Speaker 1: Hey everybody. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
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Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome to it could Happen Here podcast,
Speaker 2: which I'm recording at eight in the morning and best
Speaker 2: without any of my colleagues, and I'm joined today to
Speaker 2: discuss the technological aspects of the border regime by Austin
Speaker 2: Coca of Syracuse University and by Jake Quiener of the
Speaker 2: Electronic Privacy Information Center. Hi guys, good morning.
Speaker 3: How are you doing.
Speaker 2: James good, I'm very excited to talk more border stuff.
Speaker 2: I like covering this, even though it's sometimes terrible. So
Speaker 2: what I wanted to start off with is I think
Speaker 2: our listen as be familiar with CBP one, right, the
Speaker 2: most cursed cell phone up of all time, and both
Speaker 2: of you have written a lot and very insightfully about
Speaker 2: CBP one so I thought we could kind of do
Speaker 2: a little bit of a breakdown of a the issues
Speaker 2: with it and be like with the issues with it
Speaker 2: as an app, and then the fact that we're using
Speaker 2: an app being a problem inherently. So perhaps we could
Speaker 2: start with I know, Jake, you mentioned you wanted to
Speaker 2: talk a little bit about the design of the app.
Speaker 2: So in the process of sort of commissioning it and
Speaker 2: making it, should we start there?
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think this story is pretty interesting and
Speaker 4: unique because CBP one was built in house by a
Speaker 4: small team at the Office of Field Operations. Wow CBP Yeah,
Speaker 4: which is it is unique? Like, yeah, there's one other
Speaker 4: app that they built, and I don't really know of
Speaker 4: other mobile apps that have been rolled out with anything
Speaker 4: close to the size of CBP one that have been
Speaker 4: designed by a government agency.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's kind of an odd choice.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Conceptually, it's not something I'm critical of, Like, I think,
Speaker 4: if we're going to have a government that's providing services,
Speaker 4: it's good for them to do things in house. It
Speaker 4: means you're not relying on third parties who are able
Speaker 4: to like use information from the app and benefit off
Speaker 4: of it. But it doesn't mean you need the institutional
Speaker 4: competency to be able to design an app and so
Speaker 4: to just like provide a quick history. Basically, a CBP
Speaker 4: one app was built off of the framework of an
Speaker 4: older app called CBP Rome. That app was used just
Speaker 4: for people boating on the Great Lakes because technically, if
Speaker 4: you go like voting on Lake Michigan, you will leave
Speaker 4: the United States if you chase a fish over the
Speaker 4: boundary to Canada. Yeah, and CBP felt that it was
Speaker 4: very important the people who did that reported leaving and
Speaker 4: coming back into the United States. Yeah, right, questionable, but
Speaker 4: they built an app to let people do that, and
Speaker 4: the framework for that app used a GPS ping to
Speaker 4: verify when you're back in the US.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is a small app, you know.
Speaker 4: I don't think they encountered too many problems with it
Speaker 4: because you're maybe a couple hundred visitors a day. And
Speaker 4: on that framework they built out CBP one to do
Speaker 4: a couple of things. It's used for folks like customs folks.
Speaker 4: So if you're importing goods into the country, you can
Speaker 4: do some of that reporting through CBP one and also
Speaker 4: use it to apply for the and obtain the I
Speaker 4: ninety four Travel form, which is the forum that like
Speaker 4: most folks coming to the United States are going to
Speaker 4: need and then critically for our uses, is that if
Speaker 4: you are applying for asylum, you can use it to
Speaker 4: schedule an appointment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's been the of my reporting on it, is
Speaker 2: that the bulk of its use I think so, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: and so I'm still blown away with the fact they
Speaker 2: designed in house. It's crazy. Did you ever find that
Speaker 2: job did job posting? So people who designed it or
Speaker 2: did they just like get some people who were good
Speaker 2: to it to kind of take a swing at it.
Speaker 4: So, as far as I know from you know, I've
Speaker 4: talked to one of the people involved in the creation.
Speaker 4: I think Austin has as well. My understanding is that
Speaker 4: it was like an in house team that already existed. Okay,
Speaker 4: but Austin, you may be able to clarify that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's my understanding too. I think they have a
Speaker 3: technology team within the agency that was using technology in
Speaker 3: various ways. I don't think we have a full understanding
Speaker 3: of the scope of their responsibilities and the work that
Speaker 3: they've done. I think, to Jake's point, it is quite
Speaker 3: interesting that they produce something for the public It's not unusual,
Speaker 3: of course for large agencies to have teams in house
Speaker 3: that deal with all of the general technology call challenges
Speaker 3: that that every agency in twenty twenty three faces, you know, databases,
Speaker 3: you know, keeping government cell phones working and secure and
Speaker 3: all of that, all of that kind of thing. But
Speaker 3: a lot of the things that are public facing from
Speaker 3: federal agencies tend to be contracted out to a private
Speaker 3: vendor in some way. So this is it's quite unique,
Speaker 3: and but I don't think we have a false scope
Speaker 3: of what they what they are aren't producing in house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they that's interesting because they heavily rely on outside
Speaker 2: contractors for so much of it. Like there's a whole
Speaker 2: industry that you know, starts here in San Diego and
Speaker 2: goes over to Tucson and are probably further into New
Speaker 2: Mexico of people providing surveillance technology to border patrol and
Speaker 2: then you know, it goes over to the West Bank too.
Speaker 2: Lots of lots of it can be seen. Having talked
Speaker 2: about they sort of unique approach to design, it's probably
Speaker 2: a good idea to then talk about the implementation of
Speaker 2: zapp and it's kind of lacklusters and understandment it just
Speaker 2: fucking sucks. It's terrible. So like, in what many ways
Speaker 2: has it been unfit for the purpose that it's supposed
Speaker 2: to do. So I guess first we can talk about
Speaker 2: technological and inadequacies, and then more broadly about why this
Speaker 2: isn't a problem you can really solve with an app
Speaker 2: on a telephone that needs to broadband and Wi Fi.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I'll start by saying that I think a
Speaker 4: lot of what's happening with the problem the CPP one
Speaker 4: app is institutional blindness. So the people who design the app,
Speaker 4: I genuinely think want it to work well, and I
Speaker 4: think they're simply not asking the questions that you need
Speaker 4: to be asking. And when you design app like this,
Speaker 4: which is who's really going to be using it? What
Speaker 4: are their needs? What technology? What wireless services today? What
Speaker 4: phones are they using? Basically like, if you're someone on
Speaker 4: the southern border with very little money and probably an
Speaker 4: outdated phone, yes, are you going to be able to
Speaker 4: use this app?
Speaker 3: Not a great camera?
Speaker 4: And so I think the first place to start with
Speaker 4: that is simply the fact that the app requires a
Speaker 4: strong Wi Fi or sale signal to use, which is
Speaker 4: not always present. And I think Austin has some good
Speaker 4: insight into the problems with insufficient Wi Fi.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely, you know, I think some of what's interesting
Speaker 3: here is the way not only that the app relies
Speaker 3: on Wi Fi, but then the kind of real world
Speaker 3: social consequences here for how people then try to cope
Speaker 3: with these problems. I want to take one step back,
Speaker 3: just really quickly and discuss the world that CBP was
Speaker 3: dropped into, because there's some important context here. So as
Speaker 3: I know you've already covered James. You know, over the
Speaker 3: past three years, the dominant border control policy was titled
Speaker 3: forty two, a COVID era policy that was purportedly motivated
Speaker 3: by concerns about public health. This is where title forty
Speaker 3: two comes from. Title forty two of the US Code
Speaker 3: pertains to issues of questions of public health. It's not
Speaker 3: an immigration policy. It was a public health policy, although
Speaker 3: detailed reporting has I think pretty well established that it
Speaker 3: was more of a political moment of political opportunism rather
Speaker 3: than a legitimate public health concern. But regardless, that policy
Speaker 3: allowed Customs and Border Protection to effectively turn back anyone
Speaker 3: who arrived at the border, whether they attempted to cross
Speaker 3: unlawfully or not, and the primary human rights concern here
Speaker 3: was people who were seeking asylum, which is their right
Speaker 3: to do. One of the aspects of Title forty two
Speaker 3: was that there was a rare exemption clause built in
Speaker 3: that allowed people who were particularly vulnerable a.
Speaker 5: Particular humanitarian concern.
Speaker 3: To attempt to effectively apply for this kind of exemption.
Speaker 3: Until Anuary of this year, that process was run by
Speaker 3: nonprofit organizations. CBP had this sort of informal outsourced system
Speaker 3: where NGOs on the Mexican side of the border would
Speaker 3: effectively conduct massive amounts of intake and prioritization and triaging
Speaker 3: of these cases and then submit you know, names to
Speaker 3: CBP to a lot of people to come through ports
Speaker 3: of entry. CBP one effectively replaced that system in January,
Speaker 3: which meant that instead of migrants going through the NGOs,
Speaker 3: they would have to download this app, fill out the
Speaker 3: information and send it in. This is really important to
Speaker 3: mention because the groundwork was actually laid by a tremendous
Speaker 3: amount of effectively unpaid labor on the backs of NGOs
Speaker 3: on the southern side of the border. And you know,
Speaker 3: is it is fair and accurate to say that this
Speaker 3: was an extremely imperfect system and that there were absolutely,
Speaker 3: you know, significant issues with this. But one of the
Speaker 3: interesting things is that the role that NGO's played meant
Speaker 3: that people coming and seeking asylum would then in some
Speaker 3: ways be potentially connected with a broader network of NGOs
Speaker 3: support services, advocacy and so forth. So the introduction of
Speaker 3: CBP one purportedly bypassed the work of NGOs in screening
Speaker 3: people for the exemption process. However, NGOs still ended up
Speaker 3: performing all this kind of invisible labor because they're the
Speaker 3: ones who effectively were working with migrants to make Wi
Speaker 3: Fi available. And it's not just Wi Fi, it's actually
Speaker 3: charging your phone. When I visited shelters and camps on
Speaker 3: the southern side of the border at the end of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two, a big part of their having camps
Speaker 3: and shelters was actually providing electricity, you know, when I
Speaker 3: was there, and I know others have reported on this, James,
Speaker 3: I'm sure you've seen this too. You know, people would
Speaker 3: be huddled around the outlets because they needed to charge
Speaker 3: their phone, if their phone didn't work, if their phone
Speaker 3: wasn't charged, they didn't have access. Prior to CBP one,
Speaker 3: this was already a challenge because the primary form of
Speaker 3: communication with CBP was phone calls. They would individuals would
Speaker 3: get phone calls. In fact, I interviewed the Russian family
Speaker 3: on the Mexican side of the border and Matamotos in
Speaker 3: last November and a family now they and many of
Speaker 3: the other migrants I spoke with, and this was also
Speaker 3: true for many migrants. By the way, the families, typically
Speaker 3: the wife and children, if there were a family unit,
Speaker 3: would stay either in a hotel or a shelter or
Speaker 3: someplace that was more safe, and then the men would
Speaker 3: effectively have the nights on the street where they could
Speaker 3: actually get cell phone coverage and things like that. So
Speaker 3: CBP one introduced all of these kind of technological demands.
Speaker 3: It's not that they weren't there before, but I think
Speaker 3: it's a different matter when you go from interacting with
Speaker 3: a network of NGOs to say saying, now you're actually
Speaker 3: interacting with the US government and this is the only
Speaker 3: way that you're going to be able to enter the country.
Speaker 3: I think those demands were quite high. They've clearly had
Speaker 3: some tremendously negative impacts from migrants trying.
Speaker 5: To come through that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, I know have one here. But we've bought
Speaker 2: so many of these, like solar powered charging brick things
Speaker 2: and distributed those. But I have so many photos of
Speaker 2: people's hands reaching through the wall and people trying to
Speaker 2: charge to their phone on the other side of the wall,
Speaker 2: you know, And it's been a big demand for a while.
Speaker 2: But it's certainly when CBP were detaining people in places
Speaker 2: where you didn't have power and then expecting them to
Speaker 2: also communicate using their telephones, that became a particularly sort
Speaker 2: of ridiculous issue, very upsetting to see it like done
Speaker 2: like that. So, yeah, this app really isn't a solution
Speaker 2: for the problem we're facing, which is, as you said,
Speaker 2: like a three year backlug on people who have legitimate
Speaker 2: sign claims being able to make those asylum claims. And
Speaker 2: I guess can we talk about who it favors in,
Speaker 2: you know, implementing this system as a catchule, right, not
Speaker 2: an option, but the option Who does that favor and
Speaker 2: who does it not?
Speaker 4: Yeah, before we get there, I think it might be
Speaker 4: helpful to just run through, like what it is like
Speaker 4: to use CVP one. Oh, yeah, let's talk. You have
Speaker 4: to go through because it is a yeah, and that's
Speaker 4: when you're thinking about that, think that every step is
Speaker 4: a potential failure. Point right, every step you could have
Speaker 4: a glitch, And anytime you have a glitch happen, it's
Speaker 4: going to kick you out of the app and.
Speaker 3: You have to restart.
Speaker 4: So, if you're on a southern border you to apply
Speaker 4: for asylum, you've been walking for months from Venezuela, Guatemala,
Speaker 4: et cetera.
Speaker 2: You got your phone.
Speaker 4: The first thing you have to do is log into
Speaker 4: the app through login dot gov. That's the single sign
Speaker 4: on service that many government agencies use. H works fairly well,
Speaker 4: but you got you need, so you register yourself a profile.
Speaker 4: Then you're going to navigate over. Hopefully you speak one
Speaker 4: of the languages that CPP one is available in. As
Speaker 4: of now, I believe that's English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole,
Speaker 4: although they may have added a new language recently. You
Speaker 4: find the right place on the app, not always super clear,
Speaker 4: to submit your asylum application and try and schedule an appointment.
Speaker 4: And then you're going to have to fill out a
Speaker 4: ton of information. You're giving CBP, your name, addresses, people
Speaker 4: you know in the US, big form to fill out,
Speaker 4: including often information on like how vulnerable you are, so
Speaker 4: like are you pregnant, are you disabled? Have you been
Speaker 4: threatened in Mexico? Information that they want to use to
Speaker 4: prioritize you hopefully, and then you're going to need to
Speaker 4: take a facial photo that's going to go into CBP
Speaker 4: and Department Homeland Securities databases. It will be run against
Speaker 4: facial recognition searches that they populate with, like this massive
Speaker 4: facial recognition system, the Traveler Verification Service that can flag
Speaker 4: people who are on CBP's target list TSA's target list.
Speaker 3: You could be wrongfully flagged.
Speaker 4: By that because facial recognition is not a perfect technology.
Speaker 4: You're also going to take a facial liveness scan. It's
Speaker 4: related to facial recognition, but it is different. It's a
Speaker 4: different technology and it is untested. There's been no government
Speaker 4: agency that has evaluated facial liveness for bias, and that
Speaker 4: basically is trying to figure out are you a real
Speaker 4: person or are you like a picture of James that
Speaker 4: you're holding up because you're trying to get James an
Speaker 4: appointment and then sell it to them later or something.
Speaker 4: Do the facial liveness scan. That's been the sticking point
Speaker 4: where folks with darker skin and indigenous folks have not
Speaker 4: been able to get through it. We can talk about
Speaker 4: that a little later. Yeah, you're also going to do
Speaker 4: a GPS pain so your phone, pulling from both cell
Speaker 4: towers and GPS data, is going to try and establish
Speaker 4: your location and send it to CBP. That can create
Speaker 4: problems if you're pinging off a US cell tower, Suddenly
Speaker 4: it's less reliable, might look like you're in the US.
Speaker 3: And once you get.
Speaker 4: Through all these steps, then you're able to submit your
Speaker 4: information and you're in a lottery or whether or not
Speaker 4: you get an appointment.
Speaker 2: Great. Yeah, let's the photo thing. I think has been
Speaker 2: covered maybe I but we've been covered extensively because this
Speaker 2: is what I do. But I think maybe some people
Speaker 2: aren't aware of the complete inadequacy of those facial liveness scans.
Speaker 2: And I know some nonprofit since you want to have
Speaker 2: light booths which can help with that, but it's not
Speaker 2: you know, it's again like that money could be doing
Speaker 2: something more useful, right and then making like a like
Speaker 2: a Instagram booth for people who just want to use
Speaker 2: the exercise I llegal right to claim asylum. So let's
Speaker 2: talk about that that technology and how it's not working.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think one really important factor here, and the
Speaker 3: reason I wanted to paint some of the contexts was
Speaker 3: and partly selfish because as a geographer, I'm always very
Speaker 3: you know, eager to evangelize about the importance of understanding
Speaker 3: social geography for thinking about questions of you know, human
Speaker 3: rights and asylum and immigration, so the facial life. This
Speaker 3: test is a great example of that. So you know,
Speaker 3: it's hard to see this unless you've been on the
Speaker 3: ground in some of these places. But you know, again,
Speaker 3: just a historical thing I think will be pretty non controversial.
Speaker 3: Anti black racism is something that's existed for a very
Speaker 3: long time. It's not just in the United States. It's
Speaker 3: around the world obviously, yeah, not everywhere, but but you know,
Speaker 3: obviously through colonialism, through settler colonialism, and so forth. It's
Speaker 3: really shaped not just anti black racism, but anti black
Speaker 3: racism itself has produced many of the geographies that we have,
Speaker 3: from redlining, segregation, educational acts, all kinds of things. The
Speaker 3: way that the social world looks today is already shaped
Speaker 3: by these issues of racism. What that then means is
Speaker 3: questions like who has access to cell phone towers and
Speaker 3: fast Wi Fi, and who can afford up to date
Speaker 3: smartphones that can meet all of the threshold of require
Speaker 3: the technological requirements to this to use this apvenues of
Speaker 3: software is already distributed and fractured by questions of race
Speaker 3: and identity. What that means is, even if the facial
Speaker 3: liveness test worked perfectly and there were no issues with
Speaker 3: the software, which is not true, but let's even just
Speaker 3: assume that it is still true that acts to that
Speaker 3: technology and software is already structured by race. So one
Speaker 3: of the things I noticed, you know, having spent time
Speaker 3: along the border, was just how much even in some
Speaker 3: of the shelters and where black and African migrants had
Speaker 3: access to shelter, was itself much tended to be more
Speaker 3: pushed to the out outside of the where you're less
Speaker 3: likely to get good cell phone coverage, less likely to
Speaker 3: have electricity, much more likely that the roads even where
Speaker 3: I visited, were not paved. And I was there when
Speaker 3: it was raining in Reynosa one day, and you know,
Speaker 3: some of the places where African migrants and African families
Speaker 3: were staying, and black migrants, by the way from Latin America.
Speaker 3: Let's just remind everyone that there are black Latinos living
Speaker 3: in Latin America, right, were also pushed you know, more
Speaker 3: to the outskirts, and as a result of that, those
Speaker 3: factors contributed to access. So it wasn't just issues with
Speaker 3: theware itself, which may be there. It's hard for me
Speaker 3: to evaluate. It's not, you know, because it's not like
Speaker 3: we've done our own evaluation of that. But it's also
Speaker 3: all of those contextual factors. And I just want to
Speaker 3: make a fine point on this. We know that already.
Speaker 3: CBP should understand that already and understand the various social
Speaker 3: factors that impact access. So simply saying, for instance, if
Speaker 3: one wanted to take a defensive position and say, well, look,
Speaker 3: we ran the test, the software works as intended, there's
Speaker 3: no racial bias in the software. That doesn't get CBP
Speaker 3: out of the responsibility of saying yes, but you absolutely
Speaker 3: had all the information and a reasonable person should have
Speaker 3: known that this access to this app or had these
Speaker 3: kind of technological requirements and that access was not evenly distributed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's really important you said that, actually
Speaker 2: because a lot of reporters it does get reporters on.
Speaker 2: There are people doing great work, but like sometimes it
Speaker 2: gets missed because African migrants might not speak Spanish Black
Speaker 2: African migrants and a lot of reporters don't have the
Speaker 2: language skills to talk to people in I worked with
Speaker 2: a fixer who spoke a Romo and to Grayan and
Speaker 2: a lot of other, like five or six other languages,
Speaker 2: and that helped to get me an insight into the
Speaker 2: very difficult situation that lots of African people face. And
Speaker 2: you know that their isolation and the relative lack of
Speaker 2: resources even in what's a pretty resource spar setting for everyone,
Speaker 2: and Haitian people, I've spoken to a lot of Haitian people.
Speaker 2: Plus then you add that, like if I think about
Speaker 2: last month, the languages which I was able with through friends,
Speaker 2: through translation to speak to people with you know, Vietnamese
Speaker 2: command you is a dialect of Kurdish, French, right, Swahili, Spanish,
Speaker 2: evidently Dutch aside from Spanish, those are not covered. Maybe
Speaker 2: if you're French you can, I think it would be
Speaker 2: still hard to work in Haitian creole of you if
Speaker 2: you spoke sort of more mainland French, those are not
Speaker 2: covered by that, right, so you have to find a
Speaker 2: way to access that with via translation, And then it's
Speaker 2: very the information makes you incredibly vulnerable to whomever of
Speaker 2: you if you're asking someone to share. Right, It's imperfect.
Speaker 2: It's not a sufficient way to describe it, but it
Speaker 2: extremely flawed system.
Speaker 3: To Jake's point, like, I'm also like kind of open
Speaker 3: minded about, you know, about using an app like this.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's I mean Jake's right, I mean, if
Speaker 3: you're going to have a government in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: like having some reasonably up to date ways to do
Speaker 3: things is not an unreasonable expectation.
Speaker 5: But there's just so many blatantly.
Speaker 3: Obvious sort of shortcomings that are not difficult to identify
Speaker 3: in preparing this app and understanding what people are likely
Speaker 3: to need, so to have those gaps, and then also
Speaker 3: to roll out the app at a time when the
Speaker 3: same policy announcement that rolls out this app is also
Speaker 3: a policy announcement that says this is the only way
Speaker 3: to do it. I mean, imagine if like your new
Speaker 3: policy for like healthcare for some you know, particular healthcare
Speaker 3: you know, thing was like, we have to go through
Speaker 3: this route, and we know that eighty percent of people
Speaker 3: aren't going to be able to use this, but now
Speaker 3: this is the only treatment you have an.
Speaker 5: Option for I mean that would be that it's just strange.
Speaker 3: I think I think one thing to just think about
Speaker 3: creatively here is I can imagine a phase rollout of
Speaker 3: this where they did improve it over time, that they
Speaker 3: were adequate, you know, outlets for people who didn't fit
Speaker 3: into the categories that they had built into the app.
Speaker 3: And I think I think that would be a more
Speaker 3: complex and more nuanced than maybe a more more interesting
Speaker 3: way to do it. I just don't think I don't
Speaker 3: think it was rolled out responsibly in that way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I think we should be honest that beta
Speaker 4: testing an app on hundreds of thousands of the most
Speaker 4: vulnerable people in the world is incredibly responsible.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's just cruel. It's not in any way appropriate.
Speaker 2: So I guess we've talked a lot about this app.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about let's say you're fortunate enough to get
Speaker 2: an a sign of appointment here to enter the US.
Speaker 2: You would then, in most cases enter something which is
Speaker 2: called CBP's Alternatives to Detention Systems. Icis, sorry, Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2: Let's explain a little bit like why it's an alternative
Speaker 2: to detention? Why would one be detained if you haven't
Speaker 2: in theory, done anything wrong, well, in many people's perspective,
Speaker 2: have done anything wrong, I guess. And then what does
Speaker 2: ATD mean? And then we can get into some of
Speaker 2: the privacy issues and the way that it affects not
Speaker 2: just migrants but also everyone.
Speaker 4: Yeah, one thing before we go there, I think would
Speaker 4: be great, just closing the loop on the racial bias discussion.
Speaker 4: This is like an element of my advocacy that I
Speaker 4: talk about all the time in different areas of like
Speaker 4: how fish recognition is used when it's using the criminal
Speaker 4: justice system, is that there absolutely is bias in most
Speaker 4: facial recognition systems. They work really well for white men
Speaker 4: and increase increasingly less well basically as you run down
Speaker 4: the privileged spectrum. That's an element of how these systems
Speaker 4: are designed, right, It's they get fed a lot of
Speaker 4: images of white men and fewer images of other folks.
Speaker 4: That's fixable, right, like you can provide a training database
Speaker 4: that is a whole, you know, a good spread of people.
Speaker 4: It seems to not necessarily have been done with the
Speaker 4: facial liveness for CBP one, in part because the British
Speaker 4: company that designed it probably did not have access to
Speaker 4: a lot of images of the type of people who
Speaker 4: would be on the southern border. You're talking about like
Speaker 4: Indigenous Mexican folks v. Shield folks, just a very large
Speaker 4: number of different ethnicities. But any bias like that is,
Speaker 4: as Austin said, sitting on top of a series of
Speaker 4: other biases, right of structural biases. And so the result
Speaker 4: we see with a lot of facial recognition systems, and
Speaker 4: this facial ibness system is ceb going is no different.
Speaker 4: Is that a little bit of even to a little
Speaker 4: bit of bias in how the facial recognition works gets amplified,
Speaker 4: and it's amplified by social biases. It's amplified by the
Speaker 4: biases of people who run the system and people who
Speaker 4: interact with it every day, and then it's amplified by
Speaker 4: institutional blindness as well, failure to recognize a problem. We
Speaker 4: had facial recognition systems rolled out since on some levels
Speaker 4: since like the early to mid two thousands, and we
Speaker 4: didn't even know that facial that bias was a problem
Speaker 4: in any facial recognition system until twenty eighteen. So when
Speaker 4: you're thinking about and you're hearing about like bias testing
Speaker 4: and the fact that it's been bias tested. Those tests
Speaker 4: are never incredibly reliable because they're not done in the
Speaker 4: real world, they're not done with the people actually using
Speaker 4: the technology.
Speaker 3: They're done in a.
Speaker 4: Controlled setting, and they're not done by people who have
Speaker 4: a nuanced understanding of how the technology impacts people. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I think it's very important to remember that. Yeah, there's
Speaker 4: layers upon layers of bias, and they stack to make
Speaker 4: it harder and harder for certain people coming to the
Speaker 4: United States to get Again, what's that right? Often to
Speaker 4: just be safe, right, like some people, especially the less
Speaker 4: advantage you are sort of on a global scale, the
Speaker 4: likely the less safe you are waiting in Mexico to
Speaker 4: make an appointment for your asylum. Right, Like, if you
Speaker 4: can't get into a shelter, or you're from a group
Speaker 4: where you don't have community to look out for you, you're
Speaker 4: just that bit more likely to be taken advantage of
Speaker 4: or have something bad happen to you or your family. So, yeah,
Speaker 4: it'll stacks up, I guess, to make for a very
Speaker 4: unfortunate situation for people. Yeah, which means the consequence of
Speaker 4: having a glitch happen is way higher.
Speaker 2: Yes, I've personally known people who have had terrible consequences
Speaker 2: from what should have been a very very straightforward asylum
Speaker 2: application and very easy to process very rapidly. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: it's it's a whole it's a whole mess. And I
Speaker 2: know I'm trying to speak more to some of the
Speaker 2: folks who work with African migrants because I think that often, yeah,
Speaker 2: their stories just don't get told, especially at our southern border,
Speaker 2: where like I think obviously there's this like a lot
Speaker 2: of people like to report on the border but not
Speaker 2: leave New York or DC or wherever they have their
Speaker 2: studio or newspaper or what have you. And I think
Speaker 2: it's easy to miss that if you haven't, like Gosud said,
Speaker 2: been around a lot and seen all these things to
Speaker 2: stack up on top of one another. But yeah, it's
Speaker 2: an important topic that we don't especially as like I know,
Speaker 2: it doesn't get reported on because everyone likes to report
Speaker 2: on Ukraine and only Ukraine, Like there's more wars in
Speaker 2: Africa or wars in you know, certain people from Myanmar,
Speaker 2: it's very hard for them to get to the southern border.
Speaker 2: Actually from hearing from thousands maybe different cases where people
Speaker 2: can't leave Thailand. But again, the system you know, when
Speaker 2: you have a whole other alphabet that you're trying to
Speaker 2: access the system in and it doesn't work for you
Speaker 2: then and that makes it incredibly difficult for those people.
Speaker 2: And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call a
Speaker 2: cliffhanger in the podcasting industry. Because we will be back
Speaker 2: tomorrow with more on how ICE tracks migrants and how
Speaker 2: that tracking of migrants can impact other people, people who
Speaker 2: live with them, people in their communities. I hope you're
Speaker 2: joined us then, thanks by hi everyone to James, and
Speaker 2: I am back with Austin and Jake to discuss ICE's
Speaker 2: Alternatives to two tent program today. If you didn't listened
Speaker 2: to yesterday's episode on CBP one and a little bit
Speaker 2: of at D, then I suggest starting there because there's
Speaker 2: a lot of context that you might be missing in
Speaker 2: today's episode. Let's talk about alternatives to detention a bit
Speaker 2: that's this is a this is a once inside the
Speaker 2: US system, right, so it's a little different. It's people
Speaker 2: who've managed to get through the significant hurdles post by
Speaker 2: CBP one. What happened to them? Then?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know ICE has the option of detaining
Speaker 3: people at immigrant Detention facilities. This includes people who are
Speaker 3: facing deportation. Most people who are facing deportation.
Speaker 2: Can you explain that the Title eight thing, because people
Speaker 2: might not be for I've tried to explain that before,
Speaker 2: but I'd love you to explain that again, just so
Speaker 2: people are clear regarding detention, well regarding like finding a
Speaker 2: defensive asylum application and why people might be doing that,
Speaker 2: like post like the post Title forty two sort of
Speaker 2: paradigm for processing asylum.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, Okay, So Title forty two, which we talked
Speaker 3: about earlier, has gone away, which means now Title eight
Speaker 3: is not like Title forty two. It's the part of
Speaker 3: the US law which is about immigration. Title eight never
Speaker 3: went away, but it is now the dominant section of
Speaker 3: code that is shaping border enforcement and immigration processing. When
Speaker 3: someone comes through CBP one and they get an appointment,
Speaker 3: they go to their interview for the entry. Then they
Speaker 3: come into the United States. They have not made an
Speaker 3: asylum application yet, so they still have to do that.
Speaker 3: And the United States has two options at this point.
Speaker 3: There's two agencies that can make decisions, can receive asylum
Speaker 3: applications and make decisions. USCIS, which is historically the primary
Speaker 3: one US Citizenship and Immigration Services. They have what are
Speaker 3: called asylum officers whose job it is to adjudicate assylum applications,
Speaker 3: interview people and so forth. Or people the United States
Speaker 3: can file removal proceedings deportation cases effectively against these individuals
Speaker 3: and put them into immigration court, where an immigration judge
Speaker 3: can accept an assiled application and adjudicate the assigled application.
Speaker 3: The major difference here is that in the court room
Speaker 3: in the immigration court system, that individual is going in
Speaker 3: front of a judge and has an ICE officer, an
Speaker 3: enforcement related kind of attorney effectively arguing against them in court. Technically,
Speaker 3: they're not supposed to be arguing against them per se.
Speaker 3: They're supposed to be finding the right outcome, but effectively
Speaker 3: they're arguing against them, almost like they're, you know, trying
Speaker 3: to apply for asylum and immigration court or in like
Speaker 3: a criminal court setting. Almost not really, but almost right.
Speaker 3: So here's the two main differences when those individuals. You know, historically,
Speaker 3: when people have been put into the immigration court system,
Speaker 3: ICE does have the option of detaining them, or at
Speaker 3: least detaining them for an early part of that process
Speaker 3: until they meet some certain tolds. The Biden administration has
Speaker 3: decided largely at this point not to go that route.
Speaker 3: That has not been true in the past. The Trump
Speaker 3: administration's detention numbers were up well over sixty thousand people
Speaker 3: detained the day at one point. Right now, it's about
Speaker 3: half that it's up from the beginning of the year.
Speaker 3: But it's about almost thirty thousand people are in detention now,
Speaker 3: and people seem to be moving through even when they
Speaker 3: are detained, relatively quickly. This is where alternatives to detention
Speaker 3: come in. We should not think of alternatives to detention
Speaker 3: as alternatives detention. In fact, ICE itself has said on
Speaker 3: their website and in testimony before Congress, alternatives to detention
Speaker 3: is not an alternative to detention. It is an alternative
Speaker 3: to unsupervised release. So it's what it really is is
Speaker 3: an electronic monitoring program that allows the agency to effectively
Speaker 3: keep track of everyone that they want to keep track of. Now,
Speaker 3: the number of people in this alternatives to detention program
Speaker 3: is an extremely small fraction of the number of asylum
Speaker 3: systems in court. It is nowhere near, you know, saturating
Speaker 3: the total number of people that they could be. One
Speaker 3: wonders whether they consider five percent monitoring some kind of
Speaker 3: massive success when you know, when most people are actually
Speaker 3: not monitored. But one major change has happened, which is
Speaker 3: in addition to the smartphone app that migrants use to
Speaker 3: even try to seek asylum, now migrants also have to
Speaker 3: download an app called smart Link. That is now this
Speaker 3: one is not built in house. This is contracted out
Speaker 3: from an organization called BI that effectively mostly contracts with
Speaker 3: the fminal Justice system, but they also contract with ICE.
Speaker 3: So they have to download an app on their phone
Speaker 3: and they have to check in regularly using a similar
Speaker 3: but different kind of facial technology. They can communicate with
Speaker 3: deportation officers, they can get alerts about their immigration court here,
Speaker 3: all this stuff, but the crucial part of that is
Speaker 3: under threat of detention or redetention, redetaining migrants have to
Speaker 3: check in on their smartphone. So it means that that
Speaker 3: same phone that one you know, struggled with on the
Speaker 3: periphery of Vernosa trying to just even get into the
Speaker 3: United States to pursue what is their legal right to
Speaker 3: pursue asylum, now they're glued to their smartphone, worried that
Speaker 3: if they don't respond to, you know, a text message
Speaker 3: or an alert or a ping on their phone, they
Speaker 3: could be redetained and you know, potentially deported in some way.
Speaker 3: So that that's currently how the system. So it's not
Speaker 3: for everyone. It's not as if everyone follows this exact
Speaker 3: same path, but it is true, and I think this
Speaker 3: is the big takeaway. It is true that asylum seekers
Speaker 3: today will start interacting with the US government, may start
Speaker 3: interacting with the US government on their smartphone as far
Speaker 3: south as Mexico City, and then continue to have their
Speaker 3: primary contact and interaction with the US government on their
Speaker 3: smartphone all the way through the border and to Columbus, Ohio,
Speaker 3: New York City, Seattle, Washington. So the smartphone has become
Speaker 3: effectively this kind of what I am trying to think
Speaker 3: of and conceptualize as a kind of mobile border. They
Speaker 3: never where, migrants never really arrive, and they never really leave.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of not to get too sort of
Speaker 2: I guess not conspiratory, it's their own word. But like
Speaker 2: since two thousand and one, the border has come to
Speaker 2: you more and more and more, right, and you don't
Speaker 2: have to go to the border for the border to
Speaker 2: surveil you. And we can see this in hundreds of ways.
Speaker 2: Can we backtrack a little bit, just because our listeners
Speaker 2: will be familiar with some of the human stories that
Speaker 2: surrounded the end of Title forty two. Some of those people,
Speaker 2: to my understanding, entered the United States. I'm doing heavy
Speaker 2: air quotes between ports of entry under Title forty two,
Speaker 2: but then were detained. That it is fairly obvious they
Speaker 2: thought they were being detained. It looked very much like
Speaker 2: they were being detained. They weren't allowed to leave. CBP
Speaker 2: apparently would argue that they were not detained because the
Speaker 2: conditions were wofully inadequate by their own detention policies, which
Speaker 2: don't exactly provide for luxurious conditions to begin with, And
Speaker 2: so what would the situation be for those people because
Speaker 2: they haven't They were trying, at least some people I
Speaker 2: spoke to to make CBP one appointments from a place
Speaker 2: of detention, which I don't think one can do. Maybe
Speaker 2: one can if one's not on a list or something,
Speaker 2: but you still have to get there right and you
Speaker 2: can't leave south or north to access.
Speaker 3: You have to be in Mexico to schedule and appointment
Speaker 3: on CBP one.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, these guys were in between the border walls.
Speaker 5: As Jake knows better than I do.
Speaker 3: I mean the issue with being along the border, and James,
Speaker 3: you know this because I mean you're there, which cell
Speaker 3: tower you're on if you're close to the border.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, tricky, isn't it.
Speaker 2: I got so I use T mobile. That's a free
Speaker 2: buzz marketing. But they I have roam free roaming on
Speaker 2: my phone, right, very useful in the work I do.
Speaker 2: But I remember in twenty eighteen, I was in Mexico
Speaker 2: a lot, and then I was obviously also just riding
Speaker 2: my bike a lot in places along the border, and
Speaker 2: they were like, you've been in Mexico every day this month.
Speaker 2: You don't live in America. We're going to cancel your
Speaker 2: phone contract. I had been in Mexico like some days,
Speaker 2: but they had all just think, oh, you're pinging Mexican celtoer.
Speaker 2: Yeah what I was on a bike ride, like in
Speaker 2: East County, San Diego. I wasn't in Mexico, but my
Speaker 2: phone thought, I was, so, yeah, the same thing can
Speaker 2: happen in reverse, right, You're your phone can pink American
Speaker 2: cell towers when you're in Mexico. So those people might
Speaker 2: appear to be in the US when they're not. But
Speaker 2: in that situation, they couldn't make a cbp U apployment.
Speaker 2: So I guess they're assumed to have. It's the same
Speaker 2: as if they crossed the fence somewhere else and been
Speaker 2: detained ten miles inside the United States, right, what would
Speaker 2: their process be?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I think if we're talking about right now,
Speaker 4: this is actually really important. Is that the new rule
Speaker 4: called Circumvention of Lawful Pathways that replaced Title forty two
Speaker 4: supposed to happen like three years ago. Yeah, and it
Speaker 4: finally got passed. Basically, there were a number of court
Speaker 4: challenges in which Red States tried to keep Title forty
Speaker 4: two in place. The same states, mind you, who were
Speaker 4: very critical of COVID protections, were extremely worried about lifting
Speaker 4: the ban on people in the southern border coming in
Speaker 4: because of COVID concerns. Part of what that rulemaking did
Speaker 4: was it worked a fundamental change in the way that
Speaker 4: asylum seevers work and so like just context asylum claiming
Speaker 4: asylum is a human right, is a right guaranteed by
Speaker 4: international law, is the right guaranteed by US law that
Speaker 4: you can show up and say, hey, I am not
Speaker 4: safe in the country that I'm coming from and I
Speaker 4: need asylum in the States, and you have a right
Speaker 4: to do that, and for the US or whatever country
Speaker 4: you arrive in to process your claim and decide if
Speaker 4: it's valid or not. So one of the changes in
Speaker 4: this rule making was that they are applying what's called
Speaker 4: the government is applying a presumption of ineligibility to people
Speaker 4: seeking asylum, which means that if you did not show
Speaker 4: up in the proper manner the United States. That means
Speaker 4: if you did not use the CBP one app to
Speaker 4: claim asylum before you got to the border, and if
Speaker 4: you did not apply for asylum in every country that
Speaker 4: you traveled through along the way. If you traveled from
Speaker 4: Guatemala and you did not pay for apply for asylum
Speaker 4: in Mexico before you got to the border, you are
Speaker 4: automatically deemed ineligible and your asylum claim will be denied
Speaker 4: with no hearing, with no opportunity to say, hi, I'm
Speaker 4: here because like my husband is a police officer somewhere
Speaker 4: in Guatemala and he's trying to kill me, and I
Speaker 4: can't stay in the country, right And so that is
Speaker 4: a fundamental change in the way the law works. And
Speaker 4: that's the starting point of someone who has frost illegally
Speaker 4: not used CBP one and then is picked up's and
Speaker 4: that's new in the law in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so they would immediately be filing like a
Speaker 2: defensive asylum application to prevent that removal.
Speaker 4: Yes, And basically at that point you're trying to argue
Speaker 4: for one of a tiny subset of exemptions, yes, which
Speaker 4: there is virtually no guidance on how to implement those exemptions, right. Like,
Speaker 4: one thing you can claim is that you cross without
Speaker 4: a CVP one appointment because you couldn't use the app
Speaker 4: The idea of trying to prove to someone at the
Speaker 4: Customs of Border Protection that you were technologically enabled to
Speaker 4: use an app seems basically impossible, given that the only
Speaker 4: proof that you have is that you didn't get the appointment, right,
Speaker 4: that you weren't able to submit it. That's not a
Speaker 4: strong record that a lawyer would like to argue on,
Speaker 4: I will tell you.
Speaker 2: As a lawyer.
Speaker 4: And so the result is basically that people who have
Speaker 4: certainly legitimate asylum claims are likely to be turned away
Speaker 4: because they didn't comply with the proper process.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Even people we heard dabig. I can't remember where
Speaker 2: it was now where Customs officials in Mexico have been
Speaker 2: threatening to do people for longer than it so they
Speaker 2: couldn't make it in time for their CBP one appointment,
Speaker 2: right that they had already made. They're gone through that
Speaker 2: arduous and bias process, made the appointment, and then people
Speaker 2: were being detained unless they paid a bribe. And then
Speaker 2: then if those people had crossed like legally in between
Speaker 2: ports of entry, that would be very harder than to
Speaker 2: prove that they could that that had happened at all, right,
Speaker 2: like what had caused him to do that? So those
Speaker 2: people are in an even more difficult scenario. If people then,
Speaker 2: through any of these processes, find themselves in a ATD
Speaker 2: alternative to detention, there are numerous ways it could be surveyed.
Speaker 2: Alston mentioned that the phone app which I think is
Speaker 2: the perhaps the most recent and most common one. Another
Speaker 2: one is ankor monitors. Right, you can get like a
Speaker 2: parole kind of ank style of ankor monitor And I
Speaker 2: know that, Jake, you've written a little bit about some
Speaker 2: of the consequences of those. Do you want to talk
Speaker 2: about that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, first of all, an overview of the ATV
Speaker 4: program is that there are different levels of monitoring and
Speaker 4: all of them are I think should functionally be viewed
Speaker 4: as incarceration, which is to say that you are not
Speaker 4: You've not been released from custody, just the location of
Speaker 4: your custody has been moved from a prison to somewhere
Speaker 4: out in the world where you're being surveilled and your
Speaker 4: movements are potentially tracked. But you are still in many
Speaker 4: ways as vulnerable as you would be if you're actually
Speaker 4: in a jail or a prison, and so ICE has
Speaker 4: the option to decide at their discretion which level of
Speaker 4: monitoring you get. The levels of monitoring, the highest level
Speaker 4: is an ankle bracelet or an ankle shackle, that is
Speaker 4: a GPS device that is battery power, has potentially only
Speaker 4: a few hours of charge on it, you might get
Speaker 4: a day of charge off of it, and is constantly
Speaker 4: monitoring your location and sending that location back to both
Speaker 4: ICE and to the contracting staff of BI Industries. This
Speaker 4: prison technology company, who ICE has hired as case managers,
Speaker 4: basically people who are providing support for ICE on keeping
Speaker 4: track of the usually eight to ten thousand people who
Speaker 4: are on the ankle monitor system.
Speaker 3: If you don't get quite that.
Speaker 4: High level, or if you get de escalated over time,
Speaker 4: you applied ICE and you say, hey, I've been on
Speaker 4: my ankle bracelet for like three months, I've not straight
Speaker 4: outside the area I'm supposed to go. I've always responded
Speaker 4: to check ins. Then they might bump you down to
Speaker 4: the smart Link app, also provided by BI Industries on
Speaker 4: an extremely lucrative contract. Their last contract was like two
Speaker 4: point two billion dollars. And that smart link app is
Speaker 4: either going to be loaded on your smartphone if you
Speaker 4: have a smartphone that can handle it, or you'll be
Speaker 4: given a smartphone buy ICE and told to use that
Speaker 4: smartphone to check in. You will be required to check
Speaker 4: in on a sort of regular schedule. I don't have
Speaker 4: a strong sense for how often that is. Could be daily,
Speaker 4: could be less. To check in, you're going to open
Speaker 4: the app up, it's going to ping your GPS location,
Speaker 4: send a dice, and then you're going to take official
Speaker 4: recognition photograph. That photograph will be compared to make sure
Speaker 4: that you're actually you. That photograph is also potentially capturing
Speaker 4: your surroundings, the people you live with, whoever's like in
Speaker 4: the frame, and then you can communicate with your case manager.
Speaker 4: On the app, you can potentially find information on when
Speaker 4: your immigration court hearings are.
Speaker 3: That type of thing.
Speaker 4: It's the middle level of monitoring. The lowest level of
Speaker 4: monitoring is voice print based. So basically, every once in
Speaker 4: a while, whatever or your dedicated check in time is,
Speaker 4: you're going to call into ICE on your phone. You're
Speaker 4: gonna say Hi, I'm Jake Wiener, I'm checking in, and
Speaker 4: ICE will run a voice print analysis and make sure
Speaker 4: that you are the person who say you are and
Speaker 4: confirm your location.
Speaker 3: At any point, if.
Speaker 4: That system screws up, you are potentially you're then in
Speaker 4: violation of the terms of your release. And at any
Speaker 4: point ICE, if you've there's been an error, an ICE
Speaker 4: officer can show up and take you right back to jail.
Speaker 2: Let's talk a little bit about that you've mentioned BI. Right,
Speaker 2: you've both mentioned BI. This is not a government agency,
Speaker 2: this is a contractor. But potentially they have access to
Speaker 2: your photograph, details of your asylum case and were we
Speaker 2: very clear on like certainly with the ICE issued phones,
Speaker 2: people seem to have concerns like what is being monitored
Speaker 2: and what isn't being monitored on the phone, right like,
Speaker 2: is it only when they have the app open? Is
Speaker 2: everything on their phone now subject to a review by
Speaker 2: ICE and potentially also by this third party contractor? Right? So,
Speaker 2: how are those contractors vetting their person now? How are
Speaker 2: they're making sure that these this very sensitive information is
Speaker 2: secure in private like it should be.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I have no idea how they're vetting their staff.
Speaker 4: They're not exactly forthcoming. One aspect of the surveillance that
Speaker 4: I think is worth noting is that both ICE and
Speaker 4: BI don't just have your whether you're on the smartphone
Speaker 4: or if you're on the ankle monitor. They don't just
Speaker 4: have your last GPS ping. They have your historical movements,
Speaker 4: which means if you're on an ankle monitor, they have
Speaker 4: a record of every single place you went for the
Speaker 4: entirety of the time since you've been on an ankle monitor,
Speaker 4: and they also know where you are right now a
Speaker 4: little more limited on a smartphone, but that's information that's
Speaker 4: highly sensitive. You're location and especially your historical location information
Speaker 4: and tell you all kinds of things like what church
Speaker 4: this person goes to, have they been to Planned parenthood
Speaker 4: or recently?
Speaker 3: Who do they associate with?
Speaker 4: Like what houses are they visited, and for ICE, that
Speaker 4: information is very valuable because most migrants don't live alone.
Speaker 4: They live in community with other people. Some of those
Speaker 4: people may be undocumented. And so as a migrant, you
Speaker 4: are now worrying every time you check in. Am I
Speaker 4: exposing someone who's undocumented to ICE surveillance? Am I exposing myself,
Speaker 4: you know, to just like tagging somewhere that ICE doesn't
Speaker 4: want me to be and maybe an officer is going
Speaker 4: to show up for a check Because of that, it
Speaker 4: is creating a ton of insecurity and a system that
Speaker 4: is already very insecure, and the like psychological harms of
Speaker 4: that are manifest. You know, there's good studies like internationally
Speaker 4: that your risk of suicide and depression goes way up
Speaker 4: you're on electronic monitoring, that your access to jobs goes
Speaker 4: wait out. You you know, there's stigma with wearing an
Speaker 4: ankle brace also concerns that if you take a job
Speaker 4: you won't be able to check in at your home
Speaker 4: at the appropriate time. It looks like you're absconding, right,
Speaker 4: So this level of monitoring is messing with people's lives
Speaker 4: and really fundamental and deeply cruel ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, and these like like you talked about sort
Speaker 2: of how how your phone can make you a snitch. Like,
Speaker 2: mixed status families are very common, right, and it's fifty
Speaker 2: in migrant diaspora is so like it could be someone
Speaker 2: in your family who have a different immigration status from you,
Speaker 2: and to do what you need to do, you might
Speaker 2: be putting that person at risks. And it's a very
Speaker 2: scary thing to have that that tag on you at
Speaker 2: all times. And like you said, it's not just where
Speaker 2: you where you are, but where you've been and ice
Speaker 2: if I'm right, like they they they keep that data, right,
Speaker 2: That data isn't anonymized or sort of like destroyed. They
Speaker 2: can keep that data forever if they want to.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's inputed into their systems.
Speaker 4: And that hangs around for I think the retention period
Speaker 4: of seventy five years. Okay, yeah, great, depends a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This technology that goes into these right, that's facial recognition.
Speaker 2: I know they also have a number plate license plate
Speaker 2: in America recognition. They have.
Speaker 3: That.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to think which are other technologies they have,
Speaker 2: cell phone site simulation. A lot of that can also
Speaker 2: be transferred to local police agencies right through some of
Speaker 2: these like, they're not tech transfer programs, that's the wrong word.
Speaker 2: But some of these grants and programs that ICE and
Speaker 2: DHS more broadly has. Does that mean that local police
Speaker 2: agencies could also have access to some of this data?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I think there's two different types of programs
Speaker 4: and it's worth breaking them apart. There are grant programs
Speaker 4: that are providing state and local police with the technology itself. Right,
Speaker 4: that's like money to buy a license plate reader and
Speaker 4: pop it out in your community. There are is also
Speaker 4: the overlap between beteral and special Department of Homeland Security
Speaker 4: ices databases the systems that they house all of this
Speaker 4: information in, and state and local police they have their
Speaker 4: own databases. Those databases are very often linked or accessible,
Speaker 4: which means that monitoring. You know, your local police department
Speaker 4: has a log of everyone and they arrest very often
Speaker 4: that log is sent to ICE and vice versa.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: So it's one of the main ways that this has
Speaker 4: done is through fusion centers, which is basically a federally
Speaker 4: funded state run technology center embedded in state or local
Speaker 4: police departments where you have the Department of Homeland Security
Speaker 4: agents who have access to their set of databases and
Speaker 4: state and local police department officers who have access to
Speaker 4: their set of databases sitting right next to each other,
Speaker 4: and those people can then talk and be like, yo,
Speaker 4: I need you to run this search into your system,
Speaker 4: which is theoretically only for federal use, but suddenly it's
Speaker 4: getting used for state law enforcement and vice versa. One
Speaker 4: of the biggest problems with this is that cities that
Speaker 4: want to be sanctuary cities that don't want their police
Speaker 4: departments reporting and handing people over to ICE when they
Speaker 4: arrest undocumented folks, city government is unable to control their
Speaker 4: local police departments and the information that is sent to ICE.
Speaker 4: So even a sensible sanctuary cities where the city says
Speaker 4: we're not going to report this information, the way that
Speaker 4: these databases are tied together, especially license plate reader databases,
Speaker 4: but as well as arrest databases, all sorts of stuff
Speaker 4: means that the city government functionally cannot create a sanctuary city.
Speaker 2: Right which, just in if we talk about my situation,
Speaker 2: I'm in San Diego, are mayor is terrible and want
Speaker 2: to turn all our street lights into spies? Right like,
Speaker 2: put put little put little cameras on them so that
Speaker 2: they can watch what we're doing, and like this information
Speaker 2: feeds into we know exactly where the future center is actually,
Speaker 2: Like I wrote about this in twenty twenty when the
Speaker 2: cops took someone's phone and used gray key to crack
Speaker 2: it open. So like the Yeah, the exposure for people
Speaker 2: who in the US who are not citizens of the
Speaker 2: US is very high with these things. The last thing
Speaker 2: about these databases I wanted to talk about was those
Speaker 2: aren't the only databases that ICE has access to, right,
Speaker 2: can you explain how they've they've managed to acquire some
Speaker 2: data about other people and whether or not that is
Speaker 2: strictly speaking legal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So we have a massive problem in America with
Speaker 4: data broker in which is yes, companies the biggest, the
Speaker 4: worst are Lexus and Nexus and Tops and Writers West Law.
Speaker 4: But there are hundreds and hundreds of data brokers who
Speaker 4: vacuum up all of the information that they can off
Speaker 4: the Internet, off of utility records, off of publicly available information,
Speaker 4: and basically make massive databases that are tracking to the
Speaker 4: best that they can at every aspect of people's lives.
Speaker 4: Credit reporting agencies, the people who like give you your
Speaker 4: credit score, are also data brokers. They're pulling in all
Speaker 4: this information so that they can assign you your credit
Speaker 4: which is like where your credit cards are, how much
Speaker 4: money you have. All this information is super valuable, right,
Speaker 4: and it's valuable to advertisers. It's valuable, yeah, like for marketing,
Speaker 4: but it's also really valuable for law enforcement because you
Speaker 4: have everything from like addresses where people are spending money.
Speaker 4: Often you can pull from advertising like phone advertising data,
Speaker 4: people's GPS location, and a number of these services have
Speaker 4: sold access to ICE, both like Thompson, Ridge Is Clear
Speaker 4: Lexis Nexus has several products that they sell to ICE,
Speaker 4: as well as locate x which is now Babble Street,
Speaker 4: which is specifically a GPS location company. And ICE has
Speaker 4: basically managed to obtain through contracts information that they could
Speaker 4: not legally obtain through a warrant, right, which is to
Speaker 4: say that if you a police officer and ICE officer
Speaker 4: want to get information on a single person, you know
Speaker 4: you want their GPS location off their phone, you need
Speaker 4: to go to a court and say, hey, I'm looking
Speaker 4: for James Stout and I think that he committed a
Speaker 4: crime or an immigration he brook immigration law. Here's my evidence.
Speaker 4: I need a warrant. You cannot get a warrant for
Speaker 4: mass monitoring. That's like a fundamental part of how the
Speaker 4: Fourth Amendment US Constitution works is that it has to
Speaker 4: be individualized or very close to individualized. But there is
Speaker 4: currently no law that says that ICE can't just go
Speaker 4: buy the information on the open market and completely evade
Speaker 4: the warrant requirement. So that's what's going on with Lexus
Speaker 4: and Nexus, with locate Acts as well as some social
Speaker 4: media surveillance companies.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, are the same database is that I as
Speaker 2: a journalist use when I'm you know, wondering if this
Speaker 2: Nazi is still living in this place, or you know,
Speaker 2: finding the sense of Confederate veterans to check if they
Speaker 2: still work at the Citadel University. So I think a
Speaker 2: good way to finish this up will be to talk
Speaker 2: about once you're in, you've gone through this process, right,
Speaker 2: you've CVP one, you've at d'd, and you enter into
Speaker 2: sort of the asylum hearing or you have your your
Speaker 2: various different asylum processes. Can Austin, can you give us
Speaker 2: a very broad overview of like the likelihood of success
Speaker 2: and maybe a couple of I know you're very good
Speaker 2: at monitoring the factors that determine the likelihood of success
Speaker 2: in an asylum application through TRACK. This is a great
Speaker 2: place to plug track if you want to. Can you
Speaker 2: talk about like how likely folks are to be successful
Speaker 2: in that asylum application process?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we monitor this federal data related to immigration
Speaker 3: other areas through TRACK Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse
Speaker 3: University where I'm at.
Speaker 5: I'm also a research fellow at American University.
Speaker 3: So we have a kind of a fun partnership right
Speaker 3: now looking at different angles of connecting data to research
Speaker 3: on Latin American Latino migrants. And so we keep really
Speaker 3: close track of what's happening with the immigration courts. We
Speaker 3: don't get data. Remember earlier I described as two tracks
Speaker 3: of seeking asylum. We don't currently get data on that
Speaker 3: first track where people go through asylum. Officers at USCIS
Speaker 3: were interested in it, but they actually publish not comprehensive,
Speaker 3: but they published decent amount of data. We would certainly
Speaker 3: like to get more, but it's the immigration courts that
Speaker 3: we have focused very heavily on for the last decade,
Speaker 3: I would say. And so we get very detailed, granular
Speaker 3: data from the immigration courts on a monthly basis that
Speaker 3: allows us to see exactly what's happening. I would say
Speaker 3: currently the success rate denial rate, however you want to
Speaker 3: put it in immigration court for asylum seekers is about
Speaker 3: fifty two or fifty three percent get denied, about forty
Speaker 3: seven to forty eight percent are granted asylum, but that
Speaker 3: varies widely by immigration court and by nationality. So migrants
Speaker 3: from Central America, El Salvadorjundara, Squatemala tend to have much
Speaker 3: higher denial rates seventy eighty percent, ninety percent, where as
Speaker 3: nationals from let's say Ukraine, China, some other countries, Cuba
Speaker 3: have very high success rates. Haiti actually is a good
Speaker 3: example of a country that has very low grant rates,
Speaker 3: very high denial rates, even though much like northern Mexico,
Speaker 3: where we actually send people that we deport very often,
Speaker 3: there are all kinds of travel warnings.
Speaker 5: You know, the United States government does not.
Speaker 3: Want people going to Haiti because it's too dangerous, but
Speaker 3: we don't even have a problem deporting people back there
Speaker 3: who are seeking asylum, right and so that's what we've
Speaker 3: seen in recent years. The denial rate was as high
Speaker 3: as seventy percent during the Trump administration, and so it's
Speaker 3: certainly much better under the Biden administration. I do want
Speaker 3: to say though, that in addition to sort of policy
Speaker 3: related issues that may drive this factor, geographic concerns, people
Speaker 3: are much more successful in New York City than say
Speaker 3: Houston or Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 5: But one of the really.
Speaker 3: Important factors here is, in addition to all of that,
Speaker 3: there's a threshold question, which is a lot of people,
Speaker 3: including a lot of people who are recently arriving to
Speaker 3: the United States, if they can't get an attorney, it's
Speaker 3: very unlikely that they will even be able to file
Speaker 3: in the sylum application in the first place. So that's
Speaker 3: fifty you know, that forty eight percent rant rate is
Speaker 3: for people who file in the sylum application. We're not seeing,
Speaker 3: you know, the people who don't even who aren't even
Speaker 3: able to file in the silum application in the first place.
Speaker 3: And one of the most concerning things recent developments is
Speaker 3: that the Biden administration, I think not for no reason
Speaker 3: at all. I mean, there's two point two million pending
Speaker 3: cases in the immigration course right now. The Biden administration
Speaker 3: is trying to push cases too faster. This is something
Speaker 3: the Obama Innistry administration tried Trump administration tried it, Biden
Speaker 3: administration tried it, and every single time the cases get accelerated,
Speaker 3: including a large number of family cases. Unfortunately, they simply
Speaker 3: don't have time to get an attorney and file a
Speaker 3: good stylent application. So what we're seeing as an addition
Speaker 3: to like geography, nationality, does someone get an attorney. It's
Speaker 3: also speed, just how fast the cases go through. And
Speaker 3: the reality is if you try to force an asylum
Speaker 3: case through the immigration courts or frankly even through USAIS
Speaker 3: in a matter of weeks, people are just not going
Speaker 3: to win. You can't speed things up and maintain a
Speaker 3: fair system.
Speaker 5: You just can't.
Speaker 3: It's also not great for people to wait, you know, five, six, seven,
Speaker 3: eight years for a hearing or for a conclusion.
Speaker 5: So that's not ideal either.
Speaker 3: But you know, trying to force cases through and you
Speaker 3: know two or three months is just doesn't work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've spoken to Peeve. I spoke to a friend
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks ago who was saying that now
Speaker 2: he's seeing people newly. Right, he's been in the United
Speaker 2: States for a few years. I've gone through the process,
Speaker 2: but he's seeing people come in and the amount to
Speaker 2: pay for a lawyer if they want to get a
Speaker 2: private lawyer is going up, and like if people only
Speaker 2: have a few months or don't have the right to work,
Speaker 2: there's just no way for them to obtain that much money.
Speaker 2: And then the people who are doing it sort of
Speaker 2: I guess sort of in for nonprofits are just overwhelmed
Speaker 2: by the amount of demand. So yeah, those people are
Speaker 2: in a really tough situation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think we should talk a little bit about
Speaker 4: the fundamental unfairness of this system.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 4: So, like immigration judges are administrative law judges. They are
Speaker 4: not like real judges approved by Congress. They are hired
Speaker 4: by an administrative agency, which effectively means that there are
Speaker 4: much lower bars to who can be an administrative law judge.
Speaker 4: You also, as an immigrant, do not have a right
Speaker 4: to an attorney sitting in front of an administrative law judge.
Speaker 4: And one of the things that the data throws out
Speaker 4: is that in every aspect of the system, having an
Speaker 4: attorney is the strongest indicator of a good result. So
Speaker 4: that's like how likely peopot people are to know about
Speaker 4: their appointments. It's actually extremely hard if you are someone
Speaker 4: who does not speak English and has limited money and
Speaker 4: limited access to the system. And frankly does not understand
Speaker 4: how the American immigration law system works, which is reasonable
Speaker 4: because virtually no one understands how it works. It's really
Speaker 4: difficult to know, Like when you have a court take
Speaker 4: much less to show up and to understand what kind
Speaker 4: of information that you need to collect and present to
Speaker 4: a judge that will be convincing to this person, who
Speaker 4: again is not an Article three judge that's been appointed
Speaker 4: by Congress, not the type of judges that you or
Speaker 4: I would have our cases heard by if we were
Speaker 4: arrested or if we just like file the lawsuit. And
Speaker 4: so access to a judge is like the number one
Speaker 4: best indicator for whether your asylum claim is going to
Speaker 4: be be successful or not, or any kind of claim
Speaker 4: and the immigration system, frankly, and we do not provide
Speaker 4: that to people who don't have the money to hire
Speaker 4: a lawyer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is fundamentally unjust right.
Speaker 4: We also there's like not a guarantee that you will
Speaker 4: have a quality translator. Yes see, you will be able
Speaker 4: to show up to court and at all understand what
Speaker 4: is happening in your legal case, which is a huge
Speaker 4: barrier to be able to get a good results to
Speaker 4: be able to communicate who you are and why you
Speaker 4: will not be safe if you are deported from the country.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, we heard that in May where they were
Speaker 2: like they were basically asking if anyone could come and
Speaker 2: help trans migrant advocacy groups. You know, does someone speak Comanagi,
Speaker 2: does someone speak Turkish? You know, just does someone speak Vietnamese?
Speaker 2: Could they come down and help this person with their
Speaker 2: initial interview? Which it's just not a not a just
Speaker 2: or refrom reasonable way to do these things. But yes,
Speaker 2: that's where it's out right now. I guess I think
Speaker 2: most people probably aren't aware of much of that, so
Speaker 2: it's good to explain how fundamentally and jest it is.
Speaker 2: So if people want to learn more about this, if
Speaker 2: people want to follow along, I know you both do
Speaker 2: some writing online. Where can they find you and where
Speaker 2: can they find more of your writing about this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you.
Speaker 4: Can find my writing on the Electronic Privacy Information Center
Speaker 4: EPICS website that is EPIC dot org. You can find
Speaker 4: me and my one hundred and fifty followers on Twitter
Speaker 4: at at real Jake Wiener that's w I E n
Speaker 4: e R. And hopefully in the near future you'll be
Speaker 4: able to find some scholarship for me as well.
Speaker 2: Oh cool, Yeah, using the Donald Trump Twitter format. Great.
Speaker 2: How about you, Austin, where can people find you? You
Speaker 2: have many more followers on Twitter dot com.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's Austin Cooper. Last name is koc h
Speaker 3: e er. Peculiarity of that name is in my favorite
Speaker 3: because you know, pretty easy to search. But actually this
Speaker 3: is great timing. I just had an article published this week,
Speaker 3: detailed one on CBP one. It's called Glitches and the
Speaker 3: Digitization of Asylum. It's an academic article, but it is
Speaker 3: open access, so there's no paywall there. Glitches and the
Speaker 3: Digitization of Asylum. It's also up on my Twitter page.
Speaker 3: I'm on Twitter at ac Coker, so a c k
Speaker 3: O c h e R. And I also write pretty
Speaker 3: regularly on substack, and that's like a weird thing to say.
Speaker 3: I'm slightly embarrassed to mention it, except that I'm not
Speaker 3: because this academic article emerged actually out of stuff that
Speaker 3: I was initially exploring on substack. So I really loved
Speaker 3: that format for writing because it's given me a chance
Speaker 3: to work out concepts and ideas before they even go
Speaker 3: into like pure ifew print. So if people want to
Speaker 3: get ahead of the curve on what I'm thinking, go
Speaker 3: check that out too. Nice and don't forget to visit
Speaker 3: track t R A C dot, s y R dot
Speaker 3: ed U to get all kinds of data on immigration courts,
Speaker 3: alternatives to detention, detention statistics and so forth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I like try this Telegram channel as well. Right,
Speaker 2: it's like the only time I can go on Telegram,
Speaker 2: I don't see dead people, So I appreciate it for that.
Speaker 3: That's right. We put stuff out on Telegram and WhatsApp too,
Speaker 3: So if you don't want to have to be on Twitter,
Speaker 3: if you don't want to have to get an email
Speaker 3: on something like that, you just want to get a
Speaker 3: little if you like some of those other messaging platforms.
Speaker 3: We have announcement threads on there. You can't interact, you
Speaker 3: just you just get the little notification. But we try
Speaker 3: that we try to diversify as much as possible, especially
Speaker 3: with the muscification of Twitter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's pretty a good move. Thank
Speaker 2: you very much for your time both to you. I
Speaker 2: really appreciate it. That was very insightful. Thank you, James. Hello,
Speaker 2: welcome to the podcast. It could happen here. It's me
Speaker 2: James and Scharene today. Hi Serene, Hi James, Hi Sarene. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's lovely to have you. Thanks for introducing yourself.
Speaker 2: A little confused, but he always talking to you.
Speaker 6: I've done podcasts for a long time and I never
Speaker 6: actually know how to introduce myself. But I'm really happy
Speaker 6: to be doing this episode with you because you're a
Speaker 6: very good episode partner.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Sreen. I am also happy to beating this
Speaker 2: episode with you. I think you're an excellent episode partner.
Speaker 6: What are we talking about that just because I said it?
Speaker 2: No, I like him. It's good, it's good. Do we
Speaker 2: help people learn things?
Speaker 6: Well, today you're going to learn some more things about Palestine.
Speaker 6: It's been a minute since we had an update, and
Speaker 6: I mean, surprise, surprise, things aren't good. So we're going
Speaker 6: to talk about some recent stuff that's been happening. There's
Speaker 6: we mentioned some stuff that we've mentioned before in other episodes,
Speaker 6: like the Nekaba or just the ethnic cleansing that happened
Speaker 6: in nineteen forty eight. Also some politics stuff. So if
Speaker 6: you are interested in getting more detail and you haven't
Speaker 6: listened to those, I would recommend listening to those just
Speaker 6: for more context if you desire.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, I think you're diving in probably at
Speaker 2: the deep end if if you start here. But we're
Speaker 2: going to dive in at the deep end. So earlier
Speaker 2: this month, Omar Katten twenty seven, a father of two
Speaker 2: children who worked as an electrician for the local municipality,
Speaker 2: was killed when about four hundred Israeli settlers marched down
Speaker 2: thaumas Aya's main road, selling cars, homes, crops and trees
Speaker 2: ablaze as they went. It's not clear if you're shot
Speaker 2: by IDF troops or settlers of both stormed the village
Speaker 2: carrying weapons. Under international law, Israeli settlement to illegal, however,
Speaker 2: it's really Prime Minister of Benjamin net and Yahoo announced
Speaker 2: plans to build a thousand new housing units in the
Speaker 2: settlement of Eli in response to the deadly shooting of
Speaker 2: for Israelis by two Palestinian gunmen on Tuesday, the twentieth
Speaker 2: of June. The suspected assailants were late killed. One of
Speaker 2: them was quote unquote neutralized by civilian the other by
Speaker 2: the IDEF. But it appears the plan is to place
Speaker 2: the whole nation again. Our auntwer to terror is, to
Speaker 2: strike it hard and to build our country. Net Yeah,
Speaker 2: who said his right wing government is dominated by settler
Speaker 2: leaders and supporters. But his statements came just days after
Speaker 2: the government gave far right finance minister there's a little
Speaker 2: smotorridge sweeping powers to exploit the construction of legal settlements
Speaker 2: by passing masses that have been in place for almost
Speaker 2: twenty seven years. The violence in thaumas ayah Am I
Speaker 2: saying that, right.
Speaker 6: I just looked it up. Yeah, totumos Aya is it's
Speaker 6: a town in the West Bank for context people that
Speaker 6: don't know, so, yeah, it's it's in the Ramola and
Speaker 6: LB the governor in the West Bank.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to get a little bit more into
Speaker 2: it of why this is all happening. We just wanted
Speaker 2: to kind of paint the picture for you first of
Speaker 2: all of the big events that have happened. I guess.
Speaker 2: So this violence against the people of this town and
Speaker 2: the shooting of Forestraelis followed an incursion by the IDF
Speaker 2: and Israeli border forces into the Genine refugee camp. It
Speaker 2: was an operational scale not seen for decades. So did
Speaker 2: you tear gus s Dun grenades and an attack helicopter.
Speaker 2: Seven Palestinians were killed, nearly one hundred were wounded.
Speaker 6: And I feel like this is not the first time.
Speaker 6: If you've been following any Palestinian news that you've heard
Speaker 6: of Janine the refugee camp, or that it's being attacked,
Speaker 6: it might sound familiar. I'll get into it more later,
Speaker 6: but Sharene abou Ocle was actually killed while reporting there.
Speaker 6: So I want to get into just why exactly Israel
Speaker 6: keeps raiding the Janine refugee camp in particular, and I
Speaker 6: want to talk about the camp's history, why it's getting targeted,
Speaker 6: and why the latest raid was different than the ones
Speaker 6: before it. Janine is slowly becoming a symbol of Palestinian resistance.
Speaker 6: It was originally established in nineteen fifty three to house
Speaker 6: Palestinians who were ethnically cleansed during the Nekaba of nineteen
Speaker 6: forty eight, which force seven hundred and fifty thousand people
Speaker 6: from their homes in order to make way for the
Speaker 6: establishment of Israel. And again we've talked about this in
Speaker 6: other episode. You want to revisit those but essentially he
Speaker 6: was just a very perfect example of ethnic cleansing and massacres,
Speaker 6: in genocide and displacement. So the camp has seen much
Speaker 6: unrest over the decades, and it was nearly destroyed in
Speaker 6: two thousand and two when Israeli soldiers ambushed it during
Speaker 6: the Second Antifada. According to a Human Rights Watch investigation,
Speaker 6: at least fifty two Palestinians, including women and children, were
Speaker 6: killed during this period of time. In two thousand and two,
Speaker 6: during the Second Anthi Fada, there were also at least
Speaker 6: twenty three Israeli soldiers killed and several others injured that
Speaker 6: were reported. And since then, Janine has recently seen intensifying
Speaker 6: attacks by Israeli forces, especially since twenty twenty one, and
Speaker 6: it has slowly, along with Gaza, become a major symbol
Speaker 6: of Palestinian resistance. At this point, Palestinians are really fed
Speaker 6: up up with the enaction of the Palestinian Authority the PA,
Speaker 6: which is the government entity meant to oversee and quote
Speaker 6: unquote protect the Palestinians within its governance. The Palistine Authority
Speaker 6: was formed in nineteen ninety four following the Gaza Jericho
Speaker 6: Agreement between the PLO and the Government of Israel, and
Speaker 6: it was only intended to be a five year interim body.
Speaker 6: Further negotiations were then meant to take place between the
Speaker 6: two parties regarding its final status. According to the Oslo Accords,
Speaker 6: the Palestinian Authority was designated to have exclusive control over
Speaker 6: both security related and civilian issues in the Palestinian urban areas,
Speaker 6: which are referred to as Area A, and only Palestinian
Speaker 6: control over Palestinian rural areas, which is called Area B.
Speaker 6: The remainder of the territories, including Israeli settlement, the Jordan
Speaker 6: Valley region and bypass roads between Palestinian communities, were to
Speaker 6: remain under Israeli control aka Area C. East Jerusalem was
Speaker 6: excluded from the accords. Negotiations with several Israeli governments had
Speaker 6: resulted in the Authority gaining further control in some areas,
Speaker 6: but that control was then lost in some areas when
Speaker 6: Israel retook several strategic positions during the Second Antifaba. At
Speaker 6: this point, the Palestine Authority is an authoritarian regime that
Speaker 6: has not held elections in over fifteen years, and it
Speaker 6: doesn't really stand in the way of the Israeli government
Speaker 6: and the crimes they commit. So what concerns Israel is
Speaker 6: that in Janine and elsewhere. Young Palestinians are increasingly taking
Speaker 6: up arms because they see no other way out of
Speaker 6: the pressure of occupation, and they're very disillusioned with the
Speaker 6: ineffectiveness of the Palestinian authority.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a really important way too. Like
Speaker 2: when we talk about like especially Palestinian people taking up arms,
Speaker 2: right or expecting these new groups which have come in
Speaker 2: the last couple of years, Right, there's that Lions Day group.
Speaker 2: I think they're more like nobles. Janine Brigades is another one.
Speaker 2: It's in the context of like government failure or state
Speaker 2: failure in I guess when we look at like the
Speaker 2: formation of states, right, when there's the it's called social contracts,
Speaker 2: the area, right, the idea that when we go and consent,
Speaker 2: which we don't do, but we don't ever, like we
Speaker 2: don't have a chance to consent to being in a state, right,
Speaker 2: like very obviously if you're from Palestine, you're aware of this,
Speaker 2: Like we were supposed to give up some of our
Speaker 2: freedom and get some security, but the Palestinian authority has
Speaker 2: repeatedly failed to protect people in Geneine right and in
Speaker 2: lots of other places too, and so like this response,
Speaker 2: like this response is taking up aren't is in the
Speaker 2: context of state failure, right, Like people are trying to
Speaker 2: protect their own communities when there's been a complete failure
Speaker 2: by the people who are supposed to protect them, the
Speaker 2: people who is and that's both the PA and then
Speaker 2: like the broader the international community is kind of a
Speaker 2: pointless phrase. It doesn't really mean anything. But like international
Speaker 2: law is also a pointless phrase. It doesn't really mean anything,
Speaker 2: which I'm getting too far afield here, but like the
Speaker 2: amount of times people in my replies on Twitter will
Speaker 2: be like, this is against international law, and like are
Speaker 2: you going to go and fucking enforce it? Then? Good?
Speaker 6: Like guess if that matter is at that point, Yeah,
Speaker 6: it's just so good.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter, like what we know it's bad. I
Speaker 2: don't like, that's not what's up for debate? That what's
Speaker 2: for debates? What the fuck are you going to do
Speaker 2: about it? How are you going to stop it? And
Speaker 2: like these people have decided that the way they're going
Speaker 2: to stop it is by taking up arms, and like,
Speaker 2: evidently Israel sees them as terrorists. Evidently there are some
Speaker 2: groups inside Palestine who have killed civilians and done shit,
Speaker 2: which is is you know, like, it's not very nice. Also,
Speaker 2: the idea of killed civilians all the time, right, one
Speaker 2: of them is funded and armed by your taxes, and
Speaker 2: so like, yeah, it's it's an understandable response. And the
Speaker 2: response of the IDF is to sort of paint the
Speaker 2: whole of Janine as harboring quote unquoite terrorists, right, which
Speaker 2: which is, and then to do these attacks which often
Speaker 2: cause civilian casualties, which is not that distinct from suggesting
Speaker 2: that Israel is a terrorist state, right, and then attacking Israel,
Speaker 2: which like, but one of these things is more broadly
Speaker 2: condemned is terrorism, and one is not as broadly condemned
Speaker 2: as terrorism. When then they're not, to my eye, that
Speaker 2: morally different. I guess, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 6: I agree, and I also think, no, it makes a
Speaker 6: lot of sense. I think remembering the imbalance that it
Speaker 6: starts at is so important because Palestine has no army,
Speaker 6: it's not backed by any rich ass nation, it's not
Speaker 6: trained by anything, and it's an extremely unbalanced unquote battle.
Speaker 2: No one's deploying an Apache helicopter when when the idea
Speaker 2: of killers journalist right.
Speaker 6: Like exactly, and yeah, like sharenaut Oarckley was a US citizen.
Speaker 6: Not that it matters, but it should matter just in
Speaker 6: the idea of what the US can do or like
Speaker 6: the outrage it can have, but it doesn't.
Speaker 2: Do anything as a journalist who goes to dangerous places
Speaker 2: and is a US citizen. Now, like it's fucking infuriating
Speaker 2: and obviously like and particularly thing that like you know,
Speaker 2: like daddy government is coming to save me. I'm not
Speaker 2: like you know, if you if you're laboring under that illusion,
Speaker 2: you're probably a little bit naive. But it is just
Speaker 2: incredibly frustrating to see the value of some quote unquote
Speaker 2: American lives, like it's it's it's always wrong to shoot journalists,
Speaker 2: of course, but like it's just in the US basically
Speaker 2: condoning that. It's yes, as again, this isn't first if
Speaker 2: I can get like Arab journalist that the US who
Speaker 2: is a US citizen who has been killed by an
Speaker 2: authoritarian regime, that the US had done fuck all about.
Speaker 6: Yeah, No, I think it's just a slap in the
Speaker 6: face for her family and just the entire community of
Speaker 6: like both Arabs and journalists and that crossover there. But
Speaker 6: I did want to mention just the terrorism. Acts on
Speaker 6: both sides are obviously terrible. I just think you have
Speaker 6: to remember where they started and the imbalance that is there,
Speaker 6: especially if the entity that is supposed to protect the
Speaker 6: Palestinians isn't doing shit and the only way Palestinians can
Speaker 6: fight back or defend themselves is with violence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 6: It's just frustrating when people point out the violence on
Speaker 6: just the Palestinian side, and we'll get into the news
Speaker 6: version of what that means and then biases of what
Speaker 6: that means it a little bit, but yeah, I just's
Speaker 6: explaining exactly why these groups have risen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's just to be an absolute fuckingd weep for
Speaker 2: a second. The introduction to Wretched of the Earth that
Speaker 2: John Paul starts Were wrote, it's a France fan on
Speaker 2: book is fantastic when talking about violence and violence in
Speaker 2: the decolonial process, and like how it's very nice that
Speaker 2: these colonial states, apartheid states like Israel speak in the
Speaker 2: language of rights. Yeah, and they encourage to colonize people
Speaker 2: to make their claims in the language of rights. But
Speaker 2: every time they fucking do, they get met with violence, right,
Speaker 2: And it is entirely understandable that when the state speaks
Speaker 2: you only in violence, you will reply using the same
Speaker 2: language that is spoken to you with right, Like that
Speaker 2: that is how decolonial struggles have been, right from Algeria
Speaker 2: to Vietnam to Palestine. And like this isn't a particularly
Speaker 2: like under theorized concept. It's there and Pano in the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty that's always something I like to suggest people read.
Speaker 2: I think it's a very good kind of distillation of
Speaker 2: what's occurring.
Speaker 6: Yeah, No, I like that you mentioned that because it
Speaker 6: does seem like that this is like a Palestinian problem
Speaker 6: that they have, that they are violent and that they
Speaker 6: hate the other side, and it is just another good
Speaker 6: example of the effects of colonialism, and like that's the
Speaker 6: occupied people and their only choice of like retaliation. Anyway,
Speaker 6: I don't want to get into that too much, but
Speaker 6: I do want to emphasize why exactly that they were disillusioned,
Speaker 6: the Palestinian youth, especially during this time, because the IDEF
Speaker 6: has been extremely violent and the PA still is really
Speaker 6: inactive and doesn't do anything. So that's kind of the
Speaker 6: reason why there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we have a little more on Shury neverorrectly
Speaker 2: if you want.
Speaker 6: To oh yeah, we have an episode about her, I believe,
Speaker 6: and I'm going to mention her a little bit here.
Speaker 6: The gen and refugee camp houses armed fighters and they
Speaker 6: are from several factions, but this means Israeli's They consider
Speaker 6: it a hub for what they call terrorist activity rather
Speaker 6: than resistance, so the entire camp is then dubbed a
Speaker 6: terrorist site. But most of the people what the IDEF
Speaker 6: has killed are not engaging in any sort of violent activity,
Speaker 6: and in some cases they are clearly marked as press
Speaker 6: wearing a bulletproof vest and a helmet, like El Jazeera
Speaker 6: journalist Sharina bu Akle, for one, she was shot dead
Speaker 6: by an Israeli sniper in May twenty twenty two, and
Speaker 6: in her case, the IDF said they were aiming at
Speaker 6: armed Palestinians who were shooting at them and responding with fire,
Speaker 6: and after I don't know a lot of inconclusive proof
Speaker 6: in the IDF sticking to that story. A ballistics analysis
Speaker 6: proved that that story wasn't true and there was no
Speaker 6: fire coming from the other side. Regardless, no one cares
Speaker 6: about that, and this happened all in Janine. So I
Speaker 6: think it's very clear why this camp has become a
Speaker 6: symbol of resistance simply because the atrocities that have happened
Speaker 6: there are tremendous and they keep fighting back. And I
Speaker 6: think it's an example of how exactly a Palestinian symbol
Speaker 6: comes to be, like Gaza, like this, whatever it is.
Speaker 2: I wanted to include a coat from the Israeli military
Speaker 2: spokesman Ran Kouchov. He told Army Radio, which I guess
Speaker 2: is not exactly a kind of neutral arbit to here,
Speaker 2: that she was filming and working for a media outlet
Speaker 2: amidst arm Palestinians. They were armed with cameras, if you
Speaker 2: will permit me to say so, which like no, like
Speaker 2: we should not not fucking permit someone because like you know,
Speaker 2: I'll go to all kinds of dangerous spots with a camera.
Speaker 2: Like I've never fucking shot someone with a camera, because
Speaker 2: it's a fucking camera, right, Like it doesn't it And
Speaker 2: that's not what cameras do. They take videos.
Speaker 6: It's the most like I can't believe that's an actual
Speaker 6: quote that's someone said and got away with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what the fuck is wrong? Like what it's just
Speaker 2: incorrect operation of the human brain to use the fucking
Speaker 2: phrase arm with camera like what is wrong with you?
Speaker 2: It's I know, people get really people got really mad
Speaker 2: briefly when Russians were shooting journalists in Ukraine in the
Speaker 2: star of the conflict, and like I guess they were
Speaker 2: kind of as we mask off about this, but like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a fucking camera. If if your security is threatened
Speaker 2: by someone filming the ship that you do, it's because
Speaker 2: you shouldn't be doing it, and you know you shouldn't
Speaker 2: be doing it right, like and again, like I've experienced that,
Speaker 2: like people people you know, doing stuff they don't want
Speaker 2: to be filmed and getting mad that I'm filming it.
Speaker 2: But like maybe if you're not prepared to defend what
Speaker 2: you're doing, you shouldn't be doing it. You don't, you know,
Speaker 2: you don't suggest that the camera is the camera is
Speaker 2: it's a new straw object here. It's not the camera
Speaker 2: that shot a woman in the head.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean that sentence is infuriating the fact that
Speaker 6: literally it says they were amidst armed Palestinians and then
Speaker 6: you couldn't you could stop there and people can just
Speaker 6: like click out and read and like move on their
Speaker 6: day thinking that they had fucking guns. And the next
Speaker 6: sentence is literally they're armed with cameras, Like are you
Speaker 6: I don't know. That's just so infuriating to me that
Speaker 6: that's like a real thing that was said and accepted.
Speaker 2: It seems to be like almost deliberately insulting or I
Speaker 2: don't know, like it's definitely an attack on Like I
Speaker 2: don't know. If you're a journalist and you don't see
Speaker 2: that of an attack on all of us, then you know,
Speaker 2: made me examine your biases, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 6: And then the ballistics analysis that I mentioned earlier where
Speaker 6: she was it showed that where she was shot there
Speaker 6: were several targeted shots, one of which hit her head
Speaker 6: because there were shots in the tree that was behind her,
Speaker 6: so she was clearly targeted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because she was shot by a sniper at the
Speaker 2: back of one of very PCs. Right, they have a
Speaker 2: little little like murder hole, and she was shot from
Speaker 2: two hundred meters to which is not very far with
Speaker 2: a magnified sign and like, yeah, you don't just it
Speaker 2: wouldn't look like that, I guess, Like three little holes
Speaker 2: behind where her head was suggested that someone fired like
Speaker 2: a single shirts targeted, not just like spraying it sprain
Speaker 2: bullets around. Yeah.
Speaker 6: I don't want to talk about it too much because
Speaker 6: there it is, that's on the topic of this episode.
Speaker 6: But I do want to just say that I think
Speaker 6: it's so ironic that the idea is supposed to be
Speaker 6: this most advanced military body, this highly trained thing, and
Speaker 6: then at the same breath their defenses sometimes they made
Speaker 6: a mistake. Oops, you know what I mean, Like they
Speaker 6: made this grave mistake. They thought she was carrying a
Speaker 6: gun or she was around people with guns. I just
Speaker 6: think that's a very silly I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm being shure. It's true, I suppose, and you can.
Speaker 2: You can make mistakes. But if you make mistakes, you
Speaker 2: own them. You could still be like, oh, yeah, we
Speaker 2: we one hundred percent fucked up, and like we need
Speaker 2: to examine how we fucked up.
Speaker 6: You know, that's just their defense. So many times it
Speaker 6: gets really fucking old. But Okay, before we continue and
Speaker 6: talk about the recent attack in Janine, let's take our
Speaker 6: first break and we'll be right back. And we're back.
Speaker 6: Let's go back to talk about the latest raid on
Speaker 6: the Janine refugee camp. The Israeli Army launched its latest
Speaker 6: raid on the Janine refugee camp in the early hours
Speaker 6: of Monday, June nineteenth. Five people, including a fifteen year old,
Speaker 6: were dead by the time it withdrew its forces in
Speaker 6: the afternoon. Others died the following day because of their injuries.
Speaker 6: Several journalists were shot at and they were surrounded and
Speaker 6: one was injured. This raid ironically took place near the
Speaker 6: location where Sharin A Blockley was killed. Several ambulances were
Speaker 6: also fired upon with live ammunition, and at first they
Speaker 6: were denied access to the injured, which is nothing new
Speaker 6: to the IDF. They do this consistently with the block
Speaker 6: medical aid to reach the people that are injured. The
Speaker 6: Israeli armies said the raid was to arrest two suspects,
Speaker 6: one of whom was a former Palestinian prisoner, Asim Abu
Speaker 6: ad Haija, who was the son of an imprisoned Hamas leader.
Speaker 6: I just want a quick reminder of refresh. I know
Speaker 6: I say this in most of the episodes about Palestine,
Speaker 6: especially the ones I've done in the beginning of this year,
Speaker 6: but in twenty twenty two, Israeli forces killed more than
Speaker 6: one hundred and seventy Palestinians, including at least thirty children
Speaker 6: in occupied East Jerusalem and in the West Bank, and
Speaker 6: this is described as the deadliest year for Palestinians and
Speaker 6: those living in those areas since two thousand and six.
Speaker 6: Since the start of twenty twenty three, Israeli forces have
Speaker 6: killed at least one hundred and sixty Palestinians, including twenty
Speaker 6: six children, and it's June. The death toll includes thirty
Speaker 6: six Palestinians killed by the Israeli army during a four
Speaker 6: day assault on the besieged Gaza strip between May ninth
Speaker 6: and May thirteenth of this year. I just want to
Speaker 6: put that into contexts because if twenty twenty two was
Speaker 6: the deadliest year for Palestinians in the last twenty years
Speaker 6: and we're essentially already there by six months into this
Speaker 6: new year, it's just it's really disturbing and it's really
Speaker 6: heartbreaking that it's truly there's no slowing down. And this
Speaker 6: raid is a great example of them just like upping
Speaker 6: the ante. And what was different about this raid. Israeli
Speaker 6: offences into Janine are nothing new, but it appeared that
Speaker 6: the raiding soldiers were caught off guard this time. Shortly
Speaker 6: after the raid began, videos showed an Israeli military panther
Speaker 6: APC being hit with a roadside improvise explosive device, and
Speaker 6: there is a video of this. I haven't seen it
Speaker 6: because I just personally don't want to, but I said
Speaker 6: there if you choose to see it. Military helicopters then
Speaker 6: began shooting and launching rockets and flares while surveillance aircraft
Speaker 6: hovered above. It was the first time in twenty years
Speaker 6: that Israel deployed helicopter gunshow in the West Bank. By
Speaker 6: the end of the raid, reports suggested that at least
Speaker 6: five Israeli military vehicles had been damaged by explosive devices
Speaker 6: and bullets deployed by armed Palestinians. This was the first
Speaker 6: time the IDF was met with this understandable degree of
Speaker 6: resistance and defense Enginine, and their response was overwhelming. In return.
Speaker 2: Hi everyone, it's James and Train again and we're here
Speaker 2: today for a little update. It's the third of July
Speaker 2: as we're recording this. Just because there's been a significantly
Speaker 2: larger IDF incursion into the Genine refugee camp, and because
Speaker 2: we know this is coming out at the end of
Speaker 2: the week, we wanted to make sure you had a
Speaker 2: little bit more update to date information, so as best
Speaker 2: I can kind of bes together what happened is that
Speaker 2: some It'sraeli military vehicles were hit with an ID bomb,
Speaker 2: right roadside bomb and explosive device, and Israel responded by
Speaker 2: going fully ham on a scale that we haven't really
Speaker 2: seen since the second to fighter. So there's air attacks,
Speaker 2: droned helicopters, armored vehicles. I saw them using like an
Speaker 2: anti tank missile against a house. Saw videos of armored
Speaker 2: bulldozers tearing up roads in the camp, and preps sreen
Speaker 2: you could kind of give a scale of what this
Speaker 2: has done, not just to roads obviously, but to the
Speaker 2: people who live there.
Speaker 6: Yeah, like James was saying, they're continuing to attack with
Speaker 6: drones and rockets, and the Janine refugee camp is very
Speaker 6: densely populated. It has about twenty thousand people, and they
Speaker 6: are targeting infrastructure like homes and roads and the mirror
Speaker 6: of Jane Nidhal Obaidi, he said the attack was a
Speaker 6: real massacre and an attempt to wipe out all aspects
Speaker 6: of life inside the city and the camp. Those being
Speaker 6: targeted now are not just the resistance fighters, but civilians
Speaker 6: are being killed and wounded as well, and water and
Speaker 6: electricity services have also been cut off from the camp.
Speaker 6: Since the attack has started. In the Palestine, RECRESCENTCE said
Speaker 6: that at least three thousand people were evacuated from the camp.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then as far as like at time of recording,
Speaker 2: which is Monday afternoon, eight people have been killed. One
Speaker 2: more person was called in Romala. The two youngest victims
Speaker 2: were identified as Nordine Hassam Yusuf Marshud who is fifteen,
Speaker 2: and seventeen year old Majdi Joannis surd Ararawi. So both
Speaker 2: of them under eighteen, but the oldest person was twenty three,
Speaker 2: So these are all very young people sally dead now.
Speaker 2: And then they estimate that Palestinia Request estimates that three
Speaker 2: thousand people have left the camp, which I think paints
Speaker 2: a picture of like emptying or cleaning or whatever colonial
Speaker 2: sort of word you want to use to make it
Speaker 2: seem less brutal than it is, but like emptying the
Speaker 2: space of human being so that it can be colonized
Speaker 2: or that other folks can move there, right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah. In addition to some places are saying eight
Speaker 6: have died, some people some places are saying nine but regardless,
Speaker 6: there are over one hundred people that are injured, and
Speaker 6: so I don't know, the fact that the oldest person
Speaker 6: was only twenty three years old should really paint the
Speaker 6: picture of like who exactly is being targeted and killed,
Speaker 6: because there's no way their defense of targeting terrorists can
Speaker 6: play here, even though it probably does in the long run.
Speaker 6: But I just I think it's really fucked up and unfair.
Speaker 6: The White House meanwhile, so the United States quote supports
Speaker 6: Israel's security and right to defend its people against Hamas,
Speaker 6: Palestinian Islamic jihad and other terrorist groups, and they also
Speaker 6: highlighted the need to protect non combatants, which hasn't happened,
Speaker 6: and none of those people are actually being targeted or no,
Speaker 6: there's nothing to defend at this point. I really don't.
Speaker 2: I don't know. It's it's also weird that I don't know,
Speaker 2: Like it just seems such a knee jerk response. Maybe
Speaker 2: this is just me being being a dweeb or whatever,
Speaker 2: but like, at least one of the IDs was was
Speaker 2: like claimed by Janine Brigades, I think the one earlier
Speaker 2: last week to call out groups by name like and
Speaker 2: then not call out the group who are claiming responsibility
Speaker 2: for at least one of these attacks. It just seems
Speaker 2: so like okay, like press play on the tape.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they're also naming things that people are probably more
Speaker 6: familiar with, like almost to like justify or like entice
Speaker 6: fear of being like, oh my god, yeah Hammas attack
Speaker 6: Hamas or whatever they think will happen with that response
Speaker 6: in the international response. Yeah, the international response has also
Speaker 6: been dog shit, surprise, surprise, because it will always just
Speaker 6: talk and nothing really happens. Turkey's Foreign Ministry voice is
Speaker 6: deep concern over the attack. They warned that it can
Speaker 6: trigger a new spiral of violence it already has, and
Speaker 6: they called the Israeli encouragion a heinous crime. Cut Her
Speaker 6: stress that the need for international community to move urgently
Speaker 6: to protect the Palestinian people was very necessary. And then
Speaker 6: Jordan condemned the escalation as a violation of international humanitarian law,
Speaker 6: which Israel has been breaking for years. So nothing has happened.
Speaker 6: And then Egypt, on the other hand, it warned of
Speaker 6: serious repercussions and it called on other international people to intervene.
Speaker 6: And then the UN said the situation is very dangerous,
Speaker 6: like all these things I think have already been said
Speaker 6: every time. That's why. I just think it's so empty
Speaker 6: and I don't know, I nothing if it's just words
Speaker 6: and no actions, Like, how are we supposed to even
Speaker 6: take anything seriously? I guess I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the the thoughts and prayers of the yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: national like the UN is always deeply concerned that it
Speaker 2: never does fuck all right, So yeah, I guess to
Speaker 2: wrap up, we should talk about what this means for
Speaker 2: Janine as a place, like as a community.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we mentioned this in our previous recording last week.
Speaker 6: But Israel's attacks on Janine are part of an effort
Speaker 6: to crush resistance with the young Palestinians that are increasingly
Speaker 6: taking up arms because their disillusioned with the PA, and
Speaker 6: according to analysts, Israel's hard right government is likely to
Speaker 6: continue with heavy handed approach toward Palestinians in the West Bank.
Speaker 6: Palestinian lawyer and analyst Diana Buttu said Israel wants to
Speaker 6: do whatever it can to crush Janine in any other
Speaker 6: form of resistance. Israel has made it clear that there
Speaker 6: are three options available for Palestinians. Option one is to leave.
Speaker 6: Option two is to remain as residents, but not as
Speaker 6: citizens of any state. And option three is if you resist,
Speaker 6: we are going to crush you. This is what they
Speaker 6: are implementing. Yeah, yeah, I think that's well said. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Hassan Ayub, who is a Palestinian political science professor at
Speaker 6: n Nija National University in Nablus, he agreed with the
Speaker 6: lawyer's statement, and he said, the end game is to
Speaker 6: make Palestinians give up any hope of achieving self determination
Speaker 6: or being recognized as a people. Janine has a long
Speaker 6: history of resistance. It is a model for the masses
Speaker 6: that Israel wants to eliminate. But for Palestinians, the question
Speaker 6: is a matter of principle, and their endgame is to
Speaker 6: end this occupation. And essentially Israel intends to crush what
Speaker 6: I you refer to as quote the Janine phenomenon or
Speaker 6: any form of Palestinian resistance. Yeah, the Israeli aggression it
Speaker 6: raised fears of an escalation that continues to happen in
Speaker 6: areas such as the Kaza Strip because that's another symbolic
Speaker 6: place of resistance for Palestinians. And yeah, that's where we
Speaker 6: are now.
Speaker 2: Pretty much. It will I reach out to some people
Speaker 2: I know, but people generally don't like to be on
Speaker 2: their phones when this stuff is happening. So maybe I'll
Speaker 2: update you with some more information.
Speaker 6: Yeah, hopefully. I mean updates like this are always kind
Speaker 6: of like unfortunate because I don't think we want to
Speaker 6: update that more shitty things are happening, But especially with
Speaker 6: stuff like this, it doesn't seem like Israel is going
Speaker 6: to back down anytime soon. So yeah, that's that's the update.
Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah, so I wanted to talk about some of
Speaker 2: the people who were killed. One of the people who
Speaker 2: was killed was I'm dadf al Jas. He was forty eight.
Speaker 2: His son, aged twenty two, was killed in the Guinane
Speaker 2: massacare that occurred in January this year, so kind of
Speaker 2: gives you a sense of like the risk that I
Speaker 2: guess one incurs unwillingly by existing in what is a
Speaker 2: fucking refugee camp. His son wasn't the only young person killed.
Speaker 2: Another person who's killed was a Sadil Natcha Nachia. She
Speaker 2: was fifteen, and a few days later her classmates attended
Speaker 2: her funeral, all in their school uniforms. It's pretty sad.
Speaker 2: There are obviously images of it if you want to
Speaker 2: go look them up. But you can see lots of
Speaker 2: little school girls burying their friend in a town which
Speaker 2: is covered in burned detritus. No one should have to
Speaker 2: bury their kids. It's a torrible kid shouldn't have to
Speaker 2: deal with this shit. But there are plenty of pictures
Speaker 2: of little school girls standing by her grave. It's it's awful,
Speaker 2: so horrible. Yeah. The other victims were identified as Ahmed
Speaker 2: Saka Ahmed Da Rachma, Colored Dawish custom Pais Labusilia. They
Speaker 2: were fifteen, nineteen, twenty one, nineteen, and twenty nine respectively.
Speaker 2: They after this occurred, the aforementioned attack on settlers in
Speaker 2: Eli took place. Two gunman shown to a gas station
Speaker 2: or restaurant. One was killed on the scene and one
Speaker 2: was killed later. It was a response to the master
Speaker 2: attack on Tulmasya that occurred a few days before. And
Speaker 2: I want to highlight how the NYT covered this because
Speaker 2: I think it's important to dissect how Palestine is covered
Speaker 2: by the US right because obviously the US is one
Speaker 2: of the biggest state supporters of Israel, and specifically one
Speaker 2: of the people who continues to equip the IDF to
Speaker 2: do this stuff, so I'm quoting here directly. Last week,
Speaker 2: two Palestinians called for Israelis and injured four others near
Speaker 2: the Eli Settlement, escalating month long violence between Palestinians and
Speaker 2: Israelis in the West Bank. The next day, some four
Speaker 2: hundred settlers descended on several Palestinian villages, including tulmas Aya,
Speaker 2: a prosperous town near Romala, where reportedly they torched cars
Speaker 2: and homes. I want to I want to stop right there,
Speaker 2: because it is not reportedly right, Like we do not
Speaker 2: have to qualify this with like maybe or like we've
Speaker 2: just seen this on Twitter dot com. Like you could
Speaker 2: probably see this shit on Google maps, right, Like they
Speaker 2: torched a town. There's there's massive damage done. Even the
Speaker 2: New York Times itself didn't qualify it as a reported
Speaker 2: incident in its own reporting, and that this isn't we
Speaker 2: don't hear the same thing with the two Palestinian gunmen, right.
Speaker 2: Just to read the first opening sentence again, last week,
Speaker 2: two Palestinian carriers killed for Israelis. It's just stated as
Speaker 2: a fact, right, And these just within those couple of sentences,
Speaker 2: you can see so much of the bias in the
Speaker 2: way this is reported so much of the different perspectives
Speaker 2: through which state violence I would encourage you people not
Speaker 2: to use terrorism. I would encourage them to see things,
Speaker 2: especially in this context, in terms of political violence. Right,
Speaker 2: there is political violence done by both sides. One of
Speaker 2: those sides is a state actor, the other side is
Speaker 2: a non state actor. But qualifying one and making it
Speaker 2: distinct from the other, I think is shoddy journalism, and
Speaker 2: I don't think it really helps us understand this situation.
Speaker 2: So what happened, right Like, fifteen homes were burned, sixty
Speaker 2: vehicles were burned, and the writer's sort of quote unquote,
Speaker 2: sort of saying this is reportedly. It's not true. It's
Speaker 2: a thing that really happened. Another kind of phrasing that
Speaker 2: I've found really objectionable in this instance is clashes, right
Speaker 2: Like often you'll see clashes in Janine, and like that
Speaker 2: casts a lens of parity, or it looks at these
Speaker 2: things through a lens of parity, which I don't think
Speaker 2: is real on the ground. Like, it's not a clash
Speaker 2: when a helicopter is firing rockets, even if it's varying
Speaker 2: rockets at people with kalashnikovs, Right Like, that it's not
Speaker 2: a clash. There's not really a parody there, right, Like,
Speaker 2: and it's it also kind of downplaced the violence of
Speaker 2: what's happening, right, it's an attack, it's an assault. I
Speaker 2: think the constant use of clashes, right, it's nearly always.
Speaker 2: You don't really see it used anywhere else. If you
Speaker 2: if you do, it's for it's for much less severe violence,
Speaker 2: like like clashes between an arrival football fans, not that
Speaker 2: that can't be very violent, care, but you don't really
Speaker 2: see this word used to characterize like state violence on
Speaker 2: this scale anywhere else. And so I would really encourage
Speaker 2: people when they're reading, especially coverage of this, right, which
Speaker 2: is an issue that the US cannot get its head
Speaker 2: out of its ass about, uh, to look for this
Speaker 2: bias language. And if you're reading coverage or anything else, right,
Speaker 2: if you're if you're reading coverage something, and you start
Speaker 2: to notice that, like I would perhaps question where you're
Speaker 2: getting your coverage from. And I know you had some
Speaker 2: shit to say about the New York Times sharing.
Speaker 6: I mean, yeah, I one really liked what you said
Speaker 6: about referring to it as state violence versus terrorism, because
Speaker 6: I think that's a huge point that I also want
Speaker 6: to adopt because I didn't even really transfer that over
Speaker 6: until just now when you said it, and I think
Speaker 6: it's a really important distinction, So thank you for that.
Speaker 6: But yeah, the New York Times, as well as many,
Speaker 6: if not most news organizations, they're incredibly biased when it
Speaker 6: comes to Palestine. Is real reporting, and The New York
Speaker 6: Times in particular has been absolute dog shit and their
Speaker 6: coverage of Palestine for quite a while now. There has
Speaker 6: been a persistent pattern of bias when it comes to
Speaker 6: Israel and Palestine. I'm going to go in chronological order,
Speaker 6: and then James will jump back in with the recent
Speaker 6: article about the New York Times and this terrible thing
Speaker 6: that it has within it that I'm not going to
Speaker 6: give away right now. But let's go back in time
Speaker 6: to February twenty eleven, when The New York Times published
Speaker 6: a piece on JVP activism in the Bay Area. JVP
Speaker 6: stands for Jewish Voices for Peace, and this article said,
Speaker 6: the activists say they are not working against Israel, but
Speaker 6: against the Israeli government policies they believe are a discriminatory
Speaker 6: which is yes correct, But in the editor's note, the
Speaker 6: Times later wrote that one of the articles two authors
Speaker 6: was a pro Palestinian advocate and that he should not
Speaker 6: have written the article and should not have been allowed
Speaker 6: to write it. So it initially seems like good reporting
Speaker 6: because it's true you're protesting against the Israeli government. But
Speaker 6: then to say that a Palestinian advocate can't write it
Speaker 6: is ridiculous, So fuck you New York Times. And then
Speaker 6: in twenty fifteen, a study was done analyzing the New
Speaker 6: York Times publications during the period of September tenth and
Speaker 6: October fourteenth and twenty fifteen. At the time of the
Speaker 6: study in twenty fifteen, two thousand Palestinians had been injured
Speaker 6: while eighty three Israelis were injured, just for context of
Speaker 6: what the reporting was about, and the study analyzed thirty
Speaker 6: six articles. In these articles, the New York Times talked
Speaker 6: about Palestinian quote unquote violence thirty six times and Israeli
Speaker 6: violence two times. The word attack was used to describe
Speaker 6: Palestinian actions one hundred and ten times, in Israeli actions
Speaker 6: seventeen times. They use the word terrorist forty two times
Speaker 6: to refer to Palestinian violence and one time one time
Speaker 6: to refer to Israeli violence. More than half of the
Speaker 6: New York Times headlines during that whole year depicted Palestinians
Speaker 6: as the instigators of violence. Zero headlines depicted Israelis as aggressors.
Speaker 6: None and nothing has changed. I know that's from a
Speaker 6: period in twenty fifteen, but that's basically consistent, if not
Speaker 6: more so prevalent.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 6: It just seems like the New York Times editorial board
Speaker 6: refuses to incorporate Palestinian perspective into its editorials, even though
Speaker 6: there have been many calls to do so, and this
Speaker 6: leads it to fundamentally misread the reality on the ground
Speaker 6: in Palestine. And it clearly shows the newspaper's bias when
Speaker 6: it comes to what it chooses to include about Palestine
Speaker 6: and from whom. Of the two thy four hundred and
Speaker 6: ninety opinion pieces about Palestinians with The New York Times
Speaker 6: published between nineteen seventy in twenty nineteen, only forty six
Speaker 6: written by actual Palestinians, which is an average of less
Speaker 6: than two percent. With the lack of Palestinian and Arab
Speaker 6: columnists that are even employed by New York Times, a
Speaker 6: kind of group think has inevitably emerged there, and this
Speaker 6: group think consistently places Israel, Israeli framings and Israeli perspectives
Speaker 6: above those of Palestinians. A keyword search of the Times
Speaker 6: editorials that discuss Palestinians is like this. Between nineteen seventy
Speaker 6: and twenty nineteen, the word piece appeared one thousand and
Speaker 6: one hundred and twelve times, but justice only appeared eighty
Speaker 6: six times. Terror was mentioned six hundred and forty nine times,
Speaker 6: but occupation was only mentioned two hundred and nineteen times,
Speaker 6: two hundred and nineteen times. I want to also remind
Speaker 6: you this is from starting from nineteen seventy. Israel's security
Speaker 6: quote unquote was written ninety times, but Palestinian freedom was
Speaker 6: mentioned just three times. While keyboard searches alone do not
Speaker 6: tell the whole story, they do help us get a
Speaker 6: sense of the overall tenor of the Times coverage, and
Speaker 6: over the last five decades, Israel has been unquestioningly presented
Speaker 6: by Times editors as a close ally, while the Palestinians
Speaker 6: have been consistently framed as a problem.
Speaker 2: So I want to talk about this. There was an
Speaker 2: excellent piece that came out in Study Hall. I believe
Speaker 2: it's based on some reporting in a Canadian outlet called
Speaker 2: Passage and Study Hall is a freelance journalists like group
Speaker 2: Localists serve, but they also do some editorial work. It's
Speaker 2: talking about this this Israeli nonprofit or it's really funded
Speaker 2: nonprofits based in the US and also in Israel called
Speaker 2: Honest Reporting. What it is is a five oh one c.
Speaker 2: Three And essentially what they've done is is what Sharene
Speaker 2: describes right where they've they've found not I believe, mostly
Speaker 2: Palestinian reporters, perhaps also non Palastinian reporters who are reporting
Speaker 2: from this. I guess from what I would described as
Speaker 2: the facts based approach to this, which is describing what's
Speaker 2: happening as an apartheid and they've dived into these people's background,
Speaker 2: their previous tweets, their previous writing, their other work to
Speaker 2: describe them as biased and get their articles taken down.
Speaker 2: They've done this to some very like this has happened
Speaker 2: at the time, and this is at a time, like
Speaker 2: I know Sharen mentioned something that happened in twenty eleven,
Speaker 2: but I know that in twenty ten the Jerusalem bureau
Speaker 2: chief of the Times had a child serving in the
Speaker 2: IDF Right. So like you know, if if I had
Speaker 2: a you know, if I was a journalist, and I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, I actually have a son who's in the
Speaker 2: Aleaxa Martyrs Brigade. Like then they're not going to not
Speaker 2: going to commission my piece. But they've for instance, Hosam Salem.
Speaker 2: Have you seen Sam's work?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 6: My brain doesn't create.
Speaker 2: I've worked with a sum before. It's a friend of mine.
Speaker 2: He's an incredibly gifted photojournalist. People should follow him on
Speaker 2: the places where they see photographs. He's blacklisted by The
Speaker 2: Times based on an honest reporting probe into his quote
Speaker 2: unquote bias, which his photos of Gaza are some of
Speaker 2: the most emotive photographs of Gaza I've ever seen. And
Speaker 2: I work with him on a piece that will one
Speaker 2: day become a podcast about Parkour in the Gaza Strip.
Speaker 2: But yeah, Hossam is a fantastic photo journal Listen absolutely
Speaker 2: like it is. It's utterly ridiculous to have like have
Speaker 2: him blacklisted by a major news organization, which, like, whether
Speaker 2: we like it or not, that is where a lot
Speaker 2: of Americans get their news. In one instance, this organization
Speaker 2: managed to get the Toronto Start to scrub all uses
Speaker 2: of Palestine from their stories to include shit like yeah,
Speaker 2: like the like they were profiling a DJ who was
Speaker 2: Palestinian and wow, which I think is like incredibly illustrative,
Speaker 2: right that, Like this is organization presents itself as fighting
Speaker 2: anti Israeli bias, which I'm sure that is a thing
Speaker 2: that exists. It fucking does not exist in the US media.
Speaker 2: Like I'm I'm not a Palestinian person, by speak as
Speaker 2: a person who has pitched articles about conflict in various
Speaker 2: parts of the world, and they can tell you that
Speaker 2: that that is not a bias that I have come across,
Speaker 2: having worked with almost every big outlet that it is
Speaker 2: possible to work for in the US. And it's not
Speaker 2: doing that. It's trying to raise Palestine and Palestinian people
Speaker 2: not only their perspectives but their whole existence. Right, And
Speaker 2: this is something that I hop on a lot, But like,
Speaker 2: I think we should do more conflict reporting that's about people,
Speaker 2: unless it is about numbers and battles and such like.
Speaker 2: That's why I want to write about little girls who's
Speaker 2: surfing Gaza and young men who do parkour, because like
Speaker 2: when Israel bombs Gaza, it doesn't just bomb people who
Speaker 2: are part of fatal or humas or whatever they want
Speaker 2: to say. They're targeting, right, like the lions den or genymbrias,
Speaker 2: whatever they're When they're bombing these places, they're also bombing children.
Speaker 2: They're also bombing places where little kids want to go
Speaker 2: and play football. They're bombing towns where little boys want
Speaker 2: to I mean the hospitals and schools, and yeah, like
Speaker 2: the this is where people just like you live. It's
Speaker 2: not like it's a very clear desire to kind of
Speaker 2: erase Palestinian civilians, I guess from my narrative, and it's
Speaker 2: really important that we as journalists and as people don't
Speaker 2: allow that to happen. I guess you can. We'll link
Speaker 2: to this in our sources at the end of the month,
Speaker 2: but I think it's an excellent piece. It's worth reading.
Speaker 6: Thank you parentialing that before we continue with some really
Speaker 6: excellent new things. Let's take our second break and we'll
Speaker 6: be right back.
Speaker 2: Yes, way back, And I want to talk a little
Speaker 2: bit more about h the I guess the Israeli political
Speaker 2: context behind the increasing aggression towards Janina and Palestini in general.
Speaker 2: So of the one hundred and sixty five Palestinian deaths.
Speaker 2: About eighty six are in the North and West Bank,
Speaker 2: mostly in the areas of Janine and Nublists, which cannot
Speaker 2: come incidainly are the areas where we're seeing new armed
Speaker 2: groups emerging. Despite this, Israel it's ready to massively step
Speaker 2: up settlement in the West Bank. Earlier in June, Prime
Speaker 2: Minister Benjamin then Yahoo ratified a policy allowing pro settler
Speaker 2: finance Minister that's Aleel Smotridge to bypass the six days
Speaker 2: process for building settlements, effectively giving him the ability to
Speaker 2: make settlement decisions on its own. In recent years, Israeli
Speaker 2: politicians as settlers have become more and more open about
Speaker 2: their goals annexing most, if not all, of the West Bank.
Speaker 2: So March of this year, Smartridge claimed that Palestinian people
Speaker 2: were an invention of the last century. It's probably worth
Speaker 2: taking a moment to point out that all national identities
Speaker 2: are inherently constructed. If humanity did not come to earth
Speaker 2: with flags, those are things that came to exist in
Speaker 2: the nineteenth and twentieth century. Like, so is Israel right,
Speaker 2: we can kind of put a date on that one.
Speaker 3: So that's just so that's.
Speaker 6: Like literally projecting an invention of the last century is
Speaker 6: literally Israel whatever, Yes, the state of Israel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean nations calling other nations constructed. Is the
Speaker 2: kind of the popcorn in the cow blackleg. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: in some much as if we're going to do that,
Speaker 2: I think is rarely throwing stones from a glasshouse.
Speaker 6: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: It's like it doesn't really fucking matter either, right, Like
Speaker 2: it doesn't matter how long the one group of people
Speaker 2: has had one flag, you still shouldn't fucking kill children,
Speaker 2: which applies to anyone involved in the killing of children.
Speaker 2: Smatrich said that there was no such thing as a
Speaker 2: Palestinian because there is no such thing as a Palestinian people.
Speaker 2: In a speech in Paris and a memorial for Jack Koppa,
Speaker 2: an Activisty's else right wing LIQUD party. Do you know
Speaker 2: who are the Palestinians? He said, I'm a Palestinian, going
Speaker 2: on to describe his late grandfather, who he said was
Speaker 2: a thirteenth generation Jerusalem might as a true Palestinian, which
Speaker 2: is somewhat Look, these people are supposed to be contradictory,
Speaker 2: Like it's not really worth sucking pointing this out, but
Speaker 2: like you can't simultaneously say there aren't a Palestinians. Palestine
Speaker 2: doesn't exist. Also, I'm a Palestinian, right, it is again
Speaker 2: not the point. I guess he was a resident. He
Speaker 2: is a resident one of the settlements himself. He's an
Speaker 2: advocate for theocratic law, the segregation of maternity wards. So
Speaker 2: he doesn't want Arab and Israeli women to give birth
Speaker 2: in the same ridiculous Yeah, it's his justification for it
Speaker 2: is like even worse, but I won't bother with that.
Speaker 2: He's also openly homophobic, and he supports the conspiracy theory
Speaker 2: that Jitzach Rabin was killed by Israel security agencies. All around.
Speaker 2: Top guy Benjamin and Yahoo's party likes to use names
Speaker 2: for the West Bank that you might find in the Bible,
Speaker 2: and it's made accelerating a legal settlement there a priority.
Speaker 2: Since it took office that Yahoos coalition has approved seven
Speaker 2: thousand new housing units, many in the occupied West Bank.
Speaker 2: The government also amended law to clear the way for
Speaker 2: settlers to return to four settlements that have previously been evacuated.
Speaker 2: Within a week of having power to make these decisions,
Speaker 2: smart Rich approved five thousand new units. We this is
Speaker 2: a great time to draw attention to one of the
Speaker 2: most fucking infuriating paragraphs that has ever been written, which
Speaker 2: I found in a New York Times article that.
Speaker 6: I can't believe this is real. James said it to
Speaker 6: me before this, and it is crazy.
Speaker 2: I like the century and stuff I know will make
Speaker 2: her angry. Of course, not all West Bank settlers are
Speaker 2: alter nationalists who believe that living in the land of
Speaker 2: the Bible is a religious edict. Most settlers, in fact,
Speaker 2: including hundreds of thousands of Altra Orthodox News, move there
Speaker 2: seeking a portable housing. I am fucking like I cannot
Speaker 2: real lost it when.
Speaker 6: I got here. Yeah, I checked out mentally. I catapopled
Speaker 6: myself into outer space. I don't want to be here anymore.
Speaker 6: That is ridiculous.
Speaker 2: I have decided to curl up into a ball and
Speaker 2: no longer exist. Like this is from the newspaper as well,
Speaker 2: that like went so fucking ham on people in twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: like taking milk from a target, you know, like when
Speaker 2: you like seeking affordable dairy products. I guess could have
Speaker 2: been an alternative frameing of that that they didn't. They
Speaker 2: didn't go for it. It just fucking unbelievable, like the
Speaker 2: like the shit that free economics has done to people's brains.
Speaker 2: Is it's really next level. But more people listen to
Speaker 2: our podcasts in their podcast because we're winning in the
Speaker 2: marketplace of ideas and so all in seven hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty thousand people live in these settlements. But being a
Speaker 2: legal under international law doesn't really mean anything unless that
Speaker 2: law is enforced. And it really is. We spoke earlier
Speaker 2: this before, right, just like the US, which frequently violates
Speaker 2: Domexican international law on its own border, Israel is simply
Speaker 2: not held to account for its crimes. United Nations Special
Speaker 2: Reporteur and Palestine Francisco Albernesi told Al Jazeera international law
Speaker 2: has a quote unquote problem of enforcement. There is a
Speaker 2: problem of double standards because clearly when it comes to Palestine,
Speaker 2: there is a cognitive dissonance, especially among West countries and
Speaker 2: reticents in applying these coercive measures and all the prohibitions
Speaker 2: international law of thoughts are Benici said.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we already mentioned how just even the phrase international law,
Speaker 6: it's just make believe like you always hear about Israel,
Speaker 6: even like committing crimes against humanity, None of that even
Speaker 6: seems to matter when it comes to Israel. Because there's
Speaker 6: never a repercussion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't matter anywhere that there's no direct interest
Speaker 2: to capital to enforcing that law. Right, it doesn't matter
Speaker 2: when young women in mem are get raped by soldiers.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter when villages get burned down there, It
Speaker 2: doesn't matter in to grie in Ethiopia and Eritrea because
Speaker 2: there's no interest to finance capital of solving that problem.
Speaker 2: It's not just a Palestine thing. It's the thing all
Speaker 2: over the world. And laws are fundamentally backed up by violence. Right,
Speaker 2: Like in America, if you get a parking ticket and
Speaker 2: you don't pay your parking ticket and you go to court,
Speaker 2: and you don't go to court, eventually someone with a
Speaker 2: gun will come and kick down your door. And like
Speaker 2: all laws are based in violence. And there ain't no
Speaker 2: one kicking down Israel's door, right, and no one will.
Speaker 2: And so it doesn't matter. International law doesn't matter. It's
Speaker 2: it's nice and it's there. We can point to it
Speaker 2: and say, look, we've all agreed this is bad, but
Speaker 2: we all know it's bad. That we don't really need
Speaker 2: a bunch of like old men suits to tell us
Speaker 2: it's bad. We knew it was bad. What we needed
Speaker 2: to fucking make it stop, and that's not happening.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I think it's also interesting to mention that internationally,
Speaker 6: even when you get better quote unquote reporting about Palestine,
Speaker 6: it still is not enough because it's usually about peace
Speaker 6: and both sides or a conflict or whatever. So I
Speaker 6: just think, I mean that also goes back to news
Speaker 6: and how it's reported. But this stubborn insistence on blaming
Speaker 6: both sides is reflective of a deeply flawed quote unquote
Speaker 6: peace framework, and it has dominated the international under standing
Speaker 6: of the Israel Palestine quote unquote conflict for decades. The
Speaker 6: framework of peace centers on identity politics and ignores the
Speaker 6: structural violence that the state perpetuates against oppressed groups and
Speaker 6: instead focuses on acts of spectacular violence committed by those
Speaker 6: groups in response to the oppression they face. And it
Speaker 6: also blames them for escalating conflict and then uses it
Speaker 6: to justify the repressive violence by the more powerful forces.
Speaker 6: To go back to New York Times briefly, many of
Speaker 6: the Time's editorials over the last thirty years since the
Speaker 6: advent of the Oslo Accords have been steeped in the
Speaker 6: peace framework. They treat israelis a Palestinians as having equal
Speaker 6: power when they clearly don't. They praise Israel for minor
Speaker 6: adjustments to its daily structural violence against Palestinians, but in
Speaker 6: the same breath they scold Palestinian leaders and society for
Speaker 6: acts of violence done in turn. And the word is
Speaker 6: also problematic in and of itself, because Palestine isn't some
Speaker 6: conflict or problem for Israel to sort out. It's a
Speaker 6: cause for everyone to fight for. Since nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 6: the Israeli state has prevented Palestinians from living in their
Speaker 6: homeland with freedom and dignity, whether it's by banning refugees
Speaker 6: from returning to their homes, or discriminating against Palestinian citizens
Speaker 6: inside Israel, or keeping millions of Palestinians under military occupation.
Speaker 6: If there is a problem to be solved, that problem
Speaker 6: is the regime itself. But this fact of bias and
Speaker 6: shitty reporting, and the fact that the truth is not
Speaker 6: out of there, that fact seems to have eluded the
Speaker 6: Times editorial board because, rather than recognize the systemic violence, discrimination,
Speaker 6: and colonization perpetuated by Israel against Palestinians, the board blames
Speaker 6: quote unquote both sides for a vastly asymmetric situation. This
Speaker 6: both sides may give the appearance of balance, but it
Speaker 6: does not reflect the reality in which Israel holds almost
Speaker 6: total political, economic, and military power over the lives of
Speaker 6: every Palestinian in a system that growing numbers of scholars,
Speaker 6: human rights groups, and legal experts are defining as apartheid.
Speaker 6: But I do hope some of this was at least helpful,
Speaker 6: and I mean probably be back to do the same
Speaker 6: kind of thing soon because Israel is relentless and stupid
Speaker 6: and I hate it. So until then, fuck the IDF
Speaker 6: and have a nice day.
Speaker 1: Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
Speaker 1: from now until the heat death of the universe.
Speaker 6: It Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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