WEBVTT - It Could Happen Here Weekly 55 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:02.680 Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let 0:00:02.720 --> 0:00:06.320 you know this is a compiletion episode. So every episode 0:00:06.480 --> 0:00:09.600 of the week that just happened is here in one 0:00:09.680 --> 0:00:13.440 convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to 0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:15.960 listen to in a long stretch if you want. If 0:00:16.000 --> 0:00:17.919 you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:20.119 there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you 0:00:20.160 --> 0:00:29.680 can make your own decisions. It's sports. We're doing touchdown 0:00:30.880 --> 0:00:38.880 five yard penalty that the Angels have become the Mariners, 0:00:37.680 --> 0:00:45.320 a body checking. Uh yep, this is the sports episode. 0:00:45.440 --> 0:00:50.320 Welcome to It could happen here your favorite sportscast. I'm 0:00:50.400 --> 0:00:52.720 not the host of this episode, but I'm talking for 0:00:52.760 --> 0:00:57.200 some reason. Uh, James and Chris, why are we talking 0:00:57.240 --> 0:01:02.200 about sports? To distract us from the crumbling of society 0:01:02.200 --> 0:01:06.600 around us, but more specifically to talk about how sports 0:01:06.640 --> 0:01:12.640 I used to laund other reputations of dictatorial regimes. And 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:16.440 I know Chris has got some interesting stuff on Balsonaro's 0:01:16.480 --> 0:01:19.680 Brazil and sports. This is this is this has before that? Sorry, yeah, 0:01:19.680 --> 0:01:21.360 I should measure this. This is okay, like this is 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:25.360 this is this is this is some wonderful pt era 0:01:25.360 --> 0:01:30.880 of vintage crimes. Oh good stuff. Okay, I love a 0:01:30.920 --> 0:01:33.520 Brazilian crime, no matter what the vintage. So I'm excited 0:01:33.560 --> 0:01:39.680 to learn about how the NFL legitimizes the military police 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:43.319 state anyway. Um ye. And it's not even football, is it. 0:01:43.440 --> 0:01:48.120 So multiple things they're doing wrong. I want to talk 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:50.560 first about like the original incidence of what we're going 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:53.200 to call sports washing, because everyone else calls it sports 0:01:53.200 --> 0:01:57.200 washing too, So it's like using these big global mega 0:01:57.280 --> 0:02:00.360 events to launder the reputation of a pretty reste of 0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:03.680 all regime. So the o g instance of this is 0:02:03.880 --> 0:02:07.120 the nineteen thirty six Olympics, which were held in Berlin. 0:02:07.560 --> 0:02:09.800 You'll probably familiar with who was in charge in Berlin. 0:02:12.240 --> 0:02:15.880 It was the Nazis. That's a spoiler, and the Anazis 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:17.919 were actually given the Olympics. The Olympics were given to 0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:21.520 Biby Germany, which was considerably less ship than the Nazis, 0:02:21.560 --> 0:02:23.680 but the Nazis took them on and they're really round 0:02:23.680 --> 0:02:26.880 with them. And lots of the symbology that we associate 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:29.919 with the Olympics today, that the raising of flags during 0:02:30.040 --> 0:02:33.040 the medal ceremony, the playing of national anthems. The parade 0:02:33.040 --> 0:02:37.360 of flags are, the opening ceremony, the torch relay. The 0:02:37.360 --> 0:02:41.359 torch relay goes from o g Olympia in Greece to 0:02:41.520 --> 0:02:44.440 wherever the Olympics are being held. It's it's this big 0:02:44.440 --> 0:02:47.560 ceremonial thing, right, that all of these things were created 0:02:47.760 --> 0:02:50.160 by its guy called Carl D. M who was a Nazi, 0:02:50.560 --> 0:02:56.280 to draw stronger links between the Nazi Party and the 0:02:56.320 --> 0:02:59.400 ancient Greeks and position the Nazis the inheritors of this 0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:02.640 classical legacy, right, and the civilized people in the barbaric world, 0:03:02.720 --> 0:03:05.680 like the Greeks saw themselves. And obviously the Olympics, if 0:03:05.680 --> 0:03:09.959 you aren't familiar, draws its legacy from a largely mythical 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:13.760 construct of a games that did actually happen in ancient Greek. Right, 0:03:13.800 --> 0:03:15.920 so they claimed to be like a reconstruction of this 0:03:16.360 --> 0:03:19.960 Greek tradition, except in the Greek truition everyone was naked, 0:03:20.040 --> 0:03:22.679 which I think would make the Olympics much more watchable. 0:03:23.800 --> 0:03:26.959 We could, yeah, it's that is. I would watch the 0:03:27.040 --> 0:03:34.240 male gymnastics way more, not just naked but oiled. Yeah, honestly, 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:38.560 men's men's swimming would be a lot more interesting yes, 0:03:38.600 --> 0:03:42.240 it would yep, naked Olympics, we can get behind. But 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:44.640 they didn't bring that back. Nazi didn't bring that back. 0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:47.120 They didn't have some naked statues, but they weren't big 0:03:47.120 --> 0:03:51.400 into nudity. But they fused a whole lot of fashy 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:54.400 eugenic shit. Right, So the reason that they started having 0:03:54.440 --> 0:03:57.880 these medal tables was very much to reinforce their idea 0:03:58.040 --> 0:04:01.200 of the superiority of one race over other races. Right. 0:04:01.520 --> 0:04:03.480 Didn't really work out for them in the nineteen thirty 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:07.880 six because Jesse Owens turned up and owned them lots 0:04:07.920 --> 0:04:10.240 of different events and c into being of course of 0:04:10.280 --> 0:04:16.280 black American sprinter and long jumper, and it didn't well. 0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:20.359 The Natietics Olympics did exist to did help significantly in 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:23.120 laundering the Nazi image. They hit away a lot of 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:26.640 their bullshit, like they for instance, like all the Nazi 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:31.040 Party newspapers like weren't distributed for the time that foreigners 0:04:31.040 --> 0:04:33.960 were in the country. Right, they hit away anti Semitic slogans. 0:04:34.160 --> 0:04:37.760 They even had a Jewish woman on the German Olympic team, 0:04:37.800 --> 0:04:40.520 because there was lots of sort of fluster and and 0:04:40.760 --> 0:04:45.200 sort of they're like neoliberal liberal complaining I guess about like, oh, no, 0:04:45.279 --> 0:04:47.200 you're being anti Semitic, or you shouldn't. Oh look there's 0:04:47.200 --> 0:04:49.239 a Jewish person on your team. It's fine. You guys 0:04:49.240 --> 0:04:52.080 are great. You guys aren't anti Semitic at all. It's good. 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:56.039 We're sorted. And the US did nearly boycott the Olympics, 0:04:56.600 --> 0:04:58.280 but they decided not to, and that this guy called 0:04:58.320 --> 0:05:00.159 every brandage who went on to be a p of 0:05:00.200 --> 0:05:04.640 ship of some right now, So like this Olympics, I 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:07.760 guess set the tone for the use of these massive 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:10.320 events to put on a show to the world and 0:05:10.560 --> 0:05:13.120 bring the world's press and show them what you want 0:05:13.120 --> 0:05:14.599 them to see and hide the stuff that you don't 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:16.039 want them to see, which I think is a nice 0:05:16.040 --> 0:05:20.840 transition to talking about Brazil. Yeah, so we'll talk sort 0:05:20.880 --> 0:05:24.000 of about that effective it. Their sports has a second 0:05:24.160 --> 0:05:28.760 sort of incredibly important internal political effect, which is that 0:05:29.720 --> 0:05:33.160 when when when you have a sports thing that's large enough, 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:35.720 like when you have you know, like we have a 0:05:35.760 --> 0:05:37.720 World Cup, you have the Olympics, show up, you have 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:41.200 even to something the super Bowl, like you what what 0:05:41.200 --> 0:05:45.640 What it basically creates is this like like it basically 0:05:45.720 --> 0:05:48.040 creates a temporary sort of state of state of exception 0:05:48.720 --> 0:05:52.760 where just like the sort of sort of normal function 0:05:52.760 --> 0:05:54.920 of society stops, right, and you know that this can 0:05:54.960 --> 0:05:56.800 going this and going a number of different ways, like 0:05:57.320 --> 0:06:01.000 I and anyone wh's ever lived in Philadelphia, like, okay, 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:02.599 there there's a version of this in Philly where like 0:06:02.680 --> 0:06:06.200 after after the Eagles win, like for like fifteen hours, 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:09.440 there are no laws like or like when they just 0:06:09.560 --> 0:06:15.560 killed like thirty people, yeah, well like a hundred, Yeah 0:06:15.600 --> 0:06:24.200 it was a ye, yes, yeah, I think yeah, yeah, 0:06:24.640 --> 0:06:28.000 you got ahead of the sports for killing tons of people. 0:06:28.360 --> 0:06:31.960 I think that likely to blame where the cops were sports. 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:33.760 But I mean, but that, but this, this is the 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:35.719 thing about sports, right, is that in order to sort 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:38.719 of like do security blah blah blah blah, blocks and etcetera, 0:06:38.760 --> 0:06:40.520 in order to make sure the game's worked, you can 0:06:40.560 --> 0:06:44.560 do fucking anything. Yes, right, justified. Its nasty as ship. Yeah, 0:06:44.600 --> 0:06:45.920 And you know what, one of one of the things, 0:06:46.240 --> 0:06:47.800 one of the sort of like examples that I wanted 0:06:47.800 --> 0:06:50.800 to talk about about this happening is one that is 0:06:50.839 --> 0:06:53.120 really not talked about that much, which is the two 0:06:53.400 --> 0:06:57.320 fourteen World Cup in Brazil, which wound up I think 0:06:57.360 --> 0:07:01.360 actually having a pretty big impact on the way Brazilian 0:07:01.400 --> 0:07:06.159 politics went and also just destroying the lives of unfathomable 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:13.000 numbers of people. So okay, so this whole thing, like 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:15.320 I've been in like since it's happening to us fourteen. 0:07:15.360 --> 0:07:17.720 It's been in the works since like Lula was in 0:07:17.800 --> 0:07:20.760 office in like the late twenty like late late two 0:07:20.760 --> 0:07:23.720 thousand's right, Um, this is this is like this is 0:07:23.760 --> 0:07:25.200 like one of this is like one of the workers 0:07:25.240 --> 0:07:27.560 parties like big things is that they're they're they're they're 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:30.240 going to have this World Cup. Um, they've taken a 0:07:30.240 --> 0:07:32.600 ship ton of corporate money to do it. They've taken 0:07:32.840 --> 0:07:34.800 you know, they've they've they've spent they spent enormous amount 0:07:34.800 --> 0:07:37.720 of political capital making sure this is gonna happen, and 0:07:38.360 --> 0:07:42.360 the consequences of it are just like astronomic. Something like 0:07:42.400 --> 0:07:46.640 two d fifty thousand people like lost their homes in 0:07:46.760 --> 0:07:49.640 order to like make way for like the fucking stadiums 0:07:49.640 --> 0:07:51.600 and the fields and like all of the sort of 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:56.080 like bullshit around like all the sort of security, theater stuff, 0:07:56.080 --> 0:07:58.200 all of like just like debate. Yeah, and this is 0:07:58.200 --> 0:08:00.720 something that happens with Olympics, is to more famously, but 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:03.200 like when whenever you have a sports event like this, 0:08:03.600 --> 0:08:07.120 there's just this giant cleansing that happens of like anyone 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:10.240 who's like onto the street, who's homeless, right, anyone who's 0:08:10.240 --> 0:08:13.800 just sort of like doesn't look right, particularly anyone who's 0:08:13.800 --> 0:08:16.520 black just sort of like suddenly is like disappeared by 0:08:16.520 --> 0:08:20.760 the police from this area. Um. But this, this this 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:24.640 particular one in in in Brazil was interesting because this 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:26.800 is happening to just in fourteen, so and she doesn't thirteen, 0:08:27.720 --> 0:08:32.160 they were like enormous protests in Brazil and actually there 0:08:32.200 --> 0:08:35.360 there's been another like set of soccer events there in thirteen, 0:08:35.720 --> 0:08:38.599 like something like eight hundred thousand people were in the 0:08:38.640 --> 0:08:42.320 streets across Brazil like protesting it. But yeah, there there's 0:08:42.320 --> 0:08:44.480 these like there's enormous street movements. Is like like six 0:08:44.559 --> 0:08:48.040 percent of the entire Brazilian population was in the streets. Um. 0:08:48.400 --> 0:08:51.440 They were like basically started as sort of like antiosterity 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:54.400 protests because cities were sort of like we're increasing the 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:58.920 price of like fairish first off, and it gets it 0:08:58.960 --> 0:09:02.040 gets the just get kind of weird very quickly because 0:09:02.040 --> 0:09:04.199 on the one hand, so like you have the workers 0:09:04.200 --> 0:09:06.240 party in power right and like that the Workers Party 0:09:06.240 --> 0:09:08.280 has been sort of sliding right by this point. But 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:10.600 you have a sort of like you have like a 0:09:10.640 --> 0:09:13.160 really bilitant left that's industry. You have a bunch of anarchis, 0:09:13.200 --> 0:09:14.560 you have a bunch of autonomist or sort of like 0:09:15.080 --> 0:09:17.280 doing stuff. But then also right wingers start showing up 0:09:17.320 --> 0:09:19.440 because it's a protest against the governments and the government's 0:09:19.480 --> 0:09:23.200 like nominally a left government. And yeah, this leads to 0:09:23.320 --> 0:09:29.200 just a really confusing stative affairs. But but you know 0:09:29.280 --> 0:09:32.920 the next year, this like and the protest like keep 0:09:33.000 --> 0:09:35.200 going for like a long time, and there's still like 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:37.280 even after like the largest ones are kind of pee 0:09:37.280 --> 0:09:40.640 doing out, there's still protests happening. But when the World 0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:45.199 Cup hits, like the World Cup, is that like is 0:09:45.480 --> 0:09:47.559 one of this sort of like like the arth, like 0:09:47.640 --> 0:09:50.040 the law suddenly doesn't work anymore. Like in orders to 0:09:50.080 --> 0:09:52.880 do this, you have to sign like there's something called 0:09:53.360 --> 0:09:56.560 the General Law of the World Cup, which is like 0:09:56.640 --> 0:09:58.320 a bunch of like laws that you have to sign 0:09:58.360 --> 0:10:02.120 it like physically change what you're calls are like in 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:06.559 order to have this event magnificent. I mean that's actually 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:10.559 that's actually great, you should do more of that. The 0:10:10.640 --> 0:10:13.600 great thing about FIFA is that they've sharing a commitment 0:10:13.640 --> 0:10:15.960 to human rights, to quality and democracy, and so I'm 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:18.400 sure there's rules are good rules, and you know so 0:10:18.960 --> 0:10:21.080 so there are fun things like like it literally like 0:10:21.160 --> 0:10:25.319 parts of the Brazilian constitution are suspended parts like well 0:10:25.360 --> 0:10:27.160 so physically a bunch stuff about the right to strike, 0:10:27.520 --> 0:10:29.960 Like there's a special court that's set up that like 0:10:29.640 --> 0:10:33.600 it like that within forty eight hours, like like decide 0:10:33.600 --> 0:10:35.200 on whether it's strike is legal or not and what 0:10:35.240 --> 0:10:38.320 the thing is going to be. Like that's not very good. 0:10:38.840 --> 0:10:42.280 It's really they're all not real very bad. Like like 0:10:42.320 --> 0:10:46.320 there's there's the Brazilian governments like seventy million dollars buying 0:10:46.360 --> 0:10:48.959 basically police equipment and like from the U S. From 0:10:48.960 --> 0:10:53.160 Germany and from Israel, which is like the holy trinity 0:10:53.280 --> 0:10:56.480 of good normal countries where if you're buying shipped from them, 0:10:56.480 --> 0:11:00.440 you're doing a good thing. See I you were going 0:11:00.480 --> 0:11:03.520 to talk about how you know, there's moments in our 0:11:03.520 --> 0:11:06.920 society where the regular rules of engagement are suspended, and 0:11:07.400 --> 0:11:09.880 in such we can use this moment of extra opportunity 0:11:09.920 --> 0:11:13.760 to find new ways of liberatory of experiencing liberatory freedom. 0:11:14.640 --> 0:11:16.800 People tried that, and and and and instead of a 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:20.640 bunch of literally like they were driving tanks through the 0:11:20.679 --> 0:11:24.320 street like into like like blockading off like roads leading 0:11:24.360 --> 0:11:27.000 out of the favelas with tanks like it was. It 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:32.199 was nuts, like some incredible videos of this time. Yeah, 0:11:32.400 --> 0:11:36.760 there are like laws in Brazil about child labor, right, um, 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:39.200 guess what doesn't apply to FIFA, so you can just 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:44.960 so they can have fucking ball boys, they said, they 0:11:45.000 --> 0:11:47.520 also have they have these. There are twenty thousand people 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:49.600 who are working for this event who are who are 0:11:49.600 --> 0:11:55.319 classified as volunteers. You can just use them as basically 0:11:55.360 --> 0:12:00.400 they started doing slave labor. Yeah, what's the what's the shocking? Yeah, 0:12:00.440 --> 0:12:03.080 I know, are they forced into this or do they 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:09.559 actually volunteer? Kind of Okay, so sometime the actual you 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:14.000 know what it's actual slavery because it's it's not actual Okay, 0:12:14.000 --> 0:12:17.160 so the Brazilian government will do actual slavery, but like 0:12:17.280 --> 0:12:20.320 this is yeah, this is not quite that, but it's 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:24.600 a bunch of people who are kind of its volunteering. Yeah, 0:12:24.640 --> 0:12:26.920 but yeah, who have who have no labor rights, like 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:31.600 and the everything happens is there's there there are enormous crackdowns, 0:12:31.880 --> 0:12:34.760 like they just start they start doing the thing that 0:12:34.920 --> 0:12:38.880 like the US does it too, but I think I 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:40.680 think like Canada, this is more than the US where 0:12:40.720 --> 0:12:43.000 it's like when when when they know a protest is 0:12:43.000 --> 0:12:45.560 about to happen, they like go find the like six 0:12:45.640 --> 0:12:47.520 people who they think are protest leaders and just arrest 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:50.360 them beforehand. They started doing that. They there's a bunch 0:12:50.400 --> 0:12:52.760 of people who get tortured. There's a bunch of like 0:12:53.360 --> 0:12:58.720 the police are basically just going ape shit. They like, yeah, 0:12:58.760 --> 0:13:01.600 they there are some like that. There's a point in 0:13:01.640 --> 0:13:05.800 this where like the garbage workers go on strike and 0:13:05.960 --> 0:13:08.440 they actually win because it turns out that if if 0:13:08.480 --> 0:13:10.240 in the middle of the World Cup there's fucking garbage 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:12.840 piling up on the street, like it's really bad. But 0:13:12.880 --> 0:13:18.880 like yeah, like this has like this has a just 0:13:18.960 --> 0:13:25.360 like absolutely disastrous effect on like just just sort of 0:13:25.360 --> 0:13:27.240 what's like everything is going on president in politics like 0:13:27.520 --> 0:13:29.760 um one of the things that Lula does. I'm gonna 0:13:29.760 --> 0:13:31.800 talk about this more in another Brazil episode, but Lula 0:13:32.040 --> 0:13:37.080 like sent a bunch of Brazilian troops to invade haiti Um, 0:13:37.080 --> 0:13:39.720 which fucking sucks, and then those troops came home and 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:43.160 they were used to occupy the favelas in real well 0:13:43.200 --> 0:13:47.400 this was going on, and this kind of crushed like 0:13:48.120 --> 0:13:49.880 what was left of the sort of left that had 0:13:49.920 --> 0:13:53.360 been in the streets. Like they just got like they 0:13:53.400 --> 0:13:57.720 just got they just got stomped because the Brazilian police 0:13:57.880 --> 0:14:04.480 are on terrifying and like literally they're deploying colonial troops 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:07.080 like in the streets, and yeah, and so so this 0:14:07.080 --> 0:14:09.800 this is a sort of second kind of thing that 0:14:09.840 --> 0:14:11.120 you can get with sports, which is like on the 0:14:11.120 --> 0:14:12.839 one hand they're used to sort of whitewasherzimes and on 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:15.440 the other hand they're used as as basically a way 0:14:15.480 --> 0:14:18.800 to like do fascism inside of the state where you 0:14:18.800 --> 0:14:20.040 can you know, like you can you could do a 0:14:20.080 --> 0:14:22.040 state of exception, right like the law seas to exist, 0:14:22.760 --> 0:14:25.960 the state becomes like this entity that can just sort 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:28.280 of like do whatever it wants in order to preserve itself. 0:14:28.560 --> 0:14:29.800 And it's a way that you can just you know, 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:33.600 you can socially cleanse two people, and which is something 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:35.520 that would be like you know, would genuinely be pretty 0:14:35.560 --> 0:14:37.600 difficult if you try to do this in any other circumstance, 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:40.520 but you know, it's it's sports, so you can just 0:14:41.520 --> 0:14:49.360 basically do ethnic cleansings, and yeah, it sucks as sometimes 0:14:49.400 --> 0:14:51.600 you can do it with the support of the other side. 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:56.320 Like the World Cup. It's coming to Qatar, right and 0:14:56.320 --> 0:14:59.360 and they one of the things is happening against it's 0:14:59.400 --> 0:15:04.120 quote unquote security consultants from the participating nations are coming. 0:15:04.800 --> 0:15:08.240 So you have this like incredible situation where like a 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:15.200 the Qatari and like police chief I believe, has been like, hey, 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:17.920 for your own safety, fans, if you do happen to 0:15:17.960 --> 0:15:21.040 be gay and it's illegal to be gay right in Qatar. 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:23.840 Like just guys, just don't hold hands with your partner 0:15:23.960 --> 0:15:26.520 because it's not us who's going to come and beat 0:15:26.520 --> 0:15:30.080 you up. It's it's the regular qataris right like you, 0:15:30.080 --> 0:15:32.160 you won't be safe and we can't protect you from 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:35.800 their violent homophobia. And then we've got like Britain's sending 0:15:35.840 --> 0:15:37.600 soldiers to be like, yeah, let us help you with 0:15:37.640 --> 0:15:40.760 your security consultations. Guys, you we need to keep this 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:43.280 country safe. Oh god, okay, so did you do you 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:49.520 know what else those violent security consultations? Is it? Britain? Yes? Yeah, 0:15:49.520 --> 0:15:53.120 we were now sponsored by the Nation of Britain help 0:15:53.680 --> 0:15:56.560 better help online counseling. If you don't sign up for therapy, 0:15:56.680 --> 0:16:00.400 a military a military team will break through your windows 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:04.160 and force you to go to therapy with that's that is, 0:16:04.280 --> 0:16:07.520 that is the better health guarantee. And we're back. And 0:16:07.560 --> 0:16:11.560 I am not thinking about the people who I know 0:16:11.600 --> 0:16:14.480 who were physically dragged by cops in the therapy. It's great, 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:17.560 it's a great never happened. Never happened. No one's ever 0:16:17.640 --> 0:16:22.000 been forced to go to therapy non consensually. It doesn't 0:16:22.040 --> 0:16:30.520 have Yeah. Yeah, other things that don't happen include include sports. Yeah, 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:34.160 sports aren't real. Their fingment of our imagination if we 0:16:34.240 --> 0:16:39.880 simply the ontology of sports is fatally flawed. One might 0:16:39.880 --> 0:16:42.440 say that's sports for a way of teaching people to 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:45.720 be complying with rules and to be administrators in the 0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:49.200 colonial empire. Or people can argue that sports offer a 0:16:49.240 --> 0:16:53.400 gamified version of the world that allow you to recognize 0:16:53.440 --> 0:16:57.840 problem solving in fun and creative ways and encourage team 0:16:57.840 --> 0:17:01.240 building so that you have join online squad. I don't 0:17:01.280 --> 0:17:04.760 actually like sports very much. On the other hand, do 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:08.679 quite like sports, but I'm aware of the role they play. Okay, 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:11.520 so this is like a big thing that the Gulf 0:17:11.600 --> 0:17:17.480 States do. Um is particularly lead do this sports bullshit, 0:17:17.640 --> 0:17:20.640 and Carter, I think, usually is smarter about it than 0:17:20.800 --> 0:17:23.240 like Carter just has better pr people in the Saudias do. 0:17:24.160 --> 0:17:26.320 And I mean they're they're slightly helped by the fact 0:17:26.359 --> 0:17:30.560 that they are marginally less bad than Saudi Arabia, like 0:17:30.960 --> 0:17:33.760 marginal like this is a this is this is a 0:17:34.200 --> 0:17:36.400 this is a fucking a bar that is so low 0:17:36.480 --> 0:17:39.640 you can trip over it. Like I think we can 0:17:39.680 --> 0:17:42.920 just say both bad. Yeah, So should we talk about 0:17:42.960 --> 0:17:46.800 the Catholic system a little bit? Okay, So the Gulf 0:17:46.840 --> 0:17:50.159 States have this thing called the catholicis now and there 0:17:50.200 --> 0:17:52.359 have been some alterations to it and something that made 0:17:52.400 --> 0:17:55.639 it less bad in the last few years, but basically 0:17:57.280 --> 0:17:59.920 this is the system that lets Okay, So there's a 0:18:00.200 --> 0:18:02.800 there's a lot of mirket workers, particularly from Southeast Asia, 0:18:03.520 --> 0:18:08.160 that like take jobs in the Gulf because they pay 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:13.120 they have the Gulf States have a like an obscene, fanatical, 0:18:13.600 --> 0:18:17.439 like world rending amount of oil money um and so 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:19.919 people you know, come seeking these jobs because they need 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:21.680 to feed their families, and you know, there's a huge 0:18:21.680 --> 0:18:24.399 amount of oil money here, like they have just every 0:18:24.440 --> 0:18:30.040 petro dollar. Um. But the way this labor system basically 0:18:30.160 --> 0:18:33.320 works is that like in order to like be in 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:37.800 the country, you have to have a job, right you like, 0:18:37.800 --> 0:18:39.680 you like very specifically have to have a job, and 0:18:39.720 --> 0:18:42.520 your employer has to be there. And so very very 0:18:42.560 --> 0:18:44.280 bad things start to happen when you have a group 0:18:44.320 --> 0:18:47.840 of people who you can just like instantly destroy the 0:18:47.880 --> 0:18:50.359 life of. And so these will happen where for example, 0:18:50.440 --> 0:18:53.880 like so you okay, so you show up, you show 0:18:53.960 --> 0:18:56.640 up to Carter right, and your boss will just take 0:18:56.680 --> 0:19:01.119 your fucking passport and it's is gone, right, and you know, 0:19:01.160 --> 0:19:03.440 it's like okay, if if you don't do literally everything 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:05.159 they tell you, like you, you're not gonna get your 0:19:05.160 --> 0:19:09.840 hasbro back. You're just fucked. And this creates a like 0:19:10.880 --> 0:19:15.640 a genuinely like very close to slavery, has a lot 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:18.240 of the fucking horrors. Like you, there have been a 0:19:18.280 --> 0:19:20.560 bunch of stories people like fucking jumping out of buildings 0:19:20.560 --> 0:19:23.840 trying to escape and then like being dragged back. Like 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:31.359 it's fucking horrifying labor conditions. Um, it's and it's not 0:19:31.359 --> 0:19:36.600 not indentured serviceude, Yeah, absolutely is. It's yeah, it is 0:19:36.680 --> 0:19:39.119 it is one of the worst. It's it's one of 0:19:39.119 --> 0:19:42.240 the worst labor regimes on earth that is not literally slavery. 0:19:42.920 --> 0:19:44.800 It is. It is. It is in the category of 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:50.399 technically not slavery, but like very horrificly close. Yeah, it is. 0:19:51.440 --> 0:19:52.760 It is. It is one of the worst things that 0:19:52.760 --> 0:19:56.840 exists a serious and genuine solution to if you want 0:19:56.880 --> 0:19:59.680 to solve like a bunch of the problems of all 0:19:59.680 --> 0:20:01.240 of the all ship that's happening in the Gulf region, 0:20:01.280 --> 0:20:03.400 if you gave every single one of these migrant workers 0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:07.240 like several artillery batteries and a bunch of assault rifles 0:20:07.280 --> 0:20:10.960 like instantly, like so many of the problems of this 0:20:11.000 --> 0:20:14.920 region would be solved. Yeah. So I was just looking 0:20:14.960 --> 0:20:18.399 at statistics. Six thousand, five hundred of these workers have 0:20:18.520 --> 0:20:20.800 died in cutter since it was awarded the World Cup. 0:20:22.880 --> 0:20:27.480 Like that's that's uh, that's that's a pretty alarming um 0:20:27.760 --> 0:20:30.880 number of Like so it's from India, Bangladesh, ne poll 0:20:30.960 --> 0:20:34.159 for Lanka prices like that, right, I think, Yeah, these 0:20:34.160 --> 0:20:37.480 people have absolutely no rights and they have incredibly dangerous 0:20:37.760 --> 0:20:40.680 working conditions. And also we got about like people are 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:45.680 super fucking racist, Like yes, like the it's it's it's 0:20:45.960 --> 0:20:49.440 the kind of racism that you get when you have literally, 0:20:49.560 --> 0:20:53.119 like basically pure absolute power over someone. It is a 0:20:53.560 --> 0:20:57.600 it is a fucking trip. Yeah, people will literally have 0:20:57.680 --> 0:21:00.439 to pay off the debts that they include. You'll pay 0:21:00.480 --> 0:21:03.240 a recruitment trophee or a travel fee to get these jobs. 0:21:03.240 --> 0:21:06.800 Like we're not messing around me, said the indentured sertitude. Yeah, 0:21:06.880 --> 0:21:09.439 and it's very hard to do that. Your your your 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:12.040 employees could just you know, like they can just withhold 0:21:12.040 --> 0:21:16.480 your pay for whatever the fun reason, because yeah, because 0:21:16.520 --> 0:21:20.040 it's absolute power. There's like a few should I read 0:21:20.080 --> 0:21:21.880 this one? That's an example of one of these deaths 0:21:21.880 --> 0:21:24.480 that I could read if we want so. This guy, 0:21:24.720 --> 0:21:27.520 um mad Hubal Apoly I think his name. He's from India. 0:21:27.960 --> 0:21:30.480 He was forty three. He left his wife and his 0:21:30.560 --> 0:21:32.879 thirteen year old son, Rejesh in India to take a 0:21:32.960 --> 0:21:36.239 job in catering, and they never saw him again. One 0:21:36.359 --> 0:21:39.520 late night, when his roommate returned to his dorm, he 0:21:39.560 --> 0:21:42.680 found Bullapai's body on the floor. Like thousands of other 0:21:42.720 --> 0:21:45.680 sudden and unexplained death, it's passing was recorded his heart 0:21:45.680 --> 0:21:49.120 failure due to natural causes despite working for his employer 0:21:49.160 --> 0:21:51.680 for six years. His wife and son received a hundred 0:21:51.680 --> 0:21:54.880 and fourteen thousand rupees it's about a thousand pounds about 0:21:54.880 --> 0:21:58.240 a thousand dollars now as well in compensation and unpaid salary. 0:21:58.760 --> 0:22:01.120 Jess had no idea why his father died. He had 0:22:01.119 --> 0:22:05.960 no health problems. He said, there was nothing wrong with him. Yeah. Pretty, 0:22:05.960 --> 0:22:08.920 there's I'll will link the Guardian story. But there are 0:22:08.960 --> 0:22:11.960 dozens of these stories of people who die working in 0:22:12.040 --> 0:22:15.480 extreme heat for long hours with no breaks and terrible conditions. 0:22:15.480 --> 0:22:19.239 It's pretty terrible shit. Yeah, And a lot of these 0:22:19.240 --> 0:22:20.640 And also, and this is the only thing we should 0:22:20.640 --> 0:22:22.119 point out, is a lot a lot of people have 0:22:22.200 --> 0:22:27.080 died directly building, yes, the stadium stadium, Yeah, which is 0:22:27.680 --> 0:22:33.359 like just like the absolute human horror of why on 0:22:33.640 --> 0:22:36.359 why are we using like why are we building a 0:22:36.440 --> 0:22:39.159 giant fucking soccer stadium in the middle of like in 0:22:39.200 --> 0:22:43.400 the fucking desert, Like, yeah, Jesus Christ, in a place 0:22:43.440 --> 0:22:45.920 with no endemic soccer culture. It's not that the stadium 0:22:46.040 --> 0:22:47.639 is like, you know, going to be packed week in 0:22:47.680 --> 0:22:49.880 and week out with the Qatari Altra is doing tea 0:22:49.880 --> 0:22:53.480 pots and ship like it just exists for people to 0:22:53.560 --> 0:22:57.600 come once to watch this spectacle and then leave again. 0:22:57.760 --> 0:23:00.280 I mean it's the same thing with all the Olympics stuff, right, 0:23:00.400 --> 0:23:04.600 Like they like tank a city's economy to build a 0:23:05.840 --> 0:23:11.120 whole like basically miniatured like village in town that then 0:23:11.160 --> 0:23:13.879 becomes useless after like a month. Yeah, some of them 0:23:13.880 --> 0:23:16.960 will just get turned into like I don't know, that's 0:23:17.000 --> 0:23:19.399 what the Olympics are for. The Olympics are like a 0:23:19.440 --> 0:23:22.399 gathering place for a transnational bourgeoilie and they have always 0:23:22.480 --> 0:23:25.080 been there, right like they when they started for a 0:23:25.119 --> 0:23:27.640 very long time, the Olympics had an amateurism clause, which 0:23:27.680 --> 0:23:30.840 meant that like quote unquote, professional athletes couldn't take part, 0:23:30.960 --> 0:23:34.399 which was designed such that like Boua, people who had 0:23:34.480 --> 0:23:37.480 enough leisure time to train could compete, but working class 0:23:37.520 --> 0:23:40.479 people who needed to take time off to train couldn't 0:23:40.480 --> 0:23:42.800 be compensated for that time off. Right, they couldn't even 0:23:42.800 --> 0:23:45.959 be compensated for their time off taken to travel and 0:23:46.000 --> 0:23:50.200 compete at the Games. So like, the Olympics are doing 0:23:50.280 --> 0:23:53.000 what they're supposed to do, which is is bringing these 0:23:53.000 --> 0:23:56.480 elite people together. But Coca Cola benefits more from every 0:23:56.480 --> 0:23:59.000 Olympics in the city that hosts it. Yeah, yeah, I 0:23:59.000 --> 0:24:04.160 mean and obviously the the Olympics are heavily tied to nationalism. 0:24:04.280 --> 0:24:07.280 Um that has a whole bunch of you know, not great. 0:24:08.640 --> 0:24:12.000 A munch of the national symbology comes from the Nazis 0:24:12.040 --> 0:24:15.120 directly like that, yeah, exactly, But also on the flip 0:24:15.200 --> 0:24:18.399 side of that, there's other stuff like um have like 0:24:18.560 --> 0:24:22.119 Taiwan having to compete compete as Chinese Taipei and not 0:24:22.320 --> 0:24:26.720 use their actual flag, which is other Like, yes, the 0:24:26.760 --> 0:24:30.480 alternative would be more, you know, embracing the country as 0:24:30.520 --> 0:24:32.800 like as a nationalist thing, like as it's as its 0:24:32.800 --> 0:24:36.119 own nation. But still it's it is, it's still not 0:24:36.240 --> 0:24:39.480 great that they can't they can't compete under their actual 0:24:39.720 --> 0:24:43.480 you know, it's like a name and yeah, and and 0:24:43.480 --> 0:24:45.199 and and you know, like and then this is like 0:24:45.520 --> 0:24:49.240 Carter's kind of Weirdly, this is slightly backfire on Carter 0:24:49.280 --> 0:24:54.080 a little bit because, like Carter, Carter works the best 0:24:54.200 --> 0:24:56.919 as a sort of diplomatic power when nobody pays attention 0:24:56.960 --> 0:25:01.080 to it. And then the like absolute funk brain geniuses 0:25:01.240 --> 0:25:03.919 at the Gaitari role elite were like, what if we 0:25:04.040 --> 0:25:07.520 fucking drew attention to ourselves? And that everyone was like, wait, 0:25:07.560 --> 0:25:09.560 hold on, this place is fucked, but this has not 0:25:09.600 --> 0:25:14.760 stopped it. FIFA is like maybe the only ruling sports 0:25:14.760 --> 0:25:17.960 body more corrupt than the Olympic Committee. Like it is 0:25:19.160 --> 0:25:21.560 is incredibly staggering, like a group of people who have 0:25:21.640 --> 0:25:24.200 figured out a way to just like help a city 0:25:24.280 --> 0:25:27.119 ethnically cleanse a bunch of its population and then extract 0:25:27.240 --> 0:25:30.240 enormous amount of wealth and then look good while doing it. Yeah, 0:25:30.600 --> 0:25:33.639 it is. It's it's an exercise and like pointing, pointing 0:25:33.680 --> 0:25:36.760 over there while you steal someone's wallet, you know. Yeah, 0:25:36.800 --> 0:25:38.040 So I think that the last thing I think we 0:25:38.040 --> 0:25:39.480 want to talk about was talking about what the STA 0:25:39.480 --> 0:25:42.639 Saudis have been doing this too, because yes, one of 0:25:42.720 --> 0:25:45.760 the sport I'm most familiar with obviously is like cycling. 0:25:45.800 --> 0:25:48.480 It's a sport I competed in, and it's recently seen 0:25:48.520 --> 0:25:52.320 this influx of money from petrochemical states. Right, so we 0:25:52.400 --> 0:25:55.359 have like you a E teen, We had a Dubuy 0:25:55.480 --> 0:25:58.640 team for a while, and we there is like a 0:25:58.640 --> 0:26:00.840 tour of Cuta and a tour of you buy Now 0:26:00.960 --> 0:26:03.359 that like these are not places ayone wants to go, 0:26:03.520 --> 0:26:05.960 right about it? Right, they're hot, they're flat, they're terrible. 0:26:06.080 --> 0:26:08.560 But like, bike races have always served as a way 0:26:08.600 --> 0:26:11.159 to consolidate nations, right, That's why the Tour of France exists. 0:26:11.240 --> 0:26:14.640 It's like it's literally a loop and being like, hey, 0:26:14.680 --> 0:26:17.680 you're included in this, And like in in Europe, they're 0:26:17.720 --> 0:26:20.560 often used to consolidate nations that exist outside of states, 0:26:20.640 --> 0:26:24.919 right like Flanders, Catalonia, the Basque country, Wallonia. All of 0:26:24.960 --> 0:26:28.560 these places have bike races that delineate who belongs in 0:26:28.640 --> 0:26:32.720 and who belongs out. Slightly different in these petrochemical economies, 0:26:32.760 --> 0:26:35.920 because more delineates a look at us, We're a great 0:26:35.920 --> 0:26:37.879 country and totally normal, and you can come here and 0:26:37.880 --> 0:26:40.600 do sports. And please don't look at the way that 0:26:40.640 --> 0:26:43.919 we treat our workers from Southeast Asia like um, it's 0:26:43.960 --> 0:26:48.800 it's please ignore our seventeen wars like all the school 0:26:48.800 --> 0:26:51.640 bus full of children we've blown up. Do not look 0:26:51.640 --> 0:26:55.280 at Yemens like yeah, which also, by the way, I 0:26:55.320 --> 0:26:56.520 do want I do want to just put this room. 0:26:56.560 --> 0:26:59.560 And Carter also fucking involved in Yemen. Same with the 0:26:59.640 --> 0:27:02.560 u A. They nobody ever talks about it. They also 0:27:02.600 --> 0:27:04.399 are fucking doing this. Do not left them off the 0:27:04.400 --> 0:27:09.080 book for this bullshit. Uh, yeah, yeah, it's interesting to 0:27:09.240 --> 0:27:12.520 see it. Like, yes, it's interesting to see some fan 0:27:12.640 --> 0:27:16.119 groups organizing like against this ship, right And chiefly I 0:27:16.119 --> 0:27:18.480 think it's gonna it's about stuff that you're about to 0:27:18.520 --> 0:27:20.720 talk about, I think, which is the purchasing of clubs 0:27:20.720 --> 0:27:24.119 by these these very wealthy interests. I find it fascinating 0:27:24.160 --> 0:27:26.919 to see that there's always been an anti fascist element 0:27:26.960 --> 0:27:29.080 in football actors, right, there have always been clubs that 0:27:29.119 --> 0:27:31.919 have been anti fascists. Those clubs have always tended to 0:27:31.960 --> 0:27:36.159 oppose like ownership of the clubs that they are fans 0:27:36.200 --> 0:27:39.719 of by finance capital. But it's interesting to see that 0:27:39.800 --> 0:27:44.040 now articulated against these petrochemical regimes in the Middle East, right, 0:27:44.119 --> 0:27:47.680 Like it gets Keith from fucking Bolton and his mates 0:27:47.720 --> 0:27:50.000 who go to the football match every Saturday, and now 0:27:50.119 --> 0:27:53.520 I'm fucking past because I allow an lgbt Q rights 0:27:53.520 --> 0:27:57.200 in Qatar. But yeah, it's it's very funny to see. 0:27:57.240 --> 0:27:59.160 And also it's nice to see, right, Like, it's good 0:27:59.160 --> 0:28:01.960 to see people sharing so darity, like you can't display 0:28:02.040 --> 0:28:05.920 in theory, you can't display pride flags in stadium or 0:28:05.960 --> 0:28:08.920 anywhere else in Qatar right now, No people were talking 0:28:08.920 --> 0:28:11.679 about taking them anyway, So maybe someone will do an 0:28:11.680 --> 0:28:15.600 epic like Pride flag or TFO at the Olympics, which 0:28:15.760 --> 0:28:18.560 would be uh, I don't know, I've never seen the 0:28:19.240 --> 0:28:22.320 World Cup. Then they might all get disappeared. But yeah, 0:28:22.720 --> 0:28:25.959 then the entire with caution. Yeah, then then the stadium 0:28:26.000 --> 0:28:29.240 collapses and there we go. Okay, So the other thing 0:28:29.280 --> 0:28:31.199 that's sort of been happening is that Starily has been 0:28:31.200 --> 0:28:34.200 buying up a bunch of clubs. But they brought Britain's 0:28:34.200 --> 0:28:37.520 Premier League Newcastle United team. There's like bought it that 0:28:37.640 --> 0:28:39.800 they have. They the Stardies have this this thing called 0:28:41.320 --> 0:28:43.640 the Public Investment Fund, which is like it's kind of 0:28:43.640 --> 0:28:46.840 like a sovereign wealth fund kind of. They just use 0:28:46.920 --> 0:28:49.560 it to like it buy ship and they've they've been 0:28:49.560 --> 0:28:51.360 doing a bunch of sports stuff. They've also been pushing 0:28:51.360 --> 0:28:54.760 into the sports, which is interesting the disasters. Yeah, so 0:28:55.280 --> 0:28:59.080 they bought the e s L, which is the does 0:28:59.120 --> 0:29:02.840 it still stand for Electronic Sports League especially? I think 0:29:02.880 --> 0:29:10.680 it's all does so there doesn't. Okay, you're about to 0:29:10.680 --> 0:29:14.000 be a Biggert and say sports on sports. No, they're 0:29:14.080 --> 0:29:19.440 video games. It's better than actually better than regular sports. 0:29:19.880 --> 0:29:25.840 They're different Chess the same ship is happening here. So 0:29:26.160 --> 0:29:27.800 the E s L is like one of the it's 0:29:27.840 --> 0:29:31.120 it's it basically ate a bunch of the other. So 0:29:31.160 --> 0:29:32.600 they used to be a bunch of sort of circuits 0:29:32.600 --> 0:29:34.760 for a bunch of different like E sports games, right, 0:29:34.880 --> 0:29:38.160 things like kind of strikes seems like StarCraft. Um, those 0:29:38.160 --> 0:29:40.400 are those sort of I think there's another. What's the 0:29:40.440 --> 0:29:45.000 other big one that s L does. Um, seems to 0:29:45.040 --> 0:29:47.640 be counts. Yeah, it's it's mostly kind of striking. They 0:29:48.120 --> 0:29:51.560 basically consumed all of the like StarCraft, So they used 0:29:51.560 --> 0:29:53.760 to be I M and dream Hack that dude stuff, 0:29:53.760 --> 0:29:56.440 and they've eaten them all. And the E s L 0:29:56.640 --> 0:29:59.680 just got like bought out by like like the Saudiast 0:29:59.760 --> 0:30:03.440 fucking investment company, by and by by by a new 0:30:03.520 --> 0:30:06.480 sort of like media group thing at the Saudiast Forum 0:30:06.520 --> 0:30:12.800 that's headed by fucking former Activision CEO Brian Ward. Actually unbelievable. Yeah, 0:30:12.680 --> 0:30:15.680 who who's the guy who engineered the fucking Activision Blizzard 0:30:15.720 --> 0:30:19.760 merger and is now going on to do this bullshit 0:30:20.760 --> 0:30:25.600 savvy games group. Yeah, I mean, like like East Sports 0:30:25.640 --> 0:30:28.320 as always, there's funds always sucked, Like a bunch of 0:30:28.320 --> 0:30:30.680 the stuff is funded by like fucking cryptocurrency. Right now, 0:30:30.840 --> 0:30:36.000 I think somehow sports I just can't take it seriously. 0:30:36.000 --> 0:30:38.560 It's the best. But yeah, they the Saudis have taken 0:30:38.560 --> 0:30:41.440 by beloved StarCraft League. I will be waging an unending 0:30:41.480 --> 0:30:44.800 holy war against them until they fucking ceased to exist. 0:30:45.600 --> 0:30:48.920 And yea, yeah, you become a stock craft too. Again, 0:30:49.600 --> 0:30:53.040 it sucks. All I know about East Sports is Sonic 0:30:53.120 --> 0:30:56.960 Fox and Smash Brothers. That's all I know because everything 0:30:57.000 --> 0:30:59.680 else just seems like people who are having a fun 0:30:59.720 --> 0:31:03.640 time playing video games. That's great. It was very so 0:31:03.800 --> 0:31:06.520 my my post was founded by the IOC and like 0:31:06.600 --> 0:31:08.719 at the time I was there, there was just massive 0:31:08.880 --> 0:31:10.280 Like first of all, there was like a lot of 0:31:10.280 --> 0:31:13.280 boom iss discussing av sports for sports and then whether 0:31:13.320 --> 0:31:15.400 they should be incorporated in the Olympics, and it was 0:31:15.600 --> 0:31:19.320 extremely funny to watch, like these people completely failed to 0:31:19.400 --> 0:31:23.600 understand the fundamental like you know, sports of physical contest 0:31:23.640 --> 0:31:25.440 with the metal element, right, don't matter if you're moving 0:31:25.440 --> 0:31:27.880 a thumbs or your whole buddy. But it was very 0:31:27.880 --> 0:31:31.360 funny towards these people. I want to say this because 0:31:31.440 --> 0:31:33.880 this is okay, so it's just really funny, but also 0:31:34.040 --> 0:31:36.600 people get like really seriously injured doing the sports ship 0:31:37.080 --> 0:31:39.280 like particularly Starkers. There's a lot of Starker players who 0:31:39.360 --> 0:31:42.120 like sucking paralyzed, who have like serious year damage of 0:31:42.120 --> 0:31:45.240 their spines. Yeah, because they have like StarCraft players, like 0:31:45.320 --> 0:31:48.000 especially older days. You know, people like practicing sixteen hours 0:31:48.000 --> 0:31:50.360 a day, right, and they're sitting in a chair and 0:31:50.360 --> 0:31:53.800 they're they're fucking you know, they have like a PM right, 0:31:53.840 --> 0:31:57.400 so you're doing like like six hundred actions in a minute, 0:31:58.040 --> 0:32:01.640 and people's people's risks just explore loads, Like people get 0:32:01.680 --> 0:32:04.000 fucking like damage to their spines to get nerve damage 0:32:04.080 --> 0:32:08.240 like as it sucks. Um. I have a friend who's 0:32:08.280 --> 0:32:10.800 a human physiologist who used to work for the Department 0:32:10.840 --> 0:32:13.760 of Defense here and said, diego helping like you know, 0:32:13.800 --> 0:32:16.320 like high speed MB people be better at killing people, 0:32:16.760 --> 0:32:18.960 uh a Navy people, I guess in San Diego, and 0:32:19.000 --> 0:32:21.200 then left to work for Red Bull in their sports 0:32:21.200 --> 0:32:24.240 to oh yeah, yeah, yeah, to be the human physiologist 0:32:24.320 --> 0:32:26.800 who like, yeah, optimizes people set up so that they 0:32:26.840 --> 0:32:29.200 arrested a right angle and like, guest, I'm actually training. 0:32:29.840 --> 0:32:33.400 I guess we won't be happy until Taiwan is playing 0:32:33.480 --> 0:32:40.520 Fortnite in a democratized, decentralized East Sports league that has 0:32:40.720 --> 0:32:45.040 union workers and I guess that's what we're advocating for now. Yeah, 0:32:45.080 --> 0:32:47.280 that's the one goal of this podcast. There is a 0:32:47.400 --> 0:32:50.880 there's a MYANMA National Unity Government e sports team. So 0:32:51.400 --> 0:32:53.960 actually that there was actually a whole thing in competitive 0:32:53.960 --> 0:32:55.880 StarCraft where someone someone held up someone held up a 0:32:55.920 --> 0:32:59.480 Hong Kong flag and they fucking like they cut the 0:32:59.560 --> 0:33:03.400 stream and fired this actually fired the two like like 0:33:03.440 --> 0:33:05.880 they not only fired the guy who held the thing up, 0:33:05.920 --> 0:33:09.880 they fired the two fucking casters who like who were 0:33:09.920 --> 0:33:14.160 just there. Well it happens. Yeah, so critical respect that 0:33:14.360 --> 0:33:17.440 person is. See the John Carlos, that's the raised fist 0:33:17.480 --> 0:33:22.320 moment of the sports Yeah. So yeah, fuck sports do 0:33:22.400 --> 0:33:26.840 bad things, make them do good things. Overthrower local governments. Yeah, 0:33:26.880 --> 0:33:29.680 I mean the the revolutionary I mean this is this 0:33:29.680 --> 0:33:31.440 has been written about by like actual academics, but the 0:33:31.480 --> 0:33:34.600 revolutionary but the revolutionary potential of like soccer hooligans and 0:33:35.120 --> 0:33:38.520 football hooligans are like it's massive, Like on what one day, 0:33:38.560 --> 0:33:42.280 We'll do one episode about the fucking the Turkish soccer 0:33:42.360 --> 0:33:44.920 ultras who fucking stole a back hoe and we're driving 0:33:44.920 --> 0:33:48.160 it around Turkey, doesn't thirty destroying fucking police barricades with it, 0:33:48.760 --> 0:33:52.600 sick of ship every lots of like in Rear Square 0:33:52.600 --> 0:33:55.760 their Egyptian Ultras were leading in the Maidan it was 0:33:55.880 --> 0:34:00.440 Ukrainian Nottras. And there's a really good book called people 0:34:00.480 --> 0:34:04.960 should read if they're interested in the political potential of 0:34:04.960 --> 0:34:08.440 football ultras. We should we should do something about like 0:34:08.480 --> 0:34:12.040 hooligans in general. But yes, this was supposed to kind 0:34:12.040 --> 0:34:15.240 of be about the various ways that there's sports things 0:34:15.280 --> 0:34:19.440 that are kind of messed up. Yeah, maybe just regular 0:34:20.280 --> 0:34:23.960 one more thing. You can stop these fucking giant mega 0:34:23.960 --> 0:34:26.800 events from happening in your city, like people. People successfully 0:34:26.800 --> 0:34:28.239 do this. They've done this with the Olympics, have done 0:34:28.280 --> 0:34:30.839 this sub lesser sounds World Cup. But yeah, and if 0:34:30.880 --> 0:34:33.960 you can do that, like please do like don't you 0:34:34.239 --> 0:34:38.200 don't have to let these fucking sports company bullshit like 0:34:38.480 --> 0:34:42.200 exacts ethnically cleanse your city. You just don't. You can stop. 0:34:42.680 --> 0:34:44.759 No Olympics l A is something that people in the 0:34:44.800 --> 0:34:48.160 U s should look up. Yeah, that is that is 0:34:48.200 --> 0:34:52.040 your action item for today is look up. I think 0:34:52.080 --> 0:34:55.080 we've talked about an Olympics before, but the ton Olympics. 0:34:55.080 --> 0:34:58.120 On the podcasts I Think and the Last Thing I Will, 0:34:58.160 --> 0:35:00.600 I will give an Easter egg. There's there's one sport 0:35:00.640 --> 0:35:05.759 I actually un ironically enjoy curling. No, not fuck you, 0:35:05.760 --> 0:35:32.880 You're racist racism. That's the episode Hello and Welcome to 0:35:33.000 --> 0:35:35.120 It could happen here. It's a podcast about the world 0:35:35.120 --> 0:35:37.840 falling apart and people who are putting it back together. 0:35:38.160 --> 0:35:42.200 Today we're joined by Jimmy and Rain from mutually Disaster Relief. 0:35:42.280 --> 0:35:44.600 They are helping to put back together some of the 0:35:44.640 --> 0:35:47.799 parts of the world that are acutely falling apart right now. 0:35:48.440 --> 0:35:52.799 My colleague Gare is here as well. I guess, and Yeah, 0:35:52.840 --> 0:35:54.440 we're gonna we're gonna get into it. We're gonna talk 0:35:54.440 --> 0:35:56.919 about the response that mutual A disaster relief have made 0:35:56.920 --> 0:35:59.799 too hurricane Ian. We're going to talk about how we 0:36:00.040 --> 0:36:03.080 can solve these things without necessarily giving a bunch of 0:36:03.120 --> 0:36:05.520 money to the wrong people, and people can help people 0:36:06.120 --> 0:36:09.120 in a way that is natural, organic and good for everyone. 0:36:09.320 --> 0:36:14.080 So Jimmy and Rain say hi everybody. Hello, Hey, and 0:36:14.280 --> 0:36:16.360 can you explain to us a little bit first of 0:36:16.360 --> 0:36:20.160 all about what mutual aid disaster relief is and how 0:36:20.200 --> 0:36:25.240 it operates in these natural disasters. SURE mutual Aid Disaster 0:36:25.280 --> 0:36:28.719 Relief is a people power disaster relief network based on 0:36:28.760 --> 0:36:32.760 the principles of solidarity, mutual aid, and autonomous direct action. 0:36:33.560 --> 0:36:36.040 And we act as a Swiss army knife for the 0:36:36.120 --> 0:36:40.719 larger autonomous disaster response and mutual aid movements UH and 0:36:40.760 --> 0:36:45.400 work with UH affinity groups, local mutual aid groups UH 0:36:45.440 --> 0:36:51.120 and other disaster survivors to help form and foster or 0:36:51.120 --> 0:36:56.160 communal recovery. That sounds great, That's very inspiring. Can you explain, 0:36:56.239 --> 0:36:59.120 maybe for listeners who aren't familiar exactly what mutual aid 0:36:59.200 --> 0:37:04.560 means in this count text. Sure mutual aid is a voluntary, reciprocal, 0:37:04.760 --> 0:37:10.319 participatory exchange among equals. It's about sharing resources, but it's 0:37:10.320 --> 0:37:14.520 also about sharing power. I'll spend a lot of my 0:37:14.560 --> 0:37:17.120 life in poverty, and I know that many people in 0:37:17.160 --> 0:37:22.440 the same experiences would rather not receive something than receive 0:37:22.560 --> 0:37:25.399 something with a downward gaze. If if something costs us 0:37:25.440 --> 0:37:28.560 our dignity, it's not worth it UM, and so mutual 0:37:28.560 --> 0:37:30.960 aid is a way to share with each other UH, 0:37:31.040 --> 0:37:34.840 where we're UM sharing as equals UM instead of a 0:37:34.880 --> 0:37:37.880 powerful giver of aid and a powerless receiver of aid, 0:37:38.080 --> 0:37:40.600 and it also has the dynamic of addressing the root 0:37:40.640 --> 0:37:46.280 causes of the need in the in the first place. Okay, 0:37:46.320 --> 0:37:48.319 that's yeah, it's really that's a good description. Thank you 0:37:48.400 --> 0:37:52.200 very much. What what you've done recently, right, is responded 0:37:52.280 --> 0:37:55.239 to Hurricane Ian, which most people I think will know 0:37:55.400 --> 0:37:58.759 hit Floorida and I think the Carolinas after that. Can 0:37:58.800 --> 0:38:00.520 you take us through some of the work that you've 0:38:00.520 --> 0:38:04.359 been doing down there? Sure? A lot of what I've 0:38:04.400 --> 0:38:08.799 been involved in it supplies distribution, So we're UM every 0:38:08.880 --> 0:38:14.040 day loading up vehicles and going doing mobile distribution to 0:38:14.360 --> 0:38:19.840 trailer parks, to public housing apartments, uh and other communities 0:38:19.880 --> 0:38:23.520 that are hit in historically, you know, left out of 0:38:24.360 --> 0:38:31.080 top down relief models, UM and providing tarps, water, food, 0:38:31.680 --> 0:38:36.960 other essentials that people need. Yeah, sure, that's very important. 0:38:37.000 --> 0:38:40.600 What's the situation like where now? What like with ten 0:38:40.680 --> 0:38:42.839 days out something like that from when the hurricane first 0:38:42.840 --> 0:38:48.879 made landfall? Is that right? I'm not sure exactly right? 0:38:48.920 --> 0:38:51.880 Do you know? Yeah? No, time, time is not a 0:38:51.920 --> 0:38:54.160 thing when this is happening. It's just kind of like 0:38:54.200 --> 0:39:01.200 all of the days go together, or nights or both. Yeah. Yeah, 0:39:01.280 --> 0:39:04.600 that's yeah, that's totally fine. So's you know, UM, in 0:39:04.640 --> 0:39:07.200 some places, power is starting to get turned back on. 0:39:07.719 --> 0:39:11.120 Gas is easier to find than it was, you know, 0:39:11.239 --> 0:39:16.080 several days ago. UM, but there's still um, you know, 0:39:16.160 --> 0:39:21.520 like a lot of need for solidarity based relief. There's 0:39:22.000 --> 0:39:26.799 uh just like every disaster, there's uh many communities that 0:39:26.840 --> 0:39:30.400 are left behind. UM. And it's the same communities that 0:39:30.480 --> 0:39:33.520 are left behind by the disaster of capitalism and colonialism 0:39:33.560 --> 0:39:37.600 and white supremacy. And so you know, even though power 0:39:37.680 --> 0:39:39.719 is starting to get turned back on in some places, 0:39:40.040 --> 0:39:43.280 it's gonna be months or years, you know before people 0:39:44.000 --> 0:39:46.799 recover from this. Yeah, there's a lot of folks that 0:39:46.840 --> 0:39:49.120 are not UM like to me he's talking about. There's 0:39:49.200 --> 0:39:52.319 folks that are renters who you know, don't don't know 0:39:52.440 --> 0:39:54.880 what they're supposed to do with their with the apartment 0:39:54.920 --> 0:39:57.719 that they're in. The roof is caving in, and if 0:39:57.719 --> 0:39:59.959 the landlord is not responding, then where do they spit 0:40:00.040 --> 0:40:02.359 to do. So if there's folks on the ground, they 0:40:02.400 --> 0:40:04.520 go in and they'll try to help get the tarp up, 0:40:04.640 --> 0:40:06.719 you know, on the roof and things like that. So 0:40:06.800 --> 0:40:09.480 that's usually the kind of stuff I'm involved with when 0:40:09.520 --> 0:40:12.759 I'm when it's happening more in my area. But there's 0:40:12.760 --> 0:40:14.440 a lot of us that are working like remote as 0:40:14.440 --> 0:40:17.320 well to help support on the ground, like doing calms 0:40:17.360 --> 0:40:20.839 and organizing supply lines through the autonomous supply line chain 0:40:20.920 --> 0:40:23.440 that we have, and just kind of trying to mobilize 0:40:23.480 --> 0:40:26.280 more affinity groups in the local areas, like Food Not Bombs, 0:40:26.800 --> 0:40:29.279 UM sitting and Food Not Bombs came down and helped 0:40:29.320 --> 0:40:31.600 out and did a food chair and so just trying 0:40:31.600 --> 0:40:34.359 to get everybody who's close by to be able to 0:40:34.400 --> 0:40:37.040 address the immediate needs and start planning for the long 0:40:37.120 --> 0:40:42.560 term because Jimmy is right, it's going to take years. Yeah, 0:40:42.640 --> 0:40:45.160 that's really fascinating. I think you're right that often like 0:40:45.840 --> 0:40:48.000 and I think we should contrast actually that like that 0:40:48.120 --> 0:40:51.799 they sort of not the large global nonprofit model or 0:40:51.880 --> 0:40:55.359 the service provider model that they contrast with this, right, 0:40:55.400 --> 0:40:58.200 which often kind of floods an area with resources whether 0:40:58.280 --> 0:41:00.960 or not it needs them, and then withdrawals kind of 0:41:00.960 --> 0:41:02.920 once attention is going to when people are left to 0:41:03.640 --> 0:41:08.080 rebuild their lives kind of on their own, right. Yeah, Yeah, 0:41:08.680 --> 0:41:13.960 time and time again, Um, from Hurricane Katrina to Hurricane Maria. 0:41:14.600 --> 0:41:18.759 You know, our rain, you know uh. In Louisiana has 0:41:18.800 --> 0:41:22.960 experienced a number of hurricanes, you know, in recent years. Um, 0:41:23.000 --> 0:41:26.719 you know, time and time again, we we we had 0:41:26.880 --> 0:41:30.640 we learn over and over again that the state is 0:41:30.640 --> 0:41:33.520 not coming to save us. The market is not going 0:41:33.560 --> 0:41:37.120 to save us. The nonprofit industrial complex, it's not gonna 0:41:37.160 --> 0:41:39.040 save us. We have to save each other. We have 0:41:39.080 --> 0:41:43.520 to take care of each other from below. Yeah, I 0:41:43.520 --> 0:41:47.400 think it's very true. I remember in eighteen when the 0:41:47.480 --> 0:41:49.760 last seven mid terms came, there was a large migrant 0:41:49.760 --> 0:41:52.319 caravan that came to Tijuana, which is just south of 0:41:52.440 --> 0:41:55.279 where I live, and there are a number of these 0:41:55.280 --> 0:41:59.080 big international non profits, but they weren't actually allowed to 0:41:59.400 --> 0:42:01.880 enter the area where these people were. So you had 0:42:01.920 --> 0:42:05.839 these people in a football stadium and you had large 0:42:05.880 --> 0:42:08.319 non property outside, and they cut off the water to 0:42:08.400 --> 0:42:10.040 the place where these people work because they wanted them 0:42:10.040 --> 0:42:12.960 to go somewhere else. And it was this bizarre scene 0:42:13.000 --> 0:42:16.080 where you had tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars 0:42:16.080 --> 0:42:18.600 of resources sitting outside, and then you had little children 0:42:18.640 --> 0:42:21.920 who hadn't had a drink of water that day sitting inside. 0:42:21.920 --> 0:42:24.680 And it was really illustrative to me of how these 0:42:24.760 --> 0:42:27.080 massive nonprofits can raise a ship time of money and 0:42:27.120 --> 0:42:30.520 still completely fail people when they need help the most. 0:42:31.160 --> 0:42:33.120 So it's great that you guys are out there doing that. 0:42:33.320 --> 0:42:36.160 Can you take us through some of you You mentioned 0:42:36.239 --> 0:42:40.440 Hurricane Katrina, you mentioned being in New Orleans, like, can 0:42:40.520 --> 0:42:43.120 you take us through some of the other natural disasters 0:42:43.160 --> 0:42:48.359 and how you've helped UM well, UH in twenty six 0:42:49.560 --> 0:42:53.320 when we first kind of got our paperwork UM official 0:42:53.600 --> 0:42:57.160 or whatever, we had the flood and plank rouge and 0:42:58.400 --> 0:43:00.560 it was one of the most history excellent since like 0:43:00.600 --> 0:43:03.120 the early nine and it barely made the news. And 0:43:03.160 --> 0:43:05.800 there were several other major floods that happened with the 0:43:05.880 --> 0:43:09.840 climate cause floods in the Midwest that UM summer that 0:43:09.920 --> 0:43:11.880 barely made the news. And now people are starting to 0:43:11.880 --> 0:43:13.919 talk about it right, starting to talk about climate change 0:43:13.920 --> 0:43:17.719 because it's inevitable. Every single disaster is you know, more 0:43:18.120 --> 0:43:21.239 just more and more frequency or higher intensity storm, more 0:43:21.320 --> 0:43:24.399 rainfall in a shorter amount of time. And so we 0:43:24.480 --> 0:43:27.920 had that flood and we hit the ground pretty much running, 0:43:28.120 --> 0:43:31.239 just doing lots of bucking and gutting and organizing a 0:43:31.280 --> 0:43:35.880 lot of folks coming up from UH, Texas and south 0:43:36.040 --> 0:43:39.600 in like New Orleans area, and you know, east from 0:43:39.640 --> 0:43:43.880 Florida all the way over Mississippi. UM. And then, like 0:43:43.960 --> 0:43:46.080 Jimmy said, we just kept getting hit and hit. I 0:43:46.080 --> 0:43:48.880 can't even remember everything after that, I knew there was IRMA, 0:43:49.480 --> 0:43:53.640 and we responded to IRMA. We had national calms running 0:43:53.960 --> 0:43:55.800 U which was really cool. People were signing up for 0:43:55.840 --> 0:43:58.600 workshifts and helping out on the ground while people were 0:43:58.640 --> 0:44:02.920 running around and getting transportation and getting people out of places, 0:44:03.320 --> 0:44:07.040 delivering supplies, helping you know again with starping or like 0:44:07.160 --> 0:44:10.239 things that might have happened homes UM. And then we've 0:44:10.239 --> 0:44:13.879 had Maria. I went down to Puerto Rico for that 0:44:14.160 --> 0:44:16.279 UM and helped out with some of the solar and 0:44:16.360 --> 0:44:20.800 water issues there. And then we have Laura and Harvey, 0:44:21.280 --> 0:44:26.360 and I cannot even remember all of them at this point, Fiona. 0:44:26.560 --> 0:44:29.000 They just all they're all going to keep coming either 0:44:29.080 --> 0:44:31.279 into the Gulf or they're going to head along the 0:44:31.280 --> 0:44:34.440 East coast because of the way that the climate has 0:44:34.480 --> 0:44:37.560 affected the currents and the surface water temperatures in the 0:44:37.560 --> 0:44:40.919 Gulf in the Atlantic. Yeah, and like you said, they're 0:44:40.920 --> 0:44:42.960 going to have a disportionate impact on people who are 0:44:42.960 --> 0:44:46.479 already marginalized. What is it you were talking about people 0:44:46.480 --> 0:44:49.680 signing up for work. That's interesting. So do you seems 0:44:49.680 --> 0:44:52.360 like you're mostly volunteer organization to people who have special 0:44:52.360 --> 0:44:54.480 skills just got up to a website and say hey, 0:44:54.520 --> 0:44:57.600 I'd like to help. Well, how does that work? It 0:44:57.640 --> 0:44:59.799 happens in a lot of ways. Sometimes folks will reach 0:44:59.800 --> 0:45:03.840 out via the email on the website, um, or they'll 0:45:03.880 --> 0:45:06.239 reach out on one of the social media, or they'll 0:45:06.239 --> 0:45:10.000 know somebody and be like, hey, I want to get involved. Um, 0:45:10.040 --> 0:45:12.480 it's really grassroots. Some people are in the ground. There's 0:45:12.480 --> 0:45:14.719 a lot of folks that have gotten involved more long 0:45:14.840 --> 0:45:17.640 term because um, you know, there was a response on 0:45:17.640 --> 0:45:20.640 the ground in their area. They kind of got into 0:45:20.680 --> 0:45:23.600 it just because that's you know, what ends up happening 0:45:23.600 --> 0:45:25.560 when there's no one else around, you rely on each 0:45:25.560 --> 0:45:28.480 other and you build that community. It's kind of it's 0:45:28.560 --> 0:45:33.480 kind of just what happens. Yeah, that makes sense. So 0:45:33.600 --> 0:45:36.200 what's your sort of national Do you have a sense 0:45:36.200 --> 0:45:38.040 of how many people how many volunteers you have on 0:45:38.080 --> 0:45:41.560 a national I'm guessing your national or international scale. Now 0:45:42.440 --> 0:45:46.200 it varies, you know, like in in times of you know, 0:45:46.280 --> 0:45:50.520 when you know, between disasters, uh, you know, there's you know, 0:45:50.719 --> 0:45:54.400 dozens of people involved or you know, like a hundred 0:45:54.520 --> 0:45:57.920 or two hundred, um. But then we're very you know, 0:45:57.960 --> 0:46:02.400 participatory and um so when a disaster happens, you know 0:46:03.200 --> 0:46:06.920 there's a lot more people involved, hundreds and thousands of 0:46:06.960 --> 0:46:10.960 people that participate in one way or another. Like in Louisiana, 0:46:11.040 --> 0:46:14.160 we've had a lot of different like DSA groups or 0:46:14.480 --> 0:46:17.440 sri A groups come out and help out, like mobilies 0:46:17.480 --> 0:46:19.680 on the ground and kind of come out as deffinity 0:46:19.719 --> 0:46:23.879 groups and do different jobs, help out with different homes 0:46:23.920 --> 0:46:26.520 and so really it's just like it's a network of 0:46:26.560 --> 0:46:33.080 facilitating anyone who's interested in ensuring that all of us 0:46:33.120 --> 0:46:36.320 have what we need when we know the response is 0:46:36.360 --> 0:46:39.880 going to be slow from those that are supposed to 0:46:39.920 --> 0:46:44.120 be handling that quote unquote right, and then you guys 0:46:44.200 --> 0:46:46.759 can connect people with skills or people with time to 0:46:47.480 --> 0:46:51.640 people who need help. Yeah, so really, anybody who has 0:46:52.360 --> 0:46:57.600 skill of any kind or as welcome, that's great. Yeah, 0:46:58.040 --> 0:47:00.279 where can they find that people do want to sign up? 0:47:01.760 --> 0:47:04.520 I guess the easiest they would be yet I don't know. 0:47:04.600 --> 0:47:07.239 Jimmy money in that I'm on the ground a lot. 0:47:07.360 --> 0:47:10.080 Check out our website. Mutual Aid disaster relief dot org 0:47:10.880 --> 0:47:13.759 and our emails mutual Aid Disaster Relief at gmail dot com. 0:47:13.760 --> 0:47:16.919 We're on all the social media's as well, and yeah, 0:47:17.080 --> 0:47:19.960 we we love it when folks uh reach out to 0:47:20.040 --> 0:47:21.760 us and tell us how they want to be involved. 0:47:22.520 --> 0:47:25.160 I wanted to ask you there are obviously some other 0:47:25.400 --> 0:47:27.759 organizations who, like maybe I would name it, you can 0:47:27.840 --> 0:47:30.120 if you want to, who have received a lot of 0:47:30.239 --> 0:47:35.200 national press for doing helping people in times of disaster, 0:47:35.440 --> 0:47:38.440 and maybe you can explain why, like some folks wouldn't 0:47:38.440 --> 0:47:43.319 necessarily be comfortable asking them for help or going to 0:47:43.360 --> 0:47:49.920 them if they needed help. Yeah. UM, so oftentimes, uh, 0:47:50.000 --> 0:47:55.080 you know, you know like organizations you know, um, you know, 0:47:55.080 --> 0:48:00.200 top down organizations. You know they partner with you know, 0:48:00.800 --> 0:48:05.800 police or homeland security or carcetral institutions like that. There's 0:48:06.400 --> 0:48:11.040 um a shelter after um uh when Hurricane Michael hit 0:48:11.120 --> 0:48:15.920 the Panhandle. UM, you know, people who had warrants you know, 0:48:16.000 --> 0:48:19.560 we're we're signed into the shelter and then police came 0:48:19.600 --> 0:48:22.640 and scooped them up and brought them to um, you know, 0:48:22.640 --> 0:48:25.840 to jails into prisons and you know, so you know, 0:48:26.400 --> 0:48:29.960 um and also you know, even with with you know 0:48:30.160 --> 0:48:33.560 with those you know, extreme situations aside um. You know, 0:48:33.880 --> 0:48:40.440 the the top down approach is patronizing, it's stigmatizing it. 0:48:41.120 --> 0:48:47.160 Um can um At sometimes provide the water, the food 0:48:47.680 --> 0:48:51.719 that that people need, but oftentimes comes at a too 0:48:51.760 --> 0:48:54.880 high of a cost. Uh, and people long for a 0:48:54.880 --> 0:48:58.960 communal recovery. That's how we heal from disasters. Likeness from crises, 0:48:59.000 --> 0:49:02.520 events is part of you know, a communal recovery. We 0:49:02.600 --> 0:49:04.839 were all able to kitchen and receive what we need 0:49:04.880 --> 0:49:08.359 and and give what we can. Yeah, can you tell 0:49:08.400 --> 0:49:10.520 us can you give U an example of a communal recovery, 0:49:10.560 --> 0:49:13.279 like that's something that's happened somewhere. Well, you guys have 0:49:13.320 --> 0:49:15.360 been able to assist a community or a community be 0:49:15.360 --> 0:49:19.759 able to assist a family or an individual in recovering. Yeah. Um. 0:49:20.040 --> 0:49:25.680 One one example that I think that's really representative of 0:49:25.680 --> 0:49:30.960 of our approach is um there there there's a family 0:49:31.239 --> 0:49:36.279 who was evicted you know, the um illegally you know, 0:49:36.320 --> 0:49:41.680 after after a disaster, and uh that you know, single 0:49:41.760 --> 0:49:44.919 mom was looking after the other single moms making sure 0:49:45.000 --> 0:49:48.919 they had you know, uh fuel for you know, their 0:49:48.960 --> 0:49:53.320 generators to um you know, to power their their phone 0:49:53.320 --> 0:49:56.080 in different different devices, and that they had diapers and 0:49:56.120 --> 0:49:58.719 that they had you know what, what they needed to 0:49:58.760 --> 0:50:01.640 get by even though you know, they no longer had 0:50:01.800 --> 0:50:05.160 a roof over their head. And so when mutually disaster 0:50:05.200 --> 0:50:09.720 relief comes across people like this, our resources are their resources, 0:50:09.760 --> 0:50:13.960 you know. So so when we both local mutual aid 0:50:13.960 --> 0:50:18.000 groups just the matriarch on the block who's taken care 0:50:18.000 --> 0:50:22.360 of of of the other folks on the block, mutually 0:50:22.400 --> 0:50:28.400 disaster relief exists to uh to share you know, um 0:50:28.480 --> 0:50:32.440 this this network of supplies and labor and you know, 0:50:32.840 --> 0:50:36.640 back up and support with with efforts like that that 0:50:36.680 --> 0:50:42.720 are spontaneous that arise after every crisis. Okay, that makes sense. 0:50:42.880 --> 0:50:44.920 That That's the thing I really wanted to get to 0:50:45.120 --> 0:50:48.960 here was like, as you mentioned, climate changes causing these 0:50:49.040 --> 0:50:51.840 natural disasters and the worst that things get them, the 0:50:51.880 --> 0:50:56.040 worst that things get. And like you guys have started 0:50:56.080 --> 0:51:00.160 this organization that helps people to help people, and I'm wondering, 0:51:00.520 --> 0:51:04.760 like what a like, how can people organize to help 0:51:04.840 --> 0:51:09.560 and be how can people in communities organize to be 0:51:09.680 --> 0:51:12.239 more resilient and in the time when natural disaster is 0:51:12.360 --> 0:51:16.520 becoming more and more commonplace. So one of the things 0:51:16.520 --> 0:51:19.080 that I think what Jimmy spoke to regarding like a 0:51:19.120 --> 0:51:22.360 matriarch on the black building, that community in advanced and 0:51:22.480 --> 0:51:24.920 after if it happens to just be after, which is 0:51:25.000 --> 0:51:26.680 kind of what happens a lot of times, is when 0:51:26.680 --> 0:51:29.800 it's that forced, um, I don't want to say forced, 0:51:29.880 --> 0:51:34.279 but out of necessity, right, Like necessity is the mother 0:51:34.320 --> 0:51:37.239 of invention, right, And so there's these iterations of what 0:51:37.320 --> 0:51:42.040 community can become. Every time there's a disaster, there's like 0:51:42.080 --> 0:51:45.160 a clean slate and there's a vacuum in which something 0:51:45.239 --> 0:51:48.279 can be created because there maybe nothing. And so if 0:51:48.320 --> 0:51:50.719 you can see an opportunity and if you if you 0:51:50.800 --> 0:51:53.799 have any kind of network on the ground or you 0:51:53.960 --> 0:51:58.480 and it spontaneously erupts, then that can be the new 0:51:58.520 --> 0:52:00.640 growth or the like or however you to phrase it. 0:52:01.200 --> 0:52:06.719 But I think for the resiliency to happen, that solidarity 0:52:07.040 --> 0:52:11.840 in the long term is built from those networks on 0:52:11.880 --> 0:52:14.520 the ground. There's people recognizing each other and seeing each other. 0:52:14.560 --> 0:52:17.440 And I think COVID is so interesting because people have 0:52:17.600 --> 0:52:23.719 become so nuclear and like isolated the technology and then 0:52:23.840 --> 0:52:26.920 forced into these pods of technology and that was the 0:52:26.960 --> 0:52:29.200 only way people existed and then all of a sudden, 0:52:29.200 --> 0:52:31.080 there was this need to be around people like people 0:52:31.239 --> 0:52:34.160 like no, no, no no, I really want like human contact. 0:52:34.480 --> 0:52:37.160 And so I think that kind of speaks to the 0:52:37.200 --> 0:52:40.480 reality of what we need to survive and that's going 0:52:40.520 --> 0:52:45.120 to be through disasters, through pandemics. So building that building 0:52:45.120 --> 0:52:47.959 a community garden, like saying hey to your neighbor, finding 0:52:47.960 --> 0:52:50.239 out who on your street is like an elder and 0:52:50.280 --> 0:52:53.240 maybe doesn't have anybody checking up on them, Like knowing 0:52:53.400 --> 0:52:56.280 what is in your what are the resources, whether it's people, 0:52:56.560 --> 0:52:59.960 whether it's a food bank, whether it's like a water fountain, 0:53:00.280 --> 0:53:03.560 Like what are the resources in your area? And where 0:53:03.680 --> 0:53:08.680 can you spontaneously take over areas when something happens. There's 0:53:08.760 --> 0:53:14.120 so many empty lots, different places that are you know, 0:53:15.360 --> 0:53:18.200 really on the verge of being gentrified. And when something happens, 0:53:18.239 --> 0:53:22.120 if you can help in the areas where you can 0:53:22.160 --> 0:53:27.080 maybe take over a building, that would help maintain that 0:53:27.120 --> 0:53:29.560 building for the persons who would otherwise be getting pushed 0:53:29.560 --> 0:53:32.280 out soon. Right, Like we've worked with people that allow 0:53:32.360 --> 0:53:34.799 us to set up school libraries, for example, in their 0:53:34.880 --> 0:53:38.279 areas while we're while we're doing disaster the response, and 0:53:38.320 --> 0:53:43.200 we helped build that house or that community center for 0:53:43.360 --> 0:53:47.760 that school up while we're there and creating a community 0:53:47.800 --> 0:53:51.160 space for people to then run with that concept of 0:53:51.160 --> 0:53:53.360 what they wanted to build, like what they wanted to 0:53:53.440 --> 0:53:56.799 put there. The best way you know, to prepare for 0:53:56.880 --> 0:54:02.080 disasters is ongoing mutual aid projects, groups and efforts. You know, 0:54:02.120 --> 0:54:04.759 the more that we can connect with each other, those 0:54:04.800 --> 0:54:10.799 relationships and those connections, they're the groundwork for uh a 0:54:10.920 --> 0:54:14.799 vibrant people power disaster response. You gotta know who's who. 0:54:14.840 --> 0:54:19.720 You gotta know what people are able to do, wanting 0:54:19.719 --> 0:54:22.800 to do. You know, what are people's strengths. It really 0:54:22.800 --> 0:54:26.640 is about that resiliency. Knowing who you can count on 0:54:26.719 --> 0:54:30.719 for something like who knows about you know, wiring, who 0:54:30.719 --> 0:54:35.840 knows about plumbing, who knows about you know, the streets, 0:54:35.960 --> 0:54:39.040 who knows the area the best? You know, certain members 0:54:39.040 --> 0:54:41.920 in the community that are founders in the community that 0:54:41.960 --> 0:54:45.880 others will respond to or navigate or gravitate too. I 0:54:45.920 --> 0:54:48.160 got you. Yeah, Yeah, that makes a lot of sense that, Like, 0:54:48.719 --> 0:54:51.120 I think it's really interesting to contrast this with the 0:54:51.160 --> 0:54:54.400 model of like surviving natural disasters that we've seen portrayed 0:54:54.520 --> 0:54:58.160 so often, especially on like TV shows like Preppers, Right 0:54:58.239 --> 0:55:00.680 which is like I will see on my own with 0:55:00.719 --> 0:55:03.799 a ship ton of ammunition and shoot anyone who comes 0:55:03.800 --> 0:55:06.799 off to my Roman noodle castle. But what are you 0:55:06.800 --> 0:55:09.200 gonna do with that? When you're supplies right now? Then? 0:55:09.239 --> 0:55:10.759 When you who are you gonna rely on? All we 0:55:10.800 --> 0:55:14.319 have is each other? We're not. We're not. I mean, 0:55:14.440 --> 0:55:17.399 more power to the you know, outlier individual out there 0:55:17.440 --> 0:55:20.480 that can literally do everything for themselves. But I just 0:55:20.760 --> 0:55:27.759 don't think that's humanities function we have. We have much 0:55:27.800 --> 0:55:31.520 more UM when we share with each other um than 0:55:31.600 --> 0:55:35.840 we have individually. When we pull our resources together, we 0:55:35.920 --> 0:55:38.839 have enough for everybody. Uh. We you know, we take 0:55:38.880 --> 0:55:42.000 what is in our cabinets, you know, as far as 0:55:42.040 --> 0:55:45.000 food or sup supplies, we take what's in our medicine cabinets. 0:55:45.120 --> 0:55:50.680 We make it liberated communal uh space and supplies and 0:55:50.680 --> 0:55:55.200 and very quickly thinks snowball and uh small first aisation 0:55:55.360 --> 0:55:59.000 becomes a wellness center or a clinic. And and and 0:55:59.080 --> 0:56:02.080 that's you know, the hour of sharing with each other 0:56:02.120 --> 0:56:08.200 and building building alternative infrastructure infrastructure together, and the alternative 0:56:08.239 --> 0:56:11.560 infrastructure for me is really important to UM. I think 0:56:11.640 --> 0:56:14.680 for us to be resilient, we we have to teach 0:56:14.719 --> 0:56:17.920 each other the skills we have to start learning the 0:56:17.960 --> 0:56:20.600 ways in which we will be able to actually build 0:56:20.680 --> 0:56:23.799 back the way we want, the way we foresee our 0:56:23.800 --> 0:56:27.480 communities to be. Whatever that looks like. But we need 0:56:27.520 --> 0:56:30.400 those skills if we are going to divest, if we 0:56:30.440 --> 0:56:35.759 are going to have autonomy. Yeah, I really like that 0:56:35.800 --> 0:56:40.040 model of thinking of your natural disasters like an opportunity 0:56:40.120 --> 0:56:43.080 to rebuild in a more a more equal way, rather 0:56:43.080 --> 0:56:45.359 than thinking of it it's the thing which just has 0:56:45.440 --> 0:56:48.359 knocks down, you know, the amount of stuff you've accumulated 0:56:48.440 --> 0:56:50.279 or whatever. Instead of seeing it as an opportunity is 0:56:50.280 --> 0:56:54.360 really positive. It is an opportunity to reevaluate, is an 0:56:54.400 --> 0:56:57.080 opportunity to see each other, to see your neighbor. It's 0:56:57.080 --> 0:57:00.200 an opportunity to be more sustainable in the rebuild, which 0:57:00.200 --> 0:57:02.200 is the thing that I really struggle with in a 0:57:02.239 --> 0:57:07.960 lot of responses. Um, it's just the dependency on the 0:57:08.040 --> 0:57:12.120 existing supply chains and the existing methods of transportation like that. 0:57:12.120 --> 0:57:15.400 That whole needs to be addressed for resiliency in the future. 0:57:15.440 --> 0:57:18.160 There's got to be an entire real world of how 0:57:18.160 --> 0:57:22.760 we respond in some ways in general, Yeah, divest the 0:57:22.760 --> 0:57:25.440 way we want now, I think that's the sustainability thing. 0:57:25.520 --> 0:57:28.160 If just reminded me of something which like, for whatever reason, 0:57:28.200 --> 0:57:30.160 I bought one back last time I was somewhere. But 0:57:31.280 --> 0:57:34.439 people can't see this being an audio podcast. But one 0:57:34.440 --> 0:57:36.680 of the things you often see in natural disasters is 0:57:36.720 --> 0:57:39.520 these things that are called humanitarian daily rations and it's 0:57:39.600 --> 0:57:41.680 like a it's like an m R E. And it 0:57:41.720 --> 0:57:43.919 comes in a pink packet and everything else comes into 0:57:43.920 --> 0:57:47.760 packet and like it's within like two days. And obviously 0:57:48.080 --> 0:57:50.760 this is a time when like sort of systems for 0:57:50.840 --> 0:57:54.680 disposing of rubbish have been overwhelmed within two days, these 0:57:54.720 --> 0:57:57.240 things and the foil packets and little brown experience of 0:57:57.640 --> 0:58:02.120 fucking everywhere, and it's just it always strikes me as 0:58:02.160 --> 0:58:04.919 so sad that like we've taken this time when people 0:58:05.000 --> 0:58:07.000 are in crisis, and we've made at a time when 0:58:07.040 --> 0:58:11.520 also that their environment is in crisis now as well. Yeah, 0:58:11.520 --> 0:58:13.400 and it's a lot, and that's one of the things 0:58:13.440 --> 0:58:16.040 I struggle with, um with water as well. Water is 0:58:16.120 --> 0:58:19.960 kind of like my thing. I know that irony, but um, 0:58:20.080 --> 0:58:23.920 when whenever there's a response, there's a heavy dependency on 0:58:24.920 --> 0:58:29.000 bottled water and there's other alternatives, but it would require 0:58:29.400 --> 0:58:32.520 you know, a little bit of advanced skill training, a 0:58:32.560 --> 0:58:36.479 little bit of advanced infrastructure development, but that response could 0:58:36.520 --> 0:58:39.640 be prepared in advance. And I think in in some 0:58:39.680 --> 0:58:43.320 cases there's communities, especially in the local South, where that 0:58:43.680 --> 0:58:48.120 advanced thinking about it's gonna happen, right, It's gonna happen here, right, 0:58:48.280 --> 0:58:54.080 it's gonna it's gonna have what's gonna happen everywhere in 0:58:54.120 --> 0:58:56.000 the Gulf Coast, and it's going to keep going up 0:58:56.040 --> 0:58:58.400 and up, And whether it's a fire, whether it's a 0:58:58.480 --> 0:59:01.840 hurricane where there's a math, to tornado, whether to drought, 0:59:01.840 --> 0:59:05.000 in a food shortage or a pandemic, if we're not 0:59:05.640 --> 0:59:07.880 thinking in advance and be just and I don't want 0:59:07.880 --> 0:59:10.840 to sound like you know, necessarily prepper individualistic, but as 0:59:10.880 --> 0:59:15.000 a community thinking in advance, like for example, small plug 0:59:15.040 --> 0:59:20.000 but cooperation Jackson is thinking about building um their own 0:59:20.160 --> 0:59:23.200 water infrastructure so that they are not going to be 0:59:23.280 --> 0:59:28.960 dependent on just municipal water, which is yeah, I mean 0:59:29.000 --> 0:59:32.520 why not even if it's small scale, why not start 0:59:32.600 --> 0:59:38.560 developing community owned micro grids, water treatment facilities. Why is 0:59:38.600 --> 0:59:43.200 it just capital large capital, Like Jimmy said, we're stronger together. 0:59:43.600 --> 0:59:47.160 So if we pull together in these communities style, just 0:59:47.200 --> 0:59:50.680 like old school see essays we can do that, then 0:59:50.840 --> 0:59:55.760 we can. Essentially it's an it's another opportunity divested to 0:59:55.880 --> 0:59:58.120 build it ourselves. We can do it before, we could 0:59:58.120 --> 1:00:00.680 do it after. But I think for resilience for me, 1:00:01.720 --> 1:00:08.840 finding ways around those existing models and supply lines is 1:00:09.160 --> 1:00:16.880 critical to avoid the gap in the disaster and the response. Yeah, 1:00:17.040 --> 1:00:20.720 talk us through a community on water sustainable water project 1:00:20.840 --> 1:00:22.760 like that, like what does that look like? What are 1:00:22.760 --> 1:00:25.800 the what are the components of it? It would So 1:00:25.920 --> 1:00:29.960 that's a fabulous question, um. But it's also when that 1:00:30.120 --> 1:00:32.760 I personally can't answer. I can because I'm not the 1:00:32.880 --> 1:00:35.560 entire community. So there's so many questions that are involved 1:00:35.560 --> 1:00:40.520 with that, like who's gonna who's committing to maintain it financially, operationally, 1:00:40.640 --> 1:00:43.160 maintenance wise, you know how many people? A is it 1:00:43.240 --> 1:00:46.880 going to be be used by? How frequently is it 1:00:46.920 --> 1:00:50.160 intended for all the time? Used for just as a 1:00:50.200 --> 1:00:52.840 response in a backup, So there's a lot of things 1:00:52.880 --> 1:00:56.280 that are involved there, and also financial structures. There's so 1:00:56.320 --> 1:00:58.640 many different ways that I can get set up, um, 1:00:58.680 --> 1:01:00.600 And like Jimmy knows, I do not like to involve 1:01:00.640 --> 1:01:03.600 myself with money aspects, I'm just straight hammers and like 1:01:04.160 --> 1:01:08.520 you know, solar um. But there there's a lot of 1:01:08.560 --> 1:01:13.800 the good examples of community owned my grigrids for solar, 1:01:14.200 --> 1:01:18.400 and that's really the I don't know that there's that many, 1:01:18.520 --> 1:01:22.840 especially in the US community owned water systems, but if 1:01:22.880 --> 1:01:28.200 you look internationally that is likely different. Um. Yeah, but 1:01:28.360 --> 1:01:33.520 as far as solar, that's a pretty common thing. Diversity. Well, 1:01:33.560 --> 1:01:35.400 there's a lot of different ways my grogrids can get 1:01:35.400 --> 1:01:37.560 set up and who could own it. So again it 1:01:37.600 --> 1:01:40.720 depends on the scale, right, like who's going to fund 1:01:40.800 --> 1:01:43.480 the operation at the beginning, if you have a few 1:01:43.520 --> 1:01:45.600 angel owners that want to do it, or if you 1:01:45.640 --> 1:01:47.600 have a community that's willing to pitch in an equal 1:01:47.600 --> 1:01:50.560 amount for person you know, and how much they want 1:01:50.560 --> 1:01:52.760 to use for it. So you calculate how much you 1:01:52.800 --> 1:01:57.120 need for each person's use, you know, what's the distribution area, 1:01:57.160 --> 1:01:59.680 how many camels do you need and how are you 1:01:59.720 --> 1:02:01.800 going to get it to everybody? Are they going to 1:02:01.880 --> 1:02:05.760 have battery paints for autonomous use? Are they going to 1:02:05.800 --> 1:02:09.200 be like tied in? So there's it's a lot of 1:02:09.240 --> 1:02:14.280 models that you could do for hurricane just before hurricane 1:02:14.320 --> 1:02:20.000 Ian Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico um and it wiped out, 1:02:20.240 --> 1:02:24.720 you know, for for a time the whole islands power grid, 1:02:25.320 --> 1:02:30.800 but the autonomous off grid solar infrastructure that was built 1:02:30.840 --> 1:02:32.840 up at the central state point of Mutual the Mutual 1:02:32.880 --> 1:02:36.600 aid centers across the island stayed the lights stayed on, 1:02:37.240 --> 1:02:41.000 and they were able to continue powering their communities through 1:02:41.160 --> 1:02:45.960 autonomous infrastrure infrastructure. Oh yeah, that's really cool. I know 1:02:46.160 --> 1:02:49.280 some indigenous nations and on the West Coast certainly have 1:02:49.720 --> 1:02:53.440 their own micro grids as well. Nice. Yeah, it's it's 1:02:53.520 --> 1:02:57.680 smaller scale, like how many like people are in the communities? Sorry, yeah, 1:02:57.760 --> 1:03:00.440 the smallish scale. I think like maybe a few hundreds, 1:03:00.480 --> 1:03:04.160 maybe a couple of thousands something like that. That's good. Yeah, 1:03:04.200 --> 1:03:06.520 it's an area of interest, I know for other Indigenous 1:03:06.560 --> 1:03:11.320 people for very obvious reasons. But yeah, that's really cool 1:03:11.480 --> 1:03:13.640 if someone was interested in that. Like let's say I'm 1:03:13.640 --> 1:03:15.920 at home with my community and I hear this and 1:03:15.920 --> 1:03:17.320 I'm like, hell, yeah, that's what I want to do. 1:03:17.440 --> 1:03:21.280 Can they reach out? Can they reach out to you 1:03:21.360 --> 1:03:23.360 and be like, hey, help me, help me join together. 1:03:23.400 --> 1:03:26.680 These fifteen press car batteries or would you be able 1:03:26.680 --> 1:03:28.640 to help them with the like planning stages of that 1:03:28.760 --> 1:03:32.360 or is that beyond the scope of your work. Um? So, 1:03:32.640 --> 1:03:38.360 my my main area of knowledge is around water um, 1:03:38.440 --> 1:03:42.400 and I dabble with solar a lot. But there are 1:03:42.440 --> 1:03:45.560 a lot of folks in the network who have insane skills. 1:03:45.640 --> 1:03:49.240 Like we have people working on all kinds of projects, 1:03:49.000 --> 1:03:53.400 so many cool things. So I would say, yeah, reach out, um, 1:03:53.440 --> 1:03:55.640 because that's kind of what the network is. It is 1:03:55.680 --> 1:03:59.880 a lot of really cool people trying to just make 1:04:00.040 --> 1:04:03.360 positive change. It's super awesome skills. A lot of folks 1:04:03.360 --> 1:04:07.200 have pretty cool skills. Yeah. In the beginning of this interview, 1:04:07.320 --> 1:04:11.680 you mentioned how you felt like times just kind of 1:04:11.720 --> 1:04:19.200 slowed down or like it's all kind of blurred into one. Um. 1:04:19.320 --> 1:04:22.720 Is that like a common feeling whenever these things happen 1:04:23.000 --> 1:04:27.080 and people are on the ground, the type of otherworldly 1:04:27.360 --> 1:04:30.800 nous or how everything feels so stretched out. How does 1:04:30.800 --> 1:04:38.160 that kind of like what's your experiences with with that feeling? Um? Yeah, 1:04:38.200 --> 1:04:40.760 I think that feeling is partly trauma, right, there's a 1:04:40.760 --> 1:04:44.160 lot of trauma associated with the work, and you know, 1:04:44.200 --> 1:04:48.360 those conversations happen a lot and it's UM really. I 1:04:48.360 --> 1:04:52.200 mean personally, I won't speak for everybody obviously, but personally 1:04:52.200 --> 1:04:55.919 I've feigned a lot of UM support just in our 1:04:56.560 --> 1:05:01.760 collective network, everybody's UM. I feel really focused on the 1:05:01.880 --> 1:05:05.920 same thing. So I personally gain strength from that. But 1:05:06.000 --> 1:05:11.520 I think there is a lot of UM. I feel 1:05:11.520 --> 1:05:13.640 like you can get a lot of hopelessness sometimes right 1:05:13.720 --> 1:05:17.800 like you start to see the the long term need 1:05:18.560 --> 1:05:22.160 and the fading of the spotlight because the next disaster happens. 1:05:22.520 --> 1:05:24.920 And I mean there's literally still people in ban Rouge 1:05:24.920 --> 1:05:28.479 who still have houses that haven't been fully rebuilt and 1:05:28.640 --> 1:05:32.320 that was from the flood. And there's still places that 1:05:32.400 --> 1:05:34.960 don't have electricity in Puerto Rico right now, and it's 1:05:34.960 --> 1:05:37.120 been like, you know, I don't know what, over a month. 1:05:37.400 --> 1:05:41.040 So you know, Flint, Michigan, just like name of thing. Right, 1:05:41.560 --> 1:05:46.959 So I think, my, my, I don't think I could 1:05:46.960 --> 1:05:51.200 do this work without the support of other people who 1:05:51.240 --> 1:05:54.680 do this work, who have that same UM feeling, who 1:05:54.680 --> 1:05:59.280 who experienced that. And the time. The time work I 1:05:59.320 --> 1:06:05.880 think is partly for me again, partly exhaustion, partly trauma, UM, 1:06:05.920 --> 1:06:11.160 partly UM like excitement. There is so much excitement right, 1:06:11.520 --> 1:06:14.400 seeing seeing it, seeing the love, like, I don't want 1:06:14.400 --> 1:06:16.320 to make it sound all bad, Like there's like beautiful 1:06:16.400 --> 1:06:19.080 moments every day with the love that you have on 1:06:19.120 --> 1:06:23.800 the grountain with everybody. Um, and so yeah, go for 1:06:23.920 --> 1:06:29.680 it often. Um. You know, Dorothy Day, after the San 1:06:29.720 --> 1:06:33.680 Francisco earthquake over a century ago, said, while the crisis lasted, 1:06:33.840 --> 1:06:40.120 people loved one another. And what oftentimes we experience after 1:06:40.600 --> 1:06:45.560 a major crisis or disaster is is that our lives 1:06:45.680 --> 1:06:50.840 before we're disastrous. You know that capitalism and colonialism, in 1:06:50.920 --> 1:06:55.280 the isolation and alienation and the meaninglessness, drudgery of the 1:06:55.320 --> 1:06:57.960 work and selling ourselves to the highest bidder so that 1:06:58.000 --> 1:07:02.280 we can survive, you know. Um, all that is an ongoing, 1:07:02.320 --> 1:07:08.000 invisible disaster. And in in the moment where the the 1:07:08.120 --> 1:07:10.760 ruins are around us and we see them, you know, 1:07:10.840 --> 1:07:16.120 we we come together in a way that that draws 1:07:16.240 --> 1:07:20.320 on on on that feeling of solidarity and love and 1:07:20.320 --> 1:07:23.560 and those those ideas of a better world that we 1:07:24.520 --> 1:07:27.280 that we protest for, that we march on the streets 1:07:27.320 --> 1:07:31.400 for that we you know, envision coming you know sometime 1:07:31.480 --> 1:07:34.440 in the future in a microcosm, they exist here and 1:07:34.520 --> 1:07:38.800 now in in these local pockets of people taking care 1:07:38.800 --> 1:07:44.400 of each other against all odds. Two. Yeah, I think 1:07:44.400 --> 1:07:46.680 that's really that's really well put. Like it's sort of 1:07:46.840 --> 1:07:49.280 it made me reflect on like I've reported from it 1:07:49.280 --> 1:07:52.600 and worked in lots of natural disasters, and like that 1:07:52.680 --> 1:07:57.320 time when they like alienation, boredom, and despair they associate 1:07:57.400 --> 1:08:00.520 with everyday drudgery under capitalism goes away and you have 1:08:00.600 --> 1:08:04.480 a purpose and everyone's working together and you're also on 1:08:04.480 --> 1:08:08.640 like Twitter dot com all the time. It's very and 1:08:08.640 --> 1:08:10.439 and in time stretchy is in at the same time 1:08:10.480 --> 1:08:14.280 compresses It's it's very addictive in a sense, like it 1:08:14.320 --> 1:08:17.800 feels wonderful and hopeful. And then it's the feeling that 1:08:17.880 --> 1:08:22.439 an uprising tries to replicate. It's it's the it's this 1:08:22.520 --> 1:08:27.280 moment of peak experience that makes you. It forces you 1:08:27.360 --> 1:08:30.479 to fall out of the kind of the drudgery of 1:08:31.120 --> 1:08:37.280 collapsing capitalist infrastructure and you're forced to actually live around 1:08:37.360 --> 1:08:41.639 people and it's the weirdest feeling. And it happens when 1:08:41.800 --> 1:08:47.800 horrible things happen, like disasters like wildfires, hurricanes, or it 1:08:47.840 --> 1:08:51.240 happens people getting shot. Yeah, the moment of like national 1:08:51.320 --> 1:08:54.120 uprising as well like it's the same it's the same 1:08:54.160 --> 1:08:57.879 function and for a brief moment you're able to actually 1:08:57.920 --> 1:09:01.920 live the things that you like preach um and you're 1:09:01.960 --> 1:09:04.800 able to see them get applied to the world. I 1:09:04.840 --> 1:09:07.200 think a lot of us getting away from that just 1:09:07.280 --> 1:09:10.280 being a peak, right and having to come back down, 1:09:10.320 --> 1:09:15.360 because I'm really is to build that resiliency, right, to 1:09:15.360 --> 1:09:18.439 to create it so that the lights don't go out 1:09:18.960 --> 1:09:21.840 and we just keep rolling and if they do go out, 1:09:21.920 --> 1:09:24.400 you know, we've got a backup plan, like you know, 1:09:24.479 --> 1:09:26.639 there's a wood burning stove and we make some pizza. 1:09:27.000 --> 1:09:31.040 I don't know, but you know, I think, yeah, the 1:09:32.000 --> 1:09:35.479 peak shouldn't be a peak, there should be just a shift. 1:09:37.200 --> 1:09:39.160 So how do yeah, so how do we how do 1:09:39.200 --> 1:09:42.880 we keep that right? How do we rebuild and keep 1:09:42.960 --> 1:09:50.759 that momentum that that that net for each other? Yeah, 1:09:50.760 --> 1:10:00.000 it's yeah, yeah, I think that Letton had an answer 1:10:00.120 --> 1:10:05.960 to that that it did not work out the best. Yeah, 1:10:06.000 --> 1:10:09.320 and and we're still here, yeah, yeah, here we are 1:10:09.400 --> 1:10:12.439 listening to podcasts. But yeah, I think that was wonderful. 1:10:12.479 --> 1:10:15.439 I really enjoyed that. I think your point just to 1:10:15.560 --> 1:10:18.320 close out that discussion about like how you guys have 1:10:18.360 --> 1:10:21.880 a network that supports people. Some of the most profound 1:10:21.960 --> 1:10:26.520 depression I've experienced has been not like directly around disasters 1:10:26.600 --> 1:10:29.559 or conflict, but coming home and feeling useless. So I 1:10:29.600 --> 1:10:34.200 think that like checking in on people and continuing to 1:10:34.240 --> 1:10:36.880 feel like you're pushing in a positive direction, Like more 1:10:36.920 --> 1:10:39.920 people will experience a natural disaster after listening to this 1:10:40.040 --> 1:10:42.280 and have done before listening to this, and next year 1:10:42.320 --> 1:10:43.920 will be bigger than this year, and it will get 1:10:43.960 --> 1:10:49.120 worse until but like you will feel elated and that's okay, 1:10:49.160 --> 1:10:51.639 and you will feel devastated and that's okay. And checking 1:10:51.680 --> 1:10:55.720 it on people is super duper important. And speaking of 1:10:55.800 --> 1:10:59.200 that network and making connections, where can people find in 1:10:59.479 --> 1:11:04.320 support the work that y'all do? All right, Jimmy Scene, 1:11:05.400 --> 1:11:08.559 We can go to mutual a Disaster Relief dot org 1:11:09.320 --> 1:11:13.240 or on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, mutual a Disaster Relief on 1:11:13.280 --> 1:11:17.040 Twitter it's mutual Aide Relief and our email is Mutually 1:11:17.040 --> 1:11:20.080 a Disaster Leaf at gmail dot com. I would love 1:11:20.640 --> 1:11:24.880 for more people to join uh this movement, you know, 1:11:24.920 --> 1:11:28.559 both Mutual A Disaster really their local Mutual Aid Project 1:11:28.960 --> 1:11:34.240 um and and and other other similar efforts or start one. Yeah, 1:11:34.280 --> 1:11:36.800 that's a question we get a lot is like, Yo, 1:11:37.240 --> 1:11:39.400 you guys talk about mutual aid and stuff, but there's 1:11:39.439 --> 1:11:41.439 really nothing in my area. There's I don't I don't, 1:11:41.479 --> 1:11:44.479 I don't know what whatether's to do. Like okay, well 1:11:46.040 --> 1:11:52.280 there's some that can fix that problem. I mean, like, 1:11:52.439 --> 1:11:54.400 do you have any like resources to help people kind 1:11:54.400 --> 1:11:58.639 of figure out how they would absolutely? On our website, 1:11:58.720 --> 1:12:01.400 mutual a disaster leaf dot or there's a resources tab 1:12:01.800 --> 1:12:05.320 and one of the sessions is mutual aid about you know, 1:12:05.600 --> 1:12:07.920 diving into the subject of what is mutual aid and 1:12:07.920 --> 1:12:11.880 how to form a group or a project UM and 1:12:11.880 --> 1:12:16.880 and other resources along those lines. We also have a 1:12:16.960 --> 1:12:21.760 newly formed UM mutual Aid Toolkit Relief Toolkit that's on 1:12:21.760 --> 1:12:25.440 our website. So if there are local mutual aid groups, UM, 1:12:25.479 --> 1:12:29.839 this is a public form, so there's a big bold 1:12:30.240 --> 1:12:33.879 like warning about it and happening it's public. For intention 1:12:33.920 --> 1:12:37.200 we have our own obviously like internal threads, but this 1:12:37.280 --> 1:12:40.040 is more like for folks who maybe haven't ever plugged 1:12:40.080 --> 1:12:43.000 into mutually before, like being able to see where's all 1:12:43.040 --> 1:12:45.559 the different mutual aid projects and what they're doing. So 1:12:46.040 --> 1:12:49.559 UM again we talked about the resiliency, so This is 1:12:49.640 --> 1:12:51.800 kind of our attempts to be able to map for 1:12:51.840 --> 1:12:55.880 each other UM away where we can see what every 1:12:56.120 --> 1:12:58.920 where where everyone is that's interested in responding and doing 1:12:58.960 --> 1:13:00.479 what they're doing. So if it's a you know, bom 1:13:00.520 --> 1:13:03.479 screw or like whatever your mutually things that you're doing, 1:13:03.800 --> 1:13:06.960 if you want to join on to that UM that's 1:13:06.960 --> 1:13:08.559 a fun way to see who might be in your area. 1:13:08.560 --> 1:13:12.040 If everybody start stilling it out, fantastic. Thank thank you 1:13:12.080 --> 1:13:15.960 so much for taking time out of the stretched out 1:13:17.120 --> 1:13:21.160 or fis concept of litera progression of time to talk 1:13:21.200 --> 1:13:25.840 with us about the fantastic work that you are all 1:13:25.880 --> 1:13:45.679 a part of. Thanks for having us appreciate it. Hey everyone, 1:13:46.080 --> 1:13:49.920 and welcome. It could happen here. I'm Andrew the YouTube 1:13:49.960 --> 1:13:52.880 channel andrewis UM. I would like to borrow some of 1:13:52.880 --> 1:13:55.200 your time today or tonight, whenever you're listening to talk 1:13:55.240 --> 1:14:01.439 about movements, the fact that humans move around and the 1:14:01.520 --> 1:14:05.639 most Indian restrictions on it in our modern world. Today, 1:14:05.680 --> 1:14:10.920 I'm joined by my co hosts. Hello Garrison here, Hi, 1:14:11.000 --> 1:14:16.479 it's James as well. Right. Glad to be here and 1:14:16.560 --> 1:14:21.479 to be here with you guys. So even before I 1:14:21.520 --> 1:14:24.920 was an anarchist I would say there were three things 1:14:25.000 --> 1:14:28.679 I really despised. Things I despised from like fairly early 1:14:28.720 --> 1:14:37.840 each that being the education system, advertising and porters. I 1:14:37.880 --> 1:14:42.120 believe freedom of movement is fundamental. I don't know if 1:14:42.120 --> 1:14:48.720 that's controversial or anything, but these days it feels like 1:14:49.280 --> 1:14:53.520 it has reached a point of like really great restriction, 1:14:54.840 --> 1:14:59.280 more so, I think than at most points of human history. 1:14:59.400 --> 1:15:01.800 So I want to talk about the history of borders, 1:15:02.000 --> 1:15:07.120 the role of borders, and the fight against borders. Not 1:15:07.200 --> 1:15:10.000 to give you some context, cause you can't about my 1:15:10.000 --> 1:15:14.040 accent and from the Caribbean, particularly from Trina and Tobago, 1:15:14.760 --> 1:15:19.360 and being from an island nation, twin island nation. Actually 1:15:20.240 --> 1:15:25.559 I have been made away of the constant through history 1:15:25.640 --> 1:15:29.960 that has been into Ireland migration, whether you're talking about 1:15:30.040 --> 1:15:34.799 the Polynesian migrations across the Pacific, whether you're talking about 1:15:34.800 --> 1:15:40.240 even within the Malay Archipelago or the Philippine Archipelago, or 1:15:40.240 --> 1:15:43.840 even when you're talking about of course the Caribbean. There's 1:15:43.880 --> 1:15:47.559 always been, you know, this movement of people going from 1:15:47.600 --> 1:15:51.599 Ireland to Ireland. You know, like Tronada is very close 1:15:52.640 --> 1:15:57.479 to northeastern Venezuela, only eleven kilometers off the coast of 1:15:57.520 --> 1:16:01.040 northeastern Venezuela out in the Northern Area in literally called 1:16:01.120 --> 1:16:06.479 Northern Range, is an extension of Venezuela's maritime and these mountains, 1:16:06.920 --> 1:16:10.880 but the connections to end there. Human settlements in Turad 1:16:11.160 --> 1:16:15.160 dates back at least seven thousand years. In fact, one 1:16:15.160 --> 1:16:17.839 of the oldest human settlements discovered in the Eastern Caribbean, 1:16:18.240 --> 1:16:21.320 the Banouari trade site, is found in southeastern turn Dad. 1:16:22.200 --> 1:16:28.360 One of the leading theories of human disposal across the 1:16:28.400 --> 1:16:33.040 world places the migration of the Caribbean as beginning in 1:16:33.120 --> 1:16:37.000 Turnad and going up the Antillian chain. A lot of 1:16:37.000 --> 1:16:40.000 the indigenous groups that settled in turn Dad and in 1:16:40.040 --> 1:16:43.360 the other islands north of Trindad and for the most 1:16:43.400 --> 1:16:46.880 part migrated up the or Nocle River in what is 1:16:46.920 --> 1:16:50.920 now Venezuela. So exchange in migration between the continents and 1:16:50.960 --> 1:16:56.960 the island has continued undisturbed freely for thousands of years 1:16:57.000 --> 1:17:00.920 before the arrival of the Spanish, and today in our 1:17:01.360 --> 1:17:05.360 free quote and code post colonial code and code world, 1:17:05.720 --> 1:17:09.200 what was once the norm is now criminalized. Now you 1:17:09.200 --> 1:17:12.400 have to go through this proper process. In order to migrate. 1:17:12.880 --> 1:17:16.160 You have to ask permission from governments who draw these 1:17:16.200 --> 1:17:21.360 invisible lines or in some cases violently physical lines in 1:17:21.400 --> 1:17:25.959 the sand and demanded deference. And yet still migration continues, 1:17:25.960 --> 1:17:30.839 because migration is a constant of human existence, legal and illegal. 1:17:32.000 --> 1:17:35.320 Recent Venezuela crisis and subsequent migration is just another uptake 1:17:35.360 --> 1:17:39.240 of the same. Refugees, desperate escape the present um of 1:17:39.280 --> 1:17:44.879 American imperialism and Venezuelan government mismanagement and all the component 1:17:45.000 --> 1:17:47.840 is us that have caused Venezuelan crisis have been flee 1:17:47.880 --> 1:17:51.519 into Colombia, to Brazil, to the Dutch Caribbean Islands, to 1:17:51.600 --> 1:17:54.000 the other lastin American countries, and of course to turn 1:17:54.080 --> 1:18:00.200 that well, this migration is extorted by opportunists, facility, by 1:18:00.200 --> 1:18:04.880 the organized crime of human traffickers, because when you try 1:18:04.920 --> 1:18:09.040 to restrict that kind of demand, when you illegalize that 1:18:09.160 --> 1:18:14.479 kind of movement, the people on the margins, we'll try 1:18:14.520 --> 1:18:18.479 to take advantage of those who are who need to 1:18:18.520 --> 1:18:22.320 move around, because that need is still there. And so 1:18:23.640 --> 1:18:29.280 lines also, of course are not necessarily creating, but they 1:18:29.320 --> 1:18:35.160 serve to exacerbate essues like xenophobia, which is you know, 1:18:35.240 --> 1:18:40.000 only amplified by the existence of orders, and they also 1:18:40.040 --> 1:18:43.320 deal with, due to their paperless status, a lot of 1:18:43.320 --> 1:18:47.160 gross exploitation because they struggled to find work and secure 1:18:47.200 --> 1:18:51.360 the basic necessities of life. The Venezuelan refugee crisis is 1:18:51.360 --> 1:18:54.000 a disaster I've seen unfull before my own eyes when 1:18:54.000 --> 1:18:57.680 I have witnessed firsthand, and one that is facilitated and 1:18:57.760 --> 1:19:02.759 exacerbated by the existence of borders. And you've seen similar 1:19:02.800 --> 1:19:05.120 issues of cool another part of the world too, you know, 1:19:05.240 --> 1:19:09.519 borders are enforced between the US and Mexico, between Haiti 1:19:09.640 --> 1:19:13.240 and the Republic, between Spain and Morocco, when you euroupe 1:19:13.240 --> 1:19:17.680 in the Swanna region, between India and Pakistan, between Australia 1:19:17.680 --> 1:19:24.280 and Indonesia, um between Palestine and Israel. And being journalists, 1:19:24.320 --> 1:19:29.080 I'm sure you guys have experienced, perhaps foodstand other examples 1:19:29.400 --> 1:19:35.479 of the violent enforcement of borders. James, you have any experiences, Yeah, 1:19:35.600 --> 1:19:38.839 for sure. I actually live just about the same distance 1:19:38.880 --> 1:19:40.920 you live from Venezuela. I live about the same distance 1:19:40.960 --> 1:19:44.120 from the US border with Mexico, so I've spent quite 1:19:44.160 --> 1:19:47.360 a lot of my journalistic career crossing the border and 1:19:47.720 --> 1:19:52.160 reporting on the border. And like it's as you said, 1:19:52.160 --> 1:19:55.880 it's become increasingly violently enforced, and it's just ugly scar 1:19:56.080 --> 1:20:00.719 on on the landscape now. And it's and I often 1:20:00.800 --> 1:20:06.160 like to say, the border doesn't protect people, it controls people. Yes, yeah, 1:20:06.200 --> 1:20:10.799 it's a very cruel and vicious and entirely arbitrary distinction 1:20:11.160 --> 1:20:15.120 between what is Kumi is Land to the north of 1:20:15.160 --> 1:20:16.760 the border and Kumi is Land to the south of 1:20:16.800 --> 1:20:21.439 the border in my case, Yeah, exactly exactly. The way 1:20:21.479 --> 1:20:26.920 that borders have cut through, um the homelands of any 1:20:26.920 --> 1:20:31.720 different indigenous groups has been absolutely disastrous for them. This 1:20:31.880 --> 1:20:35.400 has taken place, and of course the us UM and 1:20:36.520 --> 1:20:42.759 most I suppose recognizably in Africa, where these clunial borders 1:20:42.840 --> 1:20:47.240 have been causing tremendous harm to this day. Yeah, yeah, 1:20:47.240 --> 1:20:49.360 that's a very good point. I remember, just talking of 1:20:49.439 --> 1:20:53.679 like weird border things. I remember just before the pandemic, 1:20:53.760 --> 1:20:56.640 I was on the border between Rwanda and the Democratic 1:20:56.640 --> 1:21:00.800 Republic of Congo. And when you it, it just seems 1:21:00.840 --> 1:21:04.200 so absurd, like to think that you know, some literally 1:21:04.200 --> 1:21:06.120 some I'll do it in England or a line on 1:21:06.160 --> 1:21:09.280 a map or whatever in Germany. But one of the 1:21:09.360 --> 1:21:12.080 things that it creates is this weird situation where plastic 1:21:12.120 --> 1:21:16.280 bags are illegal in Rwanda because they're trying to protect 1:21:16.320 --> 1:21:18.400 the environment and they're not in Congos. So there's like 1:21:18.439 --> 1:21:23.000 this illegal arbitrage trade of plastic bags across this border. 1:21:23.880 --> 1:21:27.320 And it's just such an odd and constructed, entirely unnecessary 1:21:27.360 --> 1:21:35.920 and strange sort of legacy of the colonial plunder of Africa. Yeah. 1:21:35.960 --> 1:21:41.120 I didn't even hear that before. That sounds quite interesting. Um, 1:21:41.160 --> 1:21:45.320 he says, between Rwanda and Democrats Republic of the Congo. Yeah, 1:21:45.360 --> 1:21:49.479 I think it's sending the border town there. Um yeah, 1:21:49.600 --> 1:21:52.920 people people will come across with their plastic bags. Be 1:21:53.000 --> 1:21:55.280 interesting to see how that develops. I know they are 1:21:56.000 --> 1:22:01.559 attempting to unify Democratic Republic of the car and go Tanzania, Kenya, 1:22:01.640 --> 1:22:07.880 you can salt Sudan, um, I think Jubooty and and 1:22:07.920 --> 1:22:10.519 Somalia and a few other places I think into like 1:22:10.560 --> 1:22:14.880 an East African federation. So be interesting to see how 1:22:14.920 --> 1:22:20.200 those um discrapan seas and laws developed. Yeah, the Rwanda 1:22:20.280 --> 1:22:22.800 border with Congo is that there's a soldier every fifty 1:22:22.880 --> 1:22:26.320 meters with a big machine gun, even going right through 1:22:26.360 --> 1:22:29.320 the middle of the New Way rainforest, which is very 1:22:29.320 --> 1:22:33.160 remote by rewinded standards. Under a busy country with lots 1:22:33.160 --> 1:22:36.320 of people. But yeah, yeah, that's a very militarized border 1:22:36.400 --> 1:22:40.320 right now, right, yeah, yeah, that reminds you it's a 1:22:40.400 --> 1:22:43.600 less militarized example. Um. I mean, people point out the 1:22:43.640 --> 1:22:47.719 disparity between the US Canada border and the US Mexico border, 1:22:48.240 --> 1:22:52.160 but I remember reading a story somewhere about how persing 1:22:52.200 --> 1:22:56.720 on the Canadian side UM had like they could very 1:22:56.720 --> 1:22:59.120 easily cross over onto the US side, but there was 1:22:59.200 --> 1:23:02.000 like a steep trooper or something just standing there and 1:23:02.040 --> 1:23:04.120 it's like if you cross over, have to arrest you. 1:23:05.600 --> 1:23:08.439 And it's just it's like you're right there, we're literally 1:23:08.479 --> 1:23:11.280 having a conversation face to face, and yet if I 1:23:11.320 --> 1:23:17.280 walk over this our cherry designation, I have to be jailed. Yeah, 1:23:17.439 --> 1:23:21.679 it's bizarre. There's a very arbitrary The border between Myanmar 1:23:21.760 --> 1:23:24.519 and Thailand is it's a funny example like that where 1:23:24.560 --> 1:23:28.680 like it's a river and this is unfortunately resulted in 1:23:28.680 --> 1:23:31.000 people trying to cross it here and able to swim dying, 1:23:31.320 --> 1:23:34.720 which is terrible, right, But one thing that happens is 1:23:34.760 --> 1:23:36.960 like if you're in the river, you're in neither country. 1:23:37.400 --> 1:23:40.920 And so people will make stilts like little stands on 1:23:41.040 --> 1:23:44.599 stilts which come up to the level of the river bank, 1:23:45.680 --> 1:23:48.679 such that they can stand in like no man's land 1:23:48.760 --> 1:23:52.080 or every man's stand, maybe every one's land, and sell 1:23:52.200 --> 1:23:56.280 alcohol without paying the Thai taxes and to people who 1:23:56.280 --> 1:23:59.120 are standing on the bank in Thailand. And again it 1:23:59.240 --> 1:24:01.519 just really illustrates how stupid now but treat this whole 1:24:01.520 --> 1:24:06.920 thing is. So as we're talking about the absurdity of boarders, 1:24:07.000 --> 1:24:12.360 I suppose it's only fair to get into their history 1:24:12.439 --> 1:24:14.600 because for most of the rule, and for most of 1:24:14.640 --> 1:24:19.840 human existence, really free movement has when the status cool traders, migrants, 1:24:19.920 --> 1:24:25.280 hunter gatherers, nomads, they freely traversed this little blue marble, 1:24:25.680 --> 1:24:29.519 as they call it. Of course, many ethnic groups maintains 1:24:29.560 --> 1:24:33.160 it in relationships with particular lands. But even when city 1:24:33.240 --> 1:24:35.880 states on such rules, it was rare for rulers to 1:24:36.000 --> 1:24:44.120 delineate precisely where their realm ended and another's began. The 1:24:44.200 --> 1:24:48.639 first like large scale restrictions really a rose under the 1:24:48.760 --> 1:24:53.600 Roman emperor Constantine in the fourth century, when he forbade 1:24:53.960 --> 1:24:58.559 serves from leaving their lord's land. Documents, of course, had 1:24:58.600 --> 1:25:03.439 to be created to request safe passage. To ask O king, 1:25:04.080 --> 1:25:07.040 will you please allow me to move from point A 1:25:07.160 --> 1:25:13.519 to point B, my lord, your majesty soon whatever. What 1:25:13.520 --> 1:25:19.080 what do we call the first passports is what quickly 1:25:19.120 --> 1:25:23.880 and rules the medieval era essentially bound large parts of 1:25:23.880 --> 1:25:28.360 yours population in place by sufdomb and movement was viewed 1:25:28.360 --> 1:25:31.200 by rulers as ruin us to their law and order. 1:25:32.560 --> 1:25:37.479 They needed static populations to stay in place so that 1:25:38.360 --> 1:25:45.439 taxation and the raising of troops and whatever they wanted 1:25:45.479 --> 1:25:49.800 to extract could easily be extracted. Because you know, if 1:25:49.880 --> 1:25:53.360 if these presidents were able to just move as they pleased, 1:25:56.080 --> 1:26:00.360 they will probably try to evade taxation that a little 1:26:00.400 --> 1:26:06.000 bit too excessive. Um, they would probably trying to evade 1:26:06.800 --> 1:26:12.000 the oppression of their rulers. And that they did. I 1:26:12.000 --> 1:26:21.320 mean throughout feudalism, passant revolts and uprisings very commonplace, and 1:26:21.360 --> 1:26:24.840 it's due to those revolts of the masses that sift 1:26:24.920 --> 1:26:28.759 them would come into a decline as a wage labor 1:26:28.840 --> 1:26:32.040 rule was in the fifteenth and sixteen centuries, but that 1:26:32.040 --> 1:26:36.439 would mean that free movement came back because now people 1:26:36.439 --> 1:26:39.720 were commodity that a country's government wanted to keep within 1:26:39.720 --> 1:26:44.439 its borders. Sur rulers offered citizenship and tax incentives and 1:26:44.439 --> 1:26:48.760 want to encourage migration. And yet while they were encouraging migration, 1:26:49.280 --> 1:26:52.639 they were also kicking people out. So countries like Spain 1:26:52.640 --> 1:26:57.240 and France were either executing or expelling ethnic and religious 1:26:57.280 --> 1:27:02.559 minorities and mass So this period also bring about the 1:27:02.640 --> 1:27:06.720 rights of you know, nationalism, which were tapped into an 1:27:06.720 --> 1:27:13.040 earlier sense of um I suppose connection and sort of 1:27:13.120 --> 1:27:18.200 subvert that from connection to community to connection to this 1:27:18.960 --> 1:27:25.400 abstract notion of nation state, the imaginary community of the nation. 1:27:27.160 --> 1:27:31.840 Nationalism in Europe would attempt to unify a vast and 1:27:31.960 --> 1:27:36.759 diverse range of cultural groups and classes under one state 1:27:37.360 --> 1:27:41.920 while defining themselves against outsiders. And of course this ruling 1:27:41.960 --> 1:27:46.320 class meta narrative exists as a mechanism of manufactured, meaningless 1:27:46.360 --> 1:27:50.880 loyalty in order to control you. But that's a topic 1:27:50.920 --> 1:27:57.720 for another time. This era has also been described as 1:27:58.040 --> 1:28:03.040 one of the large just periods of involuntary migration in 1:28:03.120 --> 1:28:07.599 human history, that be in the Transatlantic slave trade, which 1:28:07.640 --> 1:28:10.839 trafficed an estimated twelve point five million in slave African 1:28:10.840 --> 1:28:14.280 people between the sixteen and nineteenth century. But there was 1:28:14.320 --> 1:28:16.639 this one key movement in history of borders that would 1:28:16.640 --> 1:28:20.040 have lasted effects to today. At the end of the 1:28:20.080 --> 1:28:23.720 Thirty Years War, the Peace of Westphalia was signed by 1:28:23.760 --> 1:28:27.360 a hundred and nine principalities and touchies and imperial kingdoms 1:28:28.520 --> 1:28:31.360 which basically agreed in sixteen forty eight that the state's 1:28:31.439 --> 1:28:35.439 borders were inviolable and an absolute sovereign state could not 1:28:35.520 --> 1:28:38.519 interfere in the domestic affairs of another. Now, of course, 1:28:39.320 --> 1:28:42.080 this is all just talk, right at the end of 1:28:42.120 --> 1:28:45.559 the day, states have continued to interfere the domestic affairs 1:28:45.600 --> 1:28:49.240 of others, would continue to violate the borders of other states. 1:28:49.720 --> 1:28:53.280 There are plenty of board of disputes that are alive 1:28:53.320 --> 1:28:57.280 and well some decades or even centuries old um on 1:28:57.320 --> 1:29:00.719 this planet. And then, of course this idea of West 1:29:00.720 --> 1:29:06.679 Pralian severenety would not really be applied to people outside 1:29:06.720 --> 1:29:12.679 of Europe. The actual inhabitants of the interesting looking maps 1:29:12.720 --> 1:29:16.719 that the West Filian era produced, we're not actually made 1:29:16.760 --> 1:29:21.599 privy to any of those um decisions about the drawing 1:29:21.640 --> 1:29:27.040 of borders. They would also be moving, of course, people continuously, 1:29:27.120 --> 1:29:32.439 so you know, Spain was kicking out um Jewish people 1:29:33.160 --> 1:29:36.320 and more's and people who relate the heretics as Uni 1:29:36.400 --> 1:29:42.479 inquisition um. The British was moving their dissenters, criminals and 1:29:42.880 --> 1:29:46.559 general pains and the Bombacy to settle colonized in places 1:29:46.640 --> 1:29:51.040 like Australia, which is why Australia is like that. And 1:29:52.760 --> 1:29:56.479 things progress a bit further, you have the notion of 1:29:56.520 --> 1:29:59.280 free trade and free market gain in some ground thanks 1:29:59.320 --> 1:30:02.200 to Adam Smith this new school of economics. At the 1:30:02.200 --> 1:30:08.400 same time, concerns of population of MOUTHUS, unemployment and social 1:30:08.479 --> 1:30:12.120 unrest in Europe led governments to start facilities and emigration 1:30:12.760 --> 1:30:16.640 moving out their colonies. The more general free flows settler clonalism, 1:30:17.200 --> 1:30:21.240 which would lead to domestic depopulation in Europe. And then 1:30:21.240 --> 1:30:25.080 there was another shift, as tend to be the case 1:30:25.080 --> 1:30:28.160 in human history, as in the nineteenth century, migrants from 1:30:28.160 --> 1:30:32.080 now underdeveloped regions began to stream towards the more developed 1:30:32.120 --> 1:30:35.759 areas and drews. So you had North Africans going to France, 1:30:35.840 --> 1:30:38.800 Italians and Irish headed to New York and all the while, 1:30:39.120 --> 1:30:44.000 of course racism and xenophobia festering and proliferating as nationalists 1:30:44.000 --> 1:30:46.519 with top fay against the so called threats to their nation. 1:30:47.280 --> 1:30:51.280 Of course, Italians and Irish were eventually assimilated into the 1:30:51.360 --> 1:30:57.120 hegemonic notion of whiteness. But North Africans in France have 1:30:57.200 --> 1:31:00.960 not been so lucky. Oh I said, who is lucky? 1:31:01.040 --> 1:31:03.599 Could and could because there's a little conversation about how 1:31:04.080 --> 1:31:09.160 whiteness destroys cultures and erases the unique identities that these 1:31:09.160 --> 1:31:12.680 people would have come up with in an efforts to 1:31:12.800 --> 1:31:17.920 unite them against minorities such as African Americans in the US. 1:31:19.240 --> 1:31:22.040 So you see this period of lockdown, of this increased 1:31:22.080 --> 1:31:26.280 nationalism and these restrictions. These bad restrictions would also try 1:31:26.320 --> 1:31:33.640 to manipulate access to certain technologies, um, the telegraph, the 1:31:33.720 --> 1:31:36.960 rail road. Yes, they enabled central governments to assert their 1:31:37.000 --> 1:31:41.439 presence across the whole territory, but they would also try 1:31:41.520 --> 1:31:47.200 to compete with other nations UM and keep certain secrets 1:31:47.680 --> 1:31:53.000 regarding technology. See that particularly um during the Cold War, 1:31:54.200 --> 1:31:57.800 but we'll get to that a bit later. During the 1:31:57.840 --> 1:32:02.120 First World War, we have of some sixteen million people, 1:32:02.360 --> 1:32:05.160 the Great War UM as you should probably call it 1:32:05.200 --> 1:32:08.280 if you ever happened to time travel to that period. 1:32:08.320 --> 1:32:10.080 I don't think people would want to hear that this 1:32:10.160 --> 1:32:16.960 is just the first two wars. But after the World War, 1:32:17.640 --> 1:32:21.640 the Great War UM, the seggregationist Wouldrew Wilson, who was 1:32:21.920 --> 1:32:25.640 US President at the time, proposed fourteen points to the 1:32:25.680 --> 1:32:29.720 international community in order to prevent such horrors. And one 1:32:29.760 --> 1:32:33.040 of those core principles of the fourteen points was it 1:32:33.080 --> 1:32:36.840 the globe's borders. We were drawn along clearly recognizable lines 1:32:36.880 --> 1:32:40.240 of nationality. And like I said before, this is of 1:32:40.280 --> 1:32:43.000 course just in Europe. It's not like any of these 1:32:43.000 --> 1:32:45.439 WILL leaders actually care about the territories they coughed up 1:32:45.439 --> 1:32:48.519 in Africa. And I think there was a point that 1:32:48.600 --> 1:32:53.479 I wanted to make about technology and how technology has 1:32:53.520 --> 1:32:57.360 been restricted because when you look at again the real 1:32:57.479 --> 1:33:01.320 road and telegraph, while they enabled central governments to suit 1:33:01.400 --> 1:33:04.559 their presence and assut their control, and like ever before, 1:33:05.360 --> 1:33:11.479 the potential these technologies was kind of lost. Yes, the 1:33:11.600 --> 1:33:14.599 railroad in the telegraph can help a government to suit 1:33:14.680 --> 1:33:19.040 its control over its territory, but it con justest as 1:33:19.040 --> 1:33:25.599 easily empower people to travel further and faster than they 1:33:25.600 --> 1:33:30.599 ever had before, so communicate across greater distances and they 1:33:30.600 --> 1:33:33.519 ever had before. And insteadin the hands of the states, 1:33:33.640 --> 1:33:38.599 these technologies are of course used for oppress events. Back 1:33:38.680 --> 1:33:41.680 to the end of the First World War. In the 1:33:41.680 --> 1:33:45.120 post war period, which saw the collapse of four European 1:33:45.160 --> 1:33:50.280 empires Ottoman, Russian, Austro, Hungarian, and German, millions of refugees 1:33:50.320 --> 1:33:53.439 were left in a world where immigration controls had continued 1:33:53.479 --> 1:33:58.679 to tighten and passports gained greater prominence. Last once the 1:33:58.800 --> 1:34:03.360 nation state was mented in place, Fascism and Nazism would 1:34:03.439 --> 1:34:07.760 quickly arise to god its supposed purity. The world would 1:34:07.800 --> 1:34:11.120 once again be plunged into war, the second one, this 1:34:11.240 --> 1:34:14.719 time which would again leave millions of uprooting and displaced 1:34:14.720 --> 1:34:19.240 people that states like Switzerland quote unquote neutral and the 1:34:19.360 --> 1:34:24.120 US would largely refuse to assist. After the Second World War, 1:34:24.360 --> 1:34:27.200 nation building would continue to displace and slaughter millions of 1:34:27.240 --> 1:34:32.200 ethnic and religious minorities. Millions of refugees have been dismissed 1:34:32.240 --> 1:34:36.840 from lands that have been colonized and imperialized, and intervened 1:34:36.880 --> 1:34:43.559 with wars and wrecked with just the destruction of climate 1:34:43.640 --> 1:34:48.599 change and poverty, and yet immigration controls only tightened further, 1:34:48.680 --> 1:34:54.240 and they will likely continue to tighten due to the 1:34:54.280 --> 1:35:00.679 effects of climate migration and climate collapse, especially in our 1:35:00.840 --> 1:35:05.800 post ninety leven reality. US border patrol in particular has 1:35:05.960 --> 1:35:10.760 escalated to employed twenty thousands and agents, and Israel Run 1:35:10.880 --> 1:35:14.040 is the largest open air prison in the world. These days, 1:35:14.439 --> 1:35:19.120 militarized borders with heavily guarded barbed wire and electrified fences, 1:35:19.120 --> 1:35:23.200 which were once common in times of war, have now 1:35:23.240 --> 1:35:26.960 been a staple of times of peace. These marginary lines 1:35:26.960 --> 1:35:29.880 in the map have become in some places violent fixtures 1:35:29.920 --> 1:35:32.719 on the landscape, with thousands of people lose their lives 1:35:32.840 --> 1:35:36.720 every year for simply trying to cross. We've entered an 1:35:36.720 --> 1:35:43.200 era of essentially bordering without precedent, and thanks to today's technology, 1:35:43.439 --> 1:35:45.920 governments no more now about the people they govern, the 1:35:45.960 --> 1:35:48.760 people within their territory, but at any point prior and 1:35:48.880 --> 1:35:53.120 human history. Cross border surveillance keeps neighbors in the new 1:35:53.680 --> 1:35:59.360 managing and monitoring their populous like lab rats. Data has 1:35:59.400 --> 1:36:04.559 become of aluable then black cold itself. These governments have 1:36:05.040 --> 1:36:09.559 chosen to wall and survey. This is our will now. 1:36:10.040 --> 1:36:16.799 It's not some future cyberpunk the stupia, The curveillance capitalist 1:36:16.840 --> 1:36:19.720 health keepers here now and borders have an important for 1:36:19.800 --> 1:36:23.320 rule to play. But as our power structure their system 1:36:23.360 --> 1:36:28.200 of control. As the writers that Crime Think have said, 1:36:28.640 --> 1:36:32.599 there's only one world on the border is tearing it apart. 1:36:34.400 --> 1:36:37.880 And I think the idea of borders extends much further 1:36:37.920 --> 1:36:43.040 than just the nations borders. When you look at the Internet, 1:36:43.080 --> 1:36:49.120 fire walls, the checkpoints, the hidden databases, the for profit 1:36:49.160 --> 1:36:53.240 prisons in the gated communities, all these different boundaries enforced 1:36:53.240 --> 1:36:59.520 by ceaseless violence, enforced by a deep aortation, enforced by vigilanty, 1:36:59.560 --> 1:37:03.240 attack by street haraspment by torture, All of these boundaries 1:37:03.320 --> 1:37:11.160 are holding us back and tearing us apart. Migrants, due 1:37:11.200 --> 1:37:16.720 to their vulnerable status or often the first target when 1:37:16.720 --> 1:37:19.720 it comes to the economic down to and oppression, civiilians 1:37:19.760 --> 1:37:28.080 and scapegoating nations wield of fair of this other and 1:37:28.280 --> 1:37:34.040 they use that to prevent their people from fighting for better. 1:37:35.080 --> 1:37:40.240 They turned their eye towards another victim. I doesn't even 1:37:40.240 --> 1:37:43.280 get into all the different categories that have been constructed 1:37:44.439 --> 1:37:53.040 migrant expert, refugee, asylum seeker, illegal alien, and that one 1:37:53.040 --> 1:37:59.439 in particular really grinds my cares because it is I believe, 1:37:59.520 --> 1:38:06.600 the pinner cool of the humanization to look at a 1:38:06.640 --> 1:38:13.280 person who's dice just man just managed to like just 1:38:13.360 --> 1:38:18.439 by happensands fell on the other side of the border, 1:38:18.760 --> 1:38:22.360 to look at them and to deem them alien, deem 1:38:22.400 --> 1:38:25.800 them illegal, to brand them that, and I even acknowledge 1:38:26.479 --> 1:38:28.960 their humanity when referring to them. And it's become a 1:38:28.960 --> 1:38:34.120 normalized part of political discourse to speak of illegal aliens. 1:38:34.320 --> 1:38:37.759 But I don't think we should reget just how violent 1:38:37.800 --> 1:38:43.519 that kind of languages. It's particularly violent when you count 1:38:43.600 --> 1:38:49.200 for the fact that while these borders are used to 1:38:49.240 --> 1:38:54.000 restrict people on the lowest rung of society, capital has 1:38:54.240 --> 1:38:57.680 very few restrictions. In fact, that has much less restrictions, 1:38:57.720 --> 1:39:05.360 and people the right and their capital can cross borders 1:39:05.400 --> 1:39:09.639 with ease, go from place to place without munch process. 1:39:09.680 --> 1:39:13.519 And in fact, we look at Jeff Bassos and we 1:39:13.600 --> 1:39:15.840 say that, oh, well, he's the richest man the world 1:39:16.439 --> 1:39:21.880 for say soon, But when you account for the wealth 1:39:22.000 --> 1:39:27.400 that has not been accounted for, I think it must 1:39:27.439 --> 1:39:33.640 be put into perspective that Bill Gates, Zackaboo, Jeff Bazos, etcetera. 1:39:35.240 --> 1:39:39.439 They are the richest people that we know of, not 1:39:39.520 --> 1:39:45.439 necessarily the richest. A global economy has also been of 1:39:45.439 --> 1:39:49.400 course moving resources for a while now. Resources have more 1:39:49.439 --> 1:39:55.440 freedom than people. The unequal and even development has extracted 1:39:57.240 --> 1:39:59.960 minerals and materials from some parts of the world, process 1:40:00.080 --> 1:40:02.600 them in other parts of the world, manufacture them in 1:40:02.600 --> 1:40:05.600 other parts of the world, and then sold worldwide for 1:40:05.640 --> 1:40:08.920 the profits to be hoarded by select few countries and 1:40:09.000 --> 1:40:13.479 select a few people. These wealthy countries plunder the poor 1:40:14.360 --> 1:40:17.719 and then brutalize those who follow. Where the opportunities of Antica. 1:40:19.360 --> 1:40:22.519 But I don't think that one's opportunities one freedom. One's 1:40:22.520 --> 1:40:26.400 freedom should be restricted by where they were born or 1:40:26.439 --> 1:40:31.280 by the wealth that they do. To not control passports, 1:40:31.280 --> 1:40:37.000 inequality is yes, you that should not exist. Passports should 1:40:37.040 --> 1:40:42.400 not exist. Palestinians can travel visa free to only thirty 1:40:42.439 --> 1:40:45.160 eight countries and territories, yet those in the West Bank 1:40:45.760 --> 1:40:48.960 are restricted by violent by violent checkpoints and those who 1:40:49.000 --> 1:40:52.120 live in gas are call you distript at all. Meanwhile, 1:40:52.960 --> 1:40:59.599 other regions enjoy fast visa free travels, such as Germans 1:40:59.680 --> 1:41:04.040 who have access to countries and territories, or the Japanese, 1:41:04.400 --> 1:41:07.559 who enjoy the most freedom piece of free of all, 1:41:07.640 --> 1:41:13.960 with ninety three countries available to them. A billionaire like 1:41:14.240 --> 1:41:17.080 Elon musket flying wherever he wants in his private jet. 1:41:17.720 --> 1:41:20.160 A political prisoner like a Jory Luta, who can be 1:41:20.240 --> 1:41:25.920 kept in solitary years on end. Traditional seafear and channels 1:41:26.760 --> 1:41:33.439 and land has been militarized and guarded by these vast navies, 1:41:33.479 --> 1:41:40.680 by these vast troops, by these these machines, These structures 1:41:40.720 --> 1:41:46.200 that disconnected, unraveled the deep ties between communities, borderston us 1:41:46.240 --> 1:41:50.640 all into prisoners, and I think it's about time we 1:41:50.760 --> 1:41:55.519 resisted them. As the underground railroads of anti Nazi and 1:41:55.560 --> 1:42:00.200 anti slavery resistance has shown everyday people can help every 1:42:00.240 --> 1:42:04.640 day people, no matter the obstacles. If you live in 1:42:04.680 --> 1:42:08.680 a border sanctuary city or a migrant community, they are 1:42:08.680 --> 1:42:12.160 probably already groups that are put in this work and 1:42:12.200 --> 1:42:15.600 you could join that infrastructure resistance. If not, you can 1:42:15.760 --> 1:42:18.960 help to create that infrastructure to connect with people who 1:42:18.960 --> 1:42:22.599 are affected by borders in ways that you aren't. I mean, 1:42:22.640 --> 1:42:25.120 perhaps you have a neighbor or a cool worker who's 1:42:25.160 --> 1:42:32.360 undocumented and could you use a help in that try 1:42:32.760 --> 1:42:37.160 to connect cross border formal and informal, public and coland 1:42:37.160 --> 1:42:42.320 design because these connections, these networks, or how people move, 1:42:43.640 --> 1:42:48.920 live and evade state violence. Obviously, I can't speak for 1:42:48.920 --> 1:42:55.960 everybody situation because different people's legal status, language, ability, education level, gender, 1:42:56.040 --> 1:42:59.640 raised class, commit muns and ability would affect their contribution 1:42:59.760 --> 1:43:05.920 to the anti borders movement. But however you decide to contribute, 1:43:06.760 --> 1:43:11.559 I hope that you would remember who it is we're 1:43:11.600 --> 1:43:16.760 trying to help. We're not trying to act as you know, 1:43:16.840 --> 1:43:20.679 these saints for the media, and I recognized the irony 1:43:20.720 --> 1:43:25.680 of saying saints in particular considered my old YouTube name. 1:43:26.880 --> 1:43:31.920 But the media is not our focus. The audience of 1:43:31.920 --> 1:43:34.600 our actions is not public opinion. It is those we 1:43:34.640 --> 1:43:39.080 want fighting with us, people who need our help, people 1:43:39.120 --> 1:43:44.280 who know the violent supporters forutand so they get into 1:43:44.360 --> 1:43:50.440 direct action two, you know, directly affect the material outcomes 1:43:50.439 --> 1:43:53.479 of people influence our borders. You know, whether you're helping 1:43:54.360 --> 1:43:57.479 my creation prisoner managed to escape, or helping one person 1:43:57.600 --> 1:44:00.320 get a roof over their head, helping an asylum case, 1:44:00.320 --> 1:44:04.960 having a person who is trapped in this system to 1:44:05.000 --> 1:44:08.679 find the strength to get through a day. These actions 1:44:08.680 --> 1:44:11.760 refuberating our communities and they help oup others do the same. 1:44:13.120 --> 1:44:18.479 We also, need, of course, more infrastructure, networks, alliances, skills 1:44:18.479 --> 1:44:24.040 and resources to be cultivated to strengthen our autonomy from 1:44:24.080 --> 1:44:28.920 these structures and to develop ability to defend against them, 1:44:28.960 --> 1:44:32.559 and of course these actions should be rooted in some 1:44:32.720 --> 1:44:38.920 strategy long term and short term for overcoming this regime 1:44:38.960 --> 1:44:43.280 onnths and for all. Just for a final would I 1:44:43.320 --> 1:44:47.480 would say that there is nothing necessary or inevitable about borders. 1:44:49.120 --> 1:44:52.960 Only the violence of their most ardent believers keep them 1:44:52.960 --> 1:44:56.879 in place and without them what as with seats to exist, 1:45:00.000 --> 1:45:05.719 waters can only exist if they are enforced, and together 1:45:06.960 --> 1:45:12.760 we can make waters and enforceable. Together we can create 1:45:12.760 --> 1:45:15.080 a will in which everyone is free to travel, free 1:45:15.120 --> 1:45:17.679 to create, and free to exist on their own terms. 1:45:20.600 --> 1:45:25.320 Now's it. If you like what I spoke about in 1:45:25.640 --> 1:45:29.880 this episode, or if you just like to hear my voice, 1:45:31.200 --> 1:45:34.520 feel free to check out my YouTube channel and Truism 1:45:35.280 --> 1:45:37.000 and you can support me on picture and dot com 1:45:37.040 --> 1:45:41.040 slash Seeing True, will follow me on Twitter at and 1:45:41.160 --> 1:46:00.479 Disclosing True. Hey everyone, and welcome taken up in the hare, 1:46:01.439 --> 1:46:06.160 I'm Andrew the YouTube channel Andrewism, and today I want 1:46:06.160 --> 1:46:09.960 to talk about the squatting movement. Actually, before I do that, 1:46:11.120 --> 1:46:15.360 I'm joined today by my co hosts Your Cause Andrew 1:46:15.439 --> 1:46:17.680 or Garrison Davis and James Stout, and I am your 1:46:17.840 --> 1:46:23.200 producer Sophie and I am here Andrew, please continue, Thank you, Sophie. 1:46:23.600 --> 1:46:27.759 I want to talk about the squatting movement and particularly 1:46:27.800 --> 1:46:34.519 how people love overcome the analities of privatizing land and 1:46:35.080 --> 1:46:38.840 restricting people's access to it so they could cove a 1:46:38.920 --> 1:46:46.320 life for themselves. Um in this troubling world now, I 1:46:46.360 --> 1:46:50.160 think a lot of people are least passionally familiar with 1:46:50.400 --> 1:46:56.240 the squatting movements, the political squatting movements where be an anarchist, 1:46:56.400 --> 1:47:00.320 a tournament store, socialist of nature that I've taken place 1:47:00.400 --> 1:47:05.400 in Italy, the US, and most famously Denmark where they 1:47:05.400 --> 1:47:11.600 had you know, Freetown Christiania set up. But outside of 1:47:11.760 --> 1:47:14.160 the global North and much of the rest of the world, 1:47:14.200 --> 1:47:18.680 squatting is just a fact of life. It doesn't typically 1:47:18.880 --> 1:47:24.920 though sometimes it does have radical political ambitions. So today 1:47:24.960 --> 1:47:29.799 I'm not going to be spending time discussing the squatting 1:47:29.800 --> 1:47:36.200 movement in Europe or North America, but instead discussing the 1:47:36.240 --> 1:47:39.760 millions of people in the world lack of access to 1:47:39.840 --> 1:47:44.320 land where they can find secure shelter. And I turned 1:47:44.600 --> 1:47:50.000 to what has been deemed informal occupation or squatting to 1:47:50.080 --> 1:47:55.439 find residents. Most specifically, I'll be discussing the Caribbean, but 1:47:55.520 --> 1:47:58.799 first I need to get into some statistics. It's always 1:47:58.800 --> 1:48:02.880 that kind of weird, right. In nine fifty, only eighty 1:48:03.000 --> 1:48:06.280 six cities around the world had populations of one million 1:48:06.320 --> 1:48:10.559 people or more. In twenty sixteen, there were just over 1:48:10.760 --> 1:48:16.200 six hundred cities that met this threshold. Over half of 1:48:16.200 --> 1:48:20.639 the world's population now lives in urban areas, and nearly 1:48:20.720 --> 1:48:23.479 a billion, if not a billion, are estimated to be 1:48:23.560 --> 1:48:27.840 living in informal settlements, mostly in the urban and perry 1:48:27.960 --> 1:48:31.760 urban areas of less developed countries. I don't know if 1:48:31.760 --> 1:48:34.080 any of you have read Planets of the Slums by 1:48:34.120 --> 1:48:39.240 Mike Davis. I don't think I have, but he discusses 1:48:39.320 --> 1:48:45.640 this phenomenon, this explosion in urbanization, and the fact that, unfortunately, 1:48:45.800 --> 1:48:49.439 you know, these cities aren't exactly urban Eden's. They are 1:48:49.640 --> 1:48:56.200 deeply impoverished, filled with m makeshift and often unsafe, whether 1:48:56.240 --> 1:49:01.880 it be you know, poison us or just poorly constructed 1:49:02.040 --> 1:49:07.960 or disease written dwell ends areas such as their roots Quarantina, 1:49:08.479 --> 1:49:14.400 Mexico cities Santa Cruz, Maya, Huaco Ros Favelas, and Cairo 1:49:14.600 --> 1:49:17.120 is a city of the dead. We're up to one 1:49:17.520 --> 1:49:22.960 million people living homes made out of actual tools. Now 1:49:23.040 --> 1:49:28.080 Davis addresses the issues root cause, that being post colonial 1:49:28.200 --> 1:49:33.400 neoliberal policies driven by free market Catholics principles. It is yes, 1:49:33.439 --> 1:49:36.439 cities modernized in the wake of the colonial era, a 1:49:36.479 --> 1:49:39.439 lot of the same zone and boundaries enforced by imperial 1:49:39.479 --> 1:49:43.880 powers across racial and soce economic lines were continued. So 1:49:44.040 --> 1:49:48.400 quality colonization did not really take place, and did imperial 1:49:48.479 --> 1:49:52.040 rule didn't lead to a magical increase in equality e galitianism. 1:49:52.560 --> 1:49:55.519 It's just that post colonial rulers took up the mantle 1:49:55.600 --> 1:50:03.200 where a colonial rulers left so and of course this switch, 1:50:03.880 --> 1:50:07.800 this changing of hands of power was kept up by 1:50:07.880 --> 1:50:12.360 the International Monetary Fund, which stepped in on behalf of 1:50:12.400 --> 1:50:16.639 these elites and pushed the poorest citizens basically into thickly 1:50:16.680 --> 1:50:21.160 concentrated slums by making it easier for the ruling class 1:50:21.360 --> 1:50:29.360 to ignore these issues and prioritize the affluent. The debt 1:50:29.400 --> 1:50:32.680 restructure and policies and nine also LEDs a lot of 1:50:32.680 --> 1:50:36.960 governments cutting down on their public health and education investment 1:50:37.000 --> 1:50:40.240 expenditure so that they could repay the loans that they 1:50:40.280 --> 1:50:43.840 had been forced to take out David spent a lot 1:50:43.880 --> 1:50:47.559 of time talking about Asia and sometime talking about the 1:50:47.560 --> 1:50:52.639 increasing hardship in African cities. But the situation of squatting 1:50:52.760 --> 1:50:57.360 is often overlooked in the Caribbean, and so I'd like 1:50:57.400 --> 1:51:03.439 to draw some attention to that. I think that anyone 1:51:03.439 --> 1:51:06.760 who has lived in the Caribbean or as family in 1:51:06.760 --> 1:51:09.720 the Caribbean would be somewhat familiar with the idea of 1:51:09.960 --> 1:51:14.760 family land, which is this idea that you know, you 1:51:14.840 --> 1:51:21.200 have these plots that the family essentially owns collectively, maybe 1:51:21.280 --> 1:51:23.400 somebody living there, or it may just be landed as 1:51:23.439 --> 1:51:29.240 being passed along for anyone who needs it. UM. A 1:51:29.240 --> 1:51:33.600 lot of this land was acquired by purchase, and a 1:51:33.640 --> 1:51:38.320 lot of it was acquired by squatting in Trinidad, in 1:51:38.400 --> 1:51:44.160 Jamaica and Puerto Rico and Martinique and Barbadoes. Squatting was 1:51:44.200 --> 1:51:54.920 how a lot of recently emancipated people gained some foothold 1:51:56.479 --> 1:52:01.840 to live now they could not stay on the plantation system. UM. Now, 1:52:01.880 --> 1:52:08.439 the early squatting movement was largely wiped out by the 1:52:08.479 --> 1:52:15.479 growing plantation system UM, but eventually a new squatting movement 1:52:15.479 --> 1:52:21.479 would arise due to escaped slaves and maroons and post 1:52:21.520 --> 1:52:28.560 indentured individuals who would resettle um on those regions that 1:52:28.640 --> 1:52:34.439 were previously wiped out by the plantation system. I'm going 1:52:34.520 --> 1:52:37.520 to spend most of the focus of this episode discussing 1:52:37.680 --> 1:52:42.280 what took place in Jamaica because I discovered this really 1:52:42.280 --> 1:52:46.439 excellent research paper done by Professor Jean Besson. But Jamaica 1:52:46.520 --> 1:52:49.479 is really quite an interesting example because Jamaica is one 1:52:49.479 --> 1:52:53.520 of the few Caribbean countries that had a successful, sustained 1:52:54.320 --> 1:52:58.840 maroon movement that lasted into the twenty one century. And 1:52:58.960 --> 1:53:02.000 so what happened, as is the case for a lot 1:53:02.000 --> 1:53:06.280 of these colonies, is you have this Cittain model of 1:53:06.880 --> 1:53:10.720 land ownership called crown land. Basically all the land of 1:53:10.760 --> 1:53:14.680 the crown deemed themselves to own by virtue of colonized. 1:53:14.680 --> 1:53:17.760 In these places, crown land would often be you know, 1:53:18.160 --> 1:53:21.320 parceled out when they want to attract new colonists to 1:53:22.000 --> 1:53:30.280 their different colonies, and so enslaved people in Jamaica created 1:53:30.320 --> 1:53:35.439 these squatters, settle months on crown land, basically recaptured that 1:53:35.560 --> 1:53:42.720 land and created villages and communities um in as maroons 1:53:42.840 --> 1:53:48.559 in that context of colonial violence, and of course these 1:53:48.560 --> 1:53:54.439 governments would demolish the squads settlements and try to effect 1:53:54.800 --> 1:54:05.320 land capture. But in Jamaica, the Maroons succeeded, particularly the 1:54:05.400 --> 1:54:08.000 Leeward Maroons, as they were two different groups to win 1:54:08.000 --> 1:54:09.840 Wood Maroons in the Leewood Moroons, and that's a whole 1:54:09.840 --> 1:54:14.920 different history. Today, a Kampong Village is the only survive 1:54:15.000 --> 1:54:18.840 in village for the Jamaican Leewood Maroons, and there's also 1:54:18.880 --> 1:54:26.439 the oldest persistent Maroon society in African America. After the 1:54:26.600 --> 1:54:32.040 enslaved Africans and Creoles escaped the plantations and squatted Crown Land, 1:54:32.920 --> 1:54:36.720 they waged successful guerrilla warfare against the British colonists in 1:54:36.760 --> 1:54:41.080 the First Maroon War and the leadership of Kujo and 1:54:41.280 --> 1:54:44.160 that land would be the basis of two Leewood Maroon 1:54:44.280 --> 1:54:47.920 villages that be in Kujo's Town in St. James and 1:54:48.000 --> 1:54:52.240 a Kampongs Town in St. Elizabeth, a Kampong being named 1:54:52.240 --> 1:54:59.879 after Kujo's brother in arms, Captain A. Kampong. Eventually, Kujo 1:55:00.080 --> 1:55:04.440 Town will be renamed Trelawny Town after the treaty between 1:55:04.480 --> 1:55:07.840 the British governor would grant the Maroons their freedom and 1:55:07.920 --> 1:55:14.000 fifteen hundred acres of legal freehold land. A compound town, 1:55:14.040 --> 1:55:17.400 on the other hand, did not really get any legal 1:55:17.440 --> 1:55:23.280 recognition until a land grant was given to them to 1:55:23.920 --> 1:55:30.840 some two thousand fives around a couple of decades later 1:55:30.920 --> 1:55:36.120 between six the Second Maroon War before between the Trelawny 1:55:36.200 --> 1:55:39.520 Town Maroons and the British colonists. Because of course the 1:55:39.560 --> 1:55:43.960 British did what they would do and whipped two of 1:55:44.000 --> 1:55:48.280 the Maroons for the theft of pigs in Montego Bay. 1:55:49.360 --> 1:55:51.840 Of course, this is just the insight and incident, as 1:55:51.880 --> 1:55:55.400 these things tend to be, for the deeper discontent regarding 1:55:55.520 --> 1:55:59.160 access to the land. And after this Second Maroon War, 1:55:59.640 --> 1:56:05.440 the learning Roons ended up being deported to Nova Scotia. So, 1:56:05.520 --> 1:56:09.240 for those a bit familiar with you know Canadian history, 1:56:10.600 --> 1:56:16.320 the Maroons are moved to and resettled in Canada. As 1:56:16.320 --> 1:56:21.200 a result of this and the Trianytown ruins Land being confiscated, 1:56:21.960 --> 1:56:27.480 a compunc Town became the soul surviving village and today 1:56:27.600 --> 1:56:31.120 it remains Common Treaty town. It is owned in common 1:56:31.480 --> 1:56:35.280 by the some I believe it's like just over three 1:56:35.320 --> 1:56:38.800 thousand adults, all of which, by the way, claimed descent 1:56:38.960 --> 1:56:43.640 from you know Couju and they sort of have a 1:56:43.680 --> 1:56:49.480 mixed settlement, producing for household use, rare and livestock, utilizing 1:56:49.480 --> 1:56:54.280 in the forest of medicines and timber um, cultivating food 1:56:54.320 --> 1:57:00.920 forests and provision grounds. And even after that was of 1:57:00.920 --> 1:57:03.640 the communitude migrate, they would still have that connection to 1:57:03.680 --> 1:57:06.920 their commons and often returns to either live or visit. 1:57:08.520 --> 1:57:13.600 Trilony Town. On the other hand, after being recaptured by 1:57:13.760 --> 1:57:19.280 the crown, it was eventually purchased and transformed into family 1:57:19.360 --> 1:57:24.360 lands by the descendants of slaves, lanterns, and ruins, and 1:57:24.440 --> 1:57:28.680 of course squatting played a part in that development. Most 1:57:28.800 --> 1:57:31.920 recently in Latin America and the Caribbean, there has been 1:57:31.960 --> 1:57:35.080 a move by governments switching from a policy of trying 1:57:35.120 --> 1:57:39.240 to eradicate squatters and instead trying to give them titled 1:57:39.240 --> 1:57:44.520 their lands, either granting them or usually selling it to 1:57:44.600 --> 1:57:48.240 them in an effort to alleviate poverty so they could 1:57:48.320 --> 1:57:51.040 use their house as you know, collateral for business loans 1:57:51.080 --> 1:57:55.320 and that kind of thing. And that's basically what happened 1:57:55.800 --> 1:58:00.080 for a compound town and for Trelawney Town, where the 1:58:00.120 --> 1:58:03.040 captured land was surveyed and subdivided and put for sale 1:58:03.400 --> 1:58:05.400 and so the squat was able to purchase the land 1:58:06.000 --> 1:58:09.320 and the government was able to impose taxation on the 1:58:09.320 --> 1:58:12.720 people who lived on that land. Now, I I spoke 1:58:12.760 --> 1:58:17.120 of squatting in the Caribbean Latin America typically being not 1:58:17.720 --> 1:58:23.320 radically political, but there are political slash religious movements that 1:58:23.400 --> 1:58:28.840 have used squatting to gain a foothold. For example, the 1:58:28.840 --> 1:58:37.480 Revival Zion movements and offshoot of Rasterfarian movements. If I'm honestly, 1:58:37.480 --> 1:58:40.280 couldn't find much information about them, but they're enough from 1:58:40.320 --> 1:58:44.760 Jamaican religion and slash cult and so they managed to 1:58:44.960 --> 1:58:49.640 capture a lot of the land near Trelawney Town and 1:58:50.880 --> 1:58:57.200 we're often settled their homes right behind the city councils, 1:58:57.200 --> 1:59:01.080 no squatting signs. Eventually, you know you have about thirty 1:59:01.160 --> 1:59:07.120 house shools who have basically recaptured their land from Babylon, 1:59:07.920 --> 1:59:17.080 as Rastafarians would describe the state um. Their community, which 1:59:17.080 --> 1:59:21.080 they called Zion, became a very vibrant squatter settlement of 1:59:21.120 --> 1:59:27.680 some seventy house yards on about thirty acres have captured land. Eventually, 1:59:28.000 --> 1:59:32.400 the land was surveyed and subdivided, of course, trying to 1:59:33.640 --> 1:59:39.760 tax and control the people that were there, But the 1:59:39.840 --> 1:59:44.360 situation led to a lot of people still you know, 1:59:44.760 --> 1:59:46.600 not being able to afford the land, and still of 1:59:46.640 --> 1:59:50.880 course having to squat on the land that they lived on. 1:59:51.640 --> 1:59:55.640 But so long difficulty with squatted land is that it's 1:59:55.760 --> 2:00:00.960 a very um tenuous, very fragile, wild state of being. 2:00:01.920 --> 2:00:06.440 The future is often unswittan and cleats. It's more secure, 2:00:06.480 --> 2:00:10.960 i would say, than being like homeless, but you're still 2:00:11.080 --> 2:00:14.920 very much subject to state violence. Um And even when 2:00:15.200 --> 2:00:19.840 so called legal avenues opened up for you to get 2:00:19.880 --> 2:00:23.240 the land, you know, through purchase, the fact that you 2:00:23.320 --> 2:00:25.240 had to squat in the land in the first place 2:00:25.280 --> 2:00:28.000 should be some indication that you probably can't afford to 2:00:28.080 --> 2:00:37.320 buy land. But squatting enables people, at least in the 2:00:37.360 --> 2:00:43.080 interim two potentially you know, develop some funds and stuff 2:00:43.160 --> 2:00:49.320 until they are able to secure a future for their families. 2:00:53.160 --> 2:00:57.080 I think a lot of the liberal solutions to the 2:00:57.120 --> 2:01:01.400 issue of squatting and poverty is to replace these sorts 2:01:01.440 --> 2:01:07.040 of systems and put it instead like proper private property 2:01:07.160 --> 2:01:09.280 rights and giving these people private property so that they 2:01:09.280 --> 2:01:13.200 could achieve sustainable development goals and all the other buzzwords 2:01:13.280 --> 2:01:17.320 that you know, these programs tend to use. I think 2:01:17.360 --> 2:01:20.600 the future of these kinds of projects, however, should be 2:01:21.240 --> 2:01:26.840 more along the lines of commons. I think that the 2:01:26.840 --> 2:01:30.520 fact that they were able to secure that land without 2:01:30.560 --> 2:01:33.760 the government's approval should be an indication that the government 2:01:33.760 --> 2:01:38.800 should not need to approve for people to live on 2:01:39.840 --> 2:01:44.200 the ether You're called home. I've spoken a previous episode 2:01:44.240 --> 2:01:49.360 about barb Uda and they are commons, and I really 2:01:49.360 --> 2:01:54.840 don't see why. I do see why, but I really 2:01:54.880 --> 2:02:00.000 believe the solutions these isssues lies in reclaiming the commons, 2:02:00.720 --> 2:02:07.440 lies in rejecting these colonial and post cluonial governments which 2:02:07.920 --> 2:02:13.600 based themselves on exclusion and illegality. And bring a boat, 2:02:14.280 --> 2:02:20.680 participatory local management of the land, by the people, for 2:02:20.800 --> 2:02:24.920 the people. And that's about it. Thanks, and do you 2:02:24.920 --> 2:02:30.640 think it was re fascinating? Any any final thoughts, Scare James. 2:02:30.680 --> 2:02:33.560 My final thought is that we have a live share 2:02:33.560 --> 2:02:36.160 wonderful And yeah, just the thing I was thinking about 2:02:36.160 --> 2:02:39.360 as we talked about squatting this one. You will be 2:02:39.400 --> 2:02:43.200 excluded unless you can pray the cost of entry or 2:02:43.200 --> 2:02:44.920 work out how to not be excluded, I guess. But 2:02:44.920 --> 2:02:49.480 it's on the twenty six of October I nearly forgot 2:02:49.480 --> 2:02:53.360 what month it was, And you can buy tickets on 2:02:53.480 --> 2:02:56.160 the internet. Yeah, so we're doing this live stream October 2:02:56.200 --> 2:02:59.440 twenty six, six pm. It is a live virtual event 2:02:59.800 --> 2:03:03.120 and you can get tickets at moment dot c o 2:03:03.640 --> 2:03:07.600 slash I see h H will link that in the 2:03:07.600 --> 2:03:28.560 episode script. Will be a fun, spooky themed light show. Hey, everybody, 2:03:28.640 --> 2:03:31.640 Robert Evans here and welcome to it could happen here. 2:03:32.000 --> 2:03:34.720 You know, when we started the show, when I did 2:03:34.760 --> 2:03:37.080 the first season of it, you know, the one about 2:03:37.120 --> 2:03:41.040 all the Civil War stuff. Back in this was basically 2:03:41.080 --> 2:03:43.960 a place for me to write long essays explaining my 2:03:44.080 --> 2:03:46.920 vision of the future and the present. Uh, And people 2:03:47.200 --> 2:03:49.160 seem to like that a lot. We did a little 2:03:49.160 --> 2:03:52.000 bit of that at the start of this new Eternal 2:03:52.480 --> 2:03:55.800 daily season of the show. Um, but obviously over the 2:03:55.880 --> 2:03:58.600 last year or so, it's it's morphed into something very 2:03:58.640 --> 2:04:02.680 different and something wonderful and successful, and it's brought a 2:04:02.680 --> 2:04:06.680 lot of new voices, or at least voices people maybe 2:04:06.760 --> 2:04:09.640 hadn't heard from as much out in front of the audience, 2:04:09.680 --> 2:04:11.720 and I've been really happy about that. But what I 2:04:11.760 --> 2:04:15.520 also haven't been doing is writing any more essays about 2:04:15.680 --> 2:04:19.400 the world and how fucked up shit is. Because you know, 2:04:19.480 --> 2:04:23.120 I've been managing a bunch of stuff and there's been 2:04:23.120 --> 2:04:25.440 a lot of work to do, but I like doing 2:04:25.480 --> 2:04:27.840 that stuff, and I think you people like it, So 2:04:28.040 --> 2:04:30.600 I'm gonna try to do more of that. And I 2:04:30.640 --> 2:04:33.000 wanted to kind of start by talking a little bit 2:04:33.000 --> 2:04:36.520 about Silicon Valley. And I'm going to say something at 2:04:36.520 --> 2:04:38.320 the start of this essay that a lot of people 2:04:38.320 --> 2:04:41.400 are probably instinctively gonna want to disagree with, which is 2:04:41.440 --> 2:04:45.680 that Silicon Valley and the tech industry have been gigantic 2:04:45.720 --> 2:04:48.960 failures by every metric that matters. They have made life 2:04:49.000 --> 2:04:53.040 comprehensively worse for humanity, and there is no real fact 2:04:53.080 --> 2:04:56.280 based counter argument to that statement. This is a hard 2:04:56.280 --> 2:04:57.920 pill for people to swallow. I'm sure a lot of 2:04:57.960 --> 2:05:00.400 folks are frustrated in me for saying it right now 2:05:00.400 --> 2:05:03.800 and are thinking of counter arguments. Most people today are 2:05:03.840 --> 2:05:07.000 critical of the tech industry, obviously, particularly made your social 2:05:07.040 --> 2:05:10.360 media companies, but they still tend to acknowledge the tremendous 2:05:10.400 --> 2:05:13.280 wealth created by Silicon Valley, as if there's some sort 2:05:13.320 --> 2:05:15.720 of inherent value to that. Behind a number on a 2:05:15.760 --> 2:05:20.560 spreadsheet collectively, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google, the so 2:05:20.600 --> 2:05:23.960 called Big Five had a seven point five trillion dollar 2:05:24.040 --> 2:05:27.560 market cap. And every person listening to this keeps a 2:05:27.560 --> 2:05:30.360 device in their pocket made by or using the software 2:05:30.360 --> 2:05:32.880 of one or more of these companies. And so when 2:05:32.920 --> 2:05:35.560 people want to make the counter argument to what I 2:05:35.600 --> 2:05:39.000 just said, they'll tend to point out some version of this. Uh. Yeah, 2:05:39.040 --> 2:05:41.360 companies like Facebook have done bad things, but the Internet 2:05:41.440 --> 2:05:43.520 is still a tool for good. It connects people, YadA 2:05:43.600 --> 2:05:46.440 YadA YadA. Smartphones empower us. You know. There's all these 2:05:46.480 --> 2:05:49.520 positive things about the internet, to which I will say, 2:05:49.800 --> 2:05:52.600 present me with your fucking evidence that that has mattered 2:05:52.600 --> 2:05:57.920 for people really in terms that actually, inaggregate improve their lives. 2:05:58.360 --> 2:06:00.920 I will show you my arguments to the col dry. 2:06:01.040 --> 2:06:03.360 In the period of time from Harry Truman's election to 2:06:03.400 --> 2:06:06.560 the end of the Nixon administration, American productivity on a 2:06:06.600 --> 2:06:09.240 per capita basis increased at a faster rate than it 2:06:09.280 --> 2:06:12.960 did at any other point in history. But then something happened. 2:06:13.240 --> 2:06:16.240 From nineteen seventy three to two thousand and thirteen, income 2:06:16.280 --> 2:06:18.920 growth was eighty percent slower than it had been in 2:06:18.920 --> 2:06:22.480 the previous three decades. If productivity had continued to grow 2:06:22.520 --> 2:06:24.840 at the same rate from nineteen seventy three to two 2:06:24.880 --> 2:06:27.640 thousand thirteen as it did from nineteen forty six to 2:06:27.720 --> 2:06:31.040 nineteen seventy three, the economy in two thousand thirteen would 2:06:31.080 --> 2:06:35.000 have been sixty percent larger than it actually was. Now, 2:06:35.040 --> 2:06:37.080 I'm going to guess a decent number of the people 2:06:37.200 --> 2:06:39.760 listening to this grew up watching The Jetsons. I know 2:06:39.880 --> 2:06:41.600 I did, and for the most part it was a silly, 2:06:41.600 --> 2:06:44.560 pretty harmless animated show. But at the center of it 2:06:44.600 --> 2:06:47.400 was a dream about the future that seems unfathomable in 2:06:47.480 --> 2:06:50.520 light of current events. George Jetson, who was in the 2:06:50.520 --> 2:06:53.880 show a pretty normal working class guy, worked three hours 2:06:53.880 --> 2:06:55.560 a day for three days a week. One of the 2:06:55.600 --> 2:06:58.080 running jokes in the show is that he considered himself 2:06:58.200 --> 2:07:03.600 overworked despite this idyllic schedule. Now, this was never particularly 2:07:03.680 --> 2:07:05.720 a focus of the show. It was just kind of 2:07:05.760 --> 2:07:08.280 something that was mentioned from time to time. And that's 2:07:08.280 --> 2:07:10.480 because the idea that a work week might just be 2:07:10.720 --> 2:07:13.880 nine hours in the future wasn't a joke. This was 2:07:13.920 --> 2:07:17.360 the direction of futurists in the nineteen sixties, looking at 2:07:17.400 --> 2:07:20.120 that surgeon productivity I just mentioned, and all of the 2:07:20.120 --> 2:07:22.400 middle class wealth that had been created from the forties 2:07:22.400 --> 2:07:24.760 through the early sixties. This is the direction they saw 2:07:24.800 --> 2:07:27.640 us heading in around a decade ago, in a period 2:07:27.680 --> 2:07:30.760 that was still significantly more optimistic than our current age. 2:07:31.160 --> 2:07:34.080 The Atlantics. Alexis Madrigal, when on a reading spree of 2:07:34.080 --> 2:07:38.640 some early twentieth century futurist novels, his conclusion was this quote. 2:07:39.080 --> 2:07:42.920 Technological optimists sold the world on automation by telling people 2:07:42.920 --> 2:07:45.960 it would create unimaginable amounts of leisure for them. The 2:07:45.960 --> 2:07:48.200 big question for the workers of the twenty first century 2:07:48.240 --> 2:07:52.360 would be how to spend their copious amounts of free time. Now, 2:07:52.720 --> 2:07:55.280 the future we've actually gotten has given us the opposite 2:07:55.280 --> 2:07:57.520 of this dream. To try and cover up the rank 2:07:57.520 --> 2:08:00.920 and rampant ways modern technology has failed. Human think tanks 2:08:00.960 --> 2:08:04.280 funded by venture capitalists and tech gurus produce an endless 2:08:04.320 --> 2:08:08.240 stream of identical futurist thinker types who write columns about 2:08:08.280 --> 2:08:11.080 how the world is actually better today than it's ever been. 2:08:11.720 --> 2:08:14.920 A good example of this would be this June column 2:08:14.920 --> 2:08:18.360 by Rob Ascar titled the World's getting better, Here's why 2:08:18.400 --> 2:08:22.000 your brain can't believe it. It opens with this paragraph 2:08:22.160 --> 2:08:24.280 life has improved for most people around the world over 2:08:24.280 --> 2:08:27.760 the past generation, temporary pandemics aside. The rub is that 2:08:27.800 --> 2:08:29.920 you can't get anyone to believe the good news, and 2:08:29.960 --> 2:08:32.839 the result is a toxic political environment and the potential 2:08:32.840 --> 2:08:35.480 collapse of democratic norms if too few people feel that 2:08:35.520 --> 2:08:39.320 a stressed system is worth saving. Now, I might point out, 2:08:39.400 --> 2:08:42.000 for example, that if people don't actually feel like the 2:08:42.080 --> 2:08:46.240 system is good, perhaps it's not really working well. There's 2:08:46.280 --> 2:08:49.080 a number of counter arguments you can make to this. Now, 2:08:49.200 --> 2:08:52.520 two years later, this again was written in June, We've 2:08:52.560 --> 2:08:55.000 got a massive war in Europe. People are worried about 2:08:55.120 --> 2:08:58.080 nuclear warfare as a result of that. Again, we've got 2:08:58.080 --> 2:09:01.120 a degradation of democracy world I that's continued to pace 2:09:01.160 --> 2:09:04.640 from where it was. We've got soaring inequality, we've got 2:09:04.680 --> 2:09:06.920 inflation the likes of which a lot of people alive 2:09:06.960 --> 2:09:10.160 have never seen, myself included prior to this point. And 2:09:10.520 --> 2:09:13.640 we still have a pandemic. So it's clear that Rob 2:09:13.840 --> 2:09:16.360 is at least not as smart as he thinks he is, 2:09:16.680 --> 2:09:18.640 which is what I would say about everyone who makes 2:09:18.800 --> 2:09:21.520 versions of the same claim that he was making. Now, 2:09:21.560 --> 2:09:23.720 this doesn't mean I'm saying that life is worse now 2:09:23.800 --> 2:09:26.200 than it was at some imagined pre lapse arian version 2:09:26.240 --> 2:09:27.680 of the past. I actually think that's kind of a 2:09:27.760 --> 2:09:29.800 useless way to think about the past. In the future, 2:09:30.000 --> 2:09:32.160 there's different things people would have preferred. There's things that 2:09:32.200 --> 2:09:36.000 are objectively better, there's things that are objectively indebatably worse. 2:09:36.080 --> 2:09:38.760 You know, that's hard to make those kind of claims 2:09:38.800 --> 2:09:41.920 about history, especially when they often rely on saying, well, 2:09:42.280 --> 2:09:44.400 X amount of more people have been pulled out of poverty. 2:09:44.440 --> 2:09:46.840 And the question to that is, well, I don't know, 2:09:46.920 --> 2:09:50.320 before colonization of Africa, would you say all of those 2:09:50.360 --> 2:09:53.920 people in what became the colonized parts of Africa were 2:09:53.920 --> 2:09:56.480 in poverty or were they simply not part of a 2:09:56.560 --> 2:10:00.680 system that measures poverty and anyway whatever. We can go 2:10:00.720 --> 2:10:03.000 on and on about that. My point is that the 2:10:03.040 --> 2:10:05.800 metrics these people used to claim the success of our 2:10:05.840 --> 2:10:09.000 current system to talk about how wonderful things are today 2:10:09.040 --> 2:10:12.560 are constantly shifting, and they're widely arbitrary. The same year 2:10:12.640 --> 2:10:15.000 Rob wrote his stupid column, an in O r C 2:10:15.240 --> 2:10:18.280 studies showed that Americans self reported being happy at the 2:10:18.320 --> 2:10:22.160 lowest levels in fifty years. You can quote Jukes statistics 2:10:22.200 --> 2:10:24.920 about wealthare access to luxury goods all you want. But 2:10:25.040 --> 2:10:28.440 the modern world and the post two eight financial crash economy, 2:10:28.480 --> 2:10:30.160 all of which was built in the shade of the 2:10:30.200 --> 2:10:35.040 tech industry, is making people miserable now. Happiness is obviously 2:10:35.080 --> 2:10:38.080 not a perfect measure of progress either. Self reporting is 2:10:38.120 --> 2:10:41.280 always dicey, but things like the consumer price index in 2:10:41.320 --> 2:10:43.720 per capita income, which are often used by folks on 2:10:43.720 --> 2:10:46.320 the optimist side, are also juked and jiggered to hell 2:10:46.400 --> 2:10:48.800 and back. So to provide a bit more of an 2:10:48.800 --> 2:10:51.800 international scale, I'm going to quote from the Berkeley University's 2:10:51.880 --> 2:10:56.120 Greater Good magazine. Quote released annually on the International Day 2:10:56.120 --> 2:10:58.880 of Happiness, the World Happiness Report ranks countries based on 2:10:58.920 --> 2:11:02.280 their life satisfaction the Gallop World Pole. Residents rate how 2:11:02.320 --> 2:11:04.200 satisfied they are with their lives in a scale of 2:11:04.280 --> 2:11:06.480 zero to ten, from the worst possible life to the 2:11:06.520 --> 2:11:09.920 best possible life. This year's report also analyzes how global 2:11:09.920 --> 2:11:12.520 happiness has changed over time, based on data stretching back 2:11:12.560 --> 2:11:17.560 to two thousand five. One trend is very clear. Negative feelings, worry, sadness, 2:11:17.560 --> 2:11:20.120 and anger have been rising around the world, up by 2:11:20.760 --> 2:11:24.160 from two thousand ten to two thousand eighteen. The others 2:11:24.160 --> 2:11:26.840 also found troubling trends and happiness in equality, which is 2:11:26.840 --> 2:11:30.520 the psychological parallel to income inequality, how much individuals in 2:11:30.560 --> 2:11:33.720 society differ and how satisfied they are with life. Since 2:11:33.720 --> 2:11:36.919 two thousand seven, happiness inequality has been rising within countries, 2:11:37.240 --> 2:11:39.560 meaning that the gap between the unhappy and the happy 2:11:39.600 --> 2:11:42.440 has been getting wider. This trend is particularly strong in 2:11:42.520 --> 2:11:47.840 Latin America, Asia and Sub Saharan Africa. And this is 2:11:47.920 --> 2:11:50.120 kind of getting it. I think, what is an incredibly 2:11:50.160 --> 2:11:52.160 important point, for one thing, if you want to look 2:11:52.160 --> 2:11:56.240 at how people have self reported their unhappiness rising. This 2:11:56.600 --> 2:11:59.960 massive recent surge and unhappiness occurs almost at exactly the 2:12:00.000 --> 2:12:02.960 period of time that the smartphone takes off and becomes ubiquitous. 2:12:03.440 --> 2:12:06.040 And the smartphone is such a bafflingly useful device. I 2:12:06.040 --> 2:12:08.200 would never want to give mine up as a thing 2:12:08.280 --> 2:12:10.760 that I had access to, And the Internet is an 2:12:10.760 --> 2:12:13.200 incredibly powerful tool. I wouldn't want to give the Internet 2:12:13.320 --> 2:12:18.120 up either. But the usefulness and the the undoubtable brilliance 2:12:18.200 --> 2:12:22.120 behind these products makes it seem inconceivable to argue that 2:12:22.160 --> 2:12:24.480 they haven't made us better at accomplishing the things that 2:12:24.560 --> 2:12:27.920 matter to us. But the evidence on this is pretty clear. 2:12:28.200 --> 2:12:29.680 I want to quote now from a write up in 2:12:29.680 --> 2:12:33.520 The Atlantic. No matter how aggressively you torture the numbers, 2:12:33.560 --> 2:12:36.160 the computer age has coincided with a decline in the 2:12:36.280 --> 2:12:39.880 rate of economic growth. When Chad Civerson, an economist at 2:12:39.880 --> 2:12:42.640 the University of Chicago's Business School, looked at the question 2:12:42.680 --> 2:12:45.520 of missing growth, he found that the productivity slowdown has 2:12:45.520 --> 2:12:49.080 reduced GDP by two points seven trillion dollars since two 2:12:49.120 --> 2:12:52.320 thousand four. Americans may love their smartphones, but all those 2:12:52.360 --> 2:12:55.840 free apps aren't worth trillions of dollars. The physical world 2:12:55.880 --> 2:12:58.240 of the city, the glow of electric powered lights, the 2:12:58.280 --> 2:13:00.680 rumble of automobiles, the roar of air planes overhead, and 2:13:00.720 --> 2:13:03.680 subways below is a product of late nineteenth century in 2:13:03.720 --> 2:13:08.440 early twentieth century invention, the physical environment feels depressingly finished. 2:13:08.680 --> 2:13:11.280 The bulk of innovation has been shunted into the invisible 2:13:11.280 --> 2:13:14.680 realm of bites and code. All of that code, technology 2:13:14.680 --> 2:13:18.640 advocates argue, has increased human ingenuity by allowing individuals to tinker, talk, 2:13:18.680 --> 2:13:22.760 and trade with unprecedented ease. This certainly feels true. Who 2:13:22.760 --> 2:13:24.720 could dispute the fact that It's easier than ever to 2:13:24.760 --> 2:13:27.320 record music, market a video game, or publish an essay, 2:13:27.560 --> 2:13:31.200 but by most measures, individual innovation is in decline. In 2:13:31.240 --> 2:13:33.800 two thousand and fifteen, Americans were far less likely to 2:13:33.800 --> 2:13:35.960 start a company than they were in the nineteen eighties. 2:13:36.240 --> 2:13:39.320 According to the economist Tyler Cohen, the spread of broadband 2:13:39.360 --> 2:13:42.839 technology has corresponded with a drop off an entrepreneurial activity 2:13:42.880 --> 2:13:46.760 in almost every city and in almost every industry. Now 2:13:46.840 --> 2:13:48.560 you might think from all this that I'm out ahead 2:13:48.600 --> 2:13:52.120 into some sort of techno dumer anti si primitivist rant here. 2:13:52.440 --> 2:13:55.080 I'm not. Perhaps I should, but I'm not. I am 2:13:55.120 --> 2:13:57.840 a person who loves technology. I got my start as 2:13:57.880 --> 2:14:00.280 a journalist. As a tech journalist, I joy as Lee 2:14:00.360 --> 2:14:03.960 traveled the world for years, visiting conventions looking at new gadgets. 2:14:04.000 --> 2:14:06.240 And a lot of this was in that pretty wondrous 2:14:06.320 --> 2:14:08.880 period if you're a gadget nerd from two thousand eight 2:14:08.880 --> 2:14:11.920 to two thousand eleven, where there were there's these amazing, new, 2:14:12.000 --> 2:14:15.200 weird sci fi gadgets dropping every single week, stuff that 2:14:15.240 --> 2:14:17.720 you'd grown up watching and like Star Trek, the next 2:14:17.720 --> 2:14:20.120 generation suddenly getting mailed to your door for you to 2:14:20.200 --> 2:14:23.720 test out. I tested hundreds of tablets and smart gadgets 2:14:23.760 --> 2:14:26.080 in that time frame, and there's some really great products 2:14:26.080 --> 2:14:29.000 that came out from that period. Bluetooth speakers are wonderful. 2:14:29.040 --> 2:14:31.240 A lot of people, including me, use them happily on 2:14:31.280 --> 2:14:34.520 a daily basis. But when it comes to legitimately life 2:14:34.640 --> 2:14:37.520 changing applications of technology that's come to us in the 2:14:37.560 --> 2:14:40.640 last fifteen years or so, I can really only think 2:14:40.640 --> 2:14:43.800 of three things. Number one is the ability to navigate 2:14:43.800 --> 2:14:47.320 by GPS basically everywhere. Number two is the ability to 2:14:47.320 --> 2:14:49.960 be in constant contact with people around the world. And 2:14:50.040 --> 2:14:52.440 number three is the ability to store a shipload of 2:14:52.480 --> 2:14:56.600 media on a portable device. So I'm not anti technology, 2:14:56.680 --> 2:14:58.640 Nor am I saying that big tech doesn't make things 2:14:58.640 --> 2:15:00.600 that are cool or useful? And what am I saying 2:15:00.840 --> 2:15:03.120 we should get rid of this stuff? The point I'm 2:15:03.200 --> 2:15:06.320 making is that viewed at thirty thousand feet, the tech 2:15:06.360 --> 2:15:09.960 industry has produced very little of quantifiable value to the 2:15:10.040 --> 2:15:13.160 human race, and it has caused unfathomable harm at the 2:15:13.200 --> 2:15:16.600 same time. Now, in my opinion, this has nothing, or 2:15:16.640 --> 2:15:19.320 at least fairly little to do with how the technology 2:15:19.400 --> 2:15:22.720 inherently works, and instead has everything to do with the 2:15:22.840 --> 2:15:26.400 ideology behind the people who developed and who continue to 2:15:26.520 --> 2:15:30.800 marshal that technology. In nine, two of the smartest guys 2:15:30.800 --> 2:15:34.080 in the twentieth century by my estimation, Richard Barbrook and 2:15:34.080 --> 2:15:37.680 Andy Cameron, wrote an essay about the ideology that animated 2:15:37.720 --> 2:15:39.840 the men who had come to dominate the twenty first 2:15:39.840 --> 2:15:44.720 century tech industry. They titled their essay the Californian Ideology, 2:15:44.760 --> 2:15:46.360 and I think it still counts as one of the 2:15:46.400 --> 2:15:50.000 three or four most incisive accurate essays of that century. 2:15:50.200 --> 2:15:52.320 The gist of the idea was that as the first 2:15:52.400 --> 2:15:54.360 wave of the digital boom started to hit in the 2:15:54.400 --> 2:15:57.440 mid nineteen nineties, the thinkers behind it were fueled by 2:15:57.440 --> 2:16:00.600 a mix of left wing by a x of left 2:16:00.640 --> 2:16:05.120 wing egalitarian, often anti status beliefs that got wedded to 2:16:05.240 --> 2:16:09.720 right wing free market fundamentalist libertarian ideology and created this 2:16:09.840 --> 2:16:13.160 deeply toxic way of thinking about the future. You can 2:16:13.200 --> 2:16:15.840 see this in the story of guys like Steve Wozniak, 2:16:16.080 --> 2:16:18.560 the inventor of the personal computer, who was also a 2:16:18.600 --> 2:16:21.520 former phone freaker. He committed federal crimes as a kid, 2:16:21.560 --> 2:16:25.080 hacking the phone system primarily because fuck the man. But 2:16:25.200 --> 2:16:27.760 then when he's a young man the Waws hooks up 2:16:27.760 --> 2:16:29.920 with a guy named Steve Jobs, and Jobs is a 2:16:30.040 --> 2:16:32.840 brilliant but heartless con man who cares about nothing but 2:16:32.920 --> 2:16:37.480 market dominance. Jobs recognizes the naive brilliance of Steve Wozniak, 2:16:37.560 --> 2:16:39.720 and he turns it into an engine for wealth creation. 2:16:39.840 --> 2:16:42.840 At one point, he steals money that Wosniak was owed 2:16:42.879 --> 2:16:45.600 for a project that they took on together, money Wniac 2:16:45.720 --> 2:16:47.720 probably would have just given him if he'd asked, and 2:16:47.760 --> 2:16:50.760 he used it secretly to fund their business, which became Apple. 2:16:51.640 --> 2:16:53.880 In their essay, Cameron and Barbara, who are much better 2:16:53.879 --> 2:16:57.560 writers than I, described the Californian ideology this way. The 2:16:57.600 --> 2:17:00.320 Californian ideology is a mix of cyber and etics, free 2:17:00.320 --> 2:17:04.960 market economics, and counterculture libertarianism, and is promuligated by magazines 2:17:05.000 --> 2:17:07.400 such as Wired and Mondo two thousand and preached in 2:17:07.440 --> 2:17:10.039 the books of Stuart Brand, Kevin Kelly, and others. The 2:17:10.080 --> 2:17:13.160 New Faith has been embraced by computer nerds, slacker students, 2:17:13.160 --> 2:17:17.320 thirty something capitalists, hip academics, futurist bureaucrats, and even by 2:17:17.320 --> 2:17:22.280 the President of the USA himself. Now, the tech industry 2:17:22.320 --> 2:17:25.359 as we know it got its start courtesy of government money. 2:17:25.440 --> 2:17:27.680 Everyone knows that the first version of the Internet was 2:17:27.720 --> 2:17:30.880 developed as part of a Defense Department project, but the 2:17:31.000 --> 2:17:33.560 entire computer industry, all of the coders and engineers who 2:17:33.560 --> 2:17:36.879 would form the first generation of Selincom Valley profit engines, 2:17:37.200 --> 2:17:40.000 all these guys got their start working for or as 2:17:40.040 --> 2:17:43.240 defense contractors. When the US pulled out of Vietnam, thousands 2:17:43.240 --> 2:17:44.840 of these people were left out of jobs and they 2:17:44.879 --> 2:17:48.080 were forced to move into the private sector. Everything worthwhile 2:17:48.160 --> 2:17:50.320 that's come out of big tech has involved a titanic 2:17:50.360 --> 2:17:52.560 amount of public funding, one way or the other. And 2:17:52.560 --> 2:17:55.840 I'm gonna quote from that essay again. Almost every major 2:17:55.879 --> 2:17:58.520 technological advance of the last two hundred years has taken 2:17:58.560 --> 2:18:00.879 place with the aid of large outs of public money 2:18:00.879 --> 2:18:03.840 and under a good deal of government influence. The technologies 2:18:03.879 --> 2:18:05.560 of the computer in the net were invented with the 2:18:05.560 --> 2:18:08.879 aid of massive state subsidies. For example, the first difference 2:18:08.920 --> 2:18:12.320 Engine project received a British government grant of five hundred 2:18:12.320 --> 2:18:15.280 and seventeen thousand, four hundred and seventy pounds a small 2:18:15.320 --> 2:18:18.800 fortune in eighteen thirty four. From Colossus to EDVAC, from 2:18:18.840 --> 2:18:22.400 flight simulators to virtual reality, the development of computing has 2:18:22.480 --> 2:18:25.600 depended at key moments on public research handouts or fat 2:18:25.640 --> 2:18:29.360 contracts with public agencies. The IBM Corporation built the first 2:18:29.400 --> 2:18:32.520 programmable digital computer only after it was requested to do 2:18:32.600 --> 2:18:35.440 so by the U. S Defense Department during the Korean War. 2:18:35.879 --> 2:18:38.000 The result of a lack of state intervention meant that 2:18:38.080 --> 2:18:41.199 Nazi Germany lost the opportunity to build the first electronic 2:18:41.240 --> 2:18:43.800 computer in the late thirties when the Wehrmacht refused to 2:18:43.840 --> 2:18:47.279 fund Conrad Zooz, who had pioneered the use of binary code, 2:18:47.320 --> 2:18:51.200 stored programs, and electronic logic gates. One of the weirdest 2:18:51.200 --> 2:18:54.039 things about the Californian ideology is that the West Coast 2:18:54.040 --> 2:18:57.720 itself was a product of massive state intervention. Government dollars 2:18:57.720 --> 2:19:01.119 were used to build the irrigation systems, highway schools, universities, 2:19:01.120 --> 2:19:04.199 and other infrastructural projects which make the good life possible. 2:19:04.600 --> 2:19:07.080 On top of these public subsidies, the West Coast high 2:19:07.080 --> 2:19:09.840 tech industrial complex has been feasting off the fattest pork 2:19:09.879 --> 2:19:12.840 barrel in history for decades. The US government has poured 2:19:12.879 --> 2:19:15.720 billions of tax dollars into buying planes, missiles, electronics, and 2:19:15.800 --> 2:19:19.960 nuclear bombs from Californian companies. Americans have always had state planning, 2:19:20.040 --> 2:19:23.440 but they prefer to call it the defense budget. Now 2:19:23.720 --> 2:19:26.760 this state of affairs is more or less unchanged today. 2:19:27.160 --> 2:19:30.480 Elon Musk is probably the most celebrated modern tech visionary. 2:19:30.520 --> 2:19:33.959 Miss Sundry companies have taken nearly five billion dollars in 2:19:34.000 --> 2:19:37.760 public funding, subsidies, and government support since two thousand fifteen. 2:19:38.400 --> 2:19:42.039 All of these libertarian visionaries, who push in their political 2:19:42.080 --> 2:19:45.680 lives for a world of lossyfair economics and corporate sovereignty, 2:19:46.040 --> 2:19:50.080 only produce value with the help of taxpayer dollars. Period. 2:19:50.520 --> 2:19:53.920 The irrational exuberance of public financing and the narcissism to 2:19:54.000 --> 2:19:56.920 ignore its role in innovation has given us a generation 2:19:56.959 --> 2:19:59.880 of tech industry overlords who seem bound and determined to 2:20:00.000 --> 2:20:04.480 destroy their own creations. Steve Jobs represented the most successful 2:20:04.600 --> 2:20:08.959 and probably the most intelligent manifestation of the Californian ideology. 2:20:09.000 --> 2:20:12.200 Every tech industry ghoul currently boiling away fortunes for the 2:20:12.240 --> 2:20:14.959 sake of their ego. I'm thinking of Zuckerberg and Musk 2:20:15.040 --> 2:20:18.920 most prominently right now is trying to be him. Steve's 2:20:18.959 --> 2:20:21.800 skill was being able to perfectly inhabit the form of 2:20:21.800 --> 2:20:24.160 a visionary, and he was so good at doing this 2:20:24.320 --> 2:20:27.519 that he convinced this generation they could follow in his footsteps. 2:20:28.400 --> 2:20:31.520 But Steve Jobs was only ever playing at being a creator, 2:20:31.640 --> 2:20:35.040 at being an inventor. His skill was not in making things. 2:20:35.240 --> 2:20:38.080 He had other people to do the making. Steve was 2:20:38.120 --> 2:20:41.800 an exceptional confidence man, and like all good confidence men, 2:20:42.160 --> 2:20:45.039 he was able to make money because he understood on 2:20:45.120 --> 2:20:49.320 a deep level what other human beings wanted. This skill 2:20:49.360 --> 2:20:52.200 allowed him to lock Apple into spending hundreds of millions 2:20:52.200 --> 2:20:54.080 of dollars on R and D for what would become 2:20:54.080 --> 2:20:56.959 the first proper smartphone, and for a while, he was 2:20:57.000 --> 2:20:59.640 just having them toss that money into an apparent chasm, 2:20:59.680 --> 2:21:03.200 repeatedly turning back iterations of the product that weren't quite right, 2:21:03.520 --> 2:21:05.480 on the strength of his belief that when they got 2:21:05.480 --> 2:21:08.680 it right, it would be worth it. In the year since, 2:21:08.720 --> 2:21:10.879 we've seen many wanna be Steves try to follow in 2:21:10.959 --> 2:21:13.800 his footsteps, igniting tens of billions of dollars of venture 2:21:13.840 --> 2:21:17.280 capital for absolutely nothing. One of the best examples would 2:21:17.280 --> 2:21:19.720 be Uber They lost eight point five billion dollars in 2:21:19.720 --> 2:21:24.360 two thousand nineteen six point eight billion dollars. Once upon 2:21:24.400 --> 2:21:26.840 a time, The understanding the jobs and vision of what 2:21:26.959 --> 2:21:29.520 Uber could be was that all of this ignited VC 2:21:29.760 --> 2:21:33.160 cash would be worthwhile because eventually the company would succeed 2:21:33.200 --> 2:21:36.680 in replacing human drivers with autonomous cars, cutting out the 2:21:36.720 --> 2:21:42.480 primary cost in the entire professional driving industry, and making 2:21:42.760 --> 2:21:45.640 the potential for a shipload of profit. But after investing 2:21:45.680 --> 2:21:48.280 more than a billion dollars in self driving cars, Uber 2:21:48.400 --> 2:21:51.480 sold their entire autonomous vehicle division off at a loss. 2:21:51.879 --> 2:21:55.080 All of that expense had resulted in self driving cars 2:21:55.120 --> 2:21:59.760 that averaged one half mile travel per accident. Despite this, 2:22:00.080 --> 2:22:03.400 after a two point six billion dollar loss in August two, 2:22:03.680 --> 2:22:07.800 Uber stock sword. Now the realities of what generates profit 2:22:07.840 --> 2:22:10.560 and loss in the tech industry have been completely divorced 2:22:10.560 --> 2:22:13.920 from productive reality or value created. For quite some time. 2:22:14.440 --> 2:22:18.440 The delamination of real value in big tech happens subtly. 2:22:18.640 --> 2:22:20.880 It's not hard to see why Apple, who created a 2:22:20.879 --> 2:22:23.280 device every human being wanted to have in their pocket, 2:22:23.720 --> 2:22:27.280 became worth a shipload more money, right, pretty obvious. The 2:22:27.360 --> 2:22:30.920 value case for Google's core business search is also pretty obvious. 2:22:31.160 --> 2:22:33.680 And as much as I hate Facebook, it became initially 2:22:33.720 --> 2:22:37.040 successful because it provided people with something of real value 2:22:37.320 --> 2:22:39.680 a way to stay in touch with human beings they 2:22:39.680 --> 2:22:42.879 had met over the course of their lives. Younger folks 2:22:42.920 --> 2:22:45.199 may find this odd because they've grown up with the Internet, 2:22:45.240 --> 2:22:47.720 but as a kid, I can remember very vividly my 2:22:47.800 --> 2:22:50.199 parents talking about the friends they'd had in high school 2:22:50.200 --> 2:22:53.039 and in college, and how a lifetime of moving regularly 2:22:53.080 --> 2:22:56.000 had severed many of the connections they'd valued with these people. 2:22:56.560 --> 2:22:59.120 When I joined Facebook and my freshman year of college, 2:22:59.440 --> 2:23:02.200 I found real value and the ability to maintain and 2:23:02.240 --> 2:23:05.640 sometimes even build stronger connections with people I would otherwise 2:23:05.640 --> 2:23:08.640 have lost touch with entirely. There is the core of 2:23:08.680 --> 2:23:11.920 something good, or something at least valued inherently by people 2:23:12.080 --> 2:23:15.360 in Facebook, and that's true with most, if not all, 2:23:15.400 --> 2:23:18.920 of the Big five companies. When people reflexively leap to 2:23:18.959 --> 2:23:21.760 defend the tech industry as an engine of innovation, they 2:23:21.760 --> 2:23:24.360 can point to these successes. But the point that I'm 2:23:24.400 --> 2:23:27.440 making isn't that no good ideas come out of Silicon Valley, 2:23:27.720 --> 2:23:30.520 or that there isn't anything valuable that is involved in 2:23:30.600 --> 2:23:33.600 what these companies do. It's that the endless quest for 2:23:33.680 --> 2:23:37.880 profit and the narcissism of this Californian ideology lead inevitably 2:23:37.920 --> 2:23:41.720 to the destruction of whatever value the industry creates. This 2:23:41.800 --> 2:23:44.360 is why none of these innovations have actually led to 2:23:44.480 --> 2:23:47.080 surges and productivity, why none of them have made us 2:23:47.120 --> 2:23:50.160 any happier, which I think might be more important. Any 2:23:50.200 --> 2:23:53.800 potential these creations had was smothered by the ideology that 2:23:53.879 --> 2:23:58.039 drives Silicon Valley money. Facebook took the connections that they'd 2:23:58.080 --> 2:24:01.000 made with people and used them to feed those same 2:24:01.080 --> 2:24:05.240 people rage bait. They destroyed the open Internet, shuttered countless 2:24:05.280 --> 2:24:08.440 local news sites, put tons of people out of business, 2:24:08.440 --> 2:24:13.040 while algorithmically pushing millions of folks around the world towards 2:24:13.080 --> 2:24:17.520 whatever kept them angriest and most online. Google spent billions 2:24:17.560 --> 2:24:20.520 on an endless stream of spinoff products like Google Plus 2:24:20.520 --> 2:24:24.039 and Google Glass, which were nearly all catastrophic failures, at 2:24:24.120 --> 2:24:27.080 least on a financial sense, and all the while they 2:24:27.120 --> 2:24:30.640 gradually turned the search results they prided themselves on into 2:24:30.640 --> 2:24:34.039 a sponsored ad feed. Google is less useful now than 2:24:34.040 --> 2:24:35.840 it was a couple of years ago. You noticed this 2:24:35.879 --> 2:24:38.080 immediately if you just get on there and start asking 2:24:38.080 --> 2:24:41.840 it questions. Elon Musk has taken the visionary technology that 2:24:41.920 --> 2:24:45.440 underpins the Tesla, all created by other people and used 2:24:45.440 --> 2:24:48.439 the clout from that to shatter any chance of California 2:24:48.480 --> 2:24:51.840 developing a high speed rail system. By the way, in 2:24:51.920 --> 2:24:56.240 June of two, Tesla stock value plunged seventy five billion dollars, 2:24:56.480 --> 2:24:58.879 which is substantially more money than the company has ever 2:24:58.959 --> 2:25:02.920 actually made. Elucidating the full scale of the failure of 2:25:02.959 --> 2:25:06.720 Silicon Valley an American techno optimism would take more time 2:25:06.760 --> 2:25:09.120 than I'm able to spend right now, So instead, I 2:25:09.160 --> 2:25:11.760 want to talk about the idea that's behind so much 2:25:11.760 --> 2:25:14.040 of the recent big failures that we've seen from big 2:25:14.080 --> 2:25:17.560 tech stuff like Meta pissing away ten billion dollars half 2:25:17.600 --> 2:25:20.039 the budget of NASA in a year to create a 2:25:20.040 --> 2:25:24.880 worse version of vr chat. The idea is called blitz scaling, 2:25:25.240 --> 2:25:28.240 and it basically means attempting to achieve massive scale at 2:25:28.280 --> 2:25:31.080 breakneck speed. You take big risks and you spend huge 2:25:31.080 --> 2:25:33.640 amounts of money very quickly to try enforce apps or 2:25:33.640 --> 2:25:36.880 other products onto the market that are then adopted rapidly 2:25:36.959 --> 2:25:40.279 by huge numbers of people. This brings in a shipload 2:25:40.280 --> 2:25:42.039 of VC money, and as a way that you can 2:25:42.040 --> 2:25:44.680 make a fortune. In the years since Jobs brought the 2:25:44.720 --> 2:25:47.320 first iPhone out, on stage. This has become the dominant 2:25:47.320 --> 2:25:51.080 model of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship. Everyone is looking for the 2:25:51.120 --> 2:25:54.120 next iPhone, right, something that can take over an industry, 2:25:54.120 --> 2:25:56.560 something you can take over the world that rapidly, that 2:25:56.600 --> 2:26:00.480 can change human life almost overnight. In Funding Calls, Mark 2:26:00.560 --> 2:26:04.039 Zuckerberg says this. In Funding Calls, Mark Zuckerberg says this 2:26:04.200 --> 2:26:08.240 very directly, comparing his company's metaverse dreams to the new smartphone. 2:26:08.760 --> 2:26:12.199 The thing that Mark misses because his ideology renders it invisible, 2:26:12.560 --> 2:26:15.400 is that Steve Jobs didn't make people want the iPhone. 2:26:15.640 --> 2:26:18.440 He was able to figure out what they wanted already, 2:26:18.680 --> 2:26:21.120 what they had talked about wanting for decades, starting with 2:26:21.160 --> 2:26:24.520 trike orders and communicators on Star Trek, and he lashed 2:26:24.560 --> 2:26:27.640 his dev team until they built the damn thing. Now. 2:26:28.000 --> 2:26:31.879 The metaverse has some analogs in fiction, including the thing 2:26:31.920 --> 2:26:35.000 that it gets its name from, um, but number one, 2:26:35.720 --> 2:26:39.520 most depictions of the metaverse in fiction are not aspirational 2:26:39.720 --> 2:26:43.760 things people want their dystopian uh, there's no evidence that 2:26:43.800 --> 2:26:46.760 people actually want this thing that he's igniting a fortune 2:26:46.760 --> 2:26:49.280 to build, or that they'd spend meaningful periods of time 2:26:49.280 --> 2:26:51.080 in it if it existed. There's not a lot of 2:26:51.120 --> 2:26:53.280 polling on this data, but one in seven but one 2:26:53.360 --> 2:26:56.119 seventeen thousand person survey I found showed less than twenty 2:26:56.560 --> 2:26:59.959 respondents respect expressing an interest in meta in a metaverse 2:27:00.520 --> 2:27:03.240 like the one Zuck is trying to build. The last 2:27:03.280 --> 2:27:06.280 time Facebook provided any kind of information about how many 2:27:06.320 --> 2:27:08.440 people are on Horizon Worlds, which is kind of the 2:27:08.440 --> 2:27:11.200 core of their metaverse efforts, it was somewhere around three 2:27:11.480 --> 2:27:14.359 dred thousand people in the most recent quarter. They declined 2:27:14.400 --> 2:27:16.480 to provide an update to those numbers, which suggests the 2:27:16.560 --> 2:27:19.800 number has not increased um And if you just want 2:27:19.800 --> 2:27:22.520 to look at what happens when people create a digital 2:27:22.560 --> 2:27:25.760 product that actually has a strong base of interest, look 2:27:25.800 --> 2:27:28.800 at how quickly World of Warcraft went from, you know, 2:27:29.040 --> 2:27:32.040 a thing that very few people outside of nerds would 2:27:32.040 --> 2:27:35.600 have known much about, to a thing that was entirely mainstream, 2:27:35.680 --> 2:27:39.640 millions of users, regular references to it on television. You're 2:27:39.680 --> 2:27:41.760 just not seeing that with any of this metaverse ship 2:27:41.840 --> 2:27:45.640 because there's nothing in it that people actually want. The 2:27:45.760 --> 2:27:49.400 sheer hollowness of big tech is starting to become financially 2:27:49.440 --> 2:27:53.320 obvious to Facebook. Stock has lost fifty seven percent of 2:27:53.360 --> 2:27:57.000 its value in the last year. Amazon is down Google 2:27:57.040 --> 2:28:00.920 by and even Apple has fallen by fourteen sent More 2:28:00.959 --> 2:28:02.959 to the point, I think any honest person has to 2:28:03.040 --> 2:28:05.280 look at the last fifteen years or so in which 2:28:05.320 --> 2:28:08.400 these companies have ruled our economic and social lives and asked, 2:28:08.840 --> 2:28:11.800 are we better off now? Over the course of the 2:28:11.879 --> 2:28:16.000 nineteenth century, productivity and income rose at unprecedented rates. There 2:28:16.040 --> 2:28:18.400 was a lot of brutality in this process, right. We talked, 2:28:18.520 --> 2:28:21.000 you know, on behind the Bastards regularly about all of 2:28:21.040 --> 2:28:23.720 the horrible labor things that happened in the nineteenth century. 2:28:24.400 --> 2:28:26.640 It also marked the beginning of the fossil fuel age, 2:28:26.640 --> 2:28:28.760 which may well kill us all. But while all this 2:28:28.879 --> 2:28:31.120 was going on, another thing that happened is wages for 2:28:31.160 --> 2:28:33.360 the working class doubled in the first half of the 2:28:33.400 --> 2:28:37.240 nineteenth century, and the second half. Life expectancy rose faster 2:28:37.320 --> 2:28:40.120 than it ever had before as well, and that continued 2:28:40.160 --> 2:28:43.360 through the first part of the twentieth century. Now, near 2:28:43.360 --> 2:28:46.280 the end of the first quarter of the twenty one century, 2:28:46.360 --> 2:28:49.279 we're not seeing that kind of movement. The United States 2:28:49.320 --> 2:28:52.119 is now ending its second consecutive year of declining life 2:28:52.120 --> 2:28:55.160 expectancy for the first time in any of our lifetimes, 2:28:55.280 --> 2:28:58.959 and real average wage adjusted for inflation, has remained flat 2:28:59.000 --> 2:29:03.959 for almost half a injury progress has flatlined, and nothing 2:29:04.000 --> 2:29:07.200 about how brilliant the modern tech industry is or how 2:29:07.240 --> 2:29:10.480 cool some of these gadgets and products are can change 2:29:10.520 --> 2:29:17.600 those fundamental facts. It's a failure. Hey, We'll be back 2:29:17.640 --> 2:29:20.879 Monday with more episodes every week from now until the 2:29:20.879 --> 2:29:23.400 heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is 2:29:23.400 --> 2:29:26.120 a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from 2:29:26.120 --> 2:29:29.080 cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, 2:29:29.200 --> 2:29:30.920 or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, 2:29:30.959 --> 2:29:34.160 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can 2:29:34.160 --> 2:29:36.879 find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at 2:29:36.879 --> 2:29:40.160 cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.