Speaker 1: Cool Media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
Speaker 2: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 2: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 2: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 2: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 2: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 2: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 2: you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 3: This is It could happen here, a show about things
Speaker 3: falling apart. I'm Garrison Davis this episode. I'm joined by
Speaker 3: Mia Wong.
Speaker 4: Mia.
Speaker 3: I have some upsetting news.
Speaker 5: Oh no, I.
Speaker 3: Which is frankly one of the best ways to start
Speaker 3: this episode and one of the best ways to start
Speaker 3: the show. So I'm pretty sure that I found this
Speaker 3: account called Let's see at Hill Hitler, and I think
Speaker 3: he's posting some things that is a little bit fascist.
Speaker 5: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: I have decoded some of at Hell Hitler's communications and
Speaker 3: I have uncovered a secret a secret Nazi code.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 6: This is this is an incredibly unexpected revelation from Hail Hitler.
Speaker 3: He has posted some pictures in like what I would
Speaker 3: assume is some kind of military uniform that looks like
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's it's some kind of like h
Speaker 3: like Germanic military uniform. But I've noticed that there are
Speaker 3: some runes on this uniform, oh, that look very similar
Speaker 3: to the Odal rune. So I'm thinking because of the rune,
Speaker 3: this guy might be a Nazi.
Speaker 6: Thank you for your work, Harrison. We could never have
Speaker 6: determined this.
Speaker 3: That's right, I am. You can find me at osent
Speaker 3: to Defender online and Defender No. That doesn't for us today,
Speaker 3: and it could happen here now. So this episode, we're
Speaker 3: gonna talk about something that's been slowly frustrating me the
Speaker 3: past few weeks, and that is the misapplication of dog whistles.
Speaker 3: And let's just get right into it. People have been
Speaker 3: noticing patterns, noticing trends in official communications from the dhs
Speaker 3: gov online accounts, which now is the main way the
Speaker 3: government sends out communications, unfortunately, especially on X the Everything app.
Speaker 3: But this, this extends outside of X the Everything after,
Speaker 3: this extends outside of Blue Sky the Internet in general.
Speaker 3: This is about how we understand the messaging of fascists
Speaker 3: and understand how rhetoric and anti fascist like education works
Speaker 3: and ways that I think it's currently being misapplied. So
Speaker 3: bear with me. This is going to be kind of
Speaker 3: an odd episode, but I think I think it's worth
Speaker 3: it because I don't want us falling into the same
Speaker 3: traps that we maybe fell into eight years ago. So
Speaker 3: let's let's let's start by talking about some communications posted
Speaker 3: on the internet by at dhs gov a picture of
Speaker 3: a painting titled American Progress by John Gast captioned a
Speaker 3: heritage to be proud of, comma a homeland worth defending.
Speaker 3: So on the surface, you know, maybe a slightly hashtag
Speaker 3: problematic sentiment here with a hashtag problematic painting, or at
Speaker 3: the very least of painting depicting the genocide of Native
Speaker 3: Americans and Indigenous people specifically with like a white supremacist outlook,
Speaker 3: with this enlarged white woman bathed in a white cloak,
Speaker 3: bringing forth that the tide of quote unquote progress as
Speaker 3: Indigenous people are are forced to flee from the edge
Speaker 3: of the painting.
Speaker 6: It's fun because this is a painting we literally when
Speaker 6: they had to explain manifest destiny like colonialism.
Speaker 4: Good.
Speaker 6: This is the painting that was in my textbook in
Speaker 6: high school.
Speaker 5: Is three class like it is like.
Speaker 6: The the er colonialism good genocide, good painting.
Speaker 3: Genocide good that that's what the painting is. But what
Speaker 3: I have found through some hashtag research there might be
Speaker 3: a hidden code in this. In this communication from the
Speaker 3: DHSO already an agency that only has the best interests
Speaker 3: of really all people who strive for human rights, the DHS. SO,
Speaker 3: if you count all of the words in the tweet,
Speaker 3: guess how many words there are in this tweet?
Speaker 5: MEA fifteen no.
Speaker 3: So close, so close, fourteen fourteen words in this tweet,
Speaker 3: which might remind you of the fourteen words the Nazi signifier,
Speaker 3: which I probably just to explain. Surely most people listening
Speaker 3: to this is familiar with the fourteen words, since it
Speaker 3: seems everybody thinks they are an armchair expert on fascist rhetoric.
Speaker 3: But the fourteen words we must secure the existence of
Speaker 3: our people and a future for white children. This became
Speaker 3: a popular hashtag dog whistle, especially in the past. I
Speaker 3: would say ten fifteen years, usually by implanting fourteen's and
Speaker 3: usually fourteen eighty eights, with eighty eight meaning hal Hitler
Speaker 3: because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet. This
Speaker 3: became a common Nazi tag. You'd see this in graffiti,
Speaker 3: you see this embedded into into posts, see this in
Speaker 3: like Nazi artwork. And going back to this DHS post,
Speaker 3: we can not only count fourteen words in this tweet,
Speaker 3: this is actually a fourteen eighty eight because two of
Speaker 3: the h's in this in this post are capitalized unusually
Speaker 3: and that means hal hitler wo because hc eighth letter.
Speaker 3: Uh oh, but wait, actually looking at this post again,
Speaker 3: there's actually other words in this tweet that are also
Speaker 3: unusually capitalized.
Speaker 7: But don't worry.
Speaker 4: Don't worry.
Speaker 3: This is still a dog whistle because those other words
Speaker 3: that are capitalized in the first sentence are the letters
Speaker 3: A and D, which if you convert those into numbers,
Speaker 3: are one in four. So it's actually another fourteen.
Speaker 6: Oh wow, we're doing numerology. We're doing jamatria, where we've.
Speaker 5: Become Q and on.
Speaker 3: We're so back. So if you cannot tell by my
Speaker 3: my thinly veiled sarcasm in that last section, I think
Speaker 3: this methodology is a little bit silly. What are we doing?
Speaker 3: What are we doing here? We're converting capitalized letters in
Speaker 3: the first half of a tweet into numbers and then
Speaker 3: rearranging the order of those letters to get a fourteen
Speaker 3: eighty eight. It's literally jermatria and then also counting the
Speaker 3: total words in the whole suite while still disregarding the
Speaker 3: capitalizations in the last four words for another fourteen What
Speaker 3: are we doing? How is this the piece of evidence
Speaker 3: that sinks sinks the Trump administration and finally proves that
Speaker 3: they're fascist. You can just look at all of the
Speaker 3: fascist policies the Trump administration is enacting. Instead of doing
Speaker 3: numerology on tweets, people are thinking, ha ha ha ha,
Speaker 3: I have decoded the secret Nazi message with AHHD one
Speaker 3: eight eight fourteen, nice trigroipers. Meanwhile, you can just look
Speaker 3: at the actual text of the post, you can look
Speaker 3: at the painting. Both of those things have an inherent
Speaker 3: fascist quality. It's literally defending the concept of ethnic genocide
Speaker 3: of manifest destiny. While the administration, the DHS is currently
Speaker 3: furthering as no nationalist policies, they are doing this.
Speaker 6: This is homeland security, right. I don't know if people
Speaker 6: realize that ICE is a part of homeland security, but.
Speaker 5: Like, this is the agency that is literally.
Speaker 8: Rounding people up and sending them to camps. We have
Speaker 8: camps in multiple countries now, but I say they're being
Speaker 8: round up and sent to camps. It's genuinely unclear whether
Speaker 8: what I'm talking about is the fucking concentration.
Speaker 3: Camp in Florida, seacot in nol Salvador.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean I think I think people have now escaped,
Speaker 6: so I can't technically call the Honduras one a death camp.
Speaker 6: But like again, there's any people in south'su Dan They're
Speaker 6: like they're just doing this, like what are.
Speaker 9: We doing here?
Speaker 3: So this episode I want to focus on how people
Speaker 3: are misusing anti fascist education, or I would argue they're
Speaker 3: misusing anti fascist education and kind of missing the forest
Speaker 3: for a cardboard cutout of trees. Yeah, not even trees,
Speaker 3: kind of something that could be a tree if you
Speaker 3: look at it from one angle, but maybe isn't actually
Speaker 3: a real tree. And you don't need to sound like
Speaker 3: a da Vinci Code conspiracy theorist to point out the obvious,
Speaker 3: like dog whistles don't matter if the regular whistle is
Speaker 3: already fascist, if they're just saying things openly and furthermore
Speaker 3: doing things, what purpose does a dog whistle? And this
Speaker 3: is something that we're going to discuss. Are not just
Speaker 3: saying this and closing the episode, We're going to get
Speaker 3: into these Yeah, And I think part of what's happening
Speaker 3: here everybody is so cooked by the paranoid style of
Speaker 3: American politics. Everyone is so eager to decode the hidden
Speaker 3: messages that we're missing what's right in front of us.
Speaker 3: Qwanon has a total victory. Qwanon does not really exist
Speaker 3: in the way that it did in twenty eighteen. That
Speaker 3: the q Andon cult conspiracy theory as like a singular
Speaker 3: cultish project is kind of no more. But q Andon
Speaker 3: has a cultural victory over the entire United States, and
Speaker 3: not just on the right wing, not just on Mega.
Speaker 3: So much of American politics now is litigating who is
Speaker 3: and is not a pedophile, who is and is not
Speaker 3: trafficking children, who can notice which events are staged, who
Speaker 3: can notice hidden codes, who can decode anonymous messages on
Speaker 3: the Internet. And this is what like everything is. And
Speaker 3: like the real turning point I think for the right
Speaker 3: wing was probably the twenty twenty election in like a
Speaker 3: massive fracture from reality in which they think that election
Speaker 3: was legitimately stolen. And obviously there was many events leading
Speaker 3: up to that which contributed to this yeah, and I
Speaker 3: think one of the biggest fracture points for liberals was
Speaker 3: the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, with people creating whole
Speaker 3: new alternate realities that that event was staged. And because
Speaker 3: that door is opened now, I'm seeing such a massive
Speaker 3: flood of things that I would label as blueing on
Speaker 3: conspiracy theories, which is kind of a nonsense term, but
Speaker 3: it gets the point across. And gonna do a whole
Speaker 3: piece on bluing on very soon. I've been collecting blue
Speaker 3: and on conspiracy theories for a while, but I want
Speaker 3: to do something specifically about this fourteen eighty eight and
Speaker 3: like secret codes thing, because it's so evocative of like,
Speaker 3: you know, Q drops, and it's evocative of, you know,
Speaker 3: searching for Masonic codes, something that American conspiracy theorists have
Speaker 3: been doing for generations. And we're to talk about that
Speaker 3: more and read a little bit of an essay on
Speaker 3: that topic after this ad break, and I will let
Speaker 3: you know. There's gonna be two messages in the ad
Speaker 3: break that if you decode, you win a special prize
Speaker 3: at the end of the episode, So make sure you
Speaker 3: listen to every single second of the ad in case
Speaker 3: you miss the code. Okay, we are back speaking of
Speaker 3: the paranoid style in American politics. I want to quote
Speaker 3: a few sections to kind of frame what I'm talking
Speaker 3: about here. This was an essay written in the sixties
Speaker 3: by Richard version hoff Setter Hofstetter Richard Hofstetter, one of
Speaker 3: the first like modern pieces on American conspiracy culture and politics.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna I have three paragraphs here that I selected
Speaker 3: as being relevant to the current topic at hand.
Speaker 5: Quote.
Speaker 3: There is a style of mind that is far from
Speaker 3: new and that is not necessarily right wing. I call
Speaker 3: it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately
Speaker 3: evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy
Speaker 3: that I have in mind. Nothing really prevents a sound
Speaker 3: program or demand from being advocated in the paranoid style.
Speaker 3: Style has more to do with the way in which
Speaker 3: ideas are believed than with the truth or falsity of
Speaker 3: their contact. Unquote. And I like that section specifically because
Speaker 3: fourteen eighty eight is a real dog whistle. We can
Speaker 3: see this used. There's aspects of people are who are
Speaker 3: trying to search for this and trying to search for
Speaker 3: patterns in the communications of unadmittedly fascistic government agency that
Speaker 3: I find like sympathetic, like I can understand, because yeah,
Speaker 3: that is a real dog whistle. I'm going to continue
Speaker 3: the quote quote. The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of
Speaker 3: conspiracy in apocalyptic terms. He traffics in the birth and
Speaker 3: death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of
Speaker 3: human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization.
Speaker 3: He constantly lives at a turning point. Like religious millenarianists,
Speaker 3: he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through
Speaker 3: the last days, and he is sometimes disposed to set
Speaker 3: a date for the apocalypse. As a member of the
Speaker 3: avant garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before
Speaker 3: it is fully obvious to it. As of yet to
Speaker 3: unaroused public, the paranoid is a militant leader. Demand for
Speaker 3: total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals,
Speaker 3: and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure
Speaker 3: constantly heightens the paranoid's sense of frustration. Unquote, hof Setter
Speaker 3: is talking about something that that me and Robert specifically
Speaker 3: have have have discussed a lot on this show before
Speaker 3: how everyone in America wants to have access to secret information.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: Everyone wants to have the exclusive piece of secret intel
Speaker 3: that will solve everything, and like having having that like
Speaker 3: informational exclusivity in a world of information saturation, right of
Speaker 3: a vortex of like meaningless noise. It's it's such a
Speaker 3: romantic idea that that I alone have the info or
Speaker 3: the clue to pieces together and it's my duty to
Speaker 3: inform the masses. It's it's a very romantic notion, and.
Speaker 6: It's also one that is exactly perfectly anti suited for
Speaker 6: the moment we live in, which is actually just a
Speaker 6: moment where everything that is happening is just so clearly literal,
Speaker 6: like it's all out of the omen like what is
Speaker 6: happening with the Trump administration. Okay, In twenty twenty, there
Speaker 6: is a mas massive uprising to attempt to attempt to
Speaker 6: fundamentally change like the structurally racist nature of the United States,
Speaker 6: to deal with its fucking class inequalities, to deal with
Speaker 6: the structural violence of the state. This was reacted to
Speaker 6: by a massive fascist movement that spent half a decade
Speaker 6: gaining power and then finally took power in the form
Speaker 6: of like a bunch of pissed off petite bourgeois fucking
Speaker 6: car dealers and like literally a billionaire real estate mogul
Speaker 6: backed by the richest tech company guy in the world, right,
Speaker 6: and they came together to build fascism. This is the
Speaker 6: most straightforward, like if this is a conception of how
Speaker 6: a fascist takeover works that is so thuddingly literal that
Speaker 6: it defies narrativization because it's just there. There's no subtlety
Speaker 6: to it. They're just saying it. They just want to
Speaker 6: do it, and they're doing it. But everyone is convinced
Speaker 6: that there's like some kind of secret hitting conspiracy and
Speaker 6: it's like, no, they're just doing the thing that they're saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can argue that we have a groper occupied
Speaker 3: government not because of counting words and posts, but because
Speaker 3: of not only who they're bringing on for Doge, but
Speaker 3: literally Ice in DHS as of today, which I'm recording
Speaker 3: this on Wednesday, I think, because this comes out Wednesday night,
Speaker 3: are copying like Patriot Front style tactics of loading up
Speaker 3: ICE agents in U haul style rentable trucks to hunt
Speaker 3: down people to assault and kidnap like they're just copying
Speaker 3: the Patriot Front playbook. Here the ICE director said that
Speaker 3: he wants an Amazon like mass deportation system, calling it
Speaker 3: quote unquote Amazon Prime, but with human beings. They're saying this,
Speaker 3: you can listen to the actual words. I'm going to
Speaker 3: read another quote here from the Paraoid Style of American
Speaker 3: Politics essay quote. A final characteristic of the paranoid style
Speaker 3: is related to the quality of its pedantry. One of
Speaker 3: the impressive things about paranoid literature is the contrast between
Speaker 3: its fantasized conclusions and the almost touching concern with fectuality
Speaker 3: it invariably shows. It produces heroic strivings for evidence to
Speaker 3: prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can
Speaker 3: be believed respectable. Paranoid literature not only starts from certain
Speaker 3: moral commitments that can indeed be justified, but also carefully
Speaker 3: and all but obsessively accumulates quote unquote evidence. The paranoid
Speaker 3: seems to have little expectation for actually convincing a hostile world,
Speaker 3: but he can accumulate evidence in order to protect his
Speaker 3: cherished convictions from it unquote. And I think that gets
Speaker 3: into the psychological mechanisms on why people are doing this
Speaker 3: Nazi code hunting. It's actually a form of self coping,
Speaker 3: looking at the horrific state of the federal government, looking
Speaker 3: at the brazenness in which ICE is operating, and this
Speaker 3: is a self preservation mechanism. Someone on Blue Sky that
Speaker 3: I was talking to this is like arguing, like, ICE
Speaker 3: doesn't need to dog whistle, they have no reason to.
Speaker 10: Like.
Speaker 3: Dog whistling is for trying to like sneakily get racists
Speaker 3: or fascists into power while signaling to a nationalistic base
Speaker 3: that they are like one of them. Right, But these
Speaker 3: guys are already in power. Yeah, and the base already
Speaker 3: knows that they're in power. There's no point in dog whistling.
Speaker 3: They're just using ICE to establish an ethno state. They're
Speaker 3: using explicit ethno state rhetoric. In a post from this
Speaker 3: morning which has one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
Speaker 3: eight nine ten words not fourteen ten words. Wow, DHS
Speaker 3: said quote, serve your country, defend your culture, no undergraduate
Speaker 3: degree required. Defend your culture. It's not about locking up
Speaker 3: criminal migrants. It's about defending a culture from its destruction
Speaker 3: through ethnic demographic shifts. They're not trying to obscure what
Speaker 3: they're doing in the slightest No, And I want.
Speaker 6: To return to something else that the Hofstater said that
Speaker 6: in that second paragraph that you read about how like
Speaker 6: one of the central conceits is that like, you know,
Speaker 6: there's this giant conspiracy that's being unleashed and the American
Speaker 6: public doesn't know anything about it, and like, yeah, you can.
Speaker 6: You know, it is distressing to a large extent, the
Speaker 6: extent to which people just don't know what the government
Speaker 6: is doing. But also like if you look at any
Speaker 6: pulling at all, but anything the people are doing, everyone
Speaker 6: hates it. There isn't like a secret thing that you
Speaker 6: can say to convince people that they're that all these
Speaker 6: people are Nazis, because it's like that's not even a
Speaker 6: particularly useful project because everyone fucking hates them already. Like
Speaker 6: trying to fight this in the realm of sort of
Speaker 6: the accumulation of the evidence of conspiracy instead of in
Speaker 6: the realm of like, hi, i'm your neighbor, you also
Speaker 6: fucking hate this. Let's go fucking like do this shop
Speaker 6: people are doing in la and like follow these fucking
Speaker 6: ice fans around, right, That is stuff that people are doing,
Speaker 6: but it doesn't have the kind of like instant emotional
Speaker 6: gratification and register of yeah, trying to like accumulate hordes
Speaker 6: of secret knowledge, so people do it less even though
Speaker 6: it's less effective.
Speaker 3: In my discussion of this, like online on various cursed
Speaker 3: social media sites, I've gotten a lot of pushback to
Speaker 3: my pushback of these tactics and what I what I
Speaker 3: see as a sort of like abuse of anti fascist education,
Speaker 3: right because people like you know, Robert Evans, myself, you know,
Speaker 3: Molly Conger spent the past eight years trying to actually
Speaker 3: you know, educate people about like Nazi rhetoric, like in
Speaker 3: like Nazi signals and dog whistles, right and as an
Speaker 3: attempt to hopefully prevent them from expanding their power. And
Speaker 3: we may have succeeded in education, but we may have
Speaker 3: failed in the prevention, yeh, of them seizing power. And
Speaker 3: that also makes me kind of question the effectiveness of
Speaker 3: certain tactics. And it's now very odd to see things
Speaker 3: that we you know, argued for visibility around to kind
Speaker 3: of be used in a way is that don't really
Speaker 3: make sense that it's it's kind of like trying to
Speaker 3: tame a monster that you've partially created. And it's so
Speaker 3: frustrating to me because I mean, one person who I
Speaker 3: was lightly arguing about the SOD line was saying, like,
Speaker 3: this is not numerology, and we don't have to be
Speaker 3: just okay with a clear attempt to normalize white nationalist rhetoric.
Speaker 3: And like, first of all, like codes aren't rhetoric. Codes
Speaker 3: are codes, And the textual fascist sentence is the rhetoric.
Speaker 3: What they're actually like saying, which has like proto fascist
Speaker 3: or fascistic aspects, that is the rhetoric and they're doing it.
Speaker 3: Is there somebody out there in twenty twenty five who's
Speaker 3: gonna finally realize that DHS has an agency has fascistic
Speaker 3: underpinnings via a chronically online Twitter user explaining that if
Speaker 3: you count words and turn certain captize letters into numbers,
Speaker 3: it makes a secret Nazi message? Is there one person
Speaker 3: is going to become given to us? No, that's not
Speaker 3: the purpose, And so trying to conceptionize this is like
Speaker 3: we have to we have to make sure we call
Speaker 3: out the use of Nazi rhetoric that doesn't apply to
Speaker 3: this specific thing that we're talking about.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and also like I think you know like I
Speaker 6: think we've sort of kind of just to some extent,
Speaker 6: we've just failed on the normalization front because again, like
Speaker 6: it's the president.
Speaker 5: Of the United States. Yeah, this is the.
Speaker 6: Official account of the Department of Homeland Security. It has
Speaker 6: already become normalized because they have power. The only way
Speaker 6: to denormalize it is not actually to do media critique.
Speaker 6: It's to like actually oppose them. But that's scary, that's scary.
Speaker 3: Report Mary Meia. Do you know what's easy posting on
Speaker 3: X the everything app.
Speaker 6: Yeah, this is how this kind of conspiratorial worldview actually
Speaker 6: empowers the state, because the central conceit of the conspiratorial
Speaker 6: worldview is that there is a nearly all powerful agency
Speaker 6: that controls in apparatus that enables it to basically control
Speaker 6: any events that it wants. Right, this is why stage things,
Speaker 6: This is why I can recollection. This is why it
Speaker 6: can like I don't know, like it can just like
Speaker 6: magically like disappear anyone. It can replace them with anyone.
Speaker 6: It can stage any protest movement it wants to. Right,
Speaker 6: And I think you've seen this a lot in the
Speaker 6: American case, where like I see people who are like
Speaker 6: genuinely well meaning leftists who are convinced that if you
Speaker 6: do anything to resist the American State, you will immediately
Speaker 6: be killed because the American State is all powerful and irresistible.
Speaker 6: And that's just fascist propaganda. Yeah, you're falling victim to
Speaker 6: the Panoptic house. Yeah, but it's fascist propaganda that fits
Speaker 6: into the narrative structure of conspiracy. And because the state
Speaker 6: is dangerous, right and can hurt you, it's very very
Speaker 6: easy to you know, accumulate structures of evidence that support
Speaker 6: the emotional sort of core of this thing that is
Speaker 6: just literally fascist propaganda. People are resisting the state every day, right,
Speaker 6: Why is ICE fucking doing patriot prayer tactics and fucking
Speaker 6: like hiding people in like fucking U hauls to jump
Speaker 6: out and grab people. It's because when they tried to
Speaker 6: fucking we stomp them, right.
Speaker 3: And when they drive around in their cars and you
Speaker 3: can see them through the window, everyone follows them. People
Speaker 3: can follow them around and alert their community members on
Speaker 3: where ICE is.
Speaker 6: Like again, mother motherfuckers and fucking Lulu Levin shit are
Speaker 6: like screaming at ICE agents where they trying to arrest people,
Speaker 6: Like yeah, that's the actual condition we're in.
Speaker 3: And like we get regular people. And that's why I
Speaker 3: find some people who would be you know, self described
Speaker 3: as like anti fascists or self described as leftists almost
Speaker 3: falling into this trap like more so than others. And
Speaker 3: it's a little bit evident of something that like I've
Speaker 3: described as like the forever twenty sixteen, how we're all
Speaker 3: kind of stuck in the mindset of this twenty sixteen,
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen era, and where you have this
Speaker 3: unwillingness to realize that that's not the political situation on
Speaker 3: the ground anymore. We are actually not in Charlottesville. This
Speaker 3: is a different situation. This is twenty twenty five. And
Speaker 3: one other like defense of this, you know, code hunting
Speaker 3: that I've seen people say is, quote, Nazis love playing
Speaker 3: games like this, so it's important that we call it out.
Speaker 3: And another person saying, quote, this is a fun little
Speaker 3: game for their group chats while they kill and disappear people, unquote,
Speaker 3: and like, first of all, this is not a game.
Speaker 3: This is actual people's lives who are being deported, who
Speaker 3: are being sent to foreign prison camps. These are not games.
Speaker 3: And I think that view of like anti fascist like
Speaker 3: education risks repeating like the Okay symbol debacle right where
Speaker 3: dog whistles end up being created or spread further due
Speaker 3: to this gamified version of like easter egg anti fascism.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like the Barber streisand effect where you
Speaker 3: end up almost accidentally making them start doing the thing,
Speaker 3: which Nazis always have that like frustrating impulse because they're
Speaker 3: the little bitch boy ideology. I think as a rat,
Speaker 3: Limit put it one of one of my favorite posters,
Speaker 3: and like, I'm not saying that Nazi signposting should be ignored,
Speaker 3: but I think we should be thought and careful of
Speaker 3: how we do it. To recap the Okay symbol thing
Speaker 3: that was invented as like a fake dog whistle to
Speaker 3: try to trick leftists into convincing like the media and
Speaker 3: had then having the media try to convinceate with people
Speaker 3: that anyone who uses like the okayhand symbol is secretly
Speaker 3: a fascist. And this scheme worked, and eventually the Oka
Speaker 3: symbol became an actual symbol used for fascists to identify
Speaker 3: each other through this ironic detachment because it was being
Speaker 3: talked about in the news as a secret Nazi symbol.
Speaker 3: Even though this whole thing was like invented as like
Speaker 3: a joke online, and I'm afraid I've started to already
Speaker 3: see a similar thing happen with the fourteen words dog whistle,
Speaker 3: with an increased use of the fourteen words and invoking
Speaker 3: the fourteen words among far right accounts, specifically because of
Speaker 3: this whole debacle with the DHS gov account, and there
Speaker 3: a heritage to be proud of, homeland worth defending American
Speaker 3: Progress like ethnonationalist posting. And I truly cannot say one
Speaker 3: way or another if that American Progress post had a
Speaker 3: intentionally embedded fourteen words dog whistle inside, I can't tell
Speaker 3: you that. And the point of trying to make is
Speaker 3: that it kind of doesn't matter, but the way we
Speaker 3: talk about dog whistles does matter. And as frustrating as
Speaker 3: it is that sometimes this feels like we're just living
Speaker 3: in the meme where the Nazi starts shaving his head
Speaker 3: because everyone's calling him a Nazi, that is how Nazis
Speaker 3: works sometimes, And I don't want to play into this
Speaker 3: attention spectacle that they so badly want, But you know
Speaker 3: what I do want right now?
Speaker 5: Is it the process and services that support this podcast.
Speaker 3: Another ad break. That's right, be sure to listen for
Speaker 3: the third and fourth hidden clue in these ads. All right,
Speaker 3: we are back.
Speaker 6: To briefly take a small tangent here. I think there
Speaker 6: was something very important about like the fact that role
Speaker 6: stuck in twenty sixteen, which was sort of like the
Speaker 6: peak of irony right as a social affect. It has
Speaker 6: left us really unprepared for now where everything is just
Speaker 6: sort of like, you know, they're just doing it and
Speaker 6: saying it right, yeah, And it's not this sort of
Speaker 6: like irony pill deniability shit. They just do it and
Speaker 6: people are just not prepared for that.
Speaker 3: They're able to wage this war kind of on both fronts,
Speaker 3: and I think they are still pushing this. I'm going
Speaker 3: to quote from a friend of the pod rat Limit
Speaker 3: one of my favorite mutes quote prediction, the Nazi salute
Speaker 3: will become common within two years. Right wingers will half
Speaker 3: asset for plausible deniability, mimify the backlash, and then start
Speaker 3: fully doing it quote unquote as a joke to quote
Speaker 3: unquote troll the Libs for being hysterical enough to think
Speaker 3: that they were doing it in the first place. Fascism
Speaker 3: is a little bit ideology because it's too timid to
Speaker 3: enact as cruelty until it can frame its cruelty as
Speaker 3: retaliation against others for anticipating it. And this has been
Speaker 3: proven right faster than I think what rat limit predicted.
Speaker 3: There's this current trend on x Everything app where white
Speaker 3: girl aspiring influencers are doing Nazi style salutes and trying
Speaker 3: to mimify the backlash. Several posts going viral of these.
Speaker 3: Of these like aspiring influencers either at the pool or
Speaker 3: cooking or doing laundry or walking your dog while having
Speaker 3: a your arm in a Elon Musk, my heart goes
Speaker 3: out to you Nazi salute style fashion. Yeah, and I
Speaker 3: think focusing media attention on someone like Musk doing a
Speaker 3: Nazi salute makes sense, right, he is like an actual
Speaker 3: person affiliated with the government, but making a whole media
Speaker 3: blits about random blue check Twitter girls. Maybe not so much.
Speaker 3: Maybe that doesn't have any actual value if of random
Speaker 3: like a random Twitter poster from Missouri is trying to
Speaker 3: garner backlash by doing a Hile Hitler salute in their
Speaker 3: kitchen next to their instapot.
Speaker 6: I keep coming back to the thing that I wrote
Speaker 6: about the original loss salute and about the ways that everyone,
Speaker 6: you know, like one of the functions of capitalism is
Speaker 6: that everyone has been trained to experience the world and
Speaker 6: think in the image of action instead of like actually
Speaker 6: existing things.
Speaker 3: That's what I want to talk about next.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Yeah, let's do this, Let's do this. Yeah, go
Speaker 5: for go for it.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: I think part of this focus on like these hidden
Speaker 3: codes and even just like these messages online is a
Speaker 3: liberal opposition to the aesthetics of deportation, but not necessarily
Speaker 3: the act itself. Yeah, it's carrying out deportations in a
Speaker 3: mode that seems not in line with like neoliberal governing.
Speaker 3: And that's I think what a bunch of the backlash
Speaker 3: being focused on the aesthetics of the Trump administration, like
Speaker 3: how they film like god asmr videos that they post
Speaker 3: from the White House account of deportations and use military planes.
Speaker 3: Those are aesthetic differences, and those differences may be important,
Speaker 3: and they're bad, right, I'm not saying these things are good.
Speaker 3: Those things are still bad. Yeah, But when that gets
Speaker 3: focused on slightly more than just the pure acti deportation itself,
Speaker 3: that I think is evident of being trapped in this
Speaker 3: like capitalist realism, being trapped in this like this neoliberal.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the society of the spectacle exactly right.
Speaker 3: Let's like in June, Ice arrested thirty thousand people and
Speaker 3: did eighteen thousand deportations. In May it was twenty four
Speaker 3: thousand arrests in eighteen thousand deportations. Since February, the Trump
Speaker 3: admin has averaged about fourteen thousand and seven hundred deportations
Speaker 3: of month. The highest number of deportations ever was in
Speaker 3: twenty thirteen under Obama, averaging thirty six thousand a month.
Speaker 3: The Biden admin averaged almost thirteen thousand when the Trump
Speaker 3: administration started using military carry planes for deportations back in January,
Speaker 3: mainly as an aesthetic choice that triggered backlash and rejections
Speaker 3: from Mexico and Columbia. Mexico refused to allow US military
Speaker 3: aircraft carrying deported migrants to land in their country. Columbia
Speaker 3: also barred two military planes full of migrants, but later
Speaker 3: caved as Trump threatened unitive tariffs. And you can see
Speaker 3: the same thing about deploying military to the border, something
Speaker 3: that Biden also did but has a larger esthetic backlash
Speaker 3: under Trump. Do you have something you want to say
Speaker 3: on this like image aspect I have some quotes from Fisher,
Speaker 3: and that's kind of all I have left.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean it is very fitting of our styles
Speaker 6: of politics that you're going to Fisher here and I'm
Speaker 6: going to Benjamin.
Speaker 3: Benjamin is quoted in these sections that Fisher is pulling
Speaker 3: from as well.
Speaker 5: Yep, yep.
Speaker 11: So I'll go into the source of I'm not going
Speaker 11: through the fucking cru bullshit like pop marksis buschois running doc.
Speaker 6: But no, like, you know, like one of the things
Speaker 6: that that Walter Benjamin, who people genuinely really should read.
Speaker 6: He's one of the great original theorists of fascism, and
Speaker 6: he fucking died trying to leave the Nazis. And one
Speaker 6: of his arguments was that, you know, one of the
Speaker 6: cores of fascism is the replacement of politics with aesthetics. Right,
Speaker 6: that aesthetics would allow you to you know, feels like,
Speaker 6: feel representation instead of do the action. And this is
Speaker 6: this is an analysis that has been sort of like
Speaker 6: folded through a whole bunch of different analyzes of how
Speaker 6: capitalism functions. Right, this is this is one of the
Speaker 6: three lines of the society a spectacle, and it's this
Speaker 6: real issue that we're dealing with now because again kind
Speaker 6: of in a sense, what has happened to everything, right,
Speaker 6: And you can argue to some extent that like our
Speaker 6: channel being called cool zone media is sort of this
Speaker 6: is that all politics from every side has been completely
Speaker 6: reduced to aesthetics. And completely reducing it to aesthetics allows,
Speaker 6: like allows the fascist mode of politics to simply draw
Speaker 6: in a bunch of people who can sort of just
Speaker 6: now passively experience living through these sort of through the
Speaker 6: sort of collection of images and this emotional aesthetic. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and it also is doing the same thing to us.
Speaker 6: But the thing is they have the fucking state and
Speaker 6: we don't, right, And so if you don't fucking exit,
Speaker 6: if you don't exit the sort of mirror world of
Speaker 6: esthetic of sort of like of fucking living in images, right,
Speaker 6: and you know, go do the actual shit that the
Speaker 6: board is talking about in the society a spectacle where
Speaker 6: you and all your friends formed workers councils and fucking
Speaker 6: start taking all of the shit back from all of
Speaker 6: the people who are taking it from you. You're just
Speaker 6: gonna live in the fascist timare forever.
Speaker 3: I mean, you could look at the union resistance to
Speaker 3: iced importations, specifically in La with restaurant workers that it's
Speaker 3: literally doing that. And like I would argue, like now,
Speaker 3: it's not so much that fascism is politics as aesthetics,
Speaker 3: but especially now, it is an aestheticized politics. And you
Speaker 3: can even see that in so far as its focuses
Speaker 3: on you know, like race and like ethnic purity, like
Speaker 3: blood and soil. That's why they're posting American progress driving
Speaker 3: out the indigenous people with the aryan white lady carrying
Speaker 3: the torch of progress. It is an ascetis sized politics
Speaker 3: on like a very pure level. And again, to quote
Speaker 3: from my goat this antioat quote Mark Fisher in capitalist
Speaker 3: realism quote, ultra authoritarianism and capital are by no means incompatible.
Speaker 3: Internment camps and franchise coffee bars coexist. Neoliberals, the capitalist
Speaker 3: realists par excellence have celebrated the destruction of public space,
Speaker 3: but contrary to their official hopes, there is no withering
Speaker 3: away of the state, only a stripping back of the
Speaker 3: state to its core military and police functions. Unquote. This
Speaker 3: is very similar to something that me and Mia talked
Speaker 3: about right as Trump got elected in terms of the
Speaker 3: state becoming more removed but hostile.
Speaker 6: Yeah, although although I see again, I disagree. It's fisial
Speaker 6: here because the neo liberals understood what they were doing
Speaker 6: to begin with. They were never trying to wither the
Speaker 6: state away. That was just the lies they told the
Speaker 6: fucking basses like su I mean, that's what contrary.
Speaker 5: To their yeah yeah, and it's like you know.
Speaker 3: Quote, such a blight can only be eased by an
Speaker 3: intervention that can be no more anticipated than was the
Speaker 3: onset of the curse in the first place. Action is pointless,
Speaker 3: only senseless. Hope makes sense. Superstition and religion the first
Speaker 3: resorts of the helpless proliferate unquote. This is part of
Speaker 3: what I conceptualize as this code. Hunting is almost a
Speaker 3: form of this hopeless superstition. To continue, quote, the catastrophe
Speaker 3: is neither waiting down the road, nor has it already happened. Rather,
Speaker 3: it is being lived through. There is no punctual moment
Speaker 3: of disaster. The world doesn't end with a bang. It
Speaker 3: winks out, unravels, gradually falls apart. What caused the catastrophe
Speaker 3: to occur? Who knows its cause? Lies long in the past,
Speaker 3: so absolutely detached from the present as to seem like
Speaker 3: the caprice of a maligned being a negative miracle, a
Speaker 3: milidation in which no penance can ameliorate. The turn from
Speaker 3: belief to aesthetics, from engagement to spectatorship is held to
Speaker 3: be one of the virtues of capitalist realism unquote. And yeah,
Speaker 3: that's what me is talking about with Gidebor and society
Speaker 3: of the spectacle. That's a trap that I think a
Speaker 3: lot of people are falling into right now. And though
Speaker 3: it's arguable that living in a liberal contradiction may be
Speaker 3: preferable to fascist authoritarianism, that still as that mean it's
Speaker 3: like good, right, That's not what we're arguing here. Fisher
Speaker 3: then quotes French philosopher A Lawn Badeu quote to justify
Speaker 3: their conservatism. The partisans of the established order cannot really
Speaker 3: call it ideal or wonderful, so instead they've decided to
Speaker 3: say that all of the rest is horrible. Sure, they say,
Speaker 3: we may not live in a condition of perfect goodness,
Speaker 3: but we are lucky that we don't live in a
Speaker 3: condition of evil. Our democracy is not perfect, but it's
Speaker 3: better than bloody dictatorships. Capitalism is unjust, but it's not
Speaker 3: criminal like stalinism. We let millions of Africans die of AIDS,
Speaker 3: but we don't make racist nationalist declarations like Lamosovich. We
Speaker 3: kill Iraqis with our airplanes, but we don't cut their
Speaker 3: throats with machetes like they do in Rwanda. And already
Speaker 3: parts of this are slightly outdated. Oh yeah, because we're
Speaker 3: shit now, Like, but this is the thing is both
Speaker 3: are tragedies where millions of people die, right. One of
Speaker 3: them is through the aesthetics of neoliberalism. The other one
Speaker 3: is through asthetics of racist nationalistic declarations, which the Trump
Speaker 3: administration is currently playing with. That is what they decided
Speaker 3: to do. Yeah, and so the reaction to it is
Speaker 3: on this aesthetic note, not necessarily on this pure actual
Speaker 3: humanistic opposition to deportations as a process that is inhumane
Speaker 3: that we should not allow at all.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I see the logic of this all the fucking time.
Speaker 6: Talking to people, We're like, we'll be like, okay, like
Speaker 6: no deportations, and then you get a whole bunch of
Speaker 6: people being like, wow, but what about criminals just.
Speaker 3: Like some some deportation.
Speaker 5: This is the structural logic of the original like deportation
Speaker 5: blitz from Trump.
Speaker 3: Creating a class of undesirables that you can then always
Speaker 3: add to and press the border on, like what Karl
Speaker 3: Schmidt talks about.
Speaker 5: This is the structural logic of fascism.
Speaker 6: But everyone thinks about deportations this way now, and they're
Speaker 6: mad that Trump is doing it and not Biden.
Speaker 5: But you know, until.
Speaker 6: People actually break through the sort of pure opposition to
Speaker 6: the aesthetics and actually start, you know, having a kind
Speaker 6: of totalizing opposition to the system that is doing this,
Speaker 6: we're just going to be stuck here.
Speaker 3: And this is I think one of the limits of
Speaker 3: using anti fascism as this like aesthetic code hunting, is
Speaker 3: because a few days ago, the THHS posted a Woody
Speaker 3: Guthrie song, his song America the Beautiful, with the DHS
Speaker 3: posting the promise of America is worth protecting the future
Speaker 3: of our homeland is worth defending. Notably, everyone in this
Speaker 3: video is all white people, which this sentiment is the
Speaker 3: same thing as the fourteen words, except it has fifteen words,
Speaker 3: so therefore not a Nazi dog whistle. We're safe, guys,
Speaker 3: we're good. I counted the words. There's fifteen of them,
Speaker 3: so you can disregard what the actual text is saying.
Speaker 3: And I think that is like the prime, the prime
Speaker 3: contradiction in which I am growing increasingly frustrated. So that's
Speaker 3: most of what I have to say about the limits
Speaker 3: of Nazi code hunting and the aesthetics of superstition and
Speaker 3: the paranoid style in American politics. Mia, Do you have
Speaker 3: any any final wise notes?
Speaker 6: The time for Nazi code hunting, if there ever was one,
Speaker 6: has passed.
Speaker 5: It is now time to end the episode right here.
Speaker 3: That's right. It is related for a meeting. Oh and
Speaker 3: if you were able to decode the hidden message in
Speaker 3: the ad break, send the contents of the message via
Speaker 3: email to your local congressman to redeem your prize.
Speaker 7: By bye.
Speaker 9: So, in case you've been living under a rock to
Speaker 9: ring in the new year, the United States regime decided
Speaker 9: to invade Venezuela and kidnap President Maduro and his wife
Speaker 9: Celia Flores to put them on trial in the United States.
Speaker 9: Thus far the time of recording, there are one hundred
Speaker 9: reported killed by America's invasion, and Maadua's vice president, Elsa Rodriguez,
Speaker 9: is now acting president of Venezuela. Amduro has been reigned
Speaker 9: in New York. There's not a lot yet known about
Speaker 9: how things played out precisely, so I don't plan on
Speaker 9: Telvin too deeply into my speculations, but many have been
Speaker 9: drawn attention to the similarities between this recent historical moment
Speaker 9: and another notorious US invasion of a nearby Latin American country, Panama,
Speaker 9: back in nineteen eighty nine. Hello and welcome. Take it
Speaker 9: up in here. I'm Addressage and I'm here with.
Speaker 4: Speak James, a person who's been to Panama. I'm excited
Speaker 4: about this one. I saw some good museums when I
Speaker 4: was in Panama.
Speaker 9: I haven't been to any museums. I did visit Panama
Speaker 9: at one point, nice and years ago. Yeah, this is
Speaker 9: before I was politically conscious.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, Yeah, I was even more politically conscious after
Speaker 4: spending some time at Panama.
Speaker 9: Yeah. I can imagine after reading about what happened. Yeah,
Speaker 9: I could see why you would be.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, like I obviously people we will inform people
Speaker 4: that they're not aware of the history of the US
Speaker 4: and Panama of two episodes, but having just come from
Speaker 4: watching people who across the Darian Gap being detained, imprisoned,
Speaker 4: and deported from Panama with US funding, and then going
Speaker 4: and seeing the museum with all this history the idea
Speaker 4: that they'd come back to full circle to like the
Speaker 4: US effectively using Panama as externalization of its own border,
Speaker 4: like the US said its Homeland Security secretary to the
Speaker 4: inauguration of the current Panamanian president, Like it was really just,
Speaker 4: i know, not great, Like it didn't make me happy.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean there's a long history of that kind
Speaker 9: of collaboration between those governments. Yeah, for that and for worse.
Speaker 9: And so that's really what we're going to look into today,
Speaker 9: you know, the history of US intervention in Panama, so
Speaker 9: we can hopefully understand why comparisons are being drawn to
Speaker 9: the US invasion of Venezuela here in turn twenty six. Yeah,
Speaker 9: So in case you did know to some basic facts
Speaker 9: about Panama, it's a country on the Isthmus connecting Central
Speaker 9: America to South America border in Costa Rica and Columbia.
Speaker 9: That's a population of just over four million people, and
Speaker 9: it is best known, of course for its canal, which
Speaker 9: is a real feat of human engineering with an unfortunate
Speaker 9: tragedy behind it, that links the Pacific Ocean to the
Speaker 9: Atlantic and via the Caribbean Sea. This canal is one
Speaker 9: of the principal reasons why the US has so long
Speaker 9: been invested in the fate of this still Spanish speaking country.
Speaker 9: So you see, if they go all the way back
Speaker 9: to eighteen twenty one, where as a member of the
Speaker 9: newly minted Republic of Grand Columbia, the country gained independence
Speaker 9: from the crumbling Spanish Empire. But after that Republic of
Speaker 9: Grand Columbia dissolved in eighteen thirty one, Panama remained part
Speaker 9: of Columbia until, with US back in, it seceded in
Speaker 9: nineteen oh three. Now, Panama had actually tried to gain
Speaker 9: its independence from Columbia before then, in eighteen thirty, eighteen
Speaker 9: thirty one, and eighteen forty, but among many other reasons,
Speaker 9: despite being part of Columbia, it didn't have any roads
Speaker 9: connecting it to the rest of Columbia due to the
Speaker 9: Darian Gap. Can you tell me a bit more about
Speaker 9: that part of the world, because I know you have
Speaker 9: a lot of intimate knowledge of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely, I'd still no road to go through the Darienage.
Speaker 4: It's extremely mountainous and extremely jungly, and it has some
Speaker 4: very large and powerful rivers. Right. You know, I spent
Speaker 4: time in the Darien myself. When you talk to indigenous
Speaker 4: people who lived in Daddy and now. But I remember
Speaker 4: speaking to a guy, Senor Bonniell was his name, and
Speaker 4: he said to me, like, how could we be unkind
Speaker 4: to immigrants. Many of us are migrants too. We go
Speaker 4: to Panama for education, I mean center from the Panamanian border.
Speaker 4: Patrol slash military are there in small numbers, but like,
Speaker 4: essentially you are outside of the state in this area right.
Speaker 4: Certainly in terms of provision of services, it's very little,
Speaker 4: and that's because largely it is geographically very difficult to access.
Speaker 4: To get there. Just to sort of paint people a picture,
Speaker 4: I took a plane. Then I drove all the way
Speaker 4: to the paved road till that ended. And then I
Speaker 4: hitched a ride on a truck all the way on
Speaker 4: the unpaved road until that ended. And then I hitched
Speaker 4: a ride in a dugout canoe that was literally a
Speaker 4: log that someone hollowed out, and I took that for
Speaker 4: about five hours, and then I walk for a while,
Speaker 4: and that was how I got to where I stayed.
Speaker 4: It's still extremely difficult for people to cross, and I guess,
Speaker 4: like you know, I like to read James Scott. I
Speaker 4: think about the way he thought about the art of
Speaker 4: not being governed, right, and it's still one of those
Speaker 4: areas that it's hard for the state to extract tribute from.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean it's impressive to me that
Speaker 9: despite these challenges, thousands of people managed to traverse through
Speaker 9: the Daring Gap every year. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, people wouldn't do it if they didn't think
Speaker 4: that what they were going to leave behind was worse.
Speaker 4: But it is one of the most harrowing journeys, one
Speaker 4: of the most difficult journeys a person can make. Like
Speaker 4: you're shimming along cliff edges on you know, a few
Speaker 4: inches of rock, and if you fall, you will die.
Speaker 4: You're crossing a river, a river that was chest high
Speaker 4: for me, I'm six foot three, and people are carrying toddlers, babies.
Speaker 4: Someone gave birth in the jungle while I was there.
Speaker 4: It's unimaginable. People die every day. I saw that myself.
Speaker 4: It's incredibly dangerous and difficult journey, but people take it
Speaker 4: because they want a better chance at life.
Speaker 9: Right, Yeah, yeah, And so you could imagine if it's
Speaker 9: so difficult differs even now, how much more difficult it
Speaker 9: would have been back then, with even less infrastructure between
Speaker 9: the regions of Panama and Columbia. Yeah, so at that
Speaker 9: point in time, Panama was mainly conducting trade, which was
Speaker 9: a state at the time was mean in conducting trade
Speaker 9: with its Caribbean neighbors rather than Columbia's capital. You know,
Speaker 9: they were very geographically isolated from the rest of Columbia.
Speaker 9: But despite that fact, Panama only succeeded in gain its
Speaker 9: independence with the help of the US as American ambitions
Speaker 9: and local elite ambitions aligned for development of the canal. Now,
Speaker 9: all this and what follows was recommented in Emperors and Jungle,
Speaker 9: The Hidden History of the US and Panama by John
Speaker 9: Lindsay Poland, which I picked up my library and it
Speaker 9: was really a fantastic book that served as my main
Speaker 9: resource for this research. In NCA Poland's words, Panama was
Speaker 9: a longstanding laboratory of US imperial power and some of
Speaker 9: the things I found out about in this book I
Speaker 9: never heard of anywhere, and it really shook me that
Speaker 9: these kinds of things were happening, you know, at this
Speaker 9: crossroads of continents.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 9: So I've been saying the US involvement in the country
Speaker 9: even preceded its independence, with eleven American interventions taking place
Speaker 9: in just the pre independent state of Panama between eighteen
Speaker 9: fifty six and nineteen oh two, and irrationale for bringing
Speaker 9: in the military usually involved, you know, claims of protecting
Speaker 9: American interests, particularly during insurrectionary or revolutionary activity in the country.
Speaker 9: And of course, because it's a mara, they always had
Speaker 9: a heavily racialized approach to the region. You know, they
Speaker 9: saw the Colombian army as ignorant mongrels, and they saw
Speaker 9: the Panama Isma's civilians as savage and animal like, especially
Speaker 9: as Americans and American capital were involved in the construction
Speaker 9: of the Panama Canal railway, which was built between eighteen
Speaker 9: fifty and eighteen fifty five to facility the Californian gold Rush.
Speaker 9: You see America as iron Panama for a long time
Speaker 9: because they saw it as an appealance side for a
Speaker 9: trans Isthmus Canal, the next big project in international trade.
Speaker 9: And aside from their direct interventions, they were signed in
Speaker 9: treaties concerning Panama even before Panama was independent, while I
Speaker 9: was expanding in its territory through the conquest of Mexico,
Speaker 9: the US signed the Bidlack Treaty with Colombia in eighteen
Speaker 9: forty six to guarantee Colombian control over Panama in exchange
Speaker 9: for free access to any future canal. As we all know,
Speaker 9: a MA always keeps its promises. So only four years later,
Speaker 9: in eighteen fifty, the US and England assigned the Clayton
Speaker 9: Bulward Treaty, which ensured their joint cooperation in any future canal.
Speaker 9: You know, not, as I said, the US and England
Speaker 9: signed that treaty. Yeah, because Columbia was not involved at all.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Are you familiar with the Scottish attempt to colonize
Speaker 4: the Dadian?
Speaker 9: No, that didn't come up. I mean I've missed that.
Speaker 4: I think it's previous to the dates you're covering that
Speaker 4: Scotland attempted to colonize the Daddi and in they think
Speaker 4: called the Darien scheme. Basically, much of the Scottish bourgeoisie
Speaker 4: pulled their capital to do this, right, the idea that
Speaker 4: there would be a Scottish colony. Obviously, at that time,
Speaker 4: colonialism was seen as the route to national security and
Speaker 4: independence prestige. Yeah, and then you know, they wanted to
Speaker 4: keep up with the English who were busy colonizing and
Speaker 4: pillaging much of the world, so they attempt to set
Speaker 4: up a colony in one of the least hospitable places
Speaker 4: on the planet unsuccessfully. You know, people got malaria. When
Speaker 4: I was there, I was told that every type of
Speaker 4: malaria is present in the gap just because you have
Speaker 4: such a global population of people, right that the Mosquitoes
Speaker 4: are buying someone from East Africa, then they're buying you,
Speaker 4: then they buying someone from West Africa, South America, Nepal.
Speaker 4: You know that the Mosquitos is getting a global buffet.
Speaker 4: So back then obviously still malaria.
Speaker 9: It's like a mosquito convention.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like a mosquito vector. Disease got
Speaker 4: old mine the Scottish boards was he significantly lost to
Speaker 4: such an extent that like we can point to this
Speaker 4: scheme of one of the reasons that Scotland continues to
Speaker 4: be colonized by England right down. Yeah, Yeah, it's wild.
Speaker 4: I think you will probably learn about it now if
Speaker 4: you're going to school, if you're going to school in
Speaker 4: Scotland or you've been to school in Scotland, you learned
Speaker 4: about it. I'd love to hear from you. But yeah,
Speaker 4: the Darien scheme was this kind of idea of a
Speaker 4: Scottish empire that ended up completely backfiring.
Speaker 9: Yeah. I just looked it up as the late sixteen nineties. Yeah,
Speaker 9: to set up a colony called New Caledonia. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 9: and that was their first attempt I set it up
Speaker 9: a colony. I mean, way to pick them.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, right, like throw a dark at the map
Speaker 4: and you couldn't land to the place, so it's less
Speaker 4: like Scotland. It does rain a lot other than that.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, as like trying to set up your
Speaker 9: first colony in like Antarctica or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, Like I don't know how whether they just
Speaker 4: felt like it looks like no one else is hanging
Speaker 4: around there, and obviously at that point in time, they
Speaker 4: weren't concerned with indigenous people, right, like yeah, they felt
Speaker 4: that there was no other state projecting its force there,
Speaker 4: or like what, I don't understand how they all because
Speaker 4: they I think I read somewhere that there have been
Speaker 4: several attempts to build a canal through the day in
Speaker 4: I think it's it's actually slightly narrower there. So whether
Speaker 4: they were early in that and just sor right, well,
Speaker 4: we'll establish ourselves here and then as we'll build a
Speaker 4: canal a bit later.
Speaker 9: Yeah, well, of course it didn't quite work out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it didn't go that way for them, sadly.
Speaker 9: So the US and England they signed the Treaty to
Speaker 9: Ensure Joint Cooperation in the Future Canal. And then during
Speaker 9: the American Civil War, President Iram Lincoln advanced the proposal
Speaker 9: to establish a colony of emancipated and deported black Americans
Speaker 9: in southwestern Panama because you know, he didn't believe black
Speaker 9: and white people could live together, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this proposal was.
Speaker 9: Scrapped due to Colombian, Central American and Black American opposition.
Speaker 9: But it's interesting to think about there being almost a
Speaker 9: Liberia in the western hemisphere, you know, because the Liberian
Speaker 9: project was an attempt are doing similarly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's wild to think about.
Speaker 9: And so after quite a few of their pre Panamanian
Speaker 9: independence military interventions, it's quite a mouthful, thank you, past Andrew.
Speaker 9: The US was hitching to build the canal that they
Speaker 9: always wanted. They were feeding for a gateway to the Pacific,
Speaker 9: and they did not like that when France tried to
Speaker 9: build their own canal through Panama from eighteen seventy nine,
Speaker 9: to eighteen eighty nine, but they didn't have, you know,
Speaker 9: enough of us saying it, because why the hell is
Speaker 9: France in America's backyard as far as they're considered. Yeah, right,
Speaker 9: The Monero doctrine was established in eighteen twenty three, so
Speaker 9: it had to be activated then and there. And of
Speaker 9: course they didn't just want a canal for mercantile or
Speaker 9: geopolitical reasons. Remember they had just conquered several states in
Speaker 9: Mexico and reached the Pacific Sea to shine and sea,
Speaker 9: as they like to say. Unluckily for them, they were
Speaker 9: still quite a lot of Native Americans and Mexicans still
Speaker 9: living in the western plains and West coast. Plus you
Speaker 9: had a lot of Asian immigration to the West coast
Speaker 9: as well, and the leaders of Americas didn't exactly appreciate that.
Speaker 9: You know, they wanted northern European stock to populate the
Speaker 9: western coast, unpolluted by having to share a railroad with
Speaker 9: black and brown Panamanians. Yea, So they have to get
Speaker 9: a canal so the whites don't have to step foot
Speaker 9: off their boats and mingle with the locals, you know,
Speaker 9: because then they could stay on their boats, they could
Speaker 9: go through they never have to breathe the same air
Speaker 9: as the local inhabitants of Panama. And so after wrapping
Speaker 9: up their war with Spain, having newly minted colonies in
Speaker 9: the Philippines, Guam, and Hawaii, they really really wanted a
Speaker 9: maritime shortcut to continue their great empire building ambihops because
Speaker 9: they see having to spend sixty seven days to reach
Speaker 9: from San Francisco to Cuba. They didn't like that, you know,
Speaker 9: going all the way around the Patagonian hu and all that.
Speaker 9: That's not fun. So the US created an opportunity for itself.
Speaker 9: After Columbia Civil War between the Liberals and the Conservatives
Speaker 9: that you know raged between eighteen ninety nine to nineteen two.
Speaker 9: Here's what happened. In Panama City. Most of the white
Speaker 9: elites tried to stay out to the conflict, but in
Speaker 9: the rural interior there was a different story as the
Speaker 9: liberals found support among the mestizo peasants. In Panama, the
Speaker 9: civil war was less focused on parties whether you're a
Speaker 9: liberal or conservative. It started off like that, but became
Speaker 9: a mass uprising against the distant conservative government in Bogota.
Speaker 9: So after several major battles, liberal forces had taken control
Speaker 9: of almost all of Panama's interior, and that's when the
Speaker 9: US society started in. They used the bid Lactreaty of
Speaker 9: eighteen forty six as justification to bring in their military
Speaker 9: to protect and said across Panama, in particular the real Way. Thus,
Speaker 9: the liberals were unable to finish their victory and had
Speaker 9: to sign a peace agreement. And in the following months,
Speaker 9: liberal forces regrouped and once again took control of nearly
Speaker 9: all of Panama except Cologne and Panama City, and once
Speaker 9: again the US got involved and blocked Liberal entry into
Speaker 9: those cities. The US made it impossible for the liberals
Speaker 9: to win, so they surrendered and signed one last peachtreat
Speaker 9: in November nineteen o two. And in the civil war
Speaker 9: and all that for what? Because more than sixty eight
Speaker 9: percent of Panama's cattle was wiped out, agriculture had collapsed.
Speaker 9: The armies on both sides committieder atrocities. You know, thousands
Speaker 9: of civilians fled into the mountains. Entire towns were emptied
Speaker 9: as people were escaping conscription and violence. Have you ever
Speaker 9: read the book One Hundred Years of Solitude?
Speaker 4: When I was like in just out of high school.
Speaker 4: Did Yeah, Okay, I read it.
Speaker 9: Last year, so when I was doing this research, it
Speaker 9: was like top of my mind. Yeah, because you know,
Speaker 9: part of that book covers that Columbia and Civil War.
Speaker 4: I should read it again.
Speaker 9: It was pretty good. I had some very weird stuff.
Speaker 4: It was pretty good, right, yeah, Yeah, it's good to
Speaker 4: I'm trying to read more fiction right now. It helps me.
Speaker 9: Yeah. Even though it was fiction, I think it pains
Speaker 9: a really grim picture of that Civil war.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 9: And so I could have in reading this, I could
Speaker 9: have pictured what was taking place because the book was
Speaker 9: over it. Yeah, you know, rural Panama was absolutely devastated,
Speaker 9: and yet the transit zone was of course untouched, the
Speaker 9: railroad and the port. The commerce captain going and with
Speaker 9: the liberal peasantry defeated, but the conservatives in the US,
Speaker 9: the conservative elites in Panama City were best positioned and
Speaker 9: negotiate for their own ambitions. With the war over, President
Speaker 9: Roosevelt was looking to finally negotiate for Panama canal rights.
Speaker 9: And if you couldn't get a deal with the French
Speaker 9: canal company there was ready to sell or the governments
Speaker 9: of Colombia. He had permission from Congress to pursue a
Speaker 9: canal in Nicaragua instead. Interesting the French company was definitely
Speaker 9: ready to offload their investment, because you know, there were
Speaker 9: multiple attempts to set up a canal. The French had
Speaker 9: their attempt and they were ready to get it off
Speaker 9: of their hands, right. But the Colombian government rejected America's
Speaker 9: hey Hran Treaty, which offered what they considered an inadequate
Speaker 9: ten million dollars in exchange for sweeping canal rights. So
Speaker 9: America made them an offer they couldn't refuse. What happened
Speaker 9: next was that Roosevelt and a French share holder named
Speaker 9: Philippe Punao Veria struck up a little side deal of
Speaker 9: their own, and the US Navy got orders to prevent
Speaker 9: Colombia from crushing any uprising on the Isthmus. Would their
Speaker 9: circumstances being what they were on the ground in Panama
Speaker 9: without Columbia intervention due to the US blockade, it didn't
Speaker 9: take long for Panamanian forces to declare independence. Finally, in
Speaker 9: nineteen oh three. The Big Black Treaty the US had
Speaker 9: signed with Columbia was supposed to protect Columbia's control over
Speaker 9: Panama and ensure free transit throughout the Isthmus and the
Speaker 9: US did basically the complete opposite. You know, that's what
Speaker 9: makes them such an excellent partner on the global stage.
Speaker 9: You can always count on them to uphold, you know,
Speaker 9: the highest standards of moral and and diplomatic decency. So
Speaker 9: before you know it, America was recognizing a newly independent
Speaker 9: Panama and drafting up a treaty with bunal Veria, who
Speaker 9: the new Panama government had given permission to negotiate a deal.
Speaker 9: But I'm thinking that they may not have known that
Speaker 9: bunal Veria had already practically signed them away. They didn't
Speaker 9: like the fact that they would behold on to a
Speaker 9: treaty that no Panamanian had signed. But if the US
Speaker 9: made sure that the Panamanian government understood that if they
Speaker 9: didn't like the treaty, the Navy could always just let
Speaker 9: the Columbian Army come in to lift their independence in
Speaker 9: the bud. You know, it's like, oh, you don't like,
Speaker 9: who's going at us? Well, you know, it'd be a
Speaker 9: real shame if the Columbia Navy came back in to
Speaker 9: the picture. So the New Canal Treaty gave the US
Speaker 9: far more than they had even expected to get from
Speaker 9: the deal. They claimed permanent control over a ten mile
Speaker 9: wide canal zone, inherited the French canal works and the railroad,
Speaker 9: and secured the right to seize land anywhere in Panama
Speaker 9: if they deemed it necessary for the canal's defense, operation
Speaker 9: or sanitation and trust and believe they would use that
Speaker 9: privilege to seize land at nineteen different times between nineteen
Speaker 9: o eight and nineteen thirty one, cumulatively hundreds of square
Speaker 9: miles thousands of acres, often without notice or compensation, and
Speaker 9: always justified as necessary for canal defense. The canal's zone
Speaker 9: was removed from Panamanian courts all together, and the US
Speaker 9: was authorized to police Panama City and Cologne and build
Speaker 9: military garrisons. Panama's new constitution made it an effective US protectorate.
Speaker 9: Article one hundred and thirty six explicitly allowed the United
Speaker 9: States to intervene militarily anywhere in Panama to restore public
Speaker 9: peace and constitutional order. Civilization, as Roosevelt argued, was the
Speaker 9: urgent mandate for all these actions toward building the Canal.
Speaker 9: Jesus construction officially began in nineteen oh four in a
Speaker 9: Panama exhausted by civil war, quanted by the French failure,
Speaker 9: and politically dependent on Washington. So he said, you had
Speaker 9: been to the canal zone and the museums and stuff,
Speaker 9: Can you tell me a bit about what you know
Speaker 9: about the canal's construction.
Speaker 4: They were very good at this part. I remember this
Speaker 4: part of very well. They had accounts from the workers,
Speaker 4: you know, the people who were in some cases like
Speaker 4: essentially forced labor. Right, they had accounts of what their
Speaker 4: lives were like. They had like sort of the ephemera
Speaker 4: of their lives, which is always in like you know,
Speaker 4: like in museums. It helps to create a picture.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 4: They're like the sort of the things that they were fed,
Speaker 4: the shitty shoes that they got, given pictures of the
Speaker 4: sleeping situations, and accounts from doctors. Right, because a lot
Speaker 4: of people became unwell because they were exposed to all
Speaker 4: these conditions and diseases that they hadn't been exposed to before.
Speaker 4: So they did a good job. I felt like painting
Speaker 4: how horrendous life was for people who were digging out
Speaker 4: the panamaketal. Yeah, they had a two tier system, right,
Speaker 4: I think it was the gold ticket. Yes, Yeah, they
Speaker 4: were explaining how life was so much more difficult the
Speaker 4: lower down that system you found yourself.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah, the whole construction of this feat of engineer and
Speaker 9: was you know rightfe would suffering Yeah, and that's suffering
Speaker 9: often came like in a very racialized way. Yes, as
Speaker 9: you mentioned, there was a gold role and a silver role.
Speaker 5: That's it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 9: So even prior to canal construction, Panama is already a
Speaker 9: very racially divided society. You had the white elites in
Speaker 9: the capital, you had the mestizo peasants, you had poor
Speaker 9: black and Mulatto communities, and you also the indigenous peoples
Speaker 9: who were not even counted in official census counts.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 9: And among the canal workforce in particular, it was quite
Speaker 9: a lot of black laborers who were either descendants of
Speaker 9: people emancipated from slavery in eighteen fifty two or migrants
Speaker 9: from the British Caribbean who drawned to Panama during the
Speaker 9: railroad construction project and the French canal construction project. And
Speaker 9: so the US took this social landscape and made it
Speaker 9: worse by introducing racial hierarchy with the gold role in
Speaker 9: silver rule that determined your pay, your housing, your medical care,
Speaker 9: and even how you were buried. You know, the American workers,
Speaker 9: the white American workers in the canalskan instruction, occupied the
Speaker 9: gold role and the Caribbean laborers were pushed onto the
Speaker 9: silver role. They had to perform the most dangerous work
Speaker 9: under the worst conditions, and so during the US construction
Speaker 9: phase alone, roughly fifty six hundred workers died from disease
Speaker 9: and accidents, and the overwhelming majority were the Caribbean laborers. Sadly,
Speaker 9: their deaths were treated as expendable losses. Is an engineering
Speaker 9: project framed as a triumph of civilization. The Canal construction
Speaker 9: finally concluded in nineteen fourteen, and so after its independence,
Speaker 9: During the Canal construction and afterwards, Panama faced eight further
Speaker 9: US military interventions, including the famous ninety eighty nine invasion,
Speaker 9: which we'll get to in the next episode. But take
Speaker 9: a guess as to what their rationale was for these interventions.
Speaker 4: They protecting a business interest, US capital.
Speaker 9: Ding ning ning, ning ning, protecting US citizens and property,
Speaker 9: maintaining control and stability, preserving US strategic and political interests,
Speaker 9: all that usual stuff. Yeah, particularly whenever Panamanians were struggling
Speaker 9: for their rights against the elites. The US would get involved. Yeah,
Speaker 9: the U s supervised elections, they oversaw the police force,
Speaker 9: they vetoed public spending whenever it wanted, and the US
Speaker 9: bases lined the canal with thousands of troops explicitly for
Speaker 9: the purpose of maintaining quiet and protecting property in Panama.
Speaker 9: Panama's whole political history in the twentieth century was basically
Speaker 9: shaped and dictated by US interests. In nineteen oh four,
Speaker 9: when general Isteban Whereas a threatened revolt, the US officials
Speaker 9: pressured Panama's president to fire him and dissolve the army entirety.
Speaker 9: In nineteen ten, when Vice President Carlos Mendoza, a liberal
Speaker 9: mulatto married to a black woman, seemed likely to win
Speaker 9: the presidency, the US Chief of Mission, Richard marsh threatened
Speaker 9: occupation if he were elected, so Mendoza withdrew his candidacy.
Speaker 9: During World War One, the garrison commander used occupation imposed
Speaker 9: moral reforms by shutting down saloons and prostitution and publicly
Speaker 9: denouncing Panamanian cities as dens of vice and in the countryside,
Speaker 9: ostensibly to protect American landowners, US troops drunkenly abused, stole,
Speaker 9: and burned homes for two whole years until they finally withdrew,
Speaker 9: and in nineteen twenty five, the US came into Panama
Speaker 9: City to crush a Renter strike. Panama also became a
Speaker 9: regional launch part for the US Empire. The Marines were
Speaker 9: stationed there, whore repeatedly deployed in Nicaragua, Mexico, and beyond.
Speaker 9: For the US Empire, the costs could always be externalized
Speaker 9: to Panama. Panama was an imperial laboratory for the US
Speaker 9: to test ideas and weapons they felt were risky to
Speaker 9: test at home. During World War Two, they tested various
Speaker 9: chemical weapons in Panama on nature and people, with minimal
Speaker 9: disclosure and almost no regard for long term environmental and
Speaker 9: human consequences.
Speaker 4: Esis.
Speaker 9: They also left behind unexploded Venetians.
Speaker 4: That is horrible.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it gets worse, Okay, great. In the nineteen fifties
Speaker 9: and sixties, US officials seriously proposed using nuclear explosions, Yeah,
Speaker 9: to carve a new sea level canal through Panama. So
Speaker 9: you've heard about this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, New Kingda Darien was there. One of the little
Speaker 4: strategies that they've thought about. I think they thought about
Speaker 4: again when the bisentennial of the United States that have
Speaker 4: been nineteen seventy six. One of the things they wanted
Speaker 4: to do is complete the Pan American Highway. Have it
Speaker 4: run all the way up from the northern tip of Alaska.
Speaker 4: I guess so, I think goes from Canada Actueen all
Speaker 4: the way down to Argentina. I think, geta can we
Speaker 4: can we just nuke the Darien and we'll just join
Speaker 4: them up and they'll be fine.
Speaker 9: Yeah. Yeah, they were really gung who about nukes. Yeah,
Speaker 9: at that point in time in history, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 9: The Panama Canal In case you don't know those of
Speaker 9: your listeners at home, the Panama Canal is not a
Speaker 9: sea level canal. It actually it climbs a mountain LOOKI
Speaker 9: you know. So it has several steps where it's like
Speaker 9: the water is released and there's like a floated mechanism,
Speaker 9: and it's it's kind of inconvenient just there's traffic backed
Speaker 9: up of boats waiting for their chance to get into
Speaker 9: the canal. And so the idea of sea level canal is,
Speaker 9: you know, so much more convenient if you didn't have
Speaker 9: to wait for all those mechanisms to you know, drain
Speaker 9: and fill and all those different things. Yeah, but nuke
Speaker 9: in the canal to create a new sea level canal's
Speaker 9: really not the best idea.
Speaker 4: No, Yeah, it's wild to think about.
Speaker 5: Then.
Speaker 4: I guess they got nukes relatively recently. They were like, okay,
Speaker 4: what can we do with these? Like yeah, yeah, what
Speaker 4: else can we Now you'll see when you're in Panama City,
Speaker 4: you see boats like sort of hanging out around the canal. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's waiting to enter those those locks.
Speaker 9: And I mean, obviously the consequences of a nuclearicate is
Speaker 9: a canal be disastrous. Entire regions that have been irradiated,
Speaker 9: populations would have been displaced, ecosystems de altered. And yet
Speaker 9: these seriously, with a straight peace consider this plant. Yeah,
Speaker 9: because you know who cares about the people outside the
Speaker 9: Imperial center?
Speaker 4: Sure? Yeah, Like what the Embra people and the Guna
Speaker 4: people who live down there, Like what do they matter
Speaker 4: to them?
Speaker 9: Right?
Speaker 4: And this is after they've dropped a nuke. It's not
Speaker 4: like they're like postulating here, like.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's not that they don't know what nukes do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they've seen this happen in Japan. Right, We're like
Speaker 4: a decade since they know that it's still killing people.
Speaker 9: Yeah, there are places and canals and structures that have
Speaker 9: been irrigated, caves style and stuff using dynamite, you know,
Speaker 9: tn T you know, basic communitions and explosive devices. And
Speaker 9: that's one thing, right, I don't know what it's like
Speaker 9: more of that. It's like, let's just school as big
Speaker 9: as we kind of go.
Speaker 4: Right, it's not understanding the fundamental difference, right, Like nuclear
Speaker 4: blast is of an entirely different nature too.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean it could have very easily end up
Speaker 9: affect in the US as well, right, Yeah, you know,
Speaker 9: the occurrents could have carried if they fall out into
Speaker 9: the southern US, into the West coast. You know, it's
Speaker 9: yea into other countries in the region as well. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I visited one of the places that the United States
Speaker 4: nuked after World War Two, right in the Republic of
Speaker 4: the Marshall Islands, and they completely failed to account for
Speaker 4: even prevailing winds, right, like the fallout directly engulfed small
Speaker 4: Japanese fishing vessel. That was just happened to be because
Speaker 4: I didn't tell anyone, right, and then they just dropped
Speaker 4: a nuclear boy told some people to see they evacuated.
Speaker 4: People are living on the island, but they dropped a
Speaker 4: nuclear barn and then we're just like, oh, wow, it's
Speaker 4: blown off over there. Did the result in people being
Speaker 4: severely irradiated?
Speaker 9: You know, it's like unch of scientists, you know, then
Speaker 9: their next and furiously scribbled on some notes.
Speaker 4: Fascinating people have attempted to get back to their island
Speaker 4: because at one point they were told that they could
Speaker 4: and they absolutely like it wasn't safe for them. But
Speaker 4: like the the coconuts and the crabs and the fish
Speaker 4: and the reefs are still irradiated, They're still not safe
Speaker 4: for them. People still have one of the highest rates
Speaker 4: of still birth in the world. Yeah, the stories they
Speaker 4: tell about miscarrying pregnancies are heartbreaking. Yeah, because they didn't
Speaker 4: know what was going on, right.
Speaker 9: The human and environmental and that it's awful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's terrible.
Speaker 9: And so it took resistance from Panamanians, from scientists, and
Speaker 9: from a growing global environmental movement to put an end
Speaker 9: to this reborsal. Now, as is the kneeature of interventions,
Speaker 9: after a certain point, they started weighan because you know,
Speaker 9: the intervening power has created this setup that they find preferential,
Speaker 9: you know, so while they're setting up they may have
Speaker 9: to intervene on repeated occasions, but once they get to
Speaker 9: a certain point where their control over that area is crystallized,
Speaker 9: they don't have to intervene as explicitly as often, so
Speaker 9: direct US interventions waned as time went on, but the
Speaker 9: tensions continue to build in Panama for independence from the US,
Speaker 9: and these tensions flared in January nineteen sixty four, which
Speaker 9: would get the ball rolling for a new treaty between
Speaker 9: the countries that will replaced the previous hay Banal for
Speaker 9: the year treaty. So, since that nineteen oh three treaty,
Speaker 9: Panamanians want to get revisited and revised. Remember, they didn't
Speaker 9: want to agree to it in the first place. They
Speaker 9: were kind of coerced into its terms. Both the US's
Speaker 9: proposal to create a new sea that canal without nukes,
Speaker 9: which would require cooperation with the Paraminians there would be
Speaker 9: forced to say he was Paramian demands into consideration, and
Speaker 9: so as a concession to Panamanian nationalism, US President John F.
Speaker 9: Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson developed a policy
Speaker 9: that would fly the Panamanian flag alongside the American flag
Speaker 9: ou La la in certain parts of the Canal Zone,
Speaker 9: and then JFK was assassinated in November nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 9: and then in January of the following year, Balboa High School,
Speaker 9: which was an American school in the Canal Zone, refused
Speaker 9: to fly either flag. So on January ninth, nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 9: American students decided to raise the American flag for freedom
Speaker 9: or whatever, and Paramanian students from Panama's National Institute marched
Speaker 9: to the school to raise their own flag, and then
Speaker 9: there's a scuffle, and then the Panamanian flag is torn,
Speaker 9: and then that scuffle becomes a riot, where twenty four
Speaker 9: Panamian civilians and four US soldiers were killed in the fighting. Yeah,
Speaker 9: and hundreds of Pamelian civilians were injured by the American crackdown.
Speaker 4: That Panamanian flag is in the museum, the Panama cat
Speaker 4: Now Museum.
Speaker 9: The one that got torn.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Oh, that's impressive. I have to go and see that then. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really it's a good museum.
Speaker 9: So that's a real big piece of history because that
Speaker 9: whole riot led to everything else.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, that is like it's a pivotal like artifact of
Speaker 4: their national history.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's like for want of a nil the horse
Speaker 9: was lost. It's like for want of a ripped flag. Yeah,
Speaker 9: Panamanian independence was lost. Yeah, yeah, obviously that's an atal
Speaker 9: allowance to that, but it's such a unique artifact of history.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's cool to be like this pivotal moment, like
Speaker 4: this thing was present.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Sometimes when I'm in Spain, I'll kick around antiques markets
Speaker 4: and find like, like a newspaper to see that this
Speaker 4: newspaper was on the street the same day, right that
Speaker 4: the Spanish military was defeated in Barcelona. You can see
Speaker 4: sometimes people like sheltering behind newspaper stands, right, it's a
Speaker 4: exchange fire with the soldiers and things like, oh, this
Speaker 4: thing was present at this pivotal moment.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, it was there for that piece of history
Speaker 9: that more months in time. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I like to acquire those things when I when I can.
Speaker 9: Something I would like to acquire though, is a bit
Speaker 9: of rubble or something from one of the other actions
Speaker 9: that day. The protesters also burned several American buildings, including
Speaker 9: entire plans, airlines, and the US Information Agency. I'm wondering
Speaker 9: if that piece of history is also in the museum.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think those buildings are still around, like some
Speaker 4: or some of those canals, some of the Canal company
Speaker 4: buildings are still around because you can you can see
Speaker 4: them when you're driving around.
Speaker 9: And so, in response to that whole riot situation, the
Speaker 9: Panamanian President Robert docci Abi cut diplomatic relations with the
Speaker 9: US and demanded a renegotiation of the treaty. A few
Speaker 9: months later, in April nineteen sixty four, diplomatic ties were
Speaker 9: re established in an effort to resolve the conflict between
Speaker 9: the countries. These negotiations would be ongoing for years afterwards.
Speaker 9: In fact, one of the reasons the idea of the
Speaker 9: nuclear excavation was considered in the first place was that
Speaker 9: it didn't require as much Paramanian labor cooperation as a
Speaker 9: typical canal project would, and because tensions were so tense
Speaker 9: that Panama, they were like, let's circumvent them and just
Speaker 9: just opening up ourselves. But when the nuclear canal project collapsed,
Speaker 9: and with mountain pressure from the Paramanians, the stage was
Speaker 9: set for the US to pull back its more direct
Speaker 9: and open medland in the country, at least for the while.
Speaker 9: JFK's vice president Lyndon Johnson won the presidency in November
Speaker 9: nineteen sixty four, and as the annalyustry of the riots approached,
Speaker 9: he resolved to figure out that new treaty, explore c
Speaker 9: level canal preparations, and settle things with the contingency of
Speaker 9: Americans in office sought to preserve America's perpetual ownership of
Speaker 9: the canals, including the famous white supremacist art conservative Strom Trummer.
Speaker 9: If you know anything about trum Thum, and you know
Speaker 9: that like fok found in kitchen, you know the fact
Speaker 9: that this guy was against Panaminians having control over the canal.
Speaker 9: It's not surprised. And this is the guy who set
Speaker 9: a country record for philibustering against the Civil Rights Act.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, I think it was beaten recently by Corey Booker,
Speaker 4: who set a world record for filibustering about not very much.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I think I could about that.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 4: He talked about Don Trump for a while and then
Speaker 4: he finished up and went and voted for a bunch
Speaker 4: of Trump appointees.
Speaker 9: It's like the Democratic Party response is like, you stop that,
Speaker 9: you meani, and then they just do whatever. Yeah, whatever
Speaker 9: Trump wants anyway.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're not allowed to do you know, you're not
Speaker 4: allowed to do that.
Speaker 9: That's against the rules.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they summoned the Reddit moderators, is the democratic response.
Speaker 4: But yeah, if there was a cause during the time
Speaker 4: he was in office and it would have made the
Speaker 4: world better, you can probably count on Strom being against it.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 9: And so the Americans they managed to script together a
Speaker 9: treaty in nineteen sixty seven, but the Panamanians didn't ratify it,
Speaker 9: and in the following year, nineteen sixty eight, Panama is
Speaker 9: overtaken by a military who don't dun't dun So if
Speaker 9: you want to know what will happen with the treaty,
Speaker 9: with Panama's political future and how all of this does
Speaker 9: or does not relate to current commissions in Venezuela, because
Speaker 9: I know I have that threat still dangling. Yeah, stay
Speaker 9: tuned for the next episode this has When it can
Speaker 9: happen here, I'm andrews Age. I'm here with James Stout
Speaker 9: and as always, all power to all the people. This
Speaker 9: The year was nineteen sixty eight, and the military coup
Speaker 9: had just rocked the Isthmian country of Panama. Welcome to
Speaker 9: it could happen here. I'm Andrew Sage, joined again by.
Speaker 4: James, it's me again. I'm excited to talk about Panama.
Speaker 9: Nearly, mister Q.
Speaker 5: Yeah I did.
Speaker 4: I was forgot who I was for a second.
Speaker 9: And this is the follow up to the last episode
Speaker 9: on the history of US involvement in Panama. So you
Speaker 9: can go back and give that one. Listen if he
Speaker 9: happens already, But in these times of Trump ro doctrine,
Speaker 9: I want to take us back to this particular moment
Speaker 9: in Iama's first history to highlight the parallels with today.
Speaker 9: In short, what we talked about last time was how
Speaker 9: Panama became a testing ground for US Empire. Long before, during,
Speaker 9: and after the construction of the Panama Canal, the US
Speaker 9: had repeated military interventions justified as protecting transit or American
Speaker 9: and wrists, and Washington ultimately backed Panama's break from Columbia
Speaker 9: nineteen oh three secure canal rights on Washington students. This
Speaker 9: independence came with a cost A caveat, a lopsided treaty
Speaker 9: that turned Panama into US protectorate and granted the US
Speaker 9: permanent control over the canal zone and the rest of
Speaker 9: the country. Effectively, the canal's construction itself was an insurance
Speaker 9: feat built on racial hierarchy, and throughout the rest of
Speaker 9: the twentieth century, the US continued to demonstrate its control
Speaker 9: over Panama's politics, the attempts of its people to exercise
Speaker 9: their autonomy, to exercise their their rights, and the US
Speaker 9: of course engaged in the testing of chemical weapons in
Speaker 9: the season of land and the use of the country
Speaker 9: as a regional military launch pad. And yet Pamelians continue
Speaker 9: to resist, continue to challenge US control, and continue to
Speaker 9: demand treaty reform. And so following the nineteenth sixty four riots,
Speaker 9: there was an opportunity to negotiate a new treaty, but
Speaker 9: after the first attempt was rejected by Panama nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 9: a military coup would rock the country in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 9: A feast to get this timeline thanks to my main
Speaker 9: resource for these episodes, Emperors in the Jungle The Hidden
Speaker 9: History of the US in Panama by John Lindsay Poland,
Speaker 9: but he doesn't go into too much depth on the
Speaker 9: military coup specifically, but that I had to look to
Speaker 9: an EPSCO knowledge advantage article by Carl Henry Marco titled
Speaker 9: Omar Torrijos ousts Arias in Panama. What I learned from
Speaker 9: that was there was a coalition of National Guard officers
Speaker 9: that ousted President Arnulfo Arias, who was himself trying to
Speaker 9: consolidate control over the military so they would support his
Speaker 9: future elections by removing those officers he thought he could control.
Speaker 9: So there were apparently racial tensions mixed into the school,
Speaker 9: as officers in the National Guard had increasingly come from
Speaker 9: Mestizo backgrounds as opposed to white backgrounds, which had traditionally
Speaker 9: supported the civilian predominantly white oligarchy. So a coalitionive officers
Speaker 9: tried to change this. At first, they were led by
Speaker 9: a guy named Major Boris Martinez, who seized power and
Speaker 9: ousted areas before anyone thought for a moment the things
Speaker 9: were finally going to radically change in the country. Within months,
Speaker 9: student protests were crushed by the National Guard with arrests
Speaker 9: and beatens, making it clear that the military rule and
Speaker 9: not democracy, was there to stay. Not long after Martinez
Speaker 9: took control, he was himself ousted by a lieutenant colonel
Speaker 9: and the junta's chief of staff in nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 9: That man was Omar Torrijos Herrera, a Mestizo officer with
Speaker 9: middle class roots. Who sought to challenge the oligarchy. Somewhat
Speaker 9: fun fact, though, Lindsay Poland mentions that Torrijos sued as
Speaker 9: a spy for the US military intelligence from nineteen fifty
Speaker 9: five to nineteen sixty nine, informing the Americans about everything
Speaker 9: from labor unrest and student activities to political issues and
Speaker 9: the Soviet Chinese penetration. Tori Host was one of the
Speaker 9: soldiers who helped suppress the unrest in nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 9: In fact, oh well, but in power. Publicly, he styled
Speaker 9: his military rule as reformist. He pushed through land reforms
Speaker 9: that opened up estates long when applies by elites, and
Speaker 9: promised change for rural Panama. But although these reforms were popular,
Speaker 9: very few poor Panamanians actually benefited. Meanwhile, he overhauled the
Speaker 9: bank n doors in the country, such as Panama quickly
Speaker 9: became a hub for offshore banking and money laundering. But
Speaker 9: it can't be said that he didn't do anything positive
Speaker 9: for the country because he was the one whom ased
Speaker 9: to establish a new treaty with the US. The US
Speaker 9: was facing international pressure this point for the continued ownership
Speaker 9: of the canal, especially thanks to a nineteen seventy three
Speaker 9: United Nations Security Council session hosted by Torrijo's in Panama City.
Speaker 9: In nineteen seventy seven, Tory Host negotiated Jimmy Carter and
Speaker 9: secured the treaties that promised the Canal's return to Panamanian control.
Speaker 9: The Tory Host Carter Treaties which agreed to transfer the
Speaker 9: canal from the United States to Panama on December thirty first,
Speaker 9: nineteen ninety nine, with the surrounding territory of the canal
Speaker 9: so And returned first in nineteen seventy nine, and the
Speaker 9: US military being allowed to remain the country until nineteen
Speaker 9: ninety nine. But despite this major win, torri Host knew
Speaker 9: his rule was under pressure, so he announced a controlled
Speaker 9: return to civilian government. He created a political party dominated
Speaker 9: by the National Guard. He stepped back from the presidency.
Speaker 9: He installed a civilian figurehead named Aristateius Royo, and he
Speaker 9: promised elections by nineteen eighty four. But then his private
Speaker 9: plane crashed in nineteen eighty one. Which it was funny
Speaker 9: how frequently that happened back in those days. You know, yeah,
Speaker 9: small aircraft doesn't randomly. These political leaders are constantly dying
Speaker 9: and blamed crashes very sad, and so the democratic reforms
Speaker 9: didn't happen. Instead, Torijos's intelligence chief emerged as the new
Speaker 9: military dictator of Panama. His name was Manuel Noriega. Now,
Speaker 9: as Lindsay Poland talks about in the book, Noriega was
Speaker 9: another informant for the US in the mid nineteen fifties,
Speaker 9: but his career in the military wasn't going anywhere because
Speaker 9: he had a history of alcoholism and beaten women until
Speaker 9: Torijo's hand picked him as his intelligence chief. Manuel Noriega
Speaker 9: came up inside a Panamanian National Guard that had been shaped, trained,
Speaker 9: and closely supervised by the US during the Cold War.
Speaker 9: He was educated at Peru's National Military Academy, trained at
Speaker 9: the School of the Americas, took courses in intelligence and
Speaker 9: conter intelligence in nineteen sixty seven, and trained in psychological
Speaker 9: warfare at Fort Benning. By the late nineteen sixties he
Speaker 9: had also become a regular informant for US intelligence. You know,
Speaker 9: he took more than just a few courses. He was
Speaker 9: very much embedded with the Americans and so totally hosts dead.
Speaker 9: Noriega seized the opportunity to take power. Initially the US
Speaker 9: was pretty much okay with this. No Diego had previously
Speaker 9: been a CIA asset, providing intelligence and governments and militaries
Speaker 9: across the region, including Cuba. He had helped suppress leftist movements,
Speaker 9: facilitated US regional operations, and maintain stability around the Canal,
Speaker 9: and for that he was well compensated more than one
Speaker 9: million dollars from the cie WOW, plus at least another
Speaker 9: one hundred and sixty two thousand dollars from the U.
Speaker 9: S Army and the Defense Intelligence Agency. By the early
Speaker 9: nineteen seventies, US agencies already knew that no Diego was
Speaker 9: deeply involved in drug trafficking. In nineteen seventy two, the
Speaker 9: Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs even considered assassinating him.
Speaker 9: But he's just too useful for him to go so soon.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 9: So, throughout the Carter years, evidence of his criminal activity
Speaker 9: was building up and was also suppressed because Washington needed
Speaker 9: Paname and cooperation to secure ratification of the Canal treateams.
Speaker 9: But under Reagan the evidence became impossible to ignore, as
Speaker 9: intelligence reports from nineteen eighty three and nineteen eighty five
Speaker 9: documented meetings between nor Diega and Cartail figures permissions to
Speaker 9: manufacture cocaine in Panama and offers to mediate disputes between
Speaker 9: the traffickers.
Speaker 4: I love the mediation, but the best Yeah.
Speaker 13: Yeah.
Speaker 9: He was like, hey, guys, this isn't you. It's come on,
Speaker 9: let's let's have us sit down and talk.
Speaker 4: He was committed to like a non cast, real solution.
Speaker 4: You know. It's great to see.
Speaker 9: Yeah, And and they continue to protect them even with
Speaker 9: that smoking gun. They were like, yeah, Noriega is still
Speaker 9: our guy. They had hoped that he would cooperate with
Speaker 9: contra operations against Nicaragua's Sandinista government THO, but in what
Speaker 9: was I suppose his first strike, he refused to cooperate
Speaker 9: with them on that operation. He also maintained relations with
Speaker 9: both Nicaragua and Cuba, and meanwhile, under his leadership, the
Speaker 9: Panamanian Defense Forces expanded their role in both arms and
Speaker 9: drug smuggling networks, much of it feeding directly into the
Speaker 9: US drug market. So Noriega and the US had to
Speaker 9: break up in the mid to late eighties. And this
Speaker 9: is also thanks to US domestic politics. You see, in
Speaker 9: nineteen eighty six, the Iran contra scandals saw a key
Speaker 9: figures who had shielded Noyeka previously be removed from their positions.
Speaker 9: At the same time, the crack co key and panic
Speaker 9: took over US politics again a very racialized situation. Congress
Speaker 9: had passed sweeping anti drug laws, mandatory minimum sentences, and
Speaker 9: the media was freeing this whole drug problem as a foreign,
Speaker 9: racial black threat. Yeah, Noriego, being a Panamdian dictator, ended
Speaker 9: up being a very useful prop villain of sorts for
Speaker 9: the burgeoning war on drugs. So in February nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 9: US Grand Juries in Miami and Tampa indicted Noriega for
Speaker 9: drug trafficking linked to activities from nineteen eighty two to
Speaker 9: nineteen eighty four. Sanctions followed within weeks, supposedly to force amount,
Speaker 9: but they didn't. The sanctions called shortages. You can only
Speaker 9: collapse and suffering among ordinary Panamanians. Yet Noriega stayed in
Speaker 9: power used the crisis to justify emergency measures and nationalist rhetoric,
Speaker 9: as is usually the response. I realize with US inflicted
Speaker 9: sanctions they end up creating almost a support base right
Speaker 9: for the administration and power, because you know you're trying
Speaker 9: to make the people suffer and it said people end
Speaker 9: up standing with their government even if they have critiques
Speaker 9: of that government.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, because they don't want to become another like
Speaker 4: vassal state. And especially in Panama, right, like they've they've
Speaker 4: already been there once or like look at what's happening
Speaker 4: right now in Iran, right, like yeah, HARMANI it's literally
Speaker 4: like he's literally tweeting that the people protesting and Donald
Speaker 4: Trump's supporters.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 9: And the thing is that they're always going to be
Speaker 9: all types of people in any protests, And I wish
Speaker 9: why people realize that. Yeah, you know, people tend to
Speaker 9: take like one or two figures or one of two
Speaker 9: pictures in any particular protest and see, oh look they
Speaker 9: are doing this. That means the entire protests like this.
Speaker 9: It's like no. Protests tend to I think, invite a
Speaker 9: variety of positions, perspectives, actors into the free.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: By their nature, they're large gatherings of people, right, Like,
Speaker 4: they're not going to be a monolith. People will always
Speaker 4: seek to either represent protests in one way or represent
Speaker 4: themselves as controlling a protest when they have not done so.
Speaker 4: But for the most part, they're very heterogeneous.
Speaker 9: Yeah, the monolithizing of protests, including in this case with Iran.
Speaker 9: I think it's a very clear example of how useful
Speaker 9: that is for every side of a conflict. Yes, because
Speaker 9: you know, the protests can be treated as a monolith
Speaker 9: by communee and by the Iranian government, you know, to
Speaker 9: say there and say these are enemies from within, you know,
Speaker 9: these are these are Zionists backed and the thing. And
Speaker 9: then of course the Israelis could also try and stake
Speaker 9: a claim on this and say, yeah, this is all people.
Speaker 9: And you know, I'm sure they're probably MASAD agents on
Speaker 9: the ground, as they are in most protest situations, not
Speaker 9: necessarily massadity agents, but intelligence service agents in general, from
Speaker 9: agencies around the world.
Speaker 5: Sure.
Speaker 9: Yeah, but you know, you could always pick and choose
Speaker 9: and create your own framen based on which aspects of
Speaker 9: the truth you want to focus on. But that's why
Speaker 9: I think our solidarity has streaming in with people and
Speaker 9: not with states.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, it seems to be a fundamental issue affecting
Speaker 4: much of the Internet left in the United States, so
Speaker 4: their solidarity appeased to only be to states and not
Speaker 4: to people. Right. We see that in Iran or Venezuela,
Speaker 4: or Russia or any anywhere else really like this sort
Speaker 4: of internet tanky leftism likes to talk about.
Speaker 14: Yeah, so we.
Speaker 9: Saw that kind of upswing of nationalistic further following those
Speaker 9: US sanctions, and the political situation in Panama was deteriorating rapidly.
Speaker 9: No Dieger annulled the results of the May nineteen Ellion
Speaker 9: ninety elections after his chosen candidates were decisively defeated. Protests
Speaker 9: followed the Panamine and defense forces crushed them, and the
Speaker 9: images of his opposition figures being beaten by his military
Speaker 9: saturated US to the visions to reinforce the racialized image
Speaker 9: of the savage Panamania because many of the soldiers that
Speaker 9: were doing the beating were black and brown, and the
Speaker 9: opposition figure in question was white, So they were able
Speaker 9: to clip that and you know, create a whole narrative
Speaker 9: around it that served their interests. Now, in October nineteen
Speaker 9: eighty nine, a coup attempt by Panamanian officers failed and
Speaker 9: the officers were executed in the US. Meanwhile, criticism of
Speaker 9: President George H. W. Bush had intensified, with editorials and
Speaker 9: senators accusing him of weakness for his failure to act
Speaker 9: decisively against Noriaca, and oh boy, call a man. We
Speaker 9: to go on and improve his prove his manhood, you know.
Speaker 9: So further motivation for what came next was Noriacer's nomination
Speaker 9: of Thomas Duquet as the first Panamian administrator of the
Speaker 9: Panama Canal Commission. Bush did not like that pick, and
Speaker 9: if the US invaded, then they could pick who they preferred,
Speaker 9: So there was another motivation. The invasion was also motivated
Speaker 9: by a desire to showcase the Pentagon's post Cold War mission.
Speaker 9: You know, the Cold War was weiganing at that point,
Speaker 9: particularly with the fall of the Berlin Wall mayor months before,
Speaker 9: and so a new threat, a new boogeyman was needed
Speaker 9: to justify US military action in Latin America, this time
Speaker 9: in the form of the drug war story. And then
Speaker 9: on December sixteenth, a U. S. Marine Intelligence udit ran
Speaker 9: a roadblock near Pameian military headquarters. Parmanian soldiers opened fire,
Speaker 9: killing Lieutenant Robert Pass. Another U. S. Soldier and his
Speaker 9: wife were detained, and while the soldier was beaten, the
Speaker 9: wife was threatened with the rape. Within twenty four hours,
Speaker 9: Bush ordered a full scale invasion on December twenty or
Speaker 9: nineteen eighty nine, the United States launched its twentieth military
Speaker 9: intervention in Panama since eighteen fifty six, and by far
Speaker 9: the most violent. It was the worst destruction Panama had
Speaker 9: seen since Columbia's Thousand Days War. Eighteen thousand people lost
Speaker 9: their homes. At least five hundred and sixteen Panamanians were
Speaker 9: killed by official Pentagon counts until Army estimates, however, but
Speaker 9: civilian deaths closer to one thousand jeez, and many believed
Speaker 9: that the true number was even higher. Entire neighborhoods were destroyed.
Speaker 9: El Toro Rillo, a poor, mostly black and Mestizo community
Speaker 9: built originally for canal workers, was bombed and burned to
Speaker 9: the ground. San Miguelitos also hit and across the country.
Speaker 9: Thousands were detained in prison camps. Damage exceeded one billion
Speaker 9: dollars on top of losses for nearly two years of samshuns.
Speaker 9: The US used overwhelming force, including stealth bombers, the bonnassaults,
Speaker 9: and heavy firepower in densely populated areas, against a Panamanian
Speaker 9: force of only about three thousand trained soldiers. Noriego was
Speaker 9: jared flew into the United States, tried and imprisoned, and
Speaker 9: as Lindsay Poland writes, quote, the names of the twenty
Speaker 9: five US soldiers killed during the invasion ruled across TV
Speaker 9: screens around the world. He had a register of Panamanians
Speaker 9: killed during the invasion has never been published even in
Speaker 9: Latin America. End quote.
Speaker 4: Jeez, when no Diega like sought refuge in the Vatican
Speaker 4: embassy for a while, I understand that they played like
Speaker 4: You Two music NonStop to force him to capitulate the
Speaker 4: PID what Yeah, yeah, yeah, they used YouTube and from
Speaker 4: other stuff too, But.
Speaker 9: I'm pretty sure my age here that just before my time,
Speaker 9: this was the band that was forced onto all the
Speaker 9: iPods and stuff, right.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's right, yeah, yeah, this was yeah, and prepped
Speaker 4: a parallel operation. Maybe again they would maybe that was
Speaker 4: a CIA of Yeah Bonner, the guy who talked to
Speaker 4: me a game and then never pays his taxes in
Speaker 4: Ireland also part of the invasion of Panama.
Speaker 9: He had a critical role in US intervention.
Speaker 4: Yeah wait until I find it. I bet there was
Speaker 4: some band I like as well, but You Two is
Speaker 4: the one that sticks in my mind.
Speaker 9: The humanity if there has to be a walker. Yeah,
Speaker 9: so in all seriousness. Though Noriego was not a good
Speaker 9: guy by any stretch of the imagination. And I don't
Speaker 9: know why people feel this, this compulsion to try and
Speaker 9: rehability figures that have been targeted by US imperial suggression.
Speaker 9: You know, you can condemn US superior suggression without carrying
Speaker 9: water for their image, right. Yeah, Now, Noriego was not
Speaker 9: a good guy, but he was not unusual. I think,
Speaker 9: if anything, you can point out the hypocrisy of the
Speaker 9: United States in this you know, selective outreach. Yeah, because
Speaker 9: at the very same moment, our wills atrocities were being
Speaker 9: inflicted by leaders across the region, carried out by regimes
Speaker 9: firmly integrated in Washington's could races. In Guatemala, for example,
Speaker 9: security forces kidnapped, tortured, and raped Diana Ortiz, an American
Speaker 9: nune before she managed to escape. But there's no evidence
Speaker 9: that this triggered outrage in Washington or cares for military intervention.
Speaker 9: And then in El Salvador, Gorilla forces launched an offensive
Speaker 9: on San Salvador, and the army responded by murdering six
Speaker 9: Jesuit priests. The same forces went on to arrest, torture,
Speaker 9: and intimidate international aid workers and church prisnel, but none
Speaker 9: of this was treated as grounds for invasion. Regime she
Speaker 9: enjoy emergency action. The US only removed Noriega because he
Speaker 9: wasn't convenient to their ends anymore, and the aftermath of
Speaker 9: that invasion was utter devastation. Panama was left without a
Speaker 9: function government until the US military stepped in to fill
Speaker 9: the vacuum after two or three days. American forces formerly
Speaker 9: took over the administration of the country under the Pentagon
Speaker 9: Plan called Operation Blind Logic. U S officers were a
Speaker 9: signed to supervise twenty two Panamian ministries and state agencies
Speaker 9: effectively run in the country for months. At the same time,
Speaker 9: the military crippled what remained of Parama's civilian administration by
Speaker 9: season roughly fifteen thousand boxes of government documents. The invasion
Speaker 9: permanently resheeted Panama's political reality, dividing it between those absorbed
Speaker 9: into Noriega's nationalist rhetoric and those who had welcomed foreign intervenure.
Speaker 9: It also sent a clear message to every political actor
Speaker 9: that Panama's sovereignty was conditional on their cooperation with the US. Meanwhile,
Speaker 9: in the US, there was baillium murmur against the government's
Speaker 9: claimed right to invade Panama, removed its government, dismantle its military,
Speaker 9: and infect costs on Panama's poor, black and Mestizo communities.
Speaker 9: The US kind of moved on from Panama after the vision.
Speaker 9: I mean, they continued to meddle, intervene, but they've basically
Speaker 9: gotten what they wanted at that point, which was the
Speaker 9: removal of someone who was not going to cooperate with
Speaker 9: them anymore. Unless you believe that they disrupted the drug
Speaker 9: trade with the arrest of Doriego, Panama continued to function
Speaker 9: as a transit point for cocaine and a center for
Speaker 9: money laundering at basically the same scale as before. So finally,
Speaker 9: what exactly is the connection with Venezuela. If any James
Speaker 9: you want to.
Speaker 4: Go first, I mean, there's a very obvious parallel in
Speaker 4: that they have deposed a leader that you don't need
Speaker 4: to go carry water for the guy they'd deposed. You
Speaker 4: could say something is bad without like the person who
Speaker 4: happened to does not therefore become a perfect angel. Things
Speaker 4: cannot be binary, that's so. But like it is wild
Speaker 4: that we look to what happened in Panama and We're like,
Speaker 4: you know what we could do better than that. We
Speaker 4: don't even have to declare a war. We don't even
Speaker 4: have to do an invasion, right, we can just just
Speaker 4: kidnap a guy.
Speaker 9: I mean, they did do an invasion. They kind of
Speaker 9: bombed a bunch of people and stuff too.
Speaker 4: Yes they did. Yeah, they did an air Yeah they did,
Speaker 4: like an airborne invasion, I guess would be the way
Speaker 4: to describe it. Like and in a sense, right, like
Speaker 4: I'm happy that they didn't sort of go through the
Speaker 4: streets of Caracas with bombs and artillery and mortars.
Speaker 9: Yeah, the then do squashed earth yeah this time.
Speaker 4: But at the same time, like we have now, like
Speaker 4: I've literally have spoken to several people in Bends Wear
Speaker 4: in the last twenty four hours, right, and they are
Speaker 4: in that situation now of not knowing, right, like who
Speaker 4: is the relevant authority the US in this case. It
Speaker 4: doesn't seem to have replaced the regime. They've just in
Speaker 4: again a parallel to what we saw in Panama, just
Speaker 4: installed another person, right.
Speaker 9: Not even already install on the person, because I mean.
Speaker 4: Let it trickle down and see how it rides.
Speaker 9: Rodriguez was already in power.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like I guess maybe they looked to Rodriguez and
Speaker 4: were like, because she's previously worked with Like I guess
Speaker 4: the analogy would be the Chamber of Commerce maybe something
Speaker 4: like that, like Venezuelan business interests. Maybe they would just like, yeah, well,
Speaker 4: maybe we can force her to be compliant with what
Speaker 4: we want. Like the only shit getting liberated is the
Speaker 4: oil in Venezuela, right, and it's actually not very good oil. Yeah,
Speaker 4: the same happened in Panama. Right, the US didn't go
Speaker 4: to liberate people, that went to liberate the canal. It's
Speaker 4: so disappointing to see people still look at foreign policy
Speaker 4: and binary terms. And like you said before, I think
Speaker 4: one of the things that the Venezuelan people I'm speaking
Speaker 4: to express deep, deep frustration with is that when they
Speaker 4: take a risk right and go online and share their
Speaker 4: frustrations with both Chavismoon and with the United States invading
Speaker 4: their country, they are told by Western leftists that they
Speaker 4: must be either THA agents or pretend Venezuelans like Americans
Speaker 4: posing as Venezuelans.
Speaker 9: Yeah, or like Gusanos or whatever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like there is this, I mean the case of Venezuela. Raight,
Speaker 4: I have you thought it was great. You could have gone,
Speaker 4: you had two decades to go. I went when I
Speaker 4: was an undergraduate, right to see it, to study it,
Speaker 4: to understand it. It was formative in the way that
Speaker 4: my politics are now, which is politics. It doesn't see
Speaker 4: human liberation coming from the state.
Speaker 9: It's not to say that there's nothing positive happening in
Speaker 9: Venezuela in terms of experiments with you know, communal initiatives
Speaker 9: and you know, cooperative economic projects, despite the us anctions,
Speaker 9: despite what they are, endurant as we young people have
Speaker 9: you know, managed to innovate and manage to create you know,
Speaker 9: these kinds of projects where they can exercise their autonomy,
Speaker 9: exercise their voice and their self determination.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 9: I think, of course that there's a level of i
Speaker 9: think co optation or attempts by the government of Venezuela
Speaker 9: to use those projects and to integrate those projects into
Speaker 9: their apparatus or to gain legitimacy to reals projects. Yeah,
Speaker 9: but that's always the situation on the ground is very complex,
Speaker 9: and people are going to have different perspectives and feelings
Speaker 9: on the levels of government's involvement in their communes and whatnot.
Speaker 9: I think the best outcome for Venezuelan's would have been,
Speaker 9: of course, primarily the lifting of US sanctions. Yeah, and
Speaker 9: you know, secondarily their own self directed liberation from the
Speaker 9: imposition of the government on their projects. But you know,
Speaker 9: there are those who have those projects who support the
Speaker 9: government's involvement, who get received funding and that kind of thing.
Speaker 4: So it's like, like you say, right, that these things
Speaker 4: aren't binaries. It's not like always good, always bad. But
Speaker 4: as you said, right, like our slodargy should be with
Speaker 4: the Venezuelan people. They should be the ones who get
Speaker 4: to decide who rules Venezuela.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, even if I disagree with that, Yeah,
Speaker 9: I still think ours be up to them.
Speaker 4: We should want a world in which should get they
Speaker 4: can choose, even if they don't choose what we want.
Speaker 4: Otherwise it's just another kind of colonial project, right, and
Speaker 4: I think that colonial impulse. And let's also be honest,
Speaker 4: there is a racialized component to the way that the
Speaker 4: American left talks to people in the global South, right,
Speaker 4: and I think we should not overlook that that they
Speaker 4: think that people aren't capable of either they don't know
Speaker 4: what's best for them and they need to be told
Speaker 4: by someone else. Or that they're not capable of understanding.
Speaker 4: Like people in Venezuela are extremely aware for the consequences
Speaker 4: of US intervention. I lived with people who were tortured
Speaker 4: in Chile. When I lived in Venezuela, many people came
Speaker 4: from fleeting Pinochet to Venezuela. It was a place that
Speaker 4: previously accepted migrants. Before migrants I ended up leaving in
Speaker 4: large numbers as they have now. People are extremely aware
Speaker 4: of what US intervention means. You know, they're much better
Speaker 4: educated than most Americans on affairs in South and Central America. Yeah,
Speaker 4: they know the game that is being played here, and
Speaker 4: I would just like to see people afford them the
Speaker 4: same humanity that they afford people in this country. Shouldn't
Speaker 4: be that difficult, but it genuinely seems to be.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I think too, there's an element where you know
Speaker 9: them with their knowledge, we make calculations, We make decisions
Speaker 9: that you with that same knowledge wouldn't make. You know,
Speaker 9: because there's internal disagreement too the people who have the
Speaker 9: same knowledge, and they come to different conclusions about that,
Speaker 9: about the best course of action, about the best trade
Speaker 9: offs that they should be making, about how they navigate
Speaker 9: the conditions they've been placed in. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 9: there's room for those conversations we had without you know,
Speaker 9: erasing that ipe. We see your perspectives and favor of
Speaker 9: that simple binary that keep coming back to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, definitely, like there's no need for their condescension if
Speaker 4: we can give criticisms from a place of solidarity. One
Speaker 4: of the things that I learned when I was in
Speaker 4: ra Java, like, not everything that happens there is something
Speaker 4: that I think is perfect or good, right, And there
Speaker 4: are a lot of people there, including internationalists, right, Like
Speaker 4: there's an anarchist group Techoschin Analysis, who are an anarchist
Speaker 4: group within the revolution, and like the revolution itself is
Speaker 4: not purely anarchist, right that they exist to give criticism
Speaker 4: from a place of solidarity, and both groups wanting the
Speaker 4: other group to get better, right to have what they
Speaker 4: want to succeed, which is how our relations with these
Speaker 4: other Like I guess liberation struggles in Venezuela would be
Speaker 4: a reasonable term to use, right, Like, our relationships with
Speaker 4: them should be that like we care about you, We
Speaker 4: hopefully both care about these things right about human liberation,
Speaker 4: about people being able to live with dignity and respect,
Speaker 4: and we could disagree, but we're ultimately disagreeing from a
Speaker 4: place of solidarity and support, not of condescension, which is
Speaker 4: what I see far too much. I think when I'm
Speaker 4: on the internet.
Speaker 9: Exactly exactly, so you know, Noriego and when we're all
Speaker 9: are not interchangeable. Parama nineteen eighty nine is not to
Speaker 9: Venezuela and twenty twenty six. The political systems, reachional dynamics,
Speaker 9: and global context are different, but the stories tooled to
Speaker 9: justify US and a venture ah pretty familiar. In Panama,
Speaker 9: the inviasion was framed as a moral necessity to stop drugs,
Speaker 9: restore democracy, and defend American lives. And this is in
Speaker 9: spite of the fact that US collaborated with that very
Speaker 9: same regime for years beforehanded Interestingly, in Venezuela's case, the
Speaker 9: justifications we also pretty similar. At first, stopping drugs, restoring democracy,
Speaker 9: defending American lives, and just like with Panama, they faced sanctions,
Speaker 9: diplomatic isolation, and economic pressure. But after the invasion of Venezuela,
Speaker 9: Trump just dropped the pretense entirely, just came out and
Speaker 9: said it, Yeah, we want their oil. So what what
Speaker 9: is the international community going to do? About it. The
Speaker 9: laws do not apply to us. In fact, we are
Speaker 9: going to withdraw from all of those international agreements that
Speaker 9: you know, threaten not interest. You could look this up
Speaker 9: that the US literally put this into.
Speaker 4: What was it, It's an executive order, right, leg as
Speaker 4: executive order, right, Yeah, they withdrawing from all of these
Speaker 4: international agreements that don't align with what they want.
Speaker 9: And so in both the case of Panama and the
Speaker 9: case of Venezuela, American interests supersede all else. American laws
Speaker 9: somehow apply to the entire world, while the world's laws
Speaker 9: never apply to America, and the actual people on the
Speaker 9: ground in both cases don't matter at all. And also
Speaker 9: another parallel, the domestic American narrative of racialized fail and
Speaker 9: drug war hysteria can be found in both invasions. And
Speaker 9: just like Panama left the media consciousness after the invasion
Speaker 9: as though the problems were solved, I wouldn't be surprised
Speaker 9: if we see a similar situation play out after they
Speaker 9: get what they want out of Venezuela. Suddenly all the
Speaker 9: issues of Venezuela have would no longer be in the
Speaker 9: picture because America got what they wanted. Courses development story
Speaker 9: so it remains to be seen. That's all I have
Speaker 9: for today. History does not repeat, but it's good to
Speaker 9: know because I find it often rhymes or power to
Speaker 9: all the people.
Speaker 14: Peace.
Speaker 2: Hey everyone, Robert here. The episode you're about to listen
Speaker 2: to is a keynote speech I gave at a symposium
Speaker 2: on combating Authoritarianism and Preserving Democracy for the Japanese American
Speaker 2: National Museum in Los Angeles, California. So you'll get to
Speaker 2: hear the speech that I gave them about what's necessary
Speaker 2: in order to deal with this new authoritarian way of
Speaker 2: overtaking the country. And then there's a Q and A
Speaker 2: with me afterwards, where I sit down with Anne Burrows,
Speaker 2: who's the President and CEO of the Japanese American National Museum.
Speaker 2: She's also an internationally recognized leader in human rights and
Speaker 2: social justice. She's a chair on the board of directors
Speaker 2: for Amnesty International. She was jailed as a political prisoner
Speaker 2: for fighting apartheid in her native South Africa. She's a
Speaker 2: pretty cool person. So that is the episode you're about
Speaker 2: to listen to.
Speaker 15: All next keynote is getting to ask us some difficult truths. Authoritarianism,
Speaker 15: as has so often been said rarely announces itself all
Speaker 15: at once. It takes root quietly in policies that silence dissent,
Speaker 15: in narratives that divide, and in systems that normalize repression
Speaker 15: until it feels ordinary. And when we get to that
Speaker 15: ordinary point, it's complicity. So I know that our next
Speaker 15: keynote is going to challenge us. We can trust that
Speaker 15: he will be provocative. We can trust that he will
Speaker 15: say some very strong things and it will be fantastic. So,
Speaker 15: without blabbering anymore, I am going to welcome Robert Evans,
Speaker 15: who is a journalist and author and the host of
Speaker 15: the enormously popular and influential podcasts Behind the Bastards and
Speaker 15: It Couldn't happen here. He's also the author of A
Speaker 15: Brief History of Vice and After the Revolution. He has
Speaker 15: that rare ability to connect history, power and lived experience,
Speaker 15: and he will certainly talk to you about his lived
Speaker 15: experience in the trenches of Portland, and he'll do it
Speaker 15: in a way that's unsettling. As I've said, he's going
Speaker 15: to challenge us, He's going to be provocative. But that's
Speaker 15: why we've asked him to provide this keynote. So Robert
Speaker 15: please come on up, it's your moment.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for that, and thank you all
Speaker 2: for being here. I'm going to try to follow that
Speaker 2: up as best I can once the telepromter's ready here.
Speaker 2: So a couple of days before I sat down to
Speaker 2: write the speech that I'm delivering now, a friend came
Speaker 2: to me and asked if I had advice on which
Speaker 2: kind of gas mask she should purchase for her four
Speaker 2: year old daughter. As was noted earlier, we live in Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 2: and while my friend wasn't planning to attend any protests,
Speaker 2: certainly not with her daughter in tow, she was keeping
Speaker 2: up with developments in Minnesota, where ice officers had just
Speaker 2: shot a man they described as Venezuelan in the leg
Speaker 2: and then tear gassed a neighborhood. One resident tried to
Speaker 2: get his family, which included small children and a newborn,
Speaker 2: out of the area, but they were gassed in their car,
Speaker 2: and then for good measure, ice officers hurled flash bangs
Speaker 2: into the vehicle. His six month old infants stopped breeding,
Speaker 2: and he had to beg repeatedly before officers would let
Speaker 2: an ambulance in to resuscitate his baby. The child was fine, now,
Speaker 2: so my friend was right to fear that her little
Speaker 2: girl might get gassed for nothing more than existing in
Speaker 2: the wrong neighborhood. Questions like this aren't theoretical to thousands
Speaker 2: of American parents right now, and they aren't theoretical to me.
Speaker 2: I was tear gassed more than one hundred times in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, and I spent a fair amount of time
Speaker 2: pulling children and other civilians out of cars that had
Speaker 2: the bad luck to exist on the same city block
Speaker 2: as a man with a badge and a grenade launcher.
Speaker 2: And so it bugs me just a little when I
Speaker 2: see Governor Walls tell protesters to stay peaceful and not
Speaker 2: take the bait. In fact, I'm left asking what do
Speaker 2: we think the bait is here? As best as I
Speaker 2: can figure it, armed and armored police officers blind firing
Speaker 2: chemical weapons that civilians is bait, while any response from
Speaker 2: those civilians beyond packing up and going home is taking
Speaker 2: said bait. Throwing back tear gas containers or anything else
Speaker 2: is somehow an escalation. So is standing against a riot
Speaker 2: line with a gas mask and a homemade shield to
Speaker 2: stop your neighbor from getting deported. Any act of resistance
Speaker 2: big or small is all the justification federal agents need
Speaker 2: to deploy more of the violence they were already using.
Speaker 2: It's a neat little rhetorical game that liberals have let
Speaker 2: themselves become trapped inside. Playing that game lets them avoid
Speaker 2: answering one supremely ugly question. If your enemy controls the
Speaker 2: police and the military, and they've promised to destroy you,
Speaker 2: what does fighting back even mean? Up until the present moment,
Speaker 2: the answer given by prominent liberals has generally been you
Speaker 2: fight by voting, or by making your voice heard, or
Speaker 2: something similar. I have a good friend who tried to
Speaker 2: make her voice heard in twenty twenty. She is now
Speaker 2: an early menopause in her twenties after being rendered sterile
Speaker 2: by chronic tear gas exposure. None of the officers who
Speaker 2: poisoned her, or thousands of other Portlanders ever saw a
Speaker 2: day behind bars.
Speaker 4: That would be wrong.
Speaker 2: They enjoy qualified immunity. They're doing an important job one
Speaker 2: every person can agree needs to be done. The year
Speaker 2: my friend was gassed repeatedly, the highest paid Portland police
Speaker 2: officer was a man who had been caught and briefly
Speaker 2: punished for maintaining a shrine to the dead men of
Speaker 2: the waffen Ss on city property. The Portland Police Union,
Speaker 2: the first police union in the country, sued for him
Speaker 2: to be reinstated and to ensure that he faced no
Speaker 2: punishment for this, and was brought back with full pay
Speaker 2: and benefits. So when you hear stories of Homeland Security
Speaker 2: hiding Nazi songs and their recruiting ads for ICE, remember
Speaker 2: it's not just an ICE problem. And yet some liberals
Speaker 2: and progresses will tell me state and local police aren't
Speaker 2: the enemy. ICE is just an aberin agency, and surely
Speaker 2: there's some democratic cheat code we can use to get
Speaker 2: the good guys in blue to help us take them down.
Speaker 2: So much of the unchecked authoritarian nightmare currently rampaging through
Speaker 2: our streets is the product of a system that views
Speaker 2: policing as sacred, officers as infallible, and protest as inherently
Speaker 2: suspicious and dangerous. This is the standard line, even within
Speaker 2: the halls of power or in the Democratic Party, and
Speaker 2: it is part of why regular young people in this
Speaker 2: country hate elected democrats. The people out, thank you, the
Speaker 2: people out in Minneapolis battling riot lines and sub zero weather. No,
Speaker 2: there's no help coming. The cavalry does not exist, and
Speaker 2: so They've had to build their own architecture of resistance
Speaker 2: off and on the fly, since immigrants and other people
Speaker 2: being targeted by ICE can't safely shop. Local businesses like
Speaker 2: Rectangle spelled like wreck is in a car Wreck Pizza
Speaker 2: have raised tens of thousands of dollars to buy and
Speaker 2: distribute food and other necessities. Gathering and handing out donated
Speaker 2: groceries feel safe, peaceful, and legal, but that's not how
Speaker 2: ICE treats it. Rectangle's fundraising campaign earned them a visit
Speaker 2: from armed ICE agents, who, for the account of co
Speaker 2: owner Brianna Evans no relation, stormed up on our door
Speaker 2: to try to get in. Thankfully, members of the neighborhood
Speaker 2: had been standing guard. They were able to raise a
Speaker 2: significant force of locals to swarm and chase off ICE,
Speaker 2: who tried to gas the neighborhood as they were leaving,
Speaker 2: only to have their munitions kicked back at them. This
Speaker 2: is one small example of the kind of networks of
Speaker 2: aid and resistance that are evolving on the ground right
Speaker 2: now as I speak. Another example that arose in the
Speaker 2: wake of renee Goods murder is ice Watch, an informally
Speaker 2: organized network that activates members of the community when ICE
Speaker 2: shows up in their area. The logic behind ICE watch
Speaker 2: is that these federal agents will be less likely to
Speaker 2: engage in extreme acts of violence while surrounded by crowds
Speaker 2: of citizens following them and trying to wear them down
Speaker 2: with shame. This is a good tactic, and we here
Speaker 2: might rightly consider it a non violent tactic. But the
Speaker 2: federal government does not remember Renee Good was shot and
Speaker 2: killed for participating in exactly this kind of activism. Through
Speaker 2: mouthpieces like Stephen Miller, the Trump administration has made their
Speaker 2: stance very clear. Anyone impeding the actions of lawelaw enforcement
Speaker 2: is a terrorist. Waving a sign or filming an ICE
Speaker 2: agent makes you just as much a terrorist as someone
Speaker 2: who breaks a window or throws a rock. You cannot
Speaker 2: be so well behaved and appropriate in your resistance that
Speaker 2: this government will not consider you a valid target. And
Speaker 2: yet again and again I see no spine or backbone
Speaker 2: from the men setting themselves up as the future of
Speaker 2: resistance to Trump. Gavin Newsom can't even stick to his
Speaker 2: own guns in his own podcast on whether or not
Speaker 2: ICE is terrorizing Americans. Senator Corey Booker's big recent suggestion
Speaker 2: was more training for ice agents, as if the men
Speaker 2: brutalizing our neighbors aren't doing exactly what they trained to do.
Speaker 2: About a year after Joe Biden's inauguration, I found myself
Speaker 2: up in the woods of rural Washington, an hour or
Speaker 2: so outside of Seattle, doing firearm training with a group
Speaker 2: of leftist side met during the twenty twenty protest. And
Speaker 2: I know that kind of thing makes a lot of
Speaker 2: people here uncomfortable, and a number of things about our
Speaker 2: shared future might make you uncomfortable. During a break in
Speaker 2: the activity, I sat down for a smoke with a
Speaker 2: guy who'd spent the last several years teaching himself to
Speaker 2: be an armor or someone who repairs and maintains firearms.
Speaker 2: As he'd gained skill with this, he'd started to take
Speaker 2: his grade school aged daughter out shooting. He didn't like that,
Speaker 2: he felt like he had to do this, but as
Speaker 2: he informed me, I don't know that she won't have
Speaker 2: to fight for her right to be treated like a
Speaker 2: human being. Hearing that, I thought back to a woman
Speaker 2: i'd met a few years earlier in the bad lands
Speaker 2: of rural Syria. She'd been held as a slave by
Speaker 2: ISIS militants for two years forced into the kind of
Speaker 2: life that I hope is unimaginable to anyone sitting in
Speaker 2: this room. One night, as the Kurdish dominated militias of
Speaker 2: the SDF advanced on Isa's positions, she managed to escape.
Speaker 2: After a harrowing journey on foot, she found her way
Speaker 2: to the sdf's lines, where the first person she saw
Speaker 2: was a fighter from an all female unit holding an
Speaker 2: AK forty seven. She made the decision to join up
Speaker 2: herself that very moment. She wanted training and a gun
Speaker 2: of her own, because then, she informed me, no man
Speaker 2: could ever own her again. Now, politics isn't supposed to
Speaker 2: work that way in the United States. People should not
Speaker 2: need to use weapons to defend their most basic civil rights.
Speaker 2: But can you look at the mobs of armed men
Speaker 2: breaking into homes and businesses in Minneapolis and elsewhere, many
Speaker 2: sporting Nazi tattoos to go along with their badges, and
Speaker 2: tell me definitively that we're going to get through this
Speaker 2: without a fight. At the end of the Second World War,
Speaker 2: as the dead were counted to cries of never again,
Speaker 2: an attempt was made to create a rules based international
Speaker 2: order built around the bones of the last failed attempt
Speaker 2: to do so at the end of the First World War,
Speaker 2: and as we stand here in twenty twenty six, potentially
Speaker 2: looking at a US invasion of Greenland, watching military helicopters
Speaker 2: circle American cities while secret police snatch victims from their
Speaker 2: families and haul them off to camps and defortation facilities,
Speaker 2: we must admit that this second attempt to create a
Speaker 2: rules based international order is failing as well. We and
Speaker 2: our predecessors failed at building and maintaining a system that
Speaker 2: would stop all of this from happening again. There are
Speaker 2: many answers to the question of how this happened. The
Speaker 2: fact that the United States from the jump refused to
Speaker 2: be bound by the same rules we hoped lesser nations
Speaker 2: would follow was certainly part of the reason why our
Speaker 2: insistence that no foreign court ever judge American politicians or
Speaker 2: American soldiers was as narcissistic as it was insane. The
Speaker 2: creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the ongoing militarization
Speaker 2: of the border and border patrol, the granting of qualified
Speaker 2: immunity the police across the country, these were all further
Speaker 2: steps on our national road to perdition citizens United. Our
Speaker 2: refusal to punish Facebook executives over the cabridge, Analytica Scannal,
Speaker 2: and our failure to charge the people responsible for January
Speaker 2: sixth with treason are all further steps on that road.
Speaker 2: I could talk about what led us hear for hours,
Speaker 2: but all that matters is this. We the United States
Speaker 2: are not special. Our long democratic traditions, great wealth, and
Speaker 2: high opinion of ourselves have not protected us. The enemy
Speaker 2: is that the gates.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 2: I don't mean to act as if all is lost,
Speaker 2: or as if the only path forward is bloody, internesting war,
Speaker 2: because I don't believe that the cause of rationality, of
Speaker 2: basic human decency still has a lot going for it.
Speaker 2: The vast majority of Americans hate this president, just as
Speaker 2: they despise the Republican Party and the vicious, cruel and
Speaker 2: soulless monster. The Conservative project has proved to be. Poll
Speaker 2: after poll shows this. We also see it in videos
Speaker 2: of grandfathers kicking tear gas cans back at ICE agents
Speaker 2: in Minneapolis. The bad guys are outnumbered. We can't forget this,
Speaker 2: and they certainly won't.
Speaker 4: But the bad.
Speaker 2: Guys also have guns and the legal right to use
Speaker 2: them however they want, whenever they want.
Speaker 4: On whoever they want.
Speaker 2: Just because they might lose an election doesn't mean they're
Speaker 2: handing in their badges or their weapons. So how do
Speaker 2: you plan to make them? One thing that gives me
Speaker 2: a sense of hope as I look around the country
Speaker 2: is that increasing numbers of liberals and progressives seem to
Speaker 2: be waking up to the idea that this is an
Speaker 2: existential fight.
Speaker 4: Perhaps the most hopeful thing I've.
Speaker 2: Seen recently is that in Minneapolis, a coalition of labor
Speaker 2: unions and community organizations have come together to call for
Speaker 2: a limited general strike that just so happens to be today,
Speaker 2: January twenty third, twenty twenty six.
Speaker 4: That's right, for a single day. There will be no work,
Speaker 4: no school, no shopping.
Speaker 2: Now, this is a demonstrative act when you might compare
Speaker 2: to the flexing of a muscle. No one involved thinks
Speaker 2: that one day of striking is going to be enough,
Speaker 2: But nothing less than a general strike has the potential
Speaker 2: to force concessions, even capitulation, from the regime, and you
Speaker 2: have to start somewhere. This is another example of an active,
Speaker 2: peaceful protest that will be considered anything but peaceful as
Speaker 2: soon as the regime feels threatened and people on the
Speaker 2: ground in Minneapolis know this. Whenever I talk to activists,
Speaker 2: whether they live in Los Angeles and Portland at Land
Speaker 2: of Minneapolis, Philadelphia, I see the same thing I saw
Speaker 2: in people in twenty twenty, a grim but very accurate
Speaker 2: assessment of what this fight is going to cost them.
Speaker 2: They are going to lose eyes and maybe limbs to
Speaker 2: riot munitions. They and their friends will be arrested, beaten,
Speaker 2: possibly tortured, and imprisoned. All of these things are happening
Speaker 2: right now to regular people who have done nothing more
Speaker 2: than speak up in lend aid and comfort to their
Speaker 2: afflicted neighbors. They are willing to risk their lives because
Speaker 2: they know the hour is late. I have not seen
Speaker 2: anything that approaches this level of commitment from the liberal intelligencia,
Speaker 2: from most elected Democratic officials, or from the party itself.
Speaker 1: JB.
Speaker 2: Pritzker calls out accurately our present situation as being like
Speaker 2: the early years of the Third Reich, and yet, like
Speaker 2: every Democrat in power, he falls short of elucidating absolution
Speaker 2: beyond peaceful protest. And if I can get only one
Speaker 2: point across to you, let it be this, as far
Speaker 2: as the regime is concerned, there is no such thing.
Speaker 2: All dissent is violent. You attending the symposium as an
Speaker 2: act of terrorism, and they will punish you for it
Speaker 2: once they get through the people they see as more
Speaker 2: immediate threats. There's a book I come back to again
Speaker 2: and again when trying to puzzle out my own path
Speaker 2: forward in these unsettling times. It's titled They Thought They
Speaker 2: Were Free, and the author was a Jewish American progressive
Speaker 2: journalist and educator named Milton Meyer. Not long after World
Speaker 2: War Two, in the early nineteen fifties, he moved to
Speaker 2: a small German village to get and know and interview
Speaker 2: a number of ordinary citizens about their involvement with the
Speaker 2: Nazi Party. Meyer called these men and women the little
Speaker 2: Nazis to contrast them from the big Nazis like Himmler and.
Speaker 4: Heidrich and Gerring.
Speaker 2: These were not people who had been movers and shakers
Speaker 2: in the party, nor had most of them been particularly
Speaker 2: active or early members. They were regular people who had
Speaker 2: latched onto Nazism late, but supported it enthusiastically because of
Speaker 2: the benefits it gave them. They Thought they Were Free
Speaker 2: is a chilling read for a number of reasons. But
Speaker 2: there's no competition for the most frightening passage in the
Speaker 2: whole work. For Meyer didn't only interview little Nazis. He
Speaker 2: sat down with people we might call little anti fascists.
Speaker 2: These were Germans who never bought into Nazism. They hated
Speaker 2: it from the jump. They even fought it for a time,
Speaker 2: but they were never central organizers or members of the resistance.
Speaker 2: And when it became clear that the Third Reich had
Speaker 2: taken power, they faded into the woodwork to try and
Speaker 2: stay alive. Meyer sat down with one of these people,
Speaker 2: a friend of his who worked as a chemical engineer,
Speaker 2: and asked him, one day, tell me, now, how was
Speaker 2: the world lost. Here's how his re spont started. The
Speaker 2: world was lost one day in nineteen thirty five here
Speaker 2: in Germany. It was I who lost it. And I
Speaker 2: will tell you how. I was employed in a defense plant,
Speaker 2: a war plant, of course, but they were always called
Speaker 2: defense plants. That was the year of the National Defense Law,
Speaker 2: the law of total conscription. Under the law, I was
Speaker 2: required to take an oath of fidelity. I said I
Speaker 2: would not. I opposed it in conscience. I was given
Speaker 2: twenty four hours to think it over. In those twenty
Speaker 2: four hours, I lost the world now, This man, this
Speaker 2: friend of Myers, knew that refusing to give the oath
Speaker 2: wouldn't cost him his freedom, but it would cost him
Speaker 2: his job and make it impossible for him to get another.
Speaker 2: No one would hire a Bolshevik, and although he'd never
Speaker 2: been a Bolshevik, once the fascists take over, everyone who
Speaker 2: isn't a fascist becomes the worst thing they ever called
Speaker 2: their enemies. Today, I guess it would be far left
Speaker 2: extremists or antifa terrorists. Anyway, Meyer's friend explained that he
Speaker 2: thought he couldn't risk being tarred with that brush. Not
Speaker 2: because he wanted to escape with his fan and get
Speaker 2: a job elsewhere, but because he genuinely wanted to stay
Speaker 2: in Germany and fight the good fight. He had many
Speaker 2: German Jewish colleagues and other dissident friends he wanted to
Speaker 2: be able to help, and he calculated, quote if I
Speaker 2: took the oath and held my job, I might be
Speaker 2: of help somehow as things went on. If I refused
Speaker 2: to take the oath, I would certainly be useless to
Speaker 2: my friends. Even if I remained in the country, I
Speaker 2: myself would be in their situation. And so he decided
Speaker 2: to take the pledge, making a decision I think many
Speaker 2: of us would have made, telling himself simply that by
Speaker 2: saying the words I swear to God, he was ensuring
Speaker 2: no human being or government could override his conscience, and
Speaker 2: he was as good as his word. Through the war years,
Speaker 2: Meyer's friend helped save many lives, using his apartment as
Speaker 2: a safe house for people fleeing the Third Reich. That's
Speaker 2: incredibly admirable. I think we can all agree. But Meyer's
Speaker 2: friend felt nothing but shame for his actions. He said
Speaker 2: later of the day he took the oath. That day
Speaker 2: the world was lost, and it was I who lost it. Now,
Speaker 2: Meyer was confused by this, saying what I'd imagine most
Speaker 2: of us would say in his position, Well, by taking
Speaker 2: the oath, you were able to save many lives. You
Speaker 2: were just one man, and the Third Reich was already
Speaker 2: in power. What more could you have done? Here was
Speaker 2: his friend's response. Of course, I must explain. First of all,
Speaker 2: there is the problem of the lesser evil. Taking the
Speaker 2: oath was not so evil as being unable to help
Speaker 2: my friends later on.
Speaker 4: Would have been.
Speaker 2: But the evil of the oath was certain and immediate,
Speaker 2: and the helping of my friends, was in the future
Speaker 2: and therefore uncertain. I had to commit a positive evil
Speaker 2: there and then in the hope of a possible good
Speaker 2: later on. The good outweighed the evil, but the good
Speaker 2: was only a hope, the evil a fact.
Speaker 4: He went on to insist.
Speaker 2: That if he had refused to take the oath of fidelity,
Speaker 2: he could have saved the people later killed by the
Speaker 2: Nazi regime. And Meyer responded, logically, you don't truly believe
Speaker 2: that your lone refusal could have overthrown the Reich in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty five, and his friend said, no, of course not,
Speaker 2: but then went on to elaborate, there I was in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty five a p example if the kind of
Speaker 2: person who, with all his advantages in birth and education
Speaker 2: and imposition rules or might easily rule in any country.
Speaker 2: If I had refused to take the oath in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty five, it would have meant that thousands and thousands
Speaker 2: like me all over Germany were refusing to take it.
Speaker 2: Their refusal would have heartened millions. Thus the regime would
Speaker 2: have been overthrown, or indeed would never have come to
Speaker 2: power in the first place. The fact that I was
Speaker 2: not prepared to resist in nineteen thirty five meant that
Speaker 2: all the thousands, hundreds of thousands like me in Germany
Speaker 2: were also unprepared. Each one of these hundreds of thousands
Speaker 2: was like me, a man of great influence or of
Speaker 2: great potential influence. Thus the world was lost. Now Meyer
Speaker 2: still doesn't believe his friend because he's bogged down in
Speaker 2: the historical details, the nitty gritty of the rise of fascism.
Speaker 2: His friend, who lived through that, is instead focused on
Speaker 2: the greater moral and historic truths behind it. These hundred
Speaker 2: lives I saved, he told Meyer, or a thousand or ten,
Speaker 2: as you will. What do they represent? A little something
Speaker 2: out of the whole terrible evil? And if my faith
Speaker 2: had been strong enough in nineteen thirty five, I could
Speaker 2: have prevented the whole evil. Now, the faith he's expressing
Speaker 2: isn't a religious belief per se, but rather faith that
Speaker 2: right and wrong exist, and that when people step into
Speaker 2: our communities hell bent on harming others, they should be
Speaker 2: stopped by any means necessary. So Meyer asks him, can
Speaker 2: you imagine anything your society might have done to sustain
Speaker 2: your faith, to ensure you and other Germans like you
Speaker 2: would have been prepared to resist. Meyer's friend realizes he's
Speaker 2: speaking about education, the very American idea that ideologies like
Speaker 2: fascism thrive in ignorance and can be banished by the light.
Speaker 2: He insisted, Meyer was barking up the wrong tree. My
Speaker 2: education did not help me, he said, And I had
Speaker 2: a broader and better education than most men have or
Speaker 2: ever will have. All it did, in the end was
Speaker 2: enable me to rationalize my failure of faith more easily
Speaker 2: that I might have done if I had been ignorant.
Speaker 4: And so it was.
Speaker 2: I think among educated men generally in that time in Germany,
Speaker 2: their resistance was no greater than other men's. And that's
Speaker 2: my challenge today to everyone at this symposium, and in
Speaker 2: fact to myself. We all have the benefit of an
Speaker 2: education where all the kind of people who sit down
Speaker 2: in nice rooms to discuss the issues. It is incumbent
Speaker 2: on us to look out at the people struggling in
Speaker 2: Chicago and Minneapolis and Los Angeles and Portland and Philadelphia
Speaker 2: and everywhere else and ask ourselves, how can I support them,
Speaker 2: and how can I go further? The answer to that
Speaker 2: question is going to be a little different for everyone here,
Speaker 2: but none of us can afford to hold on to
Speaker 2: our old ideas of what counts as acceptable and unacceptable protest.
Speaker 2: We're all going to have to become more comfortable with
Speaker 2: taking on risk, because the boundaries between what is legal
Speaker 2: and illegal are going to change on a daily basis
Speaker 2: as we prepare for what comes next. We could all
Speaker 2: do a lot worse than to take the advice of
Speaker 2: New Hampshire Episcopal Bishop Rob Hirschfeldt, who, during a vigil
Speaker 2: for renee Good, told his clergy get your affairs in order,
Speaker 2: make sure you have your wills written, because it may
Speaker 2: be that now is no longer the time for statements,
Speaker 2: but for us, with our bodies, to stand between the
Speaker 2: powers of this world and the most vulnerable.
Speaker 9: I got.
Speaker 15: Thank you, Robert for that amazing speech, inspiring, sobering, challenging,
Speaker 15: confronting all of those things. It sort of almost feels
Speaker 15: I didn't want to describe it because in describing it,
Speaker 15: I feel that it may reduce it to anecdote. It
Speaker 15: was so powerful, but you know, I was so struck
Speaker 15: by your reference to Milton Mayer's account of the man
Speaker 15: who took the oath and who later said that day
Speaker 15: the world was lost and it was I who lost it.
Speaker 15: And I think that when liberals today, all of us,
Speaker 15: you know, we tell ourselves that we're choosing a less evil,
Speaker 15: we're staying quiet, or we're sort of staying within the
Speaker 15: bounds of you.
Speaker 4: Know, a particular reaction.
Speaker 15: I often ask myself the question, you know, what are
Speaker 15: we giving away in the process? You know, what compels
Speaker 15: people to cross from accommodation into moral risk? And is
Speaker 15: there a moment ahead where mass refusal could alter that
Speaker 15: trajectory or has that window already begun to close? You know,
Speaker 15: I think of my own, my own experience. You know,
Speaker 15: some people in the room know that I was a
Speaker 15: political prisoner in South Africa, and you know, I made
Speaker 15: a very conscious decision at a certain point, and it
Speaker 15: was a moral decision to get involved in the Antipotheid struggle,
Speaker 15: knowing what the costs were. But I would love to
Speaker 15: hear from you about what it is you think that
Speaker 15: compels people, as I said earlier on, to cross from
Speaker 15: accommodation into moral risk.
Speaker 2: I think that's a fascinating and an incredibly important question,
Speaker 2: and it's it's one I don't have a perfect answer
Speaker 2: to because there's a degree of mystery I've been a
Speaker 2: number of times with a crowd who you've seen it
Speaker 2: kind of come across their eyes and like confrontations with
Speaker 2: local police or with federal ass that we have the
Speaker 2: Mount numbered, and sometimes we have them Mount numbered and
Speaker 2: their AMMO just ran dry, and you see everybody in
Speaker 2: the crowd make a decision in that moment to kind
Speaker 2: of stay where they are, to not see what could
Speaker 2: come next, right, to not take a step forward, because
Speaker 2: they all have lives, because we have a functional enough society,
Speaker 2: because people have kids to get back to and jobs
Speaker 2: to get back to, and nobody wants to play act
Speaker 2: at an October revolution in between the middle of their
Speaker 2: work week. And one of the things that is a
Speaker 2: potential moment of change is when that the certainty of well,
Speaker 2: I have a life, right, and my friends have lives,
Speaker 2: and we all have something to get back to. When
Speaker 2: you have a large enough chunk of the populace who
Speaker 2: doesn't feel that way, who feels like, well, they've taken
Speaker 2: what I would go back to, They've taken any sense
Speaker 2: of security I have. There's no longer a point in
Speaker 2: me holding back because this is not holding back, and
Speaker 2: I don't have anything to go back to that's one
Speaker 2: of the things that causes mass and sudden flips. And
Speaker 2: you asked a little earlier, do I think the window
Speaker 2: is closing? And I think, kind of somewhat paradoxically, the
Speaker 2: window starts closing as soon as it opens, but it
Speaker 2: can never close all the way because there's not a
Speaker 2: lot of them. This is true in every country, with
Speaker 2: every state police force compared to the size of the populace.
Speaker 2: And so there's always a potential when enough people get
Speaker 2: angry and enough people get radicalized, that a system, even
Speaker 2: with the amount of violence behind it that ours has,
Speaker 2: can be toppled. That said, the longer we let this
Speaker 2: go on, the more they have wrapped their fingers around
Speaker 2: every aspect of policing injustice in this country, the more
Speaker 2: ability they have given their officers to utilize violence, to
Speaker 2: utilize advanced weaponry, to utilize drones and things like stingrays
Speaker 2: and whatnot against protesters. And so in that way, the
Speaker 2: window within which people can react and feel like they
Speaker 2: have a decent chance of getting away or of succeeding
Speaker 2: closes because the force deployed against them gets larger, which
Speaker 2: makes it a lot scarier and makes people less likely
Speaker 2: to take those risks.
Speaker 15: So so what does fighting back actually mean?
Speaker 5: I mean that that's.
Speaker 15: Really yeah, you know, that's a really I think that
Speaker 15: that's a really important question because you know, as you
Speaker 15: spoke about in your you know, in your remarks, and
Speaker 15: we know so well that you know, when the government
Speaker 15: or whatever controls the police, they control the military, you know,
Speaker 15: and if that has identified you as being you know,
Speaker 15: quote unquote to terrorist, regardless of you know, what the
Speaker 15: circumstances might be, what does fighting back actually mean? You know,
Speaker 15: what what is that resistance en compass? And we know
Speaker 15: that it can take many many forms. So I sort
Speaker 15: of want to push you a little bit more, you know,
Speaker 15: what does fighting back actually mean? But what for you
Speaker 15: feels morally defensible and what genuinely troubles you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess to start with if the question is
Speaker 2: what does fighting back look like in terms of what
Speaker 2: is an escalation from the ways in which we're currently
Speaker 2: fighting back that is still within the bounds of what
Speaker 2: most people on our side of the aisle would call
Speaker 2: like peaceful and morally justified if it's not legal, right, Well,
Speaker 2: one thing that comes to mind as a general strike,
Speaker 2: and in fact, the only thing that comes to mind
Speaker 2: that I think actually has serious weight. The weight to
Speaker 2: uproot a security state as powerful and established as ours is.
Speaker 2: The way to uproot a regime that says entrenched dis
Speaker 2: ours is a general strike. It's almost the only leverage
Speaker 2: that we have, which is why I'm happy to see
Speaker 2: them starting to explore doing it, and as a real thing.
Speaker 2: In Minneapolis, you get this thing online and Twitter, on
Speaker 2: Blue Sky whatever, where people will periodically be like, we're
Speaker 2: doing a general strike next week, Nobody go to workers shop.
Speaker 4: It's like, that's not how it works.
Speaker 2: You've got to you have to have the backing of unions,
Speaker 2: You have to have you have to have a lot
Speaker 2: of infrastructure set up to try and figure out how
Speaker 2: are we going to feed people, How are we going
Speaker 2: to keep people's lights on as much as possible, How
Speaker 2: are we going to provide people with the necessities during
Speaker 2: what will probably be an extended period of time out
Speaker 2: of work, and a time in which, if you're talking
Speaker 2: about a real general strike, a lot of the pillars
Speaker 2: that uphold daily life and our daily comforts will start
Speaker 2: to fail if it's an actual, functional general strike, And
Speaker 2: so you have to have systems built up for that,
Speaker 2: and it's one of the things people don't often think
Speaker 2: about when they're hearing these kind of big hitch ideas
Speaker 2: for resistance campaigns. One of my favorite examples of this
Speaker 2: just in terms of like the difference between here's the
Speaker 2: idea and here's the things we have to do to
Speaker 2: execute it. In Liberia, kind of at the end of
Speaker 2: the last really big period they had of like these
Speaker 2: kind of warring warlords, there was a massive protest campaign
Speaker 2: by women in Liberia that was I mean, it was
Speaker 2: basically pulled right out of Lizistrata. It was we are
Speaker 2: not going to have sex with our husbands, like, we're
Speaker 2: not going to do it. It was a mass resistance campaign.
Speaker 2: This has been written about. I know it sounds like Lizistrata,
Speaker 2: but it's a real thing that happened. And when they
Speaker 2: were considering how are we going to actually do this,
Speaker 2: they had to consider some really ugly realities, including the
Speaker 2: reality of rape, and so a factor behind the scenes
Speaker 2: and figuring out how to organize this was how are
Speaker 2: we going to create networks to smuggle women out of
Speaker 2: dangerous homes and keep them safe for the length of
Speaker 2: this protest campaign? Right and when you're talking about what's
Speaker 2: going to be necessary for a general strike, it's a
Speaker 2: ton of illegalism, right, you know, everything from people shoplifting
Speaker 2: food to stop people from starving, but to the very
Speaker 2: fact that carrying out and participating in a general strike,
Speaker 2: if one gains any momentum, will be declared illegal by
Speaker 2: the regime. They will try to crack down, They will
Speaker 2: arrest ring leaders, they will put people in black sites.
Speaker 2: These are realities that have to be accounted for in
Speaker 2: the underlying planning, and I'm hopeful about the potential for
Speaker 2: something like that in twenty twenty eight. Now, when it
Speaker 2: comes to the stuff that really scares me, one of
Speaker 2: the things that scares me is what happens if we
Speaker 2: cross the point into which there is no longer any
Speaker 2: hope or talk of peaceful resistance, right. And you have
Speaker 2: to consider this when you have a large number of
Speaker 2: armed men saying we just need to kill all of
Speaker 2: the people who are on the other side of this
Speaker 2: thing which we have in this country right now. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of them, They have weapons, many of them
Speaker 2: are in the police, some of them are in the military.
Speaker 2: These are realities of our present situation, and that's scary
Speaker 2: to me because when you cross that line, there's no
Speaker 2: longer any question of like right or wrong. It's just
Speaker 2: a matter of like what can survive the onslaught, And
Speaker 2: that's I think the thing to try to avoid at
Speaker 2: all costs, because any sort of mass internescing conflict in
Speaker 2: the United States among the Americans, it'll kill is many
Speaker 2: people outside of the country because global food systems and
Speaker 2: global medicines to supply systems will collapse. Right, So we're
Speaker 2: talking about having governors call out the National Guard against
Speaker 2: federal police forces. I think about both the necessity of that,
Speaker 2: because you have to try to resist and you have
Speaker 2: to try to make it clear is there anyone backing
Speaker 2: up the people from this federal agency? Is there anyone
Speaker 2: at a state level? Is there any kind of resistance
Speaker 2: that the state is going to respect? You have to
Speaker 2: ask that question, but some of the answers to it
Speaker 2: can take us to really terrifying places. And I don't
Speaker 2: think we can avoid asking the question anymore. I don't
Speaker 2: think we're going to avoid a point at which some
Speaker 2: governor tries something like that, because Ice is going to
Speaker 2: continue grabbing, right, They're going to continue pushing what they
Speaker 2: can do in blue cities. They're not going to This
Speaker 2: is not the extent of the shit they're going to try.
Speaker 15: Sorry, no, you know, and I think it's also particularly
Speaker 15: terrifying we think of what the budgets are behind, you
Speaker 15: know that enables this, and you know, the budgets that
Speaker 15: are now about to be voted. I mean we're not
Speaker 15: just we're talking about billions and billions, eh, and it's
Speaker 15: just extraordinary. So you know, I mean again going back
Speaker 15: to my experience in South Africa and you know, this
Speaker 15: idea of a general strike, you know, what was ultimately
Speaker 15: the most effective weapon against the apartheid regime was mass mobilizing,
Speaker 15: mass organizing across the country, mass marches that actually that
Speaker 15: quite literally made it was a specific campaign to make
Speaker 15: the country ungovernable. And it was on every level. It
Speaker 15: was consumer boycotts, it was mass marches, it was you know,
Speaker 15: marches specifically targeted at the aparthe eight laws that broke
Speaker 15: the back of the apartheight laws. And it was that
Speaker 15: aided by incredible pressure from outside, from outside sanctions.
Speaker 5: Of course, things are very different now.
Speaker 15: But you know, this does take me to another question
Speaker 15: something that I've thought a lot about is you know,
Speaker 15: after this whole crisis, after this is over, you know,
Speaker 15: what are the consequences? What about accountability? You know, when
Speaker 15: we get to the other side of this, which we will,
Speaker 15: we will get to the other side of this. You know,
Speaker 15: what should that accountability look like? Is it an American
Speaker 15: truth and reconciliation campaign? You know, we had a truth
Speaker 15: and reconciliation campaign in South Africa and it was extraordinarily healing,
Speaker 15: but there was no restitution and at the end of
Speaker 15: the day, there was no justice. So what was the
Speaker 15: sort of transformational societal transformational aspect of that should we
Speaker 15: think about an American truth and reconciliation campaign? Is it
Speaker 15: something closer to Nuremberg? You know, who gain to be
Speaker 15: seen as the architects of this authoritarian movement? Who going
Speaker 15: to be seen as the architects of this anti authoritarian movement?
Speaker 15: You know, how do we as a democratic country or
Speaker 15: a democratic society, how willing are we to go to
Speaker 15: pursue those consequences? I mean, we've just seen how hollow
Speaker 15: that can be. You know, after January sixth, you know
Speaker 15: how Trump has pardoned the insurrectionists. I'd love to hear
Speaker 15: your thoughts on that, and I know we've only got
Speaker 15: three minutes left before I get hold off the stage.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I guess I have two answers to that.
Speaker 2: The first would be what do I think is likely
Speaker 2: to happen? And then what should happen? In terms of
Speaker 2: what's likely to happen, I guess the likeliest thing is
Speaker 2: that if we have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, it's
Speaker 2: something that we kind of half ass and it falls
Speaker 2: way too short, and there's not any kind of criminal
Speaker 2: restitution for the people who are breaking laws and hurting
Speaker 2: and killing people right now. I would say that's a
Speaker 2: likely possibility, just given the way in which this country
Speaker 2: has handled similar things in the past and the ways
Speaker 2: in which other countries have handled similar things in the past.
Speaker 2: Let's not forget the Nuremberg. For all of the things
Speaker 2: about it that were good, was also a failure in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways. Right The vast majority of the
Speaker 2: Nazis who participated directly physically in the Holocaust did not
Speaker 2: see any kind of criminal consequences. So when it comes
Speaker 2: to what I think we should have, I think we
Speaker 2: do need something along the lines of in Nuremberg. And
Speaker 2: I think that if you want to talk about the
Speaker 2: people politically who are committing crimes right now and who
Speaker 2: should be on trial, I think we can all come
Speaker 2: up with a lot of very similar names.
Speaker 4: And I'm very.
Speaker 2: Supportive of trying and bringing this regime to justice for
Speaker 2: its current illegal behavior and past illegal behavior. That said,
Speaker 2: I think it's going to be also a failure if
Speaker 2: we do not extend any attempt at criminal consequences, at
Speaker 2: retribution at justice.
Speaker 4: I guess would be.
Speaker 2: The better term to a group of people who have
Speaker 2: underlined all of the negative societal changes that are happening
Speaker 2: right now, which is the people who run all of
Speaker 2: the major social media corporations in the world, all of
Speaker 2: whom are deeply complicit and not just our authoritarian slide,
Speaker 2: but in direct violence. Facebook knew for a fact that
Speaker 2: the military of me Amar was using their website to
Speaker 2: spread propaganda to help further in ethnic cleansing, and they
Speaker 2: made the choice basically to sit with that because it
Speaker 2: made the money, you know, And that sort of thing
Speaker 2: should be seen as just as illegal as a bunch
Speaker 2: of ice agents without a warrant busting into somebody's house
Speaker 2: with guns, you know.
Speaker 4: So that's where I stand.
Speaker 2: I'm on a we didn't go nearly far enough after
Speaker 2: the Civil War either kind of kick right now, but
Speaker 2: without need to go into that.
Speaker 15: We've come to the end of our time. Unfortunately, you
Speaker 15: know I could continue. I've got, you know, seven seven
Speaker 15: questions that I would have loved to have asked you,
Speaker 15: but we don't have time. But you know, Robert, I
Speaker 15: can't thank you enough for coming, for being with us,
Speaker 15: for sharing your thoughts, and you know, traveling all the
Speaker 15: way from Portland, and you know, I'm so sorry about
Speaker 15: the hundred times that you've been to your guest. You know,
Speaker 15: I've been to your guest many many times in my life,
Speaker 15: but it's definitely not one hundred.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of people got to your guests more
Speaker 2: than me, and Bortlands.
Speaker 4: Well and elsewhere.
Speaker 15: Thank you, Thank you so much, and thank you all
Speaker 15: for bearing with us.
Speaker 3: This is it could happen here at Executive Disorder, our
Speaker 3: weekly newscast covering what's happening the White House, the crumbling world,
Speaker 3: and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis Dame,
Speaker 3: joined by James Stout, Robert Evans and maybe Sophie Lichterman. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this episode we are covering the week of January twenty
Speaker 3: eighth to February fourth. Very exciting events happening this weekend,
Speaker 3: as we know, the super Bowl and even more importantly,
Speaker 3: the Turning Point USA halftime Show streaming on Daily Wire Plus,
Speaker 3: America's Real Voice, National News Desk and TBN. I don't
Speaker 3: know what that is.
Speaker 1: Way pause, pause, it's behind a payroll.
Speaker 3: Uh you know, unclear? Well, but probably not because it's
Speaker 3: gonna be Also it's also gonna be on YouTube x
Speaker 3: Everything app and Rumble.
Speaker 4: But I was going to ask it was on Rumble.
Speaker 3: It's gonna be Oh, don't worry, James that there are
Speaker 3: one step ahead of you and we can we can
Speaker 3: see all of our favorite acts. We have kid Rock,
Speaker 3: Bradley Gilbert, Lee Brice, and Gabby Barrett, all of my
Speaker 3: favorite performers.
Speaker 2: Garrett, I haven't seen kid Rock since you and I
Speaker 2: watched Kid Rock together at the RNC.
Speaker 3: It's been too long. It's been too long.
Speaker 4: It's been way too long.
Speaker 3: It's been too long. I'm I'm excited for Lee Bryce
Speaker 3: obviously as a as as the biggest Bryce head on
Speaker 3: the pod. Rice is gonna be huge. Yeabby Beart will
Speaker 3: be a nice you know, a nice little spice on top.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and this guy's name is it's not Bradley, It's
Speaker 4: it's Brandley.
Speaker 3: Sorry, Brandy Gilbert. My my apologies, my apologies all the
Speaker 3: big Brandley fans out there by bad name obviously the
Speaker 3: most literally.
Speaker 4: Brand that's not a real name. That's just not a
Speaker 4: real name. Yeah, it isn't spelt with L E I
Speaker 4: g H. So we do have to give him that.
Speaker 2: If it was Brandt Leigh, I would be doing some
Speaker 2: terrorism right.
Speaker 4: Right, gun in my hand. Yeah, I would be unable
Speaker 4: to stop myself.
Speaker 12: You guys, I just googled Lee Brice and the first
Speaker 12: picture that pops up is incredible and I'm gonna put
Speaker 12: it in the chat.
Speaker 4: Please do is it in the work chat?
Speaker 1: It's zoomed. That's the first picture that pops up. It's incredible.
Speaker 3: Oh he looks tough.
Speaker 4: Wow is he in band of brothers?
Speaker 3: His jaw is fantastic.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, an incredible first photo.
Speaker 4: Yeah, his expression isn't though. He's really letting himself down
Speaker 4: with the face.
Speaker 1: Yeah, his face says I really am racist.
Speaker 4: It just doesn't look happy to be there.
Speaker 3: So obviously, after about six months of planning, Turning Point
Speaker 3: was able to put together just the finest, the finest
Speaker 3: acts in all the show business for their for their
Speaker 3: all Americans, all the big names, really whatever flits, everyone's
Speaker 3: it to listen. They could not even get Nicki Minaje,
Speaker 3: which is like so humiliating, Like, come on, guys.
Speaker 4: Yeah, didn't she do a dance with the Treasury Secretary
Speaker 4: yesterday or something?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 12: Who is that guy or those two people that were
Speaker 12: at the R and C that they kept showing doing
Speaker 12: that rap video?
Speaker 1: I like kind of blocked it down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, those conservative rap guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for Gattio Blow is it forget for Gatio Blow
Speaker 2: is one of the conservative rap guys.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, I will admit I don't have a deep
Speaker 4: knowledge in this area.
Speaker 2: I I saw him at the R n C. I
Speaker 2: was walking behind him on my way to the beer store.
Speaker 4: He's incredible. He's an amazing looking man. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 4: unique dude. That's a that's your risky goople of the day.
Speaker 2: God really broke the mold with him.
Speaker 3: So we will we will report on how the Turning
Speaker 3: Point halftime show went next week for the next d
Speaker 3: D because you you know that I'm going to be
Speaker 3: turned into rumble to watch this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's gonna be We're need a minute by minute
Speaker 2: breakdown of this bad Boy.
Speaker 3: I'll be taking extensive notes.
Speaker 4: I feel'll be able to record in watch it again
Speaker 4: later for posterity. I feel like it's gonna go down
Speaker 4: like live aid. You know, it's the greatest moment in
Speaker 4: live music.
Speaker 3: It is interesting that they are showing it on national
Speaker 3: news desk. Fox News did not do not decide to
Speaker 3: air air the all of Eric at halftime show, so
Speaker 3: instead you have to tune into TBN whatever that is
Speaker 3: in a national news desk. So let's get us some
Speaker 3: actual news though.
Speaker 2: Sure, real news, Okay. So Portland, Oregon has been the
Speaker 2: site of some recent noteworthy ice protests. On Saturday, the
Speaker 2: thirty first of January, there was a large union march
Speaker 2: on the Ice building on McAdams Street in Portland, Oregon.
Speaker 2: This was like basically every union in Portland. It was
Speaker 2: the largest union march that we've had here in like
Speaker 2: twenty years. Somewhere along those lines, about five to ten
Speaker 2: thousand people showed up. Wow, when I heard it was
Speaker 2: ten k because I wound up there. I hadn't even
Speaker 2: planning to go, but I showed up with a friend
Speaker 2: and as we were kind of watching the crowd pass,
Speaker 2: a buddy of ours came up who knows one of
Speaker 2: the people who organized the march, and was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: they're expecting like ten thousand people and I was like,
Speaker 2: there's no way they're going to get ten that fucking
Speaker 2: people out here. And then as the crowd went past
Speaker 2: me for like twenty straight minutes, and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that might be ten thousand people. That really is quite
Speaker 2: a lot of motherfucking people. It was an extremely diverse crowd,
Speaker 2: which I mean in the age sense primarily it's Portlands,
Speaker 2: so not in the in any other sense of the word.
Speaker 12: Yeah, those protests tend to have you know, older folks, teenagers, families, teachers.
Speaker 2: A lot of older folks, a lot of little kids,
Speaker 2: kids who were like eight to twelve years old. Because
Speaker 2: it was just suppose people were like the basic rout
Speaker 2: of march was doing a circle around the ice facility,
Speaker 2: and then there was like sound equipment and music set
Speaker 2: up on a nearby park. So I think I don't
Speaker 2: believe the plan was an extended confrontation with Ice, which
Speaker 2: is what made what came next so surprising, which is
Speaker 2: that we start walking towards where the route of march
Speaker 2: is heading. We're kind of in like the middle of
Speaker 2: the crowd probably, and we see a cloud and it's
Speaker 2: like three point thirty in the afternoon. So the people
Speaker 2: I'm with, who have all been through their share of
Speaker 2: Portland protests, are like, that can't be tear gas. It's
Speaker 2: not even four pm and this is the Liberal March.
Speaker 2: There's no way they've gassed it already. Like I saw
Speaker 2: the front of the march. It was a bunch of
Speaker 2: people in their fifties. Like, they're not forcing the issue
Speaker 2: with Ice, I don't think, but apparently pray the claims
Speaker 2: made by Ice. When the crowd reached the Ice building,
Speaker 2: people began throwing water bottles. So obviously that's a situation
Speaker 2: that can't be allowed to continue. So they gas the
Speaker 2: absolute fuck out of the march, and they gased it
Speaker 2: so much that the cloud of gas spread to cover
Speaker 2: pretty much the entire march, including the people who were
Speaker 2: nowhere near.
Speaker 4: The front of the march.
Speaker 9: Yet.
Speaker 2: So as we're walking towards it, we've become aware about
Speaker 2: halfway towards getting to it that like, okay, that's not
Speaker 2: smoke that is in fact gas. Some of us had masks.
Speaker 2: I did not, so I'm like, well, I'm going to
Speaker 2: have a bad time. This is straight up not going
Speaker 2: to be fun album with It was because of where
Speaker 2: they gassed us.
Speaker 4: There were kind of two streets.
Speaker 2: Of buildings on either side, so you basically got you're
Speaker 2: in like a valley almost. You've got steep canyon walls
Speaker 2: kind of on either side of you. And there was
Speaker 2: no wind that day, so you've just got this thick
Speaker 2: cloud of gas smoke and ten thousand people crammed in
Speaker 2: between two pillars of buildings. So it was a very
Speaker 2: bad time. A lot of kids got gassed. I saw
Speaker 2: a number of children in significant distress, like little kids.
Speaker 2: A lot of old people wound up in significant distress.
Speaker 2: It was straight up a bad time and it continued
Speaker 2: for the next day. There was another march the next
Speaker 2: day that started at city Hall. This kind of galvanized
Speaker 2: people in Portland to specifically take up the charge of
Speaker 2: protesting for the city to basically not renew or cancel
Speaker 2: ICE's contract to use the building that they're based out of.
Speaker 4: So there was a large march on Sunday. I showed
Speaker 4: up as the march.
Speaker 2: Which reached the Ice area because.
Speaker 4: I didn't want to walk across town.
Speaker 2: And sure enough we get there and maybe an hour
Speaker 2: or so after the crowd arrives, there's like a thousand
Speaker 2: or so people and it's still a very young crowd.
Speaker 2: This is not mostly people who have been doing the
Speaker 2: protest thing in Portland for a long time.
Speaker 4: Like I saw a lot of.
Speaker 2: Girls who couldn't have been older than sixteen or seventeen
Speaker 2: out on Sunday and they gassed again. And I couldn't
Speaker 2: tell you. They were letting people like right up to
Speaker 2: the front of the Ice building, which they had gassed
Speaker 2: folks for throwing water bottles kind of near the day before.
Speaker 2: So there's never any consistency with these sort of things.
Speaker 2: And eventually they just decided to gas the shit out
Speaker 2: of everybody again to come and snatch people. And that's
Speaker 2: kind of the story is people in Portland are really
Speaker 2: pissed again because they gassed the big Lib march. All
Speaker 2: of the unions are really angry, all of the nurses
Speaker 2: are really angry, The city government's angry. The Mayor of Portland,
Speaker 2: Keith Wilson, made a statement that all of the I
Speaker 2: say should quit their jobs should resign. I don't know that.
Speaker 2: I think that they're actually going to kick I out
Speaker 2: of its building now. To be fair, I don't think
Speaker 2: that ICE is really getting much done in that building
Speaker 2: because it's locked down completely. They are using facilities up
Speaker 2: in Washington for the actual immigration stuff for the most part,
Speaker 2: so it's become I think it's largely a symbol. Yeah,
Speaker 2: a symbolic kind of dill. So we'll see. I don't
Speaker 2: know what's going to happen next, but yeah, that's the
Speaker 2: update from here.
Speaker 1: The tear gas air is spicy and bad for our.
Speaker 2: Health, yeah, I mean, it always bums me out to
Speaker 2: see really young people like kids get tear gased, especially
Speaker 2: like teenage girls. Because there's data, and not nearly as
Speaker 2: much as there should because the government really doesn't like
Speaker 2: studying this on how tear gas affects, particularly like reproductive health,
Speaker 2: and it's bad. There's evidence from places like Gaza that
Speaker 2: it can cause miscarriages. There's documentation and miscarriages and at
Speaker 2: least three different countries as a result of tear gas use,
Speaker 2: although again it's not the kind of documentation you'd want
Speaker 2: for a medical thing because you can't really isolate out
Speaker 2: other factors that may have been happening at the same time,
Speaker 2: because you're trying to figure out what this and other
Speaker 2: things are doing to people's bodies in a place like
Speaker 2: Gaza where you have no kind of like clinical control.
Speaker 2: But outside of that, there's evidence of missed periods that
Speaker 2: it can like delay or cause unusually painful periods.
Speaker 1: Send people into early menopause.
Speaker 5: Jeez.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's some evidence for that.
Speaker 2: It's kind of a When I brought this up online,
Speaker 2: someone got very angry at me because they're like, well,
Speaker 2: it's not proven. I think there's enough data to tell people,
Speaker 2: especially if you've got a uterus wear a mask when
Speaker 2: you go protest.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think also, how are we going to obtain
Speaker 4: proof in this scenario?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 4: What are they going to do? Yeah, it's not very
Speaker 4: easy for us to do. We can't really do it
Speaker 4: just a double blind trial, right.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Somebody brought up like, if it was bad for reproductive health,
Speaker 2: then all of the women in the military, because you
Speaker 2: get tear gassed as part of military training, then that
Speaker 2: would have shown up before and it hasn't. And I
Speaker 2: immediately found in about three second it's the largest study
Speaker 2: done so far on the effect of tear gas that
Speaker 2: specifically noted. Yeah, they did some studies on here tear
Speaker 2: gas affects people in the sixties. They didn't look at women,
Speaker 2: weren't interested, they didn't care, not at.
Speaker 4: All a priority. Yeah, completely ignored it. Shocked, shocked to
Speaker 4: hear this.
Speaker 2: So anyway, just like we're a respirator, A half faced respirator,
Speaker 2: you know, is cheaper. I would recommend a full face
Speaker 2: because tear gas sucks on your eyes. They're not crazy expensive.
Speaker 2: You don't have to get a nice gas mask. Just
Speaker 2: get a respirator. It's better than nothing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I like my respirator.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 4: So firstly, just a couple of small things that we
Speaker 4: wanted to note that we might come back to covering later. First,
Speaker 4: the US has now admitted that it had a small
Speaker 4: contingent of troops on the ground in Nigeria. I wrote
Speaker 4: on my newsletter about US drone strikes in Nigeria, what
Speaker 4: they're doing there and who they're targeting with those drone strikes,
Speaker 4: alongside the the long running issues with civilian casualties with
Speaker 4: airborne raids in Nigeria. On my news letters of people
Speaker 4: want to read that they can and secondly, I wanted
Speaker 4: to mention that Judge Anna Reyes has stated Secretary Nomes
Speaker 4: decision that would have rendered three hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 4: Haitians without legal status when she was going to let
Speaker 4: the temporary protected status expire. I have explained TPS several
Speaker 4: times on ED and in my first Darien series, so
Speaker 4: I'm not going to go into detail about it here,
Speaker 4: but if you'd like to listen to those, you can
Speaker 4: find out more about it.
Speaker 3: Last thing before our first ad break, Bill and Hillary
Speaker 3: Clinton have agreed to testify before Congress is a part
Speaker 3: of the Epstein investigation. A vote to hold the Clintons
Speaker 3: and criminal contempt of Congress was scheduled for this week
Speaker 3: before they finally agreed to be deposed at two hearings
Speaker 3: in late February, and the Clintons have now called for
Speaker 3: these hearings to be public. This follows a slew of
Speaker 3: new Epstein documents that are released by the DOJ last week,
Speaker 3: which Robert You'll be you'll be covering on behind the
Speaker 3: Bastards soon.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, we will be talking about the things revealed
Speaker 2: in the new Epstein file releases. The three million or
Speaker 2: so documents that just came out. Yes, we'll be talking
Speaker 2: about that on Behind the Bastards.
Speaker 1: Not next week but the week after.
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably like the week after something like that. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of good stuff in there, a lot of
Speaker 2: Brock Pierce in this set of releases. If you've been
Speaker 2: curious as to what the guy who invented tether, the
Speaker 2: cryptocurrency tether, was up to, with Jeffrey Epstein as a spoiler,
Speaker 2: it was molesting people, Jesus Christ. Yeah, well allegedly, we
Speaker 2: don't know. We don't know that it was molesting. They
Speaker 2: were described as girls, repeatedly described as girls in the
Speaker 2: emails between Brock Pierce, the Mighty Ducks guy, and Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but that could mean anything, you know, that could mean anything.
Speaker 3: You'd be talking about the Elon Mosk emails in there.
Speaker 2: There's some Elon stuff in there. It's nothing definitive. The
Speaker 2: downside of it is Elon has a leg to stand
Speaker 2: on when he's like I never went to the island
Speaker 2: that said. You can interpret the emails one of two ways.
Speaker 2: Because I saw an Elon Musk fans, I'd be like, see,
Speaker 2: he was clearly just trying to blow him off. That's
Speaker 2: not how I interpret Elon's emails to Epstein. I think
Speaker 2: he really wanted to go to that fuck island.
Speaker 4: What night will the wildest posse be or something?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was like I want to know where that
Speaker 2: But he was also talking about like the whole island
Speaker 2: area right, like where the wildest parties are that he wanted,
Speaker 2: So he does have some plausible deniability, But he was
Speaker 2: lying about not being in touch with Epstein and also
Speaker 2: JK Rowling in touch with Epstein. Oh shit, save yes,
Speaker 2: saved him seats for the opening of her play. Oh
Speaker 2: of the Harry Potter play on Broadway, got Jeffrey Epstein
Speaker 2: a seat.
Speaker 4: God, just when you thaw she gonna be a worse
Speaker 4: fucking person.
Speaker 1: Incredible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what ad What a disgrace to national Yeah, I
Speaker 4: mean we have lots of those, I guess, but yeah.
Speaker 3: I can't believe this one person has ruined the reputation
Speaker 3: of Britain, the.
Speaker 4: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, previously unblemished
Speaker 4: in santis of history Jesus Christ till the tough Wizard
Speaker 4: Lady came alone. Yeah, the first bed English person anyway.
Speaker 3: So yeah, on February twenty sixth, Hillary will be testifying
Speaker 3: and on the twenty seventh Bill will be testifying in
Speaker 3: hearings that should be televised live to the public.
Speaker 12: Interesting, okay, let's go on, brit all right, we're back,
Speaker 12: and I have a fantastic news. Look what I found.
Speaker 1: Look what I found, you guys, deep in my archives
Speaker 1: of misery.
Speaker 3: Luckily, podcasting is a visual medium.
Speaker 1: Oh no, it's audio.
Speaker 4: Okay, what are we imagine?
Speaker 10: Oh god, all right, I think I think we get
Speaker 10: forgot you.
Speaker 5: Wow?
Speaker 4: Do we need anymore?
Speaker 12: No?
Speaker 10: No, we don't.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, sorry?
Speaker 5: Oh god.
Speaker 4: The fact that video is playing on the background of
Speaker 4: a large police badge.
Speaker 1: We're voting Donald Trump baby so.
Speaker 3: Bad, so bad. I cannot tell you how disappointed I
Speaker 3: am that I will not be hearing them perform on
Speaker 3: Super Bowl Sunday. You can see just the disappointment in
Speaker 3: my face right now.
Speaker 4: M M.
Speaker 3: This Wednesday morning, February fourth, Tom Homan announced that they're
Speaker 3: pulling seven hundred federal agents out of Minneapolis, though two
Speaker 3: thousand will remain in this city.
Speaker 1: That's so many agents.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's so that much.
Speaker 1: Seven hundred sounded like there's.
Speaker 3: Still a lot of ICE and Border patrol on the ground.
Speaker 4: Wow, two thousand was a search that they did earlier
Speaker 4: this year. That that was when they really kind of
Speaker 4: flooded it with ICE agents. So two thousand is still
Speaker 4: two thousands is still a massive amount of ICE is
Speaker 4: overall capacity that these aren't all ICE agents, right, like
Speaker 4: they deputize atf and marshals and other things.
Speaker 3: But a lot of Border patrol guys here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know if that's who the seven hundred
Speaker 4: who there was drawing are.
Speaker 3: It's a mix, it's not. I don't think they're from
Speaker 3: just one agency.
Speaker 4: Okay, Yeah, there are a lot of Border patrol you
Speaker 4: see that a lot, right, Like, the border patrol agents
Speaker 4: clearly love this, right, They're they're getting per DM, they're
Speaker 4: getting travel pay, they make more money than they do
Speaker 4: in the border, and they don't have to like drive
Speaker 4: around in the middle of nowhere. They call it going
Speaker 4: on Safari. Homan has cited an increase in cooperation by
Speaker 4: Minnesota authorities. He was talking about handing over detained people
Speaker 4: who would be deportable, I think, but I have not
Speaker 4: seen a similar statement from state authorities in Minnesota, at
Speaker 4: least at a time so like take that with a
Speaker 4: pinch of salt. Right, A lot of what we see
Speaker 4: coming out of drum DHS just straight up isn't true.
Speaker 3: They have been talking about trying to like increase the
Speaker 3: cooperation with ICE detainers in the local prisons and jails.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think that would be what this cooperation
Speaker 4: would be. It would be like either cooperating with ICE
Speaker 4: detainers or even alerting ICE if they thought someone was deportable.
Speaker 3: An interesting thing of note, as well as earlier this week,
Speaker 3: the military troops that were placed on standby have been
Speaker 3: unplaced on standby, So not looking like those guys in
Speaker 3: Alaska or North Carolina will be deploying to Minneapolis. In
Speaker 3: some other Minneapolis related news, Don Lemon, front of the Park,
Speaker 3: was arrested Thursday, January twenty nine, and now faces civil
Speaker 3: rights charges for allegedly violating Face Act, which prohibits interfering
Speaker 3: with reproductive health services or people exercising religious freedom at
Speaker 3: a place of worship. On January eighteenth, Lemon reported on
Speaker 3: a protest at City's church in Saint Paul, where one
Speaker 3: of the pastors is also the head of the local
Speaker 3: ICE field office. A magistrate, judge and an appeals court
Speaker 3: previously dismissed the charges against Lemon before the case was
Speaker 3: brought before a grand jury in Minnesota. Six activists and
Speaker 3: one other journalists are also facing charges. We reported on
Speaker 3: this protest after it happened, and yeah, the DOJ has
Speaker 3: been trying to pin pin Lemon on this for the
Speaker 3: past few weeks. Yeah, probably not a great sign just
Speaker 3: for you know, general general first Amendment activity.
Speaker 4: No, no, that's a pretty pretty bleak side actually.
Speaker 3: As frustrating as as it is to start waiving the
Speaker 3: Jimmy Kimmel Don Lemon flag. You know that, that is
Speaker 3: the situation we're in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not good. The journalists they arrested was the
Speaker 4: head of the National Association of Black Journalists.
Speaker 9: What's' she?
Speaker 4: Georgia fort is her name? Yes, yes, I do want
Speaker 4: to say actually that like when we talk about protections
Speaker 4: for journalists, like journalists, yes, can often be the people
Speaker 4: who were first targeted for like things that violate freedom
Speaker 4: of speech. Right, Like when governments are going to violate
Speaker 4: freedom of speech, they can go after journalists first. But
Speaker 4: like when someone is recording ice operations, they are doing
Speaker 4: citizen journalism, they are protected by exactly the same rights
Speaker 4: that we have as journalists who are doing this as
Speaker 4: our full time job. There isn't a special first Amendment
Speaker 4: for us. And so when the border patrol agents killed
Speaker 4: Alex Pretty, they killed someone who is at that time
Speaker 4: engaged to journalism too. And like, I'm happy to see
Speaker 4: journalistic bodies standing up, not just for people who employed
Speaker 4: this full time journalists have put all of our rights
Speaker 4: to document and record.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all of the legal observers who are film ICE
Speaker 3: as well that are being targeted with intimidation, being pulled over.
Speaker 4: Having guns pointed at them, etc.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Do you want to talk about the Senate funding for ICE? Oh?
Speaker 9: Do I?
Speaker 3: So the partial government shut down, which did start last
Speaker 3: week was ended on Tuesday after the DJs bill was
Speaker 3: stripped out of the now one point two trillion dollar
Speaker 3: annual funding package. DHS's funding will lapse on Friday the thirteenth,
Speaker 3: and negotiation.
Speaker 4: Why not.
Speaker 3: While negotiations continue on a DHS funding bill, Congressional Democrats
Speaker 3: are pushing for agency reforms like judicial warrants and no
Speaker 3: masked agents, while Republicans are signaling minor concessions like having
Speaker 3: a border patrol and ICE wear body cameras Yeah.
Speaker 4: Should we talk a little bit more about body cameras.
Speaker 3: You know what, my favorite topic. Let's talk about body
Speaker 3: cameras again.
Speaker 4: I love to talk about a body worn camera.
Speaker 3: Time was a flat circle.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, So Christie Nome this week announced that ICE
Speaker 4: agents in Minnesota were going to where body worn cameras
Speaker 4: going forward. And I've been kind of disappointed a lot
Speaker 4: of the reporting on this. What is I think missing
Speaker 4: is that that, like, there was a twenty twenty two
Speaker 4: executive order right signed by Biden the ordered federal law
Speaker 4: enforcement to use body worn cameras. Funding for them was
Speaker 4: included in the twenty twenty one for SCOOL year appropriations built.
Speaker 4: Nome has said they will grow the program as funds
Speaker 4: become available, but those funds have been available for some time.
Speaker 4: Right In twenty twenty four document ICE document that talked
Speaker 4: about their pilot program study, they said, quote full implementation
Speaker 4: is expected by September thirtieth, twenty twenty five. Eagle eared
Speaker 4: listers will notice that it's in the past. However, in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five, ICE began and rolling this back. They
Speaker 4: issued a directive which continued only implementing the body worn
Speaker 4: camera program in the certain pilot programs cities. The Trump administration,
Speaker 4: in its second term, has called Congress to cut funding
Speaker 4: for body worn cameras by seventy five percent and reduce
Speaker 4: the staffing of the body worn camera program from twenty
Speaker 4: two people to just three. They have also cut oversight
Speaker 4: offices within DHS like oh IDO. O IDEO is like
Speaker 4: the nichest level of DHS. Understand that when you know
Speaker 4: of o IDEO, I think Biden created it. I actually
Speaker 4: I've seen them once. It's the Office of the Immigration
Speaker 4: Detention ombardsmen. They came to the outdoor detention sites in
Speaker 4: hercumber which seems to be something of a concession that
Speaker 4: by the administration at the time denied people were detained
Speaker 4: in those sites. It had one hundred plus employees at
Speaker 4: start of the Trump administration. It also has three now
Speaker 4: according to Reuters. This most recent bill, as Garrison said,
Speaker 4: does include funding and a mandate for their use. A
Speaker 4: federal judge in Chicago had already ordered agents there to
Speaker 4: wear cameras in November of last year. I should note
Speaker 4: that I also looked up the ice body warm camera
Speaker 4: policy and theoretically now in so far of any of
Speaker 4: these policies are being followed right, prohibits them for using
Speaker 4: body warm cameras for the quote sole purpose of recording
Speaker 4: people engaged in First Amendment protected activities. So they can
Speaker 4: just use their phones for that. I guess that's what
Speaker 4: they've been doing.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, this is like part of the frustration
Speaker 3: around this bill is you do have humor pushing for
Speaker 3: certain things like like not wearing masks and not doing
Speaker 3: the rolling raids. Will also emphasizing you know, you want
Speaker 3: the masks off and the cameras on, as if that's
Speaker 3: going to affect the behavior of agents on the ground. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: during the killing of Renee Good, the officer that shot
Speaker 3: and killed her was filming the whole thing on his phone.
Speaker 3: He was filming on his own cell phone, so obvious. Obviously. Yeah,
Speaker 3: having a camera on the agent is not going to
Speaker 3: prevent them from killing someone.
Speaker 2: Because they think it's good what they're doing. Yeah, they
Speaker 2: don't think it's bad.
Speaker 4: You have to understand that agents who shot Alex pretty
Speaker 4: actually had body worn cameras and they're actually CBP agents.
Speaker 4: So CBP or BP, I should say, right, customs are Border.
Speaker 3: Protection, one of them is CPP. One of them's PP.
Speaker 4: That's correct. Yeah, that's they're they're both CBP agents, but
Speaker 4: within CBP you have BP and OFO. Okay, they get
Speaker 4: really mad if you get this wrong. Literally, I've got
Speaker 4: an email once for a subject line. Come on, man.
Speaker 4: So they were both Customs and Border Protection agents generally
Speaker 4: border patrol. Border Patrol is part of Customs and Border Protection,
Speaker 4: right the other part of the Office of Field Operations.
Speaker 4: Border Patrol ceased using their cameras early in the Trump administration,
Speaker 4: citing an issue with the bluetooth used by the cameras
Speaker 4: that could make them detectable. This is a thing that
Speaker 4: can happen. It is possible. There's a GitHub script for this.
Speaker 4: Whether they're justifiers stopping using them is an entirely different question.
Speaker 4: Both the agents in the pretty shooting were wearing body
Speaker 4: can but we have not seen footage. The two agents
Speaker 4: have been identified by Pro Publica as Border Patrol agent
Speaker 4: Jizus jesse Or Choa and Customs and Border Protection Officer
Speaker 4: Field Operations Officer Raimundo Gutierrez. A Choa joined twenty eighteen.
Speaker 4: Gutierrez joined in twenty fourteen. Gutierrez is part of the
Speaker 4: Officer Field Operations Special Response team that is generally a
Speaker 4: team with training in weapons and tactics who would serve
Speaker 4: high risk warrants do raids.
Speaker 5: I guess swat style.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's another word for swat. I think because what
Speaker 4: became somewhat you know, they decided they wanted a different
Speaker 4: word for it. Sure, pro Publica I got an interview
Speaker 4: with the choa's ex wife who said, quote, by the
Speaker 4: time the couple split in twenty twenty one, he had
Speaker 4: become a gun enthusiast, with about twenty five rifles, pistols
Speaker 4: and shotguns. In so much as that matters, I guess
Speaker 4: that was the only interview they could get about them.
Speaker 4: Both of the men are from South Texas.
Speaker 3: To circle back to the funding bill for DHS and
Speaker 3: these potential reforms being pushed for at you know, multiple
Speaker 3: levels of the Democratic establishment, you know, with Schumer being
Speaker 3: a little bit lighter and obviously people like AOC and
Speaker 3: to leave pushing for more extreme measures like abolishing the
Speaker 3: agency advice, which is unlikely to happen in this funding
Speaker 3: bill as the Republicans control Congress. But still there is
Speaker 3: a spectrum of beliefs among the party at the moment.
Speaker 3: And to get a look at what average regular registered
Speaker 3: Democrats believe. There's a new poll from you gov that
Speaker 3: came out this week based on data from late January
Speaker 3: early February that have seventy nine percent of Democrats saying
Speaker 3: they support abolishing ICE. Abolishing ICE is also up eight
Speaker 3: points with Independence and more people overall support abolishing ICE
Speaker 3: at forty six percent to forty four percent opposing.
Speaker 4: So, just to finish up on our immigration coveray to
Speaker 4: the week, we also saw Judge Cobb with the DC
Speaker 4: District Court grant a tentative restraining order that prevents DHS
Speaker 4: from denying Congress people the right to inspect immigration attention
Speaker 4: facilities without notice. Previously, DHS had been asserting that they
Speaker 4: had a seven day period of notice that they had
Speaker 4: to give before they could inspect attention facilities. The judges
Speaker 4: found that that's not justified. Another eight attorneys have left
Speaker 4: or announced intentions to leave the US Attorney's office in Minnesota.
Speaker 4: They are now operating at less than half the capacity
Speaker 4: of assistant USA attorneys that they had in the early
Speaker 4: Biden administration. They've also lost several non attorney staff, and
Speaker 4: the Star Tribune reports that this is due to concerns
Speaker 4: about selective prosecution. And the exclusion of state and local
Speaker 4: investigators from the good and pretty cases. In court yesterday,
Speaker 4: one federal prosecutor said, and I'm quoting from the transcript here,
Speaker 4: this system sucks. This job sucks. Another quotation. I am
Speaker 4: here just trying to make sure that the agency understand
Speaker 4: how important it is to comply with all the court orders,
Speaker 4: which they have not done in the past or currently.
Speaker 4: I'm here as a bridge and a liaison between the
Speaker 4: one that in jail, because if I walk out sometimes
Speaker 4: I wish you would just hold me in contempt your honor,
Speaker 4: so that they could have a full twenty four hours
Speaker 4: of sleep. Yikes, it's just a person on the ragged edge. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that is someone who is breaking. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I mean.
Speaker 4: You could look up her caseload and it is legitimately insane. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and it has only got bigger since the start of
Speaker 4: the year. You can see why people are are quitting
Speaker 4: this job, even if they like don't have a moral
Speaker 4: issue with it, because it's an inhumane amount of work.
Speaker 2: And again, like, I'm not coming at this from a
Speaker 2: point of a lot of sympathy, but it's not funny.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it's funny. It's just funny. It's funny to
Speaker 4: see them so obviously frustrated that their agencies are just
Speaker 4: not complying with what they asked them do. That she
Speaker 4: I was reading the transcript today is judging the case.
Speaker 4: Was like, look, you can tell me the agencies are
Speaker 4: not complying, But like, if I have a problem in
Speaker 4: the restaurant, I don't walk in there and try and
Speaker 4: find the exact person who's baking the bread. I talk
Speaker 4: to the restauran, and the restaurant sorted out you are
Speaker 4: part of the executive branch. Yeah, this is on you.
Speaker 4: Like it was a good, little little core exchange. And
Speaker 4: then finally NBC has obtained a leaked email from Greg
Speaker 4: Bovino showing tensions between himself and Todd Lyons. Lions is
Speaker 4: the acting director of Immigration and custom to Enforcement. Lions
Speaker 4: attempted to prevent Baveno from engaging in widespread sweeps in
Speaker 4: which agents kind of ran around check papers on anyone
Speaker 4: they think might not be a citizen, and he encouraged
Speaker 4: him to do targeted operations instead. And then mister Bovino
Speaker 4: said in the email quote, mister Lyons said he was
Speaker 4: in charge, and I corrected him, saying, I report to
Speaker 4: Corey Lewandowski, Garrison has just made a face for those.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and if you want to hear more about our
Speaker 12: dear buddy, Greg, Robert and I recorded an episode with
Speaker 12: Jack O'Brien from Behind the Bastards that's dropping next Thursday.
Speaker 1: Oh, sick all about Greg Bavino.
Speaker 3: Greg's been on a bit of a tour on his
Speaker 3: way back to California.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he wrote, But he went to Mount Rushmore to
Speaker 4: record like a moto video and then he was spotted
Speaker 4: drinking a glass of red wine in Las Vegas. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it seems like they made him road trip.
Speaker 2: Like a weirdo who's drinking. You're drinking the house wine
Speaker 2: at a casino in Vegas. Come the fuck on, Greg Upreg, Yeah,
Speaker 2: have a fucking cocktail.
Speaker 4: Jesus Christ. I think he's back in Imperial now. But
Speaker 4: it was. It seems that they made him take a
Speaker 4: road trip home. They didn't fly him back, wouldn't spring
Speaker 4: for the plane trip. Yeah, he's quite.
Speaker 3: Remarkable, incredible, gestapo, unbelievable. All right, we are back. Last Wednesday,
Speaker 3: January twenty eighth, the FBI executed a raid on the
Speaker 3: Fulton County election office outside of Atlanta, Georgia as a
Speaker 3: part of an investigation into Trump's claim that the twenty
Speaker 3: twenty election was rigged against him. The special Agent in
Speaker 3: charge of the FBI Atlanta Field Office resigned a week
Speaker 3: before the warrant was served. This search warrant was signed
Speaker 3: by a United States Magistrate judge and instructed investigators to
Speaker 3: seize quote all records relating to violations of Title fifty
Speaker 3: two US Code two zero seven zero one and two
Speaker 3: oh five one one, with these violations occurring quote after
Speaker 3: October twelfth, twenty twenty unquote. The former statute here two
Speaker 3: seven one relates to retaining and preserving election records for
Speaker 3: twenty two months after an election, and the latter two
Speaker 3: five one one relates to voter fraud or threats, intimidation,
Speaker 3: and coersion against voters. The records that were to be
Speaker 3: seized are listed on the warrant as quote all physical
Speaker 3: ballots from the twenty twenty general election in Fulton County,
Speaker 3: all tabulator tapes for every voting machine, all ballot images
Speaker 3: produced during the original ballot count, All voter roles from
Speaker 3: the twenty twenty general election in Fulton County from absentee,
Speaker 3: early and in person voting and any electronically stored information
Speaker 3: relevant to those items above. The Fulton County Commissioner mount
Speaker 3: Ivory said that federal officials took seven hundred boxes of ballots,
Speaker 3: and curiously, Director of National Intelligence Tulci Gabbert appeared at
Speaker 3: the side of the search and had a phone call
Speaker 3: with Trump. After the raid concluded, Gabert sent a letter
Speaker 3: to Congress on Monday, claiming, quote, my presence was requested
Speaker 3: by the President and executed under my broad statutory authority
Speaker 3: to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence relating to election security,
Speaker 3: including counter intelligence, foreign and other malign influences, and cybersecurity unquote.
Speaker 3: She also wrote on x the everything app quote the
Speaker 3: Office of the Director of National Intelligence has and will
Speaker 3: continue to take action under my statutory authorities to secure
Speaker 3: our nation ensure the integrity of our elections. I will
Speaker 3: include here that four days before January sixth, twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: Trump told George's top election official to quote unquote find
Speaker 3: enough votes to overturn the election. Here's a recording of
Speaker 3: that phone call.
Speaker 13: All I want to do is this. I just want
Speaker 13: to find.
Speaker 8: Eleven thousand, seven hundred and eighty votes.
Speaker 3: The Trump administration has made multiple unsuccessful attempts to gain
Speaker 3: access to the twenty twenty Georgia ballots through civil suits.
Speaker 3: Now they have just turned to executing search warrant through
Speaker 3: the FBI. On February first, Mike Johnson was asked to
Speaker 3: vote potential election medaling in Georgia. Here is this exchange
Speaker 3: from NBC News.
Speaker 16: What do you say to that allegation that President Trump
Speaker 16: is going to meddle in the twenty twenty six midterm elections,
Speaker 16: that that's what he's doing in Georgia.
Speaker 13: I find it comical that one of the senators from
Speaker 13: Georgia is talking about schemes in elections. Remember, Georgia was
Speaker 13: example a of that. In the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 16: There were two statewide recounts in Georgia.
Speaker 5: They see the mail out balance to everyone.
Speaker 13: Everyone knows all of the problems that occurred in Georgia.
Speaker 13: It was very controversially and remains so to this day
Speaker 13: because of all the things that happened there. Again, we're
Speaker 13: not going to relitigate that. But what we have to
Speaker 13: focus on is going forward to ensure that there are
Speaker 13: not questions about the elections. And that's why Republicans are
Speaker 13: working at the federal and the state levels to clean
Speaker 13: those things up and clean up voter rolls to make
Speaker 13: sure illegals are not voting, for example. That's what the
Speaker 13: Save Act is about, and we have to continue that
Speaker 13: and the President is keeping a proper focus on it.
Speaker 13: This investigation is to ensure that all the questions that
Speaker 13: about the elections in Fulton County are investigated properly so
Speaker 13: that people have confidence in this system.
Speaker 5: A kah, that's very important.
Speaker 16: But there are really no questions about election in Tigry
Speaker 16: from twenty twenty that have not been asked and answered.
Speaker 16: Even the Republican note, the Republican led governor has pointed out,
Speaker 16: it's been years and no one has ever come forward
Speaker 16: under oath with evidence of fraud in Georgia.
Speaker 3: But let me ask you, pretty absurd stuff.
Speaker 12: Yeah, yeah, we're not going to relitigate it as we
Speaker 12: rel litigate it.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, and just giving no evidence, just being like, oh,
Speaker 4: it's very controversial, everyone knows, like.
Speaker 1: Such a weasly answer.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Republican Governor Brian Camp has been very clear that there
Speaker 3: was absolutely no fraud happening in Georgia during twenty twenty
Speaker 3: and if there was any attempt to meddle with the election.
Speaker 3: It is this phone call that Trump made to the
Speaker 3: Georgia Secretary of State, Yeah, asking to find a certain
Speaker 3: number of votes that itself should have resulted in Trump
Speaker 3: going to prison like South Korea style, like you're done,
Speaker 3: You're finished. You can't do that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that is like the most transparent election interference.
Speaker 3: The way that Trump's court case in Fulton County related
Speaker 3: to his attempts to meddle into twenty twenty election is
Speaker 3: just a complete disaster due to coruption within the Fulton
Speaker 3: County courses tom itself. One of the worst things to
Speaker 3: happen during this like Biden era, is the mishandling of
Speaker 3: the court cases around Trump's attempts to overturn the election. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and especially like looking at at what South Cura did
Speaker 3: after their president tried to take over the country a
Speaker 3: year or two ago, is like, oh, yeah, that's very
Speaker 3: clearly what we should have done with this guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, people could have done better.
Speaker 3: And Mike Johnson just keeps making really concerning statements on
Speaker 3: the news about quote unquote nationalizing elections.
Speaker 4: I follow up on elections.
Speaker 2: The president says that he wants Republicans.
Speaker 5: To nationalize elections.
Speaker 2: Do you agree with him and do you have confidence
Speaker 2: in how elections are conducted?
Speaker 5: Right now heading into the midterm.
Speaker 13: We have thoughtfuled debate about our election system every election cycle,
Speaker 13: and sometimes in between. We know it's in our system.
Speaker 13: The states have been in charge of a minister in
Speaker 13: their life elections. What you're hearing from the President is
Speaker 13: his frustration about the lack of some of the Blue states, frankly,
Speaker 13: of enforcing these things.
Speaker 3: Make Johnson goes on to discuss possible fraud in California specifically,
Speaker 3: though admits that he has no evidence of said fraud.
Speaker 3: One more clip.
Speaker 13: In some of the states, like in California, for example,
Speaker 13: I mean, they hold the elections open for weeks after
Speaker 13: election day. That's just one thing that bothers so many people.
Speaker 13: We had three House Republican candidates who are ahead on
Speaker 13: election day in the last election cycle, and every time
Speaker 13: a new tranche of ballots came in, they just magically
Speaker 13: whittled away until their.
Speaker 5: Leads were lost.
Speaker 13: And no series of ballots that were counted after election
Speaker 13: day were our candidates ahead on any of those counts.
Speaker 13: It looks on its face to be fraudulent. Can I
Speaker 13: prove that, No, because it happened so far upstream. But
Speaker 13: we need more confidence in the American people in the
Speaker 13: election system.
Speaker 3: Absurd.
Speaker 4: Yeah, completely, bonks, sir.
Speaker 12: I fear that more ballots have been counted and results
Speaker 12: have changed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what elections are.
Speaker 3: You cannot place a vote in California after election day. No,
Speaker 3: but they do count mail in ballots that have been
Speaker 3: postmarked on or before election day, which is what he's referencing.
Speaker 3: But he's yeah, miss, he's purposely misconstruting it to make
Speaker 3: it sound way more, way more nefarious than what it
Speaker 3: actually is. If you've placed a mail in vote on
Speaker 3: or before election day in California, that vote will be counted.
Speaker 4: That is.
Speaker 3: That is how the elections in California work. Not this
Speaker 3: magically keeping keeping the election open for for weeks afterwards
Speaker 3: people can continue to vote. That's that's not that's not true.
Speaker 12: It's giving like a very specific sports reference where that
Speaker 12: the announcers like and the.
Speaker 1: Team with the most points won the game. That's literally
Speaker 1: what he's doing.
Speaker 12: He's like, as as the votes were counted, the results changed.
Speaker 3: They changed and someone won. Who is not what I
Speaker 3: wanted to happen.
Speaker 4: Uh, yeah, shock, horror.
Speaker 3: Can I prove there's fraud? No, but well I continue
Speaker 3: to say there's fraud, yes, Mike Johnson.
Speaker 4: It had been reported that they were trying to leverage
Speaker 4: the ice raids in Minnesota against getting electoral role information
Speaker 4: from Minnesota as well. Yes, so like this is this
Speaker 4: is not just his fascination with with Georgia. Like this
Speaker 4: is all deeply concerning as we go into like midterm year.
Speaker 4: But we will find out soon.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, especially as Congress is the entity that is
Speaker 3: supposed to be there to help to ensure that states
Speaker 3: run the elections fairly and that we do not have
Speaker 3: a nationalized voting system.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And the fact that the Speaker of the House seems
Speaker 3: to be unaware siding siding with the executive branch with
Speaker 3: this idea of nationalizing elections or at least trying to
Speaker 3: like manufacture consent for Trump's Trump's claim there very very worrying.
Speaker 3: I now want to update a story we talked about
Speaker 3: almost a year ago, based on some new information that
Speaker 3: has come out. In January, a judge has unsealed a
Speaker 3: State Department memo from March twenty twenty five that confirms
Speaker 3: that Ramesa Osturk's visa was revoked and the government sought
Speaker 3: to deport her on the basis of oz Turk co
Speaker 3: authoring an op ed in the student newspaper at Tufts University.
Speaker 3: This memo admits that DHS could not provide any evidence
Speaker 3: that oz Turk ever engaged in any eighties Semitic activity,
Speaker 3: was involved in Students for Justice in Palestine, or has
Speaker 3: ever expressed support for terrorism as claimed by government officials.
Speaker 3: Last year, Churchill McLoughlin told CNN at the time of
Speaker 3: oz Turk's arrest that DHS and ICE investigations had found
Speaker 3: that oz Turk had quote engaged in activities in support
Speaker 3: of hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing
Speaker 3: of Americans unquote. On the contrary, this newly unsealed memo
Speaker 3: from the State Department reads, quote, while os Turk has
Speaker 3: been involved with actions protesting Tuft's relationship with Israel, DHS,
Speaker 3: ICE or Homeland Security investigations has not, however, provided any
Speaker 3: evidence showing that oz Turk has engaged in any anti
Speaker 3: Smithy activity or made any public statements indicating support for
Speaker 3: a terrorist organization or anti Semitism. Generally, unquote. The memo
Speaker 3: goes on to state that though a previous DHS report
Speaker 3: quote implies a connection between oz Turk and the now
Speaker 3: banned Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine, the report presents
Speaker 3: no evidence other than os Turk's membership in Graduate Students
Speaker 3: for Palestine, which supported proposals to Tufts which were also
Speaker 3: supported by Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine. Nor has
Speaker 3: DHS ICE or HSI shown any evidence that oz Turk
Speaker 3: was involved in any of the activities which resulted in
Speaker 3: Students for Justice in Palestine being suspended from Tufts unquote.
Speaker 3: The Bureau of Consular Affairs VISA office and ANAD no
Speaker 3: reporting specific to oz Turk on US government interagency databases.
Speaker 3: According to this memo, and interagency vetting partners do not
Speaker 3: provide any response to oz Turk's twenty twenty four VISA
Speaker 3: application quote indicating the existence of derogatory terrorism related information.
Speaker 3: I'll read the final quote here from this memo quote,
Speaker 3: DHS did not identify any alternative grounds for removability that
Speaker 3: would be applicable to oz Turk, including the ground for
Speaker 3: removability for aliens who have provided material support to a
Speaker 3: foreign terrorist organization. Or terrorist activity, and has not indicated
Speaker 3: whether it plans to consider termination of oz Turk's CIVIS registration,
Speaker 3: Although information provided by DHS, Homeland Security Investigations and ICE
Speaker 3: does not establish any potential ineligibility for oz Turk, you may,
Speaker 3: in your discretion and in accordance with Department policy in
Speaker 3: nine FAM four three point one point one DAH five
Speaker 3: b A, I prove revocation of her F one visa
Speaker 3: effect immediately based on the totality of the circumstances presented,
Speaker 3: indicating that revocation may be warranted unquote. The only evidence
Speaker 3: held against her in the memo is that she wrote
Speaker 3: an op ed. You still can revoke her visa if
Speaker 3: you want to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, And that is pretty much the way student
Speaker 4: visas especially work, right, leg You did just here at
Speaker 4: the pleasure of US politics.
Speaker 3: Essentially, the fact that this memo openly says they do
Speaker 3: not have evidence to support the claims that she's involved
Speaker 3: in anti Smithy activity on campus supports Hamas in any way.
Speaker 3: The fact that you have the government saying that in
Speaker 3: these internal documents, while externally, people like Christian McLoughlin and
Speaker 3: Rubio say otherwise, it's such a naked display of the
Speaker 3: sort of rhetoric that these people are using. Secretary Rubio
Speaker 3: claimed at a press conference on March twenty seven, twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five. Quote, we revoked her visa. It's an F
Speaker 3: one visa. I believe we revoked it. And here's why.
Speaker 3: If you apply for a visa to enter the United
Speaker 3: States and be a student, and you tell us that
Speaker 3: the reason why you're coming to the United States is
Speaker 3: not just because you want to write op eds, but
Speaker 3: because you want to participate in movements that are involved
Speaker 3: in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings,
Speaker 3: creating a ruckus. We're not going to give you a visa.
Speaker 3: If you lie to us and get a visa and
Speaker 3: then enter the United States and with that visa participate
Speaker 3: in that sort of activity, We're going to take away
Speaker 3: your visa. Unquote.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, she didn't tell them that she was
Speaker 4: engaged to that kind of activity. She wasn't.
Speaker 3: That's just not what happened. Yeah, And DHS admits itself
Speaker 3: that she was not involved in the activity. The protest
Speaker 3: activity that resulted in students Justice in Palestine being banned
Speaker 3: from campus, which included vandalism, but DJA says that they
Speaker 3: do not have evidence that she was involved in that
Speaker 3: in any way, nor had any direct association with that group.
Speaker 3: In December, a federal judge allowed oz Turk to continue
Speaker 3: her research and teach at Tuft University on the basis
Speaker 3: that she is likely to succeed on the claim that
Speaker 3: her visa termination was quote arbitrary and capricious, contrary to
Speaker 3: law and in violation of the First Amendment. The court
Speaker 3: case related to her removal proceedings will still continue.
Speaker 4: Yeah, pretty bleak.
Speaker 1: That was That was Yeah wow, I.
Speaker 4: Guess talking of bleak. Should I finish up with a
Speaker 4: summary of the situation in Syria?
Speaker 1: Yeah, give us a Syria date.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay. So the an e S has reached a
Speaker 4: settlement with the STG. The aa n e S the
Speaker 4: Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria aka ro Java,
Speaker 4: and the STG being the Syrian Transitional government that will
Speaker 4: result in the withdrawal of troops from the points of contact,
Speaker 4: as well as the withdrawal of SDF troops from Commichelo
Speaker 4: and Hesseka and the entry of the Syrian Ministry of
Speaker 4: the Interior. They're about ninety Ministry of Interior people going
Speaker 4: into Commishlo one hundred and hessecas. These are essentially like Syrian,
Speaker 4: so I guess right. Integration of the SDF will occur
Speaker 4: as brigades of the Syrian Army deployed Derik. If you're
Speaker 4: looking at a map, it's probably going to say al Malakaya,
Speaker 4: Delhi being the Kurdish name, Comichelo, Hesseka and Kabani. These
Speaker 4: forces will be largely Kurdish, but they will also include
Speaker 4: Assyrian and Arab elements, as the SDF always has. I
Speaker 4: imagine they will probably be Armenians as well. There then,
Speaker 4: nearly always are sending in the sdfs in the beginning
Speaker 4: there have been. The agreement also included the integration of
Speaker 4: the Shaish into the Syrian Ministry of the Interior, the
Speaker 4: government takeover of oil fields and borders, and a recognition
Speaker 4: of Kurdish education credential across the country. The A and
Speaker 4: E S will appoint a governor in Hesseka and the
Speaker 4: security chief will be appointed by Damascus. The SDF will
Speaker 4: also appoint a deputy Defense Minister in Damascus. The STG
Speaker 4: appointed Marwan Ala Ali Debac security He previously did this
Speaker 4: for HDS in Idlib Hyactoria al Sham Right, that's the
Speaker 4: group that formally listed as a Foreigntarist organization in the
Speaker 4: US that has gone on to take over Syria and
Speaker 4: become the government in Damascus, and he sort of oversaw
Speaker 4: their purge of rasal Din, which is like an al
Speaker 4: Qaeda associated group in Idlib. Shortly after the deal was
Speaker 4: signed to Syrian traditional government began accusing journalists who entered
Speaker 4: via Samalka, as I have done and Robert has done,
Speaker 4: of having entered Syria illegally, which great I guess. Turkey
Speaker 4: has continued to prevent aid coming to Kabani, where water
Speaker 4: and power remain cut off. Pretty bleak situation in Rosjaba.
Speaker 4: I'm glad that there is not more killing and not
Speaker 4: more dying, but also sad to see some of the
Speaker 4: things that so many people for and died for being lost,
Speaker 4: especially this idea of brotherhood of peoples, which I think
Speaker 4: was integral to the Asjaba revolution and the women's revolution,
Speaker 4: which it will be very hard to sustain in the
Speaker 4: context of the estate led by HTS. Pretty upsetting. I
Speaker 4: know that they can still use your support. Sorry, we'll
Speaker 4: put a fundraising link for heavusaw at the bottom of
Speaker 4: this Yeah. Good time to be alive. Yeah, great, great
Speaker 4: stuff happening in the world. Yeah, if you would like
Speaker 4: to email us, you can email us using a proton
Speaker 4: mail address. To email our proton mail address, which is
Speaker 4: cool Zone Tips at proton dot me.
Speaker 12: Yeah's not here, but she would say put a trans
Speaker 12: girl on your couch. Uh, so I'll say it for
Speaker 12: put a transgirl on your couch.
Speaker 3: We reported the news.
Speaker 4: See the news. We reported the news.
Speaker 2: Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
Speaker 2: from now until the heat death of the universe.
Speaker 17: It could happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 17: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 17: Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 17: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcas can now
Speaker 17: find sources where it could happen here listed directly in
Speaker 17: episode descriptions.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.