WEBVTT - It Could Happen Here Weekly 232 0:00:01.800 --> 0:00:03.080 Alsome Media. 0:00:03.320 --> 0:00:05.720 Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let 0:00:05.800 --> 0:00:09.440 you know this is a compilation episode, So every episode 0:00:09.560 --> 0:00:12.640 of the week that just happened is here in one 0:00:12.800 --> 0:00:16.520 convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:19.040 listen to in a long stretch if you want. If 0:00:19.040 --> 0:00:21.000 you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, 0:00:21.040 --> 0:00:22.759 there's going to be nothing new here for you, but 0:00:23.120 --> 0:00:24.720 you can make your own decisions. 0:00:28.400 --> 0:00:33.159 Hello, welcome to it could happen here. It's me today, James, 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:35.520 and I'm very lucky to be joined by Cooper Quentin, 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:38.320 who is a senior staff technologist at the EFF and 0:00:38.400 --> 0:00:41.360 Colonel Panic who is a hacker. And we are going 0:00:41.440 --> 0:00:45.080 to be talking today about the privacy apocalypse that is 0:00:45.080 --> 0:00:48.319 coming our way, I guess, the end of privacy and 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:49.839 what you can do to stop it being the end 0:00:49.880 --> 0:00:52.960 of privacy. So thanks for joining me, Bithee. 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:55.600 Absolutely, Hey James, happy to be on the show again. 0:00:55.640 --> 0:00:56.320 Thanks for having me. 0:00:56.520 --> 0:00:59.480 Yeah, thanks for making the time. So I guess, like 0:01:00.200 --> 0:01:03.440 in the case is somebody lives under a rock, we 0:01:03.480 --> 0:01:08.280 should start breaking down some of the different surveillance mechanisms 0:01:08.280 --> 0:01:11.680 that the state is building and maybe kettle panic. You 0:01:11.720 --> 0:01:15.040 can kick us off with flock because that is the 0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:17.920 one that has probably got the most attention recently, and 0:01:17.920 --> 0:01:20.000 then Cooper, we can pick up on some of the 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:23.920 many other privacy violation tools. 0:01:24.319 --> 0:01:27.320 Certainly, you may notice all these cameras popping up around 0:01:27.360 --> 0:01:30.559 your town. They're on a black pole. It's a black 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:33.520 camera with a solar panel, and these are what we 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:36.240 call flock cameras. They're really easy to spot, but they're 0:01:36.319 --> 0:01:40.319 essentially ALPRs. They're automatic license plate readers. So this is 0:01:40.360 --> 0:01:43.640 like a form of drag net surveillance where anytime you 0:01:43.720 --> 0:01:46.280 drive by these things, they're just logging your license plate. 0:01:46.640 --> 0:01:49.600 And they've expanded this to do other things like facial 0:01:49.640 --> 0:01:54.520 recognition and gunshot detection and so on. Distressed person detection 0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:57.240 is another one which is really dodgy. 0:01:57.840 --> 0:02:00.520 Yeah, fascinating, but it just looks for people who are 0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:01.480 acting distressed. 0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:04.480 Or I think it's a sound thing too, right. 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:08.840 Oh, okay, yeah, I think it's it's pretty similar to 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:12.760 gunshot detection in the books for people shouting, people in 0:02:12.800 --> 0:02:16.240 the heightened state of emotion, right, I mean, this could 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:18.880 really easily be a protest detector. 0:02:18.600 --> 0:02:20.920 Right yeah, Or I meantine if that was a fucking peacock, 0:02:21.040 --> 0:02:24.480 like you have peacocks get angry, they really sounds like 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:25.880 someone's dying or folks. 0:02:25.919 --> 0:02:29.000 So yeah, I mean false false positives are already a 0:02:29.120 --> 0:02:32.520 huge issue for gunshot detections in general. Right, they can 0:02:32.520 --> 0:02:34.639 go off for a balloon popping, they can go off 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:35.480 for fireworks. 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:38.800 Yeah, and then just because you're in the area, you know, 0:02:39.000 --> 0:02:41.000 you're now part of an investigation. 0:02:41.840 --> 0:02:43.440 So press, we should talk a little bit about some 0:02:43.440 --> 0:02:45.240 of the other ones to keep it. Maybe we start 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:46.359 with facial recognition. 0:02:47.040 --> 0:02:50.920 Yeah, yeah, facial recognition is all the rays these days. 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:56.520 A lot of law enforcement is unfortunately investing in this. 0:02:57.000 --> 0:03:00.360 We've seen of course ICE with their mobile fortified tool 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:03.280 that's gotten a lot of press lately. And then this 0:03:03.360 --> 0:03:06.280 is so this is an app that runs on Android 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:11.200 phones that they can scan people with and you know, apparently, 0:03:11.639 --> 0:03:15.440 according to them, get a fully one hundred percent accurate 0:03:15.960 --> 0:03:20.000 identity for that person within seconds. Anybody who understands facial 0:03:20.040 --> 0:03:22.720 recognition will tell you that that is not true, and 0:03:22.760 --> 0:03:25.919 that can't possibly be true. Facial recognition is never one 0:03:25.960 --> 0:03:29.799 hundred percent accurate, and in fact, there have been dozens 0:03:29.800 --> 0:03:33.840 of cases where people have been falsely arrested, wrongfully imprisoned 0:03:34.120 --> 0:03:39.280 in charge because of incorrect facial recognition results. This has 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:41.920 also already happened in the case of Mobile Fortify. There 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:46.600 was a woman in Oregon who ICE scanned her face, 0:03:46.800 --> 0:03:49.880 and they scanned her twice. Both times it came up 0:03:49.920 --> 0:03:52.840 with a different identity for this woman, and it turns 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:55.920 out that both of those identities, neither of them were 0:03:55.960 --> 0:03:57.720 the correct identity for this woman. 0:03:58.040 --> 0:04:03.080 Jesus, but it's been using this as as a you know, 0:04:03.200 --> 0:04:08.080 sort of judge jury and execution to determine whether to arrest, detain, 0:04:08.320 --> 0:04:11.120 and possibly even deport somebody. 0:04:11.440 --> 0:04:11.760 Wow. 0:04:12.440 --> 0:04:15.360 Yeah, yeah, it's pretty bleak. Something that happens if when 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:17.920 you come to the United States you're a migrant rate 0:04:17.960 --> 0:04:20.120 is that they will collect a large amount of your 0:04:20.120 --> 0:04:23.880 biometric data. But it seems to even with all of that, 0:04:24.000 --> 0:04:26.080 the resolution that they have on the scan is actually 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:26.559 very poor. 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:29.760 Yeah. Yeah, that's I mean, that's that is correct. Right. 0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:32.599 So the way that this works, the databases that they have, 0:04:32.800 --> 0:04:37.680 it's checking against various immigration databases. We think that it's 0:04:38.160 --> 0:04:42.560 most likely checking against the like tsa database of biometric 0:04:42.600 --> 0:04:44.359 scans that you do every time you take a flight, 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:47.240 of course, all of the at the border biometric scans, 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:50.640 the ingress and egress scans. Yeah, any sort of viset 0:04:50.680 --> 0:04:55.039 information or anything like that. There's also the Clearview AI, 0:04:55.640 --> 0:04:57.839 So even if you've never done any of these, there's 0:04:57.920 --> 0:05:00.200 another app called clear View which is used by law 0:05:00.240 --> 0:05:03.040 enforcement and by ICE, which does a similar thing. But 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:06.480 it's back end data is all of the photos that 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:10.159 have been posted online, so they're using data from social 0:05:10.200 --> 0:05:15.119 media Facebook, Instagram, everything else to make a face match 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:17.719 and determine who you are based on that sort of 0:05:17.720 --> 0:05:19.320 publicly available data as well. 0:05:19.720 --> 0:05:20.000 Great. 0:05:20.440 --> 0:05:23.520 Yeah, what a reassuring thing to hear. 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:25.320 The high cost of the free service. 0:05:25.880 --> 0:05:27.839 Yeah. Absolutely. 0:05:28.440 --> 0:05:30.440 Let's talk about a couple of other things. I think 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:34.800 those are things that people have a very reasonable fear 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:39.039 of concern, with anger about however you want to put it. Yeah, 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:41.760 there is some stuff which I think perhaps we just 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:44.880 need to understand what it means, I guess, and maybe 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:47.320 we could start there and it coup. You've done a 0:05:47.360 --> 0:05:52.080 lot with stingrays or cell phone sight simulators, with lots 0:05:52.080 --> 0:05:52.760 of names for them. 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:56.720 Yeah, definitely. So I've been for the last couple of 0:05:56.839 --> 0:05:59.200 years working on a project called ray Hunter, which is 0:05:59.240 --> 0:06:04.720 a open so project to detect cell sized smitters or 0:06:04.760 --> 0:06:07.200 stingrays or MC catchers, whatever you want to call them. 0:06:07.400 --> 0:06:11.640 I will probably use these terms interchangeably. And in short, 0:06:11.720 --> 0:06:13.400 the way it works is it's a little piece of 0:06:13.440 --> 0:06:15.760 software that sits on a mobile hotspot, one of those 0:06:15.800 --> 0:06:17.719 little things that you buy to get like Wi Fi 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:22.320 in various places from a cellular connection, and it looks 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:25.120 at the traffic between the hotspot and the towers that 0:06:25.120 --> 0:06:28.919 it's connected to, specifically the control traffic, not what you're doing, 0:06:29.200 --> 0:06:32.280 but what the control traffic is, how it's connecting into 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:34.919 the towers. It looks for a number of suspicious things, 0:06:34.960 --> 0:06:38.280 signatures that we've written of what we think are indicative 0:06:38.279 --> 0:06:41.720 of MC catcher activity. So we've been running this for 0:06:41.760 --> 0:06:45.200 a year. There's several hundred of these around the US, 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:47.120 if not a couple of thousand, but we don't have 0:06:47.160 --> 0:06:49.920 exact numbers. There's a bunch of these all over the US. 0:06:49.920 --> 0:06:52.279 We had a bunch of Minneapolis, people have been running 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:54.080 them in Chicago, in LA when that was going on. 0:06:54.120 --> 0:06:56.440 People have been running them all over the country. Yeah, 0:06:57.160 --> 0:07:00.719 and we have found some evidence of MC catchers, but 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:04.039 a lot less than we expected, or a lot less 0:07:04.040 --> 0:07:07.160 than many people expected. I actually didn't expect to find many. 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:12.760 And specifically, we have not found any evidence of mccatchers 0:07:12.920 --> 0:07:16.000 being used at protests. And I just stop for your 0:07:16.000 --> 0:07:19.200 first second to explain what a sting ray or mccatcher is. Yeah, 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:24.160 this is a fake cell tower essentially that tricks your 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:27.920 phone into connecting to it so that your phone will 0:07:28.000 --> 0:07:33.000 identify itself to the mccatcher. These are used for the 0:07:33.000 --> 0:07:35.960 primary reason these are used for is to track down 0:07:35.960 --> 0:07:38.720 a specific person. So like what we see in court 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:44.240 documents is that these are used to verify that somebody 0:07:44.320 --> 0:07:47.600 is home before a police rate happens. Right. This is 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:50.600 what the vast majority of use for these is. That 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:53.120 is one use. The other potential use, and the one 0:07:53.120 --> 0:07:56.000 we're actually more concerned about, is that these could be 0:07:56.120 --> 0:08:00.200 used to identify who is in a specific area. You 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:02.920 can set one of these up outside, let's say, outside 0:08:02.960 --> 0:08:06.280 of a mosque or outside of a protest an anarchist 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:10.800 meeting or a anti fascist meeting is regularly happening, right, 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:13.440 and identify the people who were in that meeting by 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:15.640 getting those unique IDs and then going to the phone 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:19.400 company and saying give us the subscriber information for these people, 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:23.760 and that is a far more concerning use, and we 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:27.000 are not seeing it so far with ray Hunter being 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:29.960 used for that. What we're seeing is uses that seem 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:33.479 to be more in line with the sort of manhunt 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:36.520 or like verifying that somebody is home style of operation, 0:08:36.559 --> 0:08:38.800 which is also what we're seeing in cored documents. 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:39.640 Interesting. 0:08:40.160 --> 0:08:45.280 Yeah, it doesn't mean that they government cannot find out 0:08:45.400 --> 0:08:49.800 that you were at a place or at a protest, right, 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:52.560 It just means that they're not using this mechanism of 0:08:52.600 --> 0:08:53.000 doing that. 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:56.719 Yeah, that's that's exactly right. So people have asked us, 0:08:57.000 --> 0:08:59.160 are what our theories are for about why we're not 0:08:59.200 --> 0:09:01.240 seeing these a protest because for a lot for a 0:09:01.320 --> 0:09:03.480 long time, there were a lot of activists that were 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:06.839 pretty convinced that these were showing up at every protest, right, 0:09:06.920 --> 0:09:09.400 or that maybe like you know, to use the old 0:09:09.960 --> 0:09:12.360 there was the old co Intel pro language was like 0:09:12.400 --> 0:09:16.040 the architects of co Intel pro wanted activists to feel 0:09:16.040 --> 0:09:18.680 like there was a cop behind every bush and inside 0:09:18.679 --> 0:09:22.800 every mailbox, right, And that was really the impression that 0:09:22.840 --> 0:09:25.079 a lot of activists had about mccatchers, right, that they 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:27.320 were in every cop car, that they were everywhere, that 0:09:27.360 --> 0:09:30.280 they were just constantly being used, And it seems like 0:09:30.360 --> 0:09:31.800 that's not the case. And I think there's a couple 0:09:31.920 --> 0:09:35.280 reasons why. One is that they're expensive. It costs about 0:09:35.280 --> 0:09:38.800 a million dollars for an mccatcher contract, So these are 0:09:38.840 --> 0:09:43.160 actually like fairly rare, and they're hard to operate. They 0:09:43.200 --> 0:09:45.959 require a lot of technical knowledge, they require a lot 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:50.320 of understanding. Cops are idiots. They don't want to actually 0:09:50.360 --> 0:09:53.560 go do all this work if it's not necessary, right, 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:57.520 And it's a lot more expensive then using one of 0:09:57.559 --> 0:10:02.000 the many other surveillance technologies they have flock facial recognition, 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:04.640 things like pen Link, which we can talk about in 0:10:04.640 --> 0:10:08.839 a little bit, but other databases of location because our 0:10:08.880 --> 0:10:12.720 phone advertisements on our phones are constantly giving up our location, right, 0:10:12.760 --> 0:10:15.880 and there's a whole surveillance industry around that selling that 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:20.000 data to police. Also, the other big issue is that 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:24.920 there was a legal decision in twenty twenty, twenty nineteen. 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:28.160 I'm going to mess this up. Fact checkers will need 0:10:28.160 --> 0:10:31.480 to get on this in twenty nineteen called Carboner versus USA, 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:34.760 and the Supreme Court in that decision decided that to 0:10:34.880 --> 0:10:39.720 access historical cell site location information, so this is where 0:10:39.760 --> 0:10:43.640 people were located based on what cell towers they're connected to. 0:10:44.240 --> 0:10:47.600 That police would need a warrant for that information. And 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:51.040 it seems like at that time a lot of law 0:10:51.080 --> 0:10:56.199 enforcement agencies decided that that also extended to stingrays. Whereas 0:10:56.280 --> 0:10:58.680 previously they had not been needing to get a warrant 0:10:58.800 --> 0:11:01.160 to use their sting rays, it seems like a lot 0:11:01.160 --> 0:11:03.720 of them thought, oh, okay, this seems like it probably 0:11:03.760 --> 0:11:07.760 also applies to stingrays. Therefore, any case using sting rays 0:11:07.880 --> 0:11:10.040 without a warrant, we'll get thrown out, and therefore we're 0:11:10.080 --> 0:11:11.800 going to need to get a warrant to use this thing. 0:11:12.440 --> 0:11:16.760 It turns out having to get a warrant was too 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:20.080 high of a bar for most police agencies and made 0:11:20.080 --> 0:11:23.840 them not want to use this technology unless they absolutely had. 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:25.679 To and thought they could get a warrant for it. 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:29.000 But there's a lot of other things they don't have 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:32.000 to get a warrant for, so we think my theory 0:11:32.640 --> 0:11:35.760 is that they are using these other technologies that are 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:38.559 easier to use, cheaper to use, don't have to get 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:41.080 a warrant, and saving the stingrays only for when they 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:43.439 are sure they can get a warrant and when they 0:11:43.720 --> 0:11:46.320 cost and complexity is justified. 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:49.880 Yeah, that makes sense to the twenty eighteen June twenty second, 0:11:49.880 --> 0:11:51.840 twenty eighteen, that supreme cool case. 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:55.080 Thank you real time fact checking here on ICHH. 0:11:55.440 --> 0:11:58.200 Yep, that's what we do. Let's talk about PenLink and 0:11:58.360 --> 0:12:03.480 like other data. I did hear recently that it's possible 0:12:03.520 --> 0:12:08.960 that Iran had used commercially available location data to target 0:12:09.320 --> 0:12:12.160 some of its strikes on US troops in the Middle East, 0:12:12.160 --> 0:12:13.280 which is wild to consider. 0:12:13.720 --> 0:12:16.800 I had not heard that, but it's not surprising and 0:12:16.880 --> 0:12:21.720 it is absolutely wild. Right. So yeah, So PenLink is 0:12:21.840 --> 0:12:24.280 a company that actually previously had sold a lot of 0:12:24.320 --> 0:12:27.840 software to help out with mccatchers. So interestingly they have 0:12:27.960 --> 0:12:31.760 now pivoted to different types of surfails. So they a 0:12:31.800 --> 0:12:34.160 few years ago acquired this company is Rael, a company 0:12:34.200 --> 0:12:38.760 called Cobwebs. Cobwebs makes a lot of different software. There's 0:12:38.800 --> 0:12:42.000 actually just recently a fantastic report about all of the 0:12:42.040 --> 0:12:44.800 software in that was acquired by PenLink. In this sale, 0:12:45.280 --> 0:12:48.440 there were links to a couple of spyware manufacturers. Anyway, 0:12:48.679 --> 0:12:51.079 there was a report on citizen Lab that's excellent. I 0:12:51.280 --> 0:12:54.120 highly recommend it. But the short of it is that 0:12:54.559 --> 0:12:57.120 PenLink has acquired two of their main products, one of 0:12:57.120 --> 0:12:59.920 which is called Tangles and the other one is called Weblock. 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:06.920 Tangles is a social media surveillance tool that allows investigators 0:13:06.960 --> 0:13:15.760 to scrape social media for specific keywords and make links 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:20.439 between different people different organizations. Say like anybody who has 0:13:20.600 --> 0:13:24.280 interacted with the Jean Brown gun Club, or anybody who 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:28.120 has interacted with the Socialist ra or anybody who has 0:13:28.240 --> 0:13:31.120 mentioned the words Antifa. Right, you can go build a 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:34.160 dossier on that person, build the dossier on who their 0:13:34.160 --> 0:13:37.360 friends are, what they're talking about. Scrape specific groups, any 0:13:37.360 --> 0:13:40.480 sort of left leaning group, right, they can build a 0:13:40.520 --> 0:13:42.360 dossier on that and who all the people are, who 0:13:42.360 --> 0:13:45.280 their friends are. And then they have this tool called Weblock. 0:13:45.760 --> 0:13:50.240 And what Weblock does is it is a near real 0:13:50.320 --> 0:13:55.040 time database of the locations of millions of phones worldwide. 0:13:55.720 --> 0:14:01.239 And so how it works is police can circle a 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:05.000 specific area on a map and it will show information 0:14:05.080 --> 0:14:09.000 about all of the phones that they know, you know 0:14:09.080 --> 0:14:11.400 that we're in that area in some sort of time frame. 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:13.800 And I think that the data gets updated every twenty 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:15.640 four hours. So you're going to have about a twenty 0:14:15.640 --> 0:14:19.400 four hour delay in that data piece. So you circle 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:21.320 an area just like with your finger, and you're going 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:23.680 to see who was there, you know, as of twenty 0:14:23.720 --> 0:14:26.240 four hours ago and back to so you know, whatever 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:29.200 timebrame you said. You can then select any one of 0:14:29.240 --> 0:14:33.200 those phones that were in that area and see information 0:14:33.240 --> 0:14:39.000 about that person, which is mostly advertising demographic information like 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:42.800 what what sort of age bracket that person's in, what 0:14:42.880 --> 0:14:46.000 their interests and hobbies are, whether they have kids, whether 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:50.160 they're a parent, what their nationality is, et cetera, et cetera. 0:14:50.280 --> 0:14:54.040 But you can also see a historical map of where 0:14:54.040 --> 0:14:56.920 that person or where that device we should say, yeah, 0:14:57.040 --> 0:14:59.240 has been right, and so you can see where they're, 0:14:59.360 --> 0:15:02.400 where they spend their days, which is probably their work 0:15:02.520 --> 0:15:04.560 or something like that, where they spend their nights, which 0:15:04.640 --> 0:15:07.400 is probably their house, you know, where they spend sort 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:09.920 of their afternoons or evenings, maybe a third space, maybe 0:15:09.960 --> 0:15:12.200 a lover's house, something like that. Right, But you can 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:14.480 see everywhere they've gone. You can see if they were 0:15:14.560 --> 0:15:16.960 at a specific protest, you could see everybody who was 0:15:17.000 --> 0:15:19.360 at a specific protest. You could do a lot of 0:15:19.360 --> 0:15:22.000 different things with that, and we think that they get 0:15:22.040 --> 0:15:26.000 that data from advertising networks. We know they get it 0:15:26.000 --> 0:15:29.200 from apps on your phone, and basically those apps are 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:34.680 sending information to advertising networks which is then sold or 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:39.720 scraped by penleink to add to their database for this app, 0:15:40.360 --> 0:15:43.120 and all of this is then sold to law enforcement, 0:15:43.240 --> 0:15:45.640 so law enforcement can get this information and none of 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:49.360 it requires a warrant. Currently, a law enforcement does not 0:15:49.520 --> 0:15:52.640 think they need a warrant to acquire this data, and 0:15:52.800 --> 0:15:54.400 judges have upheld that so far. 0:15:54.760 --> 0:15:57.280 Yeah, so you're saying when you download an app and 0:15:57.560 --> 0:16:01.280 you give it location permissions, that this is aggregated and 0:16:01.320 --> 0:16:03.080 then sold to third party. 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:05.920 Not every app, but yeah, a lot of apps, like 0:16:06.040 --> 0:16:09.960 most didn't. We've been really strongly encouraging people to not 0:16:10.160 --> 0:16:13.840 give apps location permissions unless there's a very good reason 0:16:14.200 --> 0:16:16.840 why that app should have location permissions. Right Like, on 0:16:16.880 --> 0:16:20.040 my phone, the only app that has location permissions is 0:16:20.080 --> 0:16:23.120 my maps app and my weather app, and that's because 0:16:23.160 --> 0:16:26.920 I know those apps don't have advertising SDKs in them. Yeah, 0:16:26.960 --> 0:16:28.920 but if you wanted to, if you were extra paranoid, 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:30.920 like if I was heading through too something, I mean, 0:16:31.080 --> 0:16:33.680 if I was heading to something that I didn't want 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:35.760 people to know I was there, I would turn my 0:16:35.800 --> 0:16:39.400 phone off or at least put it on airplane mode, right. Yeah, 0:16:39.480 --> 0:16:41.800 you know, short of that, you could turn off location 0:16:41.960 --> 0:16:45.280 services entirely for your phone, right and give no app 0:16:45.360 --> 0:16:49.720 your location. But yeah, it's our phones are snitches, man, 0:16:49.840 --> 0:16:50.840 Our phones are snitches. 0:16:51.600 --> 0:16:54.920 Yeah, that is the big take home is the big 0:16:54.920 --> 0:16:58.520 snake you carry around in your pocket take everywhere with 0:16:58.600 --> 0:17:03.720 you talking of its nitches. I can't think of a 0:17:03.720 --> 0:17:07.000 way to fucking pivot this into adverts down some cerruss. 0:17:07.480 --> 0:17:09.399 Here's some things you can buy the snitch on you. 0:17:09.960 --> 0:17:11.320 Yeah, hey, buy these things. 0:17:11.320 --> 0:17:13.680 They'll give away information data, sell it to an is 0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:26.800 Raeli company, will sell it back to the cops. All right, 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:31.080 we are back. I hope you bought something nice. I 0:17:31.359 --> 0:17:35.720 want to talk about community counter surveillance because it is interesting. 0:17:36.119 --> 0:17:39.719 It gives people something they can understand a little more 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:43.040 about the web of surveillance around them. Right then they 0:17:43.080 --> 0:17:45.960 could feel a little bit more informed. So let's talk 0:17:45.960 --> 0:17:48.960 about it. Maybe, Colonel Panic, if you want to kick off, 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:51.520 you've been involved in some of these devices. I don't 0:17:51.520 --> 0:17:52.960 know how you want to put it. You're behind some 0:17:53.080 --> 0:17:53.360 of them. 0:17:53.680 --> 0:17:57.399 Yeah, certainly I came up with the idea for what 0:17:57.480 --> 0:18:00.159 people are now calling we spy. It actually was are 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:05.239 initially called OUI spy. Its organizational unique identifier, which is 0:18:05.280 --> 0:18:10.400 the first six characters of a Mac address. But it's art. 0:18:10.480 --> 0:18:13.000 You know, it's going to be pronounced however people want it. 0:18:13.000 --> 0:18:16.680 It has dual meanings we spy. But this actually kind 0:18:16.680 --> 0:18:19.600 of was born from the war driving community, which is 0:18:19.840 --> 0:18:25.400 old school driving around trying to find devices, just seeing 0:18:25.480 --> 0:18:29.160 what's out there. And so essentially you have all these 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:33.000 devices that are transmitting around you, and it's totally fine 0:18:33.040 --> 0:18:37.600 and totally legal to just receive passively, and so things 0:18:37.680 --> 0:18:41.800 like Wiggle or Kismet you can use on Linux to 0:18:41.880 --> 0:18:43.880 just drive around and just kind of see what devices 0:18:43.920 --> 0:18:47.159 are in your area. And through this I came up 0:18:47.160 --> 0:18:51.000 with a device that was based on remote ID stuff 0:18:51.200 --> 0:18:54.440 prior to we spy that just detects drones and then 0:18:54.920 --> 0:18:57.960 transmits it over meshtastic, or it detects a device and 0:18:58.000 --> 0:19:00.600 transmits it over meshtastic. And then I was like, it'd 0:19:00.640 --> 0:19:03.760 be really cool to have a device that if you 0:19:03.800 --> 0:19:06.200 have a device that you want to know when comes 0:19:06.240 --> 0:19:10.000 around you, it'll just BEP. And so I just took 0:19:10.040 --> 0:19:13.560 a micro controller and drew out the design for this 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:17.240 thing to connect to a beeper and essentially made the 0:19:17.280 --> 0:19:20.800 firmwares that do a few different things. For instance, if 0:19:20.840 --> 0:19:23.160 you if you wanted to know when a Tesla drove 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:25.359 by or something, you could put in the OUI for 0:19:25.440 --> 0:19:28.840 that or the MAC address for a specific device, and 0:19:28.960 --> 0:19:31.679 you can just tell you get alerts when devices are 0:19:31.680 --> 0:19:34.280 around you, essentially, so that's where all that began. 0:19:35.040 --> 0:19:39.040 Yeah, to explain how like this might help someone. Let's say, 0:19:39.080 --> 0:19:41.159 like you just wanted to get an idea right of 0:19:41.240 --> 0:19:45.280 the surveillance infrastructure that that you encountered in your daily life. 0:19:45.920 --> 0:19:47.960 You haven't been going to city council meetings, you don't 0:19:48.000 --> 0:19:50.120 know what that shit is. Your local newspaper is dead 0:19:50.200 --> 0:19:52.919 now because everyone's local newspaper is dead now, right, so 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:55.600 there's no reporting on it. Like if they wanted to 0:19:55.600 --> 0:19:57.680 get one of these devices, cruise around town and work 0:19:57.720 --> 0:20:00.480 out like when they were being spied on, Look, what 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:03.560 kind of abilities would it give them? 0:20:03.840 --> 0:20:06.639 Certainly, so there's drone detection on this device, so you 0:20:06.680 --> 0:20:09.320 can have it alert when drones are near, or have 0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:13.320 it map via remote ID. But the biggest one I 0:20:13.320 --> 0:20:15.359 think that has been the most important one is the 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:20.679 flock camera detection. There's a ton of other cameras then flock, 0:20:21.359 --> 0:20:24.320 but this is the important one lately. So a lot 0:20:24.320 --> 0:20:26.600 of people are out on you know, out doing war 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:31.640 driving and doing real time research and contributing to, you know, 0:20:31.680 --> 0:20:36.200 adding to this database of flockcams signatures essentially, and it's 0:20:36.240 --> 0:20:38.760 either Wi Fi or Bluetooth, and some of them are 0:20:38.800 --> 0:20:42.640 over cellular too, but essentially this. I made a firmware 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:45.400 called flock you when you drive around, it just war 0:20:45.480 --> 0:20:50.640 drives flockcams. And a good friend of mine did some 0:20:50.680 --> 0:20:53.280 recent research and found out that if you put the 0:20:54.040 --> 0:20:58.000 micro controller into Wi Fi promiscuous mode, it'll detect more flockcams. 0:20:58.040 --> 0:21:01.600 So that firmware just came out a couple of days ago. 0:21:01.680 --> 0:21:05.479 So constantly being added to. So if anyone has you know, 0:21:05.880 --> 0:21:09.879 mac addresses OUIs, please contribute. It takes a village to 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:12.680 raise us surveillance detection shit. 0:21:15.880 --> 0:21:19.800 Yeah, it allows people to then yet lit the crowdsce 0:21:20.000 --> 0:21:23.399 or do do community based mapping of this stuff, right 0:21:23.440 --> 0:21:26.560 to give people and like I know, I have friends 0:21:27.000 --> 0:21:30.520 have reported on gunshot detection software like it won't surprise 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:33.400 people to find out which communities are the most surveiled 0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:36.880 and which communities are the least surveiled. Right, But it 0:21:36.920 --> 0:21:40.720 nonetheless it is important, Like that's an important function in 0:21:40.760 --> 0:21:44.679 making that obvious to people. Likewise, drones, people might be thinking, 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:47.159 why why would I want to look for drones? Drones 0:21:47.160 --> 0:21:49.760 are super cool. I just fly them around to see 0:21:49.760 --> 0:21:53.280 the birds. Like, you can explain that drones might also 0:21:53.400 --> 0:21:55.040 play a role in surveillance. 0:21:55.520 --> 0:21:59.919 Yeah, absolutely. I'm an avid drone flyer, so I developed 0:22:00.520 --> 0:22:03.440 just for funzis, you know, and made a drawn detector, 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:06.800 and I quickly realized that the most frequent flyers are 0:22:06.840 --> 0:22:11.000 the PD unfortunately, you know, surveilling the area. So it's 0:22:11.040 --> 0:22:13.720 really interesting to see and to see that they're flying, 0:22:14.240 --> 0:22:16.520 you know, more regularly than any hobbyist. 0:22:17.520 --> 0:22:20.520 Yeah. Yeah, this has become a big part of late cups. 0:22:20.600 --> 0:22:22.240 Used to have to send up a helicopter to look 0:22:22.240 --> 0:22:24.439 at something from above, right, and they still do all 0:22:24.480 --> 0:22:26.840 the time. Hear that shit over my house every day. 0:22:27.240 --> 0:22:29.280 But they can also do it with it right now 0:22:29.359 --> 0:22:32.800 for much less money. But you want to explain ray 0:22:32.960 --> 0:22:36.280 hunter a little bit for people who are like suddenly 0:22:36.280 --> 0:22:38.200 shocked by all of this and they want to turn 0:22:38.240 --> 0:22:39.879 the car into a beeping machine. 0:22:40.359 --> 0:22:43.199 Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure I will do that. I 0:22:43.240 --> 0:22:45.760 want to. I want to extol the virtues of we 0:22:45.920 --> 0:22:48.480 spuy for for a little bit before that, though, Yeah, 0:22:48.760 --> 0:22:50.479 I mean this is this is how I linked up 0:22:50.480 --> 0:22:52.439 with Colonel Panics because I thought this was such a 0:22:53.160 --> 0:22:57.280 really amazing project. And I think that it's it serves 0:22:57.280 --> 0:23:00.120 a couple of purposes, right, I think that there's there 0:23:00.160 --> 0:23:03.600 is one very practical purpose of like this can help 0:23:03.640 --> 0:23:07.360 you map out the surveillance in your town, right, you can. 0:23:07.440 --> 0:23:09.760 You can export the data from this and upload it 0:23:09.800 --> 0:23:14.200 directly to block mapper, right, or there's some other site 0:23:14.240 --> 0:23:16.119 that'll help you, like plot a route from point A 0:23:16.200 --> 0:23:18.480 to point B avoiding flock cameras, which I think is 0:23:18.520 --> 0:23:25.920 really cool. It also just helps sensitize you to how 0:23:25.960 --> 0:23:28.840 many flock cameras are in your town. Like people like 0:23:28.880 --> 0:23:31.959 they they they are unobtrusive to a degree, right, Like 0:23:32.040 --> 0:23:35.760 they are easy, easy visual noise to just ignore. Yeah, right, 0:23:35.800 --> 0:23:39.480 but when you're like I was surprised by how much 0:23:39.520 --> 0:23:41.440 it went off in my town, and then I look 0:23:41.480 --> 0:23:44.240 up and I'm like, oh yeah, flog cameras, flock camera okay, right, 0:23:44.280 --> 0:23:48.280 And It got me used to like spotting those cameras around, right, 0:23:48.280 --> 0:23:51.040 And I think that it's a really it's a really 0:23:51.119 --> 0:23:56.360 useful piece of propaganda work essentially in that in that 0:23:56.400 --> 0:23:58.880 way to get people used to spotting these, to get 0:23:58.880 --> 0:24:01.119 people thinking about, well, where are these? How many of 0:24:01.160 --> 0:24:02.280 these are there in my town? 0:24:02.720 --> 0:24:02.920 Right? 0:24:03.040 --> 0:24:04.880 Like people are like, well, you could just go look 0:24:04.920 --> 0:24:06.720 for them, Yeah, but people don't. 0:24:06.560 --> 0:24:09.720 Right, You've got this ship to do. Yeah, Like, yeah, exactly. 0:24:09.760 --> 0:24:12.760 But if I hear that from the from their you know, 0:24:13.240 --> 0:24:17.840 really loud buzzer, right, I know that something is going on. Right, 0:24:17.880 --> 0:24:20.640 it's more of a it's a little more jarring. It's 0:24:20.680 --> 0:24:21.560 it's good in that way. 0:24:22.000 --> 0:24:23.879 Yeah, I see it. It's like a like a little 0:24:24.280 --> 0:24:27.040 note Meandineville parrots at your shoulder. And when you're being 0:24:27.080 --> 0:24:29.280 spied on, you're being spied on. You're being spied on 0:24:29.560 --> 0:24:33.240 just constantly. Yeah, yeah, you realize the extent to which 0:24:33.240 --> 0:24:33.920 that is happening. 0:24:33.960 --> 0:24:36.920 Surveillance coal mine canary essentially, And yeah. 0:24:36.840 --> 0:24:39.240 It canary is better better enalogy. 0:24:39.119 --> 0:24:41.920 Kind of like lying cat, but surveillance cat. 0:24:41.920 --> 0:24:44.280 Right, yeah, yeah. 0:24:44.080 --> 0:24:45.960 Instead of every time you're lying and says that, it 0:24:46.040 --> 0:24:48.119 just says surveillance every time somebody's spying on you. 0:24:48.280 --> 0:24:49.680 Yeah. 0:24:49.800 --> 0:24:52.240 The other thing that I think is is cool. I 0:24:52.359 --> 0:24:55.919 know you I spy and and raigment. And why I 0:24:55.920 --> 0:24:58.600 think these are good projects is it gives a lot 0:24:58.600 --> 0:25:01.800 of people something to do right. Fascism can really make 0:25:01.880 --> 0:25:05.320 people feel helpless, and it's overarching surveillance can really make 0:25:05.359 --> 0:25:08.439 people feel helpless. And it's really easy for people to 0:25:08.640 --> 0:25:13.240 fall into privacy nihilism and security nihilism right and just 0:25:13.280 --> 0:25:16.119 be like, well, I'm gonna be watched constantly. There's nothing 0:25:16.160 --> 0:25:19.600 I can do, so, you know, sprit, why do anything right? 0:25:20.119 --> 0:25:23.560 And this gives people something to do, right. There's a 0:25:23.640 --> 0:25:26.840 thing you can and Americans love buying a thing, right, 0:25:26.960 --> 0:25:29.040 We love a gadget. And so there's a thing you 0:25:29.080 --> 0:25:32.960 can go buy or build or set up or whatever. Right, 0:25:33.040 --> 0:25:37.280 and go start pushing back, even just a little by little, 0:25:37.800 --> 0:25:39.359 on the surveillance around you. 0:25:39.680 --> 0:25:39.880 Right. 0:25:39.960 --> 0:25:44.240 And then once you start doing one thing, it lowers 0:25:44.280 --> 0:25:46.920 the energy of activation. It becomes easy to do other 0:25:47.000 --> 0:25:49.879 things right. It becomes easier to go to your city 0:25:49.920 --> 0:25:53.520 council and demand that they rip these cameras out. It 0:25:53.560 --> 0:25:56.480 becomes easier to find and organize with other people in 0:25:56.520 --> 0:26:00.760 your community, right, it becomes easier to start to you know, 0:26:00.800 --> 0:26:03.520 think about direct action, you know, in that sense, it 0:26:03.560 --> 0:26:06.080 becomes a bit of like propaganda indeed, right, Like we're 0:26:06.080 --> 0:26:10.080 giving people the tool to get off their couch and 0:26:10.280 --> 0:26:13.800 start to push back and start to fight back and 0:26:13.840 --> 0:26:15.600 start to become a part of a community. Right. So 0:26:15.640 --> 0:26:18.479 I think it's really important for that with ray Hunters. 0:26:18.520 --> 0:26:20.439 So I already kind of described how it works, but 0:26:20.880 --> 0:26:22.960 we had we had a few goals with ray hunter. 0:26:23.320 --> 0:26:27.639 One was to figure out, you know, how often the 0:26:27.720 --> 0:26:31.040 cell size simulators were being used in the US and 0:26:31.080 --> 0:26:33.080 around the world. But but you know, I live I 0:26:33.119 --> 0:26:36.240 live here, so this is my main focus, but specifically 0:26:36.240 --> 0:26:38.880 how often they're being used to spy on protesters, right, 0:26:38.920 --> 0:26:41.239 because we were getting this idea that a lot of 0:26:41.400 --> 0:26:44.240 activists thought that they were everywhere, right, and I thought 0:26:44.280 --> 0:26:47.159 that other things were a much bigger threat, right, Like, 0:26:47.240 --> 0:26:50.359 I'm there are there are things that I'm more concerned about. 0:26:50.480 --> 0:26:55.080 But also cel size simulators, stingrays are pretty mysterious, right, Like, 0:26:55.119 --> 0:26:58.040 we don't we know the broad strokes of how they work, 0:26:58.080 --> 0:27:01.080 but we don't know the technical details of what exploits 0:27:01.119 --> 0:27:04.600 they are using to you know, essentially trick people's phones 0:27:04.640 --> 0:27:07.679 into connecting to them. Right, So this was a this 0:27:07.840 --> 0:27:10.520 was a chance to try to get some ground truth 0:27:10.600 --> 0:27:15.280 information about that as well. Yeah, and we have succeeded 0:27:15.320 --> 0:27:17.560 in that we have a bunch of recordings from around 0:27:17.560 --> 0:27:21.040 the US of things that we think are quite likely 0:27:21.119 --> 0:27:25.560 to be cell size similiators actively in use by law enforcement, 0:27:25.640 --> 0:27:29.479 and move out some ideas about how they're working and 0:27:29.520 --> 0:27:32.000 what they're doing, and the other goals that we wanted 0:27:32.000 --> 0:27:35.879 to try to like calm down some of the fear 0:27:35.920 --> 0:27:39.639 and uncertainty and doubt among activists about whether this was 0:27:39.640 --> 0:27:41.879 a threat model that they need to worry about and 0:27:41.960 --> 0:27:43.880 give people more accurate threat models. 0:27:43.960 --> 0:27:44.120 Right. 0:27:44.320 --> 0:27:47.360 Yeah, and like also give people, you know, a modicum 0:27:47.359 --> 0:27:47.880 of comfort. 0:27:47.960 --> 0:27:48.120 Right. 0:27:48.640 --> 0:27:50.959 This is not a self defense device, right, This is 0:27:51.040 --> 0:27:52.760 actually like at the end of the day, this is 0:27:52.760 --> 0:27:56.200 a data collect like not data collection. We're not collecting 0:27:56.240 --> 0:28:00.280 your data, but this is this is a research project. Yeah, 0:28:00.480 --> 0:28:03.040 we're collecting the data about like how often do we 0:28:03.080 --> 0:28:05.720 think that we're actually seeing these Right. But it gives 0:28:05.760 --> 0:28:08.400 people a modicum of comfort too, Right, because you have this, 0:28:08.800 --> 0:28:10.960 you have Rayhunter with you, right, and if it doesn't 0:28:10.960 --> 0:28:13.560 go off, you're like, every time it doesn't go off, 0:28:13.640 --> 0:28:16.080 you're like, Okay, you know, maybe this is not actually 0:28:16.119 --> 0:28:18.520 a threat model that I need to worry so much about, right, 0:28:18.880 --> 0:28:20.359 And then I hope you'll think, well, what do I 0:28:20.359 --> 0:28:23.560 need to worry about? Oh? Probably things like PenLink. Probably 0:28:23.600 --> 0:28:26.919 things like Celebrate and the cops arresting me and making 0:28:26.920 --> 0:28:29.320 a copy of all the data on my phone. Yeah, right, 0:28:29.560 --> 0:28:32.640 probably other you know, facial recognition and other things like that, 0:28:32.640 --> 0:28:34.480 which I think are the things that you should be 0:28:35.280 --> 0:28:38.240 thinking about and worrying about. Yeah, that's been the point 0:28:38.240 --> 0:28:40.760 of Rayhunter, and I think it's been successful in that sense. 0:28:41.000 --> 0:28:41.200 Right. 0:28:41.520 --> 0:28:43.840 But yeah, we really, I mean, we want we want 0:28:43.880 --> 0:28:46.080 more people to install this, right, especially the next time 0:28:46.240 --> 0:28:50.040 Ice lays siege to a city, right, we want to 0:28:50.080 --> 0:28:52.280 have we want to have some there. You know, late 0:28:52.320 --> 0:28:55.120 in the game to Minneapolis, a ground game got set 0:28:55.160 --> 0:28:57.120 up where we then had like a couple hundred of 0:28:57.120 --> 0:28:59.440 these on the ground of Minneapolis, and we didn't find 0:29:00.160 --> 0:29:03.360 we did not find anything in Minneapolis that we follow 0:29:03.440 --> 0:29:07.200 was conclusive evidence of an mccatcher. Well, Ice was there 0:29:07.400 --> 0:29:10.160 laying siege to the city. Hopefully there is no next 0:29:10.200 --> 0:29:11.600 time they lay siege to a city. 0:29:11.720 --> 0:29:13.160 Yeah, hopefully that doesn't happen again. 0:29:13.320 --> 0:29:16.080 But if that does happen again, hopefully we can get, 0:29:16.280 --> 0:29:17.760 you know, sort of a grand game set. I'm very 0:29:17.840 --> 0:29:20.800 quickly to try to determine if they're using this form 0:29:20.800 --> 0:29:21.680 of surveillance or not. 0:29:22.400 --> 0:29:25.000 So talking of surveillance, here are a couple of products 0:29:25.040 --> 0:29:28.280 and services. If you buy them, that will probably result 0:29:28.320 --> 0:29:30.560 in your data being collected, which will in turn be 0:29:30.640 --> 0:29:33.560 sole perhaps to an Israeli company who'll say to the cops. 0:29:33.400 --> 0:29:43.680 Shamba would never sell my data. 0:29:47.120 --> 0:29:50.520 All right, we are back. I think that's really good 0:29:50.560 --> 0:29:53.320 explanation of the value of these devices. The more you know, 0:29:53.360 --> 0:29:55.800 the more you know. And this is a struggle that 0:29:55.840 --> 0:29:58.000 I have on a daily basis at the moment. There 0:29:58.000 --> 0:30:00.880 are so many things to be angry and scared about 0:30:00.960 --> 0:30:03.520 right now. We don't need to invent shit that we 0:30:03.560 --> 0:30:07.960 shouldn't be angry and scared about. We need to focus 0:30:08.240 --> 0:30:11.200 on the things that are a real threat. And there 0:30:11.240 --> 0:30:14.640 are things in this landscape which are a real threat. 0:30:14.840 --> 0:30:17.840 And so I think it helps people to have that, 0:30:17.920 --> 0:30:21.160 Like it's one thing to go on flog map or 0:30:21.200 --> 0:30:22.960 whatever and be like, Okay, well they're there and there 0:30:22.960 --> 0:30:24.800 and there it's another one to be like, well, shit, 0:30:25.200 --> 0:30:28.720 in my going out to get a pizza with my friends, 0:30:29.120 --> 0:30:32.160 I was spied upon five times, and I think that 0:30:32.160 --> 0:30:35.040 that is very valuable. At the same time, nobody tried 0:30:35.080 --> 0:30:37.960 to sell sites spoof and get my information that way. 0:30:38.240 --> 0:30:41.160 I think that's very important. Let's talk a little bit 0:30:41.240 --> 0:30:44.440 about like how people can organize. San Diego has done 0:30:44.440 --> 0:30:46.760 a spectacular job of signing a contract that it can't 0:30:46.760 --> 0:30:49.920 stop paying for surveillance cameras. So even if we stop 0:30:50.040 --> 0:30:54.560 using them tomorrow, we would keep sending our taxpayer money 0:30:54.600 --> 0:30:57.240 to a spying company, which is great. Because our city 0:30:57.320 --> 0:30:59.640 is and run by the sea, it will continue to 0:30:59.680 --> 0:31:03.040 be a shit show forever apparently. But like, let's assume 0:31:03.080 --> 0:31:05.840 that other people have slightly more competent local government. 0:31:05.920 --> 0:31:09.600 What an amazing contract. I can't believe that they said that. 0:31:09.160 --> 0:31:11.680 It's California politics is a shit show, But San Diego 0:31:11.720 --> 0:31:14.040 is a fucking joke. Many examples of this. 0:31:14.280 --> 0:31:17.120 Listen, my city council member just got indicted by the 0:31:17.160 --> 0:31:20.920 FBI on corruption charges. So in the year of our 0:31:20.960 --> 0:31:24.240 Lord twenty twenty five, he got indicted by the FBI. So, like, 0:31:24.280 --> 0:31:26.720 how stupid do you have to go out so I 0:31:27.480 --> 0:31:29.840 have no legs to stand on. But also in California, 0:31:29.920 --> 0:31:30.600 so it all tracks. 0:31:30.680 --> 0:31:34.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, the great great times on the left coast. 0:31:34.240 --> 0:31:36.400 Yeah, let's talk about how people have. 0:31:36.480 --> 0:31:39.800 Organized their communities against surveil. It's like just to like 0:31:39.800 --> 0:31:42.760 paint a picture for folks here, right, Like, the flock 0:31:42.800 --> 0:31:45.520 camera does not know if you're doing a crime. The 0:31:45.560 --> 0:31:50.040 flock camera doesn't know if you came from another state 0:31:50.120 --> 0:31:55.440 to obtain reproductive healthcare. The flock camera doesn't know if 0:31:55.480 --> 0:31:59.280 you're a migrant parent popping out to get formula for 0:31:59.320 --> 0:32:02.520 your little baby. It captures all of that shit, right, Like, 0:32:02.600 --> 0:32:06.360 there's a broad range of people in this country who 0:32:06.360 --> 0:32:09.480 are fucking disgusted at that, people who we might not 0:32:09.560 --> 0:32:12.400 be used to organizing with. But perhaps you guys could 0:32:12.480 --> 0:32:15.120 like explain the how or if you're aware of instances 0:32:15.120 --> 0:32:18.560 where people have organized against state survailan too, would be 0:32:18.560 --> 0:32:19.480 cool to hear about that. 0:32:20.320 --> 0:32:24.400 Yeah. I recently did a talk here in Asheville, North Carolina, 0:32:24.520 --> 0:32:27.640 at an event called nerd Nite, and nerd Night is 0:32:27.760 --> 0:32:30.600 essentially it's a way to go to a bar without 0:32:30.640 --> 0:32:33.680 just a bunch of drivel. You know, you go and 0:32:33.720 --> 0:32:37.840 then somebody does three talks fifteen minutes each, and so 0:32:38.080 --> 0:32:40.280 the host was kind enough to give me a twenty 0:32:40.320 --> 0:32:44.320 five minute slot at the end to talk about flock 0:32:44.400 --> 0:32:47.600 cameras in our city here, And it just so happened 0:32:47.600 --> 0:32:50.280 to be happening before they tried to vote on a 0:32:50.320 --> 0:32:56.000 real time intelligence center that centralized flock ax on and 0:32:56.360 --> 0:32:58.920 all of our drawn data into one just like wall 0:32:59.000 --> 0:33:02.760 of surveillance for the city. And so I did this 0:33:02.920 --> 0:33:06.920 talk and a city council member showed up our toolest 0:33:06.920 --> 0:33:11.080 city council member, Kim Roni. She showed up and dearing 0:33:11.680 --> 0:33:14.800 the questions at the end, I was unsure because on 0:33:14.840 --> 0:33:17.040 our portal here it said the APD says, you know, 0:33:17.080 --> 0:33:20.320 we don't share our data with outside agencies. And Kim 0:33:20.400 --> 0:33:23.480 Roni came up and confirmed that something like four thousand 0:33:23.880 --> 0:33:26.760 agencies have access to our data. Yeah, we don't share them, 0:33:27.000 --> 0:33:28.960 but they can request and we just hand it over. 0:33:29.080 --> 0:33:31.880 So yeah, that's that's one thing that we learned at 0:33:31.880 --> 0:33:36.240 that time. So this this prompted a big push that 0:33:36.400 --> 0:33:39.120 was kind of happening for city council. So a lot 0:33:39.160 --> 0:33:42.120 of folks that came to that talk came to city Council, 0:33:42.200 --> 0:33:44.200 and I'm telling you, like, it's folks all over the board. 0:33:44.200 --> 0:33:47.240 I mean, this is Appalachia here, nobody, nobody wants to 0:33:47.280 --> 0:33:48.920 be surveilled in these hollers. 0:33:48.960 --> 0:33:52.080 You know. Yeah, this is one of those areas where 0:33:52.080 --> 0:33:56.560 we can build really broad coalitions, like of people who 0:33:56.600 --> 0:33:59.640 we might not agree on with on everything. Like this 0:33:59.680 --> 0:34:02.240 is a wret to anyone who wants to do almost 0:34:02.280 --> 0:34:04.440 anything apart from I guess just go show uping. 0:34:04.760 --> 0:34:08.239 One interesting point is that over one hundred people showed 0:34:08.320 --> 0:34:10.839 up to city council. I'm you know, this is new 0:34:10.880 --> 0:34:12.960 to me. I'm working on getting out there a little bit, 0:34:13.040 --> 0:34:16.960 and I seeded my time to another speaker, but over 0:34:17.000 --> 0:34:18.759 one hundred people showed up, and then they pulled it 0:34:18.800 --> 0:34:21.359 from the vote. They pulled it from the agenda, so 0:34:21.800 --> 0:34:24.440 lots of folks left, but then some folks stucked around 0:34:24.440 --> 0:34:27.400 for general comment and still got it out there. But 0:34:27.680 --> 0:34:30.960 you know, we'll see what happens down the line. They 0:34:31.000 --> 0:34:32.000 love to do that tactic. 0:34:32.040 --> 0:34:33.719 They did the same thing in Oakland when it was 0:34:33.800 --> 0:34:35.600 up for When it was up on the agenda, they 0:34:35.640 --> 0:34:37.719 said a ton of people showed up to discuss it, 0:34:37.760 --> 0:34:39.799 and then they were like Oops, no, never mind, we're 0:34:39.800 --> 0:34:43.040 gonna pull that from the agenda today. Yeah, it's such 0:34:43.080 --> 0:34:45.759 a shady tactic, but no, I mean, at eff we've 0:34:45.760 --> 0:34:48.560 seen we've seen similar things all over the country. You know, 0:34:48.680 --> 0:34:53.080 a ton of different cities have dropped their flock contracts 0:34:53.880 --> 0:34:57.920 recently because of community pressure. Right, this doesn't happen in 0:34:57.920 --> 0:35:01.000 a vacuum. Your city council doesn't care, right They they 0:35:01.040 --> 0:35:04.560 want to score easy political wins. Right block sells them 0:35:04.640 --> 0:35:07.640 this as an easy political win. Right this they can 0:35:07.719 --> 0:35:11.680 stop carjackings, right they can. They can find car thefts, 0:35:11.800 --> 0:35:14.720 they can, they can do all these things that are popular. 0:35:14.800 --> 0:35:17.320 Nobody likes being carjacked, nobody likes having their car stolen. 0:35:17.560 --> 0:35:20.279 Right But when people show up to city council and 0:35:20.320 --> 0:35:24.160 push back and fight against this, it makes it not 0:35:24.320 --> 0:35:27.120 an easy political win, right, it makes it It makes 0:35:27.160 --> 0:35:30.879 it actually politically a bit poisonous to push these technologies. 0:35:30.920 --> 0:35:31.799 And it should be. 0:35:31.960 --> 0:35:36.120 Yeah, we shouldn't be surveilled constantly just because we happen 0:35:36.600 --> 0:35:39.600 to be outside, and like, look, I would love to 0:35:39.680 --> 0:35:42.319 not have a car, right, but this is America. Like 0:35:42.520 --> 0:35:45.440 everybody drives all the time. That is that is the 0:35:45.480 --> 0:35:49.919 society we live in unfortunately. Yeah, and you shouldn't be 0:35:50.160 --> 0:35:54.480 You shouldn't be subject to surveillance just for participating in society. 0:35:55.000 --> 0:35:57.239 And like you said, I think we can build very 0:35:57.280 --> 0:36:01.759 broad coalitions around this, right, and we can start to like, hey, 0:36:01.840 --> 0:36:04.160 you know, remember how you know how mad you were 0:36:04.320 --> 0:36:07.200 about flock, Like, yeah, wait till you find out about 0:36:07.239 --> 0:36:11.040 these other surveillance technologies, right, Like, now, let's talk about 0:36:11.440 --> 0:36:14.319 campaign finance and how how all these companies you don't 0:36:14.440 --> 0:36:18.359 like are financing politicians? Right, Like you can you can 0:36:18.520 --> 0:36:21.919 pull people to the left, and this is a good 0:36:21.960 --> 0:36:25.279 way to start interacting with those people. Yeah, right, even 0:36:25.320 --> 0:36:27.400 people on the right, even sort of our more you know, 0:36:27.840 --> 0:36:29.280 the more libertarian folks. 0:36:29.280 --> 0:36:30.120 They hate them too. 0:36:30.560 --> 0:36:33.120 A lot of them have gone full Nazi, But the 0:36:33.120 --> 0:36:36.959 ones that haven't gone full Nazi, right, like, should really 0:36:37.000 --> 0:36:39.359 care about this stuff, right, and you can you know, 0:36:39.440 --> 0:36:41.759 this can be away in with them as well. 0:36:42.040 --> 0:36:44.400 Yeah, like everyone we can bring with us, we need 0:36:44.400 --> 0:36:47.000 to in it when else fuck them? Yeah, absolutely, But 0:36:47.560 --> 0:36:50.800 I think this is a really good area to organize 0:36:50.840 --> 0:36:52.960 because all of us stand to lose something. It's so 0:36:53.239 --> 0:36:56.839 fucking creepy when you realize the extent to which like 0:36:56.920 --> 0:37:00.960 someone is watching or could be watching. A million reasons 0:37:01.040 --> 0:37:01.799 why people could be. 0:37:01.760 --> 0:37:02.160 Mad at that. 0:37:02.840 --> 0:37:05.560 There's plenty of room for abuse, you know there too, 0:37:05.600 --> 0:37:09.040 And it's been documented, you know, a recent video with 0:37:09.120 --> 0:37:11.480 Ben Jordans. I mean, you know, oh yeah, if you 0:37:11.520 --> 0:37:14.880 give people this kind of surveillance access, it's impossible to 0:37:15.000 --> 0:37:17.840 vet people on this level, you know. And if you 0:37:17.880 --> 0:37:21.680 give people who got you know, God likes surveillance power, 0:37:21.680 --> 0:37:23.279 what are they going to end up doing? And there's 0:37:23.320 --> 0:37:26.480 been cases where they've shown that police officers have surveiled 0:37:26.480 --> 0:37:30.399 their ex partners and then consequently pulled that person over, 0:37:30.760 --> 0:37:31.920 which is just insane. 0:37:32.400 --> 0:37:35.480 Yeah. No, they've used this to stop people, to surveill 0:37:35.640 --> 0:37:39.319 current partners, ex partners. Like the idea that police would 0:37:39.320 --> 0:37:45.680 never abuse their power is completely absurd and anybody who 0:37:45.760 --> 0:37:48.239 is arguing that is not arguing in good faith, I think. 0:37:48.880 --> 0:37:52.280 Yeah. And yet like like it is another the Dems 0:37:52.280 --> 0:37:54.879 are like necessarily I mean, they're not on the side 0:37:54.880 --> 0:37:57.719 of goods, especially in this area. But like it is 0:37:57.760 --> 0:38:00.320 a big blue state thing, Like don't think that because 0:38:00.360 --> 0:38:04.120 you live in California, this isn't happening. It is very 0:38:04.200 --> 0:38:05.280 much happening. 0:38:05.800 --> 0:38:08.120 Right right, Yeah, I mean to talk about that real quick, 0:38:08.160 --> 0:38:11.520 right like, we have I am blanking on the bill number, 0:38:11.520 --> 0:38:14.480 but we have a law in California that prevents California 0:38:14.520 --> 0:38:19.399 police agencies from sharing data from flock with from lices, 0:38:19.400 --> 0:38:22.120 play regions in general, with outside agencies and with ICE. 0:38:22.920 --> 0:38:26.440 And it still happens all the time. Police just willfully 0:38:26.560 --> 0:38:29.160 ignore this law, you know, I mean, like we see 0:38:29.640 --> 0:38:32.680 immigration or ICE support as the reason they put down 0:38:32.760 --> 0:38:35.319 for searches, even though that's illegal. And when they don't 0:38:35.320 --> 0:38:37.600 do that, we know that ICE. You know, people in 0:38:37.680 --> 0:38:40.799 ICE have buddies in California law enforcement. They text them, 0:38:40.800 --> 0:38:43.880 they say, hey, run this plate for me. Law enforcement texts, 0:38:44.160 --> 0:38:47.319 runs the plate, puts the reason down as investigation or 0:38:47.520 --> 0:38:51.120 crime or you know some other such nonsense. Yeah, and 0:38:51.160 --> 0:38:54.240 then and then you know, sends the information back to ICE. 0:38:54.360 --> 0:38:56.560 Right It's we call that the good old boys system 0:38:56.600 --> 0:38:57.080 down here. 0:38:59.040 --> 0:38:59.239 Yeah. 0:38:59.320 --> 0:39:02.799 Yeah. And they've made a concerted effort to recruit people 0:39:02.840 --> 0:39:05.239 from local law enforcement all across the country. And this 0:39:05.400 --> 0:39:08.560 is part of why right like, it gives a workaround 0:39:08.960 --> 0:39:12.600 SB fifty four is the California Values Act, which thank you, 0:39:12.800 --> 0:39:15.759 thank you, you are welcome. That is my shit. There 0:39:15.760 --> 0:39:18.359 has never been a prosecution under SP fifty four. As 0:39:18.360 --> 0:39:22.440 far as I'm aware, this law exists, like largely to 0:39:22.480 --> 0:39:25.319 make the politicians who passed it feel good. There are 0:39:25.320 --> 0:39:28.320 some parts about transferring people who are in detention already, 0:39:28.760 --> 0:39:32.919 But like these these systems give so many workarounds, right, 0:39:33.120 --> 0:39:36.719 or like if the data belongs to the company and 0:39:36.760 --> 0:39:39.800 not to the city, or if it's stored on a 0:39:39.880 --> 0:39:44.360 service somewhere else, like, all of these things provide potential 0:39:44.400 --> 0:39:48.800 work around. So I don't think I guess that because 0:39:49.280 --> 0:39:53.680 your local city council member has tweeted about ice being bad, 0:39:53.800 --> 0:39:56.759 that that means that your flock cameras are not being 0:39:56.840 --> 0:39:59.000 used for that. It's very hard to ring fences. 0:39:59.040 --> 0:39:59.239 Shit. 0:39:59.440 --> 0:40:02.880 Yeah, absolutely, If people want to learn more about this, 0:40:03.120 --> 0:40:06.359 if they want to maybe get a ray hunter, if 0:40:06.360 --> 0:40:08.880 they want to get a wee spy or mesh detect, 0:40:09.360 --> 0:40:11.360 don't explain mesh de tech for people really quickly. We 0:40:11.360 --> 0:40:12.279 didn't touch on that one. 0:40:12.520 --> 0:40:15.840 Yeah, mesh detect is essentially it's the first advice that 0:40:15.880 --> 0:40:19.000 I made, and its primary function was to detect dron 0:40:19.080 --> 0:40:22.799 remote ID. The FAA requires remote ID, which is any 0:40:22.920 --> 0:40:26.040 drone over I believe it's five hundred grams has to 0:40:26.080 --> 0:40:30.920 transmit pilot location and drone location in real time either 0:40:31.040 --> 0:40:35.239 via ble or Wi Fi, which is pretty whack for like, 0:40:35.880 --> 0:40:39.040 you know, yeah, amateur flyers that just want to fly around. 0:40:39.080 --> 0:40:42.120 But that being said, it's a great ocent tool. So 0:40:42.200 --> 0:40:45.080 I started with that, and essentially what this does is 0:40:45.520 --> 0:40:49.000 mesh detect. It takes that detection and sends it over 0:40:49.560 --> 0:40:53.200 mesh Tastic Laura networks. So you can set up a 0:40:53.680 --> 0:40:56.360 for instance, set up a node way out somewhere and 0:40:56.400 --> 0:40:58.120 then you can have it sends you a message down 0:40:58.160 --> 0:41:00.480 the line when a dron comes by over mesh tastic, 0:41:00.680 --> 0:41:03.319 or you can set it up somewhere and have it 0:41:03.480 --> 0:41:07.120 say okay, there's a body cam down here or whatever device, 0:41:07.160 --> 0:41:08.600 a tesla, an anything. 0:41:09.360 --> 0:41:09.520 You know. 0:41:09.520 --> 0:41:13.680 A lot of devices randomize their OUI these days, mostly phones, 0:41:13.719 --> 0:41:17.839 but there's plenty that don't easily detectable. So send it 0:41:17.840 --> 0:41:20.160 over mesh. It just gives you a network of detection. 0:41:20.320 --> 0:41:20.720 Essentially. 0:41:21.800 --> 0:41:24.480 So people wanted to get a wee spy to get 0:41:24.480 --> 0:41:27.000 a mesh detect, how would they do? How they go 0:41:27.040 --> 0:41:29.200 about it? What are the ways they could get on? 0:41:29.360 --> 0:41:29.759 Make one? 0:41:30.320 --> 0:41:33.720 Yeah, I have a website called kernel Panic dot tech 0:41:33.840 --> 0:41:36.600 and it's co l O N e L. It's a 0:41:36.960 --> 0:41:39.160 little bit of a play on words. But these devices, 0:41:39.200 --> 0:41:40.680 like if you really need one of these things, hit 0:41:40.760 --> 0:41:44.160 me up, we'll talk. But also it's just two wires, 0:41:44.200 --> 0:41:46.640 you know, like you can take my design and just 0:41:46.880 --> 0:41:49.200 reverse engineer it and copy it, and I put the 0:41:49.200 --> 0:41:52.479 wiring on my GitHub. Every bit of this is open source, 0:41:52.520 --> 0:41:54.680 so if you look up Colonel Panic GitHub, you can 0:41:54.680 --> 0:41:57.000 take this and make it on your own. I've made 0:41:57.040 --> 0:42:00.960 Home Assistant integration, so like if a UI pops up 0:42:00.960 --> 0:42:03.239 around your house, you can just get an alert via 0:42:03.320 --> 0:42:06.040 your smart home. You could just go on there, you know, 0:42:06.160 --> 0:42:08.759 dev it out. If you see something that's that I 0:42:08.840 --> 0:42:11.040 screwed up, just let me know and I'll fix it 0:42:11.160 --> 0:42:13.760 or we'll collab. So it's all open source. 0:42:14.080 --> 0:42:14.319 Yeah. 0:42:14.560 --> 0:42:16.160 How about ray Hunter. 0:42:16.680 --> 0:42:20.919 Yeah, so folks can go to Rayhunter dot e ff 0:42:20.960 --> 0:42:24.040 dot org and that is our ray Hunter documentation, that's 0:42:24.080 --> 0:42:28.120 our the ray Hunter book essentially, and there you can 0:42:28.160 --> 0:42:31.480 find links on where to buy the hardware. We do 0:42:31.560 --> 0:42:34.440 not sell the hardware, but you can buy the hardware 0:42:34.520 --> 0:42:39.960 on eBay or Amazon. Sometimes. The Orbit is what people 0:42:40.040 --> 0:42:43.680 use in the US primarily and like South America in 0:42:44.440 --> 0:42:47.960 Europe and parts of Africa. There's a tp link device 0:42:48.480 --> 0:42:52.680 that fits the bill better for those areas, and once 0:42:52.680 --> 0:42:55.279 you buy the hardware, you can install the software on 0:42:55.320 --> 0:42:58.040 it there. The hardware, unfortunately, is not open source because, 0:42:58.040 --> 0:42:59.840 like I said, we didn't bull the hardware. We're just 0:43:00.120 --> 0:43:03.200 purposing old hardware right when this when the project started, 0:43:03.239 --> 0:43:05.600 you could buy the hardware for like ten or twenty bucks. 0:43:06.280 --> 0:43:09.439 Now it's harder to find because of people have bought 0:43:09.440 --> 0:43:12.239 out a lot of the supply and other other scalpers 0:43:12.280 --> 0:43:14.080 have wised up to the fact that people are trying 0:43:14.080 --> 0:43:17.560 to buy these. So unfortunately we've created a whole like 0:43:17.719 --> 0:43:21.120 mini market. Uh, i'm a I'm a I'm a market maker. 0:43:21.160 --> 0:43:25.680 Goddamn it. We've a hyper capitalist right here. But no, 0:43:25.920 --> 0:43:28.120 there's like there's a whole you know, mini market of 0:43:28.120 --> 0:43:31.760 people selling like already installed ray Hunters on eBay and stuff. 0:43:32.680 --> 0:43:35.320 I don't recommend paying more than like forty or sixty 0:43:35.360 --> 0:43:39.080 bucks for the hardware, but then, yeah, the software is free. 0:43:39.280 --> 0:43:42.360 It's free, it's open source, right, it's on getthub. You 0:43:42.360 --> 0:43:44.160 can go edit it right now. And you know, I 0:43:44.200 --> 0:43:46.600 know there's a lot of tech folks that listen to 0:43:46.680 --> 0:43:48.560 the show, And I just want to say, like, there's 0:43:48.600 --> 0:43:52.200 so many cool opportunities for counter surveillance, right, Like we 0:43:52.320 --> 0:43:55.359 keep kind of kind of mentioning that, like a lot 0:43:55.360 --> 0:43:58.320 of police hardware is made by this company Axon, and 0:43:58.800 --> 0:44:01.400 it has a very unique blue chooth signature that can 0:44:01.440 --> 0:44:02.440 be easily detected. 0:44:02.560 --> 0:44:02.719 Right. 0:44:03.040 --> 0:44:06.600 There's a lot of really interesting stuff that you can 0:44:06.640 --> 0:44:10.840 do with coutsual balance. And the chip that the OUI 0:44:10.920 --> 0:44:14.000 spy runs on, the ESP thirty two is this really 0:44:14.000 --> 0:44:16.480 powerful little chip that only costs like six bucks if 0:44:16.480 --> 0:44:19.160 you buy them wholesale, and it's got Wi Fi blue 0:44:19.160 --> 0:44:21.839 shoes and a bunch of really cool capabilities you know 0:44:21.920 --> 0:44:24.319 that you could use to make some really cool counter 0:44:24.360 --> 0:44:27.000 surveillance stuff. And so I really want to encourage the 0:44:27.440 --> 0:44:29.759 tech minded folks to like think about this, Come look 0:44:29.800 --> 0:44:32.520 at these projects, you know, Come, you know, write your 0:44:32.520 --> 0:44:34.040 own code or make your own projects. 0:44:34.160 --> 0:44:34.319 Right. 0:44:34.400 --> 0:44:38.360 But like the quote from Hackers, and as your beautifully 0:44:38.360 --> 0:44:41.680 designed PC board says, colonel, we can snoop onto them 0:44:41.719 --> 0:44:44.719 as they snoop onto us, right exactly, we need to 0:44:44.800 --> 0:44:47.560 spy back, right, and we need to raise the cost 0:44:47.880 --> 0:44:50.080 of them spying on us, right, And that's like, sorry, 0:44:50.320 --> 0:44:52.680 let mean that that makes me to another thing go off. 0:44:52.840 --> 0:44:55.440 What's really cool about these products is like you can 0:44:55.480 --> 0:44:58.000 build right hunters for about twenty bucks, right you could. 0:44:58.120 --> 0:45:02.000 You could buy beautiful PC board and the already assembled 0:45:02.040 --> 0:45:06.480 thing from Colonel for you know, a few dollars. I 0:45:06.480 --> 0:45:08.560 don't know these priced off the time, it's I don't 0:45:08.600 --> 0:45:10.839 want to say. Or you could build one for you know, 0:45:10.920 --> 0:45:14.799 under twenty bucks, right yep, And you are then, for 0:45:15.080 --> 0:45:19.160 you know, twenty or forty bucks, you are making useless 0:45:19.280 --> 0:45:22.920 a surveillance tool and surveillance network which costs hundreds of 0:45:22.960 --> 0:45:27.239 thousands to millions of dollars. Right The economics here are 0:45:27.280 --> 0:45:30.120 on our side, yeah, right, Like this is just like 0:45:30.200 --> 0:45:34.680 any sort of asymmetrical warfare, right Like, it costs millions 0:45:34.719 --> 0:45:37.760 and billions and really billions of dollars for the governments 0:45:37.760 --> 0:45:40.319 of the US to set up this surveillance economy, and 0:45:40.360 --> 0:45:43.680 we can defeat it for you know, twenty or forty 0:45:43.680 --> 0:45:46.279 bucks each, right, Like, we can do this a lot 0:45:46.400 --> 0:45:49.000 longer than they can. They will go broke before we do. 0:45:49.560 --> 0:45:51.759 And I think that that's really important, right, Like, like 0:45:51.840 --> 0:45:54.719 the asymmetry here and the economics here are actually on 0:45:54.800 --> 0:45:56.080 our side. Yeah. 0:45:56.400 --> 0:46:00.840 And it's also like it's cool to understand and make stuff. 0:46:01.320 --> 0:46:04.400 I am very good at fixing things that work on 0:46:04.719 --> 0:46:08.000 you know, like explosion happens and piston lifts right like that, 0:46:08.000 --> 0:46:11.319 that's my wheelhouse. I can fix my truck. I can 0:46:11.320 --> 0:46:13.759 fix my bicycle. I can fix Are you saying you 0:46:13.960 --> 0:46:15.960 like ice in combustion? 0:46:16.400 --> 0:46:16.560 Yea. 0:46:18.560 --> 0:46:21.000 In many ways, both ices will be the yeah, the 0:46:21.120 --> 0:46:24.319 end of all of us. But I enjoy to fix one. 0:46:24.400 --> 0:46:26.120 I like to look at it and go like uh 0:46:26.200 --> 0:46:28.480 huh okay, this goes bang and then this goes up. 0:46:28.520 --> 0:46:31.279 And it's cool to learn this stuff. It's cool to 0:46:31.360 --> 0:46:34.359 learn a new skill, especially like once you get into 0:46:34.360 --> 0:46:37.200 your thirties, like it's good to learn shit. Yeah, and 0:46:38.120 --> 0:46:41.879 this is approachable, especially like the guides for these are 0:46:42.080 --> 0:46:44.960 very approachable even if you're not like a tech punk. 0:46:45.239 --> 0:46:48.279 If this is your first time going on GitHub and 0:46:48.320 --> 0:46:50.080 that there are people you can reach out to, like 0:46:50.200 --> 0:46:53.040 real nice people. You won't get an AI tech support. 0:46:53.560 --> 0:46:56.480 Someone will help you understand this shit, and that is cool. 0:46:57.040 --> 0:46:59.440 There's a platform called the M five stack that makes 0:46:59.480 --> 0:47:02.560 it really easy. So like you get as a jaw 0:47:03.120 --> 0:47:06.040 ESP thirty two, but M five stack makes it so 0:47:06.120 --> 0:47:07.840 that like you don't even have to do soldering, and 0:47:07.880 --> 0:47:11.280 they have dragon drop coating, so you can just plug 0:47:11.320 --> 0:47:13.359 in sensors and things like you can make a drawing 0:47:13.360 --> 0:47:14.960 detector out of one of those and already has like 0:47:15.000 --> 0:47:18.160 a screen onboard, and so like it's super cheap and 0:47:18.200 --> 0:47:20.719 you could just deb it out really hard and just 0:47:20.800 --> 0:47:21.279 go for it. 0:47:21.320 --> 0:47:21.440 You know. 0:47:21.560 --> 0:47:25.719 It's it's easy for makers nowadays, Like like in the fifties, right, 0:47:25.719 --> 0:47:28.080 you have to have an it's our military and industry 0:47:28.080 --> 0:47:30.279 complex behind you to do this kind of stuff, right, 0:47:30.440 --> 0:47:33.040 or a corporation, And now you can just just make 0:47:33.080 --> 0:47:35.120 yourself a little thing in your house. It's really cool. 0:47:35.440 --> 0:47:39.960 Yeah, And like you know, I was in Minnesota there 0:47:40.120 --> 0:47:42.800 at the time when lots of ice and CBP agents 0:47:42.800 --> 0:47:46.120 were two when they took a lot of people and 0:47:46.200 --> 0:47:49.560 killed two people, And like one of the things that 0:47:49.840 --> 0:47:54.640 was beautiful about that really horrible time was that everyone 0:47:54.880 --> 0:47:59.040 was so locked in, like to include grandmothers, to include 0:47:59.040 --> 0:48:02.239 a dude with a signed said, what would Ronald Reagan do? Like, 0:48:02.480 --> 0:48:04.399 no one wanted those people in their town, right, And 0:48:04.440 --> 0:48:07.319 that requires everyone to do what they do best. Not 0:48:07.400 --> 0:48:09.880 everyone can be out on a street corner whistling a 0:48:09.880 --> 0:48:13.400 whistle or driving around right. Some people that have HA 0:48:13.600 --> 0:48:15.799 like a really powerful skill set, And if you are 0:48:15.800 --> 0:48:18.960 someone who can't be out, you can still help create 0:48:19.040 --> 0:48:22.719 these You can help code this stuff like it's beautiful 0:48:22.760 --> 0:48:26.200 when our resistance takes the best from all of us 0:48:26.719 --> 0:48:28.920 and then we are all better because of. 0:48:28.880 --> 0:48:32.200 That, absolutely beautifully said. 0:48:32.640 --> 0:48:35.440 Anything you guys would like to plug before we go, websites, 0:48:36.320 --> 0:48:39.399 util aid projects, favorite snacks, whatever you want. 0:48:39.719 --> 0:48:42.120 Take a peek at d flock dot emmy if you 0:48:42.160 --> 0:48:44.439 want to. I have nothing to do with that project yet, 0:48:44.480 --> 0:48:47.600 but you know they map in the flock cams. You 0:48:47.640 --> 0:48:51.480 can use these detectors as supplementary devices to confirm or 0:48:51.840 --> 0:48:54.239 to find things you haven't seen. But other than that, 0:48:54.280 --> 0:48:56.759 just Colonel paniccdot tech can definitely check out EFF. They 0:48:56.760 --> 0:48:58.120 get a lot of good stuff going on and they've 0:48:58.160 --> 0:48:59.719 been doing it since the early days. 0:49:00.360 --> 0:49:05.719 At I guess I'll plug EFF's surveillance self defense guys. Specifically, 0:49:06.680 --> 0:49:08.680 that's at SSD dot ef dot org. 0:49:08.719 --> 0:49:09.080 We got it. 0:49:09.120 --> 0:49:16.200 We're the only continuously updated and long longest maintained security guys. 0:49:16.280 --> 0:49:19.600 There's also the Activist Checklist, which is really great. Another 0:49:19.640 --> 0:49:23.200 really great resource, the surveillance self defense guides are almost 0:49:23.200 --> 0:49:25.319 like a textbook, like there's a lot of info there, 0:49:25.640 --> 0:49:27.600 but if you just need the like quick and dirty 0:49:27.600 --> 0:49:31.359 cliffs that it's version. Activist Checklist is really great for that, right, 0:49:31.760 --> 0:49:33.640 and they're doing a good job keeping that up. A 0:49:33.680 --> 0:49:36.200 lot of respect to them, and then yeah, I check 0:49:36.239 --> 0:49:38.680 out you know Rayhunter dot eff dot org for Ray 0:49:38.760 --> 0:49:41.960 Hunter stuff, Colonel Panic dot tech for his stuff. Since 0:49:42.000 --> 0:49:45.319 he plugged my stuff, I guess the other thing that 0:49:45.480 --> 0:49:51.040 I will plug is open Archive, which is a nonprofit 0:49:51.080 --> 0:49:53.760 that I'm on the board of. They're making an app 0:49:53.880 --> 0:49:59.040 called save which allows you to securely record, archive, and 0:49:59.120 --> 0:50:03.399 verify videos of whatever you want, say, such as human 0:50:03.480 --> 0:50:07.600 rights abuses or you know, police atrocities or things of 0:50:07.600 --> 0:50:11.359 that nature. And so I recommend that project. Go check 0:50:11.400 --> 0:50:13.480 them out. They're really good folks. If you're doing a 0:50:13.480 --> 0:50:16.120 lot of cop watch type stuff, that's a good place 0:50:16.160 --> 0:50:16.279 to go. 0:50:17.800 --> 0:50:20.440 Fantastic nice. We thank you very much for joining us. 0:50:20.440 --> 0:50:22.160 That was great, Thank you for having us. 0:50:22.440 --> 0:50:39.960 Thank you. Counter terrorism, No, I prefer table terrorism. 0:50:40.280 --> 0:50:42.400 Counter I hardly know word terrorism. 0:50:42.840 --> 0:50:46.160 Hi, this is it could happen here. Yeah, I'm Garrison Davis. 0:50:46.239 --> 0:50:48.320 That's Robert Evans and. 0:50:48.480 --> 0:50:50.280 Not a lot to be proud of with that introduction. 0:50:50.880 --> 0:50:52.600 No, not much to be proud of. But there's also 0:50:52.640 --> 0:50:56.280 not much to be proud of considering the twenty twenty 0:50:56.280 --> 0:50:58.920 six White House counter Terrorism Strategy. 0:50:59.560 --> 0:51:00.000 That's right. 0:51:00.160 --> 0:51:02.239 So I think we put equal amount of work into 0:51:02.320 --> 0:51:05.280 this as Sebastian Gorga. 0:51:04.800 --> 0:51:06.000 Did every year. 0:51:06.040 --> 0:51:10.239 The new counter terrorism list is It's My Dune, you know, 0:51:10.440 --> 0:51:12.000 or whatever big movie's coming out this year. 0:51:12.239 --> 0:51:12.399 Hi. 0:51:12.480 --> 0:51:13.240 I was excited. 0:51:13.800 --> 0:51:17.560 Yeah, I mean I was excited until I actually read it. 0:51:17.640 --> 0:51:20.040 And that's what we're gonna be talking about today. And 0:51:20.200 --> 0:51:23.880 it's a short one. This is very short. Actually, this 0:51:23.960 --> 0:51:27.719 is just fourteen pages of actual text, about half the 0:51:27.840 --> 0:51:31.799 length of previous comparable documents. Now, there's been a lot 0:51:31.800 --> 0:51:37.160 of headlines about the political weaponization after this strategy was released, 0:51:37.200 --> 0:51:39.120 and we'll talk about that in a sec. But let's 0:51:39.360 --> 0:51:44.200 first start by talking about how the document starts with 0:51:44.239 --> 0:51:47.960 a presidential forward by none other than Donald Trump, dated 0:51:48.040 --> 0:51:53.359 May twenty twenty sixth. Trump lists counter terrorism accomplishments from 0:51:53.360 --> 0:51:56.719 the first year of a second term, like mobilizing DHS 0:51:56.719 --> 0:52:02.240 to remove illegal alien criminals in ghiest sympathizers to arresting 0:52:02.280 --> 0:52:06.120 the isis K operative who planned the Abbey Gates suicide 0:52:06.120 --> 0:52:09.920 bombing in Afghanistan, and rescuing over one hundred American hostages. 0:52:10.480 --> 0:52:13.480 Speaking of Trump also says he secured the release of 0:52:13.520 --> 0:52:16.680 the remaining October seventh hostages end quote began the process 0:52:16.680 --> 0:52:19.000 of ensuring Gaza can no longer serve as a haven 0:52:19.120 --> 0:52:23.640 for terrorism and extremism unquote, and that's through establishing Trump's 0:52:23.640 --> 0:52:27.640 own Board of Peace. The president writes that Operation Midnight 0:52:27.640 --> 0:52:31.800 Hammer and Epic Fury have dealt quote unquote devastating blows 0:52:31.840 --> 0:52:34.800 to Iran, which Trump calls the world's number one state 0:52:34.920 --> 0:52:40.000 sponsor of terror. Other actions Trump admin has taken include 0:52:40.040 --> 0:52:43.880 designating Muslim Brotherhood chapters and quote unquote deadly cartels as 0:52:43.960 --> 0:52:49.160 terrorist organizations, with Trump boasting that he quote began using 0:52:49.200 --> 0:52:51.440 the strength and power of the US military to stop 0:52:51.440 --> 0:52:56.160 and destroy cartel operations. The example that he includes here 0:52:56.239 --> 0:52:59.800 is when the US armed forces captured the quote unquote 0:53:00.239 --> 0:53:07.640 narco terrorist outlaw Venezuelan dictator Nicholas Maduro. So Trump's opening 0:53:07.800 --> 0:53:12.040 forward covers the majority of what this sixteen page total 0:53:12.440 --> 0:53:18.239 strategy is focused on. As Trump writes, quote cartel's jihadists 0:53:18.400 --> 0:53:22.560 or the governments who support them. Now, what Trump doesn't 0:53:22.680 --> 0:53:26.960 actually write about in this forward is what most reporting 0:53:27.120 --> 0:53:30.160 on the new counter terrorist strategy has focused on. The 0:53:30.320 --> 0:53:34.400 later inclusion of left wing terrorism as one of the 0:53:34.520 --> 0:53:39.280 nation's leading terror threats, and that's what we'll be mostly 0:53:39.480 --> 0:53:42.959 talking about today. Good though we will cover the other 0:53:43.080 --> 0:53:47.359 two types of terrorism that this guide focuses on now. 0:53:47.600 --> 0:53:52.080 This strategy is the brainchild of White House counter Terrorisms 0:53:52.120 --> 0:53:56.720 are Sebastian Gorka, a far right Hungarian commentator who briefly 0:53:56.760 --> 0:54:01.600 served in Trump's first term. This new document states, quote, 0:54:02.040 --> 0:54:05.279 a new type of domestic terrorism has emerged, driven by 0:54:05.360 --> 0:54:10.799 violent extremists who have adopted ideologies antithetical to freedom and 0:54:10.880 --> 0:54:14.520 the American way of life. The terrorist threat has changed. 0:54:14.840 --> 0:54:18.239 We face new categories and combinations of violent actors that 0:54:18.320 --> 0:54:23.680 make established ways of doing counter terrorism insufficient or obsolete. 0:54:23.719 --> 0:54:27.440 This strategy lists three main types of terror groups the 0:54:27.600 --> 0:54:33.320 US is currently facing narco terrorists and transnational gangs, legacy 0:54:33.480 --> 0:54:39.239 Islamic terrorists, and violent left wing extremists, including anarchists and 0:54:39.440 --> 0:54:43.759 anti fascists. Now we'll get to the narco terrorist stuff later, 0:54:44.239 --> 0:54:48.280 but let's start with that last line, which is clearly 0:54:48.640 --> 0:54:52.879 clearly pulling from Trump's Antifa terrorism Executive Order as well 0:54:52.920 --> 0:54:56.160 as the National Security Presdential and Mirandum Number seven, which 0:54:56.200 --> 0:54:59.239 directed federal law enforcement to investigate potential crimes relating to 0:54:59.280 --> 0:55:03.040 political violence and terrorism quote under the umbrella of self 0:55:03.080 --> 0:55:09.040 described anti fascism. This is a pretty clear political weaponization 0:55:09.880 --> 0:55:14.400 of the intelligence community apparatus, and the new counter terrorist 0:55:14.440 --> 0:55:20.960 strategy doubles down on what ms M seven established writing quote. 0:55:21.640 --> 0:55:25.200 In addition to cartels and Islamist terror groups, our national 0:55:25.239 --> 0:55:29.239 counter terrorism activities will prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization 0:55:29.840 --> 0:55:34.480 of violent, secular political groups whose ideology is anti American, 0:55:34.719 --> 0:55:39.000 radically pro transgender, and anarchist. We will use all the 0:55:39.040 --> 0:55:41.560 tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, 0:55:41.560 --> 0:55:45.640 identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, 0:55:46.040 --> 0:55:49.480 and use law enforcement to cripple them operationally before they 0:55:49.480 --> 0:55:51.600 can name or kill the innocent. We will do the 0:55:51.640 --> 0:55:54.680 same with state sponsors of such groups and those governments 0:55:54.719 --> 0:55:59.320 undertaking lethal plots on US soil or against Americans anywhere quote. 0:56:00.760 --> 0:56:02.799 Are there any cases of that happening? Are there any 0:56:02.840 --> 0:56:04.640 Antifa groups killing Americans. 0:56:05.040 --> 0:56:08.400 They have one case. They have one case, not ANTIFA groups, 0:56:08.520 --> 0:56:09.320 but yes. 0:56:09.120 --> 0:56:13.680 Oh they don't have cases of state sponsors backing ANTIVA, 0:56:13.719 --> 0:56:17.799 but they do have one instance included a violent left 0:56:17.800 --> 0:56:21.040 wing extremism, which we'll get to in a sec one 0:56:21.040 --> 0:56:24.680 example across this like fourteen to sixteen page document. Now, 0:56:25.440 --> 0:56:29.000 the violent secular ideologies that I just listed are very 0:56:29.040 --> 0:56:33.760 similar to or overlapping with the common indicators and motivations 0:56:33.880 --> 0:56:40.040 animating violent conduct. Included NSPM seven, anti Americanism, anti capitalism 0:56:40.160 --> 0:56:43.320 to Christianity, support for the overthrow of the United States government, 0:56:43.360 --> 0:56:46.200 extremism on migration, race and gender, and hostility to those 0:56:46.200 --> 0:56:49.799 who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality. 0:56:50.680 --> 0:56:54.960 After this new strategy was published, Sebastian Gorka told reporters, quote, 0:56:55.080 --> 0:57:01.560 we are taking ideology and counter ideology very seriously now, 0:57:01.760 --> 0:57:06.680 despite that clear political focus, literally calling it left wing extremism, 0:57:07.160 --> 0:57:09.719 something that Biden never really did with right wing extremism 0:57:09.760 --> 0:57:11.280 at least some documents. 0:57:10.840 --> 0:57:12.080 Like this, no shocking. 0:57:13.000 --> 0:57:16.760 Despite that clear focus, this counter terrorism strategy claims that 0:57:17.080 --> 0:57:20.520 counter terrorism operations will be executed quote unquote a politically 0:57:21.640 --> 0:57:25.560 and actually spends a significant portion complaining about how the 0:57:25.600 --> 0:57:30.919 Biden admin previously weaponized counter terrorism operations against innocent Americans 0:57:31.480 --> 0:57:35.760 great stuff quote, as real threats were ignored or underplayed. 0:57:36.000 --> 0:57:40.480 Americans have witnessed the politically motivated killings of Christians and 0:57:40.600 --> 0:57:45.440 Conservatives committed by violent left wing extremists, including the assassination 0:57:45.600 --> 0:57:49.840 of Charlie Kirk by a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies. 0:57:49.920 --> 0:57:50.880 Unquote. 0:57:51.040 --> 0:57:53.720 This is the only example of quote unquote left wing 0:57:53.800 --> 0:57:57.760 violence included in this entire document. Just this, just this 0:57:57.840 --> 0:58:02.480 one killing now on executive disorder. We have reported on 0:58:02.560 --> 0:58:05.680 a few instances where the Trump administration has tried to 0:58:06.400 --> 0:58:10.720 weaponize the killing of Christians or attacks against churches as 0:58:10.800 --> 0:58:14.520 being motivated by like anti Christian bias, even when the 0:58:14.600 --> 0:58:19.120 people committing those attacks were themselves Christian, and for all 0:58:19.120 --> 0:58:23.920 that we can tell, we're not religiously motivated against Christians. 0:58:24.000 --> 0:58:26.480 But they tried to glom onto a few of these incidents. 0:58:26.200 --> 0:58:29.400 Certainly not the Charlie Kirk assassination exactly. 0:58:29.080 --> 0:58:30.800 Right, Yeah, but they've tried tried to try to glom 0:58:30.920 --> 0:58:33.920 onto these examples to build this narrative of like anti 0:58:34.000 --> 0:58:37.240 Christian violence which is rising in the United States. And 0:58:37.600 --> 0:58:40.160 as for the assassination of Charlie Kirk, we still don't 0:58:40.160 --> 0:58:42.560 have a clear picture of the motivations behind that attack. 0:58:43.520 --> 0:58:48.360 More on that later. After this new counter terrorism strategy dropped, 0:58:48.880 --> 0:58:51.000 I did the thing that I assume anyone would do 0:58:51.320 --> 0:58:54.120 and read through the past like three or four counter 0:58:54.200 --> 0:58:55.240 terrorism strategies. 0:58:55.760 --> 0:59:00.800 Really, yeah, great stuff from the past ten years. Good work. 0:59:01.200 --> 0:59:04.040 Trump released one in twenty eighteen, and Biden's came out 0:59:04.040 --> 0:59:08.040 in twenty twenty one. Now, the first mention of any 0:59:08.360 --> 0:59:12.880 non Islamic terrorist group in Trump's twenty eighteen counter terrorism 0:59:12.920 --> 0:59:18.640 strategy is the Nordic Resistance Movement quote, a prominent transnational 0:59:18.680 --> 0:59:22.640 self described national socialist organization with anti Western views that 0:59:22.680 --> 0:59:27.520 has conducted violent Attacksicans, Muslims, left wing groups, and others unquote. 0:59:27.840 --> 0:59:30.960 This document from Trump's first term focuses almost exclusively on 0:59:31.040 --> 0:59:35.440 Islamic terrorism, specifically ISIS and al Qaeda, but also briefly 0:59:35.480 --> 0:59:39.520 mentions the Neo Nazi National Action Group in one paragraph 0:59:39.680 --> 0:59:42.560 and in another reads quote, the United States has long 0:59:42.640 --> 0:59:45.600 faced persistent security threat from domestic terrorists who are not 0:59:45.720 --> 0:59:50.840 motivated by a radical Islamist ideology, but are instead motivated 0:59:50.840 --> 0:59:54.720 by other forms of violent extremism such as racially motivated extremism, 0:59:54.800 --> 0:59:59.000 animal rights extremism, environmental stremism, sovereign citizen extremism, and militia 0:59:59.040 --> 1:00:03.000 extremism quot but that's really all has on non Islamic 1:00:03.040 --> 1:00:06.080 extremism in what is a thirty four page document. 1:00:07.000 --> 1:00:08.200 By the time Biden. 1:00:08.040 --> 1:00:12.800 Got into office, White's premacist violence had risen dramatically and 1:00:12.840 --> 1:00:16.360 the Biden had been released a domestic terrorism specific counter 1:00:16.520 --> 1:00:20.000 terrorism strategy. This document, released in June twenty twenty one, 1:00:20.360 --> 1:00:24.480 starts by describing racially or ethnically motivated violence from the 1:00:24.560 --> 1:00:28.880 KKK during reconstruction to attacks on Black churches and synagogues 1:00:28.920 --> 1:00:33.120 and the Al Paso shooting at the walmart. Then the 1:00:33.160 --> 1:00:36.400 document covers what it calls anti government or anti authority 1:00:36.480 --> 1:00:40.760 violent extremism, including the Oklahoma City bombing, the Congressional baseball 1:00:40.800 --> 1:00:45.320 game shooting, and the recent January sixth attack. I'm going 1:00:45.360 --> 1:00:49.520 to read a paragraph from Biden's domestic terrorism strategy here 1:00:49.560 --> 1:00:54.320 to compare quote. Today's domestic terrorists espouse a range of 1:00:54.440 --> 1:00:57.880 violent ideological motivations. They also take on a variety of forms, 1:00:57.880 --> 1:01:00.880 from loan actors to small groups of in formally aligned 1:01:00.880 --> 1:01:05.640 individuals to networks exhorting and targeting violence towards the specific communities, 1:01:05.680 --> 1:01:09.240 to violent self proclaimed militias. Among that wide range of 1:01:09.280 --> 1:01:14.400 animating ideologies, racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, particularly those 1:01:14.440 --> 1:01:17.720 who promote the superiority of the white race, and militia 1:01:17.760 --> 1:01:22.680 vilencxtremists are assessed as presenting the most persistent and lethal threats. 1:01:23.680 --> 1:01:26.560 These actors have different motivations, but many focus their violence 1:01:26.560 --> 1:01:29.120 towards the same segment or segments of the American community, 1:01:29.360 --> 1:01:33.400 whether persons of color, immigrants, Jews, Muslims, or other religious minorities, 1:01:33.440 --> 1:01:38.280 women and girls, LGBTQI plus individuals, or others. Their insistence 1:01:38.320 --> 1:01:40.800 on violence can at times be explicit. It also can 1:01:40.880 --> 1:01:44.160 at times be less explicit, lurking in the ideologies rooted 1:01:44.400 --> 1:01:47.160 in a perception of the superiority of the white race 1:01:47.560 --> 1:01:51.280 that call for violence in furtherance of preservation and abhorrent 1:01:51.360 --> 1:01:56.840 notions of racial purity or cleansing. Now, Biden's strategy does 1:01:56.920 --> 1:02:01.680 later specifically mention quote unquote, anarchist violence, though within the 1:02:01.720 --> 1:02:06.680 broader context of anti government or anti authority extremism quote. 1:02:07.040 --> 1:02:11.000 A significant component of today's threat includes self proclaimed militias 1:02:11.000 --> 1:02:13.840 and militia violent extremists who take steps to violently resist 1:02:13.920 --> 1:02:16.760 government authority or facilitate the overthrow of the US government 1:02:17.040 --> 1:02:21.560 based on perceived overreach. Anarchist violent extremists who violently oppose 1:02:21.640 --> 1:02:26.080 all forms of capitalism, corporate globalization, and governing institutions which 1:02:26.080 --> 1:02:29.840 they perceive as harmful to society. The document goes on 1:02:29.960 --> 1:02:35.360 to mention sovereign citizen violent extremists and other groups that 1:02:35.560 --> 1:02:39.320 resist or oppose legislative, regulatory, or other actions taken by 1:02:39.360 --> 1:02:43.200 the government. And this strategy also names a few single 1:02:43.240 --> 1:02:47.080 issue ideologies which may motivate violence, like abortion, animal rights, 1:02:47.440 --> 1:02:54.280 environmental issues, or involuntarily seliment violent extremism. But that little 1:02:54.320 --> 1:02:57.720 section there is the closest that the Biden's strategy gets 1:02:57.720 --> 1:03:00.840 to quote unquote left wing violence as Trump would call it. 1:03:01.120 --> 1:03:04.160 But rather than referring to violence as somewhere on like 1:03:04.280 --> 1:03:08.320 left right politics, Biden's strategy tries to specifically name the 1:03:08.560 --> 1:03:13.880 exact motivating factor driving the violence. His document reads, quote, 1:03:14.160 --> 1:03:16.880 the definition of domestic terrorism in our law makes no 1:03:16.960 --> 1:03:21.280 distinction based on political views right, left or center, and 1:03:21.400 --> 1:03:26.120 neither should we unquote. Biden's ag Merk Garland would often 1:03:26.200 --> 1:03:29.120 say that combating domestic terrorism is about stopping violence, not 1:03:29.120 --> 1:03:33.560 policing ideology, and quote unquote, violence not ideology was an 1:03:33.720 --> 1:03:38.680 often repeated refrain during the Biden administration, and this is 1:03:38.680 --> 1:03:42.840 something that the Biden administration definitely acted on. The FBI 1:03:42.960 --> 1:03:47.080 investigated Stop Cop City under Biden, and a significant portion 1:03:47.240 --> 1:03:51.240 of the domestic terror related charges while Biden was in office. 1:03:51.480 --> 1:03:54.400 We're levied against Stop Coop City protesters by the State 1:03:54.440 --> 1:03:59.560 of Georgia with investigative assistance from multiple federal agencies, and 1:03:59.640 --> 1:04:02.760 almost all of whom we're charged with terrorism. We're not 1:04:02.800 --> 1:04:05.160 actually charged with any specific violent crime. 1:04:05.920 --> 1:04:06.760 We'll talk more. 1:04:06.640 --> 1:04:12.200 About the partisan weaponization of terrorism or counter terrorism after 1:04:12.360 --> 1:04:13.720 some ads. 1:04:13.760 --> 1:04:30.040 Excellent and we're back. 1:04:30.480 --> 1:04:33.000 It's such a blast from the past. Like read through 1:04:33.040 --> 1:04:35.600 all of these Biden counter terrorism manuals. 1:04:35.680 --> 1:04:39.320 Yeah, boy, back in those days. Yeah, it makes makes 1:04:39.320 --> 1:04:40.160 me nostalgic. 1:04:40.840 --> 1:04:42.640 It's just a totally different world. 1:04:43.080 --> 1:04:43.280 Yep. 1:04:43.520 --> 1:04:46.640 Like it's unfathomable to like think of the federal government 1:04:46.680 --> 1:04:49.560 now using this kind of language talk about like ethnic 1:04:49.640 --> 1:04:53.560 cleansing being done by the white supremacist motivated terrorists. It's 1:04:53.640 --> 1:04:57.200 it's like it's just a totally different, totally different ballgame now. 1:04:57.240 --> 1:05:01.000 In Trump's A New Strategy, it states that under the 1:05:01.000 --> 1:05:05.200 Biden admin, US officials quote used their significant powers to 1:05:05.240 --> 1:05:08.920 politically target individuals in the interests of those they favored, 1:05:09.240 --> 1:05:13.240 wanted to keep in power, or to help win elections unquote. 1:05:13.480 --> 1:05:13.760 Now. 1:05:14.320 --> 1:05:17.640 Under Biden, there was an increase of domestic terrorism related 1:05:17.680 --> 1:05:22.959 prosecutions following January sixth, plus unrelated felony cases against Trump 1:05:23.040 --> 1:05:26.960 himself and prosecutions of Trump allies related to the Stop 1:05:27.000 --> 1:05:30.760 This Steal efforts. In twenty twenty two, the DOJ opened 1:05:30.760 --> 1:05:34.600 a new unit focused on domestic terrorism investigations, and just 1:05:34.680 --> 1:05:38.440 that year, one hundred million dollars of additional resources were 1:05:38.480 --> 1:05:43.040 allocated to the DOJFBI, and DHS for countering domestic terrorism. 1:05:43.400 --> 1:05:43.600 Now. 1:05:43.640 --> 1:05:47.680 This increase in focus was correlated to an increase in attacks. 1:05:48.160 --> 1:05:51.960 The Government Accountability Office reported that between twenty and ten 1:05:52.000 --> 1:05:55.479 and twenty twenty one, domestic terrorism related investigations had grown 1:05:55.560 --> 1:05:59.800 by three hundred and fifty six percent, with two hundred 1:05:59.840 --> 1:06:04.480 and thirty one confirmed incidents. According to the DHS, in 1:06:04.600 --> 1:06:07.800 just Biden's first year of office, the number of FBI 1:06:07.840 --> 1:06:12.200 domestic terrorists investigations more than doubled during this time period. 1:06:12.520 --> 1:06:17.040 The intelligence community classified racially or ethnically motivated violence as 1:06:17.040 --> 1:06:19.840 the most common type of attack. It's thirty five percent 1:06:19.880 --> 1:06:22.880 of domestic terrorism, and this category also contributed to the 1:06:22.880 --> 1:06:25.520 most debts. The second most common type of attack was 1:06:25.600 --> 1:06:29.600 anti government or anti authority motivated violent extremism, with thirty 1:06:29.600 --> 1:06:32.000 two percent of attacks, and that category covered a lot 1:06:32.000 --> 1:06:34.280 of different things, including the malicious stuff as well as 1:06:34.280 --> 1:06:39.760 the anarchist stuff. It depends on who's doing the exact categorization, though, yeah. Now, 1:06:39.880 --> 1:06:43.800 the racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists were most likely 1:06:43.840 --> 1:06:47.960 to conduct civilian mass casualty attacks, while militia types were 1:06:47.960 --> 1:06:53.040 more likely to target law enforcement or government apparatus. In comparison, 1:06:53.640 --> 1:06:57.880 Trump's new counter terrorism strategy does not contain a single 1:06:58.000 --> 1:07:03.680 mention of racially or ethnically motivated by extremism, not one 1:07:04.120 --> 1:07:06.840 which is like a which is astounding, right, even like 1:07:06.920 --> 1:07:11.080 beyond beyond the clear partisan what weaponization like just from 1:07:11.080 --> 1:07:14.000 a counter terrorism standpoint like this is this is bizarre, 1:07:14.040 --> 1:07:17.280 This is this is quite quite a choice. The last 1:07:17.360 --> 1:07:21.680 pillar of Biden's counter terrorist strategy was quote confronting long 1:07:21.760 --> 1:07:26.360 term contributions to domestic terrorism, like racism, bigotry, religious or 1:07:26.400 --> 1:07:31.760 ethnic hatred unquote. Meanwhile, Trump's new strategy says that the 1:07:31.800 --> 1:07:35.920 fearsome powers of the US government must never be abused quote, 1:07:36.360 --> 1:07:41.160 whether under the guise of de radicalization, protecting our democracy, 1:07:41.600 --> 1:07:47.760 or any other pretext unquote. Great, which is I don't 1:07:47.800 --> 1:07:49.160 even know how to respond to that. 1:07:49.760 --> 1:07:52.880 Yeah, and what always yeah, Like what are you supposed 1:07:52.880 --> 1:07:53.240 to say? 1:07:53.600 --> 1:07:56.320 I mean it. It demonstrates they're not actually interested in 1:07:56.640 --> 1:08:01.520 combating what is the most lethal form of domestics no terrorism, No. 1:08:02.000 --> 1:08:02.920 And they never have been. 1:08:03.560 --> 1:08:04.760 Even in Trump's first term. 1:08:04.840 --> 1:08:08.440 At least they moved towards that as the threat was increasing, 1:08:09.000 --> 1:08:13.000 But now they just have no interest whatsoever. And actually 1:08:13.120 --> 1:08:17.519 like target deradicalization as an example of the fearsome powers 1:08:17.520 --> 1:08:18.400 of the US government. 1:08:18.760 --> 1:08:21.360 Yeah, like the thing that never worked and like never 1:08:21.400 --> 1:08:24.400 actually did anything. Is the big boogeyman for you guys. 1:08:24.840 --> 1:08:26.719 Okay, it's wild. 1:08:27.080 --> 1:08:31.879 The new strategy includes a few examples of US government overreach. Quote. 1:08:32.360 --> 1:08:36.320 Our nation has not been well served by its intelligence community, 1:08:36.439 --> 1:08:39.360 which has been mirrored in old ways of looking at threats, 1:08:39.720 --> 1:08:42.439 or has been actively weaponized by its leadership as a 1:08:42.479 --> 1:08:47.519 political tool, whether plotting against conservative Catholics attending traditional Mass 1:08:47.520 --> 1:08:50.880 in Virginia, parents standing up for their children at school 1:08:50.880 --> 1:08:54.280 board meetings, members of Congress, or President Trumpet's associates. This 1:08:54.360 --> 1:08:58.080 administration will continue to prohibit the intelligence community from being 1:08:58.200 --> 1:09:02.680 used politically against innocent Americans unquote. So that's the main 1:09:02.720 --> 1:09:07.000 example of partisan weaponization of the intelligence community. Let's start 1:09:07.040 --> 1:09:11.840 with this first one, targeting Catholics attending traditional Mass. This 1:09:11.920 --> 1:09:14.479 refers to a twenty twenty three FBI memo from the 1:09:14.560 --> 1:09:18.400 Richmond Field Office on how racially or ethnically motivated violent 1:09:18.400 --> 1:09:23.200 extremists were displaying a growing interest in traditionalist Catholicism up 1:09:23.280 --> 1:09:27.600 great and how trad Catholic extremist violence could be mitigated 1:09:27.960 --> 1:09:33.479 by building connections within the church. Sure now, random Latin 1:09:33.560 --> 1:09:37.640 Mass churchgoers in Virginia were not being investigated. Rather, this 1:09:37.720 --> 1:09:41.640 memo was discussing the quote unquote growing overlap between the 1:09:41.640 --> 1:09:47.599 white nationalist movement and quote unquote radical traditionalist Catholics, and 1:09:47.640 --> 1:09:51.360 how white supremacists may use trad cafe social media to 1:09:51.400 --> 1:09:55.959 promote violence and recruit. This memo also made a distinction 1:09:56.439 --> 1:10:01.760 from ordinary traditional Catholics who prefer or Latin mass and 1:10:01.840 --> 1:10:04.720 the extremist beliefs and violent rhetoric from what they call 1:10:05.200 --> 1:10:09.720 radical traditional Catholics what we would just call tradcats like colloquially. 1:10:10.439 --> 1:10:13.320 After backlash to this memo, the FBI claims to have 1:10:13.400 --> 1:10:17.040 scrapped it for not meeting the standards of the FBI. 1:10:17.320 --> 1:10:19.720 Sure, yeah, we've seen how high those standards are in 1:10:19.760 --> 1:10:20.639 Cash Betell's era. 1:10:22.720 --> 1:10:24.479 I'm gonna go out a little bit of like a 1:10:24.560 --> 1:10:28.200 tangent here because I wanted to get more information about 1:10:28.200 --> 1:10:32.400 this Richmond Field Office memo and investigation. So it turns 1:10:32.439 --> 1:10:37.400 out the FBI did monitor a traditionalist priest at a church, 1:10:37.800 --> 1:10:39.880 and this church was not considered by the Vatican to 1:10:39.880 --> 1:10:42.640 be in full communion with the Catholic Church, but it's 1:10:42.640 --> 1:10:46.000 still Catholic affiliated. This priest refused to speak with the 1:10:46.040 --> 1:10:49.519 FBI about communications he had with a parisher who was 1:10:49.560 --> 1:10:55.280 a self described radical traditional Catholic clerical fascist, self described 1:10:55.800 --> 1:10:58.400 who was posting about conducting a mass shooting at a 1:10:58.439 --> 1:11:01.680 special needs school. Are resistance against the government, learning how 1:11:01.680 --> 1:11:05.080 to manufacture pipe bombs and using untraceable means to purchase 1:11:05.080 --> 1:11:09.040 supplies to manufacture three D printed weapons. Posting about that 1:11:09.120 --> 1:11:10.320 on this Catholic account. 1:11:10.439 --> 1:11:11.360 Yeah, nothing sketchy. 1:11:11.880 --> 1:11:14.879 So this Nazi was actually previously arrested in twenty nineteen 1:11:15.320 --> 1:11:18.720 after being overheard making comments about political violence while purchasing 1:11:18.720 --> 1:11:22.679 a several AR fifteen style rifles, multiple high capacity magazines, 1:11:22.720 --> 1:11:25.120 and large quantities of two two three ammunition, as well 1:11:25.120 --> 1:11:27.639 as making online statements advocating civil war and the murder 1:11:27.640 --> 1:11:31.320 of politicians. Now, after getting out of prison, this guy 1:11:31.360 --> 1:11:35.720 started attending this traditionalist church and planning an attack. The 1:11:35.800 --> 1:11:38.519 FBI claims he tried to recruit others with similar belief 1:11:38.600 --> 1:11:42.200 systems and made comments to churchgoers about his intent to 1:11:42.240 --> 1:11:45.840 commit violence. He was arrested again and pleaded guilty to 1:11:45.920 --> 1:11:49.559 possessing a destructive device. So the FBI was looking into 1:11:49.640 --> 1:11:52.080 this priest because this priest was not talking to them 1:11:52.560 --> 1:11:57.760 about what the communications were with this Nazi, communications that 1:11:57.800 --> 1:12:00.200 they know existed, and so they briefly looked into him. 1:12:00.439 --> 1:12:03.360 This caused a massive backlash among the right. This is 1:12:03.360 --> 1:12:06.280 where Marjorie Taylor Green was posting about defunding the FBI. 1:12:07.640 --> 1:12:09.760 A lot of the dismantled FBI stuff coming from the 1:12:09.840 --> 1:12:12.960 right was based on this incident of the FBI, you know, 1:12:13.040 --> 1:12:18.720 targeting conservative churchgoers. Little side tangent there. The other main 1:12:18.760 --> 1:12:23.679 example from the Trump counter terrorism strategy refers to parents 1:12:23.680 --> 1:12:26.599 and school boards. This is in reference to a letter 1:12:26.960 --> 1:12:31.280 from the National school Boards Association requesting federal intervention into 1:12:31.320 --> 1:12:33.880 the harassment, threats and attacks against school boards in twenty 1:12:33.920 --> 1:12:37.439 twenty one. And this letter read, in part quote, these 1:12:37.520 --> 1:12:40.800 heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of 1:12:40.840 --> 1:12:45.479 domestic terror and hate crimes unquote. After this letter was sent, 1:12:45.840 --> 1:12:48.920 the ag Mayork Garland announced that the government was going 1:12:48.960 --> 1:12:51.960 to look into these threats. This too, sparked a huge 1:12:51.960 --> 1:12:55.600 backlash from the right, claiming that the FBI was investigating 1:12:55.640 --> 1:12:59.599 parents for terrorism. There was congressional hearings, and a month later, 1:13:00.040 --> 1:13:03.479 the National school Board Association apologized for some of the 1:13:03.560 --> 1:13:07.040 language they included in this letter. So those are the 1:13:07.040 --> 1:13:10.559 two man examples of this of this horrendous government overreach 1:13:10.760 --> 1:13:14.680 and weaponization of the intelligence community against innocent Americans. 1:13:15.360 --> 1:13:18.479 Yeah, of course, I mean, it's just it's frustrating how 1:13:18.520 --> 1:13:21.680 like reality doesn't matter at all here, But like what 1:13:21.760 --> 1:13:23.479 is the point of even like going in and line 1:13:23.520 --> 1:13:26.639 by line here's everything that's wrong with that. I don't 1:13:26.640 --> 1:13:27.839 even know anymore. 1:13:28.160 --> 1:13:31.120 No, it's not a matter of convincing. It's often a 1:13:31.120 --> 1:13:34.320 matter of just holding my sanity together, I guess. 1:13:34.520 --> 1:13:36.800 Yeah, yeah, No, No, it's important to like look at 1:13:36.840 --> 1:13:40.240 it and to some extent document how bullshit it is. 1:13:40.360 --> 1:13:43.439 But it's also just like it's incredibly frustrating to like 1:13:43.439 --> 1:13:46.439 see this fucking tradcat priest get away with shit that 1:13:46.479 --> 1:13:49.040 like people would go to prison for if the ideologies 1:13:49.080 --> 1:13:49.719 were reversed. 1:13:49.880 --> 1:13:53.439 You know, yeah, sure you if you switch this stuff around, 1:13:53.600 --> 1:13:56.839 you can imagine how the Trump administration would be handling it. Yeah, 1:13:56.880 --> 1:14:01.720 a unitarian pastor righting planning some kind of attack with 1:14:01.800 --> 1:14:04.360 like an Antifa supercilgier well. 1:14:04.560 --> 1:14:07.679 Or just if you've got like a unitarian pastor or whatever, 1:14:07.800 --> 1:14:12.160 like someone who is tangentially attached to someone left wing 1:14:12.200 --> 1:14:14.600 who was like posting about carrying out an attack, like, 1:14:14.880 --> 1:14:17.960 the level of backlash would be higher and would hurt 1:14:18.000 --> 1:14:18.519 more people. 1:14:18.800 --> 1:14:22.480 No, horrendous, We've seen stuff like that happen. The sections 1:14:22.600 --> 1:14:26.639 on left wing terrorism in this new strategy actually only 1:14:26.800 --> 1:14:30.719 make up a few paragraphs of this sixteen page document. 1:14:31.360 --> 1:14:34.400 So what is the rest of this counter terrorism strategy 1:14:34.439 --> 1:14:39.040 really about? Then? The first priority is the quote neutralization 1:14:39.400 --> 1:14:44.919 of hemispheric terror threats by incapacitating cartel operations un quote. 1:14:45.240 --> 1:14:49.080 The primary threat is the so called narco terrorists previously mentioned, 1:14:49.640 --> 1:14:52.960 And this term narco terrorists was invented in the eighties 1:14:53.000 --> 1:14:55.600 by the President of Peru to describe attacks on the 1:14:55.600 --> 1:14:58.680 police by drug traffickers, but since then the term has 1:14:58.680 --> 1:15:02.240 come to mean a variety of things. In this new strategy, 1:15:02.640 --> 1:15:06.240 Trump doesn't just consider drug trafficking as a means to 1:15:06.439 --> 1:15:11.160 fund terrorist groups, but also implies that drug overdoses themselves 1:15:11.600 --> 1:15:13.920 constitute a form of terrorism. 1:15:14.240 --> 1:15:14.479 Right. 1:15:14.720 --> 1:15:19.120 Quote. The borderless America created by the Biden administration was 1:15:19.160 --> 1:15:23.160 so badly exploited by threat actors that during one twelve 1:15:23.240 --> 1:15:26.519 month period, more Americans died as a result of illicit 1:15:26.600 --> 1:15:29.880 drugs flooded into the country by the cartels than all 1:15:29.920 --> 1:15:34.360 the US servicemen killed in combat since nineteen forty five. Unquote. 1:15:34.760 --> 1:15:37.160 I just look at those numbers for cigarettes. Let's just 1:15:37.200 --> 1:15:39.439 stand tobacco in. Let's just throw tobacco into the mix 1:15:39.479 --> 1:15:42.360 sea that. Oh, does it dwarf every other drug related 1:15:42.400 --> 1:15:45.080 death till combined? Yeah, it does. 1:15:45.400 --> 1:15:48.559 Obviously an absurd statement. Yeah, but I think It is 1:15:48.640 --> 1:15:52.400 crucial to understanding how the administration is operating by understanding 1:15:52.400 --> 1:15:56.839 that they consider drug overdoses to be terrorism. And that's 1:15:56.880 --> 1:15:59.160 a big part of how they're able to do what 1:15:59.160 --> 1:16:03.680 they're currently doing is by weaponizing terrorism as a category. 1:16:04.160 --> 1:16:08.360 The strategy later considers illicit fentanyl and its core precursor 1:16:08.400 --> 1:16:12.040 chemicals to be weapons of mass destruction. Sure right, this 1:16:12.080 --> 1:16:14.479 is the same category of weapons as nuclear bombs. That 1:16:14.880 --> 1:16:18.759 is how they categorize it. Technically, when the US government 1:16:18.880 --> 1:16:23.240 uses the term terrorism, it's supposed to mean activities that 1:16:23.280 --> 1:16:25.839 involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation 1:16:25.960 --> 1:16:28.320 of the criminal laws of the United States or any state, 1:16:28.680 --> 1:16:31.479 that appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a 1:16:31.520 --> 1:16:34.519 civilian population, to influence the policy of a government by 1:16:34.560 --> 1:16:37.600 intimidation or coersion, or to affect the conduct of the 1:16:37.640 --> 1:16:42.680 government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping. It's really that 1:16:42.680 --> 1:16:45.960 that last half that constitutes the terrorism part that separates 1:16:46.040 --> 1:16:49.000 terrorism from just any crime. It's the intent to intimidate 1:16:49.080 --> 1:16:53.120 or coerce civilian populations or influence the government. But the 1:16:53.200 --> 1:16:59.200 FBI defines international terrorism as quote violent criminal acts committed 1:16:59.200 --> 1:17:02.160 by individuals and or groups who are inspired by or 1:17:02.200 --> 1:17:08.720 associated with designated foreign terrorist organizations unquote. So if you 1:17:08.840 --> 1:17:12.559 designate a group of foreign terrorist organization, that means that 1:17:12.640 --> 1:17:16.400 what they are doing is terrorism. And that last bit 1:17:16.680 --> 1:17:19.679 leads us to Trump's kind of core strategy to combat 1:17:19.720 --> 1:17:25.560 drug trafficking, designating cartels and transnational gangs as foreign terrorist organizations, 1:17:25.560 --> 1:17:30.000 which will quote make available additional intelligence authorities and denying 1:17:30.000 --> 1:17:34.000 disrupt their financial streams and access to the United States unquote. 1:17:34.520 --> 1:17:38.200 After the designation, Trump authorized quote dozens of strikes by 1:17:38.200 --> 1:17:42.360 the Department of War against cartel drug boats, resulting in 1:17:42.400 --> 1:17:45.799 a more than ninety percent decrease in maritime drug smuggling 1:17:46.120 --> 1:17:51.280 into the United States unquote. Citation needed. Yeah, we will 1:17:51.280 --> 1:17:55.240 get into the second priority of the counter terrorist strategy 1:17:55.840 --> 1:18:10.479 after these ad breaks. All right, we are back for 1:18:10.600 --> 1:18:13.920 our last section here. Let's start by talking about the 1:18:14.000 --> 1:18:18.639 second priority of the counter terrorism strategy released last week. 1:18:19.520 --> 1:18:24.439 The second is the targeting and destruction of Islamist terror groups, 1:18:25.160 --> 1:18:28.320 especially Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and isis k. 1:18:28.960 --> 1:18:33.520 Trump's new strategy blames continuing jie hottist plots against Americans 1:18:33.640 --> 1:18:37.880 quote in part because of the failed forever war policies, 1:18:38.240 --> 1:18:42.000 the empowerment of terror supporting regimes like Iran, and a 1:18:42.080 --> 1:18:47.280 past unwillingness to challenge Islamist ideologies head on unquote. So 1:18:47.280 --> 1:18:50.400 how's that going? How's that going? I haven't I haven't 1:18:50.479 --> 1:18:53.840 checked the news in about three months, Robert, can you 1:18:53.880 --> 1:18:54.920 briefly fill me in? 1:18:55.560 --> 1:18:56.040 Good? 1:18:56.560 --> 1:18:57.639 No, no, no problems. 1:18:57.840 --> 1:18:58.360 It's flied. 1:18:58.560 --> 1:18:59.200 Everything's fine. 1:18:59.240 --> 1:19:02.040 Yeah, we solve all the failed forever war policies. 1:19:02.080 --> 1:19:05.280 We did no more forever wars. We've got a short war, 1:19:05.320 --> 1:19:06.799 but it's one of our shortest garrison. 1:19:07.040 --> 1:19:08.559 Iran is in no way empowered. 1:19:08.640 --> 1:19:11.200 I can't. I can't tell you how short this war 1:19:11.360 --> 1:19:14.320 is at the moment, you know, incredibly short war. 1:19:14.400 --> 1:19:17.120 Iran is an exercising economic influence over the whole world 1:19:17.160 --> 1:19:17.559 right now. 1:19:17.720 --> 1:19:19.919 I know you think that this has albin a disaster, 1:19:20.080 --> 1:19:21.960 but I'm going to put on a graph how long 1:19:22.000 --> 1:19:24.639 World War II lasted next to how long this little 1:19:24.640 --> 1:19:27.400 adventure in Iran has lasted, and you tell me if 1:19:27.400 --> 1:19:30.880 it's a problem. Mmmmmm, Wow, one of those numbers is 1:19:30.880 --> 1:19:31.679 bigger than the other. 1:19:32.040 --> 1:19:32.799 Yes, we're fine. 1:19:33.120 --> 1:19:36.280 It's wild. It's absolutely that shit that they have this 1:19:36.360 --> 1:19:40.160 in here yeah, like, yeah, it's so funny, it's insane. 1:19:41.040 --> 1:19:46.479 So the document talks about Islamist terrorism in Asia, Africa, 1:19:46.520 --> 1:19:49.080 the Middle East, and Europe for over four pages. It 1:19:49.120 --> 1:19:52.839 takes up a significant chunk of the strategy. These sections 1:19:52.840 --> 1:19:56.479 of the document largely mirror Trump's National security strategy from 1:19:56.560 --> 1:20:01.080 last year and talks about how quote unfed mass migration 1:20:01.160 --> 1:20:05.400 in Europe has been the transmission belt for terrorists, and 1:20:05.560 --> 1:20:10.280 discusses the need for quote honest conversations about Islamism and 1:20:10.360 --> 1:20:15.160 how hostile groups exploit open borders and related globalist ideals. 1:20:15.479 --> 1:20:18.920 The more these alien cultures grow and the longer current 1:20:19.040 --> 1:20:23.240 European policies persist, the more terrorism is guaranteed. As the 1:20:23.280 --> 1:20:27.400 birthplace of Western culture and values. Europe must act now 1:20:27.439 --> 1:20:30.280 to halt its willful decline unquote. 1:20:30.520 --> 1:20:30.800 Sure. 1:20:31.200 --> 1:20:34.800 One of the more explicitly fascist sections of this strategy, 1:20:35.520 --> 1:20:39.960 Trump's new CT strategy does discuss the integration of counter 1:20:40.120 --> 1:20:44.400 cartel and counter terrorism efforts, saying it allows the US 1:20:44.439 --> 1:20:49.000 to quote disrupt the shared networks, financing and logistical routes 1:20:49.120 --> 1:20:54.080 used by both designated drug traffickers and Islamist terrorists unquote. 1:20:54.200 --> 1:20:57.679 The main success story of this strategy is the capture 1:20:57.720 --> 1:21:01.679 of Maduro quote, the illegitimate leader of Venezuela, a cartel 1:21:01.760 --> 1:21:05.679 boss in league with terror sponsor Oroan and its terror 1:21:05.760 --> 1:21:09.960 proxy Hezbolah un quote. We've talked about this strategy for 1:21:09.960 --> 1:21:12.280 like thirty five minutes, and you may have noticed that 1:21:13.360 --> 1:21:18.240 so far we've really just talked about identifying targets with 1:21:18.479 --> 1:21:23.000 very little discussion actually on actual strategy on how to 1:21:23.160 --> 1:21:27.559 counter these threats. That's because the document has very little 1:21:27.600 --> 1:21:30.920 on actual strategy to counter these threats. It lays out 1:21:30.920 --> 1:21:36.040 three steps for countering terrorism, identifying terror actors and plots 1:21:36.040 --> 1:21:40.080 before they happen, cutting off their arms, funding and recruiting streams, 1:21:40.320 --> 1:21:44.760 and ultimately destroy the established threat group. Methods for going 1:21:44.760 --> 1:21:48.440 about this are quote a series of similar, high intensity 1:21:48.520 --> 1:21:52.639 but short campaigns against jihadist groups love to see that happen, 1:21:53.760 --> 1:21:58.080 as well as sanctions, shadow fleet, oil tanker interdiction, and 1:21:58.160 --> 1:22:02.360 covert operations to disrupt funding and state sponsorship of terrorism. 1:22:03.000 --> 1:22:05.400 That's it. That is really the bulk of like the 1:22:05.439 --> 1:22:08.280 actual strategy of how to do this. 1:22:09.000 --> 1:22:11.320 Yeah, and that's the important thing to remember for all 1:22:11.320 --> 1:22:13.559 that's scary about this, and for all, like the people 1:22:13.560 --> 1:22:15.760 freaking out, and not to say if there's nothing to 1:22:15.800 --> 1:22:18.040 be concerned about. This is the government saying this. They 1:22:18.040 --> 1:22:20.479 have a lot of ability to fuck with. People certainly 1:22:20.479 --> 1:22:22.679 should be concerned about this, but at the same time, 1:22:22.720 --> 1:22:25.240 don't forget they don't know what they're doing or have 1:22:25.280 --> 1:22:27.559 a real plan for most of what they're doing. 1:22:28.080 --> 1:22:29.200 No like this is. 1:22:29.200 --> 1:22:32.160 Hacked together, cobbled together, and executed by people who don't 1:22:32.200 --> 1:22:34.360 know what they're doing and at least in one major case, 1:22:34.400 --> 1:22:35.479 are drunk all the time. 1:22:36.320 --> 1:22:38.599 Now, it's pretty stunning to compare this to the twenty 1:22:38.640 --> 1:22:42.560 twenty one BIND one, which is very, very complicated in 1:22:42.640 --> 1:22:47.599 laying out actual strategy to dismantle domestic terrorist operations, and 1:22:47.880 --> 1:22:50.320 this just this lacks a lot of a lot of 1:22:50.360 --> 1:22:56.840 the same strategic outlook. Lastly, the strategy outlines current functional 1:22:56.920 --> 1:22:59.800 aspects of the threat environment. That's the term at use 1:22:59.840 --> 1:23:04.599 this functional aspects. These are like complicating factors. I'll go 1:23:04.680 --> 1:23:08.559 through these line by line. New and evolving collaboration between 1:23:08.640 --> 1:23:12.719 nation states and threat groups such as cartels, alliances between 1:23:12.800 --> 1:23:17.320 established terror groups, exploitation of new weapons like drones by 1:23:17.360 --> 1:23:21.680 cartels and jihttists, the remaining threat of terrorists acquiring and 1:23:21.760 --> 1:23:26.320 using nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, which President Trump has 1:23:26.400 --> 1:23:31.360 rightly labeled the single greatest threat to this world unquote. 1:23:31.400 --> 1:23:34.759 All of this stuff is like Bush era terrorism stuff, 1:23:34.800 --> 1:23:37.960 Like this is all very outdated, not necessarily outdated, but 1:23:38.040 --> 1:23:40.720 like it's not cutting edge. I guessed what is what 1:23:40.800 --> 1:23:42.880 would be the more correct way of putting this, Like 1:23:43.120 --> 1:23:45.880 you're just talking about drones now in twenty twenty six. 1:23:46.439 --> 1:23:47.320 Yeah. 1:23:47.560 --> 1:23:52.240 But another one of these quote unquote functional aspects is 1:23:52.320 --> 1:23:58.080 quote new and deepening alliances between the far left and Islamists, 1:23:58.720 --> 1:24:03.360 i e. The Red Green Alliance unquote. This really just 1:24:03.360 --> 1:24:05.559 takes up a single line. They don't expound on this. 1:24:06.400 --> 1:24:09.320 I'm pretty sure this would relate to like pro Palestine protests. 1:24:09.320 --> 1:24:11.479 Do is this relates people on the far left either 1:24:11.479 --> 1:24:16.479 supporting Hamas or just generally being pro Palestine or anti Israel. 1:24:17.240 --> 1:24:19.240 That's what they're calling a Red Green Alliance. 1:24:19.640 --> 1:24:20.200 Yeah. 1:24:20.439 --> 1:24:23.040 Yeah, yeah, it's just like a throwaway alive. But I 1:24:23.040 --> 1:24:25.680 thought it's worth including just because of how odd it is, 1:24:25.720 --> 1:24:28.320 Like it really stands out. It's at like the middle 1:24:28.320 --> 1:24:31.280 to end of the document, way after they actually do 1:24:31.400 --> 1:24:34.280 their like three paragraphs on left wing extremism. They just 1:24:34.360 --> 1:24:37.719 kind of throw that in there as a new complicating factor. Yeah, 1:24:38.280 --> 1:24:41.960 of course, So what does this all mean for the left? 1:24:42.439 --> 1:24:46.720 Almost nothing in here that pertains to left isn't already 1:24:46.960 --> 1:24:50.959 in National Security Potential Memorandum number seven. This new strategy 1:24:51.000 --> 1:24:55.440 does not designate trans people as a class as terrorists, 1:24:55.800 --> 1:24:59.920 nor does it categorize trans people as nihilistic violent extremists, 1:25:00.080 --> 1:25:04.440 like some have previously reported, in essentially states like NSPM 1:25:04.520 --> 1:25:10.480 seven that being extremely pro transgender can be a motivating 1:25:10.560 --> 1:25:14.919 factor in carrying out terroristic violence, and the only example 1:25:14.960 --> 1:25:17.840 provided is the assassination of Charlie Kirk, which we still 1:25:17.840 --> 1:25:22.480 don't have an illuminated motive for besides the suspect allegedly 1:25:22.560 --> 1:25:28.559 expressing frustration at Kirk for spreading vaguely defined hate. The 1:25:28.600 --> 1:25:32.479 strategy claims, quote, our counter terrorism powers will not be 1:25:32.560 --> 1:25:35.320 used to target our fellow Americans who simply disagree with us. 1:25:35.640 --> 1:25:38.960 We will not permit the weaponization of America's unparalleled counter 1:25:39.080 --> 1:25:45.200 terrorism capabilities for partisan purposes quote, despite clear political weaponization 1:25:45.560 --> 1:25:49.080 and Gorka specifically specifically mentioning that we're going to be 1:25:49.360 --> 1:25:54.720 countering ideology now. A way to kind of explain what's 1:25:54.760 --> 1:25:59.679 going on here, Like think about racially motivated or ethnically 1:25:59.680 --> 1:26:05.320 motivated violent extremism. Being racist isn't illegal, but if someone 1:26:05.360 --> 1:26:08.280 threatens to shoot up a black church because they are racist, 1:26:08.760 --> 1:26:12.639 then that qualifies as racially motivated bilent extremism. The Trump 1:26:12.640 --> 1:26:17.400 administration is basically using the same mo against people with 1:26:17.560 --> 1:26:21.479 left wing, anarchist or anti fascist views to either stop 1:26:21.560 --> 1:26:25.759 crimes before they occur, or crack down harder on people 1:26:25.840 --> 1:26:29.640 or groups who have committed crimes motivated by those ideologies. 1:26:30.560 --> 1:26:34.440 The Joint Terrorism Task Forces were already directed to investigate 1:26:34.439 --> 1:26:38.840 Antifa aligned groups and individuals quote engaged in acts of 1:26:38.880 --> 1:26:42.400 political violence and intimidation, and that's been happening since at 1:26:42.439 --> 1:26:45.800 least October of twenty twenty five. What's in this documents 1:26:45.960 --> 1:26:48.879 already been in effect for a while, and we've already 1:26:48.880 --> 1:26:51.400 seen some of the results of this in the federal 1:26:51.640 --> 1:26:54.519 Prairie Land trial last February, following the shooting of a 1:26:54.560 --> 1:26:57.799 cop outside an immigration detention facility in Texas last summer. 1:26:58.439 --> 1:27:02.240 The government in that case used the specter of Antifa 1:27:02.320 --> 1:27:04.840 to link a group of defendants together and argue for 1:27:05.000 --> 1:27:09.840 ideological motive, and a federal jury convicted eight people of riot, conspiracy, 1:27:09.880 --> 1:27:14.560 and material support to terrorists, even if each individual defendant 1:27:15.000 --> 1:27:19.240 did not commit an act of violence. Yeah, So there's 1:27:19.240 --> 1:27:22.200 cases like that, and then there's also cases against the SPLC, which, 1:27:22.680 --> 1:27:25.960 while the government hasn't specifically said are part of their 1:27:26.439 --> 1:27:31.000 anti antifa investigations, you can see some similar through lines there. 1:27:31.760 --> 1:27:34.800 Yeah, right, in a broad. 1:27:34.520 --> 1:27:38.840 Sense, that's how it relates to like current left wing activism. Right, 1:27:39.320 --> 1:27:42.639 the sort of threats and risk that has existed really 1:27:42.640 --> 1:27:45.559 ever since Trump took office, but especially after the Antifa 1:27:45.640 --> 1:27:48.840 Terrorism Executive Order and National Security Postential memorid AM number 1:27:48.840 --> 1:27:51.240 seven are still in effect. That is still the same 1:27:51.360 --> 1:27:54.120 level of risk. This document doesn't introduce anything new. 1:27:54.920 --> 1:27:55.120 Now. 1:27:55.160 --> 1:27:59.040 Overall, what this strategy tries to do is connect all 1:27:59.080 --> 1:28:02.400 of the ideological targets of this administration, right, put them 1:28:02.439 --> 1:28:05.000 onto a map, intersecting each other. That's what it's doing 1:28:05.000 --> 1:28:07.839 with this Red Green alliance. So it's trying to connect 1:28:07.880 --> 1:28:12.000 all of these ideological targets while expounding on Trump's justification 1:28:12.280 --> 1:28:16.400 for mass deportations of suspected cartel members, military strikes on 1:28:16.439 --> 1:28:20.040 boats in the Western Hemisphere, regime change in Venezuela, and 1:28:20.120 --> 1:28:22.759 the ongoing war in the Middle East. That is really 1:28:22.880 --> 1:28:25.000 most of what the document's trying to do is actually 1:28:25.320 --> 1:28:29.400 build up the counter terrorism justification for all of Trump's 1:28:29.400 --> 1:28:32.400 military actions. And that's one thing that has I guess 1:28:32.439 --> 1:28:36.760 slightly frustrated me in people's discussion of this new strategy 1:28:37.000 --> 1:28:39.960 that a lot of it's based on threats to left 1:28:40.000 --> 1:28:44.160 wing activists in the United States, while not really focusing 1:28:44.200 --> 1:28:46.600 on the bulk of the document, which is building the 1:28:46.720 --> 1:28:51.000 justification for Trump's murderous military actions around the world. Right, 1:28:51.040 --> 1:28:54.560 actions that are blowing up people in boats, bombing schools 1:28:54.600 --> 1:28:57.840 in Iran, things that have like a sizable death count, 1:28:58.040 --> 1:29:02.000 and the sort of logistical and theoretical framework that Trump 1:29:02.040 --> 1:29:05.400 is building through this document does have really really devastating 1:29:05.479 --> 1:29:08.840 lethal consequences, And I guess that's what I wanted to 1:29:08.840 --> 1:29:11.080 focus on a little bit, a little bit more, rather 1:29:11.160 --> 1:29:14.640 than just the targeting of left wing extremists. 1:29:15.000 --> 1:29:17.800 Yep, all right, well fun, I guess we'll see what 1:29:17.840 --> 1:29:18.599 happens next. 1:29:19.200 --> 1:29:21.080 Yeah, I mean, we're gonna see them continue to carry 1:29:21.080 --> 1:29:25.760 this out. Yeah, both domestically against left wing activists and overseas, 1:29:25.760 --> 1:29:27.960 including like right now, right, this is what they're doing 1:29:28.040 --> 1:29:31.559 in Iran, they're talking about Cuba. This strategy does not 1:29:31.560 --> 1:29:33.320 grant them any new powers, but it does give us 1:29:33.320 --> 1:29:36.400 a look into how they are thinking about regime change 1:29:36.760 --> 1:29:38.120 and the Donro doctrid. 1:29:38.200 --> 1:29:41.400 Right, yeah, Jesus. It's also dumb. 1:29:41.360 --> 1:29:44.280 This US domination of the Western hemisphere. And I think 1:29:44.320 --> 1:29:47.800 that's really the core of what's driving this document, is 1:29:47.920 --> 1:29:51.360 the US domination of the Western hemisphere, rather than explicit 1:29:51.520 --> 1:29:57.439 political persecution of ideological left wing enemies, which is of 1:29:57.439 --> 1:29:59.720 course still a factor. It's still a thing to be 1:30:00.040 --> 1:30:02.439 concerned about and monitoring and fighting back against. 1:30:02.720 --> 1:30:02.920 Yep. 1:30:03.120 --> 1:30:06.720 Absolutely well, all right, guys, and that does it for 1:30:06.800 --> 1:30:12.599 us today? Huh yeah, let's nobody elsewhere, all right, see 1:30:12.600 --> 1:30:13.040 you around. 1:30:24.080 --> 1:30:28.840 Humanity is not a parasite, but the systems we collectively 1:30:28.880 --> 1:30:33.000 uphold today are certainly parasitic. They maintain their hold on 1:30:33.080 --> 1:30:36.320 us due to our interdependence as we rely on each 1:30:36.360 --> 1:30:41.200 other to survive. And these systems, as destructive as they are, are, 1:30:41.240 --> 1:30:45.400 how we know how to cooperate. And they also maintain 1:30:45.439 --> 1:30:48.679 their whole of course, through ideology, the sets of ideas 1:30:48.720 --> 1:30:54.360 about the world carried through religion, philosophy, politics, education, culture, 1:30:54.439 --> 1:30:58.080 et cetera. And to some extent they maintain their hold 1:30:58.120 --> 1:31:03.320 through violence, and I believe we must break free from 1:31:03.520 --> 1:31:06.280 this parasitism. I believe there are other ways of relating 1:31:06.280 --> 1:31:09.840 with each other with nature, and I'll talk about those 1:31:09.880 --> 1:31:13.960 ways at the end. By the way, hello and welcome. 1:31:14.360 --> 1:31:18.280 It could happen here. I'm andrews Age Andrewism on YouTube, 1:31:18.560 --> 1:31:20.080 and I'm joined today by. 1:31:20.680 --> 1:31:28.000 Mia Wong also here. Yeah, we're doing great interest, yepee. 1:31:28.920 --> 1:31:31.439 So I want to talk about parsism, the development of 1:31:31.479 --> 1:31:36.760 paristism over time, as discussed in Samuel Milla McDonald's book Progress, 1:31:36.880 --> 1:31:40.960 which I highly recommend quite an enjoyable read. So I 1:31:40.960 --> 1:31:45.120 actually really first heard about that book years ago before 1:31:45.120 --> 1:31:46.960 it was even out, and I had reached out and 1:31:47.000 --> 1:31:49.439 I was like, oh, I would love to, you know, 1:31:49.560 --> 1:31:51.840 get a copy as soon as it's available and talk 1:31:51.840 --> 1:31:55.200 about it and stuff. And you know, I was at 1:31:55.200 --> 1:31:58.919 that point in my life, I was really voraciously consuming 1:31:59.000 --> 1:32:03.880 these kind of grand narratives of history. And of course 1:32:03.880 --> 1:32:06.479 we know the flowers with these grand narratives. They have 1:32:07.160 --> 1:32:13.320 limited explanatory power. But I still found use in these 1:32:13.400 --> 1:32:18.800 narratives and understanding aspects and angles of our history. At 1:32:18.880 --> 1:32:23.439 least when you take a critical approach to them, because 1:32:23.439 --> 1:32:26.439 I mean history is, as the name implies, a story. 1:32:26.760 --> 1:32:29.559 You know, there are many interpretations and frameworks that can 1:32:29.600 --> 1:32:34.080 be used to explain or better understand different aspects of history, 1:32:34.840 --> 1:32:39.960 and so progress offers one framework through its three eras 1:32:40.000 --> 1:32:44.479 of focus. Of course, history isn't actually so linear. Different 1:32:44.560 --> 1:32:47.120 forms can co exist, forms can come and go. It 1:32:47.160 --> 1:32:51.600 is in this sequential development as is sometimes posed. But 1:32:51.640 --> 1:32:55.240 there are trends that we can observe. And so these 1:32:55.360 --> 1:32:59.640 three phases that McDonald discusses identifies particular ideas of progress, 1:33:00.120 --> 1:33:04.080 forms of parisitism, and agents of history. And I think 1:33:04.080 --> 1:33:09.520 it's a very compelling connection between the theology, politics, economics 1:33:09.560 --> 1:33:15.400 and ecology that intertwined to make up history. Obviously not 1:33:15.400 --> 1:33:18.799 perfectly accurate, but I think it helps us to see 1:33:19.400 --> 1:33:23.640 certain tendencies more clearly. So we can look at a 1:33:23.640 --> 1:33:27.160 lot of the anarchist approaches or anarchist adjacent approaches to 1:33:27.400 --> 1:33:31.720 tracing the development of the state in history. You know, Pt. 1:33:31.800 --> 1:33:36.040 Gal Loose had worship and power. JAMEC. Scott has against 1:33:36.040 --> 1:33:40.000 the Green and in progress, although I don't think he 1:33:40.080 --> 1:33:43.880 is anarchist anarchist a jacent in progress McDonald's starts with 1:33:44.280 --> 1:33:49.040 the beginning of recorded civilization in three thousand BCE and 1:33:50.280 --> 1:33:55.360 looks at the way that many early states developed from 1:33:55.400 --> 1:34:00.240 a blend of religion, politics, and daily life. So, I 1:34:00.280 --> 1:34:03.160 mean humans had lived for hundreds of thousands of years 1:34:03.200 --> 1:34:07.400 before recorded history, right, they spread across the globe. They 1:34:07.400 --> 1:34:10.759 experimented with all kinds of different social, political, and economic 1:34:10.840 --> 1:34:14.120 organizations that are now lost. The Time and the Dawn 1:34:14.120 --> 1:34:17.320 of Everything by David Krieber and David wen Grew kind 1:34:17.320 --> 1:34:20.920 of wrestles with some of this. In the early years 1:34:20.920 --> 1:34:25.240 of recorded history, there were many manners of approach to 1:34:25.400 --> 1:34:30.719 state development. From roughly three thousand BCE to fourteen hundred CE. 1:34:30.840 --> 1:34:35.760 This is the first phase of McDonald's timeline. Human societies 1:34:35.760 --> 1:34:40.320 such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, meso America, and medieval Europe 1:34:40.720 --> 1:34:46.080 saw a combination of hierarchy with cosmology. McDonald calls this 1:34:46.160 --> 1:34:49.240 phase Heaven in the book, not to co sign it 1:34:49.280 --> 1:34:52.920 as an ideal, but to illustrate the prominence of religious 1:34:53.080 --> 1:34:56.519 power in this time period. And me I know, even 1:34:57.280 --> 1:35:03.280 hosting recently about the impact of religion and the seeming 1:35:03.640 --> 1:35:07.000 has its uns people have nowadays about actually engaging with 1:35:07.400 --> 1:35:13.080 what it means materially for the experience of domination in 1:35:13.120 --> 1:35:13.960 our day to day lives. 1:35:14.680 --> 1:35:16.559 Yeah, well, and this some thing you can you can 1:35:16.640 --> 1:35:20.120 look at sort of in that period is the emergence 1:35:20.160 --> 1:35:24.600 of states alongside sort of the emergence of temple complexes 1:35:24.760 --> 1:35:28.600 as the thing that creates a bunch of the administrative systems. 1:35:29.360 --> 1:35:32.600 Greer talks about this, I think debt actually, where a 1:35:32.680 --> 1:35:36.400 bunch of sort of the administrative systems that would become 1:35:36.720 --> 1:35:39.880 like credit, are these things that are developed in order 1:35:39.920 --> 1:35:43.559 to sort of track resources moving into these giant temple complexes, 1:35:43.600 --> 1:35:46.280 and so you have the situation where, you know, the 1:35:46.320 --> 1:35:48.479 things that are going to become the building blocks of 1:35:48.840 --> 1:35:53.639 economics and exploitation for every single subsequent period in history 1:35:54.200 --> 1:35:56.559 are developed in order to in order to fuel these 1:35:56.600 --> 1:36:02.040 sort of hierarchical massive complexes where just staggering amounts of 1:36:02.120 --> 1:36:05.440 resources are like fueled into into these sort of temple complexes. 1:36:06.240 --> 1:36:08.560 And that's a you know, that's a thing that continues 1:36:09.000 --> 1:36:11.080 to current present day. 1:36:11.760 --> 1:36:15.200 Indeed, you know, indeed we have we have temple complex 1:36:15.400 --> 1:36:18.880 like what is temple complexes in the sense of megachurches nowadays. 1:36:19.080 --> 1:36:21.280 Yeah, it's like what is what is the megachurch, but 1:36:21.439 --> 1:36:23.160 like the temple complex is force. 1:36:25.800 --> 1:36:29.640 Yeah, yeah, exactly exactly. That's the thing, right, Like we 1:36:30.000 --> 1:36:34.719 are seeing an echo of this historical time period even 1:36:34.840 --> 1:36:37.920 in the present, because the idea of progress in this 1:36:38.080 --> 1:36:41.280 time and in these places was about progressing toward a 1:36:41.360 --> 1:36:45.440 higher alignment with the divine order, the will of the gods, 1:36:45.680 --> 1:36:47.960 you know, ensuring that different groups of people were in 1:36:48.000 --> 1:36:51.400 their proper place in that order. And so you had 1:36:51.439 --> 1:36:56.160 the development of religious laws and theologies and monumental architecture 1:36:56.640 --> 1:37:01.679 which established this particular kind of order. And when disasters struck, 1:37:01.680 --> 1:37:05.120 whether it be floods or drought, certain vasions, this was 1:37:05.120 --> 1:37:08.640 a sign, a sign of the times perhaps. 1:37:08.520 --> 1:37:10.280 That the order was breaking down. 1:37:10.920 --> 1:37:13.240 And so it's really funny to me that, you know, 1:37:13.439 --> 1:37:17.720 in this progressive account of the idea of progress that 1:37:18.120 --> 1:37:21.760 McDonald's talking about, you know, even the earlier ideas of 1:37:21.760 --> 1:37:24.639 progress have not entirely gone away. You know, they haven't 1:37:24.720 --> 1:37:28.000 been replaced by the next era. They have just taken 1:37:28.080 --> 1:37:32.640 on subtler forms, and sometimes not as subtler forms. 1:37:33.320 --> 1:37:36.920 Yeah, there's there's a concept that the journal Chwang uses 1:37:37.800 --> 1:37:40.559 where I mean they're specifically talking about like the ways 1:37:40.560 --> 1:37:43.200 that elements of like the Chinese, I guess you call 1:37:43.240 --> 1:37:45.599 it the socialist regime are sort of taken and then 1:37:45.800 --> 1:37:48.680 used in the capitalist regime. They go to this thing 1:37:48.720 --> 1:37:53.920 from biology called exceptati where something like evolutionarily that was 1:37:54.720 --> 1:37:57.760 used for a different purpose is like repurposed for a 1:37:57.800 --> 1:38:00.880 new thing. So it's like, you know, you've like finn 1:38:00.920 --> 1:38:04.680 becomes hand like that. I'm a lot of great biologists, 1:38:04.920 --> 1:38:07.160 but this is this kind of thing where like you 1:38:07.280 --> 1:38:09.840 have this situation where like, yeah, elements of like the 1:38:10.040 --> 1:38:12.519 old notion of what progress was of like the sort 1:38:12.520 --> 1:38:18.080 of centralized hierarchical complexes of religion are like excapated by 1:38:18.720 --> 1:38:21.840 the next thing that's going to happen, and that's taken 1:38:21.880 --> 1:38:23.920 by the next thing, which is taken by the next thing, 1:38:23.960 --> 1:38:26.320 and we still have our sort of like versions of 1:38:26.360 --> 1:38:29.320 it that have been taken through like countless numbers of 1:38:29.360 --> 1:38:30.160 world systems. 1:38:30.720 --> 1:38:34.559 Yeah, yeah, I definitely see that. Of course, there were 1:38:34.640 --> 1:38:38.040 differences and how they would have i think approached religion 1:38:38.080 --> 1:38:40.639 and thoughts of religion compared to how we do yep 1:38:40.840 --> 1:38:43.400 psychologically in a time like that that they didn't really 1:38:43.439 --> 1:38:48.640 have this more prominent psychocoulturally accepted secular line set that 1:38:48.640 --> 1:38:51.240 we have today, where religion it could even be seen 1:38:51.400 --> 1:38:54.679 as something separate from everything else. You know, for them, 1:38:54.960 --> 1:38:59.839 religion was whole reality, worked the seasons, the hardest illness, 1:39:00.520 --> 1:39:05.040 Victorian War. All of this was interpreted through a sacred lens. 1:39:05.360 --> 1:39:08.000 People knew what place they had in the cosmos, or 1:39:08.000 --> 1:39:10.720 at least thought about it in that lens, and they 1:39:10.840 --> 1:39:16.840 understood what role they had in the divine hierarchy. On 1:39:16.880 --> 1:39:18.840 a material basis, though, because I mean we do have 1:39:18.880 --> 1:39:23.320 to think materially and not solely ideologically, these societies engage 1:39:23.479 --> 1:39:28.160 in what McDonald called continuous and regional parasitism to extract 1:39:28.200 --> 1:39:32.160 resources like food, labor, and land. And the agents of 1:39:32.160 --> 1:39:36.479 this paris are city states, kingdoms, and empires. On the 1:39:36.479 --> 1:39:39.840 city state level, you had them dominating their immediate hinterlends, 1:39:40.160 --> 1:39:43.920 and on an empire level, their conquerringe neighbors, done for 1:39:43.960 --> 1:39:49.760 either integration and taxation or tribute or slavery. But due 1:39:49.800 --> 1:39:52.080 to the limits of the technology of the time, you know, 1:39:52.120 --> 1:39:55.760 they didn't have the instant communication and fast transportation that 1:39:55.800 --> 1:39:58.880 we do today, there were limits to how far an 1:39:58.880 --> 1:40:02.639 empire could spread. Even the largest empires had their limits 1:40:02.680 --> 1:40:06.920 and would often devolve power or fracture. Tensions would begin 1:40:07.040 --> 1:40:11.040 to build as growing empires struggled to uphold central authority. 1:40:11.640 --> 1:40:17.120 Belief systems came into conflict, and contact and intellectual traditions developed. 1:40:17.800 --> 1:40:21.840 Over time, governance would get more bureaucratic, religions would face 1:40:21.880 --> 1:40:24.960 reform due to challenges from within, and by the time 1:40:25.000 --> 1:40:28.559 that we approached the late medieval period around the thirteen 1:40:28.640 --> 1:40:32.479 hundreds and fourteen hundreds, at least from a europe focused 1:40:32.520 --> 1:40:36.719 account or Old World focused account, the world is indeed 1:40:36.960 --> 1:40:41.800 change it. Transition has begun from this heaven phase to 1:40:41.880 --> 1:40:56.160 the next phase in McDonald's framework, as in the nation 1:40:56.360 --> 1:40:59.680 phase from fourteen hundred to nineteen hundred, where we move 1:40:59.720 --> 1:41:03.000 away from a world of cosmic order to a world 1:41:03.640 --> 1:41:07.920 more distinctly human, a world of human order religion phasis, 1:41:08.040 --> 1:41:11.080 of course, but authority has begun to move from the 1:41:11.160 --> 1:41:14.880 heavens down to Earth, an earth that could be observed, 1:41:15.320 --> 1:41:20.160 could be measured, navigated and controlled by human beings. And 1:41:20.200 --> 1:41:22.400 so we see this in this time with the emergence 1:41:22.400 --> 1:41:27.160 of the sciences and the emergence of newly minted political 1:41:27.200 --> 1:41:30.880 theories and the idea of progress. In this time was 1:41:30.880 --> 1:41:36.559 redefined as expanding knowledge, increase in efficiency, mastering the environment, 1:41:37.360 --> 1:41:41.760 hence the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, advances and navigation and 1:41:41.800 --> 1:41:47.520 so on, and consequently parasitism as a process becomes more disposed. 1:41:48.520 --> 1:41:52.840 Extraction would stretch across continents and would be carried by 1:41:52.880 --> 1:41:57.000 maritime tree routes taken resources from different parts of the world, 1:41:57.040 --> 1:42:02.479 including sugar, cotton, spices, metal, and labor, all flowing through 1:42:02.560 --> 1:42:09.080 increasingly complex global systems and increasingly industrial supply chains. As 1:42:09.120 --> 1:42:13.800 wealth starts accumulating in certain regions thanks the extraction of others, 1:42:14.160 --> 1:42:16.400 you know, the rich is being built up in one 1:42:16.439 --> 1:42:21.040 place because of the poverty being developed in another place. 1:42:21.960 --> 1:42:25.160 As the agents of this time of the kingdoms and empires, 1:42:25.200 --> 1:42:30.360 but also newly minted corporate charters and nation states. And 1:42:30.400 --> 1:42:32.439 to be clear, I'm not trying to say that these 1:42:32.479 --> 1:42:36.120 are the sole agents history in any of these particular periods, 1:42:36.600 --> 1:42:39.360 which is that they were significant. I don't want to 1:42:39.400 --> 1:42:43.000 deny the role of you know, the politics from below 1:42:43.600 --> 1:42:47.720 the rabble, as Graba sometimes refers to them, would have 1:42:47.800 --> 1:42:50.320 also shaped the development of history. 1:42:50.560 --> 1:42:52.840 Yeah, I think it's also worth noting too. And there's 1:42:52.880 --> 1:42:56.160 something you were talking about from the top. But as 1:42:56.160 --> 1:42:58.559 with all of these sort of like really really broad 1:42:58.560 --> 1:43:03.600 sweet books at history, this is capturing trends in a 1:43:03.960 --> 1:43:08.880 few places in the worlds as they moved. There are 1:43:08.960 --> 1:43:13.440 obviously many, many, many other things that are also coexisting 1:43:13.520 --> 1:43:16.920 with all of these systems at the same time. The 1:43:17.080 --> 1:43:21.599 entire world in like two thousand BC is not just 1:43:21.720 --> 1:43:25.800 like mirror images of like the Shang dynasty everywhere right Like, 1:43:26.000 --> 1:43:30.600 there's a whole plethora of different systems that are interacting 1:43:30.600 --> 1:43:33.920 with each other from I mean, I can't even there's 1:43:34.280 --> 1:43:38.320 just an unbelievable sort of diversity of like cultural forms, 1:43:38.400 --> 1:43:39.960 some of which are states, some of which are not. 1:43:40.600 --> 1:43:43.120 But yeah, when you're doing a macrohistory like this, you 1:43:43.200 --> 1:43:46.000 are looking at certain sets of thems and matching patterns 1:43:46.000 --> 1:43:48.280 with them. But that also is not We're also not 1:43:48.400 --> 1:43:51.320 saying here but that's literally everything that is happening on earth, 1:43:51.320 --> 1:43:53.640 because it's not. Yeah, but yeah, just just want to 1:43:53.680 --> 1:43:55.200 get that in for the people who are gonna get 1:43:55.280 --> 1:43:58.640 very mad about this, which you are aware of the 1:43:58.680 --> 1:44:01.680 presence of other narratives. We have we have we have 1:44:01.920 --> 1:44:04.479 we have done our postmodernism training, we have done our 1:44:05.160 --> 1:44:07.680 historical archaeological stuff. I just. 1:44:10.520 --> 1:44:15.040 Of course, of course, and like I was saying, they 1:44:15.120 --> 1:44:18.960 had these other agents, but for this particular narrative of 1:44:19.080 --> 1:44:22.640 focusing on the kingdoms, the empires, the corporate charters, and 1:44:22.680 --> 1:44:25.360 the nation states. And in the nation states, we take 1:44:25.360 --> 1:44:27.920 them for granted now, but they really were not always 1:44:28.000 --> 1:44:30.000 a thing. You know, the idea of a group of 1:44:30.040 --> 1:44:35.280 people with a shared identity, language, culture, and history being 1:44:35.960 --> 1:44:39.120 artificially i would say, unified under a state. It has 1:44:39.160 --> 1:44:44.559 to be constructed and enforced through violence and assimilation. You know, 1:44:44.640 --> 1:44:48.960 you didn't have this concept of France until France was built, 1:44:49.520 --> 1:44:52.240 and the whole world has suffered as a result. You know. Yeah, 1:44:52.479 --> 1:44:55.400 we didn't have this concept of Italy. You didn't have 1:44:55.439 --> 1:44:59.799 this concept of of of Nigeria, you didn't have this concept. 1:45:00.320 --> 1:45:03.880 These nation states had to be constructed. 1:45:04.200 --> 1:45:04.679 Yeah. 1:45:05.240 --> 1:45:06.920 Even China, which is seen as like the sort of 1:45:07.080 --> 1:45:09.280 archetypical example of this, Like we have a bunch of 1:45:09.280 --> 1:45:11.960 records of people in the fifteen hundreds, and I think 1:45:11.960 --> 1:45:14.640 even through the sixteen hundreds, like going and talking to 1:45:14.720 --> 1:45:17.840 people in China and being like, yeah, you're in China 1:45:17.960 --> 1:45:19.760 and the people are talking to are like, what the 1:45:19.800 --> 1:45:24.639 fuck is China. What are you talking about? Like, we're 1:45:24.680 --> 1:45:27.240 like under this ruler, who's under this ruler, who's under 1:45:27.280 --> 1:45:30.120 this ruler? Who's like yeah, exactly, you know. So yeah, 1:45:30.320 --> 1:45:33.799 these things have to be constructed, and they were constructed 1:45:33.840 --> 1:45:35.480 a lot more recently than people. 1:45:35.200 --> 1:45:38.200 Think, and then to actually get people to identify with 1:45:38.280 --> 1:45:41.439 them also has to be constructed over generations in some cases. 1:45:41.720 --> 1:45:45.360 Yeah, and usually by you know, a process in which 1:45:45.400 --> 1:45:47.880 I mean the only way to cause people to have 1:45:47.920 --> 1:45:51.599 a positive identification with like a specific new bounded national 1:45:51.680 --> 1:45:56.040 territorial identity is to have it be posed against an other. 1:45:57.360 --> 1:46:00.479 So yeah, what of these? What of these? Also, like 1:46:00.920 --> 1:46:03.160 the question of the national like the twentieth century national 1:46:03.200 --> 1:46:06.360 liberation movements, this when you get like, for example, like 1:46:06.439 --> 1:46:10.120 pan Arabism, it's like, okay, like whose national liberation is this? 1:46:10.160 --> 1:46:12.960 Because sure as fuck is not like the Kurds or Yazidis. 1:46:13.600 --> 1:46:17.120 It's you know, yeah. This is all of which is 1:46:17.160 --> 1:46:18.559 to say what you were saying, which is this is 1:46:18.600 --> 1:46:21.639 a violent and bloody process that is a lot more 1:46:21.640 --> 1:46:23.360 recent that people understand. 1:46:23.880 --> 1:46:28.759 Absolutely, this time also saw a lot of revolutions bloody indeed, 1:46:29.200 --> 1:46:32.720 you know, the rise and fall of old powers and 1:46:32.920 --> 1:46:36.720 new powers. And this is also a phase. I think 1:46:36.800 --> 1:46:41.080 they could be marked by its contradictions. You know, you 1:46:41.200 --> 1:46:45.679 had this rise in side of ideas like liberty and rights, 1:46:45.760 --> 1:46:49.320 and you know, liberalism was developed in this period, as 1:46:49.400 --> 1:46:55.760 was socialism. But you also had obviously this vast industrial 1:46:55.800 --> 1:47:00.280 exploitation of people's and ecologies. We saw the dire event 1:47:00.400 --> 1:47:04.559 of the sciences and scientific classifications, but you also saw 1:47:04.600 --> 1:47:09.360 how that gave way to pseudo scientific justifications for inequality. 1:47:09.720 --> 1:47:11.720 You know, the create chain of being, the idea of 1:47:12.240 --> 1:47:16.000 the whit's being on top of everyone else. Yeah, you 1:47:16.080 --> 1:47:20.640 saw a self determination for some and self determination not 1:47:20.720 --> 1:47:23.400 so much for others. As by the time we reached 1:47:23.400 --> 1:47:27.280 the eighteen hundreds, the piece of change was exceedingly traumatic 1:47:27.479 --> 1:47:34.800 and volatile. Industrialization, urbanization, communication and transportation converged to compress 1:47:35.000 --> 1:47:38.600 time and space. We see the booth of new ideas 1:47:38.640 --> 1:47:41.439 and reformed relations, and by the time we reached the 1:47:41.600 --> 1:47:45.880 early twentieth century a new phase is taken shape. We 1:47:45.960 --> 1:47:50.360 are now in what McDonald's calls the system phase, spanning 1:47:50.400 --> 1:47:54.559 from nineteen hundred to the present day. The system, the machine, 1:47:54.720 --> 1:47:57.840 whatever you want to call it, is this fast, interconnected 1:47:57.960 --> 1:48:02.280 set of systems that organize we live, produce, consume, and 1:48:02.400 --> 1:48:05.320 even think. The system does not have you know, a 1:48:05.360 --> 1:48:08.360 single king or figurehead that you can point to as 1:48:08.360 --> 1:48:11.599 the big bad, despite I think people's efforts to try 1:48:11.600 --> 1:48:14.720 and find a big bad. It's really a web of 1:48:14.880 --> 1:48:19.479 processes and incentives and networks and complex bureaucracies and global 1:48:19.520 --> 1:48:23.800 markets and industrial and post industrial economies and mass communication 1:48:24.680 --> 1:48:27.360 and the underground economy and all these different things chugging 1:48:27.360 --> 1:48:33.920 along almost like it's beastly bloodthirst is something benign. Forgive 1:48:33.920 --> 1:48:35.919 the alliteration and like to throw in out of poetry 1:48:36.040 --> 1:48:42.320 every once in a while. So the idea of progress 1:48:42.400 --> 1:48:49.080 becomes very economistic in this period. It's focused on growth, output, productivity, efficiency. 1:48:49.640 --> 1:48:53.280 Our entire economy is basically organized around these metrics. That's 1:48:53.320 --> 1:48:55.080 the thing that people are worrying about when they're on 1:48:55.520 --> 1:48:59.599 Fox Business or whatever, the Financial Times, whatever spaces of 1:49:00.320 --> 1:49:02.799 dialogue about the economy. The focus is not on actually 1:49:02.920 --> 1:49:05.960 all of people's needs being met. It's what's what's growth? 1:49:06.000 --> 1:49:09.559 Looking like this quarta? How efficient how we exploit in 1:49:09.560 --> 1:49:10.040 the planet. 1:49:10.720 --> 1:49:13.439 Yeah, I'm still going to be haunted forever by that. 1:49:13.640 --> 1:49:16.479 The clip on CNBC that we played in the ED 1:49:16.920 --> 1:49:19.120 a few weeks ago whenever this is coming out, where 1:49:19.640 --> 1:49:24.040 the CNBC anchor goes, Trump has threatened to wipe out 1:49:24.040 --> 1:49:27.040 a civilization. What does this mean for investors? 1:49:27.640 --> 1:49:31.080 Yeah, I saw that. I saw that. 1:49:31.080 --> 1:49:34.160 That's horrifying, haunting, haunting shit. 1:49:35.479 --> 1:49:37.840 The way that our economy has been built around these 1:49:37.920 --> 1:49:42.280 metrics is truly horrifying. And you also see the idea 1:49:42.320 --> 1:49:47.720 of progress in this time tends toward the economistic, you know, 1:49:47.760 --> 1:49:53.320 the inevitability of globalization, the ideological victory of capitalism, and 1:49:53.360 --> 1:49:57.720 so on, and pastism in this system phase is as 1:49:57.720 --> 1:50:03.040 the name implies, systemic quote directly from the book, contiguous 1:50:03.120 --> 1:50:07.599 parstism had captured energy from additionous societies and native, wild 1:50:07.640 --> 1:50:11.880 and domestic species. This is the parstism of the first phase. 1:50:12.360 --> 1:50:18.120 Disparate parasitism, meanwhile, had captured energy from additionous societies, imperial subjects, 1:50:18.160 --> 1:50:23.080 and both exotic wild and intensively domesticated species abroad. And 1:50:23.080 --> 1:50:25.880 that's the second phase. And so the new form, networked 1:50:25.920 --> 1:50:29.840 parstism captured energy from all of these as well, but 1:50:29.920 --> 1:50:32.920 with the addition of ancient species of plant to animal 1:50:33.280 --> 1:50:38.000 in the form of fossils, this enabled concrete energy capture 1:50:38.320 --> 1:50:42.760 through increase in electrification, and then the digitization and extraction 1:50:42.920 --> 1:50:47.719 and production and abstract energy capture from extremely large, dense 1:50:47.760 --> 1:50:52.040 populations of urban subjects. Though the foundations of this system 1:50:52.040 --> 1:50:54.920 were built in the nineteenth century, it was only the 1:50:54.960 --> 1:50:59.320 twentieth century that it came to dominate end quote. So 1:50:59.400 --> 1:51:03.120 this parst is is networked on another level. You know, 1:51:03.240 --> 1:51:07.920 it flows through global supply chains. It extracts fossil fuels, 1:51:08.439 --> 1:51:12.160 you know, cool oil, gas power, maintains the entire cont 1:51:12.200 --> 1:51:17.080 It maintains transportation, industry, agriculture, digital infrastructure, all of it. 1:51:17.360 --> 1:51:20.120 A whole world, as we've seen, has been built around 1:51:20.120 --> 1:51:25.160 these fossil fuels, and something as simple as blocking a 1:51:25.240 --> 1:51:29.160 pay smalls straight can have a dire impact on the 1:51:29.320 --> 1:51:32.679 entire world, much of which is yet to be felt. 1:51:32.760 --> 1:51:36.439 Even as the strait has now been reopened, it has 1:51:36.520 --> 1:51:44.519 not been reopened about to be seemingly. I mean, Israel 1:51:44.560 --> 1:51:46.639 did viod. This is fire though, right, so it probably 1:51:46.680 --> 1:51:48.040 will not be opened again. 1:51:48.680 --> 1:51:51.640 Yeah, I mean even before that it hadn't been reopened. 1:51:51.760 --> 1:51:55.080 I don't know. I have no idea when this episode 1:51:55.120 --> 1:51:58.400 is going to come out, So I am stating for 1:51:58.439 --> 1:51:59.120 the record. 1:51:58.880 --> 1:52:00.040 Here Yeah, it's very hard to. 1:52:00.080 --> 1:52:04.519 Can't have it's impossible. It's like not impossible. It's extremely 1:52:04.560 --> 1:52:06.760 difficult to figure out whether the strait is open on 1:52:06.840 --> 1:52:08.639 an hour two hour basis. 1:52:08.800 --> 1:52:10.479 Yeah, Like that's fair. 1:52:10.600 --> 1:52:12.760 I don't know what the fuck it's gonna be, Like, 1:52:12.960 --> 1:52:15.200 I don't know, Like maybe so maybe someone will have 1:52:15.280 --> 1:52:18.080 like filled the straight in by the time this episode 1:52:18.120 --> 1:52:22.599 comes out, Like who knows. Sorry, I just I've been 1:52:22.640 --> 1:52:23.599 so straight pilled. 1:52:23.680 --> 1:52:25.360 That's a fair point. That's fair point. I guess the 1:52:25.360 --> 1:52:27.520 point I'm trying to make is even in any hypothetical 1:52:27.720 --> 1:52:32.479 scenario where this strait is fully open, you're still going 1:52:32.520 --> 1:52:35.080 to feel the impact of that brief period of closure. 1:52:35.520 --> 1:52:37.439 Yeah, for years. 1:52:38.400 --> 1:52:50.840 Yeah, this is dumb phased by the way. 1:52:50.840 --> 1:52:55.080 It's not just on the whole extraction of resources of 1:52:55.240 --> 1:52:59.040 land of Libor. You also notice that it extracts our 1:52:59.040 --> 1:53:04.639 attention as well, through the collection of data, through the 1:53:04.800 --> 1:53:10.840 increasingly efficient ways that it seeks to draw out eyeballs 1:53:11.320 --> 1:53:13.479 for the sake of advertising, for the sake of profit. 1:53:14.120 --> 1:53:19.320 And this unprecedented scale of extraction obviously cannot last. It's 1:53:19.360 --> 1:53:23.920 merely borrowing from the future and from million year old ecosystems. 1:53:24.640 --> 1:53:27.120 Eventually that debt is going to catch up on us. 1:53:27.120 --> 1:53:29.920 In fact that it already has begun to catch up 1:53:29.960 --> 1:53:33.320 on us. We're not in the when climate change happens 1:53:33.360 --> 1:53:36.400 in the future. It is happening right now, and the 1:53:36.479 --> 1:53:40.280 Nation States are carrying on business as usual and business 1:53:40.520 --> 1:53:44.240 is booming. The agents of this parasitic phase do not care. 1:53:45.080 --> 1:53:48.080 This period saw the rise of corporations, you know, these 1:53:48.080 --> 1:53:51.840 massive transnational entities, and what you'll notice about this period 1:53:51.920 --> 1:53:55.840 is that they are the agents of this time, even 1:53:55.880 --> 1:53:58.160 sometimes more than countries some of them, some of these 1:53:58.160 --> 1:54:02.240 corporations have more power than entire countries, and to the 1:54:02.280 --> 1:54:08.000 advantage of mass communication and coblization. We also saw ideological coalitions, 1:54:08.000 --> 1:54:10.240 which could be seen as another agent in this phase. 1:54:10.800 --> 1:54:14.439 You know that the government's institutions, media, tech giants, and 1:54:14.520 --> 1:54:18.439 movements that share a particular worldview and shape the narratives 1:54:18.439 --> 1:54:22.160 that determine what people be it workers, consumers, users, or 1:54:22.160 --> 1:54:26.960 citizens believe it's normal, necessary, and it never tell. As 1:54:26.960 --> 1:54:30.560 a person living in this time, it is very difficult 1:54:30.680 --> 1:54:32.960 to see it. You know, you get used to a 1:54:32.960 --> 1:54:36.000 certain system. It's you know, it's like water to fish. 1:54:36.280 --> 1:54:39.160 If you abstract and tangible like, what are you talking 1:54:39.200 --> 1:54:42.440 about this? There's nothing besides this can be the reaction 1:54:42.560 --> 1:54:46.880 you get sometimes, and it is not on anyone individual 1:54:47.040 --> 1:54:51.120 to understand the detailed machinations of the entire system, the 1:54:51.160 --> 1:54:54.800 biggest picture. Nobody I think sees all the machinations of 1:54:54.880 --> 1:54:59.120 the entire system. But nevertheless, the system sees you. You know, 1:54:59.200 --> 1:55:03.640 it sees you as part of its functioning. And to 1:55:04.040 --> 1:55:06.800 kind of bring it to a close, what I want 1:55:06.840 --> 1:55:09.960 people to take away from this is that you know 1:55:10.080 --> 1:55:14.000 you can be and you are an agent in history. Now, 1:55:14.000 --> 1:55:16.480 whether you are an agent of history that serves as 1:55:16.600 --> 1:55:20.440 a cog in the machine or you are an agent 1:55:20.560 --> 1:55:23.880 of history that serves as a wedge in the machine, 1:55:24.200 --> 1:55:27.920 that's really up to you. We're obviously facing down enormous wealth, 1:55:28.600 --> 1:55:36.960 deep inequality, technological advancement, military might, environmental stray, and atomization. 1:55:37.960 --> 1:55:41.120 The twenty twenties have been a world bind of a 1:55:41.160 --> 1:55:43.040 decade already and it's not even over yet. 1:55:43.480 --> 1:55:50.200 Oh God, so fore worry. Yeah, this decade sucks. 1:55:51.720 --> 1:55:52.600 It really does. 1:55:53.760 --> 1:55:58.720 But the system is not unassailable. Yes it can and 1:55:58.760 --> 1:56:02.520 it does adapt to our eruptures, but it is a 1:56:02.560 --> 1:56:05.600 lot more fragile than it puts forward, you know, to 1:56:05.720 --> 1:56:10.240 borrow from I can't remember who said it, the concept 1:56:10.280 --> 1:56:14.440 of paper tiger. It comes from Chinese mythology, a Chinese 1:56:14.440 --> 1:56:16.720 military philosophy. 1:56:16.160 --> 1:56:19.480 Right, yeah, Like I know, Mao talks about it a lot. 1:56:19.560 --> 1:56:21.560 I don't actually know where it's from. 1:56:21.600 --> 1:56:25.240 But yeah, yeah, but I say that to say that 1:56:25.400 --> 1:56:30.280 it's a paper tiger, you know, a particularly study paper tiger, 1:56:30.640 --> 1:56:32.520 but a paper tiger nonetheless. 1:56:32.800 --> 1:56:35.840 Yeah, And never have the people who are attempting to 1:56:35.840 --> 1:56:40.120 write the paper tiger have like, never in the entire 1:56:40.280 --> 1:56:43.840 like history of modern capitalism has it been written by 1:56:43.840 --> 1:56:47.040 people who have less idea what the fuck they're doing. Nick, 1:56:47.280 --> 1:56:51.160 Never have people who understand the system so poorly been 1:56:51.200 --> 1:56:54.200 in charge of it, and they are, you know, they 1:56:54.200 --> 1:56:57.280 are already kind of tearing it apart because they don't 1:56:57.360 --> 1:56:58.280 understand it at all. 1:56:59.040 --> 1:57:01.400 Yeah. I think one of the one of these signs 1:57:01.440 --> 1:57:05.520 of that was just the idea that you can kneecap 1:57:05.840 --> 1:57:12.840 your country's soft power mechanisms entirely and bully every other 1:57:12.880 --> 1:57:16.480 country in the world and expect nothing bad to happen. 1:57:17.000 --> 1:57:19.560 I mean, honestly, the US has not faced the consequences 1:57:19.680 --> 1:57:22.640 that it should for the things that it has done 1:57:22.720 --> 1:57:25.400 in this year alone, that's alone in a decade of history. 1:57:25.680 --> 1:57:26.160 Yeah. 1:57:26.200 --> 1:57:29.920 But I mean when you saw the deconstruction of us AID, right, 1:57:29.960 --> 1:57:33.800 which was one of the US's primary mechanisms of having 1:57:33.880 --> 1:57:37.640 swaying other countries, building up goodwill in other countries, and 1:57:37.680 --> 1:57:42.080 also you know, intervening in the into the domestic politics 1:57:42.080 --> 1:57:45.640 of other countries, to break that down like a bull 1:57:45.680 --> 1:57:48.520 in a China shop, when that was really like one 1:57:48.560 --> 1:57:52.680 of the main pillars that was keeping your whole liberal 1:57:52.720 --> 1:57:56.040 world order float. It really, I think as an indication 1:57:56.120 --> 1:57:58.520 of the incompetence with even mes Yeah. 1:57:58.560 --> 1:58:00.120 And then even on top of that, I think think 1:58:00.360 --> 1:58:03.320 even on an even larger scale, Right, the entire premise 1:58:04.360 --> 1:58:07.760 for I mean, like the entire premise of the packs Americana, Right, 1:58:07.760 --> 1:58:10.400 the entire premise of the post Wold War two American 1:58:10.600 --> 1:58:14.280 order was that the US Navy would keep the world's 1:58:14.280 --> 1:58:18.120 oceans open for supply chains. Yeah, that was the whole thing, 1:58:18.640 --> 1:58:22.760 and it worked exactly as long as the US never 1:58:22.880 --> 1:58:25.840 actually had to fight a war over like the sea 1:58:25.920 --> 1:58:28.640 lanes that it couldn't militarily control. And then we fought 1:58:29.040 --> 1:58:32.000 the one war which would prove that we cannot in 1:58:32.080 --> 1:58:37.160 fact secure the sea lanes. Global capital. Ipacal transformations are 1:58:37.200 --> 1:58:42.480 happening in like the very structure of global capital because 1:58:42.520 --> 1:58:45.960 these people think that like the idea of not using 1:58:46.000 --> 1:58:49.880 your military power and then reaping the reaping the world 1:58:50.040 --> 1:58:55.320 spanning like trillion trillion dollar rewards of this, like they 1:58:55.320 --> 1:58:58.720 thought that shit was like girl, shit, Yeah. 1:58:58.560 --> 1:59:01.280 I mean the whole the whole point of what I've 1:59:01.280 --> 1:59:03.640 been thinking. Part of the point of investing in all 1:59:03.640 --> 1:59:06.360 of this military might is so that you don't have 1:59:06.480 --> 1:59:09.120 to use it. Yeah, it's just just try and scale 1:59:09.160 --> 1:59:13.320 people into just bowing down the station your troops outside 1:59:13.320 --> 1:59:15.360 the territory, and you're like, yeah, are you gonna really try. 1:59:15.240 --> 1:59:16.160 And challenge us? 1:59:16.600 --> 1:59:19.600 Yeah, And then you went and stomped all over with somebody, 1:59:19.640 --> 1:59:21.760 and obvious they had to stand up and defend themselves. 1:59:21.800 --> 1:59:25.680 And now everybody is seeing what it is, you know. 1:59:26.480 --> 1:59:29.760 Yeah, and it's a situation too where like yeah, like 1:59:29.800 --> 1:59:32.640 Iran has always technically had the military power to like 1:59:32.720 --> 1:59:35.400 control the strader of Moos, but they never did because 1:59:35.440 --> 1:59:38.600 the consequence of that would be the US bombing their cities. 1:59:38.800 --> 1:59:41.440 So the only way you could possibly lose control of 1:59:41.480 --> 1:59:43.080 the straight of from moos is if you bombed the 1:59:43.120 --> 1:59:45.880 cities first, So all you had to do was not 1:59:45.960 --> 1:59:47.640 do that and it would be fine. 1:59:47.800 --> 1:59:50.640 Yeah. But I mean the little girls in the school 1:59:50.720 --> 1:59:55.800 were Hamasna, so oh god, yeah, it's just just a tragedy. 1:59:56.080 --> 2:00:01.080 God, it's really hideous. They've decided to repeatedly shoot themselves 2:00:01.120 --> 2:00:02.960 in the balls because they just like wanted to go 2:00:03.080 --> 2:00:06.240 kill a bunch of brown kids. You know, this is 2:00:07.160 --> 2:00:10.560 an unfathomable horror. And also they so clearly have no 2:00:10.640 --> 2:00:12.400 idea what the fuck they're doing that it makes a 2:00:12.400 --> 2:00:13.360 lot of things possible. 2:00:14.120 --> 2:00:17.280 Yeah, yep, yep, yep, yep. So the question is, you 2:00:17.320 --> 2:00:20.360 know what comes next. We're seeing, like, as you said, 2:00:20.400 --> 2:00:25.600 epocal transformations just in this year alone. This phase will 2:00:25.640 --> 2:00:29.720 be incurrently as defined by McDonald. It's not going to 2:00:29.800 --> 2:00:34.120 last forever, you know, Unlike previous phases. However, this phase 2:00:34.160 --> 2:00:38.720 has been imposed truly globally. There's no longer a hint 2:00:38.880 --> 2:00:42.800 land that one can escape too. Yeah, and so what 2:00:42.960 --> 2:00:47.160 comes next can be fragmentation, it can be some kind 2:00:47.160 --> 2:00:52.480 of evolution or calcification, or it can be a social revolution. 2:00:53.040 --> 2:00:55.960 And the more ones and the cogs and wedges in 2:00:56.040 --> 2:00:59.840 this moment to actively decide in that. But I think 2:00:59.880 --> 2:01:04.560 we can do without this parasitism. As MacDonald knowes, there 2:01:04.560 --> 2:01:08.320 are other ways of relating with each other and with nature. 2:01:08.960 --> 2:01:13.160 He borrows from the ecological language of commends, salistic and 2:01:13.320 --> 2:01:19.800 mutualistic relationships. In mutualistic relationships, organisms benefit each other. For example, 2:01:19.880 --> 2:01:23.280 we provide hives and protection, while bees pollic crops and 2:01:23.320 --> 2:01:28.720 produce honey. And commends salistic relationships, one organism captures energy 2:01:28.720 --> 2:01:31.880 from another while doing neither harm nor good to the other. 2:01:32.360 --> 2:01:34.520 There's lots of animals and plants who make their home 2:01:34.760 --> 2:01:38.360 among trees while neither harmon nor help in the tree itself, 2:01:38.960 --> 2:01:40.720 although some of them do end up helping the tree 2:01:40.880 --> 2:01:45.280 in more indirect ways. But finally, in parasitic relationships, which 2:01:45.320 --> 2:01:49.480 is the kind that has proved disastrous for our world, 2:01:49.680 --> 2:01:52.600 one organism that be in us has captured the energy 2:01:52.680 --> 2:01:56.640 of another, or of multiple others to those others detriment 2:01:57.280 --> 2:02:00.560 our system has put us in the position of essentially 2:02:00.560 --> 2:02:05.600 be in mosquitoes on planet Is, and not in the 2:02:05.680 --> 2:02:09.080 role that mosquitoes play in the overall health of the ecosystem, 2:02:09.520 --> 2:02:14.360 but literally sucking more blood than the system consistin, and 2:02:14.440 --> 2:02:16.760 so we have to shake things up, we have to 2:02:16.760 --> 2:02:21.640 imbolden I think new forms of relations and what those 2:02:21.640 --> 2:02:25.960 relations look like after you as usual, All power to 2:02:26.040 --> 2:02:28.200 all the people, peace. 2:02:41.720 --> 2:02:44.240 Welcome to it could happen here a podcast where the 2:02:44.280 --> 2:02:48.000 thin veneer of democracy that has hitherto veiled the settler 2:02:48.040 --> 2:02:51.920 colony of the United States in the mask of humanity 2:02:52.120 --> 2:02:57.960 is being increasingly ripped away, leaving behind. I think calling 2:02:58.000 --> 2:03:01.760 it a new gym crow is that title has already 2:03:01.800 --> 2:03:06.280 been used for something else. But it's a return overtly 2:03:06.560 --> 2:03:10.920 to some of the worst discrimination of the Jim Crow era. 2:03:12.120 --> 2:03:14.480 So I'm your host, Mio Wong. Let's talk about what 2:03:14.640 --> 2:03:18.680 is actually at issue here, and that is a recent 2:03:18.720 --> 2:03:23.320 Supreme Court ruling called Louisiana v. Kalay. On a sort 2:03:23.360 --> 2:03:27.400 of micro level, this is about the question of can 2:03:27.600 --> 2:03:32.440 Louisiana just eliminate the two majority black districts that it 2:03:32.520 --> 2:03:35.960 had in its congressional map in twenty twenty four. Getting 2:03:35.960 --> 2:03:38.919 to this map in the first place was a subject 2:03:39.120 --> 2:03:43.080 of really intense civil rights litigation to get to the 2:03:43.120 --> 2:03:46.360 point where there were two majority black districts in twenty 2:03:46.360 --> 2:03:50.760 twenty four. On a macro level. What is that stake 2:03:51.200 --> 2:03:56.520 here is canny state create an electoral map where they 2:03:56.640 --> 2:04:00.120 spread all of the black voters across different districts in 2:04:00.200 --> 2:04:02.880 order to make them a minority in every district, thus 2:04:02.920 --> 2:04:05.760 making it impossible for black voters select the candidate if 2:04:05.760 --> 2:04:10.880 they're choosing. Until now, the answer was no, because this 2:04:11.080 --> 2:04:15.280 is specifically what the Voting Rights Act was passed to stop. 2:04:15.600 --> 2:04:17.480 Like this, specifically like this, this is one of the 2:04:17.560 --> 2:04:21.720 very specific things. I cannot emphasize this enough, this specific thing, 2:04:21.800 --> 2:04:24.800 which is spread out the black vote across a whole 2:04:24.800 --> 2:04:27.640 bunch of districts where everyone else is white, so that 2:04:27.840 --> 2:04:30.640 black people cannot choose who they want to elect. This 2:04:30.720 --> 2:04:32.880 is like one of the specific things it was designed 2:04:32.920 --> 2:04:35.720 to stop. Again, up until now, you have not been 2:04:35.720 --> 2:04:37.520 allowed to do this, and this has led to the 2:04:37.560 --> 2:04:41.920 creation of what are called minority majority districts. This is 2:04:41.960 --> 2:04:45.600 a long and complicated history that frankly could be its own. 2:04:45.920 --> 2:04:49.760 It probably is like multiple people's doctoral dissertations. The short, 2:04:49.800 --> 2:04:53.720 short version of what a minority majority district is is 2:04:53.760 --> 2:04:56.560 it's a district where the majority of voters are from 2:04:56.600 --> 2:05:00.480 a minority group, thus allowing people from a minority group 2:05:00.520 --> 2:05:04.000 to select a candidate of their choosing. There are a 2:05:04.240 --> 2:05:07.680 lot of these districts in the South, specifically to prevent 2:05:07.760 --> 2:05:11.400 Republican politicians from making it impossible for black voters to 2:05:11.520 --> 2:05:16.040 elect anyone they chose. And fundamentally, what's at stake here, right, 2:05:16.120 --> 2:05:19.120 is the constitutional right to elect a candidates of your 2:05:19.200 --> 2:05:21.440 choosing if you are part of a minority group. 2:05:21.880 --> 2:05:22.080 Right. 2:05:22.760 --> 2:05:25.640 This is why all of this stuff was passed in 2:05:25.640 --> 2:05:28.280 the first place, because under what we call Jim Crow, 2:05:29.000 --> 2:05:32.600 it was extremely easy for a white majority to simply 2:05:32.800 --> 2:05:36.600 effectively deny the rights of black people. And this is 2:05:36.640 --> 2:05:39.360 other non white people too, but like this is primarily 2:05:39.400 --> 2:05:42.120 black people. It was it was very, very easy to 2:05:42.120 --> 2:05:46.640 simply deny them from ever getting to elect anyone by 2:05:46.720 --> 2:05:49.800 just drawing maps where a candidate they would vote for 2:05:49.920 --> 2:05:52.520 can never be elected. This is one of the basis 2:05:52.640 --> 2:06:01.600 of Jim Crow over discrimination. The Supreme Court has decided no, actually, 2:06:02.280 --> 2:06:05.600 what they decided is that if the Republican party that 2:06:05.640 --> 2:06:09.720 controls the legislature draws a map that does the thing 2:06:09.880 --> 2:06:12.320 we've been talking about, where they spread out all of 2:06:12.360 --> 2:06:15.400 the specifically the black vote into a bunch of districts 2:06:15.440 --> 2:06:19.080 so that black people can't elect a representative. In order 2:06:19.160 --> 2:06:22.880 to challenge this as violation of your voting rights, you 2:06:22.920 --> 2:06:27.240 have to prove definitively prove that the intent was racism 2:06:27.360 --> 2:06:31.120 and not literally anything else. So, for example, and this 2:06:31.200 --> 2:06:33.840 is the thing that's really at issue here, right, you 2:06:34.000 --> 2:06:37.600 have to prove that they specifically wanted to do this 2:06:37.920 --> 2:06:40.520 out of racism and not just because they want to 2:06:40.560 --> 2:06:45.440 elect Republicans by gerrymandering it partisan lee, which is amazingly 2:06:45.480 --> 2:06:47.400 a thing that's legal to do in the United States 2:06:47.480 --> 2:06:51.720 for reasons that are incredibly baffling. And also you have 2:06:51.800 --> 2:06:54.040 to be able to prove that they created this map 2:06:54.080 --> 2:06:58.240 specifically out of the intention to disenfranchise a minority group. 2:06:58.400 --> 2:07:00.960 And also you have to create a app that would 2:07:00.960 --> 2:07:04.840 allow them to achieve whatever other goals they supposedly want, like, 2:07:04.880 --> 2:07:08.200 for example, again making sure that Republicans have all the 2:07:08.200 --> 2:07:12.560 seats in a state, but also would not be racist. 2:07:13.120 --> 2:07:16.160 So you have to create a map for them that 2:07:16.160 --> 2:07:17.920 would allow them to do this in order to prove 2:07:17.920 --> 2:07:20.720 that there could be another map that achieves their goals 2:07:20.720 --> 2:07:25.520 of like partisan jerrymandering, that isn't also racist. It's completely 2:07:26.200 --> 2:07:30.160 unhinged legally. This is this is a shambles. We have 2:07:30.320 --> 2:07:35.480 covered some downright like hideous nonsense on this show in 2:07:35.560 --> 2:07:38.280 terms of Supreme Court decisions, right like that. This Supreme 2:07:38.320 --> 2:07:42.320 Court has just the lowest level of legal literacy in 2:07:42.560 --> 2:07:46.560 like living memory of any Supreme Court. It is astounding 2:07:47.240 --> 2:07:50.200 the kinds of just absolute horseshit they are popping out 2:07:50.200 --> 2:07:55.760 with this. This is maybe their worst ruling, which is 2:07:56.080 --> 2:08:00.080 difficult to prove because there have been so many abhorrent ones. 2:08:00.120 --> 2:08:03.520 Even just just from a pure legal perspective, this one 2:08:04.160 --> 2:08:09.240 is so bad it defies belief. So, okay, One of 2:08:09.240 --> 2:08:12.240 the main issues here is Section two of the Voting 2:08:12.320 --> 2:08:16.000 Rights Act. I'm just going to read what it says, quote, 2:08:16.520 --> 2:08:22.320 No voting qualifications or prerequisite to voting, or standard practice 2:08:22.520 --> 2:08:26.760 or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any state 2:08:26.960 --> 2:08:31.720 or political subdivision in a manner which results keep that 2:08:31.760 --> 2:08:35.440 in mind later, which results in a denial or abridgment 2:08:36.040 --> 2:08:38.560 of the right of any citizen of the United States 2:08:38.640 --> 2:08:41.640 to vote on account of race or color, or in 2:08:41.720 --> 2:08:45.360 contravention of the guarantees set forth in section nineteen seventy 2:08:45.400 --> 2:08:48.000 three B. So again I kind of emphasize this enough. 2:08:48.080 --> 2:08:50.320 Right the way this is written is that it says 2:08:50.360 --> 2:08:55.000 that you can't apply qualification or prerequisite to voting, or 2:08:55.000 --> 2:08:58.480 have any standard or practice or procedure cannot be imposed 2:08:58.480 --> 2:09:02.080 by the state or any other politicals of that results 2:09:02.880 --> 2:09:04.880 in the denial or abridgment of the rights of citizens 2:09:04.960 --> 2:09:05.760 vote and account of race. 2:09:05.920 --> 2:09:06.080 Right. 2:09:06.760 --> 2:09:12.000 It specifically says results. It does not say intent. Now 2:09:12.080 --> 2:09:15.320 this is incredibly important because Alito is like, no, fuck that, 2:09:15.480 --> 2:09:18.400 Actually you have to prove intent. I'm going to quote 2:09:18.440 --> 2:09:22.280 from a piece of Scotis blog by Edward Foley, who 2:09:22.680 --> 2:09:26.120 has an extremely long title of the Charles b Ever 2:09:26.240 --> 2:09:30.080 Sold in Florence Whitcomb Ever Sold share and constitutional law. 2:09:30.360 --> 2:09:33.880 As the director of Election at Law at Ohio State University, 2:09:34.160 --> 2:09:36.480 They're written a book on electoral law. He is a 2:09:36.480 --> 2:09:39.720 constitutional law professor who specifically does election law. He is like, 2:09:39.840 --> 2:09:42.720 by no means a leftist. He's coming into the right 2:09:42.800 --> 2:09:46.680 of like Justice Jackson in her dissent in this case. Right, 2:09:46.680 --> 2:09:51.360 but even he I'm going to quote what he writes 2:09:51.400 --> 2:09:55.280 about this. He calls this ruling an abomination, which is 2:09:55.360 --> 2:09:57.800 like a thing that you don't really get from like 2:09:57.920 --> 2:10:00.360 legal people. They don't say shit like that. I'm going 2:10:00.400 --> 2:10:02.800 to quote what he says about this quote. The ruling 2:10:02.840 --> 2:10:06.360 purports to interpret the Voting Rights Act Section two, but 2:10:06.440 --> 2:10:09.640 it destroys the central meaning of the section, converting it 2:10:09.680 --> 2:10:12.640 into the exact opposite of what Congress meant for it 2:10:12.680 --> 2:10:16.200 to do. The one thing that is unambiguous about Section 2:10:16.360 --> 2:10:18.800 two is that the nineteen eighty two amendment to the 2:10:18.800 --> 2:10:24.440 section's test creates a quote results test for determining whether 2:10:24.440 --> 2:10:29.160 there is liability under the section, replacing the intent test 2:10:29.520 --> 2:10:32.919 that the Supreme Court had previously adopted for Section two claims. 2:10:33.680 --> 2:10:37.280 As the text states, quote, no standard practice or procedure 2:10:37.280 --> 2:10:40.960 shall be imposed which results in a denial or abridgment 2:10:41.040 --> 2:10:44.080 of the right of any citizen to vote on account 2:10:44.360 --> 2:10:48.240 of race. Yet the case defiantly converts Section two back 2:10:48.480 --> 2:10:51.800 to an intention inquiry rather than a results analysis. So 2:10:52.000 --> 2:10:54.640 what happened here, right, To make this extremely clear, is 2:10:54.680 --> 2:10:58.080 that Congress in nineteen eighty two had amended this. They 2:10:58.080 --> 2:11:01.640 amended what this thing said, right, because Supreme Court had 2:11:01.640 --> 2:11:04.240 been adopting a standard of intent, right, which means that 2:11:04.280 --> 2:11:07.240 you have to prove that like these people were like 2:11:07.400 --> 2:11:11.920 mustache whirling saying the N word in fucking clan robes, 2:11:12.360 --> 2:11:15.000 doing Nazi salutes. You have to like prove that they 2:11:15.040 --> 2:11:17.720 intentionally did this for racist reasons and not any other reason. 2:11:18.320 --> 2:11:22.000 And Congress went back and went, no, fuck that. If 2:11:22.040 --> 2:11:27.160 the result of it is racist, then you can't do it, 2:11:27.440 --> 2:11:30.680 even if, like nominally what you're saying out loud is 2:11:30.720 --> 2:11:32.920 that you're doing this for non racist reasons. If the 2:11:33.000 --> 2:11:35.960 result is racism, then you have to not do it. 2:11:36.400 --> 2:11:39.360 And Alito goes, yeah, no, fuck that, we're just like 2:11:39.400 --> 2:11:43.560 flipping it back to an intent standard for no reason 2:11:43.680 --> 2:11:45.680 other than I want to be able to do racism 2:11:45.760 --> 2:11:48.480 and help the Republican Party win seats. The other thing 2:11:48.520 --> 2:11:52.120 that fully talks about is the court is arguing that, like, 2:11:52.160 --> 2:11:55.120 Congress can't draw from the fifteenth Amendment in order in 2:11:55.200 --> 2:11:58.080 order to like have the Voting Brice Act work. In 2:11:58.120 --> 2:12:01.280 the first place, I'm going to quote again, Yeah, the 2:12:01.320 --> 2:12:03.600 Court in this decision did not need to consider the 2:12:03.720 --> 2:12:07.520 question of congressional power to enforce the fifteenth Amendment. That is, 2:12:07.560 --> 2:12:10.160 because the power of Congress to enact Section two with 2:12:10.200 --> 2:12:13.480 the Voting Rights Amendment for the purposes of the case 2:12:14.200 --> 2:12:17.480 could have been sustained not under the Fifteenth Amendment, but 2:12:17.680 --> 2:12:21.520 under Article one, Section four of the Constitution. Congress has 2:12:21.640 --> 2:12:25.440 full power under Article one, section four to enact laws 2:12:25.480 --> 2:12:30.240 governing the quote, time, place, and manner of congressional elections. Thus, 2:12:30.480 --> 2:12:34.880 Congress can enact a prohibition against minority vote dilution for 2:12:35.000 --> 2:12:39.480 congressional districts under a disparate impact theory without any consideration 2:12:39.640 --> 2:12:43.280 of discriminatory attent, and not rely on the Fifteenth Amendment 2:12:43.320 --> 2:12:46.320 at all. So, okay, what does this mean? Right? What 2:12:46.360 --> 2:12:48.800 Alito is saying is that, like, oh well, actually, Congress 2:12:48.840 --> 2:12:51.120 doesn't have the authority to like write the secution of 2:12:51.120 --> 2:12:53.600 the Voting Rights Amendment. They don't have the authority to 2:12:53.640 --> 2:12:55.880 do it under the fifteenth Amendment because it like oversteps 2:12:55.920 --> 2:12:59.520 the rights of states to you know, run their own elections. Right, 2:12:59.600 --> 2:13:01.280 So I'm gonna do a thing I did last time 2:13:01.600 --> 2:13:03.960 with Fully's thing and just read the full Article one, 2:13:04.000 --> 2:13:06.600 section four of the Constitution. By the way, when something 2:13:06.640 --> 2:13:09.240 says like Article one, section four, you have to remember 2:13:09.320 --> 2:13:11.920 that all of the amendments, right, the amendment that got 2:13:11.960 --> 2:13:14.520 rid of slavery, even like the first Amendment, right, the 2:13:14.560 --> 2:13:18.280 freedom of speech, that's an amendment that's not in the 2:13:18.320 --> 2:13:21.640 original text that had to be added onto it. And obviously, 2:13:21.680 --> 2:13:23.280 we have something called the Bill of Rights that, like 2:13:23.760 --> 2:13:25.320 you know, was like the first ten amendments that was 2:13:25.360 --> 2:13:27.720 passed with the Constitution. But that's not stuff that was 2:13:27.800 --> 2:13:30.839 like put like a freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, 2:13:30.880 --> 2:13:34.920 freedom of worship that was not in the original text 2:13:35.000 --> 2:13:38.720 of the Constitution. That was the amendments put on. This 2:13:38.760 --> 2:13:40.880 is something that the people who wrote the Constitution were like, 2:13:40.920 --> 2:13:43.600 fuck if this is going to be in the original thing, right, 2:13:43.840 --> 2:13:45.520 So Article one, Section four, this is from like the 2:13:45.560 --> 2:13:49.120 original fucking body of text of the Constitution says, quote, 2:13:49.600 --> 2:13:53.080 the times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators 2:13:53.080 --> 2:13:56.960 and Representatives shall be prescribed in each state by the 2:13:57.040 --> 2:14:01.960 legislature thereof. But the Congress may at any time, by law, 2:14:02.120 --> 2:14:05.760 make or alter such regulations, except as to the places 2:14:05.760 --> 2:14:10.240 of choosing senators. So yes, obviously they can fucking do 2:14:10.320 --> 2:14:13.560 the Voting Rights Amendment. They literally have the ability. Like 2:14:13.600 --> 2:14:16.920 it says in section one, Congress may at any time, 2:14:16.960 --> 2:14:21.640 by law make or alter such regulations. By such regulations 2:14:21.680 --> 2:14:24.560 they mean the times, places and manner of holding elections. 2:14:25.520 --> 2:14:28.760 They could just do this, right, So obviously they can 2:14:28.800 --> 2:14:31.560 fucking do the Voting Rights Amendment. It's just it's literally 2:14:31.600 --> 2:14:34.200 just there in the custumation. It just says that it's 2:14:34.240 --> 2:14:38.000 all like this, it's gibberish. It's like, oh my god, 2:14:38.560 --> 2:14:41.920 you can just read the text of the Constitution and 2:14:42.000 --> 2:14:46.080 it says you can do this. It's god, holy shit. 2:14:46.880 --> 2:14:48.800 Even from the perspective of like if you treat the 2:14:48.920 --> 2:14:52.560 law as real, this is just pure Calvin Ball shit, 2:14:52.760 --> 2:14:57.760 Like I mean, it's just Jesus Christ. Okay, you know 2:14:57.840 --> 2:15:00.920 what's real and not Calvin Ball. It's it's these products 2:15:00.920 --> 2:15:16.640 and services. We are back. So okay, what has the 2:15:16.720 --> 2:15:19.120 result of this been. It's been about two weeks since 2:15:19.120 --> 2:15:22.240 the Court did this decision. The Court immediately followed this 2:15:22.360 --> 2:15:25.440 up by allowing Alabama to jerrymander the shit out of 2:15:25.440 --> 2:15:30.040 their upcoming election. They're doing this via again, the shadow docket, 2:15:30.040 --> 2:15:32.800 which is their ability to just be like, no, fuck you, 2:15:32.920 --> 2:15:36.919 we're not ruling on this case without actually issuing a decision. 2:15:37.200 --> 2:15:40.320 An unsigned, one paragraph thing from the court can just 2:15:40.400 --> 2:15:44.760 dictate what the law is. It's great, it's amazing, and 2:15:44.800 --> 2:15:48.440 by amazing, I mean Jesus fucking Christ. This happens about 2:15:48.480 --> 2:15:51.600 a week after the original Screme Court decision. This shadow 2:15:51.600 --> 2:15:55.680 dockett allows Alabama to put in place a map that 2:15:55.880 --> 2:16:00.879 was already found to be explicitly racially motivated. Thing Alito 2:16:01.000 --> 2:16:05.080 said in a decision that he wouldn't do right. Alito 2:16:05.200 --> 2:16:09.480 says in a decision that he won't overturn a cases 2:16:09.560 --> 2:16:13.280 that are like avert discrimination and b that he wouldn't 2:16:13.320 --> 2:16:17.080 overturn this exact case. And then they did it. 2:16:17.120 --> 2:16:24.400 Anyways, It's like Jesus Christ'. 2:16:22.280 --> 2:16:25.600 Just like, oh my god. So the short version of 2:16:25.600 --> 2:16:28.560 the Alabama conflict I'm drawing here from Slat's story on 2:16:28.640 --> 2:16:31.720 this thing is that Alabama tried to do a map 2:16:31.720 --> 2:16:33.560 that would let them get rid of like both of 2:16:33.560 --> 2:16:37.400 the congressional black congressional candidates in the states by jerrymandering 2:16:37.440 --> 2:16:40.560 the black vote. There's a whole bunch of court cases 2:16:40.600 --> 2:16:44.360 about this. In twenty twenty three, the Supreme Court said 2:16:44.400 --> 2:16:46.320 that they couldn't do this and they had to make 2:16:46.360 --> 2:16:48.960 fairer districts that didn't like violate the Voting Rights Act. 2:16:49.560 --> 2:16:52.320 So this was three years ago. This, like the Supreme 2:16:52.360 --> 2:16:56.680 Court said they had to do this. Here's some Slate quote. Alabama, however, 2:16:56.800 --> 2:17:00.400 refused to comply with that order to get like they 2:17:00.440 --> 2:17:02.760 got an order from the Supreme Court and refused to 2:17:02.800 --> 2:17:06.560 do it. Quote, so the lower court imposed its own map, 2:17:06.600 --> 2:17:09.240 featuring two districts where black voters had a real shot 2:17:09.280 --> 2:17:12.640 at choosing their representative. The court also found that in 2:17:12.760 --> 2:17:17.800 defying its previous mandate, the Alabama legislature had engaged in 2:17:17.800 --> 2:17:22.400 intentional racial discrimination, violating the Fourteenth Amendments Equal Protection Clause 2:17:22.440 --> 2:17:25.640 in addition to the Voting Rights Act. Up until Monday, 2:17:25.720 --> 2:17:28.600 this decision had prevented the legislature from joining the former 2:17:28.640 --> 2:17:31.960 Confederate states now racing to eliminate black representatives from their 2:17:31.959 --> 2:17:36.360 congressional delegations. Alabama Republicans pressed the district court to lift 2:17:36.400 --> 2:17:39.119 its bar, but it refused, so they filed an emergency 2:17:39.160 --> 2:17:42.959 request at the Supreme Court asking permission to re jerrymander 2:17:43.040 --> 2:17:47.840 black communities in light of this decision. Now, I cantdatmaicize enough. 2:17:47.879 --> 2:17:50.160 This vote from when they were granted this position. This 2:17:50.280 --> 2:17:54.080 vote is in like eight days, right, people had already 2:17:54.080 --> 2:17:57.640 started voting for candidates and primaries, right, And Supreme Court 2:17:57.720 --> 2:17:59.280 was like, yeah, sure, yeah, you can. You can fucking 2:17:59.320 --> 2:18:01.600 rejerry mander this thing eight days before the election. That's 2:18:01.600 --> 2:18:04.880 absolutely fine. Even though again I can'da emphasize this enough 2:18:05.320 --> 2:18:09.440 in the ruling, Alito specifically said in the majority opinion 2:18:09.480 --> 2:18:13.720 that they wouldn't overturn this exact case, and then they 2:18:13.720 --> 2:18:17.520 did it. It's mind boggling. It used to be, like 2:18:17.560 --> 2:18:20.000 it really truly did. Used to be that if you 2:18:20.040 --> 2:18:22.080 were going to do shit like this, you had to 2:18:22.240 --> 2:18:26.280 like sort of like pretend that you were following some 2:18:26.440 --> 2:18:29.760 kind of legal order. And now you just don't. You 2:18:29.800 --> 2:18:32.480 can just fucking do Calvin bullshit. You can just literally 2:18:32.600 --> 2:18:37.160 lie about what you're doing in your decisions and then 2:18:37.440 --> 2:18:41.280 just fucking do whatever you want about it. And obviously, 2:18:41.320 --> 2:18:42.760 you know, as slave points on. This has been pointed 2:18:42.760 --> 2:18:44.760 out by a whole bunch of different outlets. The Supreme 2:18:44.800 --> 2:18:48.720 Court also had used another legal principle to prevent states 2:18:48.720 --> 2:18:51.400 that would have were trying to like make more democratic maps, 2:18:51.440 --> 2:18:53.800 both in the sense of like not being racist and 2:18:53.840 --> 2:18:57.280 also that would elect more democratic politicians. And even though 2:18:57.320 --> 2:19:00.000 it was three months before the election, the court was like, wow, 2:19:00.040 --> 2:19:02.600 it's actually too soon, like it's too close the election 2:19:02.680 --> 2:19:04.440 for you to be changing this stuff. But then also 2:19:04.520 --> 2:19:07.720 now they're just letting Alabama do one of these like 2:19:07.800 --> 2:19:11.680 eight days before an election. So it's so incredibly clear 2:19:11.720 --> 2:19:13.879 about what's happening here is that the Court is trying 2:19:13.879 --> 2:19:16.959 to allow Republican politicians to just straight up rig elections 2:19:16.959 --> 2:19:19.440 for them by doing gerrymandered districts in a way that 2:19:19.520 --> 2:19:24.040 lets them eliminate the ability of non white people to vote. 2:19:24.280 --> 2:19:29.480 And this is a huge fucking deal. Getting the nineteen 2:19:29.480 --> 2:19:32.039 sixty five Voting Rights Act was one of the major 2:19:32.080 --> 2:19:34.160 achievements of the civil rights movement, right, It's like, one 2:19:34.200 --> 2:19:36.280 of the biggest goals of the moderate wing of the 2:19:36.360 --> 2:19:42.320 movement was to have elections in which black people got 2:19:42.360 --> 2:19:46.640 to actually fucking vote and not have their vote intentionally 2:19:46.680 --> 2:19:49.360 diluted so they could never actually elect a candidate. And 2:19:49.959 --> 2:19:54.760 that's what's being done here, right, And this has been 2:19:54.760 --> 2:19:57.760 pointed out. It's like anyone who's read any kind of 2:19:57.959 --> 2:20:00.840 analysis of racial politics in the US. One of the 2:20:00.920 --> 2:20:03.680 consistent themes of the sort of you know what you 2:20:03.680 --> 2:20:06.400 would call, I guess like the era of black uprising, right, 2:20:06.959 --> 2:20:11.280 the sort of modern era stretching from roughly Ferguson. I thought, 2:20:11.280 --> 2:20:12.920 I guess you could talk about the stuff in the 2:20:12.959 --> 2:20:15.640 Bay before that, or roughly from Ferguson through twenty twenty 2:20:16.320 --> 2:20:19.720 was that the US was not a democracy before the 2:20:19.800 --> 2:20:22.400 nineteen sixty five Voting Rights Act because the principle of 2:20:22.440 --> 2:20:27.160 one person, one vote was not real because you could 2:20:27.160 --> 2:20:30.800 simply disenfranchise anyone from a minority group, and that was 2:20:31.320 --> 2:20:35.120 the status quo of the South, and also like a 2:20:35.160 --> 2:20:38.560 lot of other parts of the country too, was this 2:20:39.480 --> 2:20:43.680 very overtibility of these people to you know, not only 2:20:43.760 --> 2:20:46.280 just like this, this is one of the components of segregation. Right, 2:20:46.360 --> 2:20:51.720 It's not just like imposing segregation legally in public spaces, right, 2:20:52.320 --> 2:20:56.600 it's also you know, like it's preventing black people from voting. 2:20:57.400 --> 2:21:03.120 And this is the thing that the Supreme Court ruling 2:21:03.160 --> 2:21:04.560 has just effectively destroyed. 2:21:05.400 --> 2:21:05.600 Right. 2:21:05.720 --> 2:21:09.720 It's the thing that made it possible to even sort of, 2:21:09.800 --> 2:21:13.519 like in the loosest sense possible, called this country a democracy. 2:21:14.280 --> 2:21:18.360 And it's gone. It's just gone. And now you know, 2:21:18.400 --> 2:21:22.080 it's like, okay, like what fucking is this now? And 2:21:22.360 --> 2:21:24.360 you know, I don't know, it's like it's it's an 2:21:24.840 --> 2:21:29.080 even more just extremely overt Jim Crow state, this is 2:21:29.120 --> 2:21:32.320 what the goal of the Republican Party has always been, 2:21:32.480 --> 2:21:36.240 Like they want resegregation. It's been the basis of modern 2:21:36.240 --> 2:21:39.680 Republican politics forever. Right, it's you know, dating back to 2:21:39.720 --> 2:21:41.760 you if you want to look at like what Trump 2:21:41.840 --> 2:21:43.879 is and descendsful. We've talked about this at length on 2:21:43.920 --> 2:21:46.640 the show. The thing that became the sort of religious 2:21:46.720 --> 2:21:49.680 right was originally born out of like the school choice movement. 2:21:49.840 --> 2:21:52.400 And the thing about the school choice movement was that 2:21:52.440 --> 2:21:55.640 it was an anti integration thing. After losing their fight 2:21:55.760 --> 2:21:58.320 to be able to have whites on these schools, a 2:21:58.360 --> 2:22:00.800 bunch of these sort of right wingers were like, Okay, well, 2:22:00.800 --> 2:22:02.680 we'll just do private schools where we can do that. 2:22:03.800 --> 2:22:08.879 And that's the basis of modern Republican politics, right, you know, 2:22:09.000 --> 2:22:11.800 sort of both evangelicalism and sort of Bush administration and 2:22:11.840 --> 2:22:16.160 trump Ism and Reagan too. Is this shit and this 2:22:16.240 --> 2:22:19.840 has been what the Republicans have done when they've been 2:22:19.879 --> 2:22:21.480 in power. Right, this is a lot a lot of 2:22:21.520 --> 2:22:24.200 the Trump administration, like what they're doing, Like all of 2:22:24.200 --> 2:22:26.640 the stuff about DEI, all this stuff about wokeness like 2:22:26.720 --> 2:22:28.320 this is also a lot of what Dog is doing. 2:22:28.400 --> 2:22:30.400 Was trying to make it so that black people like 2:22:30.480 --> 2:22:32.000 couldn't work for the US government. 2:22:32.560 --> 2:22:32.720 Right. 2:22:32.760 --> 2:22:34.640 It was a huge purge of black women from the 2:22:34.720 --> 2:22:39.000 US government and you know, now we're seeing this on 2:22:39.640 --> 2:22:44.520 the level of elections and on this level, what Republicans 2:22:44.520 --> 2:22:48.160 are trying to do with these jerrymandered maps is remove 2:22:48.240 --> 2:22:50.680 non white people and especially black people from Congress so 2:22:50.720 --> 2:22:54.520 they can just have untrammeled white supremacist rule. And they're 2:22:54.560 --> 2:22:57.800 doing it by claiming both that it's actually partisan. It's 2:22:57.840 --> 2:23:01.600 just partisan jerrymandering, which is legal to disenfranchised black vetters 2:23:01.600 --> 2:23:04.000 because black vetters won't openly vote for the party of 2:23:04.000 --> 2:23:08.800 white supremacy. And they're also claiming that like, not doing 2:23:08.840 --> 2:23:11.400 this is like infringing on the civil rights of white people, 2:23:12.040 --> 2:23:15.320 a thing that like is completely you know, just gibberish 2:23:15.640 --> 2:23:19.320 world turned upside down nonsense. But if they can just 2:23:19.400 --> 2:23:22.000 do that now because they're in power, because the court 2:23:23.000 --> 2:23:26.800 will just let them do this shit. And so I 2:23:26.800 --> 2:23:31.160 think in a way that really has not been conveyed 2:23:31.560 --> 2:23:34.360 in the media in the discourse, like this is one 2:23:34.400 --> 2:23:38.080 of the bleakest moments of this administration, right, you know, 2:23:38.240 --> 2:23:42.080 on top of just the multiple genocides they're committing, right 2:23:42.160 --> 2:23:44.040 on top of you know, just like the ethnic cleansing 2:23:44.120 --> 2:23:46.720 of non white people from the US that ICE is doing, 2:23:47.520 --> 2:23:49.600 They're what they're doing right now is attempting to end 2:23:49.760 --> 2:23:55.200 multiracial democracy in the US. And obviously, politically, I have 2:23:55.280 --> 2:23:58.600 my critiques of like electoral democracy as a concept, but 2:23:59.480 --> 2:24:02.520 having it just revert back to only white people get 2:24:02.560 --> 2:24:07.880 to decide who politicians are is something even worse than 2:24:07.920 --> 2:24:11.040 what we've had so far. You know, it's a seismic 2:24:11.440 --> 2:24:18.480 shift in just literally what this country is towards something 2:24:18.680 --> 2:24:24.600 that unbelievably an unfathomably weak state of pure white rule. 2:24:25.920 --> 2:24:28.600 And the people who are talking about this think that 2:24:28.640 --> 2:24:32.680 it can be reversed just by voting more, but no, 2:24:32.800 --> 2:24:35.959 it can't. The whole point of this right is to 2:24:36.040 --> 2:24:39.120 make sure that elections and you know, whatever the will 2:24:39.160 --> 2:24:43.120 of the people is is incapable of actually affecting the 2:24:43.120 --> 2:24:48.440 white supremacist state because not white people just don't get votes. 2:24:48.520 --> 2:24:51.520 You can't just vote harder your way through all of 2:24:51.560 --> 2:24:56.440 this shit. You have to actually do things. And you know, 2:24:56.520 --> 2:24:59.120 if we don't want to live in a white supremacist society, 2:24:59.160 --> 2:25:03.120 we're going to have to actually take action to combat 2:25:03.400 --> 2:25:08.440 and actually resist the fact that this is like this 2:25:08.480 --> 2:25:13.200 is just a pure white supremacist Jim Crow state. Now, yeah, 2:25:13.240 --> 2:25:15.680 so this has been, it could happen here. I don't 2:25:16.240 --> 2:25:20.280 have a non bleaque way to end this, but the 2:25:20.320 --> 2:25:22.960 common refrain is, if you've ever asked yourself what you 2:25:23.000 --> 2:25:26.360 would be doing in Nazi Germany, it's right now. And 2:25:26.440 --> 2:25:28.320 I think you can also add to that right if 2:25:28.360 --> 2:25:31.760 you've ever asked yourself what would you be doing during 2:25:32.000 --> 2:25:34.880 Jim Crow, The answer is whatever the fuck you're doing now, 2:25:34.959 --> 2:25:38.120 And if you're not happy with that answer, then it's 2:25:38.120 --> 2:25:38.720 time to move. 2:25:53.400 --> 2:25:57.800 Speaking of things that are on fire America, all right, 2:25:58.120 --> 2:26:00.440 I did my job, Garrison. What are we doing? Are we? 2:26:00.600 --> 2:26:03.800 This is? It could happen here? Executive Disorder, our weekly 2:26:03.840 --> 2:26:06.920 newscast covering what's happening in the White House, their crumbling world, 2:26:06.920 --> 2:26:09.440 and what this means for you. I'm Garrison Davis today, 2:26:09.600 --> 2:26:13.440 joined by James Stout and Robert Evans YEP. This episode 2:26:13.480 --> 2:26:18.160 recovering the week of May sixth through May thirteenth. YEP, James, 2:26:18.280 --> 2:26:21.800 some small news items to open us up. 2:26:21.840 --> 2:26:24.840 My little grab bag of news stories. Yeah, the United 2:26:24.920 --> 2:26:29.400 Kingdom parachute drop supplies and medical personnel into Tristan d'acuna 2:26:29.480 --> 2:26:32.680 last weekend to respond to the hunt of virus outbreak. 2:26:33.200 --> 2:26:35.959 A man had got off the cruise ship where the 2:26:35.959 --> 2:26:39.480 outbreak began in April and returned to Tristan Ta Cuna, 2:26:39.520 --> 2:26:42.240 where he resides. I think the cruise ship stopped Tristan 2:26:42.280 --> 2:26:46.000 da Cuna this weekend. British paratroopers from the Pathfind a 2:26:46.080 --> 2:26:49.720 platoon tandem jumped a doctor and a nurse onto the island, 2:26:50.160 --> 2:26:54.039 along with supplies, including oxygen, which was critically low on 2:26:54.080 --> 2:26:59.080 the island. The patient had reported symptoms two weeks after 2:26:59.160 --> 2:27:02.920 disembarking the cruise ship, and they'd spent that time on 2:27:02.959 --> 2:27:06.000 the island, and therefore there's a fairly high chance that 2:27:06.000 --> 2:27:09.959 that they've interacted with other people. Right, the island has 2:27:10.000 --> 2:27:13.720 no air strip. They was such a low supply of 2:27:13.720 --> 2:27:16.879 oxygen that there obviously wasn't time for a boat to 2:27:16.920 --> 2:27:21.279 get to Tristan Pakuna. So the UK conducted this fairly, 2:27:21.840 --> 2:27:23.520 I mean extremely You sure this is the first time 2:27:23.520 --> 2:27:25.680 the UK has ever done it. The island has a 2:27:25.680 --> 2:27:28.480 populace around two hundred and twenty people and only two 2:27:28.760 --> 2:27:33.320 medical professionals who are obviously exhausted after delivering care to 2:27:33.360 --> 2:27:36.760 this person who's on oxygen for several weeks. Yeah, so 2:27:36.800 --> 2:27:41.199 they jumped a couple more in there, fairly audacious response 2:27:41.400 --> 2:27:44.440 to the hunt virus. Secondly, and I think we can 2:27:44.480 --> 2:27:49.080 also agree of equal importance, Japanese snack food giant Cowbi 2:27:49.400 --> 2:27:52.600 is switching to black and white packaging. 2:27:52.160 --> 2:27:58.200 For its ooh no, Garrison is loading a gun right now. 2:27:58.240 --> 2:28:01.119 This is a significant portion of my daily diet. 2:28:01.240 --> 2:28:04.880 Yeah, Garrison won't be able to make it through this. 2:28:04.920 --> 2:28:07.119 One is going on hunger strike. 2:28:07.320 --> 2:28:10.840 They are wiring a crew detonator together. It looks like. 2:28:11.840 --> 2:28:15.520 I'm going to join orant an enter to this madness. 2:28:18.400 --> 2:28:18.720 That is. 2:28:18.760 --> 2:28:21.000 This is because ingredients used for the ink on its 2:28:21.040 --> 2:28:23.920 normal colorful packages are hard to come by thanks to 2:28:23.959 --> 2:28:28.240 the war with a run and thanks. Yeah. So if 2:28:28.280 --> 2:28:29.959 you want, if you've got one of those little stickers 2:28:30.000 --> 2:28:32.400 that says I did that, and you've got a packet 2:28:32.400 --> 2:28:34.760 of black and white crisps, now you can combine the two. 2:28:34.680 --> 2:28:37.320 And your black and white layme ash ships. 2:28:37.560 --> 2:28:38.240 Yeah. 2:28:38.320 --> 2:28:38.560 Yeah. 2:28:38.680 --> 2:28:42.600 The one thing that gave us joy is gone. The 2:28:43.080 --> 2:28:46.240 Nigerian military has once again carried out an air strike 2:28:46.320 --> 2:28:49.400 on a market, killing at least one hundred civilians. Going 2:28:49.480 --> 2:28:53.560 Damnasty International. The strike on the Tumfo market is the 2:28:53.640 --> 2:28:56.800 second in a month to hit a market. The Nigerian 2:28:56.840 --> 2:28:59.640 military claims the area was to hide out for bandits. 2:29:00.080 --> 2:29:03.039 It has yet to acknowledge the civilian death toll. Government 2:29:03.320 --> 2:29:06.000 in this area is more or less like only present 2:29:06.000 --> 2:29:08.879 through its ability to project force like this, and I've 2:29:08.879 --> 2:29:11.480 seen interviews as locals suggesting the town was under the 2:29:11.480 --> 2:29:14.840 control of non state groups previously. People remember, the Nigerian 2:29:14.879 --> 2:29:17.440 government has suggested that anyone doing business with the people 2:29:17.440 --> 2:29:21.200 at targeting is also a legitimate target, which is how 2:29:21.200 --> 2:29:24.440 it has justified dropping bombs on crowded markets like this. 2:29:25.440 --> 2:29:30.160 CNN is claiming that the CIA facilitated a car bomb 2:29:30.400 --> 2:29:34.520 in Sinaloa. The article seems to have sources in or 2:29:34.640 --> 2:29:37.039 very familiar with the operations of Ground Branch. It also 2:29:37.080 --> 2:29:41.800 alleges that the US government employees who were killed in 2:29:41.840 --> 2:29:44.840 the car crash last month were members of Ground Branch. 2:29:45.760 --> 2:29:48.320 More than the fact of this story, it doesn't shock 2:29:48.440 --> 2:29:51.400 me that the CIA is killing people in weird ways 2:29:51.400 --> 2:29:53.800 in different countries now that it's one of the things 2:29:53.800 --> 2:29:54.240 that they do. 2:29:54.280 --> 2:29:56.160 That's like the CIA's job. 2:29:56.760 --> 2:30:01.000 Yeah, the fact that CNN, as a source CITI is 2:30:01.120 --> 2:30:06.880 leaking Ground Branch operations, that is not usual for someone 2:30:06.959 --> 2:30:10.080 in the CIA to be talking to someone at CNN. Well, 2:30:10.120 --> 2:30:14.039 these operations are ongoing, right, and like, yeah, operations in 2:30:14.120 --> 2:30:19.360 Mexico are exceptionally high risk for these kinds of folks, 2:30:19.360 --> 2:30:22.520 Like in twenty twelve, some Mexican federal cops opened fire 2:30:22.600 --> 2:30:26.360 on US government employees, presumably not acting on behalf of 2:30:26.360 --> 2:30:27.040 the federal government. 2:30:27.160 --> 2:30:27.320 Right. 2:30:27.840 --> 2:30:32.120 Obviously, it puts this mission at risk, which isn't like 2:30:32.240 --> 2:30:34.360 this is already a high risk thing, but the fact 2:30:34.360 --> 2:30:37.040 that somebody has felt the need to leak this CNN 2:30:37.160 --> 2:30:38.119 is pretty remarkable. 2:30:38.680 --> 2:30:44.119 Speaking of potential CIA leaks, former director of the National 2:30:44.160 --> 2:30:47.760 Counter Terrorisment Center, Joe Kent claimed on x the Everything 2:30:47.800 --> 2:30:51.560 app that before the President launched the war in Iran, quote, 2:30:51.879 --> 2:30:56.119 the US intell community, including CIA, was an agreement that 2:30:56.120 --> 2:30:59.240 Iran wasn't developing a nuclear weapon and that Iran would 2:30:59.240 --> 2:31:01.480 target US base in the region and shut down the 2:31:01.520 --> 2:31:04.279 straight of Horror moves if they were attacked by Israel 2:31:04.360 --> 2:31:10.040 and the US en quote. The Supreme Court extended access 2:31:10.160 --> 2:31:13.360 to remote prescription at melt delivery of the abortion pill 2:31:13.400 --> 2:31:17.920 with pristone until Thursday, May fourteenth, which is the day 2:31:18.040 --> 2:31:22.320 this episode releases. The night this episode releases around Thursday. 2:31:22.400 --> 2:31:25.280 They're expected to make a shadow docket ruling on whether 2:31:25.360 --> 2:31:28.800 Louisiana's ban on mail order abortion pills can go into 2:31:28.800 --> 2:31:33.680 effect as the case continues through a lower court. A 2:31:33.840 --> 2:31:37.560 golden statue of President Trump was unveiled at a Trump 2:31:37.640 --> 2:31:42.080 resort in Miami last week. The statue was blessed by 2:31:42.120 --> 2:31:46.400 evangelical pastor Mike Burns, who said, quote, let me be clear, 2:31:46.800 --> 2:31:48.960 this is not a golden calf unquote. 2:31:50.959 --> 2:31:54.240 God, it's so hard. I like you went through everything, 2:31:54.280 --> 2:31:57.120 you just like the little parade of horrors like you 2:31:57.160 --> 2:31:59.720 do every week, and then you just drop that that 2:31:59.760 --> 2:32:02.600 there's there's a priest blessing a golden statue. 2:32:02.600 --> 2:32:04.240 Past pastor. 2:32:04.800 --> 2:32:08.480 Sorry, you're right, pastor. And I know that like they 2:32:08.480 --> 2:32:10.960 that he addressed in the moment, like the whole golden 2:32:11.040 --> 2:32:14.120 cat it all, which just funnier that like he knew 2:32:14.280 --> 2:32:17.800 I gotta say something like I got to make a comment. 2:32:18.120 --> 2:32:20.240 That's what got me that he felt that he needed 2:32:20.240 --> 2:32:21.880 to address the golden calf in the room. 2:32:22.160 --> 2:32:26.240 Really genuinely funny, My, this is not a golden calf shirt. 2:32:26.280 --> 2:32:28.800 As a lot of people ask few questions already answered 2:32:28.840 --> 2:32:33.840 by the shirt. Oh fuck yeah, that's great, but yeah, 2:32:33.879 --> 2:32:35.920 grim stuff yep So. 2:32:36.840 --> 2:32:41.040 A national survey of one thousand Americans by NewsGuard and 2:32:41.160 --> 2:32:44.440 YouGov suggests that about half of people in the United 2:32:44.480 --> 2:32:47.600 States he surveyed think each of the attempts on Donald 2:32:47.680 --> 2:32:50.720 Trump's life was staged or they're not sure if it 2:32:50.800 --> 2:32:54.720 was real. For the White House Correspondent dinner attempt and 2:32:54.760 --> 2:32:58.560 the Butler Pennsylvania attempts, twenty four percent of those surveyed 2:32:58.600 --> 2:33:01.880 thought the attempts were staked. Thirty two percent why not 2:33:02.080 --> 2:33:04.640 sure in the White House Correspondents to dinner attempt, and 2:33:05.440 --> 2:33:09.720 twenty nine percent for the Pennsylvania event. It's more than 2:33:09.760 --> 2:33:11.000 half if you add them up. 2:33:11.440 --> 2:33:12.320 I'm not convinced. 2:33:13.959 --> 2:33:14.720 Super funny. 2:33:15.760 --> 2:33:18.120 I'll quote from the report here. Of the twelve percent 2:33:18.160 --> 2:33:21.600 of Americans who said all three attempts were staged, fifty 2:33:21.640 --> 2:33:24.480 five percent with Democrats, thirty eight percent were independents. It's 2:33:24.520 --> 2:33:27.720 seven percent were Republicans, according to the report. 2:33:27.600 --> 2:33:31.080 Really interested in that seven percent? Yeah, what are they 2:33:31.080 --> 2:33:32.879 getting out of that? I just I don't. 2:33:34.200 --> 2:33:35.920 Like, what way do they think? It was? 2:33:36.040 --> 2:33:39.400 Just like, hell, yeah, we're owning the Libs, We're stagings 2:33:39.680 --> 2:33:40.200 what we did. 2:33:40.640 --> 2:33:43.320 Look at US go. I think it may just be like. 2:33:43.360 --> 2:33:45.600 Well, I voted for Trump because I wanted my taxes 2:33:45.640 --> 2:33:46.199 to be lower. 2:33:46.240 --> 2:33:47.360 But I know he thinks that. 2:33:48.320 --> 2:33:51.920 Yeah, this is obviously worrying, and this, this trend is 2:33:51.959 --> 2:33:55.320 something we've been talking about for years at this points. 2:33:55.400 --> 2:33:57.720 Is why I've been kind of such a such a 2:33:57.760 --> 2:34:01.360 hard ass about the about like the brul conspiracism that 2:34:01.520 --> 2:34:01.959 is growing. 2:34:02.200 --> 2:34:04.480 I don't even to find it worrying anymore, Garrison. I 2:34:04.480 --> 2:34:06.560 find it liberating that we're finally. 2:34:08.840 --> 2:34:12.640 Look at that we're finally free from the shackles of truth. 2:34:12.720 --> 2:34:16.880 Yeah, everyone's everyone's down on the muck together, nobody's nobody's 2:34:16.920 --> 2:34:20.920 standing pretty anymore. Everybody's just wallowing like a filthy pig 2:34:20.959 --> 2:34:21.680 and shit. 2:34:22.800 --> 2:34:25.200 That it's pretty much the status of the Yeah, the 2:34:25.360 --> 2:34:27.199 US news market right now. 2:34:27.480 --> 2:34:28.960 Yeah, I'm fine with it. 2:34:29.320 --> 2:34:32.080 God, it's fucking bleak. It's so bleak. Like I just 2:34:32.600 --> 2:34:35.280 I don't want to address like the factual elements of 2:34:35.320 --> 2:34:37.720 each thing because there's no point, right, But like. 2:34:37.920 --> 2:34:43.040 No, we we should all know that's useless by now, right, Yeah, 2:34:43.400 --> 2:34:45.320 just have we not gotten to a place free of 2:34:45.320 --> 2:34:45.840 that yet? 2:34:46.480 --> 2:34:46.760 Yeah? 2:34:46.920 --> 2:34:50.000 I know, I uh, I already don't know what to 2:34:50.000 --> 2:34:50.560 say about that. 2:34:51.000 --> 2:34:54.760 I mean, there are like real issues here. A conspiratorial 2:34:54.800 --> 2:34:58.520 base can be more easily recruited into a reactionary thought. Right, 2:34:58.560 --> 2:35:01.520 this is the idea of the cultic you and we 2:35:01.560 --> 2:35:04.640 can see a version of this happening with certain portions 2:35:04.640 --> 2:35:07.680 of the left. Might engage with people like Tucker Carlsen 2:35:07.840 --> 2:35:10.280 or Margie Taylor Green right now. But for me, kind 2:35:10.320 --> 2:35:13.360 of the biggest issue with this is that it's a 2:35:13.600 --> 2:35:17.640 refusal to understand or accept the particular moment that you 2:35:17.800 --> 2:35:20.800 find yourself with them, like a resistance to the self 2:35:20.800 --> 2:35:23.039 realization that you are living through history and that people 2:35:23.120 --> 2:35:27.959 are active agents in history. It's an ahistorical rejection of 2:35:27.959 --> 2:35:30.280 the fact that some people may look at some of 2:35:30.320 --> 2:35:33.960 the actions that someone like Trump is doing, whether regarding 2:35:34.000 --> 2:35:37.320 Ice or the war with Ron, and then choose to 2:35:37.480 --> 2:35:40.760 act in response, or in the case of the Butler shooting, 2:35:41.280 --> 2:35:45.640 the result of social disintegration or underregulation manifesting as someone's 2:35:46.080 --> 2:35:49.840 violent nihilistic expression, similar to the mindset of like a 2:35:49.879 --> 2:35:53.360 school shooter. My last issue relates kind of to the 2:35:53.360 --> 2:35:57.400 second issue, like the ahistorical element, how these false flag 2:35:57.480 --> 2:36:02.800 shooting conspiracy theories also prescribe Trump too much power by 2:36:02.840 --> 2:36:06.520 not just turning him into this like invincible god, but 2:36:06.560 --> 2:36:09.280 then also assuming that, like the US deep State is 2:36:09.360 --> 2:36:13.360 capable and competent enough to stage major world events like 2:36:13.400 --> 2:36:17.480 this like brainwash and groom patsies into doing these shootings, 2:36:18.040 --> 2:36:20.160 and like this also obviously removes the agency and the 2:36:20.200 --> 2:36:23.600 clearly defined history other people that do these own shootings. Right, 2:36:23.640 --> 2:36:26.080 it rejects this Like, like I said, this relates to the 2:36:26.080 --> 2:36:29.160 second thing. It rejects or refuses to understand the moment 2:36:29.240 --> 2:36:31.720 that you're living in, and that people actually are active 2:36:31.760 --> 2:36:33.840 agents of history. And like the people that do these 2:36:33.840 --> 2:36:36.080 shootings have their own family and their own friends, They 2:36:36.080 --> 2:36:38.480 have their own history that we can show and prove. 2:36:39.080 --> 2:36:41.280 And assuming that all this is like fake, that like 2:36:41.320 --> 2:36:44.560 the government has like manufactured this or somehow like turned 2:36:44.640 --> 2:36:47.680 someone who is a normy kind of liberal suddenly into 2:36:47.720 --> 2:36:50.720 like doing a shooting, or has like fake this backstory. Right, 2:36:50.840 --> 2:36:53.520 it gives the government so much power. Right, it assumes 2:36:53.520 --> 2:36:56.200 that the government has power like a magical wizard that 2:36:56.360 --> 2:36:57.920 totally controls reality. 2:36:58.360 --> 2:36:59.560 Yeah. 2:37:00.040 --> 2:37:05.560 Anyway, for our first main story today, let's talk about 2:37:05.720 --> 2:37:13.320 turning Point USA. But first on Sunday, night in Seattle, 2:37:13.720 --> 2:37:17.800 a nineteen year old transgender girl was murdered. She was 2:37:17.840 --> 2:37:21.200 a student at University of Washington and was found with 2:37:21.240 --> 2:37:25.280 stab wounds in the laundry room of an off campus 2:37:25.440 --> 2:37:29.840 apartment that she lived in. No suspect has yet been identified. 2:37:31.200 --> 2:37:35.440 While horrific in and of itself, turning point, USA was 2:37:35.480 --> 2:37:39.760 scheduled to hold an anti trans debate event just days 2:37:39.840 --> 2:37:44.360 later at the very campus this trans student attended. This 2:37:44.440 --> 2:37:46.400 event was going to be hosted by a far right 2:37:46.640 --> 2:37:51.480 anti trans lobbyist and influencer named Chloe Cole, a teen 2:37:51.560 --> 2:37:55.800 transitioner who subsequently de transitioned a few years later following 2:37:55.840 --> 2:38:00.960 an acid trip and then conversion to Christianity. Any such cases, 2:38:01.680 --> 2:38:06.560 that's fascinating, Yeah, most normal Christian d transitioner. 2:38:06.920 --> 2:38:08.480 Yeah. 2:38:08.640 --> 2:38:11.120 She made an appearance at Trump's last State of the 2:38:11.200 --> 2:38:14.800 Union address when the president talked about restricting gender affirming 2:38:14.840 --> 2:38:20.960 care minors. After the murder in Seattle, Cole and TPUSA 2:38:21.600 --> 2:38:27.039 continued plugging their anti trans event online, prompting students to 2:38:27.160 --> 2:38:30.360 plan a protest to quote unquote shut the event down, 2:38:30.959 --> 2:38:34.600 calling to bring quote flags, drums, or anything to make 2:38:34.720 --> 2:38:39.320 noise unquote. Then on Tuesday, the National Turning Point USA 2:38:39.480 --> 2:38:44.279 organization decided to cancel the event, according to University Washington 2:38:44.360 --> 2:38:49.400 spokesperson Victor Balta. Later that night, Tuesday night, Chloe Cole 2:38:49.520 --> 2:38:55.240 announced the event was postponed because quote Antifa has assembled 2:38:55.280 --> 2:38:58.640 a local militia in their own words unquote. 2:38:58.760 --> 2:39:00.920 Oh that's that's alarming. 2:39:01.680 --> 2:39:04.120 A militia now. 2:39:04.560 --> 2:39:08.360 I was not able to find an instance of Antifa 2:39:09.120 --> 2:39:11.400 claiming to have assembled a quote unquote militia. 2:39:11.600 --> 2:39:15.560 Really, no photos of the militia, the documentation of the militia, 2:39:15.760 --> 2:39:17.160 nor was this language. 2:39:17.200 --> 2:39:19.840 This this this claim of a militia in their own words, 2:39:20.400 --> 2:39:24.480 nor was this language included in right wing reporting of 2:39:24.520 --> 2:39:27.720 the planned protest. I cannot find a so horse fist. 2:39:27.760 --> 2:39:30.640 I really looked like I went through Fox articles, post 2:39:30.640 --> 2:39:35.200 millennial articles. There was nothing about Antifa using the word militia. 2:39:35.640 --> 2:39:38.400 No one, no, no counter, no protester that I could 2:39:38.440 --> 2:39:43.000 find was using the word militia now. Klokkol also claimed 2:39:43.000 --> 2:39:46.720 that they were quote explicit threats on my life and 2:39:46.760 --> 2:39:50.200 that the protest caused a quote level of attention our 2:39:50.240 --> 2:39:55.400 security team and the local PD are frankly unprepared for unquote. 2:39:56.000 --> 2:39:58.840 She shared an article from the Canadian far right outlet 2:39:58.879 --> 2:40:04.800 the Post Millennial documenting threats against the TPUSA event. Threats 2:40:04.879 --> 2:40:09.119 like one Twitter user in Canada saying that people should 2:40:09.160 --> 2:40:13.119 shut down the event, like Milo Unopolis's Berkeley campus event 2:40:13.160 --> 2:40:17.240 in twenty seventeen, writing quote, make them hurt for scheduling 2:40:17.280 --> 2:40:22.440 this one other Twitter post with two likes red quote 2:40:23.080 --> 2:40:26.560 Luckily the bricks in Red Square are easy to grab 2:40:26.680 --> 2:40:30.720 this time of year. Okay, that's the evidence that Andy 2:40:30.840 --> 2:40:34.760 No used to claim that quote. Far left extremists are 2:40:34.920 --> 2:40:39.640 urging their comrades to carry out deadly violence on two posts, 2:40:40.280 --> 2:40:43.840 just those two posts. That that was the post that 2:40:44.240 --> 2:40:47.600 Chloe Cole was sharing via this Post Millennial article, that 2:40:47.600 --> 2:40:50.680 that was the evidence for these deadly threats. Now, I 2:40:50.680 --> 2:40:54.400 do think it's worth reiterating that to these people. They 2:40:54.440 --> 2:40:58.920 also believe that just calling someone a fascist constitutes a 2:40:58.920 --> 2:41:01.360 threat of violence, right, something they've been repeating a lot 2:41:01.840 --> 2:41:04.400 since the death of Charlie Kurk, that just calling someone 2:41:04.400 --> 2:41:08.800 a fascist constitutes a deadly threat. In Chloe Cole's video 2:41:09.040 --> 2:41:12.720 announcing that the TPUSA event was, in her words, postponed, 2:41:13.360 --> 2:41:17.360 she said that after charlie'ssassination quote speaking on a university 2:41:17.360 --> 2:41:21.440 campus in twenty twenty six can come with deadly consequences. 2:41:21.840 --> 2:41:24.600 But towards the end of the video, she stressed that quote, 2:41:25.040 --> 2:41:28.720 this is not a win for Antifa because truth will 2:41:28.760 --> 2:41:33.080 always win. I am not afraid of Antifa. That a 2:41:33.200 --> 2:41:38.520 quote ragtag group of wanna be revolutionaries on cross sex 2:41:38.560 --> 2:41:43.200 hormones won't scare her. The enemy is both strong and weak. 2:41:43.560 --> 2:41:44.760 Yeah, yeah, good for her. 2:41:45.440 --> 2:41:47.879 Yeah, okay, yeah, that's how these people work. 2:41:49.080 --> 2:41:49.360 Now. 2:41:50.200 --> 2:41:53.920 While I was watching Chloe Cole's video, something sprank to mind. 2:41:54.720 --> 2:41:57.320 Last week, the White House released a new counter terrorism 2:41:57.360 --> 2:42:00.680 strategy that named three major threat groups the country is 2:42:00.720 --> 2:42:06.800 currently facing Narco terrorists and transnational gangs, legacy Islamist terrorists, 2:42:06.840 --> 2:42:11.880 and violent left wing extremists, including anarchists and anti fascists. 2:42:12.640 --> 2:42:16.720 The document says that counter terrorism activities will quote prioritize 2:42:16.720 --> 2:42:21.360 the rapid identification and neutralization of violent, secular political groups 2:42:21.520 --> 2:42:28.240 whose ideology is anti American, radically pro transgender, and anarchist unquote. 2:42:28.320 --> 2:42:31.279 I did a full episode about this with Robert earlier 2:42:31.320 --> 2:42:33.039 this week, if you want to check that out. 2:42:33.360 --> 2:42:33.640 Yep. 2:42:34.280 --> 2:42:39.520 But the left wing, transgender, anarchist antifa stuff mix up 2:42:39.760 --> 2:42:43.119 just a handful of sentences in a sixteen page document 2:42:43.360 --> 2:42:47.520 which is mostly focused on Islamic terrorism cartels and complaining 2:42:47.560 --> 2:42:52.400 about the Biden administration. For a TLDR, there's nothing new 2:42:52.640 --> 2:42:55.520 in this counter terrorism document pertaining to the left that 2:42:55.640 --> 2:43:00.120 wasn't already in National Security Presidential Memorandum number seven. It 2:43:00.120 --> 2:43:04.480 does not grant any new powers nor designate trans people 2:43:04.600 --> 2:43:09.720 as terrorists. Like NSMP seven, it essentially states that being 2:43:09.760 --> 2:43:15.120 quote unquote extremely pro transgender can be a motivating factor 2:43:15.680 --> 2:43:20.440 in carrying out terroristic violence or threats. Since last October, 2:43:20.840 --> 2:43:23.760 joint Terrorism task forces across the country had been directed 2:43:23.800 --> 2:43:28.280 to investigate ANTIFA aligned groups and individuals quote engaged in 2:43:28.360 --> 2:43:33.280 acts of political violence and intimidation. This new document is 2:43:33.400 --> 2:43:36.800 just describing things that are already happening while building Trump's 2:43:36.840 --> 2:43:40.200 justification for military strikes on suspected drug boats in the 2:43:40.200 --> 2:43:44.000 Western Hemisphere, regime change in Venezuela, and the ongoing war 2:43:44.000 --> 2:43:46.600 in the Middle East. But in the wake of this 2:43:46.800 --> 2:43:52.880 new strategy being released, I wonder if tpusay's canceling of 2:43:52.920 --> 2:43:57.240 the event and Chloe Cole's language in the announcement might 2:43:57.280 --> 2:44:02.320 also be designed to coax Trump's FEDS into going after 2:44:02.879 --> 2:44:07.880 radical transgender ANTIFA terrorists, whether that may be individuals who 2:44:08.440 --> 2:44:12.879 possibly sent threats online that I just couldn't see, or 2:44:13.000 --> 2:44:16.800 just made semi questionable posts on Twitter dot com, or 2:44:17.200 --> 2:44:21.000 who simply spread the protest flyer online, or the protest 2:44:21.080 --> 2:44:25.560 organizers themselves. Yeah, I think that is something to keep 2:44:25.560 --> 2:44:29.400 in mind. This new counter terrorist strategy, it mostly serves 2:44:29.440 --> 2:44:32.640 as a chilling effect for speech and for organizing. Like 2:44:32.640 --> 2:44:35.080 I said, it doesn't actually grant new powers, but it 2:44:35.440 --> 2:44:37.879 can scare people into thinking that the Trump administration is 2:44:38.240 --> 2:44:43.040 designating a whole class of people as terrorists and stuff 2:44:43.040 --> 2:44:45.680 like this, you know protests. Right, that is one thing 2:44:45.760 --> 2:44:49.240 that they can investigate. Your threats online, That is something 2:44:49.240 --> 2:44:51.440 that they can investigate, right, That is what they are 2:44:51.440 --> 2:44:55.400 actually looking into. They're not just investigating random trans people 2:44:55.440 --> 2:44:58.800 as terrorists. They will be looking into you know, threats 2:44:58.959 --> 2:45:02.320 or questionable hosts made on social media. Right, those are 2:45:02.320 --> 2:45:05.120 the things they actually can look into. And I think 2:45:05.200 --> 2:45:08.480 some of Chloe Cole's language about the quote unquote deadly 2:45:08.560 --> 2:45:11.119 threats she received, stuff like that could be used bunch 2:45:11.120 --> 2:45:14.920 of up administration as a pretext to investigate people. Yeah, 2:45:15.240 --> 2:45:17.320 whether or not those threats even were real. Right, I 2:45:17.360 --> 2:45:19.640 did not see anything that I think constitutes a deadly 2:45:19.720 --> 2:45:24.240 threat based on the post millennials reporting, but her saying 2:45:24.280 --> 2:45:27.440 that might be enough for a local FBI field office 2:45:27.680 --> 2:45:31.840 to want to investigate, you know, student activists at this university. 2:45:31.560 --> 2:45:33.520 Right, right, Yeah, I think that makes sense. 2:45:34.080 --> 2:45:35.960 So that's what I wanted to talk about here. 2:45:36.640 --> 2:45:39.039 This is by far the thing I'm seeing people freak 2:45:39.120 --> 2:45:42.280 out about the most right now is like overall the 2:45:42.320 --> 2:45:44.720 idea that like they've just declared it, you know, a 2:45:44.879 --> 2:45:47.400 terrorism of violent terrorism to be trans or to be 2:45:47.440 --> 2:45:50.240 anarchist or to be you know, any of the things 2:45:50.400 --> 2:45:54.160 like anti capitalists mentioned in that in that document. Yeah, 2:45:54.200 --> 2:45:56.879 And what I'm actually seeing on the ground so far 2:45:57.240 --> 2:46:01.440 is very much the same kind of prosecutions that they've 2:46:01.480 --> 2:46:05.840 been doing and the same kinds of like messaging that 2:46:06.360 --> 2:46:08.560 they've been making. And I think that, like you're right 2:46:08.600 --> 2:46:10.800 on the money, this is something to pay attention to, 2:46:10.959 --> 2:46:13.720 Like does this get a response? Is there an actual 2:46:13.800 --> 2:46:16.760 like investigation? Do we wind up see someone get indicted 2:46:16.760 --> 2:46:19.160 for a Twitter post? Or you know, if someone made 2:46:19.160 --> 2:46:21.760 a threat that we're not privy to, do they get 2:46:21.760 --> 2:46:24.920 indicted for that, like or do we see something that 2:46:24.959 --> 2:46:26.600 does look more like a witch hunt where they're going 2:46:26.600 --> 2:46:29.840 after like a protest organizer. That'll tell us a lot 2:46:29.920 --> 2:46:33.480 about kind of what's coming in the immediate future. But 2:46:33.560 --> 2:46:36.120 right now, I don't see anything different than what they've 2:46:36.160 --> 2:46:39.760 been doing, which is kind of like incompetently and haphazardly 2:46:40.520 --> 2:46:43.600 flailing at everything, sort of vaguely lefty. 2:46:44.200 --> 2:46:44.400 Yeah. 2:46:44.600 --> 2:46:47.359 And you know, I think including this in a document 2:46:47.440 --> 2:46:49.640 like the counter Terrism strategy, you know, also serves as 2:46:49.680 --> 2:46:51.600 a chilling effect. Right, This is this is to scare 2:46:51.640 --> 2:46:54.560 people they're trying to into not doing anything, right, That 2:46:54.640 --> 2:46:56.120 is a part of their strategy. 2:46:56.640 --> 2:46:56.879 Yep. 2:46:57.160 --> 2:46:59.720 But you know they have investigated people for making death 2:46:59.720 --> 2:47:03.440 threats four years right, the Biden administration and and their 2:47:03.560 --> 2:47:03.959 FBI is. 2:47:04.000 --> 2:47:06.280 Able to make death threats, by the way, if their 2:47:06.320 --> 2:47:08.240 actual threats that is illegal. 2:47:08.440 --> 2:47:12.000 Yeah, The FBI under Biden investigatives top Cop City, the 2:47:12.480 --> 2:47:16.520 charges against the protesters at Prairie Land started. That the 2:47:16.560 --> 2:47:21.640 investigation started before ns MP seven was even you know, released, Right, 2:47:21.800 --> 2:47:25.120 This is not new, but it is something to to 2:47:25.200 --> 2:47:27.160 keep an eye on, yeah, to see if they're if 2:47:27.200 --> 2:47:29.200 their scope is actually changing. 2:47:29.560 --> 2:47:29.800 Right. 2:47:30.560 --> 2:47:34.480 You know what else is changing in scope our sponsors, 2:47:36.240 --> 2:47:39.240 are they not really no same ship? 2:47:39.800 --> 2:47:55.200 Yeah, and we are back and we are back to 2:47:55.400 --> 2:47:58.800 talking about the war in Ron. So I want to 2:47:58.800 --> 2:48:04.720 start off with President Trump's extremely a vocal criticism of 2:48:04.920 --> 2:48:10.280 Curtish groups. One can assume in Iran that it doesn't 2:48:10.320 --> 2:48:13.119 necessarily seem that his criticism is limited to Curtis's groups 2:48:13.120 --> 2:48:15.440 in Iran. Let's play the clip the. 2:48:15.480 --> 2:48:20.280 Level of ferocity for protests. You know, the people are 2:48:20.320 --> 2:48:21.959 watching that they want to go out on the streets. 2:48:21.959 --> 2:48:25.119 They have no weapons, they have no guns. We thought 2:48:25.120 --> 2:48:26.879 the Curds were going to give us weapons, but the 2:48:26.920 --> 2:48:28.160 Curds disappointed us. 2:48:28.200 --> 2:48:29.400 The couras take take take. 2:48:30.240 --> 2:48:32.920 They have a great reputation in Congress. Congress is oh 2:48:33.000 --> 2:48:35.520 they fight so hard. They fight hard when they get paid. 2:48:36.400 --> 2:48:40.080 So I'm very disappointed in the Curds. But they were 2:48:40.720 --> 2:48:42.920 given I said it wasn't going to work. By the way, 2:48:42.959 --> 2:48:46.240 I just have to say it. I disagreed with what 2:48:46.280 --> 2:48:46.640 they did. 2:48:46.720 --> 2:48:47.120 They gave it. 2:48:47.200 --> 2:48:49.640 I said they'll never get there, and I was right. 2:48:49.680 --> 2:48:51.760 I like to be right in this case. 2:48:51.840 --> 2:48:55.280 Too bad. But we sent some guns with. 2:48:55.320 --> 2:48:59.200 Ammunition and they were supposed to be delivered, but they 2:48:59.280 --> 2:49:01.760 kept it. I said, they're gonna keep it. But what 2:49:01.959 --> 2:49:03.720 do I know, I've only been noticed. 2:49:04.840 --> 2:49:05.400 What do I know? 2:49:06.440 --> 2:49:10.959 Yeah, fascinating his Dia coda asking him about this. 2:49:14.760 --> 2:49:16.000 Thank you so much, mister person. 2:49:16.080 --> 2:49:19.000 Mister Preson yesterday said you gave the courts arms, but 2:49:19.040 --> 2:49:22.440 they took it for themselves. US military officials says that 2:49:22.480 --> 2:49:25.120 the Kurds have noticeived on arms on the Kurtish political 2:49:25.200 --> 2:49:27.920 parties are denying to sing on armis wrong. 2:49:31.080 --> 2:49:33.440 So that the officials, the officials are wrong. 2:49:33.720 --> 2:49:37.440 Yes, yeah, well there's the Kurds could be so many things, 2:49:37.480 --> 2:49:40.560 like they just said that officials. I'm assuming the KDP 2:49:41.000 --> 2:49:43.520 and the p u K is WHI they're referring to. 2:49:43.600 --> 2:49:46.240 But that's just like the two big parties in Iraq, 2:49:46.280 --> 2:49:48.840 which isn't even all of the Courtish parties in Iraq. Like, yeah, 2:49:49.280 --> 2:49:51.400 not to mention all of the different armed groups and 2:49:51.520 --> 2:49:54.160 the But I have no idea who he sent guns to, 2:49:54.440 --> 2:49:55.720 and I don't know that he does. 2:49:55.800 --> 2:49:59.000 Yeah, or if he did, he seems pretty confident that 2:49:59.080 --> 2:49:59.400 he did. 2:50:00.160 --> 2:50:00.360 Yeah. 2:50:00.440 --> 2:50:03.920 Yeah, this is like the opposite of Iran Contra, with 2:50:04.000 --> 2:50:06.680 the president saying like these. 2:50:06.480 --> 2:50:09.840 Synth them guns, I'm running guns. I was running. 2:50:09.560 --> 2:50:12.040 Guns, and everyone else is like, we have no fucking 2:50:12.080 --> 2:50:13.240 clue what he's talking about. 2:50:13.440 --> 2:50:18.879 Yeah, so I'm guessing this refers to his previous theory 2:50:18.920 --> 2:50:23.040 that they had supplied guns to Iranian courtage groups in January. 2:50:23.080 --> 2:50:24.600 It's the time where they were a large scale protests 2:50:24.600 --> 2:50:27.720 in Iran that those Iranian courtage groups were expected to 2:50:27.840 --> 2:50:31.480 deliver to presumably Persian protesters, presumably in large cities such 2:50:31.480 --> 2:50:35.160 as Tehran. The Jerusalem Post has reported that Trump himself 2:50:35.240 --> 2:50:39.959 personally vetoed this exact plan in January, after receiving pressure 2:50:40.000 --> 2:50:43.280 from Turkey to do so. There were some und backs 2:50:43.320 --> 2:50:46.600 to January, but small arms, as we've said before, would 2:50:46.600 --> 2:50:49.240 not really have tipped the balance here. Ram's army police 2:50:49.320 --> 2:50:53.440 besiege the IGC, as we've seen since February, can survive 2:50:53.440 --> 2:50:55.960 assault from the US and Israel. It's not going to 2:50:56.000 --> 2:50:58.120 be toppled by a bunch of people with aks. They 2:50:58.160 --> 2:51:00.160 would have bombed the whole city, so they had to. 2:51:00.760 --> 2:51:03.240 We covered this at a time in our episode about 2:51:03.280 --> 2:51:05.800 it with Gordayin, but most of the Curtiss groups I've 2:51:05.800 --> 2:51:09.000 spoken to don't have responses at this time. But the 2:51:09.080 --> 2:51:12.959 PAK that's the Kurdistan Freedom Party sent me this comment 2:51:13.120 --> 2:51:17.000 regarding the protest in January. Quote from the end of 2:51:17.040 --> 2:51:20.720 December twenty twenty five through approximately January twentieth, twenty twenty six, 2:51:20.800 --> 2:51:24.440 the Iranian regime committed an unprecedented massacre across the Ilam, 2:51:24.680 --> 2:51:29.360 Kamanchan and Lauristan. The mobilized hashtal Chaby militias into Persian 2:51:29.400 --> 2:51:32.400 cities and deployed a massive military presence into our territories. 2:51:32.640 --> 2:51:35.440 In order to defend our citizens, we targeted the outposts 2:51:35.440 --> 2:51:39.000 and military basis where these forces were stationed. We confirmed that, yes, 2:51:39.040 --> 2:51:42.120 we carried out these operations. So what they're confirming there 2:51:42.280 --> 2:51:45.320 is that they carried our operations, not where the weapons 2:51:45.360 --> 2:51:49.920 came from, right, but we saw those operations in January. 2:51:50.200 --> 2:51:53.720 Pull at Yan put at Yan, famous I guess for 2:51:53.800 --> 2:51:56.599 being a founding member of the epigae or of Fuendecard, 2:51:57.040 --> 2:52:00.000 an SDF commander. He's also an author in the politicians, 2:52:00.640 --> 2:52:02.520 did make a statement which I thought was interesting. I'm 2:52:02.560 --> 2:52:04.720 going to read it at least a good amount of 2:52:04.760 --> 2:52:07.000 it because I think it's worth it. Quote. The Kurds 2:52:07.040 --> 2:52:09.080 are not mercenaries, Kurdish blood is not cheap, and the 2:52:09.120 --> 2:52:11.160 lives of Kurdish youth are not for sale. The Kurds 2:52:11.200 --> 2:52:14.000 are fighting for their freedom, dignity, and political rights, not 2:52:14.040 --> 2:52:16.800 to serve the temporary agendas of regional or international powers 2:52:16.840 --> 2:52:20.119 without any clear outcome for the Kurdish people themselves. At 2:52:20.120 --> 2:52:22.680 the same time, the Curds have repeatedly shown their willingness 2:52:22.680 --> 2:52:25.560 to cooperate in fighting terrorism, extremism, and instability in the 2:52:25.560 --> 2:52:28.280 Middle East. Kurdish forces played a central role in the 2:52:28.280 --> 2:52:32.280 defeat of ISIS and contributed greatly to regional security, but 2:52:32.400 --> 2:52:35.440 cooperation must be based on mutual respect, clarity, and long 2:52:35.480 --> 2:52:38.200 term political understanding. I do not know the acurity of 2:52:38.240 --> 2:52:41.080 the recent claims regarding weapons are literally sent to protesters 2:52:41.120 --> 2:52:43.760 inside it Ran. If such operations truly existed, then the 2:52:43.800 --> 2:52:46.840 American side should clearly explain which group, force, or individuals 2:52:46.920 --> 2:52:49.240 receive those weapons. A nation of tens of millions of 2:52:49.240 --> 2:52:54.280 people should not be collectively accused through vague and unverified statements. Yeah, 2:52:54.600 --> 2:52:55.080 it's pretty good. 2:52:55.080 --> 2:52:56.400 It sounds reasonable. 2:52:56.720 --> 2:52:59.080 Yeah, yeah, yeah, it sounds like a really reasonable thing. 2:53:00.360 --> 2:53:04.320 It does seem that Trump has some personal animus against 2:53:04.320 --> 2:53:04.760 the goods. 2:53:05.240 --> 2:53:09.800 I wonder if what he's referring to is that like 2:53:09.840 --> 2:53:12.200 a year or so ago the last time they sent 2:53:12.280 --> 2:53:16.280 over more weapons. If he sent some message more recently 2:53:16.320 --> 2:53:18.240 being like hey, could you send some of those guns 2:53:18.280 --> 2:53:21.320 that we already gave you over to rebels in Iran? 2:53:21.640 --> 2:53:25.640 And they were like no, no, what do you mean? 2:53:26.160 --> 2:53:28.280 And he's pissed. I wonder if that's what he's pissed about. 2:53:29.280 --> 2:53:32.640 Yeah, it's so hard for me to say. Is he 2:53:32.760 --> 2:53:37.200 talking about the SDF. Is he talking about groups in 2:53:37.280 --> 2:53:40.560 southern Kadistan? They did, Yeah, he asked him to like 2:53:40.600 --> 2:53:45.800 pass Malone. I have never seen large numbers of Americans 2:53:45.800 --> 2:53:48.600 supplied weapons among the Rojilazzi groups. 2:53:48.760 --> 2:53:51.600 No, although they do. Some of their aks come from 2:53:51.640 --> 2:53:53.520 the US. If you look at like what's sent out 2:53:53.920 --> 2:53:55.920 a bunch of and like body armor, a lot of 2:53:56.000 --> 2:53:58.320 like what the SDF like, the armor they have came 2:53:58.360 --> 2:53:59.560 from Americans. Yeah. 2:53:59.680 --> 2:54:02.840 Yeah, and with the highest speed SDF guys, you'll see 2:54:02.840 --> 2:54:06.840 like mphors but even like night vision, like yat the 2:54:06.959 --> 2:54:09.400 anti terror forces in the SDF, you'll see. But like 2:54:10.040 --> 2:54:13.920 on on the Iranian side, I have not seen that. 2:54:14.080 --> 2:54:17.400 And it's he's repeated this several times ever quite a 2:54:17.400 --> 2:54:20.520 long period of time. It seems to be something he 2:54:20.600 --> 2:54:24.640 genuinely believes, but I have seen no evidence aside from 2:54:24.680 --> 2:54:28.920 his claims to support it. It doesn't matter, But it 2:54:28.959 --> 2:54:32.000 does matter in the sense that Trump clearly is personally 2:54:32.040 --> 2:54:36.520 mad at Kurdish groups and does not seem to be 2:54:36.560 --> 2:54:42.040 interested in supporting their aspirations for autonomy, which is disappointing. 2:54:42.080 --> 2:54:45.560 But I guess I don't know why. Maybe because he 2:54:45.600 --> 2:54:47.920 feels that he alone to take credit for the defeat 2:54:47.959 --> 2:54:50.640 of the Islamic State, like I can't. I can't quite 2:54:50.680 --> 2:54:52.920 work out what to cause this, other than maybe he 2:54:52.959 --> 2:54:55.600 perceives them to have slighted him by not giving weapons 2:54:56.240 --> 2:54:58.760 that we don't know anything about. Yeah, let's talk a 2:54:58.760 --> 2:55:01.600 little bit about the broader situation in Iran. I don't 2:55:01.600 --> 2:55:05.039 want to make this true social review. I know I've 2:55:05.080 --> 2:55:08.879 read Trump's truth in the past. I have reached a 2:55:08.920 --> 2:55:10.560 point where I can't do that anymore. 2:55:11.520 --> 2:55:14.039 That's fair, Yeah, like I can't. 2:55:15.040 --> 2:55:18.480 People are dying, right, they bombed a girls school, Like 2:55:18.520 --> 2:55:20.840 this is serious and horrible, and it's really hard to 2:55:20.879 --> 2:55:23.400 bring the gravity that needs to be brought to this 2:55:23.520 --> 2:55:27.880 and also read out the absolutely bonker stuff that gets posted. 2:55:28.720 --> 2:55:32.280 And Trump described a missile strike on Iran as a 2:55:32.320 --> 2:55:36.320 love tap. Yeah, this past week. So I'm just gonna 2:55:36.760 --> 2:55:38.880 not gonna do that this week. I am going to 2:55:38.920 --> 2:55:41.879 say that both sides have repeatedly and openly violated the ceasefire, 2:55:42.000 --> 2:55:46.720 which Trump describes to reporters and dr Oz as being 2:55:46.840 --> 2:55:52.160 on quote massive life support. Meanwhile, Iran's parliamentary speaker Mohammed 2:55:52.440 --> 2:55:56.040 Galibath has said quote around forces are ready to deliver 2:55:56.080 --> 2:55:59.120 a well deserved response to any aggression. Mistake and strategy 2:55:59.120 --> 2:56:02.440 and mistaken decision will always lead to mistaken results. The 2:56:02.520 --> 2:56:05.120 whole world has already figured this out. We have prepared 2:56:05.120 --> 2:56:08.880 for all options. They will be surprised. This comes as 2:56:09.080 --> 2:56:12.720 Trump calls Iran's peace demands quote a piece of garbage 2:56:12.800 --> 2:56:18.080 and quote a stupid proposal. Iranian demands allegedly included an 2:56:18.200 --> 2:56:21.160 end to Israeli aggression in Lebanon and sovereignty overit straight 2:56:21.160 --> 2:56:23.600 at home moves. Trump has also alleged that they walked 2:56:23.640 --> 2:56:27.040 back an agreement to surrender and rich Ranian. We've also 2:56:27.080 --> 2:56:29.360 found that ran has retained a large number of their 2:56:29.400 --> 2:56:32.840 missiles and their launch capacity this week. It's also been 2:56:32.879 --> 2:56:35.240 reported by Jim Laporter, who is one of the few 2:56:35.280 --> 2:56:39.080 people still doing decer reporting at CBS that Pakistan has 2:56:39.160 --> 2:56:44.959 provided safe haven for Iranian aircraft, shielding them from US strikes. Allegedly, 2:56:44.959 --> 2:56:48.000 some civilian aircraft were also sheltered in Afghanistan, but then 2:56:48.040 --> 2:56:51.200 had to be moved when Pakistan began bombing Afghanistan in March. 2:56:51.879 --> 2:56:56.400 Iran has friends everywhere, I guess. The United States sent 2:56:56.440 --> 2:57:00.760 a ballistic missile submarine to Gibraltar this week. These higher 2:57:00.760 --> 2:57:04.760 class submarines to provide the survivable element of the nuclear triad, 2:57:04.879 --> 2:57:07.160 or the most survival element of the nuclear triad. 2:57:07.400 --> 2:57:10.280 You can't strike a nuclear submarine before it gets a 2:57:10.360 --> 2:57:12.600 chance to strike. It's it's basically impossible. 2:57:13.200 --> 2:57:15.600 Yeah, that's that's the reason that they exist. 2:57:16.120 --> 2:57:18.560 Guarantees that you will get to do your thing. 2:57:18.879 --> 2:57:22.360 Yeah, for mutually assured destruction reasons. It's not super normal 2:57:22.400 --> 2:57:25.080 to announce their presence in places I don't think, but 2:57:25.400 --> 2:57:27.080 the Navy did this week. 2:57:27.200 --> 2:57:27.480 Yeah. 2:57:27.600 --> 2:57:30.279 I mean it can't be. It depends on the situation, 2:57:30.560 --> 2:57:32.920 depending on going is a little weird, yes. 2:57:33.320 --> 2:57:34.320 Yeah, yeah. 2:57:34.560 --> 2:57:39.680 The Pentagon seems to be planning to rename the war 2:57:39.720 --> 2:57:43.880 in Iran Operation Sledgehammer. This seems to be an attempt 2:57:43.879 --> 2:57:46.600 at end run around the nineteen seventy three War Powers revolution. 2:57:47.320 --> 2:57:49.560 They claimed already where we spoke about this last week, 2:57:49.600 --> 2:57:52.760 the claiming epic fury is over now and that this 2:57:52.840 --> 2:57:57.400 is a new and distinct operation. In a congressional hearing, 2:57:57.520 --> 2:58:01.520 Hexceth denied that they needed authorized use of military force. 2:58:01.920 --> 2:58:03.160 Let's play the clip. 2:58:03.800 --> 2:58:08.440 It doesn't appear that hostilities have ended, and so the 2:58:08.520 --> 2:58:14.320 question to you is whether or not the administration has 2:58:14.600 --> 2:58:20.640 has considered or had intended to seek an authorization of 2:58:20.720 --> 2:58:22.680 use of military force from the Congress. 2:58:24.280 --> 2:58:27.080 Senator, our view is that should the President make the 2:58:27.160 --> 2:58:29.680 decision to recommence, that we would have all the authorities 2:58:29.720 --> 2:58:30.600 necessary to do so. 2:58:31.600 --> 2:58:32.160 Do you think that it. 2:58:32.160 --> 2:58:35.400 Would be helpful to the president if it was made 2:58:35.480 --> 2:58:41.240 clear that, in fact, the Congress did allow did provide 2:58:41.600 --> 2:58:42.760 an au MF. 2:58:44.600 --> 2:58:46.680 I think the president our view is that he has 2:58:46.720 --> 2:58:50.040 all the authorities he needs under Article two to execute. 2:58:50.240 --> 2:58:50.959 Thank mis Chairman. 2:58:52.000 --> 2:58:55.200 That's more or less he's saying they didn't need Congress, 2:58:55.680 --> 2:58:59.240 which is great. Yeah. Access face pointed questioning from the 2:58:59.240 --> 2:59:04.320 House and Senate creation to defend subcommittees, He repeatedly batted 2:59:04.320 --> 2:59:07.960 away questions about munitions depletion and suggested that it wasn't 2:59:07.959 --> 2:59:10.440 appropriate to answer them in public on the record like this. 2:59:10.640 --> 2:59:11.320 Oh, I'm sure. 2:59:13.000 --> 2:59:15.280 He also did not directly confront the cost of the war, 2:59:15.320 --> 2:59:19.240 which is now approaching thirty billion, instead saying, quote, what 2:59:19.400 --> 2:59:21.840 is the cost of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon? And 2:59:21.879 --> 2:59:23.879 the fact that this president has been willing to make 2:59:23.879 --> 2:59:26.760 a historic and courageous choice to confront that it comes 2:59:26.760 --> 2:59:30.240 with cost, and we recognize that kind of an exercise 2:59:30.320 --> 2:59:33.400 in an evasion on excess part there apart from his 2:59:33.480 --> 2:59:36.240 pretty emphactic statement that he didn't think that they needed 2:59:36.640 --> 2:59:41.440 any permission from Congress to continue with this war. So 2:59:42.360 --> 2:59:44.360 we will be back next week to keep you updated 2:59:44.360 --> 2:59:46.600 on what might be operations sledge Hammer. 2:59:47.480 --> 2:59:53.680 Great great stuff, very exciting. So on May twelfth, twenty 2:59:53.800 --> 2:59:59.359 twenty six, the former mayor of Arcadia, California, Eileen Wang, 2:59:59.560 --> 3:00:04.879 pled guilty to acting as an unregistered agent of a 3:00:04.959 --> 3:00:09.560 foreign government and is being sentenced in the near future 3:00:09.720 --> 3:00:14.000 for being an unregistered agent of a foreign government. People 3:00:14.040 --> 3:00:17.400 have taken this news normally the foreign government is China. 3:00:17.760 --> 3:00:20.600 I did a quick little bit of googling before coming 3:00:20.600 --> 3:00:23.720 around here and found some fun headlines, one of them 3:00:23.800 --> 3:00:28.840 in the Lion California mayor pleads guilty to serving Communist China. 3:00:29.400 --> 3:00:32.320 And that article was written by John Ransom, who's a 3:00:32.360 --> 3:00:34.959 senior contributor at The Lion and also has written for 3:00:35.000 --> 3:00:38.880 The Epic Times, which itself is like the agent of 3:00:38.920 --> 3:00:44.240 a foreign power effective. Yeah, the WCBM had a headline 3:00:44.280 --> 3:00:49.600 this democrat mayor just came clean about working for communist China. 3:00:50.200 --> 3:00:51.439 She could come clean. 3:00:51.920 --> 3:00:56.560 Clean, she pled guilty and for that, you know. And 3:00:56.600 --> 3:01:00.400 then from the House Committee on China's website, mulinar warrants 3:01:00.400 --> 3:01:04.680 of CCP influence after California mayor charged in foreign influence plot. 3:01:05.200 --> 3:01:07.640 These charges highlight the very real threat of the Chinese 3:01:07.640 --> 3:01:11.160 Communist Party's attempts to influence are free and open society. Well, 3:01:11.160 --> 3:01:13.640 it denies freedom and liberty for the Chinese people. The 3:01:13.680 --> 3:01:16.720 CCP is actively working to subvert our institutions and divide 3:01:16.760 --> 3:01:19.480 us against one another. In this case, an elected mayor 3:01:19.560 --> 3:01:22.760 acted at the direction of CCP handlers, coordinated with Chinese 3:01:22.800 --> 3:01:25.560 intelligence linked individuals, and used a local news platform to 3:01:25.600 --> 3:01:29.600 spread CCP propaganda. And so let's talk about that. How 3:01:29.680 --> 3:01:31.039 much of this is true? Right? 3:01:31.480 --> 3:01:31.959 Yeah? 3:01:32.080 --> 3:01:34.840 I mean technically, yeah, Like that's that's kind of what happened, 3:01:35.560 --> 3:01:39.160 except for the part where they were like coordinating to 3:01:39.240 --> 3:01:43.840 drive Americans apart from each other and create unrest and whatnot. 3:01:43.879 --> 3:01:46.920 That's not what the purpose of this thing that Eileen 3:01:47.360 --> 3:01:51.480 got wrapped up in was. She and her former fiance, 3:01:52.120 --> 3:01:55.800 a fellow named Son who got sentenced before she did. 3:01:56.400 --> 3:02:01.039 Mike's son, are accused of basically having run like content 3:02:01.120 --> 3:02:06.000 farms at the behest of Chinese government officials, Like they 3:02:06.000 --> 3:02:10.800 were putting out articles on like the alleged genocide in Zinjang, 3:02:10.920 --> 3:02:13.680 denying like the Chinese government had done anything wrong there 3:02:13.959 --> 3:02:17.520 there was any genocide at all in the region, and 3:02:17.600 --> 3:02:19.880 so it's kind of like propaganda stuff like that they 3:02:19.879 --> 3:02:22.879 were serving as like a fire hose of propaganda. Per 3:02:22.879 --> 3:02:25.680 the Justice Department. In June of twenty twenty one, a 3:02:25.720 --> 3:02:28.600 PRC official contacted Wang and other individuals via the we 3:02:28.760 --> 3:02:32.240 chat encryptid messaging application with pre written news articles, including 3:02:32.240 --> 3:02:35.240 a PRC official written essay in the Los Angeles Times 3:02:35.240 --> 3:02:38.200 that stated China's stance on the Zinjang issue. There is 3:02:38.200 --> 3:02:40.520 no genocide in Zinjang. There is no such thing as 3:02:40.520 --> 3:02:44.160 forced labor in any production activity, including cotton production, spreading 3:02:44.200 --> 3:02:47.320 such rumors due to fame, China destroys Zinjang safety and stability, 3:02:47.360 --> 3:02:50.959 weakened local economy, and suppressed China's development. Minutes later, when 3:02:51.000 --> 3:02:53.120 posted the article on her own website and responded to 3:02:53.160 --> 3:02:55.440 the PRC official with a link to the article on 3:02:55.480 --> 3:02:57.360 her website, the others in the group did the same. 3:02:57.400 --> 3:03:01.640 The PRC official responded, so fast, thank you everyone, and 3:03:02.200 --> 3:03:06.440 this is bad. Genocide denials bad. The spreading slop content 3:03:06.600 --> 3:03:10.240 on behalf of a foreign government is like bad. It 3:03:10.320 --> 3:03:12.760 is important to note that this is not like spying 3:03:13.320 --> 3:03:16.760 or sabotage in any meaningful way. She's not acting to 3:03:16.959 --> 3:03:20.960 like try to damage the United States. She's acting as 3:03:21.040 --> 3:03:25.320 like an unregistered pr agent for the Chinese government, or 3:03:25.320 --> 3:03:27.520 at least that's what she had done up to this 3:03:27.600 --> 3:03:29.480 point in her life, and like everything that she was 3:03:29.480 --> 3:03:33.000 doing was legal if she had disclosed who she was 3:03:33.040 --> 3:03:35.680 working for, which I think is also an important thing 3:03:35.720 --> 3:03:38.080 to note because sh like this happens all the time 3:03:39.040 --> 3:03:41.400 in the media, Like we all see, there's tons of 3:03:41.440 --> 3:03:43.760 content that is the result one way or the other 3:03:44.080 --> 3:03:48.600 of some government's influence operation, and for the majority of 3:03:48.600 --> 3:03:51.480 the time when it happens, nobody gets tripped up, you know, 3:03:51.800 --> 3:03:54.640 either because they have friends in power or because they 3:03:54.640 --> 3:03:57.400 don't quite cross a line. And I lead in her 3:03:57.400 --> 3:04:01.039 friends were not very savvy about what they were doing. Yeah, 3:04:01.040 --> 3:04:04.080 but they were also not operating on a very large level, 3:04:04.160 --> 3:04:07.600 like this is not a big operation. One of the 3:04:07.640 --> 3:04:10.400 notes in this charging document is that Eileen sent this 3:04:10.480 --> 3:04:13.680 Chinese government official at screenshot showing that the article had 3:04:13.680 --> 3:04:16.520 been viewed fifteen one hundred and twenty eight times through 3:04:16.520 --> 3:04:19.280 her site, which is like, not, we're not talking like 3:04:19.360 --> 3:04:23.960 big deal influence ops here. We're not talking like sweeping 3:04:24.320 --> 3:04:28.400 powers over like public opinion. Now, perhaps that's what they 3:04:28.440 --> 3:04:32.400 hoped Eileen would kind of rise to over time. She 3:04:32.440 --> 3:04:35.480 didn't seem to be like a kind of rising star 3:04:35.680 --> 3:04:38.800 in local government in southern California. She got endorsed by 3:04:38.840 --> 3:04:42.400 some prominent Democratic Party officials, and she was still in 3:04:42.480 --> 3:04:45.240 touch with her Chinese government handlers at this time. This 3:04:45.280 --> 3:04:49.000 whole period in which she's like being charged for working 3:04:49.000 --> 3:04:50.879 as an agent of the Chinese government is like twenty 3:04:50.920 --> 3:04:54.120 twenty through at least twenty twenty two. So yeah, this 3:04:54.240 --> 3:04:57.120 is like, you know, a bad thing, and it's good 3:04:57.160 --> 3:05:00.000 that this got found out and that she's not continued 3:05:00.360 --> 3:05:04.760 to be the mayor of Arcadia. But also this is 3:05:04.800 --> 3:05:07.039 not like the scary thing that the right wing press 3:05:07.080 --> 3:05:08.520 is making it out to you. She was not here 3:05:08.560 --> 3:05:10.760 to like subvert the US so that it could be 3:05:10.760 --> 3:05:13.520 invaded or destroyed. She was there to try to stop 3:05:13.560 --> 3:05:16.040 people on the internet from being mean to the Chinese government. 3:05:16.120 --> 3:05:18.240 Like that was the primary use that they had with her. 3:05:18.720 --> 3:05:22.760 It's just not that like actually scariest story or anything. 3:05:22.840 --> 3:05:24.800 It's just a kind of thing that happens. This lady 3:05:24.840 --> 3:05:28.480 happened to become mayor of a small down basically, which 3:05:28.520 --> 3:05:32.000 is wild. It's crazy if that happened. But like this 3:05:32.040 --> 3:05:33.039 is going on all the time. 3:05:33.640 --> 3:05:37.920 Yeah, I think, yeah, people have lost their minds about 3:05:37.920 --> 3:05:39.840 this one in a way that like. 3:05:39.800 --> 3:05:45.039 It's a perfect California city, like it's a southern California town, 3:05:45.200 --> 3:05:50.839 and it's a government female spy like a course of course. 3:05:51.000 --> 3:05:54.640 There's a lot of stuff. Back when Eric Swalwell was 3:05:54.640 --> 3:05:57.920 still a relevant human being, there was some attacks on 3:05:58.040 --> 3:06:01.920 him for associating with a quote Chinese female spy man 3:06:02.040 --> 3:06:03.840 ten years ago, and that was like one of the 3:06:03.879 --> 3:06:07.720 lines of attack against him. Sure because like someone someone 3:06:07.760 --> 3:06:11.119 he had like relations with in like twenty fourteen, what 3:06:11.160 --> 3:06:13.680 was alleged or found to be a working as a 3:06:13.720 --> 3:06:16.320 spy for the Chinese government. It's interesting that they're doing 3:06:16.520 --> 3:06:19.480 this type of stuff at like the exact same time 3:06:19.480 --> 3:06:21.920 that Trump just got just like it is like arriving 3:06:21.959 --> 3:06:22.440 in China. 3:06:22.520 --> 3:06:25.080 Yeah right now, yeah, yeah, it's really great timing. 3:06:25.520 --> 3:06:29.080 Yeah, curious timing there. But I'm guessing she took them leave. 3:06:29.160 --> 3:06:30.920 This has been a period of some time, right, like 3:06:30.920 --> 3:06:31.520 her fiance. 3:06:31.800 --> 3:06:35.480 Yeah yeah, yeah, because first first her former fiance got busted, 3:06:35.560 --> 3:06:37.879 and then she was like, I didn't do anything wrong, 3:06:38.400 --> 3:06:41.240 and then it became clear that she very much had. Yeah, right, 3:06:41.320 --> 3:06:43.440 so there was this was like a thing that yeah, 3:06:43.959 --> 3:06:45.480 this has been going on for a little while. It 3:06:45.600 --> 3:06:48.080 just sort of once she pled guilty, then you could 3:06:48.120 --> 3:06:51.760 do the article like California mayor pleads guilty to working 3:06:51.760 --> 3:06:52.720 for the Chinese government. 3:06:52.840 --> 3:06:56.760 Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, just funny timing. Yeah, 3:06:57.280 --> 3:07:14.320 speaking of timing, here are some ads. Great, yay, okay, 3:07:14.320 --> 3:07:18.520 we are back for one of our last main stories. 3:07:18.879 --> 3:07:24.920 Let's talk about Virginia and the redistricting efforts. Last week, 3:07:25.000 --> 3:07:28.320 in a four to three ruling, the Virginia Supreme Court 3:07:28.440 --> 3:07:33.120 blocked the voter approved redistricting map that passed in April 3:07:33.480 --> 3:07:37.560 with almost fifty two percent of the vote. The court 3:07:37.640 --> 3:07:41.920 found the process used to advance the referendum violated the 3:07:42.080 --> 3:07:48.200 state constitution. According to Virginia's constitution, the legislature has to 3:07:48.320 --> 3:07:53.520 vote twice to pass any proposed constitutional amendment before it 3:07:53.560 --> 3:07:57.160 gets put on the ballot for Virginia voters, but these 3:07:57.160 --> 3:08:01.320 two General Assembly votes must be separated by a state 3:08:01.480 --> 3:08:06.040 general election. The first General Assembly vote for this redistricting 3:08:06.080 --> 3:08:10.600 amendment passed in October twenty twenty five, before the November 3:08:10.600 --> 3:08:14.040 general election, and the second vote to approve the referendum 3:08:14.240 --> 3:08:18.080 happened next January, so a few months ago. The Republican 3:08:18.160 --> 3:08:22.920 challengers to the new voting map argued that because early 3:08:23.040 --> 3:08:28.160 voting had already begun, the General Assembly's first vote in 3:08:28.200 --> 3:08:33.959 October did not actually occur before a general election, and 3:08:34.360 --> 3:08:37.280 that was the grounds the State Supreme Court used to 3:08:37.320 --> 3:08:42.040 block the voter approved amendment. The four judge majority ruled 3:08:42.200 --> 3:08:47.200 the intervening election requirement was violated because the general election 3:08:47.680 --> 3:08:52.760 quote began on September nineteenth, twenty twenty five, and just 3:08:53.320 --> 3:08:57.240 ended on election day November fourth, yeah I. 3:08:57.160 --> 3:08:59.120 Feel like you're kind of outside the spirit of what 3:08:59.160 --> 3:09:00.640 they were going for that one. 3:09:00.840 --> 3:09:03.680 But no, this on the face sounds quite absurd. 3:09:03.800 --> 3:09:05.720 It's one of those things that is technically correct, but 3:09:05.760 --> 3:09:06.720 at the same time. 3:09:06.800 --> 3:09:10.640 Well, and there's some complicating factors because of Trump's own 3:09:10.680 --> 3:09:14.600 attempts to restrict early voting or deem early voting like 3:09:14.879 --> 3:09:19.840 not constitutionally like appropriate, or like it defies the federal 3:09:19.840 --> 3:09:23.360 government's definition of the word election. And so now you 3:09:23.440 --> 3:09:25.640 have some groups in Virginia who are trying to pass 3:09:25.720 --> 3:09:28.800 this amendment, Democrat groups who are using kind of similar 3:09:28.879 --> 3:09:31.360 rhetoric as Trump. We'll get to that in a sec 3:09:31.720 --> 3:09:37.600 So Justice de Arthur Helsey wrote to the majority opinion, saying, quote, 3:09:37.920 --> 3:09:43.080 this violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum 3:09:43.160 --> 3:09:47.160 vote and renders it null and void. Early Virginia voters 3:09:47.280 --> 3:09:51.879 unknowingly forfeited they're constitutionally protected opportunity to vote for or 3:09:51.959 --> 3:09:57.200 against delegates who favor or disfavor amending the constitution by 3:09:57.240 --> 3:10:01.000 not anticipating a legislative vote on a constitutional amendment four 3:10:01.120 --> 3:10:04.280 days before the last day of voting, unquote. So the 3:10:04.680 --> 3:10:08.720 court said that the reason why they have this to 3:10:09.000 --> 3:10:13.400 vote requirement across two different general assemblies is to give 3:10:13.480 --> 3:10:18.480 voters enough time to not just support or not support 3:10:18.480 --> 3:10:21.480 a constitutional amendment on the ballot, but then also vote 3:10:21.560 --> 3:10:25.640 for state lawmakers who will either approve or not approve 3:10:25.640 --> 3:10:28.960 the constitutional amendment in the legislature itself. Right, So that's 3:10:29.000 --> 3:10:31.560 what they're saying. It's like this, this process of having 3:10:31.600 --> 3:10:34.120 these two votes is to ensure that voters have a 3:10:34.200 --> 3:10:37.680 say both in who they put into office as well 3:10:37.720 --> 3:10:39.400 as on the ballot. And they're saying that this process 3:10:39.440 --> 3:10:43.240 was violated because early voting had already commenced by the 3:10:43.280 --> 3:10:47.640 time that the legislature actually voted on this proposed amendment. 3:10:48.480 --> 3:10:52.440 Chief Justice Cleo. Powell wrote in the dissent that the 3:10:52.480 --> 3:10:56.920 majority quote broadened the meaning of the word election as 3:10:57.080 --> 3:11:00.920 used in the Virginia Constitution to include the early voting period. 3:11:01.560 --> 3:11:04.560 This is in direct conflict with how both Virginia and 3:11:04.680 --> 3:11:08.440 federal law define an election. By extending elections in the 3:11:08.440 --> 3:11:11.879 Commonwealth of Virginia beyond a single day, the Majorities formulation 3:11:12.040 --> 3:11:15.680 would directly conflict with the federal mandate that elections for 3:11:15.720 --> 3:11:20.040 federal officials be held on a single day, so under 3:11:20.440 --> 3:11:24.119 the Supreme Court of Virginia's new ruling, the district map 3:11:24.200 --> 3:11:26.840 drawn in twenty twenty one must be used for the 3:11:26.959 --> 3:11:32.280 upcoming election this November. The midterms, the new map would 3:11:32.360 --> 3:11:37.400 have won Democrats four more House seats, but considering this 3:11:37.600 --> 3:11:40.760 ruling by the state Supreme Court, Dems are now eight 3:11:40.840 --> 3:11:46.320 seats down in the national redistricting battle, which the latest 3:11:46.360 --> 3:11:49.320 gutting of the Voting Rights Act will only make worse. 3:11:49.840 --> 3:11:50.160 Yeah. 3:11:51.200 --> 3:11:55.119 Over this past weekend, Virginia Democrats Hakeem Jeffries and Governor 3:11:55.360 --> 3:11:59.320 Abigail Skpenberger held discussions on what to do about this ruling. 3:12:00.080 --> 3:12:04.640 Times reported that Virginia Democrats expressed determination to win two 3:12:04.800 --> 3:12:08.360 or three of the Republican held seats even with the 3:12:08.440 --> 3:12:12.360 current map, but also discussed a few long shot options 3:12:12.400 --> 3:12:16.120 to change the ruling or push forward the map anyway. 3:12:16.720 --> 3:12:19.920 One of the more extreme measures debated was the possibility 3:12:19.920 --> 3:12:24.720 of replacing the entire Virginia Supreme Court by lowering the 3:12:24.800 --> 3:12:29.640 mandatory retirement age from seventy five to fifty four and 3:12:29.640 --> 3:12:32.560 then having a new court rehear the case. 3:12:32.640 --> 3:12:35.599 Sounds great, Let's do it in between now and novemb. 3:12:36.040 --> 3:12:40.440 So it seems the Democrats decided against this path ultimately 3:12:40.959 --> 3:12:44.560 in part because the state Department of Elections deadline for 3:12:44.640 --> 3:12:48.240 congressional maps is May twelfth, which is a day before 3:12:48.360 --> 3:12:51.600 we're recording. Yeah, they kind of ran out of time 3:12:51.600 --> 3:12:53.959 on this. It's also unclear if they really would have 3:12:53.959 --> 3:12:58.520 had the bravery to pull such an extreme maneuver, right, 3:12:58.600 --> 3:13:00.600 something that may be the correct thing to do and 3:13:00.640 --> 3:13:02.840 maybe something they should just do anyway, if they have 3:13:03.000 --> 3:13:06.680 the power to fully replace their Supreme Court, why not. 3:13:07.000 --> 3:13:10.039 Because the Democrats are currently in a majority of control 3:13:10.080 --> 3:13:12.960 of the state legislature right now, why not do this anyway? 3:13:12.959 --> 3:13:16.320 To a certain extent, Also, Abigail Stanberger can only serve 3:13:16.959 --> 3:13:20.400 one term, so you know, you're not going to lose 3:13:20.480 --> 3:13:23.800 much political capital by pulling a kind of insane move 3:13:23.879 --> 3:13:26.840 like this. But it's not going to happen at least 3:13:27.080 --> 3:13:32.320 right now. Yeah, nope, Virginia State Senate Majority Leader Scott 3:13:32.400 --> 3:13:36.000 Sortiville told The New Republic quote, as a practical matter, 3:13:36.280 --> 3:13:39.720 the move would not be capable of being implemented given 3:13:39.800 --> 3:13:44.800 the time frame. Now, despite that May twelfth deadline. On Monday, 3:13:45.400 --> 3:13:49.640 Virginia Attorney General j Jones and Democratic State lawmakers filed 3:13:49.640 --> 3:13:53.600 an emergency appeal asking the US Supreme Court to put 3:13:53.640 --> 3:13:57.199 the state Supreme Court order on hold for the upcoming 3:13:57.240 --> 3:14:01.039 midterm election, arguing that the state court based their ruling 3:14:01.360 --> 3:14:06.000 on misreading the federal definition of election and by adopting 3:14:06.000 --> 3:14:08.920 its own definition, the state Supreme Court infringed on the 3:14:08.920 --> 3:14:14.040 state legislature's power to regulate federal elections quote. By forcing 3:14:14.040 --> 3:14:18.200 the Commonwealth to conduct its congressional elections using districts different 3:14:18.240 --> 3:14:21.360 from those adopted by the General Assembly pursuant to a 3:14:21.360 --> 3:14:24.920 constitutional amendment that people just ratified, the Supreme Court of 3:14:25.000 --> 3:14:28.480 Virginia has deprived voters, candidates, and the Commonwealth of their 3:14:28.600 --> 3:14:34.440 right to the lawfully enacted congressional districtsuot. This case will 3:14:34.440 --> 3:14:37.560 be initially decided by Chief Justice John Roberts, who handles 3:14:37.600 --> 3:14:41.320 the emergency appeals from states covered by the Fourth Circuit 3:14:41.320 --> 3:14:46.400 Court of Appeals, but the US Supreme Court may argue 3:14:46.480 --> 3:14:49.400 that they don't have the authority to intervene because the 3:14:49.520 --> 3:14:53.640 Virginia Supreme Court ruling cites state law, not federal law. 3:14:53.840 --> 3:14:58.000 And The New Republic also reported that state Senate majority 3:14:58.120 --> 3:15:02.600 leader Scott Saureville confirmed even if the Supreme Court gives 3:15:02.600 --> 3:15:05.720 them a good ruling, that ruling could be unlikely to 3:15:06.000 --> 3:15:10.440 impact this upcoming election cycle due to this May twelfth deadline. 3:15:11.000 --> 3:15:13.960 I guess it's just what we're saying that, like the 3:15:14.800 --> 3:15:18.360 nature of this midterm will be very important for the 3:15:18.400 --> 3:15:21.279 way you get to vote in America going forward. 3:15:21.640 --> 3:15:23.680 Yeah, I mean they're they're pulling out all the stops, 3:15:23.879 --> 3:15:28.040 like they're throwing any kind of plausible deniability in the trash, 3:15:28.400 --> 3:15:32.279 because this is the get it the lose it moment 3:15:32.360 --> 3:15:34.840 for the right, you know, Like that's very much how 3:15:34.840 --> 3:15:35.480 they're looking at this. 3:15:35.600 --> 3:15:38.840 Yeah, this is a locking in forever we'll see. 3:15:39.080 --> 3:15:39.520 Yeah. 3:15:39.680 --> 3:15:43.879 A few years ago, Ohio pushed through unconstitutional maps, but 3:15:43.920 --> 3:15:47.480 maps that were deemed unconstitutional by state courts. Yeah, one 3:15:47.560 --> 3:15:51.080 federal court did authorize them to use these maps in 3:15:51.120 --> 3:15:53.879 like an interim period and they're still using them. And 3:15:54.040 --> 3:15:57.480 in a piece by the Nation, they mentioned this option 3:15:57.959 --> 3:16:00.160 was said that they would need to have the backing 3:16:00.480 --> 3:16:04.160 of the state Board of Electors, and Virginia might not 3:16:04.240 --> 3:16:08.039 have that. There's lots of people on the Democratic side 3:16:08.040 --> 3:16:11.240 that are much more rule followy than a lot of 3:16:11.240 --> 3:16:14.640 the Republicans, as we have seen now Virginia may be 3:16:14.640 --> 3:16:18.039 able to still pass this redistricting map in the future 3:16:18.400 --> 3:16:21.760 by spreading out the process over a bigger period of 3:16:21.760 --> 3:16:24.360 time to not create this confusion about the early voting period. 3:16:24.720 --> 3:16:26.000 But the map will not be able to go into 3:16:26.000 --> 3:16:28.039 effect before the midterms, but it still may be able 3:16:28.080 --> 3:16:30.160 to go into effect in the future. I do think 3:16:30.200 --> 3:16:32.440 it's also worth noting that the same day that Virginia 3:16:32.480 --> 3:16:35.160 filed this appeal with the Supreme Court, the US Supreme 3:16:35.160 --> 3:16:38.720 Court also paved the way for Alabama to eliminate one 3:16:38.720 --> 3:16:41.880 of two majority black districts before the midterm elections by 3:16:41.920 --> 3:16:45.360 overturning a lower court order that blocked the use of 3:16:45.400 --> 3:16:48.880 a Republican backed map from twenty twenty three. So the 3:16:48.879 --> 3:16:52.560 Supreme Court is currently weighing in on not exactly the same, 3:16:53.120 --> 3:16:55.920 similar similar things in other states. 3:16:56.240 --> 3:16:59.640 That was because it was basically pointing to it Sluisiana 3:16:59.720 --> 3:17:02.040 rule and saying like, we've ruled on this, Yes, this 3:17:02.160 --> 3:17:02.480 is right. 3:17:02.840 --> 3:17:04.600 This was following the Louisiana ruling. 3:17:04.680 --> 3:17:09.000 Yeah, yeah, okay, that makes sense. You know, great videos 3:17:10.120 --> 3:17:12.760 Democratic Process Voting Rights Act. 3:17:13.480 --> 3:17:14.800 Oh. 3:17:15.040 --> 3:17:19.200 So, there's an increasing movement in the United States, both 3:17:19.240 --> 3:17:23.600 at the state and the federal level to repeal gas taxes. 3:17:23.640 --> 3:17:27.600 So in the United States, there's federal gas taxes that 3:17:27.600 --> 3:17:30.760 that everybody pays. The current federal gas tax rate is 3:17:30.760 --> 3:17:34.200 about eighteen point three cents per gallon for gasoline and 3:17:34.400 --> 3:17:36.960 gas a hall, which is the actual official name of 3:17:37.320 --> 3:17:40.320 fuel mixed with unleaded gas that's like unleaded and ethanol 3:17:40.360 --> 3:17:42.160 together is actually just called gas a hall. 3:17:42.280 --> 3:17:46.119 Okay, I never knew that. What, Yes, what I Loveny would. 3:17:45.920 --> 3:17:48.000 Yeah, they couldn't think of anything better. And then twenty 3:17:48.040 --> 3:17:50.560 four point three cents per gallon for diesel fuel, right, 3:17:51.320 --> 3:17:53.680 And then some states have their their own like Oregon 3:17:53.760 --> 3:17:57.480 has its own like gas taxes California senty does at 3:17:57.560 --> 3:18:01.200 both levels. Like the federal gas tax is there in 3:18:01.280 --> 3:18:03.920 short because it helps to pay for the roads, right, 3:18:04.040 --> 3:18:06.920 Like that's that's why we need a federal gas tax 3:18:07.040 --> 3:18:10.840 is because it funds what's called the Highway Trust Fund 3:18:11.080 --> 3:18:14.160 or the HTF, which is a big part of like 3:18:14.280 --> 3:18:19.480 what keeps our interstate infrastructure functional. And then state level 3:18:19.480 --> 3:18:23.400 gas taxes are often also like supporting like state local roads, right. 3:18:23.800 --> 3:18:28.200 And so Trump has talked about temporarily repealing the gas 3:18:28.240 --> 3:18:30.680 tax for like a couple of months, there have been 3:18:30.920 --> 3:18:36.000 Democratic proposals that are very similar. Graham Platner, who's about 3:18:36.040 --> 3:18:39.800 to be a Congressman from Maine, it's a Democratic nominee. Yeah, 3:18:39.920 --> 3:18:43.560 who's currently the nominee but is almost certainly going to win. 3:18:44.240 --> 3:18:45.879 The presumptive nominee I think. 3:18:45.760 --> 3:18:49.320 Has expressed support for ending the gas tax outright, and 3:18:49.440 --> 3:18:53.480 his basic plan was something like, you have wealthy corporations 3:18:53.480 --> 3:18:55.480 pay the money that the gas tax is currently going to, 3:18:55.600 --> 3:18:58.800 and you put that burden onto you know, corporations instead 3:18:58.800 --> 3:19:01.879 of people. Not uncommon, by the way, for the gas 3:19:01.920 --> 3:19:06.320 tax to be temporarily repealed. During the early months of 3:19:06.400 --> 3:19:10.360 the most recent escalation of the Russian invasion into Ukraine 3:19:10.440 --> 3:19:13.320 and the Biden administration back in twenty twenty two, Biden 3:19:13.400 --> 3:19:16.560 temporarily paused the federal gas tax. Right, So this is 3:19:16.560 --> 3:19:19.359 the thing that happens. It's just always a bad idea 3:19:19.840 --> 3:19:22.320 because it's the reason why you see people in the 3:19:22.400 --> 3:19:25.400 left and right make suggestions like this repeal state or 3:19:25.440 --> 3:19:28.240 federal gas taxes is because it's really easy. It's an 3:19:28.280 --> 3:19:30.160 easy way to say, like I'm looking out for you, 3:19:30.240 --> 3:19:32.640 I'm trying to take care of regular people. Gas is 3:19:32.680 --> 3:19:35.200 too darn expensive already, We've got to do everything we 3:19:35.320 --> 3:19:38.040 can to make your life easier. The problem is the 3:19:38.120 --> 3:19:41.119 Highway Trust Fund, which is absolutely critical for our roads 3:19:41.160 --> 3:19:45.400 being functional, is already always running at a deficit. In 3:19:45.480 --> 3:19:48.400 twenty twenty four, it was a deficit of about thirteen 3:19:48.520 --> 3:19:52.959 billion dollars. The main reason for this is that, like transportation, 3:19:53.120 --> 3:19:57.520 infrastructure is aging every single year and falling behind. And 3:19:57.600 --> 3:19:59.960 at the same time, that gas tax is not like 3:20:00.040 --> 3:20:02.440 peg to inflation or anything, so it has not been 3:20:02.520 --> 3:20:06.120 keeping pace with the actual needs of the Trust Fund. 3:20:06.600 --> 3:20:10.200 So anyway, we're already in a really bad situation with 3:20:10.240 --> 3:20:14.360 the HTF. Every time we pause these taxes, it gets 3:20:14.440 --> 3:20:18.800 much worse. And I'm worried right now that it was 3:20:18.800 --> 3:20:21.039 reasonable it may sound and say something like, well we 3:20:21.040 --> 3:20:24.000 should just have the rich pay for that. You're never 3:20:24.080 --> 3:20:27.280 going to have any kind of like move that does 3:20:27.320 --> 3:20:29.440 both of those things at once. They're going to start 3:20:29.760 --> 3:20:32.200 by repealing the gas tax, and then they'll never get 3:20:32.240 --> 3:20:35.920 around to replacing it with anything, and then the roads 3:20:35.959 --> 3:20:38.440 will just be bad forever. I think this is a 3:20:38.480 --> 3:20:41.960 bad idea, and I think you should be a little 3:20:41.959 --> 3:20:46.200 wary of politicians doing this because it's an easy way 3:20:46.240 --> 3:20:48.879 to get a win. But that said, damn near everybody 3:20:49.000 --> 3:20:51.959 is so how wary can you actually be? It's just 3:20:52.000 --> 3:20:54.520 a really irresponsible, bad idea that has a lot of 3:20:54.520 --> 3:20:55.520 bipartisan support. 3:20:56.200 --> 3:20:56.400 Yeah. 3:20:56.640 --> 3:20:59.280 Really, Ever since the no tax on Tips things, there's 3:20:59.280 --> 3:21:01.960 been this wave of of you know, people have called 3:21:01.959 --> 3:21:04.640 this like slopulist policies or like things that are that 3:21:04.680 --> 3:21:07.920 are that are you know, populist in framing, but have 3:21:08.080 --> 3:21:11.640 certain like economic problems or or get dispersed in weird ways. 3:21:11.680 --> 3:21:14.280 You knows. Me has talked about some specifics around the 3:21:14.320 --> 3:21:17.400 no tax on Tips policy, but there's there's there's been 3:21:17.400 --> 3:21:20.600 like a wave of these, you know, small targeted tax 3:21:20.680 --> 3:21:22.959 cuts on on on on various little things to kind 3:21:22.959 --> 3:21:26.640 of lift lift the financial burden that Americans are facing, 3:21:26.920 --> 3:21:29.920 you know, the better ones, you know, the ones like 3:21:30.080 --> 3:21:34.040 like like Platinum Strategy, which has a part of his 3:21:34.200 --> 3:21:39.440 plan increasing taxes on billionaires and oil corporations. But these 3:21:39.440 --> 3:21:42.080 sorts of taxes are just like little band aid solutions 3:21:42.280 --> 3:21:45.520 and that are almost like consolation prizes for not being 3:21:45.520 --> 3:21:48.640 able to just raise the corporate tax rate or income 3:21:48.680 --> 3:21:52.600 tax brackets. Right, And it's it's like we're adopting these 3:21:52.640 --> 3:21:58.320 consolation taxes for this presumed impossibility just actually raising taxes 3:21:58.360 --> 3:21:59.959 to the level of you know, if you look at 3:22:00.080 --> 3:22:03.560 the United States in like the nineteen fifties, super super high, 3:22:03.800 --> 3:22:06.920 super high level of taxes that actually funded social services. 3:22:07.240 --> 3:22:09.240 And you know one thing that could be frustrating about 3:22:09.280 --> 3:22:12.039 these these sorts of more like slopulist tax angles is 3:22:12.040 --> 3:22:16.279 it you know, it undermines the vital role of taxes 3:22:16.320 --> 3:22:18.320 to actually fund social services. 3:22:18.800 --> 3:22:19.039 Yep. 3:22:19.080 --> 3:22:21.960 Now should more of those taxes be funded by corporations 3:22:22.000 --> 3:22:22.960 and billionaires? 3:22:23.080 --> 3:22:23.440 Yeah? 3:22:23.480 --> 3:22:26.760 Absolutely, Yeah, But I think that should be the focus 3:22:27.160 --> 3:22:29.680 rather than these little itty bitty kind of you know, 3:22:29.840 --> 3:22:33.439 cutting away at the corners of like small, small targeted 3:22:33.440 --> 3:22:36.080 taxes that are that are again like us used as 3:22:36.120 --> 3:22:40.240 like you know, consolation prizes, rather than actually addressing the 3:22:40.280 --> 3:22:42.880 pretty significant, you know, tax reforms that need to happen 3:22:42.920 --> 3:22:43.520 in this country. 3:22:44.120 --> 3:22:46.800 And it's it's just dangerous in part because it acts 3:22:46.800 --> 3:22:49.920 as if what the gas tax is there to fund 3:22:50.080 --> 3:22:54.360 is optional, is not like necessary, like, well, we don't 3:22:54.360 --> 3:22:57.520 really need this, so we'll pause this whenever like things 3:22:57.520 --> 3:22:59.200 get bad because we don't need them. But will you 3:22:59.280 --> 3:23:02.840 do like our society is reliant upon the maintenance of 3:23:02.879 --> 3:23:06.920 that fund, and we shouldn't act like it's Yeah, this 3:23:07.280 --> 3:23:08.360 is very frustrating to me. 3:23:08.720 --> 3:23:11.760 Yeah, you can see why the gas tax and particularus 3:23:11.800 --> 3:23:15.200 appealing right now. Right now, Yes, people are struggling, like 3:23:15.280 --> 3:23:19.040 it is literally seven dollars a gallon in pods of California. 3:23:19.160 --> 3:23:20.880 Oh, it's fucking nuts. 3:23:21.000 --> 3:23:24.240 Like people who like a lot of people who struggle 3:23:24.240 --> 3:23:26.040 to make it are really struggling to make it now. Yeah, 3:23:26.040 --> 3:23:28.760 why our society is set up means it's very hard 3:23:28.800 --> 3:23:31.280 for people to exist without a car. So you're like, yes, 3:23:31.720 --> 3:23:33.800 the populist appeal is obvious, and. 3:23:34.040 --> 3:23:35.640 As is always the case with this sort of thing, 3:23:35.760 --> 3:23:37.680 the fact that it has an appeal is based on 3:23:37.800 --> 3:23:42.640 ignorance because when roads are poorly maintained, it hosts regular 3:23:42.720 --> 3:23:45.080 people huge amounts of money, and the damage it does 3:23:45.080 --> 3:23:48.000 to their car far more than the gas tax costs them. 3:23:48.080 --> 3:23:50.680 This has been established. This is not like I think 3:23:50.720 --> 3:23:52.800 we have to wonder about. There have been studies into this, 3:23:53.000 --> 3:23:55.520 like you pay more money when the roads are bad 3:23:55.560 --> 3:23:57.120 because your car gets fucked up. 3:23:57.920 --> 3:24:00.240 Yeah, and it's reasonable for people to say, well, a 3:24:00.320 --> 3:24:03.199 country has enough money, you can't we unfunck the roads, 3:24:03.240 --> 3:24:06.360 and yes, not charge me a lot of money. Unfortunately, 3:24:06.360 --> 3:24:09.320 we just spent thirty billion fucking invading Iran, so no 3:24:09.520 --> 3:24:09.960 we can't. 3:24:10.240 --> 3:24:12.440 Oh yeah, you have to not do some of the 3:24:12.520 --> 3:24:13.880 other things that we're doing. 3:24:14.360 --> 3:24:17.959 Yeah that it's not up for grabs in the current 3:24:18.000 --> 3:24:23.120 political atmosphere, right, and even your d you're like mainstream Democrats, Yeah, 3:24:23.400 --> 3:24:24.959 aren't going to ride for that. 3:24:25.120 --> 3:24:27.920 No, I mean it requires pressure against mainstream Democrats and 3:24:27.959 --> 3:24:31.920 obviously the Republican establishment as well. Right, Like, part of 3:24:31.959 --> 3:24:35.680 Plantner's plan is a fifty percent per barrel windfall tax 3:24:35.760 --> 3:24:39.360 on big oil profits, which would be significant, but there 3:24:39.360 --> 3:24:42.160 will be a lot of pushback against this, including among 3:24:42.200 --> 3:24:44.879 the democratic establishment, and that might require getting rid of 3:24:44.879 --> 3:24:47.560 a whole bunch of these democratic establishment figures who are 3:24:47.560 --> 3:24:48.960 currently occupying seats of power. 3:24:50.000 --> 3:24:53.880 Yeah. Yeah, well everyone think about that. 3:24:54.000 --> 3:24:57.360 On that hopeful note, on that optimist how to do 3:24:57.400 --> 3:24:59.400 it note? 3:25:00.600 --> 3:25:03.960 Where can people send us a news related tips chase? 3:25:05.280 --> 3:25:08.280 They can do that by emailing cool Zone tips at 3:25:08.360 --> 3:25:10.760 proton dot me. If you want to keep it a 3:25:10.800 --> 3:25:12.879 little bit more encrypted, you can do it from a 3:25:12.879 --> 3:25:15.560 proton email address so it doesn't bother you to go 3:25:15.600 --> 3:25:18.080 ahead and send it. If you have a marketing email, 3:25:18.280 --> 3:25:20.959 you can not send it. Trying not to be so 3:25:21.120 --> 3:25:22.920 rude to the marketing people. 3:25:24.160 --> 3:25:26.959 No, I think part of part of those anarchists that 3:25:27.120 --> 3:25:30.519 left being and streamers' threats might be against the marketing corporations. 3:25:30.560 --> 3:25:34.480 If James keeps a keeps threatening again at the end of. 3:25:34.400 --> 3:25:39.640 This episode, anyone to prison, I'll just blog advocating violence. 3:25:39.640 --> 3:25:41.840 I'm just gonna block your email. Okay, Well, well, I 3:25:41.879 --> 3:25:44.080 will make sure that we never hear from you again. 3:25:44.120 --> 3:25:45.920 It won't just be me blocking it, it will be 3:25:45.959 --> 3:25:48.240 all of us here at cool Zone Media. 3:25:49.360 --> 3:25:51.920 We reported the news, you reported the news. 3:25:53.040 --> 3:25:54.160 We reported the news. 3:25:59.400 --> 3:26:02.560 Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week 3:26:02.640 --> 3:26:04.560 from now until the heat death of the universe. 3:26:05.280 --> 3:26:07.800 It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. 3:26:07.959 --> 3:26:11.039 For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website 3:26:11.120 --> 3:26:14.680 coolzonmedia dot com for check us out on the iHeartRadio app, 3:26:14.760 --> 3:26:17.800 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 3:26:18.080 --> 3:26:20.000 You can now find sources where it could Happen here, 3:26:20.040 --> 3:26:21.840 listed directly in episode descriptions. 3:26:22.200 --> 3:26:23.000 Thanks for listening.