Speaker 1: Also media. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to let you know this is a compilation episode. So
Speaker 1: every episode of the week that just happened is here
Speaker 1: in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for
Speaker 1: you to listen to in a long stretch if you want.
Speaker 1: If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
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Speaker 2: Welcome to it could happen to hear a podcast about
Speaker 2: things falling apart and how to put them back together again.
Speaker 2: I am your host, Mia Wong, and today we are
Speaker 2: going to be talking about, frankly, the largest and most
Speaker 2: raconian trans healthcare band in the country and the unexpected
Speaker 2: place that well, I don't know if unexpected is the
Speaker 2: right word, but the ignored place that it's come from.
Speaker 2: And with me to talk about this band is David Forbes,
Speaker 2: who is an editor and a journalist with the Trans
Speaker 2: News Network. David, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Always good to be here.
Speaker 2: I once again back to my I wish I could
Speaker 2: have people on the show to talk about like cool
Speaker 2: and normal things, but you know, we get that sometimes
Speaker 2: this is not one of those stories.
Speaker 3: I mean, we're trans journalists and a dying empire, you know.
Speaker 2: Let's yeah, So, speaking of bad things happening in dying empires,
Speaker 2: do you want to take a sort of to the
Speaker 2: start of this healthcare ban and what we're even talking
Speaker 2: about here, because it's not a government healthcare band in
Speaker 2: the way I think people expect.
Speaker 3: No, And that's actually really important to all this story
Speaker 3: because a lot of the attention in healthcare bans has
Speaker 3: been on governments and occasionally hospitals like secular hospital systems
Speaker 3: refusing to revide care because they're scared of the federal government.
Speaker 3: So it's been a portrays a fight between governments or
Speaker 3: a fight over stuff happening at legislatures. And to be clear,
Speaker 3: that's off is absolutely important.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: However, this ban wasn't put in place by a legislature.
Speaker 3: It's not any institution that people have even the facade
Speaker 3: of an ability to really influence. On November twelfth, twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five, a complete and total trans healthcare ban medications
Speaker 3: as well as surgeries adults as well as youth was
Speaker 3: put in place throughout every healthcare system run by the
Speaker 3: Catholic Church in the US.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that has not really like I don't know,
Speaker 2: like I've talked about it, like we've mentioned it on
Speaker 2: the show before. I don't know if I've really seen
Speaker 2: any other like systemic, large scale coverage of it. I mean,
Speaker 2: there were like a couple of articles when it came out,
Speaker 2: but other than TNN, like this has been almost completely ignored,
Speaker 2: even though it is more draconian than any any healthcare
Speaker 2: band that has gone into effect anywhere in the country.
Speaker 2: It is it's again, as you said this, Yes, this
Speaker 2: is a total healthcare band for children and adults.
Speaker 3: Yes, and for all types of trans healthcare yeah, for everything. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And that's the thing. So I've honestly been a little
Speaker 3: surprised by that, even old and cynical as I am.
Speaker 3: But TNN, as far as I know, is one of
Speaker 3: the only outlets, including a queer and trans media I
Speaker 3: won't say the only, but one of the only that
Speaker 3: has done ongoing coverage on this, let alone in depth,
Speaker 3: extensive what are the roots of this? How did we
Speaker 3: get here? Kind of coverage. I've done two articles on it,
Speaker 3: and those were in December, so a few weeks after
Speaker 3: it passed. We kind of went in detail on what
Speaker 3: it meant and the implications of which were and have
Speaker 3: proven to be pretty horrifying. And also the Catholic Church
Speaker 3: is pretty horrific history as an institution. While individual Catholics
Speaker 3: have a as we'll get to, have a wide range
Speaker 3: of beliefs, including on trans rights, the institution itself has
Speaker 3: always been highly abusive, highly reactionary, an incredibly opposed to
Speaker 3: our very existence, and that just hasn't changed as actually escalating.
Speaker 3: And then we did one just last week that was
Speaker 3: on the actual impact, Like we talked to trans people
Speaker 3: around the country who'd encountered the impact of the bishop's
Speaker 3: ban as I've heard a few folks call it, and
Speaker 3: I called a few downs myself, and what it means
Speaker 3: for their lives in the ground.
Speaker 2: So I guess there's two points we should hit immediately.
Speaker 2: One is sort of how this happened, like how this
Speaker 2: band sort of came together and was voted on by
Speaker 2: like who. And the second one is how many people
Speaker 2: this affects, because I think this is the part that's
Speaker 2: really been ignored, which is that like Catholic hospitals, it's
Speaker 2: not like they're running like ten of these. I mean,
Speaker 2: it would be bad if they were running ten of these.
Speaker 2: But this is a significant part of the entire US
Speaker 2: healthcare system, Yes, a massive.
Speaker 3: Part of it. Yeah, So I think I think that's
Speaker 3: very important to kind of touch on. So this was
Speaker 3: passed in November at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops,
Speaker 3: which they have regular meetings and decide policies and stuff,
Speaker 3: and it's one of the things, and this is going
Speaker 3: to be a recurring theme. And this is the degree
Speaker 3: to which I think even people think of themselves as
Speaker 3: progressive fairly left have kind of bought hook line and
Speaker 3: sinker some of the propaganda. And it is overwhelmingly propaganda
Speaker 3: coming out of the Catholic Church since the mid twenty
Speaker 3: tens when Pope Francis got in. So you were seeing
Speaker 3: from this conference the big news in a lot of
Speaker 3: progressive circles was, oh, well, they made this statement against
Speaker 3: the Trump administration immigration. But here's the thing. That was
Speaker 3: a statement. Certainly it's better than if they supported ice,
Speaker 3: but it was a symbolic step largely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like they didn't even do like the very baseline thing,
Speaker 2: which would be like excommunicating JD.
Speaker 3: Vance.
Speaker 2: The thing they could do and did it because they're
Speaker 2: fucking hours.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but they didn't even do that. Yes, and we're
Speaker 3: going to get back to that and often worse than powers. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So at this conference that got most of the headlines,
Speaker 3: but they also passed this very draconian anti trans healthcare band.
Speaker 3: It passed overwhelmingly. This was not like some narrow victory
Speaker 3: by the conservative faction.
Speaker 2: No, it was almost everyone.
Speaker 3: It passed two oh six to seven. Yeah, Jesus Christ. Interestingly,
Speaker 3: it was interesting listening to some of the proceedings of
Speaker 3: this which may not be great for mental health, but
Speaker 3: was quite informative and one of the one of the
Speaker 3: bishops involved, Robert Barron, cited Pope Francis, who was held
Speaker 3: out even sadly by some queer media as being this
Speaker 3: step forward for queer and trans rights, which I think
Speaker 3: was completely a farce, held out his rampant transphobia, which
Speaker 3: was always very clear about, and quoted him saying that
Speaker 3: viewed the existence of trans people, they used the far
Speaker 3: right term gender ideology as and I quote, repugnant to
Speaker 3: the Bible and to our tradition. You could not ask
Speaker 3: for a more clear statement of hatred and extermination against
Speaker 3: trans people. Yeah, I mean, that's it. This is non
Speaker 3: institution that you know is slowly but surely getting better.
Speaker 3: This institution that outside of the PR is getting worse
Speaker 3: yet is digging in on doing real variactionary harm. And
Speaker 3: so the effects of that we're pretty devastating and immediate.
Speaker 3: I mean, we'll get into some folks who dealt with
Speaker 3: stuff later that same month due to this band in
Speaker 3: a little bit. But like the Catholic Church's healthcare networks
Speaker 3: are massive. By some estimates, one in six one in
Speaker 3: seven of all people in the US go through a
Speaker 3: Catholic health care system at some point in a given
Speaker 3: a year. It doesn't just include a few hospitals and
Speaker 3: includes an incredibly sprawling network of clinics and specialists and
Speaker 3: doctors practices, plenty of them are not outwardly Catholic. Even
Speaker 3: so people maybe going to a practice owner rum of
Speaker 3: the Catholic Church and not even be aware of it.
Speaker 3: It's also expanding, it's taking over and buying out previously
Speaker 3: secular practices. And this is a multifacet problem. Goes along
Speaker 3: with cuts in federal aid, It goes along with the
Speaker 3: general like capitalist fervor that kind of grips secular healthcres
Speaker 3: as well. So if they cut services, the Catholic Church
Speaker 3: often buys them up and expands, so it affects everyone
Speaker 3: in that everyone who deals with that, and the kind
Speaker 3: of tears has never been pro trans remotely. But previously,
Speaker 3: prior to this band, there was kind of a hodgepodge
Speaker 3: and some local ambiguities, and there were cases that we'll
Speaker 3: get into some of them a second, where local pro
Speaker 3: trans Catholics are folks working at those networks could and
Speaker 3: did provide pretty substantial trans care through like one ambiguity
Speaker 3: or loophole or another that just ended all of it.
Speaker 3: So throughout that entire network in some states and ones
Speaker 3: you wouldn't necessarily think, including the ones like Oregon and
Speaker 3: Washington that are ostensibly supposed to have like pretty strict
Speaker 3: trans healthcare protections, Catholic hospitals comprise like over a third
Speaker 3: of hospital beds, and I think Washington's over forty percent,
Speaker 3: So we're talking about of healthcare beds. We're talking about
Speaker 3: a substantial part of the American healthcare system. Four and
Speaker 3: ten of the largest healthcare networks are Catholic. That's how extensive.
Speaker 3: If this was and now trans healthcare is banned and
Speaker 3: all of them absolutely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's something that has an absolutely massive rolling impact,
Speaker 2: right because again it's not just that it's like outwardly
Speaker 2: Catholic hospitals, and it's something I think you're going to
Speaker 2: talk about more later, but it's also like it's people
Speaker 2: who have healthcare plans through like something that's affiliated with
Speaker 2: the church. There are all of these ways in which
Speaker 2: you know, suddenly just enormous numbers of people had their
Speaker 2: healthcare taken away effectively overnight. Because the primary way that
Speaker 2: anti trans healthcare oppression has been understood has been for
Speaker 2: the state level. And I understand why it's like that
Speaker 2: because like a lot of it has been coming from
Speaker 2: the state both on this is where you get into
Speaker 2: confusing American terminology, but both in terms of the federal
Speaker 2: government and the state state level governments. Right, people, there's
Speaker 2: been a huge focus on that, but the distribution of
Speaker 2: the Catholic health care system is cutting through the lines
Speaker 2: of what people sort of have previously assumed to be safe. Yes,
Speaker 2: and this is something that is a threat to trans
Speaker 2: people effectively everywhere. And it's compounding, as you're talking about earlier,
Speaker 2: with the sort of crisis of affordability and coverage because
Speaker 2: a lot of these healthcare clinics and hospitals and practices
Speaker 2: are the ones that are actually covered by insurance. Yes,
Speaker 2: and you can switch to like their secular ones, but
Speaker 2: you can't go to them because they're not covered by
Speaker 2: your fucking insurance. They're unbelievably expensive.
Speaker 3: And this gets to a reality that goes through a
Speaker 3: lot of our coverage, which is that trains people are
Speaker 3: an overwhelmingly working class demographic.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't think that gets sad enough. It doesn't get
Speaker 3: picked even in some queer in trans media, but that
Speaker 3: is incredibly important here. I began the second story with
Speaker 3: an interview that we published with an interview with Beth,
Speaker 3: who's a transom in the Midwest and found it nearly
Speaker 3: impossible to find healthcare outside of their networks because, like
Speaker 3: a lot of trans people, Beth has an ACA plan,
Speaker 3: and because the secular networks are a little more expensive,
Speaker 3: some cases a lot more expensive, the ACA plans that
Speaker 3: are available to most trans people, you know that they
Speaker 3: can remotely afford, don't cover healthcare there, so you kind
Speaker 3: of have to and then they don't provide your health
Speaker 3: care at all. Yeah, And in that case, this was
Speaker 3: someone she'd been going across state borders, which she noticed
Speaker 3: kind of wild to get healthcare anyway, to go to
Speaker 3: Planned parenthood. Finally thought that she had found a practice
Speaker 3: closer to home. Went there before the bishop's ban, like
Speaker 3: right before it hit. They'd seemed very welcoming. She knew
Speaker 3: other trans people that had gotten a care there before
Speaker 3: and everything seemed great. Goes back after the ban and
Speaker 3: it's like, oh, I'm sorry, we can't help you. And
Speaker 3: this wasn't a practice that was obviously Catholic, you know,
Speaker 3: didn't no giant cruise fixes or anything hanging on it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was just one that was, oh, it's a doctor's
Speaker 3: office some other trans that you have gotten care there.
Speaker 3: It beats driving at least an hour each way, if
Speaker 3: not more.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Again, when you're working glass, a two hour you know
Speaker 3: roundtrip commute is a lot. That's you know, especially with
Speaker 3: gas being up more like, that's a lot of money,
Speaker 3: and it's strained things even further. And so she had
Speaker 3: to go back to traveling across state. But you know,
Speaker 3: I think some folks assume and she points out, like, oh,
Speaker 3: you just go another provider. You often can't. There's not
Speaker 3: that option.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there isn't one.
Speaker 3: Even in some fairly major cities. There is not that
Speaker 3: option unless you have a lot more money or healthcare
Speaker 3: through a fairly well healed employer, and a lot of us,
Speaker 3: don't you know.
Speaker 2: This is another one of the problems here, which is
Speaker 2: that trans people are overwhelmingly working class. It is one
Speaker 2: of the worst demographics at poverty rate of any any
Speaker 2: demographic group in the US. Yes, the unemployment levels are
Speaker 2: like like this was like totally three back when the
Speaker 2: economy was like working was like nineteen thirty six, great
Speaker 2: depression levels.
Speaker 3: Yes, incarceration rates, education rates, it's all among the poorest
Speaker 3: of the poor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so all apocalyptically bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Then there is the issue, and this is an issue
Speaker 2: that we've covered on the show from other lenses, which
Speaker 2: is that like, yeah, like we're dealing with these like
Speaker 2: large scale waves of hospital closures and the less hospitals
Speaker 2: that exist in an area, and particularly in the sort
Speaker 2: of working class areas where these people are living, right,
Speaker 2: the more those hospitals close, because those are the ones
Speaker 2: that are closing because they're losing a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: funding from the government. Yeah, and you know, there's like
Speaker 2: there's a series of other economic pressures there. The more
Speaker 2: those options disappear, the more reliant people are on on
Speaker 2: these Catholic hospitals which have just implemented an adult healthcare band,
Speaker 2: Like the Republicans in Congress aren't pushing that right now, No,
Speaker 2: Like I cannot emphatasize how unbelievably draconian and reactionary this is.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, and also they're doing it the same time
Speaker 3: that you have major progressive media figures, legislators praising the
Speaker 3: current pope for uttering some words about universal health care.
Speaker 3: They don't practice universal health care, not just with trans people,
Speaker 3: but definitely not with trans people.
Speaker 2: It's like they have the money too, like they could, yeah,
Speaker 2: and they don't.
Speaker 5: Like.
Speaker 3: There's a story in investigating this that really set out
Speaker 3: to me, and it was from a pharmacy intern. Basically,
Speaker 3: someone as I'm studying to be a pharmacist and did
Speaker 3: a you know, a stint, a training stint in a
Speaker 3: Catholic hospital right before the bishop's ban hit and said
Speaker 3: that they were doing at least one gender affirming procedure
Speaker 3: a week Jesus Christ a week, and that actually, you know,
Speaker 3: this was someone who who had dealt with the situ
Speaker 3: to the Ford and had not their great experiences and
Speaker 3: was actually heading into this, you know, kind of this
Speaker 3: twelve week stint, expecting to have to deal with, you know,
Speaker 3: the problems of being a transpersonal with a religious institution.
Speaker 3: And I actually said, know that this particular hospital, the
Speaker 3: folks who worked there were super pro trains, super accepting,
Speaker 3: they were actively providing trains care and mentioned even because
Speaker 3: it was a moral area and that's that sat alone,
Speaker 3: that was you know, a gender firming care procedure most weeks.
Speaker 3: Should be a reminder that a lot of trains people
Speaker 3: also don't live in major cities. They live in smaller cities,
Speaker 3: They live in small towns, rural areas, even by a mile. Actually,
Speaker 3: the region of the US with the largest trans population
Speaker 3: is the South, and the Midwest is very closely tied
Speaker 3: with the West, which includes the West Coast. Per second,
Speaker 3: so they mentioned that there's this was a sentiments of
Speaker 3: the staff like, look, if you're in La Okay, there's
Speaker 3: a bunch of Catholic hostles with a bunch of other
Speaker 3: ones too. So the people seeking out Catholic hospitals may
Speaker 3: be a bit more conservative there are more likely to
Speaker 3: be other alternatives now to healthcare access can be a
Speaker 3: problem there too, But in our area, the kind of
Speaker 3: staff had a sense, look, if we don't do it,
Speaker 3: no one else will. Yeah, and so they didn't be
Speaker 3: pretty pro trains. The loophole they used the ambiguit I
Speaker 3: guess the art we're gonna use was if an ensure
Speaker 3: secular or otherwise said hey, this procedure is necessary, they
Speaker 3: didn't question it. And under the previous pre bishops band situation,
Speaker 3: there was kind of that bit of that leeway. This
Speaker 3: is an example of you know, some of them Catholic
Speaker 3: pro trans folks in a royal area actually doing some
Speaker 3: real good and then because they kind of maneuvered in
Speaker 3: this gray area and this band just completely into that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: They also described because they actually had top surgery scheduled
Speaker 3: at this same hospital and the band hit and they're
Speaker 3: very thankful to the doctor who did you know, surgeries
Speaker 3: at that hospital, who intentionally just kind of kept them
Speaker 3: on the schedule.
Speaker 2: Incredibly incredible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but like we need way more of that. But
Speaker 3: also it just got a lot more difficult and a
Speaker 3: lot more hurdles were placed in the way of that.
Speaker 3: So like what was happening just got cut off.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And this is.
Speaker 2: Also a really a really stificant issue because trans healthcare
Speaker 2: is already even before this, you know, like the wait
Speaker 2: list for think things like top sers and things like
Speaker 2: bottom surgery or sometimes years long, even in places that
Speaker 2: have like quote unquote like good healthcare, right like even
Speaker 2: in places like Oregon or like yeah, you know, in
Speaker 2: places like LA, Like you're dealing with multi year wait
Speaker 2: lists to get these procedures, and suddenly like a seventh
Speaker 2: of all the people doing this are just gone, and
Speaker 2: that just contributes even if you can get.
Speaker 3: And someplace is half yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the number of people who do these procedures
Speaker 2: is so small that if you are looking to get
Speaker 2: these procedures, like you can talk to the trans people
Speaker 2: in your area and they will know every single doctor
Speaker 2: who does it, right, Yes, because there's like three maybe
Speaker 2: if you're lucky, there's like three.
Speaker 3: Usually there's like one, like even on the HRT front
Speaker 3: sometimes and I can speak from experience on this, you know,
Speaker 3: it's often kind of an icebreaker of like, oh, you
Speaker 3: know which medical practice is giving you your hr T
Speaker 3: down because there's like two maybe three if you're lucky. Yep,
Speaker 3: and that's might be for a whole region. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: you know, a lot of transform maybe even most live
Speaker 3: outside of what you think of the few, you know,
Speaker 3: major metropolis. But also there was a while I was
Speaker 3: looking into this, there was a case in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 3: is before the bishop's ban, where at Catholic Hospital in California,
Speaker 3: which on paper at least has fairly strong trans healthcare
Speaker 3: protections for the US, where a priest with no medical
Speaker 3: experience comes in last minute, veto's the top surgery for
Speaker 3: a transman, and they kick him out on the streets,
Speaker 3: still on the drugs, the pre surgery drug.
Speaker 2: What the fuck Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3: He sued them rightly. Yeah, like you know, this is
Speaker 3: this is a hospital in your California. We could go
Speaker 3: into it a little bit in the story. So like
Speaker 3: that was happening before, but that's not everywhere. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: the few cases like the hospital that we mentioned, where
Speaker 3: there were folks working around that to still provide some healthcare,
Speaker 3: that's probably gone round. I would say it's almost certainly
Speaker 3: gone less. Folks are really just breaking the rules, which
Speaker 3: they should.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but this is sort of the systemic problem with
Speaker 2: having the church hierarchy having control over these healthcare institutions,
Speaker 2: which is that even if you are just like in
Speaker 2: the institution, trying to do good and you believe on
Speaker 2: the right thing, and you're trying to do the right thing,
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter, yeah, because suddenly just the hammer can
Speaker 2: come down on you from above, and even if you
Speaker 2: keep doing it right, there's always just the risk that
Speaker 2: they're just going to fire you all.
Speaker 3: At best, it is highly precarious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's this really kind of I don't know,
Speaker 2: this kind of like brutal demonstration of the reality that
Speaker 2: in a hierarchical institution, it kind of doesn't matter what
Speaker 2: the people on the bottom believe, because at the stroke
Speaker 2: of a pen, two hundred reactionaries who run your fucking
Speaker 2: institution can just come in and be like, no, fuck you,
Speaker 2: none of you get healthcare.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, and not just that, but run a substantial amount
Speaker 3: of the entire American health care system.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and this is actually why, and this
Speaker 3: is a a larger factor. I have survived the literal
Speaker 3: fundamentalist Christian violence when I was when I was younger,
Speaker 3: and I think this is actually something we will probably
Speaker 3: get into it a little bit like I've ever gotten
Speaker 3: the aversion, especially from queer and trans organizations, to criticize
Speaker 3: their distitutions. And didn't always used to be this way,
Speaker 3: but it's definitely been this way, including on this issue,
Speaker 3: because you know, you will look in vain for a
Speaker 3: major national organization that's like taking the Catholic Church and
Speaker 3: task go for this, yeah once with millions dollars of budgets,
Speaker 3: you know, apparently their higher ups they are too busy,
Speaker 3: you know, taking first class flights and raking in nearly
Speaker 3: a million dollars a year, while trans people can't find jobs,
Speaker 3: you know. But like, yeah, so I've never gotten the
Speaker 3: aversion because for a lot of us on the ground,
Speaker 3: for a lot of us, who are you know, among
Speaker 3: the many, many many trans people that are working class
Speaker 3: that live outside some of the like you know, handful
Speaker 3: metropoli that we often get depicted as exclusively living in
Speaker 3: fundamentals violence, you know, to be and to be clear
Speaker 3: from plenty of like Protestant evangelicals as well. Yeah, never
Speaker 3: stopped it never stopped being a very serious and real threat.
Speaker 3: Their numbers have gone down since the nineties, you know,
Speaker 3: in the early two thousands. Yeah, but it's never stopped
Speaker 3: being something you really have to have to account for,
Speaker 3: whether it's institutional. Even if it's totally illegal, they'll still
Speaker 3: do it like it in California, or literal like street violence,
Speaker 3: literally like people attacking you with weapons. So I think
Speaker 3: that's definitely a factor in all this, and I think
Speaker 3: it's a sad factor in why folks haven't heard about it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and you know, in some of the stuff I've talked
Speaker 3: about before on the show and elsewhere, I've mentioned that
Speaker 3: I think that whatever in the intent behind it, the
Speaker 3: gay ink, as it were, the structure of you know,
Speaker 3: these larger nonprofits which even send down like the local
Speaker 3: and state level at some points, and the culture from
Speaker 3: them that kind of is more satisfy and more so
Speaker 3: much just kind of dictates a lot of like official
Speaker 3: at least queer in trans politics has been a disaster failure.
Speaker 3: And I think that's even you know, even more apparent.
Speaker 3: Here this is again the largest motorconian trains healthcare in
Speaker 3: the US. It's already happened, already in place, and you
Speaker 3: will look in vain for any organizing from the issuations
Speaker 3: they're supposed to protect trains rights against it Yeah, there
Speaker 3: aren't like big lawsuits being filed. There's not like you know,
Speaker 3: Expass being run. They have far more resources than they are,
Speaker 3: you know, worker run newsroom would do a lot with
Speaker 3: what we have. We encourage people to support us, but
Speaker 3: like they have a lot more resources to make those
Speaker 3: things a large national issue. They have chosen not to,
Speaker 3: and a lot of people are going to suffer for that,
Speaker 3: are suffering for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I should mention too on an actual policy level,
Speaker 2: like a full scale healthcare ban on adult trans healthcare
Speaker 2: is like hideously unpopular. Like there's a reason that Republicans
Speaker 2: haven't done it, Yeah, right, because it's not popular. So
Speaker 2: this is this is a winning issue, yes, right, And
Speaker 2: they won't fucking take up the fight because they're too.
Speaker 3: Busy glazing the papacite. Not just them, I mean progress
Speaker 3: of us in general are are lately in the papacy
Speaker 3: way too much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's just this issue that trickles down to
Speaker 2: to like the fact that the SBC, right, the Southern
Speaker 2: Baptist Convention, the fact that there hasn't been a sort
Speaker 2: of broadscale offensive against them, you know, even though they've been.
Speaker 3: Like drawing some massive problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, driving those like all of this ship for
Speaker 2: fucking ages, and they were like, you know, like there
Speaker 2: was a point, like a couple of years ago where
Speaker 2: they were genuinely seriously weakened by their series of like
Speaker 2: eve general abuse scandals. Yes, and like even though like
Speaker 2: these are like the church groups that are also backing
Speaker 2: the healthcare bands on the legislative level, there's no sort
Speaker 2: of political will to actually go to war with the
Speaker 2: right wing churches that are doing this stuff.
Speaker 3: Well, so, any this is an interesting difference, and it
Speaker 3: relates to what we're just talking about. The sentiments I
Speaker 3: hear among trans folks in the ground, you know, working
Speaker 3: class trains folks. It's pretty anti clerical, like to put it,
Speaker 3: to put it mildly, it tends to be more gentry types,
Speaker 3: especially ones more in Scotts's institutions or like you know,
Speaker 3: official political culture, the gang stuff we've been mentioning that
Speaker 3: have more of this aversion. And I will have to
Speaker 3: say it wasn't always this way. I am old enough
Speaker 3: to remember when queer organizing taking aim at mocking, even
Speaker 3: go directly going the attack against suing definitely religious institutions
Speaker 3: was a pretty common fixture a prominent example, and I
Speaker 3: deal with this in the earlier piece as well as
Speaker 3: touching on the more recent one was act UPS nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty nine stopped the Church Action, which you imagine a
Speaker 3: queer or doing an action with that title today, in
Speaker 3: which case they militantly disrupted services to Saint Patrick's Cathedral
Speaker 3: in New York because of the ridiculous homophobia of the
Speaker 3: Catholic Church. That's werell in the ation asides. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: if there's some video of this that we that we
Speaker 3: linked in that first story from act UPS archives, and
Speaker 3: I've had the signs hilarious, but there's stuff that you
Speaker 3: would immediately see tone placing about even from some trans
Speaker 3: queer and trans media today. Yeah, you know, oh, we
Speaker 3: shouldn't alienate normies. All this, all that, and no, hey,
Speaker 3: there was a big backlash of the time, a huge one.
Speaker 3: The President condemned it, you know, the federal officials condemned it,
Speaker 3: the Congress critics condemned it. You know, there was this
Speaker 3: giant attack. This was unacceptable beyond the pale. It also
Speaker 3: worked the Catholics did start backing off their stances because
Speaker 3: they didn't want to be attacked more. And I think
Speaker 3: it's a good example that stop looking at the damn
Speaker 3: poles and just fight them. Yeah, you know, it's generally
Speaker 3: a much better approach. And I think I have to say,
Speaker 3: I think part of this, as you've seen, especially with
Speaker 3: how you know, the co option of some of the
Speaker 3: results of equal marriage, when you saw after that era
Speaker 3: gay and groups use that to become like the predominant
Speaker 3: force and keep a lot of other organizing and queer
Speaker 3: and transactivism. You saw this backing away from ever criticizing
Speaker 3: religious institutions. I mean, the advocate named Pope Francis in
Speaker 3: twenty thirteen their person of the Year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like this is the guy who said that
Speaker 2: she said that gender ideology is more dangerous to the
Speaker 2: world than nuclear weapons.
Speaker 3: Yes again Yeah, individual Catholics of their own sets of
Speaker 3: beliefs and differ. Some are very obviously pro trans, but
Speaker 3: like the institution is very unequivocal on this. It has
Speaker 3: never stopped being that. Yeah, and long time journalist covering
Speaker 3: the Catholic Church, you know, caution that. Look, the term
Speaker 3: they used was changing the tone but keeping the same
Speaker 3: music for Francis's papacy. Yeah, and Leo is very much
Speaker 3: in that now. I think that actually opens up a
Speaker 3: weakness because with the you know, revelation of the horrific
Speaker 3: levels of serial child abuse within the Catholic Church, with
Speaker 3: the you know, atrocities on massive scales involvement indigenous genocide,
Speaker 3: with the attacks in the eighties and ninety and two
Speaker 3: thousands about their homophobia and the role in the agent
Speaker 3: asides as well, like there was actually starting to be
Speaker 3: this giant institution despite how higherarchical and an accountablies were
Speaker 3: starting to be on the back foot. And you know,
Speaker 3: in some places like Ireland, this has led to its
Speaker 3: power numbers being like taking a massive hit. So there
Speaker 3: was a shift, like any institution, to give a hinder face.
Speaker 3: And the depressing thing is that among a lot of
Speaker 3: people should know better, it's largely worked. Yeah, and I
Speaker 3: really wish it would be less taken it by symbolism.
Speaker 3: It's also like the facto with theocrisy, because one of
Speaker 3: the people we talked to, Allison, would try to get
Speaker 3: testoster and right off the bishop's ban they're not Catholic,
Speaker 3: their doctor isn't Catholic, their pharmacy is not Catholic. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so you'd think, okay, well you should be able to no, no, no.
Speaker 3: The insurance that their spouse had was technically provided through
Speaker 3: a Catholic health care network, so it took them months
Speaker 3: before they finally got the test saster or not, and
Speaker 3: so now they have to pay out a pocket for it.
Speaker 3: They can for the time being, but for working class
Speaker 3: trains people, that's one more costs on top of everything else,
Speaker 3: and eventually those are costs you often can't bear. So
Speaker 3: like that, that's the reality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the realities is unaccountable the deocratic rule. Yeah,
Speaker 2: in areas where it's not supposed to be.
Speaker 3: Happening exactly well, and potentially any area you know, if
Speaker 3: you have a secular practice today delivers you HRT no issue.
Speaker 3: It could get bought out by one of these networks tomorrow. Yep.
Speaker 2: Why the fuck do these religious institutions have the ability
Speaker 2: to influence like healthcare at all?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Right, It's something you would think would be not a
Speaker 2: place where someone else's religion can suddenly yeah, and not
Speaker 2: even like that person's religion. It's like the religious hierarchy
Speaker 2: of a church should not be able to dictate whether
Speaker 2: someone gets healthcare. And yet yeah, this goes well beyond
Speaker 2: the you know, even supposed power in a secular side
Speaker 2: that you know, religiouship have all we can you know,
Speaker 2: they can make this pronouncement that applies to those who
Speaker 2: believe in that religion or that specific denomination or institution
Speaker 2: or whatever. Now this is affecting plenty of people who
Speaker 2: have never set foot in a Catholic church, Yeah, who
Speaker 2: are remotely Catholic. Even the providers that they're going to
Speaker 2: aren't Catholic.
Speaker 3: And this is still happening because that's the kind of
Speaker 3: sway and power they have, and it's not been seriously challenged,
Speaker 3: including by the liberals and even to me leftists and
Speaker 3: given to the Southern Baptis Convention earlier. It isn't just
Speaker 3: the Catholic Church, but because of the sheer scale and
Speaker 3: the centralized nature of its hierarchy, they are certainly probably
Speaker 3: the single most damaging institution on this front. The SBC
Speaker 3: is a problem. While they operate on far too vast
Speaker 3: a scale, they don't operate in the scale the Catholic
Speaker 3: Church does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is you know fundamentally, like part of the
Speaker 2: issue here is just is just there's a I don't
Speaker 2: know if advantage is the right term here, but like
Speaker 2: the centralization of the Catholic Church relative to like the
Speaker 2: sort of divided Protestants and nominations allows them to wield
Speaker 2: power like collectively in a way that is a lot
Speaker 2: harder for something like the SBC where just like it
Speaker 2: just doesn't have the scale that like that that the
Speaker 2: Church does and like that the Catholic Church doesn't. Because
Speaker 2: the Catholic Church is this large, is able to just
Speaker 2: buy out this much of the hospital system. And then
Speaker 2: because of the of the top down structures where the
Speaker 2: bishops can just go and and vote and do and
Speaker 2: implement this stuff. It's a really really really significant problem. Yes,
Speaker 2: that is just not being dealt with. This is not
Speaker 2: a problem that you can just like snap your fingers
Speaker 2: and solve by like running stuff through a state legislature.
Speaker 2: Like you actually have to go after the institution. You
Speaker 2: have to fight them on their ground.
Speaker 3: Yes, And also this is you know, it's it's kind
Speaker 3: of what I ended the December piece with. But also
Speaker 3: it's something I have sized in the second one. Anyone
Speaker 3: who wants any kind of liberatory future, regardless of whatever
Speaker 3: their personal beliefs are, tight clericalism has to be part
Speaker 3: of it. It's not the same against being it's every
Speaker 3: individual of a certain religion. It is specifically against this
Speaker 3: kind of theocratic hierarchy and its power over people's lives.
Speaker 3: You do not get to anything remotely liberatory without directly
Speaker 3: attacking and challenging that. And for too long that struggle
Speaker 3: has largely been abandoned and not shockingly fundamentalist of various varieties,
Speaker 3: and let's be honest, primarily Christian fundamentalists have played a
Speaker 3: major role in American fascism and in stripping rights from
Speaker 3: entire groups. And it's interesting because you mentioned the Council
Speaker 3: bishop beside this, but that's true, but he gets even
Speaker 3: more centralized than that, the progressive pope that's getting praised for,
Speaker 3: you know, condemning the Iran war, and it's always condemning
Speaker 3: or statements or this or that. Yeah, the Catholic Church
Speaker 3: is still kind of an absolute theocratic monarchy in some ways.
Speaker 3: You know, you could just say, hey, American bishops, don't
Speaker 3: do that, like I'm overruling you. You do have to
Speaker 3: provide trans health care under whatever circumstances are, regually all
Speaker 3: of them. He's chosen not to. And if you look
Speaker 3: at his history of transphobia before he became pope. Ye,
Speaker 3: it's not particularly surprising.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think sort of like the very baseline kind
Speaker 2: of anti clerical stance here is like the moment your
Speaker 2: religion is able to dictate the behavior of people who
Speaker 2: are outside of it. Yes, you have crossed the line
Speaker 2: into sort of like into this kind of clerical rule
Speaker 2: in ways that I think everyone should be like deeply
Speaker 2: opposed to.
Speaker 3: Yes, like universally that should be regarded as unacceptable and oppressive.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And this is what we're dealing with here, which
Speaker 2: is that when there isn't this you know, because like
Speaker 2: we talk a lot about sort of the separation of
Speaker 2: church and state, which has always been kind of a
Speaker 2: joke in the US to like a broad extent, right,
Speaker 2: But like you know, there are like other spheres that
Speaker 2: exist in our lives, right there's you know, like they're
Speaker 2: econ always here is there a health scarce sphere? They
Speaker 2: were like social spheares, And you know, like the fact
Speaker 2: that a church can just be like no, fuck you
Speaker 2: and cut off unbelievable numbers of trans people from their
Speaker 2: healthcare in a way that even the sort of like
Speaker 2: right wing theocrats in office wouldn't be able to do. Yes,
Speaker 2: is something that has to be has to be a
Speaker 2: posed because fuck.
Speaker 3: That it does. And I will add while you know,
Speaker 3: obviously and we deal with some of the story of
Speaker 3: you know, an example of pro trains folks at a
Speaker 3: Catholic hospital in the Cafe hospital, overwhelmingly the staff were
Speaker 3: pro trans. Yeah, but I do think and polls, to
Speaker 3: the extent that they matter, you know, do show repeatedly
Speaker 3: that opinion within Catholics themselves eventually is pretty split on this.
Speaker 3: There are the substantial number who are pro trains right,
Speaker 3: some pro trans healthcare. I also have to say though
Speaker 3: that at this point I think there is a specific
Speaker 3: obligation among them to speak up and act against this loudly.
Speaker 3: And you know, I think the example of the doctor
Speaker 3: who who when people I interviewed, you know, get around
Speaker 3: the band to get top surgery. I think that's the minimum, honestly,
Speaker 3: like like, okay, if you support trains rights, start here,
Speaker 3: because I think pressure from that quarter, as we've seen,
Speaker 3: hits even harder on some of these institutions, you know,
Speaker 3: because while they claimed, you know, be this above everything
Speaker 3: kind of hierarchy, we have seen worries about losing numbers
Speaker 3: of Catholics being involved in the church has driven their
Speaker 3: decisions before, and more pressure will drive them again potentially,
Speaker 3: you know, like, yeah, I think it will. Like what
Speaker 3: we've seen pretty clearly just in my lifetime is when
Speaker 3: these institutions are under attack, when folks go on the
Speaker 3: offensive against them culturally, you know, socially with direct militon
Speaker 3: organizing like Act UP did, then we see some of
Speaker 3: our rights and liberation advance shockingly quickly in some cases
Speaker 3: compared to where they were. And when that is relaxed on,
Speaker 3: when they are given space to gather power and plan
Speaker 3: and go back on the attack, then things get a
Speaker 3: lot worse very quickly. Yeah, this can be fought. The
Speaker 3: first part of fighting it is to talk about it,
Speaker 3: to be vocal about, to be loud, and to talk
Speaker 3: about how it is unacceptable. I think, frankly, a lot
Speaker 3: of pressure can also be exerted on some of these
Speaker 3: gay ink works, like if they want any donations or
Speaker 3: any support, I don't think they should get a lot
Speaker 3: of nation supporting. I think there's better places to put it.
Speaker 3: But if they don't want to become pariazed and queer
Speaker 3: in trans communities, that needs to be a message like
Speaker 3: you need to fight this. You need to fight this hard,
Speaker 3: need to fight this now, because to do otherwise, I
Speaker 3: think it's just an act of unforgivable cowardice and treaties
Speaker 3: and new more time to kind of use a metaphor, Yeah,
Speaker 3: but you know, we always end our pieces of T
Speaker 3: ANDN because I think, I mean, there was a joke
Speaker 3: about it I saw recently of like it is the
Speaker 3: sacred role of trans journalism to you know, unnecessarily scared
Speaker 3: trans people beyond all measure. Yeah, and I think people
Speaker 3: should take that to heart that among like trans folks,
Speaker 3: some trans journalism is getting that. And I've termed these
Speaker 3: pieces of panic slop when they're badly sourced exaggerate some things.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, the day we're recording this, uh, the episode
Speaker 2: came out. So I don't know if like if like
Speaker 2: some other unhinged thing has happened between now and then,
Speaker 2: and you're like, wow, why are you not mentioning like
Speaker 2: the public max executions of trans people or some shit
Speaker 2: like I don't not just like paddicts up, Like that's
Speaker 2: why because this is this is being recorded on the
Speaker 2: day in which our episode about this dropped. But yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: like this panic slop shit.
Speaker 3: Is just like, yeah, but it's you know, it's become
Speaker 3: a real problem in some quarters. And yeah, I you know,
Speaker 3: I think kind of it's to be a nerd, like
Speaker 3: any reckoning with conflict, and even like the warfare level
Speaker 3: of conflict is always like you have to have acurate information,
Speaker 3: you know what actually is a threat, what is not.
Speaker 3: And I think communities under fire, which we're all part of, yeah,
Speaker 3: have to have that even more so, and especially now.
Speaker 3: So I tried to exaggerate the very real threats and
Speaker 3: the Catholics band is definitely one of them. But also
Speaker 3: like people have fought this stuff. They fought the stuff
Speaker 3: even when the odds looked more dire. It can be
Speaker 3: fought again, Yeah, like d'reing the age shed of side exactly.
Speaker 3: They fought them in one, yeah exactly, and it can
Speaker 3: be fought against again and one. But it has to
Speaker 3: be fought and has to be fought hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But and I think I think the last thing
Speaker 2: I want to mention this is something I say a
Speaker 2: lot with union organizing, but like the people in Act
Speaker 2: Up who went and fought are just you Yeah, there's
Speaker 2: nothing like special about them. They were just people who
Speaker 2: were forced to act and who took up the fight
Speaker 2: and did it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think that actually kind of can can't
Speaker 3: transmit something that has been seen as a bad trend
Speaker 3: within trans communities. I don't think that always is of
Speaker 3: like all transmunities like crucify their heroes too much. They
Speaker 3: pillary people too much. In a lot of cases, if
Speaker 3: it's a public figure the Oxer McBride, it has done
Speaker 3: some some really terrible stuff. They're acting out of frankly
Speaker 3: a just sense of grievance. But also I think there
Speaker 3: should be a shift away from individual figures on pedestals,
Speaker 3: from looking to like a set of leaders, you know,
Speaker 3: guide everyone else. I think we're at our strongest when
Speaker 3: the organizing is coming from everywhere, the fight is coming
Speaker 3: from everywhere. It's not singular figures. And honestly, I think
Speaker 3: pedestals are bad for everyone involved. But you know, and
Speaker 3: doesn't exact what you're saying, Like people can start acting now,
Speaker 3: they don't need to, you know. Certainly, I think it's
Speaker 3: good to pressure large organizations and figures with power, partly
Speaker 3: because I think give people's sense of empowerment as well
Speaker 3: as occasionally fear works and they can see and you know,
Speaker 3: something improves a little bit, or something worse as avoided,
Speaker 3: but also just for like it's just us, y'all, you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's what's going to have to solve this.
Speaker 2: And that is why we start. I don't know, I
Speaker 2: don't have a percentage on the episodes that we start
Speaker 2: with things falling apart, but also putting them back together
Speaker 2: again because we can and we can make it better.
Speaker 3: They're building something better entirely. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, And on
Speaker 3: that note, if people want to support trans News Network,
Speaker 3: they can find out how to do so at Transnews
Speaker 3: dot Network. We are a worker run nonprofit and kind
Speaker 3: of trying to set a model for trans media that's
Speaker 3: in depth and hard hitting and unrepentently radical, but that
Speaker 3: also is you know, goes in depth and investigates stuff
Speaker 3: and gives an accurate picture of what's going on, the
Speaker 3: threats but also real victories.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the best reporting on us is going to
Speaker 2: be done by us. Yes, so you can help make
Speaker 2: the possible. We appreciate any support we get. We do
Speaker 2: a stunning amount on a fairly shoe string budget. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's unreal.
Speaker 3: Well, I appreciate that comple of it, but yeah, It's
Speaker 3: an awesome crew of people. I am incredibly fortunate to
Speaker 3: work with all of them. Yeah, and actually shout out
Speaker 3: to my head Myralizene, who did a great job of
Speaker 3: going through this piece and also has done some incredible coverage.
Speaker 3: But yeah, everyone who worked ten and I'm really fortunate
Speaker 3: to work with. And you know, this is trying to
Speaker 3: set kind of an alternative in trans journalism that is
Speaker 3: worker run and is underpent to hell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you too can go to war with the bureaucrats
Speaker 2: and the theocrats and the politicians who are trying to
Speaker 2: destroy your life.
Speaker 4: Indeed, woman life freedom. Such was the slogan of the
Speaker 4: women's movement considered key to the project of the Democratic
Speaker 4: Autuonamous Administration of North and East Syria or soon as Rajafa.
Speaker 4: Though originating in the Kurdish liberation struggle, the project quickly
Speaker 4: became polyethnic Syrians, Arabs, Armenians, Czds and other groups involved
Speaker 4: in that project, and in fact, the internationally recognized name
Speaker 4: or Java has fallen out of use by the project's
Speaker 4: administration in an effort to de ethnicize the project. I'm
Speaker 4: going to keep using Rejava simply because it's quicker to
Speaker 4: say than DAA nes so then yes or any other combination,
Speaker 4: but just wanted to put that disclaimer of in the beginning.
Speaker 4: So in the midst of the Syrian Civil War, the
Speaker 4: region gained its de facto autonomy in twenty twelve and
Speaker 4: pursued a somewhat unique political experiment for crassroots governance and
Speaker 4: social legal reforms that have attracted significant international fever and support.
Speaker 4: Do not recognize internationally as autonomous except by the Catalan
Speaker 4: Parliament for obvious reasons. For the past decade plus, the
Speaker 4: people in the region have fought fiercely for independence from
Speaker 4: ISIS patriarchy, Turkish incursions, and other Syrian opposition groups, but
Speaker 4: recent events led to the newly minted Assyrian government having
Speaker 4: seriously jeopardized the autonomy of the project. Welcome, take it
Speaker 4: happen here. I'm Andrew's age also Androism on YouTube and
Speaker 4: I'm joined once again.
Speaker 5: It's me.
Speaker 4: It's James, Yes, and I had to talk to you
Speaker 4: about this because I know that you have contacts there,
Speaker 4: you have experience with that project, with the people involved,
Speaker 4: and yeah, we're here to discuss the feat of Rajava.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm always excited to talk about Rajava and I
Speaker 5: think it's super important that we talk about it right now, Like, yeah,
Speaker 5: there's a lot of bad stuff happening currently, but this
Speaker 5: is really bad. Like in Rajava, we had the opportunity
Speaker 5: to see people living without gods or masters, people building
Speaker 5: democracy without the state. We had the opportunity to and
Speaker 5: we have the opportunity, right, So Rashava's not gone, But
Speaker 5: like anarchism didn't have to be like an ideological construct
Speaker 5: that only exists in our little punk hows it's it
Speaker 5: existed in it in an area where millions of people lived.
Speaker 5: And yes, but we should talk about how we can
Speaker 5: be in solidarity with him in this very difficult time
Speaker 5: right right.
Speaker 4: In fact, as we're on that topic, I think it's
Speaker 4: useful to have a brief explanation of the history and
Speaker 4: ideology behind the Java project before we talk about what's
Speaker 4: happened most recently. Yeah, So in brief, the project really
Speaker 4: began into Oky, where the Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK
Speaker 4: was banned and some of its supporters moved to Syria
Speaker 4: and founded the Democratic Union Party or PYD. Now this
Speaker 4: party shared an ideological foundation with the PKK and its
Speaker 4: founder Abdullah o Chilan, with the ideology of democratic confederalism,
Speaker 4: which alex plain in a second Brajava came into being
Speaker 4: following the Arab Spring of twenty eleven as various factions
Speaker 4: of Syrians rose up against President Bashar al Asad, and
Speaker 4: in such a climate of conflict, ISIS rose to prominence
Speaker 4: to threaten the region as a whole. So Alasad was
Speaker 4: dealing with other opposition group in Damascus, he withdrew forces
Speaker 4: from North Syria, which left the region vulnerable to ISIS
Speaker 4: and to key Kurdish groups in North Syria. Then formed
Speaker 4: the Kurdish National Council to secure the area, but after
Speaker 4: an ideological split, the project of Rajava would emerge as
Speaker 4: a polyethnic polity composed of the cantons of Afrin, Jazira,
Speaker 4: and Kubani. The PID operates Java within a political coalition
Speaker 4: called the Syrian Democratic Council or SDC. The IPG or
Speaker 4: People's Defense Units and the YPG or Women's Defense Units
Speaker 4: are the paramilitaries forming the bulk of the political assemblies
Speaker 4: and military coalition, which is called the Syrian Democratic Forces
Speaker 4: or SDF. I know, it's a lot of acronyms being
Speaker 4: thrown at you at once.
Speaker 5: Yeah's alphabet too. I think until relatively recently, the bulk
Speaker 5: of the sdf's forces were Arab. You have ideological groups
Speaker 5: that are allied, right than Northern Democratic Front JI Shelter
Speaker 5: War at one point, and then you have these groups
Speaker 5: which are more tribally based. Those groups had allied to
Speaker 5: the SDF to fight the Islamic State, right, Yes, yeah,
Speaker 5: they always want to push back on it being a majority,
Speaker 5: but it's now. But that's that's that's a creation of
Speaker 5: the last eight weeks.
Speaker 4: Right, Okay. I remember reading that they were the WIPEPG
Speaker 4: were forming a good chunk of the SDF. I suppose
Speaker 4: that was more recent information that I had seen then.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it probably would have been or like
Speaker 5: you will see that published in broadsheet newspapers and have
Speaker 5: done for decades. Like it just wrong. But there was
Speaker 5: this tendency in the I guess the Western press, right,
Speaker 5: and some of this is somewhat orientalist in a way,
Speaker 5: Like they referred to the SDF as the Kurds because
Speaker 5: Kurds were somehow seen as closer to European people than Arabs,
Speaker 5: and like it attempted to sort of I guess, to
Speaker 5: make it more palatable to an audience.
Speaker 4: Right, a kind of a racial elevation of some kind.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I think the friends, we can talk about
Speaker 5: friends versus whatever else. Slater, but would push back on that.
Speaker 5: They would tell you the SDF was majority Arabs certainly
Speaker 5: at the time it fort the Islamic state, and of
Speaker 5: course there were Assyrians and Armenians and your CDs and
Speaker 5: international volunteers as well.
Speaker 4: For sure. For sure. So you had these Syrian Democratic
Speaker 4: Councils or the STC, led primarily by the PID right.
Speaker 4: They were taking on the task of both fights and
Speaker 4: the Islamists while engaged in an ideological project to bring
Speaker 4: democratic confederalism into practice in North Syria. So, democratic confederalism
Speaker 4: is a transitional political movement that tries to move beyond
Speaker 4: the nation state by refusing to seize state power. Instead
Speaker 4: of organizing society through the state, they seek to organize
Speaker 4: society through local assemblies that manage their own affairs while
Speaker 4: coordinating action through confederations. Democratic and federalism emphasizes pluralism, more
Speaker 4: nationalism and secularism, or for religious government and restorative justice,
Speaker 4: gender liberation, ecological sustainability, cooperative and communal economic forms. Democratic
Speaker 4: and feralism was seen as is seen as a pragmatic
Speaker 4: way of building collective self organization within the purview of
Speaker 4: the existing dominant state model of the world while gradually
Speaker 4: undermining its authority. Now, the gender liberation component in particular
Speaker 4: has received a lot of international attention thanks to the
Speaker 4: pewide's efforts to put it into practice. They established gender
Speaker 4: party quotas in all administrative, political and decision making bodies
Speaker 4: and leadership roles. They established women's councils to address women's issues.
Speaker 4: They established the Women's Protection Units or YPG, which is
Speaker 4: an all female army which is very popular. And they
Speaker 4: established laws to ban honor killings and child marriage while
Speaker 4: strengthening the divorce rights of women. So these efforts and
Speaker 4: others within Ora Java have gotten a worldwide admiration for
Speaker 4: the project, and many international volunteers have visited Rajawa to
Speaker 4: help them fight. And if you're in a lot of
Speaker 4: online anarchist circles, you've probably heard a lot about Java
Speaker 4: and solidarity with deliberation, but I think it has created
Speaker 4: a misconception that the solidarity that anarchists feels for Java
Speaker 4: is equivalent to one to one ideological alignment yeah, right,
Speaker 4: what they're doing is not anarchism, it's kind of its
Speaker 4: own thing. It's democratic confederalism. Yeah, and this has been
Speaker 4: a bandit in solidarity to the people, of course, but
Speaker 4: it just means, you know, being clear that we are
Speaker 4: fighting for a will in which many rules exist, and
Speaker 4: so are they, and we are just willing to stand
Speaker 4: with and observe that project and you know, wish for
Speaker 4: the best and hopefully the best and see what comes
Speaker 4: of it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there are anarchist formations within the SDF right technosy analysis.
Speaker 5: It means anarchists struggle. It's like a more doctrinally anarchist formation.
Speaker 5: And like the way that they would phrase their like
Speaker 5: participation is that they are there in solidarity, right, and
Speaker 5: like you say, we want a world where many worlds
Speaker 5: can exist, and so they can offer and like if
Speaker 5: you go to Rijava, people will ask you to offer
Speaker 5: feedback right at the Curtish Worlds Techno report of feedback.
Speaker 5: They are willing to hear an anarchist critique and engage
Speaker 5: with it. That doesn't mean that they are anarchists, but
Speaker 5: it doesn't mean that they are like opposed to anarchists either.
Speaker 4: They're more willing to engage with anarchism than most Yeah, then.
Speaker 5: Almost anywhere else have been in the world, maybe aside
Speaker 5: from Myanmar, but yeah, they will engage with and have
Speaker 5: these discussions, and they're on an ideological journey, right that
Speaker 5: the movement began within what they would call the nation
Speaker 5: to state paradigm.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean the PKK was originally Marxist.
Speaker 5: Lends and olger Land thinking has very much been like
Speaker 5: his journey has led the movement on a political philosophy journey,
Speaker 5: I guess, and there are different interpretations of different movements
Speaker 5: in different parts of Kurdistan that the draw on his
Speaker 5: political philosophy. But as his thinking while he was detained
Speaker 5: in Turkey moved towards this democratic confederalist outlook, influenced about
Speaker 5: reading Marie Bookchin among others, the movement also moved and
Speaker 5: I think it was very well placed when the Assatist
Speaker 5: state withdrew to try and implement this, like you've mentioned
Speaker 5: right self government, the brotherhood of people's, all these things,
Speaker 5: but it wasn't always there, and it has been willing
Speaker 5: to change and willing to move its ideology over time.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, I mean that's the thing we want to
Speaker 4: look at people and projects and judge based on where
Speaker 4: we are in our position and our ideological alignment. Because
Speaker 4: one of us necessarily started off as anarchists, right and
Speaker 4: while we may wish that as an anarchist, I would
Speaker 4: wish that, you know, these projects would move closer to
Speaker 4: anarchy and would pursue and explore an experiment with that
Speaker 4: ideal and that idea. Everybody's on their own journey, and
Speaker 4: you know, at this stage in capitalist global dominance and
Speaker 4: status global dominance, we have to let whatever experiments exist
Speaker 4: or explore the different angles. You know, there's not one
Speaker 4: right way quite yet or they may never be, you know.
Speaker 4: As one on the topic of disclaimers, I suppose I
Speaker 4: think it is important to address that, you know, the
Speaker 4: SDF is not all sunshine and ruses. You know, there
Speaker 4: have been allegations of war crimes, including the recruitment of children,
Speaker 4: and the allegations are forced to target a displacement. Now,
Speaker 4: not all of these allegations have been conclusively verified, and
Speaker 4: there are a lot of actors have been involved in
Speaker 4: over the years that I push in narratives and common
Speaker 4: to narratives that have to be scrutinized on a case
Speaker 4: by case basis. Some of the war crime allegations, for example,
Speaker 4: have been made by Turkey, which is pretty suspect considering
Speaker 4: their track record of both hostility towards Rajava and Ni
Speaker 4: Kurdish autonomy, and also their practice of war crimes on
Speaker 4: a cell a regular basis. Yeah themselves, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but still hypocrisy has said, I think it is important
Speaker 4: to not turn a blind eye to these kinds of
Speaker 4: problems and allegations when they are made.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I totally agreed. Like, if people are being compelled
Speaker 5: to do things through violence, that is what the state is, right,
Speaker 5: and that is what we want to stop. And so
Speaker 5: if that is happening, then we should condemn it, right,
Speaker 5: be that where they're being compelled to fight or compelled
Speaker 5: to leave their homes, Like that is a thing that
Speaker 5: we are opposed to inherently, right, and it doesn't matter
Speaker 5: who's doing it is the action itself is something that
Speaker 5: we are opposed to. And yeah, we should again, like
Speaker 5: we should look at this like not through like roase
Speaker 5: To I know talk a lot about this, but I
Speaker 5: translated a piece from French a couple of years ago
Speaker 5: from an anarchist who had fought in Spain, and it's
Speaker 5: called refuting the legend, and the main thesis of the
Speaker 5: piece was that we should engage with the Spanish Civil
Speaker 5: War as it was not as we wished it to be. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and that way we could learn from it and and
Speaker 5: get better as opposed to just creating a hagiography and
Speaker 5: like a you know, like saints' lives, and same applies.
Speaker 4: Here, I think, yeah, because the anarchists ferments have been
Speaker 4: you know, few and far between. Unfortunately the major experiments,
Speaker 4: that is, the massive ones, the ones that make historical headlines.
Speaker 4: And I think there is a temptation to, as you say,
Speaker 4: in constructor a hagiography, to glorify and venerate these these attempts.
Speaker 4: I think it's very important for us we treat them.
Speaker 4: It's scrutiny, you know, to hould them up to certain standards,
Speaker 4: and to evaluate their missteps, and to highlight their missteps
Speaker 4: even more than we highlight thiss successors, because I see
Speaker 4: when we were going to succeed in the future. So
Speaker 4: if we were willing to address and engage with those mystiques.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, I think on that point, the way that
Speaker 5: I see what's happening in Rojabre is not in a
Speaker 5: monolithic way. Their are tendencies and organizations within the revolution, right.
Speaker 5: There are some who are probably operating in a paradigm
Speaker 5: that is not that far from the like ethno nationalist
Speaker 5: or kind of nationalist Marxist paradigm. There are some that
Speaker 5: are operating closer to an anarchist paradigm. There are some
Speaker 5: who are somewhere in between those two things, right, And
Speaker 5: there are some who would just want the Islamic state
Speaker 5: or the New Syrian state or the Assadist state to
Speaker 5: go away and leave them alone. And that's why they
Speaker 5: picked up arms, and that's what they're fighting for. And like, yeah, again, right,
Speaker 5: we shouldn't. We should be suspicious of a movement which
Speaker 5: is entirely homogeneous. We should be concerned. But I have
Speaker 5: concerns about the way some dissenting voices have been treated
Speaker 5: in the A n E s in the past year.
Speaker 5: We should raise those concerns. But like it would be
Speaker 5: inaccurate inter view this movement as a monolith.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, And that's the thing. It's simple, and tour
Speaker 4: is concerned. It's it's sad that this phrase has been
Speaker 4: vastardized because it's a useful phrase, right, that is, you know,
Speaker 4: critical support, yeah, or critical solidarity. It's been taken by
Speaker 4: certain Internet actors to you know, to propagate apology yeah,
Speaker 4: for atrocities and the reasure of state violence. But it
Speaker 4: is a useful way of I think freemen, the way
Speaker 4: we should engage these projects. That solidarity doesn't imply that
Speaker 4: you keep your aull shut, that you don't seek to learn,
Speaker 4: that you don't respectfully criticize. That is, I think the
Speaker 4: best way to engage these projecs not to you know,
Speaker 4: close your eyes and just follow.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 4: Getting back to I suppose what's been happening more recently,
Speaker 4: things have not been easy for the movement really since
Speaker 4: the beginning in twenty twelve. It has for a long
Speaker 4: time been caught in a web of conflicting and conversion interests.
Speaker 4: In addition to fight Genisis and not the Giadist groups,
Speaker 4: Rajava managed to receive back in from the US out
Speaker 4: of a coincidence of interests and tactical necessity, as I
Speaker 4: would put it, which is confused in some circles of
Speaker 4: the idea that Rajava is a US designed puppet through
Speaker 4: and through right. So, after the SDF liberated Raka, they
Speaker 4: began taking more heat from two Key, which saw the
Speaker 4: YPG as inseparable from the PKK and thus a threat. Remember,
Speaker 4: the YPG is the defensive army, the protective services rather
Speaker 4: and the PKK is the Kurdish party in Turkey. So
Speaker 4: they launched several military operations to prevent the Kurdish regions
Speaker 4: from linking up and having territorial continuity within Syria. At
Speaker 4: the same time, Rojava faced economic blockades, restricted movement, and
Speaker 4: strained relations with their fellow Kurdish political groups in Iraq
Speaker 4: that were aligned with Turkey and aligned with the PYD's
Speaker 4: political rivals, which had lost influence since the establishment of Rajava.
Speaker 4: Then you also had the occasional alignments with Russia as
Speaker 4: a strategic leverage against Turkey, and similar coincidences of interest
Speaker 4: with the governments of Iraq and Iran, and even cooperation
Speaker 4: between Rojava and Asad government. It's interesting to me that
Speaker 4: the US alignment is what receives the most attention, when
Speaker 4: it seems to me the Rajava had quite a roster of
Speaker 4: affiliations of convenience, not to say that those partnerships or
Speaker 4: affiliations necessarily benefit them in the long run, but it's
Speaker 4: important to police those affiliations in context. Rajava has been
Speaker 4: seen and treated as a chess piece essentially by both
Speaker 4: global and regional powers as they attempt to put out
Speaker 4: a voice of their own and echoed their own autonomy. So,
Speaker 4: just before the twenty nineteen Turkish invasion, the US abandoned
Speaker 4: Rajava entirely, withdrawing its troops and suddenly leading into the
Speaker 4: tragic fall of several settlements to Turkey and Diggish aligned groups.
Speaker 4: Whether that moved with a draw or also raised the
Speaker 4: international profile of the Rajava struggle, as people on both
Speaker 4: sides of book spectrum were pointing out this American decision
Speaker 4: to abandon its allies in the Middle East. So, before
Speaker 4: we get to the fall of US SAD, is there
Speaker 4: anything critical did you say I missed?
Speaker 5: I do a pretty good storary. I've written, literally written
Speaker 5: a book about this, so I like, there's always things
Speaker 5: I want to say. I was there during a time
Speaker 5: when Turkey was bombing. In addition to going to report
Speaker 5: on them, I just saw places as I was going
Speaker 5: about my day to day life that had been bombed
Speaker 5: the night before. Right, I think there's this misapprehension that
Speaker 5: America is by America. I'm amuseneting correctly, the United States
Speaker 5: is allied with the PYD. That's not the case. The
Speaker 5: SDF was the US partner for specifically in what's called
Speaker 5: Operation Inherent Resolve, which is the operation against the Islamic State. Right,
Speaker 5: while I was there, the US shot down a Turkish
Speaker 5: drone because it flew too close to their bases. They
Speaker 5: also didn't shoot down the dozens of other Turkish drones
Speaker 5: that killed little children while I was there, right, And
Speaker 5: I don't think anyone would reasonably expect them to because
Speaker 5: US was not there in solidarity with the revolution. It
Speaker 5: was there fighting alongside them in this one specific thing.
Speaker 5: And while that doesn't take away the fact that it
Speaker 5: is disgraceful to abandon these people who gave ten thousand
Speaker 5: plus of their children alongside the United States, Right, that
Speaker 5: is shameful. It is also what we should expect from
Speaker 5: the United States people that use the word haval, which
Speaker 5: means friend right as opposed to like the way a
Speaker 5: Marxist movement might use comrade. The friends there understood the
Speaker 5: terms of their agreement with the US doesn't mean that
Speaker 5: they were not disappointed doesn't mean that they would not
Speaker 5: ask for assistance when their children are dying. Of course
Speaker 5: it would. But those are terms on which the US
Speaker 5: was allied with them, and certainly the US did not
Speaker 5: ideologically influence them. Perhaps the opposite is the case. There
Speaker 5: are certainly some people in the US military who went
Speaker 5: over there and came back seeing the world differently. Turkey
Speaker 5: actually called the US government because some of the US
Speaker 5: soldiers were wearing Abdulahi learned patches at one point and
Speaker 5: raised complaints about it. But yeah, I think it's important
Speaker 5: to understand the terms of the arrangement between them. Otherwise,
Speaker 5: I think that's a pretty good praisie of the way
Speaker 5: things were. Do you have anything about Shengal?
Speaker 4: No, I don't.
Speaker 5: I'll do my potted. People can read my book if
Speaker 5: they'd like to hear more about its operation. I've sent
Speaker 5: one to you Andrew. Hopefully it's making its way across
Speaker 5: the ocean.
Speaker 4: Awesome.
Speaker 5: So Shengal the sacred mountain of the the Azds, or
Speaker 5: a group of people have their religious group whose religion
Speaker 5: is probably closest to Zoroastrianism. They have like a peacock angel.
Speaker 5: The Islamic state targeted the Azds because it considered them
Speaker 5: to be apostates, and it subjected them to genocidal violence. Right,
Speaker 5: this is the Uzd genocide. The states of the world
Speaker 5: largely abandoned the Azdi people. They tried to defend their communities,
Speaker 5: but they were overwhelmed by the Islamic state, and they
Speaker 5: gradually fell back to Shengol, which is their mountain, and
Speaker 5: they went to the top of their mountain to make
Speaker 5: their last stand. I guess right, that was their place
Speaker 5: where they had always gone back to. And there were
Speaker 5: some US special forces on the mountain, and from what
Speaker 5: I understand, also some British special forces, but it was
Speaker 5: the friends from Kurdistan who decided to go. It should
Speaker 5: be noted that they're like fighting the Islamics stayed at
Speaker 5: home at this time. Right their own villages, their own
Speaker 5: towns are being subjected to the same violence. They went
Speaker 5: onto the mountain and they built humanitarian corridor to extract
Speaker 5: the Azli people right with their bodies, with their blood,
Speaker 5: And if they had done nothing else since twenty twelve,
Speaker 5: that would be reason enough for us to stand in
Speaker 5: solidarity with them. Right like in that moment when the
Speaker 5: world letting the asdis die. Right when Obama and the
Speaker 5: United Kingdom and everything else was letting these people be
Speaker 5: subjected to genocide, it wasn't a military superpower who went
Speaker 5: to their assistance. Who wasn't the French or the British
Speaker 5: or anyone else who was willing to risk Again, there
Speaker 5: were small numbers of special forces, but it was regular
Speaker 5: folks from Kurtis down with Kalashnikov's who went to save them.
Speaker 5: And I think at this time, when like Western analysts
Speaker 5: who perhaps either don't have a proper grasp of what's
Speaker 5: happening in Syria or do and are just willing to
Speaker 5: lie about it, are condemning the a and Ees as
Speaker 5: some kind of kurdishcheth no nationalist project, we could point
Speaker 5: to this and we shouldn't forget the sacrifice that those
Speaker 5: people made at that time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's an important event that I didn't come across
Speaker 4: my reusage, but thank you for sharing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, of course.
Speaker 4: So I suppose we are now approaching the critical moment
Speaker 4: in Rajawa's recent history. Asad's government collapsed at the end
Speaker 4: of twenty twenty four and the Hayat tari al Sham
Speaker 4: or HGS and Islamist militia with roots in Al Qaeda
Speaker 4: stepped into the vacuum and rapidly took control of large
Speaker 4: parts of the country. Then HGS leader Ahmed al Shara
Speaker 4: was recast on the international stage as Syria's new president,
Speaker 4: welcomed by regional and western powers, received in diplomatic capitals,
Speaker 4: and rewarded with the lifting of many sanctions. Turkey emerged
Speaker 4: as his strongest backer, as they were pretty coold with
Speaker 4: a SAD and they aggressively lobbied on behalf of the
Speaker 4: HGS government, reframing it as a stabilizing partner, and not
Speaker 4: long after the fall of a SAD, In fact, after
Speaker 4: Loachlan himself called for the PKK to this arm the SDF,
Speaker 4: which is only loosely affiliated with the PKK, though said well,
Speaker 4: you know not us, we will continue to find So
Speaker 4: Western governments, particularly the United States and its allies, appeared
Speaker 4: willing to accept this transformation of THEHGS. The calculators that
Speaker 4: are fragmented and internally weak authority could be more easily
Speaker 4: stared to serve their long term geopolitical interests. So the
Speaker 4: ESHTS certain government had a little press tour, but within
Speaker 4: Syria they moved pretty predictably, engaging in violent for pressure
Speaker 4: and displacement and massacre of the Alawite, the Druze, and
Speaker 4: the Kurdish communities in Syria, and for the Kurdish initiated
Speaker 4: the project of Rajava. The rise of the HDS government
Speaker 4: would mark the beginning of an end, greater isolation and
Speaker 4: a renewed pressure from within and outside of Syria's borders.
Speaker 4: After consolidating power, the HTS government pushed into the Kurdish
Speaker 4: regions and encircled Kobani, the historic border city that once
Speaker 4: symbolized resistance to ISIS. So for days, coordinated attacks targeted
Speaker 4: Rajava itself, threatening not only the survival of Kurdish ol government,
Speaker 4: but the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians, as food,
Speaker 4: water and electricity would deliberately cut off and the city
Speaker 4: placed under siege. The violence had been especially devastating in Aleppo.
Speaker 4: From early January, the Kurdish districts of Shikh Maksud and
Speaker 4: Ashrafiya became the focus of sustained assaults by Turkish backed
Speaker 4: militias and units aligned with the Syrian Transitional government.
Speaker 5: They would tell you that hik Maksud was a diverse district,
Speaker 5: and I'd probably used to describe it as Kurdish as well.
Speaker 5: By there they will point out that is CD people
Speaker 5: and a lot of the indigenous Christian peoples of the
Speaker 5: region who lived in a Leppo tended to live in
Speaker 5: shick mac food as.
Speaker 4: Well, right, right, Okay, thanks for that contexts Yeah, of course.
Speaker 4: So civilian infrastructure was systematically hit at homes, schools, mosques
Speaker 4: and public buildings being shelled, while abductions, torture and executions
Speaker 4: reported nearmedical facilities. The bombing of Zalid Fekir Hospital devastated
Speaker 4: the local health care system and with mountain casualties and
Speaker 4: entire neighborhoods emptied, local councils in the SDF agreed to
Speaker 4: a cease fire and withdrawal on the eleventh of January
Speaker 4: twenty twenty six to allow evacuations. More than three hundred
Speaker 4: thousand people fled, many seeking refuge in areas still control
Speaker 4: by the Autonomous administration, but fighting expanded eastward. Jihada's forces
Speaker 4: began targets in Raka, the Ressoul Hassaka and critical infrastructure
Speaker 4: like the Tissrian down prisons, who within thousands of Jihada's
Speaker 4: detinees were located in these areas, and amid the chaos,
Speaker 4: Islamist fighters escaped, ISIS symbols reappeared and memorials to Kurdish
Speaker 4: fighters were destroyed.
Speaker 5: There's one example which I think is particularly revelatory. It
Speaker 5: was consistently cast once again by like think tankers who
Speaker 5: either know that they're talking speaking things that are n't true.
Speaker 5: I was going to say something else there, or they
Speaker 5: just don't know and they're being paid to pretend they know.
Speaker 5: But though the one in Tabka that was destroyed, it
Speaker 5: was a statue of a YPG fighter, which she was
Speaker 5: in arab It was portrayed as like local people celebrating
Speaker 5: their liberation from the SDF, But it was a whole
Speaker 5: group of men destroying a statue of a woman, a
Speaker 5: woman from that community who had fought to liberate that
Speaker 5: community from the Islamic state, right, And I think that like,
Speaker 5: when that context is deliberately excluded, that tells us an
Speaker 5: awful lot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that's an extremely critical point, I think.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 6: So.
Speaker 4: As the Syrian forces pushed further east, some non Kurdish
Speaker 4: villages in the region affected from Rajava to the new
Speaker 4: Syria and government.
Speaker 5: Yeah, mostly in Lake Daris or, right, which is an
Speaker 5: area where you have this longstanding that they're referred to
Speaker 5: as tribal communities like that. I guess that's a fine phrase,
Speaker 5: but sometimes the word tribal, I think, is used in
Speaker 5: a derogatory way in the West, So I want to
Speaker 5: be clear, that's not what I tend to mean here,
Speaker 5: just that they have a different form of political organizing,
Speaker 5: right of course, And like there had not been among
Speaker 5: those communities buy in I guess today an e S project.
Speaker 5: There was to the SDF as a military force, but
Speaker 5: not not so much to the project. And it was
Speaker 5: those communities that switched their allegiances.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: This happened even in Aleppo, and we can look at
Speaker 5: various economic and political and social reasons for that, and
Speaker 5: maybe at some point we should, but I don't think,
Speaker 5: like now it's the time that you know, we're concerned
Speaker 5: with ongoing struggle there. But yeah, especially in de res Or.
Speaker 5: What really saw the SDF frontline crumble was that people
Speaker 5: who were in the SDF suddenly became allied with the
Speaker 5: STG Syrian Transitional Government Syrian government, right.
Speaker 4: Right, And so these defections and with this onslaught of violence,
Speaker 4: I delivered an ultimate one to the goods and to
Speaker 4: the other groups involved in the Automouns administration North Eastyria
Speaker 4: was the dissolve the SDF and submit to incorporation under
Speaker 4: his command office and Irat. So in response, the SDF
Speaker 4: commander mass loom Abdi appealed outwill calling on the support
Speaker 4: of anyone who are be willing to assist. And this
Speaker 4: is something that particularly made headlines, anyone included Israel, which
Speaker 4: had previously intervened in Syria for the claim justification of
Speaker 4: aiding the juris community. I think the way that question
Speaker 4: was posed to the SDF commander was definitely leading, like
Speaker 4: they were fishing for headline for sure, from what I
Speaker 4: saw of that exchange. But in the context of the
Speaker 4: Pastimeian genocide and the worlds awareness of the genocide, I
Speaker 4: think that even with that desperation for survival in mind,
Speaker 4: that statement was I think a misstep.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we constantly see like this allegation that the SDF
Speaker 5: specifically is like some kind of Zionists for sort of
Speaker 5: funded by Israel. That's been around for decades, right. I
Speaker 5: will say a couple of things. First of all in
Speaker 5: the early Kurdish Freedom movement. You know, Kurds died for
Speaker 5: Palestine right with the Democratic Friends for the Liberation of
Speaker 5: Palestine and Bofort Castle. If the Israelis were genuinely allies
Speaker 5: of the Kurds, no one would dare touch them. We
Speaker 5: have seen what Israel is prepared to do to Muslim countries.
Speaker 5: They don't need much excuse. They would do the same
Speaker 5: in Syria. Furthermore, Israel has continued to invade Syria and
Speaker 5: has held Syrian territory for decades and has continued to
Speaker 5: take more of it under al Shara, and al Shara
Speaker 5: has not done anything about it. So like I find
Speaker 5: the idea that he's like eliminating Zion is going to
Speaker 5: be very frustrating when the ideaf is literally inside his
Speaker 5: country invading it. And the Kurdish Freedom movement as a
Speaker 5: whole has been pretty forthright about the genocide. So on
Speaker 5: October seventh, twenty twenty three, I was in Kurdistan and
Speaker 5: we watched what happened first in Israel and then in Palestine, right,
Speaker 5: and they were pretty forthright about that no one should
Speaker 5: be killing civilians, and as the genocide in Gaza began,
Speaker 5: they were forthright about calling it a genocide, and I
Speaker 5: think they didn't have to. No one was particularly asking
Speaker 5: them in twenty twenty three, right, and they did, and
Speaker 5: they made statements about it. And like I think seeing
Speaker 5: them as somehow ideologically inclined towards Israel when the it
Speaker 5: largely was in Israel who was fighting the Islamic state, right,
Speaker 5: it was largely them in the US. I think it's
Speaker 5: just people understanding the politics of the Middle East in
Speaker 5: terms of Marvel movies that there can only be two sides.
Speaker 5: And like, I'm sure at the time when they were
Speaker 5: facing genocide themselves they would have welcomed any support. But
Speaker 5: that doesn't mean that they support the murder of civilians
Speaker 5: in Gaza. They have been big, extra remaly clear about
Speaker 5: that for an extremely long time.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, I don't think I should becording to the question
Speaker 4: just because of the statement of one commander.
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 4: So, after much fighting, the SDF signed acreements relinquish and
Speaker 4: control of Araka, dies Azor and remain in territory west
Speaker 4: of the Euphrates Britain in only Hassaka and Kobane after
Speaker 4: withdrawing from the Tishrian Dam. But even after concede in
Speaker 4: so much government forces violated ceasefire terms, so the SDF
Speaker 4: declared general mobilization across the Kurdish regions of Syria and
Speaker 4: neighboring states as a last desperate attempt to rally resistance.
Speaker 4: By the end of January, the Autonomous Administration had lost
Speaker 4: roughly eighty percent of the territory it once governed. The
Speaker 4: SDF was forced to retreat almost entirely into Hassaka Governorate,
Speaker 4: and on the thirtieth of January, the SDF formally announced
Speaker 4: a cease fire with the Syrian government and accepted a
Speaker 4: framework for folding both their military structures and civilians into
Speaker 4: the Syrian state. Syrian authorities set timelines on this agreement.
Speaker 4: Within a month, they would retake control of water crossings,
Speaker 4: oil and gas infrastructure like Crimelane, and also Wadi detention
Speaker 4: camps holding ISIS members and their families, and strategic sites
Speaker 4: such as Kamishli International Airport. Interior ministry units were scheduled
Speaker 4: to deploy to Hassaka and Kommissili almost immediately, and Syrian
Speaker 4: security forces would oversee the absorption of the Kurdish Internal
Speaker 4: Security Apparatus the SAISH into the state's police in structures. Militarily,
Speaker 4: the SDF estates to be absorbed under the Syrian Ministry
Speaker 4: of Defense, but on an individual vetted basis. Up to now,
Speaker 4: the fate of the female fighters and non Syrian fighters
Speaker 4: within the SDF is unknown, and on the civilian side
Speaker 4: of things, the institutions created by the Rajarafa administration are
Speaker 4: to be absorbed as well. Kurdish officials have thus far
Speaker 4: secured the governorship of Hassaka and limited commander rules within
Speaker 4: the military in extreme for their surrender, because gained some
Speaker 4: recognitions on people. The government claims the firm national civil
Speaker 4: and educational rights, promised the return of displaced populations and
Speaker 4: issue decrees recognizing Kurdish as a national language taught in schools,
Speaker 4: declared the Curtis celebration of Nauru's public body, and reversed
Speaker 4: decades all citizenship policies that shripped tens of thousands of
Speaker 4: Coods of their citizenship. Thus far, most of these promises
Speaker 4: are on people.
Speaker 5: As I said, yeah, I think they'd see it. It's
Speaker 5: like a rebranding, not a surrender in agreement. Like from
Speaker 5: what I understand, the Yeppigates still see themselves as the
Speaker 5: WHITPG still see themselves as the YPG. The YPG very
Speaker 5: much still see themselves as the Women's Defense Force and
Speaker 5: so like, as you say, like, all of this is
Speaker 5: a paper agreement currently and we will see how I mean,
Speaker 5: there are now Syrian Ministry of Interior forces in Hesseka
Speaker 5: and Commichhlo, but like some of that has come to bus.
Speaker 5: But what this means. Talking to my friends, they're like,
Speaker 5: we will continue to see exactly, like what the extent
Speaker 5: they still have autonomy and to what extent they are
Speaker 5: integrated into a state which has in some instances banned
Speaker 5: women from wearing makeup for instance.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, So the US and franz CO signed this
Speaker 4: agreement and pledged oversee its implementation, and the President of
Speaker 4: the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq has also welcome disagreement.
Speaker 4: But it still remains to be seeing what happens next.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I did see a hundred people who are non
Speaker 5: Syrian Kurds. I would imagine they would mostly be Turkish
Speaker 5: from northern Kurdistan had withdrawn from Syria and Gaunt Candyal,
Speaker 5: which is kind of the stronghold of the various other
Speaker 5: parts of the Kurdish Freedom movement, and so that that's
Speaker 5: in so than Kurtistan or Iraq. It's near the border
Speaker 5: with Iran. But I saw that a number of them
Speaker 5: had withdrawn post disagreement that was probably on the tenth
Speaker 5: of February somewhere around there.
Speaker 4: So yeah, sadly this is an outcome of the imperialist
Speaker 4: world order that empires and regional actors will crush any
Speaker 4: threats to their power, will attempt to crush such threats.
Speaker 4: And as long as such power remains concentrated in these
Speaker 4: states and militaries and ruling classes, whether they are secular
Speaker 4: or nationalist, or Islamist or anything else, none of us
Speaker 4: then be free. Yeah, we could sit around on our
Speaker 4: armchairs and speculate, but what Moves or Java could have
Speaker 4: done differently, whether it be an affiliate to advance further,
Speaker 4: whether it be insufficient integration of and a buying of
Speaker 4: other groups into the project, whether it be the alliances
Speaker 4: or agreements or affiliations that they engaged in. We can
Speaker 4: also sit around lit all the limitations they face. Some
Speaker 4: they managed to overcome and others not so much. But
Speaker 4: the blame doesn't lie in their failures to play this
Speaker 4: game of geopolitical chess as ruthlessly as other powers in
Speaker 4: the region. I think the blame lies in this game
Speaker 4: of geopolitical chess, in this ability of imperial powers to
Speaker 4: treat the people of the region as a whole as
Speaker 4: tools to be used and discarded. And the end. I
Speaker 4: continue to hold to the position that only a shared
Speaker 4: uprising from below, one that refuses compromise, one that cuts
Speaker 4: across nationalist lines, has the potential to create a new world,
Speaker 4: and that fight must happen both within Syria and beyond
Speaker 4: around the entire earth. The fight is not over in Rajaba.
Speaker 4: I find it hard to believe that a people engaged
Speaker 4: in such a project would let go of that instinct
Speaker 4: and that drive toward greater and greater freedom. It remains
Speaker 4: we seeing what happens with them, but also remains we
Speaker 4: seeing what happens with us, what we decide to do
Speaker 4: to push our what's want to mean forward. And that's
Speaker 4: all from me for today, or power to all the people. Peace.
Speaker 7: This is it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. A
Speaker 7: revolution is igniting across America, at least according to viral
Speaker 7: posts on social media and TikTok videos with hundreds of
Speaker 7: thousands of views claiming that anywhere between three to six
Speaker 7: to nine warehouses have been set on fire this past
Speaker 7: week for not paying their employees a living wage.
Speaker 4: The revolution might be happening.
Speaker 6: We got a warehouse fire in Ontario, warehouse fire in
Speaker 6: New York, warehouse fire in Bakersfield, Amazon warehouse fire in Ohio.
Speaker 3: When they set a mall on fire too.
Speaker 1: It hasn't just been factories at this point, it's also malls.
Speaker 4: It seems as though people have begun to eat the.
Speaker 7: Rich workers of the world ignite. Like most instances of
Speaker 7: viral misinformation, there is a kernel of truth to this story,
Speaker 7: and one worth focusing on. But through a massive game
Speaker 7: of cross platform telephone facts and causality get warped and misconstrued.
Speaker 7: Selective reporting of similar but unrelated events can be used
Speaker 7: to assert a connection between certain events even if there
Speaker 7: is none. But let's start with that kernel of truth.
Speaker 7: Just after midnight on April seventh, a twenty nine year
Speaker 7: old warehouse worker named Schamel abdul Karim allegedly set fire
Speaker 7: to a toilet paper warehouse in Ontario, California, after multiple
Speaker 7: pallets of paper products were lit on fire. The flames
Speaker 7: overwhelmed the fires oppression system and collapsed the roof. The
Speaker 7: blaze took over twelve hours to contain and ultimately destroyed
Speaker 7: the one point two million square foot distribution center leased
Speaker 7: by Kimberly Clark, the company behind Kleenex, Huggies, and Cottonell
Speaker 7: toilet paper. Local officials and the Justice Department has said
Speaker 7: the fire caused over six hundred million dollars damages. The
Speaker 7: twenty employees who were working midnight shifts the warehouse when
Speaker 7: the fire started all evacuated safely, and there were no
Speaker 7: reported injuries. The day after the fire, videos uploaded to
Speaker 7: social media the night of the fire resurfaced, appearing to
Speaker 7: show the suspect intentionally lighting three fires inside the distribution
Speaker 7: center while speaking aloud about low wages, corporate profits, shareholders,
Speaker 7: and poor working conditions.
Speaker 4: You know, if you're not going to pay us enough
Speaker 4: to live or afford a live, I always pay us enough.
Speaker 4: Not to do that. All you had to do was
Speaker 4: pay us enough to live.
Speaker 3: All you had to do was pay us enough.
Speaker 1: There goes your inventory.
Speaker 7: The affidavit filed with the criminal complaint alleges that Abdul
Speaker 7: Kareem filmed himself setting fire to multiple pallettes of paper
Speaker 7: goods inside the warehouse, and as he lit the fires,
Speaker 7: he stated quote, if you're not going to pay us
Speaker 7: enough to fucking live or afford to live, at least
Speaker 7: pay us enough not to do this shit unquote. Beyond
Speaker 7: the short videos abdul Kareem posted to his social media,
Speaker 7: the affidavit alleges he made further statements to friends and
Speaker 7: co workers on the phone and via text message related
Speaker 7: to his motive for setting the fires. He allegedly texted quote,
Speaker 7: I just cost these expletive billions and wrote that the
Speaker 7: quote one percent is an expletive joke. US attorney Bill A.
Speaker 7: Sale said in a press conference that after setting the
Speaker 7: fire quote in a phone call to one witness, abdul
Speaker 7: Kareem compared himself to Luigi Mangioni. Abdul Kareem also allegedly
Speaker 7: texted quote, all you had to do was pay us
Speaker 7: enough to live, Pay us more of the value we bring,
Speaker 7: not corporate. Don't see the shareholders picking up a shift unquote.
Speaker 7: This past Monday, abdul Kareem pleaded not guilty to arson
Speaker 7: charges in court, though the warehouse stored Kimberlee Clerk Products.
Speaker 7: Abdul Kareem was actually employed by NFI Industries, a third
Speaker 7: party distribution company. N FI Industries is a family owned
Speaker 7: private company and does not report its profits, but last
Speaker 7: year said they generated more than three point seven billion
Speaker 7: in annual revenue and had over eighteen thousand employees. The
Speaker 7: average executive at the company has a two hundred and
Speaker 7: thirty five thousand dollars salary, with the highest paid making
Speaker 7: seven hundred thousand dollars annually. Meanwhile, the average pay of
Speaker 7: an NFI Industry's warehouse worker in California, per job listing
Speaker 7: sites is eighteen seventy four an hour, with forklift operators
Speaker 7: and warehouse specialists making twenty two dollars and thirty nine
Speaker 7: cents an hour. The median household income in Ontario, California
Speaker 7: is eighty two thousand, eight hundred and six dollars a year,
Speaker 7: and the average salary is over seventy three thousand dollars
Speaker 7: a year or thirty five dollars hourly. Ontario, California has
Speaker 7: a twenty eight percent higher cost of living than the
Speaker 7: national average. Last year, Kimberly Clark made two point four
Speaker 7: billion in operating profit. The footage of this worker allegedly
Speaker 7: lighting the warehouse on fire went super viral on TikTok,
Speaker 7: with millions and millions of us sparking meme edits and
Speaker 7: hype videos. Then, in the days after the toilet paper fire,
Speaker 7: footage of other where house fires sorry to spread around TikTok,
Speaker 7: leading some people to believe that copycat incidents might be
Speaker 7: taking place across the country. Here's a clip with over
Speaker 7: three hundred thousand views of a left wing TikTok influencer
Speaker 7: claiming that since the toilet paper arson, more people have
Speaker 7: begun setting their workplaces on fire.
Speaker 8: So apparently that guy that burns down the toilet paper
Speaker 8: warehouse because they were not paying him a living wage
Speaker 8: or anyone the living wage for that matter, who the
Speaker 8: Internet has dubbed wall Luigi for warehouse Luigi, was not
Speaker 8: the only one with that idea or to execute on it.
Speaker 8: And I will say I am not one hundred percent
Speaker 8: shore on the timelines of all of these.
Speaker 7: Oh you're not one hundred percent suore, Well, then that's
Speaker 7: that's fine. Continue anyway. This guy goes on to say
Speaker 7: that since Wa Luigi, he's seen quote four to five
Speaker 7: to six other warehouses that have quote burned down or
Speaker 7: at least been set on fire unquote. A lot of
Speaker 7: this social media reporting does not differentiate between a warehouse
Speaker 7: completely burning down and a small fire that is quickly
Speaker 7: put out. Neither do these social media reports provide evidence
Speaker 7: to the cause of these fires. One of the most
Speaker 7: circulated videos of one of these other fires is from Queen's.
Speaker 7: At seven point thirty pm on Friday night, someone reported
Speaker 7: smoke at an industrial complex in College Point, Queens. Firefighters
Speaker 7: soon responded to a rapidly growing fire inside a lumberyard warehouse.
Speaker 7: After the building was searched and no one was found inside,
Speaker 7: three hundred firefighters worked all night to contain the blaze
Speaker 7: to the sixty four thousand square foot warehouse. The lumberyard
Speaker 7: did burn down, but no injuries were reported, and the
Speaker 7: cause of the fire is still under investigation. But a
Speaker 7: post on x the Everything app with almost a million
Speaker 7: quote unquote views read quote an other disgruntled employee strikes
Speaker 7: at the heart of American capital. That TikTok influencer I
Speaker 7: already mentioned was very excited to share news of an
Speaker 7: Amazon warehouse on fire, despite not being quite sure of
Speaker 7: the details or how many warehouses were actually on.
Speaker 8: Fire, at least one of which I am beyond happy
Speaker 8: to announce one an Amazon warehouse, which is not to
Speaker 8: say more than one morn effect did. I've seen multiple
Speaker 8: videos of an Amazon warehouse on fire. I'm just not
Speaker 8: sure if it was multiple Amazon warehouses on fire or
Speaker 8: just multiple people recording the same Amazon warehouse that was
Speaker 8: on fire. Either way, either way, bottom line, people are
Speaker 8: setting Amazon warehouses on fire.
Speaker 7: There is no evidence anyone set this Amazon warehouse on fire,
Speaker 7: and yes, it is just one warehouse, not multiple. On
Speaker 7: April eighth, firefighters responded to a fire at an Amazon
Speaker 7: warehouse in West Jefferson, Ohio. The fulfillment center was evacuated
Speaker 7: as smoke billowed from the roof of the warehouse. The
Speaker 7: fire was extinguished quickly and caused quote unquote minimal damage
Speaker 7: to the underside of the roof. According to Jefferson Township
Speaker 7: fire Chief Dan Gatley, there is no evidence that this
Speaker 7: fire was intentionally set by an employee or by anyone,
Speaker 7: and was possibly caused by a simple solar panel malfunction.
Speaker 7: Investigators believe seventy five to one hundred solar panels on
Speaker 7: the roof of the warehouse caught fire, which burnt through
Speaker 7: quote just a little bit of the rubber membrane on
Speaker 7: the roofing and some of the insulation quote. According to
Speaker 7: fire chief Gatley, this insulation fell onto two racks of
Speaker 7: Amazon products, but Gatley estimated that more damage was caused
Speaker 7: by the water used to put out the solar panel
Speaker 7: fire than from the smoke or the fire itself. The
Speaker 7: exact cause of the fire is still on investigation. A
Speaker 7: post on x the Everything app with one point one
Speaker 7: million quote unquote views and twenty seven thousand likes, shared
Speaker 7: video of smoke billowing from the roof of the Amazon
Speaker 7: warehouse and was captioned, this is beginning to feel like
Speaker 7: something of a movement. Another post from a monetized blue
Speaker 7: check account with one million quote unquote views and twenty
Speaker 7: six thousand likes, also shared footage of the Amazon fire
Speaker 7: with the caption another warehouse fire, this time in Amazon
Speaker 7: fulfillment center in West Jefferson, Ohio. Warehouse employees across the
Speaker 7: country are using their unique position to attack the substructure
Speaker 7: and base of the Epstein class unquote. We'll return to
Speaker 7: talk more about these fires after this ad break.
Speaker 2: Okay, we're back.
Speaker 7: By the weekend, this warehouse fire meme really exploded and
Speaker 7: people started collecting reports of warehouse fires from all across
Speaker 7: the country. This next video went viral across TikTok and
Speaker 7: also spread to Reddit and Instagram.
Speaker 9: I was tagged about this. This is an Amazon warehouse
Speaker 9: that also just caught on fire. So this is the
Speaker 9: third one after we just heard about New York and
Speaker 9: Queens and then the other one in California where we
Speaker 9: saw the big video behind it. Right now, this is
Speaker 9: breaking news. I don't know much about it. I was
Speaker 9: tagged in this, this happened. I think perhaps today I'm.
Speaker 7: Gonna pause right here because next she includes a severe
Speaker 7: weather alert warning for risk of fire spreading in the Northeast,
Speaker 7: as if wildfires, and this weather alert was somehow related
Speaker 7: to warehouse fires on the other side of the country.
Speaker 9: And I haven't been able to find any news about
Speaker 9: it online yet. But there's this special Weather statement moderate
Speaker 9: for a fire spread in Pennsylvania right now. So that's
Speaker 9: four five right here where somebody said a Jene's store
Speaker 9: was set in fire in California. Again, I can't corroborate
Speaker 9: these things right now, these are just comments. And somebody
Speaker 9: also said New Jersey for another warehouse fire, so that
Speaker 9: is literally California, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey. I'm
Speaker 9: getting comments and reports in right now that there have
Speaker 9: been five different warehouse or storefront fires in the last
Speaker 9: three days. This shit is fucking wild. Holy six. I
Speaker 9: think that's six because it's two in California, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 9: and New Jersey. And again, I'm trying to find these
Speaker 9: items online right now, but like, I don't think the
Speaker 9: new cycle is caught up fast enough to it. So
Speaker 9: like who class war twenty twenty six shit?
Speaker 7: This person describes for off on TikTok as a quote
Speaker 7: unquote gorilla journalist, and that video got almost half a
Speaker 7: million views on TikTok and seventy four thousand likes by
Speaker 7: baselessly claiming that a string of fires that may or
Speaker 7: may not even be real are actually intentional arsons in
Speaker 7: an escalating class war hashtag eat the rich. Let's go
Speaker 7: over some of the details of a few of the
Speaker 7: fires that she and others have mentioned. In New Jersey.
Speaker 7: There were actually three fires this past week, one at
Speaker 7: a chemical plant, one at a battery warehouse and a
Speaker 7: wildfire which sent smoke into Pennsylvania. On Thursday, April ninth,
Speaker 7: a three alarm fire spread through a chemical warehouse in Newark,
Speaker 7: New Jersey. Over one hundred firefighters brought the fire under
Speaker 7: control that afternoon. No employees were harmed and the cause
Speaker 7: is under investigation. On the morning of April thirteenth, there
Speaker 7: was another three alarm warehouse fire in Rawway, New Jersey.
Speaker 7: While searching the structure, firefighters discovered the blaze emerged from
Speaker 7: palettes of lithium ion batteries. The exact cause of the
Speaker 7: fire still remains under investigation, and this past weekend, a
Speaker 7: wildfire spread through South New Jersey, burning up to one
Speaker 7: hundred and sixty acres and sending smoke into Pennsylvania. The
Speaker 7: National Weather Service worn beforehand that there was an elevated
Speaker 7: risk of wildfires last Saturday due to low humidity and
Speaker 7: twenty five mile per hour wind gusts. On the afternoon
Speaker 7: of Friday, April tenth, firefighters responded to a commercial structure
Speaker 7: fire at a trash disposal business near Atlanta, Georgia. The
Speaker 7: blaze stemmed from a garbage fire in the warehouse that
Speaker 7: grew out of control when adult was sent to the
Speaker 7: hospital with non life threatening injuries. Per a Gwinette County
Speaker 7: news release, quote, the incident presented several operational challenges, including
Speaker 7: a downed power line, a deep seated fire within large
Speaker 7: debris piles, structural components exposed to prolonged teat, and nearby
Speaker 7: hazards involving liquid petroleum gas tanks, and a diesel fuel reservoir.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 7: Firefighters brought this fire under control in less than four hours.
Speaker 7: According to employees, the fire originated from a small trash
Speaker 7: fire near the edge of the warehouse. Workers attempted to
Speaker 7: remove the burning debris before the fire rapidly intensified and
Speaker 7: spread to the structure. The fire was ruled accidental, and
Speaker 7: department spokesperson Lieutenant Jessica Joyner said that it appears to
Speaker 7: have been caused by trash piled in an unsafe manner,
Speaker 7: which can combust when mixed together at such garbage facilities.
Speaker 7: But two days later, a viral post read quote Atlanta
Speaker 7: Queen's Bakersfield, Ontario. I'm starting to lose track. Many people
Speaker 7: are saying only living wages can prevent warehouse fires. Speaking
Speaker 7: of Bakersfield, a quote unquote communist Twitter account quote a
Speaker 7: video of a warehouse fire in Bakersfield, California from a
Speaker 7: monetized news aggregator account and got twenty one thousand likes
Speaker 7: by writing let it be a pattern. Another account shared
Speaker 7: a different video ripped from TikTok, captioned it's almost like
Speaker 7: electing billionaires was a bad idea. A socialist branded monetized
Speaker 7: account posted another angle of the Baker's Field fire, getting
Speaker 7: fourteen thousand likes with the caption is a rebellion actually
Speaker 7: brewing in the Imperial Core. On the afternoon of April eleventh,
Speaker 7: firefighters responded to a fire at a thirty thousand square
Speaker 7: foot warehouse in East Bakersfield. The Kerrn County Fire Department
Speaker 7: said this is the third time buildings at this warehouse
Speaker 7: complex have caught on fire in the past few years,
Speaker 7: with similar fires in November twenty twenty four and January
Speaker 7: twenty twenty five. The cause of this new fire is
Speaker 7: still unknown and under investigation, but we know it was
Speaker 7: definitely not caused by warehouse employees because this is an
Speaker 7: abandoned warehouse. The previous owner of the buildings told local
Speaker 7: news that the fires have been started by quote unquote vagrants.
Speaker 7: A massive fire engulfed another lumberyard last Saturday night in
Speaker 7: Wayne County, Ohio. It took twenty four fire departments across
Speaker 7: three counties working together to extinguish the flames. This lumberyard
Speaker 7: was home to a wooden Pallette manufacturing business. On Sunday afternoon,
Speaker 7: the owners of the Pallette manufacturing plant said in a statement, quote,
Speaker 7: we are grateful no one was injured and that the
Speaker 7: fire was contained. We are working with investigators to determine
Speaker 7: the cause and with our insurance carrier to begin recovery.
Speaker 7: Southwood Palette has served this community for forty two years,
Speaker 7: and we intend to rebuild and be stronger than ever.
Speaker 2: Unquote.
Speaker 7: Footage of this fire racked up over half a million
Speaker 7: quote unquote views on a socialist branded monetized ex account captioned,
Speaker 7: now there is a five alarm fire at a lumber
Speaker 7: Pallette warehouse in Wine County, Ohio. There are too many
Speaker 7: fires to be a coincidence. The working class has had
Speaker 7: it and quote. Tweets of the video got tens of
Speaker 7: thousands of likes, with users writing, quote love to see
Speaker 7: people finally standing up against their employers. Eight in a
Speaker 7: week and no more thoughts and prayers, only fire unquote.
Speaker 7: Here's another video with over three hundred thousand views from
Speaker 7: that TikTok Gorilla journalist going through a few more of
Speaker 7: these warehouse fires that I've mentioned.
Speaker 9: Based on all of my comments and my research online,
Speaker 9: based on what people are telling me and from what
Speaker 9: I can see, the ones that I can corroborate right
Speaker 9: now was that last one was Ohio in a lumber yard,
Speaker 9: and then we had the Ohio Amazon, which was apparently
Speaker 9: due to the solar panels, we'll say. And then we
Speaker 9: have one in the Queens, New York one which was
Speaker 9: a lumber as well. New Jersey was a chemical warehouse.
Speaker 9: Georgia was a commercial structure. And then lastly, the one
Speaker 9: that you all been tagging me in is the California
Speaker 9: Jane Store which spread throughout the mall. From what I
Speaker 9: can hear and have seen online, so that is a
Speaker 9: total of seven since our original Luigi Man set fire
Speaker 9: to the toilet paper facility that one. So that's where
Speaker 9: we are right now, a total of seven in about
Speaker 9: three four days of warehouse storefront fires throughout the United States.
Speaker 9: Now we don't know about all of them, but these
Speaker 9: are the ones that are on the radar right now.
Speaker 9: So if there's more out there, let me know. But
Speaker 9: we're up to seven now.
Speaker 7: Out of all the fires that she's talked about, the
Speaker 7: only one that we know is ourson. Besides the toilet
Speaker 7: paper warehouse, is this fire at a mall in the
Speaker 7: same city in California, where a man who does not
Speaker 7: work at the mall allegedly lit multiple fires across several stores.
Speaker 7: The mall reopened later that same day, and authorities have
Speaker 7: said there's no connection to the warehouse fire, though the
Speaker 7: investigation is still ongoing. Before I discuss what's actually happening
Speaker 7: with all these warehouse fires, let's go on one more
Speaker 7: at break.
Speaker 5: All right, we are back.
Speaker 7: So what's really going on with all these warehouse fires?
Speaker 7: Is all this reporting just a coincidence? Are these fires
Speaker 7: really labor related? Are these all disgruntled employees? Is there
Speaker 7: even more fires happening than usual? All good questions. Even
Speaker 7: if the exact cause of most of these fires hasn't
Speaker 7: yet been determined, it does seem from watching all these
Speaker 7: videos that there's been an increase of warehouse fires since
Speaker 7: the first toilet paper inferno. Though, just because you're more
Speaker 7: aware of warehouse fires happening across the country doesn't mean
Speaker 7: that these fires are actually happening at a higher rate.
Speaker 7: A report from the National Fire Protection Association found that
Speaker 7: for from twenty to twenty twenty four and estimated one thousand,
Speaker 7: five hundred and forty four warehouse fires occur every year.
Speaker 7: That's an average of four fires per day. Warehouses are
Speaker 7: home to a lot of high heat equipment and materials
Speaker 7: that are easily combustible, like lumber, paper products, batteries, and chemicals.
Speaker 7: The recent National Fire Protection Association report found that most
Speaker 7: warehouse structure fires had an unintentional cause twenty nine percent,
Speaker 7: ten percent were caused by failure of equipment or a
Speaker 7: heat source, and intentional fires accounted for just seven percent
Speaker 7: of warehouse fires. Operating equipment was the leading heat source
Speaker 7: in warehouse fires, responsible for forty three percent, and shop
Speaker 7: tools and industrial equipment were involved in the ignition of
Speaker 7: nineteen percent of warehouse fires. Misuse of material or product
Speaker 7: and electrical failure are the leading factors contributing to ignition.
Speaker 7: Improper storage of flammable materials and human error are also
Speaker 7: contributing factors. Intentionally set fires or arson does happen, but
Speaker 7: it's not the most common cause of modern warehouse fires.
Speaker 7: And again, warehouse structure fires happen four times a day
Speaker 7: on average, So not only is there no proof that
Speaker 7: underpaid employees have begun a free of lighting fire to
Speaker 7: their workplace, but there hasn't even been a recent increase
Speaker 7: in warehouse fires. On Monday afternoon, footage spread online of
Speaker 7: another warehouse fire outside Miami with the caption living wages
Speaker 7: prevent warehouse fires. But this fire actually took place over
Speaker 7: a month ago on March fifth, twenty twenty six, and
Speaker 7: an inventory storage warehouse. An employee told NBC Miami quote, Apparently,
Speaker 7: there was a short circuit and a spark fell on
Speaker 7: one of the carpets we have, and that's how the
Speaker 7: fire started. We try to put it out, but it
Speaker 7: happened too fast. Officials have not yet confirmed those details,
Speaker 7: and the exact cause the fire is still under investigation.
Speaker 7: But it is literally impossible for this fire to in
Speaker 7: any way be related to the toilet paper warehouse because
Speaker 7: it happened a month prior, and the footage is just
Speaker 7: circulating now to boost social media engagement. The video of
Speaker 7: the employee allegedly setting fire to Pallette. Toilet paper channeled
Speaker 7: such a strong feeling across American workers that people invented
Speaker 7: and circulated a whole fake news cycle about a string
Speaker 7: of copycat incidents.
Speaker 6: Something comes me, We're not done with the warehouse fires,
Speaker 6: just a hunch, because only if you had paid us
Speaker 6: a livable wage. And I'm pretty sure everyone is fucking
Speaker 6: over corporate America at this point.
Speaker 4: Like over it.
Speaker 6: People are starting to realize that there are more of
Speaker 6: us than there are of them, and the only thing
Speaker 6: that they care about is their profits, not the people.
Speaker 6: So if you burn down the profits, the people will
Speaker 6: find other jobs. Companies have to assure it the message
Speaker 6: really sends. I'm not concerning it or encouraging it, but
Speaker 6: I am saying it makes.
Speaker 7: A point that TikTok clip demonstrates why people are so
Speaker 7: primed to share these fire spree claims and memes of
Speaker 7: Smoky the Bear saying only living wages can prevent warehouse fires.
Speaker 7: This whole warehouse fire social media news cycle is an
Speaker 7: instance of selective reporting, which happens when there is a
Speaker 7: big national news story like someone filming themselves burning down
Speaker 7: a one point two million square foot warehouse and then
Speaker 7: that causes people to share what they believe are related stories,
Speaker 7: often from local news reporting, even if the connection is
Speaker 7: minor or tangential at best. A local report from Wayne County,
Speaker 7: Ohio ordinarily would not circulate as national news, but on
Speaker 7: social media a relatively unremarkable lumberyard fire can become part
Speaker 7: of a new, increasing trend. Sometimes local news agencies themselves
Speaker 7: may be incentivized to cover smaller stories in a certain way,
Speaker 7: to ride the coattails of a national story that shares
Speaker 7: a few similar details, or national news outlets fishing for
Speaker 7: clicks may themselves cover what would typically only be a
Speaker 7: local story if it relates to a currently viral topic.
Speaker 7: A post on X the Everything app with one point
Speaker 7: four million quote unquote views and sixty seven thousand likes
Speaker 7: read quote, We're up to six warehouses set on fire
Speaker 7: now across the country, and I feel like it's being
Speaker 7: severely underreported un quote. If anything, these fires are being
Speaker 7: over reported. Another example of selective reporting is aviation accidents,
Speaker 7: where in the weeks after a high profile commercial airline crash,
Speaker 7: local news reports will spread around social media about even
Speaker 7: more plane crashes, even if these are mostly small private
Speaker 7: planes which get into accidents semi regularly Allah Harrison Ford,
Speaker 7: or minor runway incidents that usually don't make the news.
Speaker 7: A twenty twenty five poll from Data for Progress showed
Speaker 7: seventy two percent of likely voters believed plane crashes were
Speaker 7: becoming more frequent. A CNN report analyzing National Transportation Safety
Speaker 7: Board data from January twenty twenty four to March twenty
Speaker 7: twenty five found that out of one thousand, two hundred
Speaker 7: and eight flight safety incidents, only sixty incidents involved commercial carriers.
Speaker 7: Some of these incidents included turbulence or incursions that's unauthorized aircraft,
Speaker 7: vehicles or pedestrians on the runway. Half of these sixty
Speaker 7: incidents resulted in injuries, and two involved fatalities, the helicopter
Speaker 7: collision in Washington, d c. And a plane crash in Alaska.
Speaker 7: While those fatal tragedies and other high profile incidents like
Speaker 7: the runway flip in Toronto and the door flying off
Speaker 7: an Alaska Airlines plane mid flight, have sewed fear in
Speaker 7: the general public, Statistically, air travel is not getting more dangerous.
Speaker 7: The number of yearly safety incidents have remained mostly steady
Speaker 7: the past decade and only dropped around the pandemic due
Speaker 7: to a decrease in total air travel. In fact, on average,
Speaker 7: flying has only gotten safer, even including private and recreational flights.
Speaker 7: The average number of annual deadly incidents has fallen by
Speaker 7: more than half since two thousand, excluding nine to eleven.
Speaker 7: Despite viral news clips of near misses on the runway
Speaker 7: and an air traffic controller shortage, those runway incursions have
Speaker 7: also steadily dropped in recent years. But such data can
Speaker 7: be heard to stomach if in the days after a
Speaker 7: high profile aviation incident, you keep seeing more reports about
Speaker 7: plane crashes all across the country, but that itself is
Speaker 7: selective reporting. On average three to four planes crash every day,
Speaker 7: and these are typically small private planes, not commercial airliners,
Speaker 7: and typically a small Cessna crashing in Kentucky doesn't make
Speaker 7: national news. The same thing is happening with these warehouse fires.
Speaker 7: Lefty TikTok influencers and many others participating in this warehouse
Speaker 7: fire meme are ascribing the motive of one person onto
Speaker 7: a collection of unrelated incidents, trying to create a pattern
Speaker 7: when there probably isn't.
Speaker 8: One saw that this one guy said that he did
Speaker 8: it because of his anger towards capitalism. And I don't
Speaker 8: know if that was the original toilet paper guy or
Speaker 8: like another one of these warehouse fires, but to each
Speaker 8: and every one of them, period, keep it up again.
Speaker 8: Out of all the incidents I mentioned, the only two
Speaker 8: we know were intentional was the toilet paper warehouse and
Speaker 8: the Ontario mall, And the only one we have a
Speaker 8: suspected motive for is the toilet paper warehouse. An Emerson
Speaker 8: College poll found that forty one percent of young voters
Speaker 8: thought the actions of the United Healthcare assassin were acceptable.
Speaker 8: Another nineteen percent said that they were neutral on the question.
Speaker 8: Luigi Mangioni. Memes and reactions to this toilet paper fire
Speaker 8: do demonstrate a form of class consciousness. This same week,
Speaker 8: people have cheered the attacks on the home of open
Speaker 8: Ai CEO Sam Altman. Even if influencers are just trying
Speaker 8: to make a profit, there is an active willingness among
Speaker 8: the consumers sharing memes and this living wage warehouse fire
Speaker 8: content to rally behind such action. The working conditions at
Speaker 8: these warehouses can be inhumane. Just last week, a forty
Speaker 8: seven year old worker at an Amazon warehouse in Troutdale, Oregon,
Speaker 8: collapsed and died. Supervisors prevented someone with CPR training to
Speaker 8: assist with chest compressions and instructed employees to continue work
Speaker 8: as usual as the body laid still on the floor.
Speaker 8: Oregon Osha has said the death was not work related.
Speaker 8: In a catastrophic vibe shift, Let's go back to our
Speaker 8: left wing TikTok influencer for his analysis. I really hope
Speaker 8: this is a sign of of what we all hope
Speaker 8: it to sign up. I can't be the only one
Speaker 8: who has felt like the tides are turning, the tables
Speaker 8: are turning, the winds are shifting. It really feels like
Speaker 8: there's actual movement being made in just the last few days,
Speaker 8: and now all these warehouse fires, which sure could be
Speaker 8: a coincidence, but I don't think so, at least I
Speaker 8: hope not.
Speaker 2: But what do you guys think?
Speaker 3: Come up?
Speaker 8: Blow and if this really is truly the beginning of
Speaker 8: it all ending, give me a follow for more like this?
Speaker 6: Huh?
Speaker 7: Everyone knows the most important thing to do when the
Speaker 7: revolution starts is to get give me a follow. Speaking of,
Speaker 7: there is just two days left of webby voting for
Speaker 7: it could happen here behind the bastards and migrating to
Speaker 7: America and we may need a supermajority to beat the
Speaker 7: ms NOW filibuster, So go make your voices heard before
Speaker 7: voting ends on April sixteenth. That does it for me today,
Speaker 7: at it could happen here. See you on the other side.
Speaker 5: It's been more than a month since the US in
Speaker 5: Israel began raining down bombs in it Run. We've covered
Speaker 5: the weekly developments every week on Executive Disorder, but I
Speaker 5: decided that it was high time made a full episode
Speaker 5: to get people up to speed with the USA's latest aggression,
Speaker 5: the IDF opening up another front, and it's multifront war
Speaker 5: against the people of the Middle East. Normally, one would
Speaker 5: expect a major war with a major power like this
Speaker 5: fundamentally destabilized the region and ground world trade to a halt,
Speaker 5: caused massive inflation, to have some kind of very clearly
Speaker 5: defined set of goals. That is not the case here.
Speaker 5: We have seen various justifications, but the most common one
Speaker 5: seems to be that Iran is just weeks from creating
Speaker 5: a nuclear bomb. This is a claim that specifically Benjamin
Speaker 5: Nette Yahoo has been making for almost the entire time
Speaker 5: I have been alive. Here he is saying something similar
Speaker 5: a decade ago.
Speaker 10: The foremost sponsor of global terrorism could be weeks away
Speaker 10: from having enough and rich uranium for an entire arsenal
Speaker 10: of nuclear weapons.
Speaker 5: His claim was fanciful then, and it remains even more
Speaker 5: so now after twenty twenty five to Operation Midnight Hammer
Speaker 5: saw the USA and Israel attempt to bomb nuclear facilities. Indeed,
Speaker 5: the White House itself publishes statement on the twenty fifth
Speaker 5: of June following Operation Midnight Hammer, in which they quoted
Speaker 5: the Israel Atomic Energy Commission saying, quote, we assessed that
Speaker 5: the American strikes and around nuclear facilities, combined with the
Speaker 5: Israeli strikes on other elements of Iran's military nuclear program,
Speaker 5: has set back Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons by
Speaker 5: many years. The achievement can continue indefinitely if Iran does
Speaker 5: not get access to nuclear material. It also include a
Speaker 5: quotation from Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, saying quote, based
Speaker 5: on everything we have seen, and I've seen it all,
Speaker 5: our bombing campaign abliterated Iran's ability to create nuclear weapons
Speaker 5: that was less than a year ago. It seems unlikely
Speaker 5: that they destroyed much or any of the uranium that
Speaker 5: was stockpiled, but they certainly would have delayed plans to
Speaker 5: enrich that uranium or to build into a bond. Nonetheless,
Speaker 5: on the twenty eighth of February this year, a massive
Speaker 5: campaign of air strikes, high mars beraches, and ballistic misstile
Speaker 5: attacks on Iran began under the code name Operation Epic Fury.
Speaker 5: The acronym OEF will be familiar to many as the
Speaker 5: same one used by the USA for more than a
Speaker 5: decade of war in Afghanistan and other parts of the
Speaker 5: world during what it called the Global War on Terror.
Speaker 5: On the day I'm writing this, it's exactly twenty three
Speaker 5: years since United States marines tore down the statue of
Speaker 5: Saddam Hussein that stood outside the seventeenth of Ramada Mosque
Speaker 5: in Ferdo Square in Baghdad, removed his regime from power.
Speaker 5: Since then, for my entire adult life and much of
Speaker 5: my childhood, the USA has been dropping bombs on the
Speaker 5: Middle East. This month, the temper and ferocity of the
Speaker 5: aerial bombardment took a step up to a tempo we
Speaker 5: haven't seen since perhaps the peak of the Coalition war
Speaker 5: against the Islamic State, or perhaps even the shokuan Ow
Speaker 5: bombing campaign. Of March two thousand and three, and I
Speaker 5: want to go back to that campaign to explain exactly
Speaker 5: how we got to this one. The shakan Or campaign
Speaker 5: was based on a doctrine called rapid dominance that sought
Speaker 5: to establish a post Cold War military ethos United States.
Speaker 5: The theorist behind it, named Alman and Wade, explicitly outlined
Speaker 5: that to work, the shock and awe bombing campaign had
Speaker 5: to achieve a level of national shock like that of
Speaker 5: the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan, and that
Speaker 5: power and other civilian infrastructure might well be targeted. In
Speaker 5: an interview in February two thousand and three, Olmand said, quote,
Speaker 5: what we want to do is create in the mind
Speaker 5: of the Iraqi leadership and their soldiers this shock and
Speaker 5: owe so they're intimidated, made to feel so impotent, so helpless,
Speaker 5: that they have no choice but to do what we
Speaker 5: want them to do. So the smartest thing to say
Speaker 5: is this is hopeless. We quit. The US attempted to
Speaker 5: pummel their adversary so hard in two thousand and three
Speaker 5: that it would demoralized troops and lead to a rapid
Speaker 5: victory through the use and display of overwhelming force. In
Speaker 5: Iraq twenty three years ago. It sort of worked. The
Speaker 5: regime crumbled in less than a month, the USA got
Speaker 5: its quote unquote victory, and by the first of May
Speaker 5: of that year, George W. Bush had landed on the
Speaker 5: USSA Abraham Lincoln off San Diego and given a speech
Speaker 5: in front of a large that read mission accomplished. Twenty
Speaker 5: three years later, the Lincoln is in the Middle East
Speaker 5: and bombs are once again raining down on Iran and Iraq,
Speaker 5: while one way drones and missiles Iran slam into targets
Speaker 5: all over the region. In Iraq, twenty three years later,
Speaker 5: the United States embassy is once again being attacked, the
Speaker 5: US journalist was kidnapped, and the State Department it's telling
Speaker 5: citizens to avoid the region. The US bombing campaign in
Speaker 5: Iran this year dwarfs the two thousand and three Shock
Speaker 5: and All campaign, with the first day of Operation Epic
Speaker 5: Fury being almost twice the scale of the two thousand
Speaker 5: and three bombardment. However, they do have several things in common,
Speaker 5: Just like the bombardment of Iraq. Even twenty three years later,
Speaker 5: the US and Israeli air war showed us that there
Speaker 5: is no such thing as a precision bombing campaign on
Speaker 5: this scale. On the very first day of the war,
Speaker 5: the twenty eighth of February twenty twenty six, a missile
Speaker 5: slammed into a girls elementary school in Mina, then another,
Speaker 5: and then another. When the dust settled, more than one
Speaker 5: hundred and seventy five people have been killed, mostly schoolgirls
Speaker 5: between the age of seven and twelve years old. The
Speaker 5: school was located near an Iranian Revolutionary Guard base, but
Speaker 5: the school building itself had not been part of a
Speaker 5: military facility for a decade. And yet, despite targeting technology
Speaker 5: that allowed three missiles to scream across a continent hit
Speaker 5: a relatively small target in quick succession, Apparently the US
Speaker 5: military had not been able to ascertain, or perhaps did
Speaker 5: not care to ascertain, that the result of their strike
Speaker 5: was the death of as many as one hundred school children.
Speaker 5: The fact that I am reporting this forty odd days
Speaker 5: into the war suggests that despite an even larger scale
Speaker 5: campaign than the USA deployed in two thousand and three,
Speaker 5: despite the killing of little girls, the Iranian state has
Speaker 5: not said this is hopeless. We quit as Almond Hoby
Speaker 5: might around. Supreme leader Ali Hamani was assassinated in initial attacks.
Speaker 5: The power has since passed on to his son. Iran
Speaker 5: remains very much in the fight, despite the massive display
Speaker 5: of force by the US and Israel. Instead of quitting
Speaker 5: and giving up, they have been sending ballistic missiles and
Speaker 5: one way drones into targets throughout the Gulf States, Israel,
Speaker 5: and southern Kurdistan. This is in part because the United
Speaker 5: States and Israel had no clear shared plan for this war.
Speaker 5: In two thousand and three, the US aimed to remove
Speaker 5: Sada Pasan, and it did that. It made a massive
Speaker 5: cock up of everything it did after that. But this
Speaker 5: time we have two belligerent nations with very distinct goals
Speaker 5: who share a common interest in bombing the people of Iran. Israel,
Speaker 5: which by some accounts hit more targets in the USA
Speaker 5: early on in the war, is fighting to totally cripple
Speaker 5: the Iranian state in a no holds barred, no laws
Speaker 5: of war respected, campaign that has seen it bomb factories,
Speaker 5: oil infrastructure, and, most horrifically of all, desalination plants. The
Speaker 5: goal for Israel is to make it impossible for Iran
Speaker 5: to recover. It seems to leave the region mired in
Speaker 5: poverty and resource constraint and make sure that no Iranian state,
Speaker 5: be it this one or a different one, can ever
Speaker 5: be a threat to Israel. Again, it has assassinated many
Speaker 5: of the figures who have the ability to negotiate for peace,
Speaker 5: and the recent c use fire seems to have been
Speaker 5: something that Israel does not feel itself to be beholden to.
Speaker 5: For the US, the goal seems to be to use
Speaker 5: something similar to shock and or to force Iran into
Speaker 5: conceding its position and allowing the USA some access to
Speaker 5: its significant petrochemical resources. Perhaps emboldened by its success in Venezuela,
Speaker 5: the US might be expecting a similar client state relationship here. However,
Speaker 5: this has not been the outcome. Over the weekend of
Speaker 5: the eleventh and twelfth of April, JD Vance, Jared Kushner,
Speaker 5: and Steve Whitcoff flew to Pakistan as part of a
Speaker 5: Pakistani broke and cease fire to engage in peace talks
Speaker 5: with Iran. Before these peace talks, we saw both the
Speaker 5: US in Iran circlating very different bases for negotiation, with
Speaker 5: Iran demanding tolls for ships passing near its coastline, an
Speaker 5: end to sanctions, and the removal of US forces from
Speaker 5: the region. The US demanded an end to the nuclear
Speaker 5: program in Iran, and at one point the President proposed
Speaker 5: a joint US Iranian toll on ships passing through the
Speaker 5: Straight of horm Moos. Straight of horn Moose is one
Speaker 5: of the areas where there has been significant disagreement, and
Speaker 5: so I want to explain a little bit about what
Speaker 5: the Strait of horn Moose is for listeners who are
Speaker 5: not familiar. Geographically, the strait connects the Persian Golf and
Speaker 5: the Gulf of Verman, thus the open Ocean. It's just
Speaker 5: about thirty nine klumeters wide across its narrows point, with
Speaker 5: about a quarter of the world's liquefied natural gas and
Speaker 5: seaborne oil passing through the strait. Because of its geographical location,
Speaker 5: Asia and Europe are especially reliant on these energy products.
Speaker 5: Many of the Golf states will have no maritime export
Speaker 5: routes without transitting the street. In response to the United
Speaker 5: States and Israel's bombing campaign, Iran effectively closed the Straight.
Speaker 5: So a combination of missile threats, claimed mining, very high
Speaker 5: frequency radio broadcast warning ships of the two previously mentioned threats,
Speaker 5: and uncrewed surface vessel attacks that blew up and damaged vessels,
Speaker 5: including oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. At the time
Speaker 5: of writing, Iran is threatening ships transiting Distrait, and the
Speaker 5: US is attempting to blockade all ships that gaim to
Speaker 5: go to Iran. Iran has previously allowed some ships a
Speaker 5: right to pass safely if they pay a toll payable
Speaker 5: encrypto currency or Chinese yuan. Some ships appear to have
Speaker 5: certainly transited Distrait, but many more have not, and this
Speaker 5: presents a serious issue for global trade. Luckily, the problems
Speaker 5: with global trade have not affected our advertisers, so here
Speaker 5: are some goods and services that will probably cost more
Speaker 5: than they did a few weeks ago. The United States
Speaker 5: has a lack of capacity when it comes to mind sweeping.
Speaker 5: Many of the ships it does have which can do that,
Speaker 5: are not currently very close to the trade four moves.
Speaker 5: On the twelfth of April, it did send two destroyers
Speaker 5: into Distrate normally to begin mind clearing operations, but these
Speaker 5: aren't really a sort of ships that would do that
Speaker 5: so much as they would work a lotongside the ships
Speaker 5: that do that to provide them with security. There is
Speaker 5: currently a safe lane through the Strait that Iran seems
Speaker 5: to be sending ships through, but it's a little unclear
Speaker 5: to what extent, if at all, the strait is mined,
Speaker 5: and what kind of minds were used. Naval minds can vary.
Speaker 5: They can be pretty simple contact fuze minds like the
Speaker 5: ones you might have seen in the Mind Sweeper computer game,
Speaker 5: or bottom mines triggered by a number of mechanisms. Clearing
Speaker 5: a body of water this large would take a significant
Speaker 5: amount of time. Stopping transits through the strait was not
Speaker 5: Iran's only response to the attacks. They have launched a
Speaker 5: massive fuselade of one way drones and missiles a targets
Speaker 5: across the region. Their Shaheed drones are one of the
Speaker 5: most significant military innovations of the last decade. They're cheap,
Speaker 5: one way drones that can do tremendous damage at a
Speaker 5: very low cost. If you've ever heard of Shaheed drone,
Speaker 5: you won't forget what they sound like. It's like a
Speaker 5: lornmow flying over you. These drones have been so successful
Speaker 5: that the US has cloned captured drones to make it
Speaker 5: so in one wadrones, which it calls Lucas drones, and
Speaker 5: Iran has licensed production to Russia, which uses them in
Speaker 5: massive numbers against Ukraine. These drones have provided a cheap
Speaker 5: and relatively easy to launch platform for Iran strikes, which
Speaker 5: has focused on US allies Israel, and Bushur Kurdistan. Bashur
Speaker 5: meaning Southern or Iraqi Kurdistan has taken a particularly heavy toll.
Speaker 5: Much as this has been due to reporting in the
Speaker 5: early days of the conflict, which began with notorious fact
Speaker 5: check Eveder barak Ravid. Much as its reporting heavily implied
Speaker 5: or outright said that Curdish ground forces were repairing an
Speaker 5: assault into Iran. Raved's piece, which reported that Trump had
Speaker 5: spoken to two major Curtist leaders, was particularly shocking because
Speaker 5: it erroneously conflated Iraqi Curds with Iranian Curds, those from
Speaker 5: Eastern Kurdistan and Roja lad It's true that the majority
Speaker 5: of anti regime Kurdish armed groups from Iran retained bases
Speaker 5: in Iraq, but it's extremely unlikely that the KDP in
Speaker 5: the p UK, the major actors in Iraqi Kurdistan, will
Speaker 5: be storming the border into Roju Lat anytime in the
Speaker 5: near future. However, I have spoken to several of the
Speaker 5: Roja Lati arm groups who are part of the Alliance
Speaker 5: of political forces of Iranian Kurdistan. The groups involved in
Speaker 5: a Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan or the PDKI, the
Speaker 5: Free Life Party of Kurdistan PJAK, the Kurdistan Freedom Party PAK,
Speaker 5: two of the Komala parties, and the hubbut or the
Speaker 5: organization of the Iranian Kurdistan Struggle. The alliance predates the
Speaker 5: United States and Israeli campaign came around earlier this year.
Speaker 5: Arash Saleh I spoke to him for the PDKI told
Speaker 5: me quote at this point, the whole coalition is built
Speaker 5: upon some type of self rule instided Iranian Kurdistan as
Speaker 5: the main demand for all of them, and that as
Speaker 5: a main demand for all the Kurdish people in Iranian Kurdistan.
Speaker 5: This unity of groups is a positive step and it
Speaker 5: represents a real opportunity for the liberation of the people
Speaker 5: of Rojaa. But none of these parties are willing to
Speaker 5: be the spearhead of an American and Israeli offensive without
Speaker 5: guarantees that they will recive' support for their own goals,
Speaker 5: which are very different to those of the USA and Israel.
Speaker 5: In more recent weeks, President Trump has insinuated, and Fox
Speaker 5: News has claimed that he said this but haven't seen
Speaker 5: any recording of it, That the United States sent weapons
Speaker 5: to Iranian protesters through Kurdish groups, but that the Kurdish
Speaker 5: groups kept them instead of giving them to the protesters.
Speaker 5: Here's the clip of Trump implying this, and you'll have
Speaker 5: to forgive me for the gringly awkward light jazz background
Speaker 5: music here.
Speaker 11: They don't have guns. You know, we said some guns,
Speaker 11: but the group that were supposed to give which I said,
Speaker 11: what happened to my people? I said it. I called
Speaker 11: it exactly.
Speaker 4: We sent guns, a lot of guns.
Speaker 11: They were supposed to go to the people said they
Speaker 11: could fight back against these lucks. You know what happened.
Speaker 11: The people that they sent them to kept them because
Speaker 11: they said, what a beautiful gun.
Speaker 5: I think I'll keep it.
Speaker 11: So I'm very upset with a certain group of people,
Speaker 11: and they're going to pay a big price for that.
Speaker 11: But the Iranian people who will fight back as soon
Speaker 11: as they know they're not going to be shot and
Speaker 11: as soon as they yet weapons.
Speaker 5: The Kurdish groups I've spoken to have denied this, and
Speaker 5: it's not really logistically feasible. Hamno knox Bandi, a member
Speaker 5: of the General Command of the Kurdistan National Army, which
Speaker 5: is the peshmerger associated with the Kurdistan Freedom Party or PAK,
Speaker 5: said that quote Donald Trump's message is unclear to us.
Speaker 5: What is there is that we as our army have
Speaker 5: in no way received weapons from the US or any
Speaker 5: other country, not even a single bullet. And the PAK
Speaker 5: confirmed that statement to me this morning. At the time
Speaker 5: you're hearing this, that will be yesterday morning. I checked
Speaker 5: in with them. Then transiting the mountains to that part
Speaker 5: of Kurdistan and then smuggling weapons all the way to Tehran.
Speaker 5: It's not what they do and it will be very
Speaker 5: hard for them to do it. Also, at the time
Speaker 5: of the large anti regime protesting around in January, we
Speaker 5: saw groups, notably the PAK the Kurdistan Freedom Party using
Speaker 5: weapons that really don't appear to be US supplied, like
Speaker 5: pump act and shotguns. Nonetheless, this rumor, combined with the
Speaker 5: fact that Trump really did call Iraqi Kurdish leaders at
Speaker 5: the start of the conflict, presumably to ask for support,
Speaker 5: has led to a raqs Kurdistan region been targeted a
Speaker 5: great deal. These drone and rockets rights have not just
Speaker 5: hit military targets, but also the refugee camps where the
Speaker 5: families displaced from Rojaalat live, and many other civilian targets
Speaker 5: in major Kurdish cities. To quote a PDKI a statement quote,
Speaker 5: since the beginning of the war with the United States
Speaker 5: in Israel, the Islamic Republic of Ruan has so far
Speaker 5: targeted the family camps, medical centers, and educational facilities of
Speaker 5: the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan with more than one
Speaker 5: hundred and ten missiles and drones. These tags have continued
Speaker 5: even during the ceasefire between Iran and the United States.
Speaker 5: But it's not just Iraqi Kurdistan being bombed. In fact,
Speaker 5: a Rak has a distinction of being the only country
Speaker 5: bomb by both sides in the conflict. This is in
Speaker 5: part this is Popular Mobilization Forces, sometimes referred to by
Speaker 5: the Arabic name hashtal Shabi in Iraq have strong ties
Speaker 5: to Iran. The Popular Mobilization Forces or PMF if you're
Speaker 5: not familiar, were formed in twenty fourteen and fought against
Speaker 5: Islamic State in Iraq, but some factions within the PMF
Speaker 5: are also now listed to terrorist groups themselves by the
Speaker 5: United States. I want to resist doing the rather purel
Speaker 5: Sunni Shia Kurd analysis here because I don't think it
Speaker 5: explains the whole situation, and it's far too often seized
Speaker 5: upon by commentators seeking to oversimplify things. Many Kurds are Sunni,
Speaker 5: for example, but some are Shia, some the Christian or Jewish,
Speaker 5: or have no religious beliefs. There are other groups in
Speaker 5: the region who are not Muslim or Christian. I think
Speaker 5: it's unnecessarily reductionist, but nonetheless it's worth noting that the
Speaker 5: PMF are mostly Shia, as is the ratiome in Iran.
Speaker 5: The PMF have been using drones, rockets, and mortars to
Speaker 5: attack both the US bases and those of the Kurdish
Speaker 5: pesh Merger, who they see as tied to the US.
Speaker 5: On the telegram channels, PMF groups have shown successful attanks
Speaker 5: used to be Camp Victory near the Baghdad airport and
Speaker 5: against the US embassy facilities. While we can talk to
Speaker 5: Rogulati groups and see PMF statements on telegram getting information
Speaker 5: on the conflict from inside Iran, that's not regily propaganda,
Speaker 5: it's very hard. An Internet blackout by the Iranian government
Speaker 5: has lasted more than a month. The information that we
Speaker 5: see coming out of Iran is either state sanctioned or
Speaker 5: from people going to the border with Iraq to get
Speaker 5: cell phone signal, or from people using satellite Internet devices
Speaker 5: like starlings. Iran has been actively hunting people using starlings
Speaker 5: and further militarizing the Kurdistan region near the Iraqi border
Speaker 5: where people might get cell phone signal. Zenni Arbazisi and
Speaker 5: Siavan Amini, a Kurdish couple, were arrested on the seventh
Speaker 5: of March this year and they have been detained ever
Speaker 5: since for the crime of using a Starlin. This repressive
Speaker 5: capability is not unusual or unique Terranian Kurdistan. I think
Speaker 5: we need to understand the structure of the Iranian state
Speaker 5: to understand why it will be very hard for the
Speaker 5: United States to achieve regime change simply with an air campaign.
Speaker 5: Iran has a conventional army known as the Arteche. It
Speaker 5: also has the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, better known by
Speaker 5: the initials IRGC, which has a specific remit of protecting
Speaker 5: the Islamic Republic. Within the IRGC, people may have heard
Speaker 5: of the Kutz Force. The Kutzforce sort of acts like Iran,
Speaker 5: CIA and Green Berets, combined by assisting other actors, mainly
Speaker 5: non state actors in the region like Husbolla, for example.
Speaker 5: Then there's also the Busiege, which is an element of
Speaker 5: the ILGC but is a paramilitary auxiliary force with as
Speaker 5: many as half a million members available for immediate call
Speaker 5: up and many more in reserve. The Busiege are in theory,
Speaker 5: directly loyal to the Supreme Leader, and they have participated
Speaker 5: in a significant oppression of the population. Combined, these forces
Speaker 5: represent a massive apparatus for state violence that is dispersed
Speaker 5: among the civilian population. Recent reports say they are even
Speaker 5: garrising schools and other civilian buildings. While the United States may,
Speaker 5: for example, have destroyed Iran's conventional navy, its big gray
Speaker 5: boats with the Iranian flag on them, it has not
Speaker 5: and cannot destroy all the small civilian craft that these
Speaker 5: groups could easily use to haras shipping or even plant
Speaker 5: sea mines, nor can destroy the many one way surface
Speaker 5: drone Iran has along its coastline. If you're not familiar
Speaker 5: with these, think of a remote control boat that explodes
Speaker 5: when it hits its target. Israel has killed many ILGC
Speaker 5: figures but many more LGC units and besiegs remain untouched,
Speaker 5: are willing to turn their weapons on any potential uprising
Speaker 5: in the country. With this in mind, let's talk a
Speaker 5: little bit more about those peace negotiations that happened last
Speaker 5: weekend in Pakistan, and particularly let's talk about the composition
Speaker 5: of Iran's delegation. Amongst Iran's negotiators was Mohammad Jaffiri Sahra Rud,
Speaker 5: who participate in the murder of doctor Abdul Rahman Gaseemlu
Speaker 5: during negotiations between the PDKI and Iran in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 5: Doctor Gacemlu had been a notable Kurdish leader for some time,
Speaker 5: was sentenced to death by the Iranian regime and then
Speaker 5: kill when he came to the negotiating table. In a
Speaker 5: statement sent to me, the pak said quote the composition
Speaker 5: of the Iranian delegation, largely made up of military and
Speaker 5: security figures, clearly indicates that the primary objective was not
Speaker 5: to advance a genuine diplomatic process, but rather to manage
Speaker 5: the situation in line with strategic goals Iran seemed to
Speaker 5: achievely see negotiations as a way to buy time it's
Speaker 5: been able to dig out many of its missiles which
Speaker 5: were buried but not destroyed by its strikes, and in
Speaker 5: this pause it can shore up its pasture against domestic
Speaker 5: dissenters as well. It does not seem, in short, to
Speaker 5: be acting in the way the sharkan or doctrine might
Speaker 5: suggest and hope that it would. Indeed, in recent weeks,
Speaker 5: it's been able to mobilize civilians to go two power
Speaker 5: plants and the hope that their presence will prevent bombing
Speaker 5: of those facilities. Despite this, and despite it being a
Speaker 5: violation of various international treaties, some of which is right
Speaker 5: is not signed up to, Israel has continued to hit
Speaker 5: power plants, oil infrastructure, and bridges, despite the civilian costs.
Speaker 5: It certainly seems that after a weekend of negotiating face
Speaker 5: to face in Pakistan, the United States was not able
Speaker 5: to get what it wanted out of the negotiations. They
Speaker 5: have chosen not to accept our terms. Vice President J. D.
Speaker 5: Van said, here's him talking about the negotiations at a
Speaker 5: press conference on Sunday morning local time.
Speaker 12: But the simple fact is that we need to see
Speaker 12: an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon,
Speaker 12: and they will not seek the tools that would enable
Speaker 12: them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon. That is the
Speaker 12: core goal of the President of the United States, and
Speaker 12: that's what we've tried to achieve through these negotiations. Again,
Speaker 12: their nuclear programs, such as it is, the enrichment facilities
Speaker 12: that they had before, they've been destroyed. But the civil
Speaker 12: question is, do we see a fundamental commitment of will
Speaker 12: for the Iranians not to develop a nuclear weapon, not
Speaker 12: just now, not just two years from now, but for
Speaker 12: the long term. We haven't seen that yet.
Speaker 3: We hope that we will.
Speaker 5: Trump, however, has been talking about a more diverse range
Speaker 5: of goals than Balancelest's here talking about ending quote forty
Speaker 5: seven years of extortion, corruption, and death. In one truth,
Speaker 5: this suggests regime change, which Trump then went on to
Speaker 5: falsely claim he has already achieved, saying in a truth quote, However,
Speaker 5: now that we have complete and total regime change, where different,
Speaker 5: smarter and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful
Speaker 5: can happen. Who knows. This was incidentally in the very
Speaker 5: same truth in which Trump said, quote, A whole civilization
Speaker 5: will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I
Speaker 5: don't want that to happen, but it probably will. This
Speaker 5: was part of a threat which he hoped to result
Speaker 5: in Iran reopening the Strait of Horn News. Trump also
Speaker 5: posted on Easter Sunday, quote, open the fucking strait, you
Speaker 5: crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. Obviously, this
Speaker 5: statement seems odds with any idea of liberating the Iranian people,
Speaker 5: and when it comes from the guy with the nuclear arsenal,
Speaker 5: it sounds like a threat of genocide. While Trump has
Speaker 5: not launched any nuclear weapons in Iran, this does not
Speaker 5: mean that the death toll has not been heavy. According
Speaker 5: to a report by human rights organization Hengor, at least
Speaker 5: seven six hundred and fifty people have been killed during
Speaker 5: the US and Israeli bombing, including one thousand and thirty civilians.
Speaker 5: Iran has also continued attacking its own population. Despite the
Speaker 5: massive scale of the killing, Iran has not ceased, for example,
Speaker 5: executing political prisoners. Hengor estimates that at least one hundred
Speaker 5: and sixty political prisoners have been killed in the first
Speaker 5: quarter of this year. United States groups have been killed
Speaker 5: as well, thirteen of them according to the Military Times,
Speaker 5: hundreds more have been wounded. Survivors of one deadly drone
Speaker 5: attack on a US facility in q Eight have disputed
Speaker 5: official accounts of the attack, saying their facility did have
Speaker 5: vertical blast barriers, but no overhead protection against the kind
Speaker 5: of drones that killed six of their colleagues, and the
Speaker 5: kind of drones they could reasonably expect to be attacked by,
Speaker 5: given that Iran has been using these very same drones
Speaker 5: for a long time in Syria and other parts of
Speaker 5: the Middle East. To quote CBS who interviewed one of
Speaker 5: them on condition of anonymity, quote, painting a picture that
Speaker 5: one squeaked through is a falsehood. I want people to
Speaker 5: know the unit. And then there's ellipses here where they've
Speaker 5: removed part of the quotation. Was unprepared to provide any
Speaker 5: defense for itself. It was not a fortified position. So
Speaker 5: where are we now? While the US government continues to
Speaker 5: edit supercuts of bombs hitting buildings and vehicles to music
Speaker 5: ladies does not have permission to use. Families in the
Speaker 5: United States and Iran are both burying their loved ones.
Speaker 5: Despite the ceasefire, the US in Iran are theoretically held
Speaker 5: to there has been no cease fire for the Kurds
Speaker 5: who are still being bombed. No ceasefire for Lebanon, whereas
Speaker 5: where is still carrying out a massive bombing campaign. And
Speaker 5: on day two of the USA's blockade of Iranian ports,
Speaker 5: traffic through the Strait of Hormos remains in the single
Speaker 5: digit numbers of ships. We have not achieved, and it
Speaker 5: seems that we likely will not achieve liberation for the
Speaker 5: people of Iran. In fact, it may be the case
Speaker 5: that the regime moves closer to the IERGC becomes more hardlined,
Speaker 5: more repressive, more violent. Just like in Caracas. The only
Speaker 5: thing the US seems interested in liberating is oil. Iran's
Speaker 5: nuclear threat remains like Schrodinger's cat are once terrible and
Speaker 5: non existent, destroyed last year in the justification for thousands
Speaker 5: of deaths this year, as always, our solidarity should be
Speaker 5: with people and not with states. We can perfectly coherently
Speaker 5: hold that the people of Iran do not deserve to
Speaker 5: be killed by the US or the ring government, and
Speaker 5: that what we want for them should be what we
Speaker 5: want for ourselves, peace, freedom, and a beautiful life.
Speaker 7: This is it could happen here. Executive disorder, our weekly
Speaker 7: newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world,
Speaker 7: and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis today
Speaker 7: I'm joined by James Stout, Mia Wong and Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: Yes, happy to be back once again stretching the definitions
Speaker 1: of the word.
Speaker 7: Here across time, space and the Internet. We have gathered
Speaker 7: to discuss the news, and this episode we are covering
Speaker 7: the week of April eighth to April sixteenth. James, you
Speaker 7: want to start us off with some short news items.
Speaker 5: Yep, I got quite a few this week, so lock in.
Speaker 5: There have been two Turkish school shootings this week. One
Speaker 5: killed ten people, the other wounded at least sixteen. Since then,
Speaker 5: there have been one hundred and sixty two arrests for
Speaker 5: either sharing footage of the shooting or suggesting that similar
Speaker 5: attacks might happen at other schools. One suspect, according to BBC,
Speaker 5: made references to US mascular Elliott Roger on his WhatsApp profile, which, yep,
Speaker 5: not great. Just to yeah. I do find it somewhat
Speaker 5: frustrating when people say this stuff only happened in the
Speaker 5: United States.
Speaker 1: No, no, it doesn't. Now it is a fair point
Speaker 1: note that like most foreign mass shootings these days are
Speaker 1: inspired and influenced by American mass shootings. We are foundational
Speaker 1: to global shooter culture. But it ain't just us.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's not just us. Unfortunately, like culture is global
Speaker 5: and this is part of that. We also have like
Speaker 5: your regular terrorism, but this is not that. This is
Speaker 5: part of that culture. Secondly, SOUTHCOM, the United States military
Speaker 5: command responsible for, among other things, the Eastern Pacific as
Speaker 5: it calls it, has announced four strikes on small boats
Speaker 5: again this week, killing at least eleven people, according to
Speaker 5: the totals I added up from their announcements. It's probably
Speaker 5: worth noting that this either suggests that they are not
Speaker 5: striking drug boats, or that their strikes on drug boats
Speaker 5: are so spectacally unsuccessful that they are still coming across
Speaker 5: in such volumes that SOUTHCOM as having to kill people
Speaker 5: at this continuing rate.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: Either way, it doesn't point to a successful operation. Next,
Speaker 5: the Nigerian military seems to have doubled down on strike
Speaker 5: in Jili. If people haven't been paying attention to this,
Speaker 5: Jili is a place where a market was bombed. They
Speaker 5: claimed that the market contained Boko Haram fighters more than
Speaker 5: one hundred people were killed in this strike, and.
Speaker 13: I want to miss on what happened recently at Jilli
Speaker 13: to tell them that now our new strategy is anybody
Speaker 13: a friend of a tief is a chief. I've said that,
Speaker 13: so really, anybody that is doing any trade in any
Speaker 13: support to them, we find you together with them. We're
Speaker 13: going to deal with you like the bandit, like the terrorists.
Speaker 13: So people should know, if you don't want to be harmed,
Speaker 13: please avoid where those terrorists are.
Speaker 3: I'm going to give them any support.
Speaker 5: The suggestion here is that being present in a market
Speaker 5: where these people who are terrorists will also and justifies
Speaker 5: to targeting them.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Place worth noting the US has been supporting this campaign right,
Speaker 5: and this is not the first instance in which civilians
Speaker 5: have been killed over in about this. My news letter
Speaker 5: and appeals caught in the DC circuit has prevented Judge
Speaker 5: Boseberg from continuing an investigation into whether Trump officials sent
Speaker 5: migrants to a Salvador despite his order. DC Judge Raw wrote,
Speaker 5: the government has a clear and indisputaful right determination of
Speaker 5: this judicial investigation because it is premise on an order
Speaker 5: that is insufficiently clear and specific to sustain a ar
Speaker 5: to criminal contempt. A long time court interpreter, the only
Speaker 5: one for several South Asian languages in Texas, has been
Speaker 5: detained by Ice in airport. She has withholding of removal
Speaker 5: to India, but with third country removals now increasingly on
Speaker 5: the table, that is presumably what they intend for her. Finally,
Speaker 5: in court news, another DOJ attorney has been fined for
Speaker 5: missing deadlines in a habeas case, and once again that
Speaker 5: attorney cited a crushing caseload is the reason why they'd
Speaker 5: missed those deadlines.
Speaker 7: This week, both the House and the Senate failed to
Speaker 7: advance a war powers resolution compelling the President to cease
Speaker 7: military action in Iran. The House vote in particular was
Speaker 7: very close, with two hundred and thirteen votes to two
Speaker 7: hundred and fourteen, with only one Democrat, Jared Golden, voting
Speaker 7: against it, while one Republican, Thomas Massey, voted in support.
Speaker 7: On Monday, the Trump administration agreed to restore the Pride
Speaker 7: flag to the Stonewall National Monument as a part of
Speaker 7: settling a lawsuit over its removal. This weekend, President Trump
Speaker 7: got into a fight with the Pope over the statements
Speaker 7: against the US and Israel's war in the Middle East.
Speaker 7: The president truth that the pope was quote weak on
Speaker 7: crime and terrible for foreign policy, before sharing an AI
Speaker 7: image of himself depicted as Jesus Christ. The next day,
Speaker 7: Trump claimed quote, I thought it was me as a doctor.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 1: Great stuff, great stuff.
Speaker 5: Just a briefly fact check, he is neither of those things. No,
Speaker 5: as far as I'm a west or a doctor. Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, legally, I.
Speaker 2: Think it is notable and very funny that this has
Speaker 2: now shifted sniff. No, I'm not a significant but it
Speaker 2: shifted a discourse on the right to whether or not
Speaker 2: Trump is the Antichrist, with Enemy of the Show Rob
Speaker 2: Dreer saying quote, he's given off anti Christ energy. So
Speaker 2: incredible things are happening for Donald Trump among his nominal base.
Speaker 5: Meanwhile, Franklin Graham thinks it was an honest mistake.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I'm sure. I'm sure, I'm sure he does.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: On Wednesday, police responded to a bomb threat at the
Speaker 7: Illinois home of one of Pope Leo's brothers, about forty
Speaker 7: miles southwest of Chicago. No explosive was found.
Speaker 1: So Congress is in the process of deciding whether or
Speaker 1: not to reauthorize section seven oh two of the Foreign
Speaker 1: Intelligence Surveillance Act or FAIZA. It's going to sunset on
Speaker 1: April twenty. We're recording this on the sixteenth, so in
Speaker 1: four days if Congress does not reauthorize it. Section oh
Speaker 1: two is what lets intelligence agencies in the US collect email, phone,
Speaker 1: and text communications from foreign nationals outside of the United States,
Speaker 1: which often leads to communications of American citizens being caught
Speaker 1: for obvious reasons. Right well, they get kind of swept
Speaker 1: up in that big net. The FBI once has asked
Speaker 1: for and has gotten some permission to like look into
Speaker 1: that database to get information on American citizens. Congress puts
Speaker 1: some limitations on that in twenty twenty four, but it
Speaker 1: remains very controversial and basically, like one of the big
Speaker 1: debates over this is and there was a vote in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four as to whether or not to require
Speaker 1: intelligence agencies to get a warrant before accessing American communications,
Speaker 1: and that failed to pass by a single vote in
Speaker 1: the House two twelve to two twelve split in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. So right now, you know there's both the
Speaker 1: question of is this going to get reauthorized by Congress,
Speaker 1: in which case is like the FBI is certainly going
Speaker 1: to use it to go after like the communications of
Speaker 1: quote unquote antifa, right of like people who have been
Speaker 1: caught because they've been naming foreign groups, anti fascist groups,
Speaker 1: like foreign terrorist organizations. That's very obviously like one of
Speaker 1: the things this is going to be used for kind
Speaker 1: of unclear, like what is going to happen here where
Speaker 1: Congress is going to land. I did find there's an
Speaker 1: interesting article in Just Security where they're very worried that
Speaker 1: because of how very obvious it is that federal law
Speaker 1: enforcement will abuse this section seven h two will just
Speaker 1: kind of go away entirely, and the useful aspects of
Speaker 1: it as they see it will no longer be possible.
Speaker 1: That's not my primary concern, but it's interesting to read
Speaker 1: someone being like, oh my god, if these guys go
Speaker 1: so crazy, like if they keep refusing to like allow
Speaker 1: warrants to be entered into the process and keep insisting
Speaker 1: on going after like anti fat like left wing domestic terrorists,
Speaker 1: they're going to lose our ability to like surveil foreign
Speaker 1: nationals entirely. Is kind of the concern from a lot
Speaker 1: of security people. Anyway, Just probably good that you're aware
Speaker 1: of that. So probably the biggest international piece of news
Speaker 1: this week that we're covering is the defeat of Victor Orbon,
Speaker 1: who was often considered to be like a quasi dictatorial figure.
Speaker 1: I mean, he arose to power in Hungary legally, but
Speaker 1: his party like as soon as he took power more
Speaker 1: than a decade ago, he's basically been cracking down on
Speaker 1: the ability of counterparties to like organize. There's been like
Speaker 1: massive crackdowns on the like ability of like it's a
Speaker 1: lot of prototype Trump stuff, Like they went after professors,
Speaker 1: they went after colleges, they went after like public funds
Speaker 1: to educational institutions, to libraries.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he pioneered the modern tactics of undermining liberal democracy
Speaker 7: via the legal system.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it's like him and Aired Wanner sort of
Speaker 2: like yeah.
Speaker 1: Two, he went after the LGBT community, tried to criminalize
Speaker 1: like criminalize like pride events and stuff. And also like
Speaker 1: in a big a big part of like Orbon was
Speaker 1: obviously very anti migrant, like anti we don't want to
Speaker 1: take in, you know, particularly during the Syrian refugee crisis
Speaker 1: that was like a big moment for them. But he
Speaker 1: was also really anti EU. You know Hungary is a
Speaker 1: part of the EU, but Orbond's party was very e
Speaker 1: like the Fidez Party was super EU critical, and in
Speaker 1: the last decade and change that they've been in power,
Speaker 1: the Fidez Party has been massively corrupt and in fact
Speaker 1: has kind of turned the Hungarian government to the extent
Speaker 1: like you know, there was corruption before obviously, but he's
Speaker 1: woven his party into the very workings of the government,
Speaker 1: primarily as a way to collect money from people and
Speaker 1: to distribute government funds to like these right wing pet
Speaker 1: projects that they had, which we'll I'll talk about a
Speaker 1: little more in a second. But this started to piss
Speaker 1: people off in Hungary, particularly because the government wasn't doing
Speaker 1: a good job of governing, like the Hungarian economy remained
Speaker 1: one of the worst in Europe. Unemployment remained high. Like
Speaker 1: none of the promises that like, well, if we're if
Speaker 1: we kind of pushed the EU away, and if we
Speaker 1: keep all if we keep these migrants out, the economy
Speaker 1: will get better. What really happened was fides robbed everyone blind,
Speaker 1: and Orbon robbed everyone blind and put his cronies in
Speaker 1: positions of power in the hope that he would never
Speaker 1: be forced out. Now, Orbon's an interesting figure in part
Speaker 1: because he got his start as a pro democracy figure
Speaker 1: during the latter years of communism in Hungary. He was
Speaker 1: a liberal like democratic activist, and in fact, the guy
Speaker 1: who just beat him, Peter Magyar, we'll talk about his
Speaker 1: name also in a second, grew up with like a
Speaker 1: poster of Orbon on his bedroom wall because Orbon, you
Speaker 1: know again, communism was coming to an end. Everyone was
Speaker 1: very excited, all the young people were very excited about democracy,
Speaker 1: and Orbon was like a figure and he was still
Speaker 1: he was never like a leftist figure when I say liberal,
Speaker 1: but he was a figure of like democratizing values. Now
Speaker 1: Magyar himself is an odd guy. He's forty five years old.
Speaker 1: And the party that he ran with, the Tisa Party Tisza,
Speaker 1: was a party before him, but like not a living
Speaker 1: one really, like it had been a political party and
Speaker 1: it had basically died out to irrelevance. I think they
Speaker 1: had a couple of dudes kind of kicking around. It's
Speaker 1: almost like if there were still a tiny wig party
Speaker 1: that like four or five guys met in like twice
Speaker 1: a year to like have their little wig meeting.
Speaker 5: The bold coming back that.
Speaker 1: Some guy who's like a Barack Obama level political mind
Speaker 1: in terms of his skill in organizing and charisma came
Speaker 1: in and turned that party into a fucking electoral powerhouse
Speaker 1: that completely annihilated the previous leading party in an election.
Speaker 1: Like that's basically what happened in Hungary. It's a very
Speaker 1: weird story. And Magyar is definitely brilliant in terms of
Speaker 1: he is someone who is objectively very intelligent when it
Speaker 1: comes to how to build power in a political organization
Speaker 1: and how to win elections and how to message to people.
Speaker 3: He's very good at all of that stuff.
Speaker 1: Now, this is not like a leftist or a progressive
Speaker 1: like hero type figure, and he has not pretended to be,
Speaker 1: to be very clear, that's not how he built himself
Speaker 1: at all. In fact, in some ways he's more conservative
Speaker 1: than Orbon. His party that is a party is like
Speaker 1: even like Orbon at least had like a guest worker
Speaker 1: program and stuff, and Maggar's against even a lot of
Speaker 1: that stuff, Like he is actually more hostile to having
Speaker 1: like like immigration, but he's not anti EU and he's not.
Speaker 1: What's interesting is like he's really kind of hedging in between,
Speaker 1: like hedging his I don't know entirely how to describe this.
Speaker 1: He's like writing a very weird line because he is
Speaker 1: not anti Ukraine, but he's also against Hungary sending weapons
Speaker 1: a directly to Ukraine. But his oldlatitude is like, I'm
Speaker 1: not super pro what you guys are doing, but I'm
Speaker 1: not going to fight anything in the EU Parliament. Hungary's
Speaker 1: going to stop. Hungary has been like a spoiler in
Speaker 1: EU politics for a while, where they would just kind
Speaker 1: of to fuck with whatever the EU wants to do,
Speaker 1: especially used to regards aiding Ukraine and Magyar's whole thing
Speaker 1: is like, I'm just gonna stop, like I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: ful throatedly support the stuff you guys want. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna stop being an anchor weighing you down, which is
Speaker 1: enough like for the EU to be excited about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like finally, this guy Hungary is not gonna be Hungary
Speaker 1: is a weird history of acting like an anchor on
Speaker 1: other polities. Sometimes that's kind of what was going on
Speaker 1: in the Austro Hungarian Empire in like the pre World
Speaker 1: War One era, where Hungary saw itself as very separate
Speaker 1: from the Austria Hungary aspect of things, and would vote
Speaker 1: to like fuck with the military because they wanted their
Speaker 1: own military to get more powerful. It's not entirely the same,
Speaker 1: it's just interesting the level of like contrarianus that's kind
Speaker 1: of baked into a lot of Hungarian politics. I mentioned
Speaker 1: something about Peter's name. So the Magyars are like the
Speaker 1: original like nomadic horse warrior people of the area we
Speaker 1: know as Hungary today, the name Magyar just means Hungarian now,
Speaker 1: but it came from the most powerful of these tribes
Speaker 1: of nomadic warriors. And someone had made a point of
Speaker 1: this on I was ad of Twitter or Blue Sky
Speaker 1: around the election that like Peter Magyar is basically if
Speaker 1: a guy was named Johnny American, right, Like that's like
Speaker 1: literally like his name could not be more patriotic.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Adolf Hitler defeated by a yeah in Germany.
Speaker 1: And Maggar became a force on the political stage in
Speaker 1: Hungary very suddenly. He wasn't really a major figure. He
Speaker 1: was kind of actually connected to a lot of because
Speaker 1: again he was a supporter of the Fadez party. He
Speaker 1: had a lot of friends who were members of Orbon's government.
Speaker 1: One of his buddies was Orbon's chief of staff. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, he married a woman, judyte Varga,
Speaker 1: who was the Minister of Justice for the Fadez party
Speaker 1: under Orbon right, and he'd worked as like a diplomat
Speaker 1: in Brussels, so he's like a guy who's part of
Speaker 1: this government apparatus that Orbon puts into place. But in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty fours there's this huge scandal where the Ministry
Speaker 1: of Justice and like his wife by which I mean
Speaker 1: his well now his ex wife because they split, and
Speaker 1: then his ex wife pardons a man who had gotten
Speaker 1: convicted for covering up a sex abuse scandal at a
Speaker 1: children's home, and Magyar becomes like one of the most
Speaker 1: visible figures on the backlash, being like this entire party
Speaker 1: is corrupt, this is super fucked up, and he's coming
Speaker 1: from a position of and I was a part of it,
Speaker 1: so I know, like I'm an insider who's broken from
Speaker 1: the group because how corrupt and bad this is, and
Speaker 1: there's some messed up stuff in there. Magyar does attack
Speaker 1: Orbon and Fidez because his ex wife gets fired along
Speaker 1: with another woman. When this scandal becomes a problem, and
Speaker 1: he accuses the government of like hiding behind women's skirts.
Speaker 1: But he's also got he's an odd pers There's some
Speaker 1: uncomfortable not damning or anything, just some like uncomfortable realities
Speaker 1: about him. And I want to read a quote from
Speaker 1: an en PR article that came out recently that talks
Speaker 1: about some of this. Magar has blamed the end of
Speaker 1: his marriage to Varga, at least in part on political disagreements. Notably,
Speaker 1: just months before the divorce was finalized in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: he secretly recorded one of their conversations, and it Varga
Speaker 1: was talking about an attempt by government aids to interfere
Speaker 1: in a corruption case. Maggar released a recording in the
Speaker 1: wake of the pardon scandal the following year, which only
Speaker 1: added fuel to the fire and credence to his corruption claims,
Speaker 1: and his wife resigns from public life altogether after this.
Speaker 1: She has accused him of verbal and physical abuse, including
Speaker 1: like locking her in a room, and obviously, like the
Speaker 1: whole recording account, there's a lot of there's some uncomfortable
Speaker 1: stuff about this guy. But that said, she's also super
Speaker 1: corrupt and like doing a lot of really so I
Speaker 1: don't know, and no one really does if you read
Speaker 1: a lot about this guy. One of the things people
Speaker 1: point is that we don't etually know a lot about
Speaker 1: him other than he's really good at whipping a party
Speaker 1: into shape and winning an election.
Speaker 5: Right like, he proved that much, But we.
Speaker 1: Don't know much about him. Even Orbon has made anti
Speaker 1: LGBTQ rights a big part of his platform, especially as
Speaker 1: his position has gotten weaker, He's tried to like supercharge
Speaker 1: that as a way to hold on the power. Magyar's
Speaker 1: not pro queer rights, but he's not anti queer rights.
Speaker 1: He has criticized the Orbon government from going after LGBTQ
Speaker 1: people and says that they're doing it to distract citizens
Speaker 1: from the issues, which is true. He said that he
Speaker 1: supports the right to assembly, he has not said that
Speaker 1: he supports LGBTQ rights. That said, if going from a
Speaker 1: guy who's like, I actively want to prosecute people for
Speaker 1: being queer to a guy who's like, I just don't
Speaker 1: want to talk about it is probably an improvement.
Speaker 7: It's worth noting that in his victory speech he did
Speaker 7: make two references to LGBTQ rights, saying that quote everyone
Speaker 7: can live with whoever they love, as long as they
Speaker 7: do not violate laws or harm others, and also said, quote,
Speaker 7: we want to make a country where no one is
Speaker 7: persecuted because they think differently, or because someone loves in
Speaker 7: a different way to others.
Speaker 2: Unquote.
Speaker 1: This is again broadly, a really good thing, and it's
Speaker 1: also good. It's good in Hungary, it's also good worldwide
Speaker 1: because Hungary has been for years not just a major
Speaker 1: supporter of far right groups. One of the things Magyar
Speaker 1: pointed out as soon as he won election is that
Speaker 1: there's evidence that they have found that the Fidez party
Speaker 1: was using Hungarian governmental funds to support a couple of
Speaker 1: number one to support Seapack because they hold like a
Speaker 1: foreign seapac gatherings in Hungary. So like Seapack has been
Speaker 1: getting money from the Hungarian government, and Magyar said, like,
Speaker 1: that's not fine, We're not okay with that. I think
Speaker 1: that's actually illegal. And he has also noted that that
Speaker 1: government money was going to support the Matthias Corvinus Call
Speaker 1: or MCC, which was receiving funds from the Orbanne government,
Speaker 1: and that that is going to stop now. The MCC
Speaker 1: is both like it's an organization in Hungary, but they
Speaker 1: also have a bunch of like foreign They've got one
Speaker 1: in like Romania, there's one in Brussels. They have like
Speaker 1: a bunch of foreign branches and they use the MCC
Speaker 1: and fund it in order to fund the fire right
Speaker 1: in other European countries. Right, Like the MCC supports like
Speaker 1: the one in Brussels supports in Brussels local fire right groups.
Speaker 1: And it's been very a fairly effective way of like
Speaker 1: funding some of these like and oftentimes like Nazi adjacent organizations.
Speaker 1: And that money is looking to go away. And there's
Speaker 1: an interesting Politico article about some of this that talk
Speaker 1: to the MCC Brussels people, like the offshoot of this
Speaker 1: in Brussels. For its part, MCC Brussels said that Sunday's
Speaker 1: election result will have no bearing on its work in
Speaker 1: the city. As an independent organization. We will continue to research,
Speaker 1: analyze and advocate around our core concerns and continue to
Speaker 1: hold the European Union institutions to account. That's the communications manager.
Speaker 1: And the article goes on to note MCC Brussels gets
Speaker 1: almost alledge cash ninety nine percent, coming to just over
Speaker 1: six million euros according to its listing in the last
Speaker 1: financial year as part of a grant from Matthias Corvinus Collegium,
Speaker 1: which received a ten percent stake in Hungary's lucrative oil
Speaker 1: and gas company MOL from Orbonn's government in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: That's certainly going away too. This is a major blow
Speaker 1: to far right organizing in Europe and in the United States.
Speaker 1: And it's more than just losing money, losing a space
Speaker 1: to gather, it's losing a proof of concept.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Orbon was the guy they pointed to, is like, this
Speaker 1: is what we want to do in America, not just America,
Speaker 1: but very directly, and Orbon just flamed the fuck out
Speaker 1: because he sucked at governing. Now, what happens next is
Speaker 1: going to depend on whether or not Magyar prosecutes Fede's
Speaker 1: party members prosecutes Orbon and his cronies. He said he's
Speaker 1: going to, so we'll see, and that's all I gotta
Speaker 1: say for now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's worth noting that, like in Europe,
Speaker 5: we had this somewhat with Donald Tusk in Poland right
Speaker 5: and what we have seen there, for instance, on immigration,
Speaker 5: has been a continued movement to the right. Right like
Speaker 5: Tusk has been like talking about not complying with EU
Speaker 5: immigration rulings. And I think that's probably something that people
Speaker 5: who are interesting which way this might go should look at.
Speaker 5: But that doesn't mean that it's a bad thing. That
Speaker 5: all that is out now that Aubank conceded, right Like,
Speaker 5: he had multiple US politicians, including the Vice president, campaigning
Speaker 5: for him, and he lost, and he admitted he lost,
Speaker 5: and that is a very good sign.
Speaker 1: Part of why he conceded is he thinks that he's
Speaker 1: got enough people in the woven end of the government
Speaker 1: that he can return to power, or at least his
Speaker 1: party can so. Meg again, Magyar's big challenge is going
Speaker 1: to be making sure that doesn't happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and whatever else. I think it's very very
Speaker 2: unlikely that Magyar is going to be doing shit like, hey,
Speaker 2: we're going to use face We're going to threaten to
Speaker 2: use facial cognition on everyone who shows up to a
Speaker 2: Pride protest and a Pride march and arrest them, so,
Speaker 2: you know, hopefully getting better.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I again, he was willing to wire tap his wife.
Speaker 1: There's no evidence that he takes like pleasure in fucking
Speaker 1: with people. Like that doesn't seem to be as vibe,
Speaker 1: so hopefully not.
Speaker 5: Yeah, all right, should we take a break? We shall,
Speaker 5: all right.
Speaker 7: Then we will be back for more news.
Speaker 2: So one of the other pieces of news coming out
Speaker 2: of the right wing sphere is this really incredibly staged
Speaker 2: photo op that Donald Trump had where he like got
Speaker 2: this really well photographed, like fake door Dash order and
Speaker 2: then tipped tip them in one hundred dollars. That was
Speaker 2: supposed to be a promotion for his note taps on
Speaker 2: tips thing. There's a lot of stuff going on here.
Speaker 2: There's been a whole bunch of stuff because people immediately
Speaker 2: figured out that this person is someone who's been basically
Speaker 2: used to lobby for this policy a bunch. She shows
Speaker 2: up all over the place, like testifying in front of
Speaker 2: congressional committees and stuff about no tax for tips and
Speaker 2: like or like legislatures all over the country. There's a
Speaker 2: whole bunch of kind of funny stuff where she gets
Speaker 2: asked if she would vote for Trump and whether she
Speaker 2: supports trans athletes, and she's just like there's also a
Speaker 2: whole story about sort of door Dash's pr person just
Speaker 2: having a crash out and getting extremely mad online.
Speaker 1: Me don't don't put it in the newspaper that they
Speaker 1: got mad.
Speaker 2: It's really amazing. But I think the actual story here
Speaker 2: is about no tax on tips as a political project,
Speaker 2: and I think the actual most egregious part of this
Speaker 2: whole event was the White House. They operate like fifty
Speaker 2: five Twitter accounts. One of them the Guardian points out
Speaker 2: as this like rapid response thing, and it posts this
Speaker 2: video where that's captioned about how this woman said she
Speaker 2: saved eleven thousand dollars in taxes on tips. That's not true,
Speaker 2: it can't be true. It's just mathematically a lie. The
Speaker 2: actual policy and the Guardian's doing some good work on
Speaker 2: this lays out quote. But the no tax on tips
Speaker 2: policy is only a temporary deduction of up to twenty
Speaker 2: five thousand dollars in tips for eligible workers annually. Tipped
Speaker 2: workers still have to report their tips as income. So
Speaker 2: there's a lot of things going on here. One this
Speaker 2: is all all of the tax on tips off is temporary.
Speaker 2: We talked about this when it came out. It was
Speaker 2: designed to sort of phase out the moment Trump leaves
Speaker 2: office or supposed to leave office, and b. Dordash also
Speaker 2: later had to say oh no, no, no, no, she did
Speaker 2: not save eleven thousand dollars in tax money on tips.
Speaker 2: They were like, no, no, no, she made eleven thousand
Speaker 2: dollars in tips and didn't have to pay taxes on it.
Speaker 2: But first off, she did not make eleven thousand dollars
Speaker 2: on tips. Like, you can't make eleven thousand dollars in
Speaker 2: tips doing DoorDash delivery. It's basically impossible. And I'm very
Speaker 2: sure that she didn't do this because also if you
Speaker 2: look at and the Guardian with you or not the Guardian,
Speaker 2: I'm ink with you some of the earlier you know, interviews,
Speaker 2: because she's been on a PR circuit about this for
Speaker 2: a while. She was on Fox News, and on Fox
Speaker 2: News she claims that she'd saved three to four thousand
Speaker 2: dollars and that eventually that like number amount of money
Speaker 2: that she'd saved eventually gets bumped up to eleven thousand.
Speaker 2: I think, though, what happened is that she maybe got
Speaker 2: she's claiming originally that she got like three thousand dollars
Speaker 2: in tips. There's also another issue here, which is at
Speaker 2: like eleven thousand dollars, it's like not clear if that's
Speaker 2: even enough money to qualify as having to pay income
Speaker 2: taxes in Alaska. Like this is all, this is all
Speaker 2: basically just a night there. And but the reason this
Speaker 2: is all actually happening is that the note tax on
Speaker 2: tips thing is this giant pr campaign that DoorDash, particularly
Speaker 2: DoorDash but also some of the other uh, some of
Speaker 2: the other companies have been doing as basically a propaganda
Speaker 2: thing in order to avoid there being attention on the
Speaker 2: fact that they just don't pay their workers a living
Speaker 2: wage and what so. One of the really important things
Speaker 2: that's almost never talked about with DoorDash and with with
Speaker 2: all of these sort of like these these delivery apps, right,
Speaker 2: is that if you are a restaurant worker and you're
Speaker 2: making something for a DoorDash order, and this particularly like
Speaker 2: you know, for example, if you work at a coffee shop, right,
Speaker 2: you don't get tips on DoorDash orders. So when when when?
Speaker 2: When when these things? When these orders started coming through
Speaker 2: in like sort of the past like five six, eight years, right,
Speaker 2: what happened was that this was basically a giant everyone
Speaker 2: who's working like in a restaurant or in a in
Speaker 2: like a cafe or whatever, you're getting it from those
Speaker 2: people all had massive speed ups where they just don't
Speaker 2: get and they don't and they don't get paid the
Speaker 2: regular tips that they would you know, be relying on
Speaker 2: to even sort of have a living gage wage. Right,
Speaker 2: So these people all got speed ups. And then on
Speaker 2: top of that, right, so you are, if you're ordering
Speaker 2: from one of these sites, right, you're probably are paying
Speaker 2: a tip. But that tip money has basically been you know,
Speaker 2: it's been extracted from the restaurant workers. But then now
Speaker 2: it's being used as a way to subsidize, right, as
Speaker 2: a way to subsidize door Dash not paying actual fucking wages.
Speaker 2: And so what this entire project is is is it's
Speaker 2: this It's this giant attempt to basically continue this process
Speaker 2: and solidify this process and stop all of the organizing
Speaker 2: campaigns that have been happening against door Dash to get
Speaker 2: them to like actually fucking pay people. And what's happening
Speaker 2: instead is that they're trying They're trying to shift everyone's
Speaker 2: focus to like, oh, hey, we can give you like
Speaker 2: no tax on tips, even though what these tips are
Speaker 2: and what the system that they've built is is is
Speaker 2: it system to basically exploit both restaurant workers and also
Speaker 2: specifically to make sure they don't ever have to fucking
Speaker 2: pay their workers any amount of money. And that's the
Speaker 2: actual that's the actual political ramifications of what's happening here
Speaker 2: beyond guy has funny crash out in social media, and
Speaker 2: I think it's very bleak that there's been basically no
Speaker 2: coverage of the sort of totality of what this is
Speaker 2: doing to people.
Speaker 7: To circle back to the potentiality of the new Prime
Speaker 7: Minister of Hungary prosecuting the former corrupt administration, let's turn
Speaker 7: to California. The former front runner in the California governor's race,
Speaker 7: Eric Swalwell, dropped out of the election last week and
Speaker 7: subsequently resigned from Congress amidst sexual assault allegations from multiple women.
Speaker 7: The new front runner is billionaire Tom Steyer, who ran
Speaker 7: for president back in twenty twenty. You might remember him
Speaker 7: from the Yeah, good, okay clip of where he tried
Speaker 7: to talk to Bernie Sanders as Bernie and Elizabeth Warren
Speaker 7: were beefing on stage after a presidential debate.
Speaker 2: Well, is she the guy? Is she the guy who
Speaker 2: had that story about killing someone in Vietnam? Or was
Speaker 2: that was another one of the unhinged guys that.
Speaker 7: Ye Stire wasn't super unhinged. He was a little bit boring,
Speaker 7: but nominally one of the more progressive people in that
Speaker 7: overstuffed race despite being a billionaire. A lot of his
Speaker 7: poll is talking about we should tax billionaires like me more.
Speaker 7: I know, I'm a billionaire. I'll be fine. That's kind
Speaker 7: of his that's kind of part of his stick.
Speaker 1: Look, my opinion is as a former Californian and just
Speaker 1: someone who's voted in California in the long grand history
Speaker 1: of California governors, he would be one of the better options.
Speaker 1: That California is fat, which is the bar, really low bar.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and the race this year is just shite.
Speaker 1: It's it's again like Arnold Schwarzenegger was the governor and
Speaker 1: like firmly middle of the pack.
Speaker 5: Like it's absolute bollocks. Now, Like sorry, I know I'm
Speaker 5: saying very British words, but it is upsetting.
Speaker 7: It is funny to describe the California governor's racist bollocks.
Speaker 1: It's bollocks many times.
Speaker 5: I have to live here, I have to pay taxes
Speaker 5: to these clowns.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's California, baby, Like you're gonna periodically have
Speaker 1: governor raises that are just like shit shows, largely to
Speaker 1: provide content for the media.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 7: This week, Stier released part of his immigration platform titled
Speaker 7: how California Can Put Ice in Jail, echoing cries that
Speaker 7: activists have been tried to circulate into popular consciousness for
Speaker 7: the past year. Now, Stier doesn't just advocate for ICE
Speaker 7: to be abolished, which he does, but says in this
Speaker 7: new platform released on substack, quote, it's not enough for
Speaker 7: Democrats to simply engage in rhetoric and quote unquote stand
Speaker 7: against Ice or Trump. California must build a system that
Speaker 7: fights fire with fire to stop this authoritarian takeover. We
Speaker 7: must counter Ice head on and go after both their
Speaker 7: agents on the streets and their leadership within the DHS.
Speaker 7: How do we do this the same way we took
Speaker 7: on the mob, put ICE agents and their leadership in
Speaker 7: jail for their crimes, because that's how you take on
Speaker 7: a violent extremist group and win unquote. Steyer promises to
Speaker 7: do five things as governor to build this strategy to
Speaker 7: take on Ice. First, passing aggressive legislation building on current
Speaker 7: California statutes to outlaw any law enforcement agency from profiling
Speaker 7: based on race, ethnicity, language, occupation, or location. This directly
Speaker 7: takes on the Kavanagh stops, which were approved last fall.
Speaker 5: And a lot of others Supreme Court decisions of for instance,
Speaker 5: Board of Patrol operates under.
Speaker 7: Then, Stier says he'll grant the state Attorney general authority
Speaker 7: to hold ICE's leadership accountable for violence by pursuing quote
Speaker 7: unquote supervisory liability. Stire writes that quote this body of
Speaker 7: law empowers the California justice system to criminally prosecute and
Speaker 7: imprison not just the ICE agents who are committing these crimes,
Speaker 7: but the leadership directing them to do so.
Speaker 3: Unquote.
Speaker 7: Stire promise is to appoint and fund a special investigative
Speaker 7: unit that's specifically tasked with enforcing these California laws, quote,
Speaker 7: including laws related to the conditions at detention facilities. This
Speaker 7: unit will collect the evidence the Attorney General can use
Speaker 7: to prosecute offenders and their leadership.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 7: That's how he plans to take on ICE and leadership
Speaker 7: at the DHS and to prosecute crimes committed by ICE agents. Now,
Speaker 7: Stire also says that he will quote bring those detained
Speaker 7: and kidnapped by ICE back home quote by expanding the
Speaker 7: immigration legal defense infrastructure in the state of California, including
Speaker 7: funding for quote more attorneys, investigators, and accredited representatives, as
Speaker 7: well as legal aid and law school programs to assist
Speaker 7: and help those who have been imprisoned without due process unquote.
Speaker 5: This is the one like that I'd like. So there
Speaker 5: are counties in California the fund that we had an
Speaker 5: episode about this about two years ago, right that there
Speaker 5: will fund legal defense for migrants. Traditionally this has been
Speaker 5: Ice works around this by moving people who have that
Speaker 5: legal representation out of the state as quickly as they
Speaker 5: can and then refusing or making it very hard for
Speaker 5: WebEx motions for their attorneys to attend their hearings remotely.
Speaker 5: And what that does is effectively like bleeds to program, right,
Speaker 5: because then this attorney has to fly to Texas for
Speaker 5: a fifteen minute hearing about rescheduling or something similar. I
Speaker 5: would need to There's a lot of other stuff here,
Speaker 5: like law school programs. That's interesting. I don't know what
Speaker 5: those would be. There needs to be something that stops
Speaker 5: them doing that, because that is what they did under
Speaker 5: Biden too, like a this is not a Trump era thing.
Speaker 5: This is very much something that happened under Biden, and
Speaker 5: it will happen again if the state of California does
Speaker 5: this on a statewide level, I will imagine, I would imagine,
Speaker 5: especially like let's entertain the idea that we have an
Speaker 5: election in twenty twenty eight, we have a Democrat president,
Speaker 5: I still has a massively expanded detention capacity. It could
Speaker 5: very easily move people out of California very quickly, and
Speaker 5: so we need, like there need to be awareness of that.
Speaker 5: I would also say that, like, one of the tools
Speaker 5: that I don't see mentioned here that I think should
Speaker 5: be mentioned is SB fifty four in CALIFORNI SB fifty four.
Speaker 5: They're obviously there are different SB fifty four when I'm
Speaker 5: talking about a California Values Act here, the one that
Speaker 5: prohibits law enforcement cooperation except for cerchin exemptions with immigration authorities.
Speaker 5: That already exists. It's already there. And like this is
Speaker 5: his statements, pretty brief for his PDFs, only three pages.
Speaker 5: It might not go into all this detail. I would
Speaker 5: like to see that flagged, at least in in further
Speaker 5: detail or when he's speaking about this, right, because SB
Speaker 5: fifty four prosecutions of cops are important, right, because there
Speaker 5: are California agencies which appear to be flouting California law
Speaker 5: in order to comply with Trump's immigration goals. And if
Speaker 5: we don't do that first, then I have a lot
Speaker 5: less faith that any of this other shit is going
Speaker 5: to matter.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, obviously, funding legal representation for immigrants regardless,
Speaker 7: like is a good thing. But it but the effect
Speaker 7: that it could have could be curtailed by Ice, as
Speaker 7: James is said, by moving people quickly out of state.
Speaker 7: And it's unclear if Stier is also talking about trying
Speaker 7: to help trying to help residents of California.
Speaker 5: Is it people who Is it people who reside in
Speaker 5: California and have been taken by ICE? Or is it
Speaker 5: people who are in iced detention in California California? Yeah,
Speaker 5: Like those are different categories, right like, anyone or any
Speaker 5: other people in immigration attention broadly in California, to include
Speaker 5: anyone who would cross the southern border and then be detained,
Speaker 5: right Like, this is all stuff that I'd like to
Speaker 5: see fleshed out. Maybe it will be. I am going
Speaker 5: to email his office and ask some of these questions.
Speaker 7: The last thing that Stier has in this five list
Speaker 7: of promises is promised to launch a statewide no Your
Speaker 7: Rights public education and public awareness campaign, and Stire writes
Speaker 7: quote backed by expanded protections against racial profiling. Legal representation
Speaker 7: empowers detained individuals to report ICE's crimes to the Special
Speaker 7: Investigator and California's Attorney General and take the agents to
Speaker 7: court unquote. So he sees all these things like working
Speaker 7: in conjunction together to prosecute ICE agents and give immigrants
Speaker 7: legal representation so that this so that the investigative unit
Speaker 7: can be aware of certain crimes by ICE agents. It's
Speaker 7: the most that I've seen any politician like put down
Speaker 7: as like an actual plan to go after ICE. Like
Speaker 7: some other people have employed this sort of this sort
Speaker 7: of rhetoric, but in terms of actually producing a plan
Speaker 7: to go about this, this is the most detailed that
Speaker 7: I've seen. And as James said, it'll be good to
Speaker 7: learn more about how he envisions this actually going into
Speaker 7: effect and those certain details that it would be nice
Speaker 7: to have more detail on. But as as as rhetoric
Speaker 7: and as as an actual policy proposal, this is like
Speaker 7: the most advanced thing I've seen on actually trying to
Speaker 7: prosecute ICE and DHS.
Speaker 5: All Right, so it's talk a little bit more about
Speaker 5: immigration things around the topic. First and foremost in this
Speaker 5: what I want to talk about is this court filing
Speaker 5: by the ACLU and associated groups pertaining to the South
Speaker 5: Florida Soft Sided Facility South aka Alligator Alcatraz. Right. The
Speaker 5: court filing has some really disturbing stuff and it basically
Speaker 5: details what they claim to be the continued abuse of
Speaker 5: detainees despite a court order that should have prohibited some
Speaker 5: of this or prevented it. Rather, in their filing they
Speaker 5: are led to the attorneys were prevented from meeting with
Speaker 5: their clients, forced to make appointments, and we've seen some
Speaker 5: reporting on the physical abuse. I have not seen as
Speaker 5: much discussion of this, which I think is extremely concerning.
Speaker 5: Attorneys have been asked to submit copies of legal documents
Speaker 5: that they are bringing or to go over with their
Speaker 5: clients right like this would be a very clear violation
Speaker 5: of their attorney client privilege right that those communications should
Speaker 5: be private between the attorney and the client. And the
Speaker 5: facility denied detainees access to phones. This was part of
Speaker 5: the previous co order. They were to have access to
Speaker 5: phones and communications with their attorneys as well as some
Speaker 5: other stuff. They had to be advised of their rights
Speaker 5: posters explaining some of this stuff. This resulted in demands
Speaker 5: and the parts of the detainees to restore their access
Speaker 5: to phones. I want to quote at length from the
Speaker 5: filing here just so I don't make any false representations.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 5: After not having access to phone calls all day, people
Speaker 5: in their cages were getting frustrated with the situation, as
Speaker 5: these phone calls are the only way people can contact
Speaker 5: loved ones, speak with and secure an attorney. Detained individuals
Speaker 5: in mister Morphi and mister Hernandez Galband's cage began complaining
Speaker 5: loudly about the phones not working. Mister Morphi and mister
Speaker 5: Hernandez Galband both reported that several guards who work for
Speaker 5: crs a's, the entity managing the facility, came to the
Speaker 5: cage and were taunting the detained individuals inside. Detained individuals
Speaker 5: began raising their voices in protests. The guards got more
Speaker 5: aggressive and were yelling and threatening to enter the cage.
Speaker 5: Mister Hernandez Galband went to the guards to try and
Speaker 5: deesperate the situation and advise the guards not to enter
Speaker 5: the cage at that time, fearing it would lead to violence.
Speaker 5: Mister Morphy and mister Hernandez Galband both reported that another
Speaker 5: detained individual then went to the guards and an officer
Speaker 5: punched that person. Then the officers targeted mister Morphy. Neither
Speaker 5: mister Morphy nor mister Hernande's garband know why they targeted
Speaker 5: mister Morphy. The guards threw mister Morphy to the ground
Speaker 5: and severely beat him up. An officer came in and
Speaker 5: punched mister Morphy in his right eye and began to
Speaker 5: beat him. He was taken out the cage and thrown
Speaker 5: to the ground and beaten by multiple guards. He suffered
Speaker 5: injuries to his shoulder and arm, and was kicked in
Speaker 5: the head. A guard placed their knee on his neck
Speaker 5: when the guard was trying to restrain him. Mister Morphy
Speaker 5: does not know which guards are involved, as they do
Speaker 5: not wear id badges, but he believes he would recognize them.
Speaker 5: The officers beat so for other people during this incident
Speaker 5: and broke another detained individual's wrist. The officers then pepper
Speaker 5: sprayed everyone in the cage. A detained older gentleman passed
Speaker 5: out as he could not breathe. That's pretty horrific, like.
Speaker 7: This is just one day in one detention center.
Speaker 5: This I was going to say, this is one cage
Speaker 5: on one day in one facility. And like, if these
Speaker 5: people had not been brave enough to speak out, then
Speaker 5: we wouldn't know. Or if these people had been deported
Speaker 5: before they could speak out, we wouldn't know. Right, they
Speaker 5: didn't even have telephones to report this, if they hadn't
Speaker 5: had attorneys, we wouldn't know. Yeah, this is an insight
Speaker 5: into what's happening in this facility, and it is horrific.
Speaker 5: There are images that go with this, if people want
Speaker 5: to look them up. You can see some very clearly
Speaker 5: injured people, or you can see at least one very
Speaker 5: clearly injured person.
Speaker 7: Let's go on an ad break and then talk about
Speaker 7: Iran some all the part partails.
Speaker 5: All right, we are back and in our final segment
Speaker 5: of today's show, we're going to talk about the ongoing
Speaker 5: war with Iran. Right this past weekend, jd Vance and
Speaker 5: Jared Kushner's what a Steve Witcoff master negotiator, A guy
Speaker 5: who doesn't know the difference between a tweet that is
Speaker 5: public and a DM that is private. Incredible. They flew
Speaker 5: to meet an Iranian Delegation in Pakistan, which serves to
Speaker 5: mediate and host ceasefire talks between the United States and Iran. Ultimately,
Speaker 5: this did not result in an enduring agreement between the
Speaker 5: US and Iran, and as a result, the United States
Speaker 5: has begun blockading Iranian ports. So far, several vessels have
Speaker 5: been turned around by the US blockade, and at least
Speaker 5: one that tried to run it was eventually turned back,
Speaker 5: even though it attempted to hug the Iranian coastline in
Speaker 5: order to avoid consequences. The US Navy has also issued
Speaker 5: instructions which seemed to suggest that it could target shadow
Speaker 5: fleet vessels globally as part of the blockade if they're
Speaker 5: carrying a number of contraband items, which includes basically Iranian
Speaker 5: oil all its derivatives, weapons, some metals, and industrial supplies.
Speaker 5: It's a very broad list of contraband. In the thirteen
Speaker 5: claimed instances of ships being turned around so far, I
Speaker 5: have not seen any in which it was a physical interdiction.
Speaker 5: It seems that the United States ships contacted them by
Speaker 5: radio advising them of the blockade. The blockade has not
Speaker 5: currently stopped some types of cargoes entering Iran noticed a
Speaker 5: mariner suggests humanitarian supplies can enter, but those vessels are
Speaker 5: subject to inspection. If this causes a cooling effect or
Speaker 5: just a reduction in the ability of Iran to bring
Speaker 5: in more food, this could cause serious food shortages. There's
Speaker 5: a there's already been massive food price inflation since the war.
Speaker 5: Brigan and Iran had previously tried to work around this,
Speaker 5: but a complete blockade would make that harder. It does
Speaker 5: seem that negotiation between the US and Iran and ongoing.
Speaker 5: We're recording this on Thursday, and the latest thing that
Speaker 5: I had seen has suggested that Iran is saying it
Speaker 5: might allow traffic through the Strait if its assets are unfrozen.
Speaker 5: This hinges on the idea that Iran gets to decide
Speaker 5: who goes through the strait. Right, the strait is wider
Speaker 5: than twelve twelve miles is generally the territorial waters right
Speaker 5: just so it is international waters, So the idea that
Speaker 5: Iran controls it. If the US signs some kind of
Speaker 5: deal which implies or outright says, that would be a
Speaker 5: massive victory for a run right at least in that area. Meanwhile,
Speaker 5: the United States is amassing a massive naval force in
Speaker 5: the region with three carrier strike groups either there or
Speaker 5: heading there. That is approximately forty percent of the USA's navy. Interestingly,
Speaker 5: the George H. W. Bush is going around Africa to
Speaker 5: go there.
Speaker 7: The ship, not the man, that's correct, George H. W.
Speaker 5: Bush himself swimming, he's gonna wet to No, Yes, the
Speaker 5: United States ship George H. W. Bush is going around
Speaker 5: the southern tip of Africa. Geography understanders will notice that
Speaker 5: that is the long way. The short way would be
Speaker 5: through the Suez Canal.
Speaker 2: Right, Oh, no, they're doing They're doing the Russia the
Speaker 2: Resar Japanese war thing that always goes great for the
Speaker 2: imperial power.
Speaker 5: Moving because yeah, I'm guessing they're doing it because they
Speaker 5: don't want to get hit by yea many groups right
Speaker 5: going through the Red See And that seems to be
Speaker 5: the only explanation I can think of. Two Avenger class
Speaker 5: mind countermeas ships also left Singapore. They will also likely
Speaker 5: be headed to the region right for demining the straight Yeah. Meanwhile,
Speaker 5: it's worth noting that this ceasefire has not been universal,
Speaker 5: where bombing has not ceased. In Kurdistan. This week, a
Speaker 5: pesche Murger of the Commala of the toilers of Kurdistan.
Speaker 5: Ghazal Molan, a young Kurdish woman, died after sustaining injuries
Speaker 5: in a strike on Tuesday. It seems that it was
Speaker 5: very hard for the Kammala to find medical care for her.
Speaker 5: I'm going to quote from a piece by the Hannah
Speaker 5: human rights organization here quote. She then required urgent, higher
Speaker 5: level treatment, including advanced imaging, specialist trauma care, and intensive
Speaker 5: care support. Hannah has received serious allegations that the necessary
Speaker 5: treatment was not provided and that the subsequent efforts to
Speaker 5: secure your admission or transferred to other hospitals were delayed
Speaker 5: or refused. The central allegation under review is that once
Speaker 5: the case was understood to be connected to a drone
Speaker 5: strike and to carry political sensitivity, non medical considerations may
Speaker 5: have affected decisions concerning her admission and treatment. That's pretty
Speaker 5: bleak if it's true relativity, that this person could have survived,
Speaker 5: but hospitals either feared political consequences or being struck themselves,
Speaker 5: they decided. And there's a you can look at the
Speaker 5: show notes right that they link, and they talk about
Speaker 5: a number of hospitals that they basically drove her around
Speaker 5: trying to find care it's really heartbreaking. Again, other strikes
Speaker 5: have hit civilian facilities, including refugee camps sort of associated
Speaker 5: with the rogulati groups in Kurdistan, and that seems to
Speaker 5: be that there is no cease fire for the Kurds. Right.
Speaker 5: It's the long and the short of it. I run around,
Speaker 5: it's taking this time of peace negotiations to kind of
Speaker 5: reorganize its military and to reassess its supplies. Even they
Speaker 5: have dug out some missiles and anti air systems that
Speaker 5: were buried but not destroyed by strikes, and so they
Speaker 5: will be preparing for whatever comes next. If people want
Speaker 5: to know more about this, I made a whole episode
Speaker 5: which will have come out the day before this in
Speaker 5: the same feed, so you can listen to it there.
Speaker 7: This morning, also Trump announced a ceasefire deal for ten
Speaker 7: days between Israel and Lebanon. We'll see if that turns
Speaker 7: out to be real, if Israel well abide by this.
Speaker 7: But that is like as of for like an hour
Speaker 7: ago while we record Thursday afternoon.
Speaker 2: And it's worth noting there were literally thousands of violations
Speaker 2: with the last use fire that are on it's supposedly
Speaker 2: agreed to you with Lebanon. So yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: Trump had said that it was a quote separate skirmish
Speaker 5: in Lebanon and thus didn't it wasn't included in the ceasefire,
Speaker 5: which is a hell of a way to describe what's
Speaker 5: happening there.
Speaker 7: For our last story, let's talk about Sam Altman. Last week,
Speaker 7: a twenty year old college student named Daniel Moranogama traveled
Speaker 7: from Texas to San Francisco, California, and at three point
Speaker 7: thirty am on April tenth, allegedly threw a molotov cocktail
Speaker 7: toward the home of open AI CEO Sam Altman. The
Speaker 7: molotov hit the top of the security gate on the
Speaker 7: driveway leading to Altman's residence. Then, at around five am,
Speaker 7: Moranogama arrived at the open Ai headquarters and tried to
Speaker 7: use a chair to break into the building through the
Speaker 7: glass doors, but was stopped by security. According to security
Speaker 7: personnel on site, Moranogama stated that he came to the
Speaker 7: headquarters to burn it down and kill anyone inside. A
Speaker 7: federal affidavit alleges that after detaining Moranogama, officers recovered quote,
Speaker 7: incendiary devices, a jug of keras, a blue lighter, and
Speaker 7: an ANTIAI Document unquote. This document was a three part
Speaker 7: manifesto apparently authored by Moranogama. The first part was titled
Speaker 7: quote your Last Warning and allegedly states that Moranogama quote
Speaker 7: killed slash attempted to kill Sam Altman, also writing quote,
Speaker 7: if I'm going to advocate for others to kill and
Speaker 7: commit crimes, that I must lead by example and show
Speaker 7: that I am fully sincere in my message. The document
Speaker 7: then listed the names and addresses of investors, board members,
Speaker 7: and executives of AI companies. The second part of the
Speaker 7: document was titled some more Words on the Matter of
Speaker 7: our Impending Extinction. This section discussed the purported risk AI
Speaker 7: poses to humanity. The third part of the document was
Speaker 7: a letter addressed quote to Sam Altman, if you make
Speaker 7: it and read some part quote, if by some miracle
Speaker 7: you live, then I would take this as a sign
Speaker 7: from the divine to redeem yourself unquote. Moronogama's Instagram user
Speaker 7: name was but larryan Jie Hottist, in reference to the
Speaker 7: crsede against AI in the Dune novels.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: This account had a collection of Instagram stories saved about
Speaker 7: the existential threat of AI. Now we don't have a
Speaker 7: copy of this three part manifesto in full, but his
Speaker 7: sub stack is still online and it contains other writing
Speaker 7: about his belief that AI poses this existential threat to humanity.
Speaker 7: In this writing, his opposition to AI is not based
Speaker 7: on fears of disruptions to the economy, loss of jobs,
Speaker 7: or labor rights, but the belief that AI will become
Speaker 7: a superior race and wipe out or enslave humanity. In
Speaker 7: a post from January sixth, twenty twenty six, he writes
Speaker 7: that AI will quote lead to human extinction because of
Speaker 7: the quote rapid progress in artificial intelligence unquote, as well
Speaker 7: as that AI models are not aligned with humanity's interests.
Speaker 7: To quote this essay, ignore for a second these models
Speaker 7: current limitations or questions on how truly intelligent or conscious
Speaker 7: these models may actually be. The truth is all of
Speaker 7: these nuances are completely irrelevant to my argument. There are
Speaker 7: only two questions we should be concerned about at this moment.
Speaker 7: Is it willing to kill to preserve itself? And is
Speaker 7: it capable of doing so? Signs indicate that AI is
Speaker 7: willing and becoming potentially capable of doing both these things,
Speaker 7: and that is all that matters. We are dead if
Speaker 7: we do not act now unquote. He recommended that people
Speaker 7: read Eliezer Yudkowski's book If Anyone builds It, Everyone Dies,
Speaker 7: and other posts on his substack also mentioned Yudkowski's work.
Speaker 7: Who's one of the four fathers of quote unquote rationalism
Speaker 7: rationalist thought, and writes a lot about Ai Doom. Ai
Speaker 7: will bring apart the the end of humanity.
Speaker 1: This is very much a normal, like less wrong kind
Speaker 1: of mindset, right, Like, this guy's not normal. He's clearly
Speaker 1: suffering from some disordered thinking and is not like. This
Speaker 1: guy does not represent the average person who uses those things.
Speaker 1: But his justifications for what he did and his media
Speaker 1: diet is clearly all like less wrong stuff, all rationalist stuff,
Speaker 1: all Yudkowski stuff. So's he's been kind of marinating in that,
Speaker 1: and you know, this is what somebody who's not like
Speaker 1: this is unfortunately kind of the logical extent of Yodkowski's ideas,
Speaker 1: Like he would say he doesn't want anyone doing stuff
Speaker 1: like this, but his literal contention is that this is
Speaker 1: going to kill everyone and everything like and it will
Speaker 1: inevitably do it unless stopped. And if you really do
Speaker 1: believe that, you're kind of like left to act like
Speaker 1: these guys do. I think the responsible thing is for
Speaker 1: there to be an anti AI movement that's not rooted
Speaker 1: in nonsense, which is again why we do the stuff
Speaker 1: that we do, because I'm very much against a lot
Speaker 1: of this shit. Not because it's going to create a
Speaker 1: god that kills everybody, but because it makes the Internet
Speaker 1: a lot worse and makes human thinking a lot worse,
Speaker 1: and it puts a lot of money into shitty people's
Speaker 1: hands and is just often unnecessary in many of its
Speaker 1: applications and outwardly like making some things worse, and that's
Speaker 1: not great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like you know, if you want to talk
Speaker 2: about like oh this is actually going to like end humanity,
Speaker 2: it's like, well, yeah, it's also intensifying climate change, the
Speaker 2: thing that you would think these people would care about, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah not, I mean sure, yeah, it's like that's the
Speaker 1: that I'm not. I don't tend to focus on the
Speaker 1: fucking water use aspects of people complaining about AI because
Speaker 1: there's so many things we do that are like horrible
Speaker 1: in those terms.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean also just like like the energy, like the.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like the cost thing is massive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and like that is like we're just resources
Speaker 2: for but like scam bots.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just useless and a lot of like a
Speaker 1: lot of what it's being used for is pointless. Like
Speaker 1: if you're able to, you know, create machines that are
Speaker 1: more accurately able to like scan for cancers or whatever, fine,
Speaker 1: I don't have a problem with that, but like, we
Speaker 1: don't need to be burning the resources that we're burning
Speaker 1: to replace like people writing local news articles with slop advertisements,
Speaker 1: you know, like that's not a benefit to society. And
Speaker 1: I'm really angry at it, and it's frustrating to see
Speaker 1: people getting radicalized to it literally attack AI people for
Speaker 1: bullshit reasons like and honestly, Altman's partly to blame for this.
Speaker 1: He's one of the people who has fanned the flames
Speaker 1: of we might be making an evil god.
Speaker 7: Yes, because that is really good for investors, because it
Speaker 7: makes the pain seem actually impressives.
Speaker 5: Like world changing.
Speaker 3: This is their preferred opposition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you are getting rich by saying I might
Speaker 1: be making sky nets, somebody stop me. Someone might stop you, Sam,
Speaker 1: you know, like realistically, don't do that.
Speaker 7: This substack also contains writing on pseudospiritual philosophy about the
Speaker 7: quote tree of ultimate reality, the operation of man, the
Speaker 7: genealogy of being, and the warrior and the martyr.
Speaker 5: Unquote sure man, a little too much Internet.
Speaker 7: Yeah, there's a lot of stuff there. But I want
Speaker 7: to briefly touch on this other essay about political extremism,
Speaker 7: where the writer Moro on Gama describes himself as a consequentialist,
Speaker 7: defends discrimination, and advocates for quote ending mass migration and
Speaker 7: initiating mass deportations. He proposes a system of IQ or
Speaker 7: merit based nationalism, basically a country where citizenship is determined
Speaker 7: by IQ, and a program to advance quote ethical eugenics
Speaker 7: in the third world to promote IQ growth genetically on weves.
Speaker 4: Geez.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's also that's like amazingly this is one of
Speaker 2: these This is one of those sort of like you
Speaker 2: look at the Hong Kong protests and it's like they're
Speaker 2: on maoists on both sides, where both of like both
Speaker 2: him and his enemies also believe this.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean this is a certain strain of like rationalists.
Speaker 7: Post rationalist is really into this sort of like IQ
Speaker 7: merit based yeah, and intelligence and meritocracy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they're like and so are like a bunch
Speaker 2: of the tech people who are letting yeah, I stuff.
Speaker 7: I mean, this essay specifically is very disordered and it's thinking.
Speaker 7: I do not think a lot of other rationalists would
Speaker 7: would take some of the sort of beliefs and statements
Speaker 7: made in this essay at face value, or like, would
Speaker 7: not agree with the way that he would not agree
Speaker 7: with the way that Moron Agama like writes, writes about
Speaker 7: these sorts of like policies or ideas. It's very self contradictory.
Speaker 7: He writes both kind of in favor and not in
Speaker 7: favor of like I Q to vote or to become
Speaker 7: a citizen. It's all very kind of confused. And on Tuesday,
Speaker 7: Mornagama's public defender set in court that he has quote
Speaker 7: a history of autism and mental health illness, and that
Speaker 7: his actions quote appear to have been driven by an
Speaker 7: acute mental health crisis quote now Interestingly, two days after
Speaker 7: the Molotov cocktail attack, Sanltman's home was apparently targeted again
Speaker 7: in a drive by shooting. A man and a woman
Speaker 7: in their mid twenties have been arrested connected to that,
Speaker 7: and on Tuesday morning, a molotov cocktail was thrown at
Speaker 7: the entrance of a Teslas sales office in New Orleans,
Speaker 7: igniting a fire at the front door. No arrests have
Speaker 7: been made connected to that incident. I think I should
Speaker 7: also just briefly mention the warehouse fire thing, which I
Speaker 7: did a full episode on earlier this week that you
Speaker 7: can listen to, but kind of in short, just as
Speaker 7: for midnight. On April seventh, a twenty nine year old
Speaker 7: warehouse worker named Schammel Abdul Karim allegedly set a toilet
Speaker 7: paper warehouse on fire in Ontario, California, least by the
Speaker 7: company Kimberly Clark. Adilkarim allegedly filmed himself igniting three pallets
Speaker 7: of paper products on fire while saying aloud, if you're
Speaker 7: not going to pay us enough to fucking live or
Speaker 7: afford to live, at least pay us enough not to
Speaker 7: do this shit. All you had to do was pay
Speaker 7: us enough to live. There goes your inventory unquote. According
Speaker 7: to the DOJ, this fire caused over half a billion
Speaker 7: dollars in damages, it's five hundred million in profit and
Speaker 7: one hundred million in infrastructure. In the days after the fire,
Speaker 7: people started sharing viral clips of other warehouse fires across
Speaker 7: the country, asserting that a wave of copycat incidents were
Speaker 7: occurring where underpaid employees were setting their workplaces on fire. Now,
Speaker 7: none of these subsequent warehouse fires have yet been deemed arson.
Speaker 7: Most are still under investigation, but some do have suspected
Speaker 7: accidental causes, such as electrical failure, exploding lithium ion batteries,
Speaker 7: and improperly mixed waste. At least one fire was at
Speaker 7: an abandoned warehouse, so there was no scruntled worker setting
Speaker 7: his workplace on fire in that instance. Most certainly, and
Speaker 7: warehouse fires themselves, are actually pretty common. A report from
Speaker 7: the National Fire Protection Association found that from twenty twenty
Speaker 7: to twenty twenty four, an average of four warehouse fires
Speaker 7: occurred per day. The idea that the number of warehouse
Speaker 7: fires has suddenly increased is an instance of selective reporting,
Speaker 7: where a big national news story causes people to share
Speaker 7: local reports that appear connected even if there is no
Speaker 7: direct connection. This happens a lot with aviation incidents, where
Speaker 7: after news of an accident involving a big commercial airliner,
Speaker 7: people will share local news reports of plane crashes, even
Speaker 7: if these just involve small private planes which crash much
Speaker 7: more frequently.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 7: I wrote about the warehouse fire story and the viral
Speaker 7: misinformation associated with it because I've been pretty consistent about
Speaker 7: the need to have an accurate understanding of the world
Speaker 7: in order to change it. But also, even if viral
Speaker 7: claims of copycat fires are unfounded, the memes and the
Speaker 7: reactions to the story, like Luigi Mangioni, do demonstrate a
Speaker 7: form of class consciousness and do show an active willingness
Speaker 7: to rally behind such action. And the toilet paper arson
Speaker 7: story specifically is really compelling because this is just an
Speaker 7: everyday worker. This isn't like a maoist bombing plot, this
Speaker 7: isn't an anarchist affinity group. It's not hard to grasp
Speaker 7: the motivation and politics of a worker saying all you
Speaker 7: had to do was pay us a living wage. That said,
Speaker 7: passive engagement with content promoting individuals to venturism can serve
Speaker 7: as a cathartic substitute for taking political action, including the
Speaker 7: relatively tedious and difficult work of union organizing. Memes like
Speaker 7: this warehouse fire trend can have a positive outcome if
Speaker 7: the sort of energy that's channeled through this direct action
Speaker 7: and associated content could then be utilized towards actually building
Speaker 7: a labor movement instead of just being a way for
Speaker 7: influencers to attract engagement, which is why a lot of
Speaker 7: this story has kind of perforated through Reddit, TikTok, Instagram,
Speaker 7: and blue sky and Twitter. So that's kind of why
Speaker 7: I talked about the story the way I did in
Speaker 7: that episode. And if you want more details about this
Speaker 7: viral meme, you can check out that episode from a
Speaker 7: few days ago. Let's see, I think that's everything.
Speaker 5: There is no more news left.
Speaker 7: We did it. We did all the news, all right,
Speaker 7: We reported the news.
Speaker 5: Goodbye. If you want to email us, you can do
Speaker 5: so with your story tips. You can do that by
Speaker 5: emailing cool Zone Tips at proton me. If you want
Speaker 5: to email us with your marketing or to suggest that
Speaker 5: your boss be a guest on our podcast, just don't.
Speaker 7: We reported the news.
Speaker 10: Hey.
Speaker 1: We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
Speaker 1: now until the heat death of the universe.
Speaker 14: It could happen. Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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