker 2: doing this, But the earliest example I found in my
Speaker 2: research was from eighteen seventy. So there's an article on
Speaker 2: this in that by the Texas State Historical Association called
Speaker 2: understanding the rump Senate of the twelfth Texas Legislature, and
Speaker 2: the rump Senate is a term applied to the fifteen
Speaker 2: radical Republican members of the twelfth Texas Legislature who fled
Speaker 2: in eighteen seventy to stop a vote on a militia bill.
Speaker 2: And this bill gave the governor power to declare martial law.
Speaker 2: It gave him the power to establish a state police force.
Speaker 2: It increased the appointed power of the governor.
Speaker 4: A bunch of stuff that's not all that interesting to
Speaker 4: us today because governors, like every state does this today,
Speaker 4: right Like there's state police everywhere. Every state governor has
Speaker 4: the power to call a militia, you know, a national
Speaker 4: guard or whatever. Like.
Speaker 2: This is not controversial today, but it was back then.
Speaker 2: And it's important that I note that while it was
Speaker 2: fifteen radical Republicans who fled in eighteen seventy, those were conservatives, right,
Speaker 2: Like the radical Republicans were conservatives in eighteen seventy. Right,
Speaker 2: So this is this is kind of a reverse if
Speaker 2: you're just sort of looking at things from a liberal
Speaker 2: or conservative point of view. This is kind of a
Speaker 2: reversal of what's happening right now in Texas, although it's
Speaker 2: happened a lot of other times since. Right, So this
Speaker 2: is eighteen seventy. Should note it didn't succeed, right. This is, however,
Speaker 2: one of the fairly rare times when this kind of
Speaker 2: thing happens. If it goes on long enough, every time,
Speaker 2: the governor basically will declare an arrest warrant for the
Speaker 2: legislators who have left, And as a general rule, this
Speaker 2: does nothing, right, Like, the governor has the ability to
Speaker 2: find them a certain amount per day, and it has
Speaker 2: the ability to call out an arrest warrant, but it's
Speaker 2: not like a real arrest warrant, like if you murder
Speaker 2: a guy and then lead to another state an arrest
Speaker 2: warrant will be issued that law enforcement in that state
Speaker 2: has to abide by. Right because you murdered somebody, this
Speaker 2: is not a real crime. Basically, if you flee back,
Speaker 2: if you wind up back in the state that you left,
Speaker 2: you can be taken into custody by law enforcement in
Speaker 2: the state, but they can't leave the state to get you.
Speaker 2: And almost I would say, like ninety percent of the
Speaker 2: time when something like this happens, nobody actually gets arrested. However,
Speaker 2: in eighteen seventy several Conservative members were held under arrest
Speaker 2: for like three weeks until the Senate could pass the legislation. So,
Speaker 2: as is usually the case, whenever stuff like this happens,
Speaker 2: it only succeeded in kind of delaying the inevitable. It
Speaker 2: didn't succeed in actually stopping things. And this has happened
Speaker 2: a number of times in Texas, most recently Texas Democratic
Speaker 2: lawmakers broke quorum in twenty twenty one. And I want
Speaker 2: to quote here from an article in ABC News. Quote
Speaker 2: Texas state lawmakers left Brookquarran twenty twenty one when Democratic
Speaker 2: House representatives fled Texas to prevent measures restricting voting options.
Speaker 2: The measures eventually passed after internal democratic fissures led to
Speaker 2: enough representatives returning to form a quorum. And this is
Speaker 2: the kind of thing where Governor Abbott allowed the Sergeant
Speaker 2: of Arms or commanded the Sergeant of Arms to arrest
Speaker 2: the members within Texas. Weirdly enough, a couple of them
Speaker 2: did return. The first was Philip Cortes, who briefly came
Speaker 2: back to Austin to handle personal business and there was
Speaker 2: a civil arrest warrant signed, but then he fled the
Speaker 2: state again before he could be arrested. There were warrant
Speaker 2: signed for the fifty two remaining absent legislators, but law
Speaker 2: enforcement didn't arrest or detain anybody. Eventually, enough democratic legislators
Speaker 2: came back into the state for like personal reasons. Some
Speaker 2: of them had like shit to handle, like in their
Speaker 2: own life. Some of them had other things they wanted
Speaker 2: to push through in terms of like legislature, and so
Speaker 2: they were like, I guess I'll come back and let
Speaker 2: this happen. And eventually the House reached quorum. And this
Speaker 2: past Democrats did not face the five hundred dollars a
Speaker 2: day fine that they'd been threatened by the governor, and
Speaker 2: nobody was arrested. Now, I've been talking about Texas here,
Speaker 2: but this happens all over the place. In fact, when
Speaker 2: this story first broke, the immediate thing I thought back
Speaker 2: on was what happened very recently in the state of Oregon,
Speaker 2: and has happened a couple of times in the state
Speaker 2: of Oregon.
Speaker 8: You know it was mine too. They do this all
Speaker 8: the time, They do this a lot.
Speaker 2: But yes, this is a common thing in Oregon. It
Speaker 2: has started, and this is both parties have done this.
Speaker 2: I should note right, both Democrats and Republicans in Oregon,
Speaker 2: as in Texas, have done walkouts.
Speaker 8: They don't even have to leave the state.
Speaker 2: They don't even have to leave the state, although they
Speaker 2: have recently. This seems to have started an Oregon I
Speaker 2: think in the nineteen seventies. There's actually a really good
Speaker 2: article that's like an overview of a bunch of different
Speaker 2: states history of doing this in Oregon Central Oregon Daily News,
Speaker 2: although it's an ap Press article, so I guess Central
Speaker 2: Oregon Daily just is licensing this thing. But anyway, in Oregon,
Speaker 2: the most recent case of this happening was in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three, after Republicans staged a six week boycott, which
Speaker 2: is the longest so far in Oregon legislature history, over
Speaker 2: a rule a law of the Democratic Party was pushing
Speaker 2: to protect abortion rights and the right to gender firming
Speaker 2: care for transgender people. This again did not succeed. This
Speaker 2: was passed in the legislature and there were actually some consequences,
Speaker 2: although it hasn't been enough time to see how serious
Speaker 2: there will be. Because there was a different GOP walkout
Speaker 2: over climate change legislation which also failed in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: and as a result of that twenty twenty two walk out,
Speaker 2: voters approved an amendment to the state constitution in Oregon
Speaker 2: which barred lawmakers from getting re elected if they had
Speaker 2: more than ten unexcused absences in a single annual legislative session.
Speaker 2: And as a result of the walkout the next year
Speaker 2: over abortion rights and gender firming care, ten Oregon Republican
Speaker 2: lawmakers were barred from seeking re election again. As I stated,
Speaker 2: this is something that very rarely actually does anything. There's
Speaker 2: a twenty twenty one case in New Hampshire where Democrats
Speaker 2: walked out in protest of an anti abortion bill. The
Speaker 2: Republican House speaker locked the doors to maintain a quorum.
Speaker 2: I'm going to quote from the Central organ Daily article.
Speaker 2: I'm locking the doors right now so that everybody in
Speaker 2: the chamber will stay in the chamber. Shout at House
Speaker 2: Speaker Sherman Packard, who later refused to let Democrats back
Speaker 2: in to vote on the bill.
Speaker 4: It's just fucking like representative politics is just snol children
Speaker 4: shouting at each other. I want them to fight with canes.
Speaker 4: They should be fighting with King agreed. Give them, give
Speaker 4: them all enough, let them fights it out.
Speaker 2: I would say ninety percent of the time, nothing is
Speaker 2: at least from the reading I've done, nothing is achieved
Speaker 2: except for a delay, which is not to say that
Speaker 2: that's nothing. And also I do believe, like in the
Speaker 2: case of the Democratic Party, I don't think what the
Speaker 2: Texas Democrats are doing will stop the redistricting. Like the
Speaker 2: Republicans are going to win this fight. It's worth fighting. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm glad they're fighting it. However, very rarely is the
Speaker 2: actual law stopped or is anything but a delay achieved.
Speaker 2: One of the rare cases in which something more was
Speaker 2: achieved is in twenty eleven in Wisconsin, Democratic state senators
Speaker 2: fled to Illinois as a protest against Governor Scott Walker.
Speaker 2: He was attempting to strip public workers of their union
Speaker 2: rights and this, you know, this walkout was staged at
Speaker 2: the same time as a mass pro union demonstration at
Speaker 2: the capitol, and after several weeks they won a partial victory.
Speaker 2: Republicans weakened the legislation, which is like significant, right, like
Speaker 2: the fact that they actually got concessions over this, and
Speaker 2: sometimes the delay can be significant. The same year that
Speaker 2: that all went down in Wisconsin, Indiana Democrats also left,
Speaker 2: for for whatever reason, ILLINOI is where you go if
Speaker 2: you're doing this. I don't No one wants to come
Speaker 2: get you know, wants to go.
Speaker 4: No one's coming to Illinois.
Speaker 2: It's just not worth it.
Speaker 4: I've been to fuck Illinois and sorry, Illinois is the
Speaker 4: hero of this story. We love you Illinois. Yeah, Chicago's five,
Speaker 4: Chicago's fined for whatever reason. This is the state you
Speaker 4: go to if you're a Democrat doing this in the
Speaker 4: modern era. If you're in Wisconsin, it's not that far away.
Speaker 4: I guess, well, this is Indiana too, and also not
Speaker 4: very far away. Yeah, it's also not far Yeah, they
Speaker 4: couldn't make it to California. You know, it's further now
Speaker 4: that Texans are doing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but Indiana Democrats left in twenty eleven to prevent
Speaker 2: Republican law that would have stopped unions from levying mandatory
Speaker 2: fees on union members, which would kind of make could
Speaker 2: potentially make it impossible to do a union because nobody
Speaker 2: wants to pay for a union, but everyone wants won right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: every worker does you want the union protecting you. You
Speaker 2: don't want to have to give up your money, So
Speaker 2: it's the kind of thing you could I think the
Speaker 2: Republican plan was use the natural greed that people have
Speaker 2: in order to hamstring unionizing efforts. Many such cases and
Speaker 2: the Democrats left, which left the House short of its
Speaker 2: quorum and threatened to stay in the other states until
Speaker 2: they were promised that the bills would not be called.
Speaker 2: Republicans successfully passed the bill, but they had to wait
Speaker 2: until the next year. So again, every now and then
Speaker 2: you ECO win out here or the side doing this
Speaker 2: eeks out a win, and everyone does it, and everyone
Speaker 2: has been doing it for more than one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty years. Nothing about this is new, with the exception
Speaker 2: of the fact that they actually look to be pushing
Speaker 2: some serious legal consequences. The most I've been able to
Speaker 2: find in the history of this is what happened in
Speaker 2: eighteen seventy where a number of people were arrested and
Speaker 2: held in custody for a few weeks. Usually no one
Speaker 2: is arrested, and usually the fines aren't even actually levy.
Speaker 2: Right now, this does cost money. The last text walkout,
Speaker 2: Texas Democrats were spending like ten grand a day on
Speaker 2: food and board, you know, paying for their hotels or whatever,
Speaker 2: which was I think Beato Olor raised most of the
Speaker 2: money through his pack which is what covered it.
Speaker 8: A few hundred grand, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Like six hundred thousand dollars. So you know, this does
Speaker 4: cost money to do because you've got to put these
Speaker 4: people up. But generally you're not really hiding them, and
Speaker 4: generally the legal consequences are more of a threat than
Speaker 4: a reality.
Speaker 8: Right, and that might not be true in this most
Speaker 8: recent year.
Speaker 2: Yes case, Yes, And we're going to throw to you, Garrison,
Speaker 2: But first you know who does force serious life changing
Speaker 2: legal consequences on people?
Speaker 4: Jay Pritzk.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: And the products and services that support this podcast, which
Speaker 2: are entirely we're actually backed entirely by JB.
Speaker 8: Pritzker from your mouth to God's ears, Robert.
Speaker 4: Not like knowingly I stole his debit card, and boy,
Speaker 4: that guy has a high daily spending lem let me
Speaker 4: tell you yeah, but he has a lot of shadow
Speaker 4: companies anyway, Thanks JB. Please don't change your password to
Speaker 4: your online bank. Garrison, Hi, We're.
Speaker 10: Back, so as Roberts said, Republicans in the Texas Legislature
Speaker 10: are trying to jerrymander Texas to increase their total power
Speaker 10: over the state, proposing a redistricting map that would add
Speaker 10: five more Republican seats, and in an effort to prevent
Speaker 10: or delay this, this past Sunday, sixty two Texas Democrats
Speaker 10: have fled to Illinois to deny quorum in the Texas House,
Speaker 10: and only twelve need to return in order for the
Speaker 10: redistricting to go through, with the main goal right now
Speaker 10: being trying to stay out of the state until November.
Speaker 10: In terms of consequences, new House rules adopted back in
Speaker 10: twenty twenty three after the twenty twenty one quorum, I
Speaker 10: can impose a five hundred dollars fine per day for
Speaker 10: missing lawmakers, not just from the governor. Now on Monday,
Speaker 10: the Texas House Republicans voted to issue civil arrestaurants for
Speaker 10: the lawmakers, empowering the Sergeant of Arms and the Texas
Speaker 10: State Troopers to locate, apprehend, and transport the rogue legislators
Speaker 10: back to the capitol. Governor Greg Abbot announced he had
Speaker 10: mobilized the Texas Department of Public Safety to return the
Speaker 10: Democrats to the chamber. Now, these warrants really only apply
Speaker 10: within state lines. These are civil warrants. They're not facing
Speaker 10: criminal charges though. Back in twenty and three, during a
Speaker 10: similar quorum break due to gerrymandering efforts, fedral resources were
Speaker 10: used to track planes with suspected rogue Democrat lawmakers. An
Speaker 10: Abbot has already proposed trying to declare their House seats
Speaker 10: vacant if they do not return, a tactic which would
Speaker 10: probably prompt some lengthy legal battles and require new special
Speaker 10: elections to take place to fill the seats. So that
Speaker 10: still would like delay this process. That's not a quick solution.
Speaker 10: But there has been some breaking news as of this
Speaker 10: morning recording Thursday. On Thursday morning, Texas Senator John Corbin
Speaker 10: announced that the FBI would now be investigating and working
Speaker 10: to locate the Texas House Democrats saying in a press release, quote,
Speaker 10: I thank President Trump and Director Patel for supporting and
Speaker 10: swiftly acting on my call for the federal government to
Speaker 10: hold these supposed lawmakers accountable for fleeing Texas. We cannot
Speaker 10: allow these rogue legislators to avoid their constitutional responsibilities unquote.
Speaker 10: So the extent of the FBI's involvement in tracking, down, locating,
Speaker 10: or apprehending the Democrats is currently unknown. The FBI has
Speaker 10: declined to comment, but this is something that's going to
Speaker 10: develop in the next week, which.
Speaker 2: They always do when ongoing case. Is like, sure, if
Speaker 2: you email or whatever the FBI about any ongoing case.
Speaker 2: This is what they do, period. It's been their policy
Speaker 2: for p Yeah.
Speaker 10: So it doesn't tell you anything, just saying that in
Speaker 10: terms of like, we do not know what the extent
Speaker 10: of their involvement is going to be at this point, right, yeah, right,
Speaker 10: And they might not even know either.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 8: This could just be a tech cashpitl TikTok.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a good chance they're internally scrambling to like
Speaker 2: what are we gonna do?
Speaker 10: Like this would be unprecedented sending a federal like law
Speaker 10: enforcement arm to to to physically apprehend and return lawmakers.
Speaker 10: That is certainly an escalation from using like federal resources
Speaker 10: to track planes like they did in twos and three.
Speaker 10: This would be a whole new ballgame.
Speaker 2: Yeah. As I noted, it's uncommon for them to be
Speaker 2: arrested inside the state by the sergeant at arms.
Speaker 10: Yeah sure, I mean, like arrest just means, you know,
Speaker 10: you'd like accompany them back to the capital or force
Speaker 10: them to return to the capital.
Speaker 2: You're staying here, You're not going to leave to the state.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you've got a guy called sogeant Arms involved. It's
Speaker 4: not serious, but even that's purely uncommon. Yeah.
Speaker 10: No, I mean, like most corm breaks fail because legislators
Speaker 10: just choose to return, whether to do personal business, whether
Speaker 10: to do political business. It takes a lot of discipline
Speaker 10: to not return to your home for a period of
Speaker 10: like three to six months.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you get stuff to do. Most people, a lot
Speaker 2: of people have what are called familized Famali's something like that.
Speaker 8: For media, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think it's a new concept. Yeah, we're still working
Speaker 2: at cool Zone to get a handle on it. We'll
Speaker 2: have a report on whatever that is, so don't worry.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they got to get back to the polycule or whatever.
Speaker 4: But they haven't violated a federal law right lately. No,
Speaker 4: so federal, they'ven't violated a Texas law.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not a law violation. It is
Speaker 2: literally the governor saying I'm sending guys for you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's just some old timey parliamentarian shit.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 8: And like you know, as I was saying, it's like again,
Speaker 8: it isn't this could just be a cash hotel TikTok op.
Speaker 2: But also I hate the way that sounds.
Speaker 4: I what a fucking way to describe a federal law
Speaker 4: enforcement Oh it's on hinge.
Speaker 8: This is genuinely okay, I'm gonna take a very very
Speaker 8: slight detour, which I said this before. But also, like
Speaker 8: the thing that gives me the most hope about all
Speaker 8: of this is that, like, look, they found the right
Speaker 8: winger to put in charge of the American seecret Police,
Speaker 8: and he doesn't want to do his job because he
Speaker 8: just wants to be a podcaster.
Speaker 2: Hey understand, Look, you make me director the FBI, and
Speaker 2: I promise to be more or less the same.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 8: But you know, but if this is actually a thing,
Speaker 8: right and federal agents is only grabbing vallmakers out of Illinois.
Speaker 2: That is that's a big deal. Yeah, that's a massive escalation.
Speaker 10: And that's why, as people fully supported by Pritzker's private militia,
Speaker 10: we will be on the front lines defending the Texas
Speaker 10: lav makers. That's right, saluting the Chicago flag.
Speaker 5: M hm.
Speaker 2: Yes, as as governor, Pritzker recently stated blood for the
Speaker 2: blood gods, skulls for the skull throne. Classic Pritzker.
Speaker 8: I mean, you need to do some Pritzker not even
Speaker 8: slander here. So just fuck you. Tiny bit of fun
Speaker 8: Pritzker news, which I was gonna talk about a little
Speaker 8: bit anyways later. But Pritzker has basically allowed a bunch
Speaker 8: of hospitals in Chicago to stop covering gender affirming care
Speaker 8: for minors, even though it's like illegal under Illinois state law.
Speaker 8: So fuck him for that. Eat shit. Yeah we we
Speaker 8: we will unfortunately oppose the Kannie of the Great Plains.
Speaker 2: And what's the reasoning there? Has he given any He was.
Speaker 8: Just like, oh, well they're gonna lose funding.
Speaker 2: Ah, oh no, it is over yeah, okay, yeahs it
Speaker 2: is over the threats. But like, yeah, a number of
Speaker 2: states have been have been something similar as brewing in Oregon,
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 8: Yeah, we've we've Yeah, this has been happening Oregon. We
Speaker 8: just had an episode about people resisting this in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 8: This will be a continuing, ongoing struggle. But I fuck
Speaker 8: you Pritzker eat shit.
Speaker 10: Like I do have two science stories for this middle
Speaker 10: segment here. First one, I'm gonna call on everyone's I
Speaker 10: don't know, probably my least favorite Kennedy.
Speaker 8: RFRS Wow controversial. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of bad Kennedys.
Speaker 11: After reviewing the science and consulting top experts at NIH
Speaker 11: and FDA, HHS has determined that mRNA technology poses more
Speaker 11: risks than benefits for these respiratory viruses. That's why, after
Speaker 11: extensive review, BARTA has begun the process of terminating these
Speaker 11: twenty two contracts totaling.
Speaker 2: Just under five hundred million dollars.
Speaker 11: To replace the troubled mRNA programs, we're prioritizing the development
Speaker 11: of the safer, broader vaccine strategies.
Speaker 10: Sure, sure thing, sure thing, mister Kennedy.
Speaker 8: Oh Jesus fucking Christ.
Speaker 2: Yeah that sounds true, and not like we're throwing away
Speaker 2: a holy grail of medical miracles.
Speaker 8: Literally won the Nobel Price.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so this is this is some devastating
Speaker 10: news where he is removing twenty two contracts researchers and
Speaker 10: universities that are developing new mRNA vaccine technology and earlier
Speaker 10: in that video. So I'm not going to play because
Speaker 10: it's just him basically lying. But he was lying about
Speaker 10: how mRNA technology has been ineffective against upper respiratory infections
Speaker 10: because it only targets a single protein which not only
Speaker 10: becomes obsolete due to mutations, but actually accelerates the mutation
Speaker 10: process in prolongs pandemics.
Speaker 2: This is not true.
Speaker 8: You can no, it's not true. This is not true.
Speaker 10: And one of the most unique aspects of mRNA technology
Speaker 10: is that the vaccines can be developed at a much
Speaker 10: faster pace to be deployed against mutations. And even if
Speaker 10: a vaccine is not does not one hundred percent prevent
Speaker 10: an infection, that doesn't mean they still won't like decrease
Speaker 10: the severity of symptoms. He is trying to coat his
Speaker 10: decades decades long like anti vaccine advocacy in this like
Speaker 10: scientific language while actually just like stripping away all of
Speaker 10: the funding and removing access to vaccines. And this is
Speaker 10: the stuff that he promised not to do. In his
Speaker 10: confirmation hearings, he said that he would not take away
Speaker 10: vaccines yep, and he would not change who's on the
Speaker 10: vaccine advisory panels.
Speaker 8: He has done both of those things so far.
Speaker 10: Like two months ago, he fired all seventy members of
Speaker 10: the advisory panel. I talked with Cave about this, and
Speaker 10: he replaced them with eight anti vaxxers. And not only
Speaker 10: did he remove a multi billion dollar contract from Derna
Speaker 10: to continue mRNA vaccine research, he now canceled these twenty
Speaker 10: two other contracts, totally five hundred million dollars of technology.
Speaker 10: People are going to die and get sick because of
Speaker 10: these changes, yes, yeah, which doesn't just affect like COVID
Speaker 10: and the flu. It also affects all of the other
Speaker 10: ways that mRNA technology can be utilized. A lot of
Speaker 10: these research projects are about expanding the possible use of
Speaker 10: this technology beyond upper respiratory infections.
Speaker 8: So this sucks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is real bad.
Speaker 10: It's I am very nerve about the development of the
Speaker 10: HIV vaccine and cancer vaccines, things that we were getting
Speaker 10: so close to now being put intojeopardy because this fucking
Speaker 10: clown is in charge of health and human services.
Speaker 4: A ton of is who I've done at the Salkansche
Speaker 4: in San Diego, Itchile.
Speaker 10: It was reported earlier this week that some Republicans and
Speaker 10: Trump himself might actually not be happy about this. And
Speaker 10: Trump has a meeting scheduled with RFT Junior today to
Speaker 10: discuss these cancelations, so we'll see where that goes. In
Speaker 10: some other science news, Sean Duffy, interm NASA administrator who
Speaker 10: also has the Secretary of Transportation, who directed his employees
Speaker 10: to prioritize funding and grants to towards demographics with high
Speaker 10: marriage rates. He announced that he was expediating plans to
Speaker 10: launch and operate a one hundred kilowatt nuclear.
Speaker 8: Reactor for the Moon.
Speaker 2: Great. Look, there's a lot of people living on the
Speaker 2: Moon and power outages have been a constant problem there. Garrison,
Speaker 2: if this science fiction novel from the nineteen sixties is accurate.
Speaker 10: I talk with a friend of mine who is an
Speaker 10: anonymous NASA contractor. She gave a quote, quote I need
Speaker 10: a cigarette unquote.
Speaker 2: Great, because he just got fucked.
Speaker 8: It's also worth noting that all of this is coming
Speaker 8: in the context of the largest really like the largest
Speaker 8: cuts in the history of American science across the board
Speaker 8: to anything that's actually like I'm gonna get remotely doing science,
Speaker 8: Like yeah, sorry, I just I just want to go
Speaker 8: on it, especially space science. Like Duffy's trying to manufacture
Speaker 8: this new space race and prioritize like manned moon missions,
Speaker 8: all while cutting at least fifty percent all NASA science
Speaker 8: missions and just like absolutely crippling NASA's capacity to actually
Speaker 8: develop technology. Now, Duffy said at a press conference and
Speaker 8: end seeing this new directive on Tuesday, quote, we are
Speaker 8: in a race to the moon, a race with China
Speaker 8: to the moon, and to have a base on the moon,
Speaker 8: we need energy. Unquote is that fucking nineteen fifty talk?
Speaker 8: What are you talking about? That is the time when
Speaker 8: the greatness happened Garson.
Speaker 2: They want to go back to that.
Speaker 10: The NASA contractor I spoke with said, quote, NASA is
Speaker 10: already down at least twenty percent of its workforce and
Speaker 10: behind on its previously announced to lunar missions and objectives
Speaker 10: see the Lunar Gateway and Artemis three. I just don't
Speaker 10: immediately see a world where NASA does this successfully, even
Speaker 10: if they go the route of contracting it out. If
Speaker 10: the success. Specifically, the lack thereof of the Commercial Lunar
Speaker 10: Payload Services Program and the Commercial LEEO Destinations program has
Speaker 10: any indication for how this will go. It will be
Speaker 10: mirrored in failure and many years behind schedule at best
Speaker 10: un quote. This new NASA directive from Shan Daffey calls
Speaker 10: for a Fission Surface Power Program Executive to be named
Speaker 10: by the end of August, who will then yes, yes, impleant,
Speaker 10: and oversee the project while reporting directly to the NASA Administrator.
Speaker 10: The directive reads quote. Since March twenty twenty four, China
Speaker 10: and Russia have announced on at least three occasions a
Speaker 10: joint effort to place a reactor on the Moon by
Speaker 10: the mid twenty thirties. The first country to do so
Speaker 10: could potentially declare a keep out zone, which would significantly
Speaker 10: inhibit the United States from establishing a planned Artemis presence
Speaker 10: if not their first unquote. And this is I think
Speaker 10: a big part of why Duffy is wanting to do this,
Speaker 10: and the contractor I spoke to you said quote, if
Speaker 10: they're able to extend some quote unquote exclusion zone around
Speaker 10: a reactor on the surface where other countries aren't allowed
Speaker 10: to land. It's not difficult to imagine that they may
Speaker 10: try to use this to de facto claim areas of
Speaker 10: the Moon for the United States.
Speaker 2: Unquote.
Speaker 4: Hell yeah, we have colonized the Moon.
Speaker 10: And there is even more troubling use cases. Part of
Speaker 10: the directive reads that this would quote encourage do will
Speaker 10: use civil and defense operational architectures, Yes, for deployed fission
Speaker 10: surface power systems in coordination with interagency partners Moon base unquote.
Speaker 10: Space Force finally getting its moment in the sun on
Speaker 10: the Moon.
Speaker 2: I guess this really is just like.
Speaker 8: The pure unspeakable tragedy is unspeakable first version of colonialism,
Speaker 8: because it's like the Moon is the one place that
Speaker 8: is actually tyrannualists and there's nothing there and there's nothing
Speaker 8: to gain from being there. There's just nothing. But you know,
Speaker 8: we got to colonize it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but the sun ever sets on the American Empire
Speaker 4: if you've got the Moon on it as well, so
Speaker 4: you got that going for you.
Speaker 8: It's just just it's just pure drive of colonialism detached
Speaker 8: from its actual like material motives.
Speaker 4: Having failed to gain Greenland, we will pivot and take
Speaker 4: the Moon instead.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, the moon and Greenland are both
Speaker 2: similar habitable territories, so.
Speaker 4: It's true, but you can't do backflips in Greenland.
Speaker 8: So like, this is the plant of despicable meat. Like
Speaker 8: that's what we're doing here, We're doing the plaut of
Speaker 8: despicable me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, many science fiction movies have predicted this, Please send
Speaker 4: them all to us.
Speaker 2: Yes, as was noted by Robert Heinlend, the moon is
Speaker 2: indeed a harsh mistress. Wait, what is that I hear?
Speaker 2: Is that the tariff song?
Speaker 8: Rocky jazz, rocky jazz. Sorry, rocky jazz, rocky.
Speaker 2: Jazz, ah god, every time, every time, it's good.
Speaker 8: Let's talk tariff tariffs. There's so many of them. The
Speaker 8: tariffs have gone into effect. So all right, we're gonna
Speaker 8: do a full episode about this on Monday, because there
Speaker 8: is so much tariff bullshit that it quite for needs
Speaker 8: its own actual episode in which we're going to be
Speaker 8: talking about shit like, for example, the US has maybe
Speaker 8: on accident, maybe on purpose, recognized the Junta meen Maar
Speaker 8: is the legitimate government to the tariff stuff. We're talking
Speaker 8: about that on Monday because we don't have time for
Speaker 8: that shit. What we instead have time for is the
Speaker 8: just massive array of tariffs on a list of countries
Speaker 8: so long that we just genuinely can't read them all. Okay,
Speaker 8: this is a very very confusing raft of tariffs. In
Speaker 8: a lot of ways, it's simpler than the other ones.
Speaker 8: But okay, so so Persian, And if the US runs
Speaker 8: a trade deficit with you and you're not also in
Speaker 8: one of the other special categories where we have imposed
Speaker 8: a really high tariff on you, it's like fifteen percent.
Speaker 8: If we have a trade surplus with the country we
Speaker 8: imposed a ten percent tariff. This doesn't make any sense, sure, Okay.
Speaker 8: So it's like in terms of the state of motives
Speaker 8: of the tariffs, it doesn't make any sense except in
Speaker 8: terms of like raising money, which these raised very little
Speaker 8: actual money run relative to like the amount of money
Speaker 8: the US spends.
Speaker 9: I mean.
Speaker 10: Right wing commentators have stated that the end goal of
Speaker 10: this massive tariff program is to abolish income tax because
Speaker 10: we can fund the government through TIFFs.
Speaker 4: Actually great, yeah, and I just know that, No, you
Speaker 4: can't like this, No, this is just yeah. At the
Speaker 4: same time as said, driving the deficit into the fucking sky.
Speaker 8: Like yeah, And we've talked about the sort of riffs
Speaker 8: that this has caused with like the sort of true
Speaker 8: believer deficit hawks versus these just completely unhinged fund the
Speaker 8: government with tariff weirdos. But Comma, there have been a
Speaker 8: huge number of countries that now we have fifteen percent
Speaker 8: tariffs on We've also gotten a formal announcement of the
Speaker 8: one hundred percent tariffs on semiconductors unless you invest do
Speaker 8: some kind of certificant investment in the US. It's deeply
Speaker 8: unclear what the fuck that means. Apple hasn't pledged to
Speaker 8: invest one hundred billion dollars in the US. There's this
Speaker 8: very very weird thing on the right where like they
Speaker 8: just they think that you can make iPhones here. You can't.
Speaker 8: You just simply cannot. We you don't have the labor force,
Speaker 8: you don't have the technology. Yeah, but Tim Cook did
Speaker 8: just bribe Trump with a.
Speaker 4: Nice plate golden iPhone, big ing get to gold.
Speaker 2: So I thought it was a gold iPhone. There was
Speaker 2: some glass involved.
Speaker 10: As well, No, it was it was it was a
Speaker 10: plate that was on like a gold like brick base.
Speaker 2: I love that. Yeah, that's the way we're doing now
Speaker 2: beside it under the radar.
Speaker 5: Cool.
Speaker 10: You have to bribe the Supreme ruler by giving gifts
Speaker 10: of gold to grand good favor o.
Speaker 5: God it is.
Speaker 4: It's like fucking smoke whatever, Like it has this pile
Speaker 4: of gold that he's going to be sitting on. It's
Speaker 4: going to be Scrooge mcducking in that ship by the
Speaker 4: end of four years.
Speaker 8: Oh, don't get us started on darktails.
Speaker 4: Oh no, no, no, no, Yeah, that'll really inflate the
Speaker 4: length of this episode. That's what they call a layup
Speaker 4: in nine sports ball. Yeah, what's the tear us up too?
Speaker 8: They're calling me the fucking webbin Yabo, fucking a fucking
Speaker 8: inflation shop blocking. Fuck this we're talking about. We're talking
Speaker 8: about hip infrastructure. People have been trying to develop like
Speaker 8: the infrastructure developed ships for a long time.
Speaker 10: Now.
Speaker 8: The Biden administration did this. The Chinese government isn't boring
Speaker 8: a bunch of money into it. And it's basically impossible
Speaker 8: to actually develop domestic hip infrastructure other than the kinds
Speaker 8: of infrastructure that the US already has, because the really
Speaker 8: short version of it is that it's not just a
Speaker 8: technological problem, and it is it's really hard to actually
Speaker 8: felt the technology. This is why almost all of the
Speaker 8: direct productions off the're trying to replicate basically just happens
Speaker 8: in Taiwan. It's not just a problem of the technology
Speaker 8: is really hard. It's a problem of the machines to
Speaker 8: make the machines that you need to make. These things
Speaker 8: exist in like one place in the world, in Switzerland, right,
Speaker 8: So in order to actually scale up production of this
Speaker 8: would just in theory, what these one hundred percent imported
Speaker 8: semi conductor tariffs are supposed to do. Right, You have
Speaker 8: to go up three layers of the supply chain. You
Speaker 8: have to make the machines to make the machines that
Speaker 8: make the machines that make the semi conductors. Right, That's
Speaker 8: like the simplest way to explain it.
Speaker 5: We don't.
Speaker 8: We can't fucking do that, like a we could throw
Speaker 8: a fucking hundred billion dollars, that's what they would do. Shit, Right,
Speaker 8: So they're chasing just a ghost. But you know, our
Speaker 8: entire sort of like trade policy is just being run
Speaker 8: by the just weird, fascist, miasmic phantoms of all of
Speaker 8: these trade policy people. Now, it's also worth noting that
Speaker 8: there's been you know, another I guess kind of tariff
Speaker 8: that's been enacted other than hilariously the countries that tried
Speaker 8: to negotiate with Trump got worse rates than the ones
Speaker 8: who just waited until the imposted fifteen percent rate.
Speaker 4: Generally that's good, it's funny.
Speaker 5: But also so.
Speaker 8: Trump has been threatening anyone who buys oil from Russia,
Speaker 8: and also I think then is weyla although it's been
Speaker 8: less for US on that with fifty percent tariffs. Right
Speaker 8: now he's threatening India with fifty percent tariffs because India
Speaker 8: has been buying oil from Russia that India's tariffs are
Speaker 8: currently a twenty five percent. He has also just straight
Speaker 8: up imposed to fifty percent tariff on Brazil for refusing
Speaker 8: to release Bolsonaro. There's been some updates on that front
Speaker 8: where Lula is just straight up refusing to do direct
Speaker 8: talks at the US. Lula had an exclusive interview with
Speaker 8: Reuters where he said, quote, we had already pardoned the
Speaker 8: US interventions in the nineteen sixty four coup, said Lula,
Speaker 8: who got his political stri blah blah. Listen, listen to
Speaker 8: the Lula episodes we did, They're very good. More more
Speaker 8: Lula quote, but this is now not a small intervention.
Speaker 8: It's the president of the United States thinking he can
Speaker 8: dictate rules for a sovereign country like Brazil, it's unacceptable.
Speaker 8: It's worth noting that this is actually a pretty massive
Speaker 8: change for like Lula specifically relations with the US. Lula
Speaker 8: actually had very good relations with George Bush. But he
Speaker 8: is writing a massive tide of Brazilian anti American nationalists,
Speaker 8: and he's attempting to spread this tide elsewhere.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 8: He's been specifically saying that he's calling on organized resistance
Speaker 8: from particularly India and China. But the rest of bricks,
Speaker 8: which is a well, okay, bricks was originally a category
Speaker 8: of assets that's now kind of a vaguely a political alliance.
Speaker 8: Who's made members are Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
Speaker 8: It's unclear if this will happen. I kind of I
Speaker 8: don't know, but Lula is the first person really really
Speaker 8: seriously trying to organize resistance to this outside of the EU.
Speaker 8: The EU's also wonder a thread of thirty percent tariffs
Speaker 8: if they don't just sort of like see the Trump's demands.
Speaker 8: But like you know, again, India also negotiated a deal
Speaker 8: with the US and then immediately got their tariffs, like
Speaker 8: he's now being threatened with eighty percent tariffs, so you
Speaker 8: can't negotiate with him to escape this. So I don't know, Lula,
Speaker 8: maybe this is the beginning of sort of organized, like
Speaker 8: large scale organized terriff resistance to the US being framed
Speaker 8: in this sort of like collective struggle versus the US thing.
Speaker 8: That's an interesting political trend that will be following as
Speaker 8: all of this continues. Okay, and the rest of the
Speaker 8: unhinged amount of tariff news we're going to be covering Monday.
Speaker 8: I will make a brief note that the Yale Budget
Speaker 8: Lab is estimating like like a twenty four hundred dollars
Speaker 8: increase for the average family just in terms of like
Speaker 8: inflation prices for this, especially on things like clothing. They
Speaker 8: are specifically, I think there's a Ceneta articleipus. They're specifically
Speaker 8: talking about running shorts and shoes and anything any goods
Speaker 8: from South Asia massively increasing in price at talking thirty
Speaker 8: percent increases very quickly. So yeah, now, obviously all of
Speaker 8: this news is I don't know, the stock market has
Speaker 8: kind of like accustomed itself to tariff news. Yeah, but COMA,
Speaker 8: we've got a really really bad job support last month, and.
Speaker 10: Well actually, well well I don't know if that's true.
Speaker 10: I think the jobs report could be completely faked. Yeah,
Speaker 10: who can say, Jesus, if the president says it, it
Speaker 10: has to be true. It's a Biden did you have
Speaker 10: a Biden appointee? All crazy crazy.
Speaker 8: The auto pen is issued to his job's report. So yeah, Trump,
Speaker 8: Trump has fired the Commission of the Bureau of Labor
Speaker 8: Statistics for releasing this report. We are just we are
Speaker 8: just truly fully into the deep end of shit now,
Speaker 8: Like the.
Speaker 10: Report just showed that we didn't have very positive job grouths,
Speaker 10: and like anyone who's trying to get a job right
Speaker 10: now can confirm that.
Speaker 8: It's like a nightmare. Yeah, and yeah, we're just like
Speaker 8: we're just like fully going to be in Like, you know,
Speaker 8: it's unclear exactly how fast American data collection capacity is
Speaker 8: going to degrade. It is worth noting this is the
Speaker 8: thing that kind of happens at the end of dictatorships
Speaker 8: when they really start going to shit, is that they
Speaker 8: lose the ability to trust their artistical apparatus.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean, like anything that happens that Trump just
Speaker 10: doesn't like, you can claim it's fake and rigged.
Speaker 8: Whether that's losing an election.
Speaker 10: Whether that's his good, his good close personal friend Jeffrey Epstein,
Speaker 10: or if that's a Bureau of Labor Statistics job report,
Speaker 10: it's all rigged. It's all a hope.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 8: But to tie this back to Lula for a second,
Speaker 8: I think it's actually really a really interesting historical parallel
Speaker 8: that's worth noting that Lula's rise to political prominence came
Speaker 8: off of a series of shrikes that was held because
Speaker 8: because a bunch of economists that were working with the
Speaker 8: inside the Brazilian labor unions figured out the military dictatorship
Speaker 8: of Brazil had been faking their inflation numbers, and like,
Speaker 8: this is one of the things that caused the end
Speaker 8: of the dictatorship. So you know, you can only lie
Speaker 8: about the inflation rate for so long before like someone
Speaker 8: goes like, hey, you've been lying about this the whole time,
Speaker 8: and I don't know this has this has brought down
Speaker 8: military katters just before, and that's why we have to
Speaker 8: hold archive of our own accountable for faking those inflation numbers.
Speaker 2: I agree with you entirely, Garrison.
Speaker 8: I don't get paid enough for this. He's lost me
Speaker 8: not following and yeah, that has been terriff talk.
Speaker 4: You know what will continue to be of available to
Speaker 4: our listeners at an excellent price despite tariffs, the products
Speaker 4: and services that support this podcast. That's absolutely correct, Garrison,
Speaker 4: well done. All right, we're back, so bad And also
Speaker 4: back is the United Kingdom, where a poll shows that
Speaker 4: more than half of Britain's think there are more migrants
Speaker 4: in the UK illegally than legally. This isn't true, no,
Speaker 4: but feelings matter way more than facts. Failings matter, yes
Speaker 4: they do. The actual data, even at the highest estimate
Speaker 4: of undocumented people, shows that it's around ten times more
Speaker 4: foreign people who are in the UK with documents. This
Speaker 4: is indicative of a broader issue, right that the discussions
Speaker 4: we're having around immigration are nearly all based on massive
Speaker 4: amounts of misinformy. Misinformation by a mission was extremely common
Speaker 4: in legacy media until very recently, right like, there was
Speaker 4: simply not people covering immigration in a serious fashion. Even
Speaker 4: in the Biden administration, the reporting that was done was atrocious.
Speaker 4: This comes as the Labor government's disapproval rating in the
Speaker 4: UK hit sixty seven percent in a yugo of pol
Speaker 4: which I think is very indicative. What Labor did right
Speaker 4: was try to adopt right wing culture war positions to
Speaker 4: get people to vote for them, and it does not work,
Speaker 4: and it is not working for them. You can look
Speaker 4: at their policies towards trans people, right, they're atrocious, and
Speaker 4: it's not buying them to favor they wanted to moving
Speaker 4: back to the United States. Yon sou Go, she's called
Speaker 4: Sue by her friends. It's been released by Ice after
Speaker 4: being detained at a routine hearing. A twenty year old
Speaker 4: young woman as a Korean national South Korean evidently right,
Speaker 4: and the daughter of a priest. So she's here on
Speaker 4: a visa as a dependent of a religious worker. There
Speaker 4: are religious worker visas, and she's here as a dependent.
Speaker 4: She is I believe in the process of transitioning to
Speaker 4: a student visa. She had the hearing, her case wasn't
Speaker 4: dismissed or evoked. She had another hearing set for October.
Speaker 4: I claim that she overstayed her visa. Her lawyer says,
Speaker 4: I claim it's not true. I'm particularly interested in this
Speaker 4: case because of the intervention of the diocese, the Episcopalian
Speaker 4: Diocese of New York, and so it was the Episcopalian
Speaker 4: Diocese New York's legal team who fought for her release.
Speaker 4: She was very quickly moved to Louisiana. We know that
Speaker 4: ICE likes so do this right. It likes to move
Speaker 4: people to places where it feels like it has a
Speaker 4: favorable circuit court. The dioces of legal team was able
Speaker 4: to secure her release, but they are still working on
Speaker 4: the rease of a fifty nine year old ProView and
Speaker 4: asylum seeker who has been detained after having her court
Speaker 4: date moved up. So in her case, they said, hey,
Speaker 4: we've got a hearing that's opened up. When don't you
Speaker 4: come in on Thursday and then detained her, which is
Speaker 4: just reprehensible. It is really good. I think that these
Speaker 4: big religious organizations are getting involved directly in these cases,
Speaker 4: that they are taking on responsibility, that they're using their
Speaker 4: pulpits as a place to oppose this. I think that's good.
Speaker 4: I think, regardless of your stance, aren't organized religion, you
Speaker 4: should be happy about that. These are institutions that have
Speaker 4: power in this country. Talking of institutions that have power,
Speaker 4: detainees in Florida's Alligator Alcatraz are being denied their right
Speaker 4: to file court documents because federal courts are claiming they're
Speaker 4: not under federal jurisdiction. State courts are claiming they're not
Speaker 4: under state jurisdiction, which is fairly reasonable given that they
Speaker 4: have not been charged, whether or accused of, in many cases,
Speaker 4: any crimes in the state of Florida. Right then, they're
Speaker 4: not being held They were not detained by well, sometimes
Speaker 4: they were detained by Florida law enforcement, I guess, but
Speaker 4: only in their capacity to enforce federal immigrates law. Yes,
Speaker 4: with the special deputized nawty, Yes, it's yeah, it's deputies,
Speaker 4: which we're about to talk about. There have been some
Speaker 4: very funny outcomes of that. This isn't it like I've
Speaker 4: seen it report as a loophole. It's not a loophole.
Speaker 4: It's extremely fucking clear that they were detained by the
Speaker 4: federal government for immigration reasons, and they have every right
Speaker 4: to representation in immigration court right that this is not
Speaker 4: a loophole. They're just denying people their rights, and I
Speaker 4: think reporting it as a loophole is entirely ridiculous. A
Speaker 4: judge has ordered a document showing who is contracted by
Speaker 4: whom at the facility be produced as part of a
Speaker 4: civil rights lawsuit. So what that will do would obviously
Speaker 4: document in the federal government's.
Speaker 2: Paying some of this.
Speaker 4: I know Rick DeSantis had wanted to use FEMA money
Speaker 4: for some of this breaking news. So Federal Judge Kathleen
Speaker 4: Williams has ordered the construction new construction holt. They won't
Speaker 4: be allowed to do any new filling, paving, or infrastructre
Speaker 4: building for fourteen days temporary pause. They can still continue
Speaker 4: to hold people right like. This is not going to
Speaker 4: stop those people being denied their rights, which is what
Speaker 4: sort of stake here. So we talked a little bit
Speaker 4: about those Florida deputies right who have been I guess
Speaker 4: secondid to ICE orgs. They've been crossworn to do ICE work.
Speaker 4: ICE is recruiting very heavily right now. I'm offering fifty
Speaker 4: thousand dollars sign on bonuses. It has reduced the minimum
Speaker 4: age and it seems to have no maximum age cap.
Speaker 4: From what I can tell, this thing. Border Patrol has
Speaker 4: been issuing all kinds of waivers for years, right for
Speaker 4: all kinds of things that it's supposed to have as
Speaker 4: like standard for its recruiting. So it isn't particularly new.
Speaker 4: ICE has been known for a while as kind of
Speaker 4: if you want to be a FED and go around
Speaker 4: and carry a gun, and you can't get hired to
Speaker 4: do gun stuff for the FED. To other agencies, ICE
Speaker 4: is probably the place you're going to end up, right,
Speaker 4: their standards are lower than other agencies.
Speaker 10: And now they're like specifically selecting for the most like
Speaker 10: online unhinged right wing free to join their agency as
Speaker 10: like a national police force. Yes, and that's like what
Speaker 10: they're doing in their messaging online. And also some news
Speaker 10: this week Dean Kane has has joined I. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 10: it's most likely in like a promotional capacity, but still
Speaker 10: worth noting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you might get chased by middle aged superman. So
Speaker 4: let's talk about what I was doing to recruiter festival.
Speaker 4: It is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on big trucks.
Speaker 4: We know Donald Trump himself, it's a found of big trucks,
Speaker 4: many pictures of him enjoying big trucks. Over the years,
Speaker 4: ICE has spent one hundred and ninety six thousand dollars
Speaker 4: on Ford raptors for recruiting purposes. The raptor, for those
Speaker 4: not familiar, is like a tricked out F one fifty.
Speaker 4: They were issuing raptors to field agents for a while.
Speaker 4: They're not the best vehicles. Like, I've had plenty of
Speaker 4: agents complain about the raptism.
Speaker 2: Yeah they're not yeah, yeah know.
Speaker 4: And the BP had a special lowest possible trim of
Speaker 4: the raptor that like, they're popular now because people will
Speaker 4: buy them used as government surplus and make them good.
Speaker 4: But they yeah, the raptors they had didn't work too well.
Speaker 4: They also bought a GMC Yukon for one hundred and
Speaker 4: one thousand dollars, which is a very expensive GMC Yukon.
Speaker 4: I have also noted that ICE is recruiting from the
Speaker 4: police who have been cross sworn into doing ICE enforcement.
Speaker 4: This has resulted in some very funny beefs between agencies
Speaker 4: including can I share this video? Can I screenshare?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's that's what's the video.
Speaker 12: And then what has happened is ICE has sent emails
Speaker 12: to I don't know how many agencies by no, several agencies.
Speaker 12: I've talked to several sheriffs that their debuts have received
Speaker 12: these this request and basically it's a recruiting tactic. It's hey,
Speaker 12: we got your email, now you got certified, And there's
Speaker 12: something like dear colleague, you showed an interest in this
Speaker 12: and that, and we won't let you know that we
Speaker 12: are offering a fifty thousand dollars bonus paid ten thousand
Speaker 12: dollars at a time, and it.
Speaker 5: Is for five years. Obviously, man, is that not you know?
Speaker 7: Biden handed feeds you.
Speaker 12: We we went through all of that, took our time,
Speaker 12: utilizing our local resource, not ours yet.
Speaker 5: But local resources. And then they try to recruit you right.
Speaker 12: Out for Monday, using the very emails that we give you.
Speaker 8: Finally they've found something bad.
Speaker 4: Ice is done.
Speaker 8: Yeah, this is a new low even for Ice.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Sheriff Chip simmons that calling Ice out for that
Speaker 4: poor form.
Speaker 10: Sheriff Chip finally found something that shows the true depraperty,
Speaker 10: a compromised heart of Ice.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Where will they stop?
Speaker 4: Well, let's talk about where they will stop or at
Speaker 4: least start spending. Ice has been spending some money this week.
Speaker 4: Some of this, I think, like some of the sort
Speaker 4: of reporting on IFC isn't hugely responsible. So like I
Speaker 4: as to sign a sole source contract with B two
Speaker 4: Technologies for example, for quote licenses for the inmate identification
Speaker 4: A recognition system and the mobile offender Recognition Information System.
Speaker 4: They call these IRIS and MORRIS based on their initials. Right,
Speaker 4: these are for ers, so that's their enforcement and removal
Speaker 4: operations brands BO two pitches. IRIS is being able to
Speaker 4: identify people with no physical contact based on the tears
Speaker 4: in their IRIS. This technology has been used by police
Speaker 4: for a while, so you'll notice it was called the
Speaker 4: inmate identification so that the way they would obtain these
Speaker 4: Irish scans would be scanning people who were detained. CBP
Speaker 4: will also have IRIS scans so well. Uscis right. This
Speaker 4: is one of the pieces of biometric data that's sometimes
Speaker 4: collected from migrants as part of their process and moving
Speaker 4: into the United States and then getting their documents, etc.
Speaker 4: What MORRIS will do is allow them to search a
Speaker 4: registry of previous offenders. In twenty twenty four, Niagara County
Speaker 4: Sheriff's Office were the first sheriff's office to add IRIS
Speaker 4: to their vehicles. But a feeling reported as this is
Speaker 4: as a CBP officer or ice officers are going to
Speaker 4: be scanning people's arises with their phones. I don't see
Speaker 4: any evidence of that technology existing either in the contract
Speaker 4: that the government has or on the website for the
Speaker 4: company that makes it. And guessing what this will do
Speaker 4: is if they have somebody who for instance, has previously
Speaker 4: been detained, somebody who has done time and come out,
Speaker 4: then they will users to like as a web of
Speaker 4: identifying them right when after they've detained them, before they
Speaker 4: take them to wherever. The big issue here, right, is
Speaker 4: that B two owns this database of scants. So this
Speaker 4: database includes Morris right, which is previous people who have
Speaker 4: previous offenders. They have a sex offender registry within it.
Speaker 4: They also have databases of seniors who are at risk
Speaker 4: for going missing, so that I think there's people with
Speaker 4: dementia that people can voluntarily sign up to. And they
Speaker 4: have a data of missing children as well. They are
Speaker 4: two interesting company. They also they offer a bunch of
Speaker 4: services for detention companies. They previously partnered with the support
Speaker 4: our Sheriff's Foundation to provide lower cost prescriptions to sheriffs
Speaker 4: and deputies. They're pretty embedded in this law enforcement world.
Speaker 4: Other contracts they saw for ice new tech solutions for
Speaker 4: fingerprint scanners. Again, fingerprint information is routinely taken from migrants
Speaker 4: and many one people getting green cards, people getting visas,
Speaker 4: people getting citizenship. Yes, yeah, anyone who has in any
Speaker 4: capacity and really engaged with uscis like all those categories
Speaker 4: you mentioned, Garrison will have already done this. They did
Speaker 4: also purchase gray Key, which is more concerning, which is
Speaker 4: for breaking into cell phones locked cell phones. Yes, it's
Speaker 4: trying to get around the lock on your cell phone.
Speaker 4: I've written about grey Key before for Input magazine. Generally,
Speaker 4: the way they do this is that they try and
Speaker 4: make a copy of the cell phone and work on
Speaker 4: a copy so they don't get locked out of your
Speaker 4: cell phone. But grey Key is an extremely various piece
Speaker 4: of technology for breaking into people's phones which you otherwise
Speaker 4: wouldn't be able to access. So yeah, that is that
Speaker 4: is what I have for ices spending spree this week.
Speaker 10: For our last story I related to also talk about technology,
Speaker 10: but technology in the news some some AI incidents that
Speaker 10: have broken into people's news news gathering process. Former CNN
Speaker 10: anchor Chris Clomo has shared a fake AI video of
Speaker 10: AOC giving a speech in Congress calling out the Sydney
Speaker 10: Sweety American Eagle ad as racist.
Speaker 2: Damn it, I got to see this. Why does it
Speaker 2: have to all be so stupid?
Speaker 13: I was tweeting today and saw a clip of AOC
Speaker 13: saying that Sydney sweeneyad was racist, and so I replied
Speaker 13: to it, and I said, why do you care about
Speaker 13: this and ignore what matters most?
Speaker 5: Why in all the times that you've.
Speaker 13: Called on Israel to stop, why have you never told
Speaker 13: Hamas to stop, told Moss to surrender? Why would you
Speaker 13: ignore the Saint Louis attack on that Jewish guy who
Speaker 13: had his car bomb. AOC tweeted back and said, dude,
Speaker 13: that's a deep fake that Sidney tweety.
Speaker 8: You suck in so many words, and she was right,
Speaker 8: they got me.
Speaker 2: She was right, I suck. He has been owned. That's
Speaker 2: not bad, that's pretty good. That's funny.
Speaker 8: I chose to I chose to cut off the click there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's the right place for it to go.
Speaker 10: On this AI video of AOC. It is clearly like
Speaker 10: like in Boston into the video himself. This is an
Speaker 10: AI video from from chat GPT memes plus AI art
Speaker 10: on Instagram.
Speaker 4: Fucking this, this guy is being elevated as a fucking journalist.
Speaker 4: Jesus wept.
Speaker 10: He later said on on Newstation on his show They
Speaker 10: Got Me AI. It was really good and it did
Speaker 10: seem like something she would say, I'm gonna now play
Speaker 10: yeah video in question to see if you think this
Speaker 10: is something that AOC would say.
Speaker 14: Sidney Sweeney looks like an Aryan goddess and the American
Speaker 14: Eagle Jean's campaign is nazipaganda. I mean fuck watching that
Speaker 14: sultry little temptress squeeze into a Canadian Technice three silent
Speaker 14: with her bouncy little fun bags.
Speaker 8: Staring at you. Oh my god, I don't know no more,
Speaker 8: no more. In the episode they.
Speaker 2: Got me, Oh man, what a one of our greatest journalists.
Speaker 2: You know, AI really has to be. You know, we've
Speaker 2: hit a g I if it can, it can crack
Speaker 2: a mind as keen as chrism.
Speaker 8: It was really good and it did seem like something
Speaker 8: she would say.
Speaker 15: Good, even how her voice sounds unbelievable, unbelievable, some one
Speaker 15: of the most union things I've I've ever seen.
Speaker 4: To watch that and then wonder why she hasn't commented
Speaker 4: on hermus in the same breath truating indication of where
Speaker 4: our country's hat.
Speaker 10: That AI video is eighty seconds long. It gets so
Speaker 10: much crazier, but we don't need to say anymore. The
Speaker 10: other incident of AI in the News. Former CNN chief
Speaker 10: White It's correspondent Jim Acosta interviewed an AI avatar impersonating
Speaker 10: a school shooting victim.
Speaker 4: Oh noess one of those things that like every town
Speaker 4: or someone was doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yes, I caught this when it happened. Here's
Speaker 2: a video.
Speaker 5: I would like to know what your solution would be
Speaker 5: for gun violence.
Speaker 7: Great question.
Speaker 9: I believe in a mix of stronger gun control laws,
Speaker 9: mental health support.
Speaker 5: And community engagement.
Speaker 2: We need to create safe spaces for conversations and connections,
Speaker 2: making sure everyone feels seen and heard.
Speaker 8: It's about building a.
Speaker 5: Culture of kindness and understanding.
Speaker 2: What do you think about that.
Speaker 5: I think that's a great idea, Joaquin.
Speaker 2: That's not even an answer. That's not an answer.
Speaker 4: This is one of the good things I've ever seen,
Speaker 4: create a culture of kindness and understanding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that'll fix it. Thanks.
Speaker 8: Incredible humanity.
Speaker 2: Not a person that's someone's child.
Speaker 10: That's not someone's child, all right, Jim Acosta, routt is
Speaker 10: just a generic Well, no, it's it's it's not a person.
Speaker 10: This isn't a humanous Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but they've attempted to reanimate through cringeji someone's kid
Speaker 4: and they look like a character and it's a small world.
Speaker 10: Yes, the parents are involved in this process. Jim Acosta
Speaker 10: wrote on Blue Sky at four pm, I'll have a
Speaker 10: one of a kind interview with Hakeem Oliver. He died
Speaker 10: in the Parkland school shooting, but his parents have created
Speaker 10: an AI version of their son for a powerful message
Speaker 10: on gun violence. Unquote, you did not interview Lachem Oliver.
Speaker 10: That's that's not that's not him. You did not interview
Speaker 10: that person.
Speaker 8: No, you did not.
Speaker 2: You didn't interview anybody.
Speaker 10: You have helped to spread a fake puppet of someone
Speaker 10: without their knowledge and consent, just as just as gross
Speaker 10: is doing it for like movie actors right who have
Speaker 10: who have died. This is and you know, more more
Speaker 10: gross actually actually like significantly more gross.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it didn't even suggest like it it wasn't even
Speaker 2: like willing to be like ban AR fifteen's or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like there was no nothing suggested here, Like I can't
Speaker 2: believe how milk toast for a dead person who was
Speaker 2: killed by an AR fifteen. It wasn't even willingness. It
Speaker 2: was just like vaguely new gun control and also a
Speaker 2: culture of kindness. But like can't even be specific.
Speaker 10: This ghoul that you've made, You're putting fake words in
Speaker 10: someone else's like death mask mouth. It's yes, it's so,
Speaker 10: it's so unethical, Like I don't even know what to say.
Speaker 10: It doesn't work at CNN anymore. But my god, Like
Speaker 10: this is not journalism in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 4: No, I don't want to like punch down on the
Speaker 4: and I don't understand, Like I know parents who have
Speaker 4: lost children right through my work. I've talked to lots
Speaker 4: of them what I'd like to and I understand the
Speaker 4: desire to get your kid back in some form and
Speaker 4: if sure, whoever the fuck came to them and said,
Speaker 4: we're going to make an AI of your child so
Speaker 4: it can argue with journalists about gun control?
Speaker 2: Is a fucking ghoul perival.
Speaker 10: No, the the fault here is on the people promoting
Speaker 10: technology and in effect that's what Jim Accosta is doing
Speaker 10: here as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally no, because the journalist is totally irresponsible.
Speaker 8: And profiting off of it.
Speaker 2: It's so gross.
Speaker 10: So anyway, that was our AI news to close the episode. Sorry,
Speaker 10: we couldn't end on the aoc ad. Instead had to
Speaker 10: end on a bit of a more more sour.
Speaker 4: Note, Yeah, I generally want to know where that aoc
Speaker 4: ad goes. I'm gonna watch it.
Speaker 10: Oh, I'll send it to you, James. Yeah, okay, we
Speaker 10: reported the news.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess we reported the news.
Speaker 10: Hey.
Speaker 2: We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
Speaker 2: now until the heat death of the Universe.
Speaker 7: It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 6: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 6: coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 6: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 10: You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here,
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Speaker 7: Thanks for listening.