Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gotta be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. It could happen. Here is
Speaker 1: the podcast that this is right now? Would you guys?
Speaker 1: When do you guys? Solo intro this podcast? James Stout,
Speaker 1: Mia Wong do y'all? Uh do y'all just like shout
Speaker 1: atonally ever have you have y'all tried that yet?
Speaker 2: I haven't.
Speaker 3: I struggle with the intro. I just say hello everyone.
Speaker 3: Yeah James, Nope, No.
Speaker 1: That's try that's your that's your East Coast Ivy League elitism.
Speaker 1: Uh coming through.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's correct. For ever since I was born
Speaker 3: in Boston, I've had that, Yeah, growing up on a
Speaker 3: different side of the tracks to yourself also from Boston,
Speaker 3: New Coos.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, Yes, in Boston. I'm sure I'm
Speaker 1: not allowed currently to do the accent because Sophie for
Speaker 1: legal reasons. Yeah yeah, I uh yeah, yeah, she's got
Speaker 1: some dirt on me. Anyway, we are a podcast about
Speaker 1: things falling apart, and you know what would make things
Speaker 1: fall apart worse than they already are is if Donald
Speaker 1: Trump won a second term. So today, true, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk partly about that, and we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about the indictments against him. That's the big news, right
Speaker 1: the most recent big political news. Unless he's been indicted
Speaker 1: again by the time this episode drops, not impossible, send
Speaker 1: another one ready to draw up. But for my last kind,
Speaker 1: I think he's at like seventy eight charges felony charges
Speaker 1: at the moment, so honestly.
Speaker 3: He might get to triple digits. He's not all that far.
Speaker 2: There's stuff like I didn't realize. Well, I guess I
Speaker 2: knew intellectually that you could, that you could be charged
Speaker 2: with conspiracy to do something and then also doing it,
Speaker 2: but I don't think I know, Yeah, like, I don't
Speaker 2: think I've ever seen a politician charged with both conspiracy
Speaker 2: and the actual doing of the thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I hope at some point, assuming you know, we continue
Speaker 1: to have something that resembles freedom of speech. We'll get
Speaker 1: a good book about like how the whole process of
Speaker 1: them had like figuring out how and when and weather
Speaker 1: to actually like go after him. I mean, obviously we're
Speaker 1: talking about both, like the FEDS and the dau in
Speaker 1: New York, but I am interested in both of those
Speaker 1: stories because there has to be there have to have
Speaker 1: been some real interesting conversations. But yeah, we are right
Speaker 1: now he we're looking at him. He's about to be
Speaker 1: arraigned as we talk about this, for inciting an insurrection
Speaker 1: at the capitol. So so that's pretty cool. Mia, you
Speaker 1: wanted to to start us off here, I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I think this is okay. So this
Speaker 2: is an interesting indictment in that, like it somehow took
Speaker 2: them about two years to like actually do the indictment.
Speaker 2: That's like, hey, it's illegal to over try to overthrow
Speaker 2: the government by installing yourself as president.
Speaker 1: And in fairness, they don't have a lot of experience
Speaker 1: charging people with that one.
Speaker 2: Well, and we should actually mention they should Bush. Well,
Speaker 2: here's the thing, Bush Bush. Actually we're gonna talk about
Speaker 2: this more later, but like Bush actually got away with
Speaker 2: this right, Like the last time a court ruled on
Speaker 2: whether a president can use the courts to instalve themselves
Speaker 2: as president. The Supreme Court was like, yeah, that's fine,
Speaker 2: that's like no problem, Like, yeah, it's fine, you can.
Speaker 2: You can have a mob show up and disrupt the
Speaker 2: counting process and it's fine. But Trump like fucked up
Speaker 2: and didn't do it the way you're supposed to. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and you know, there's something sort of I don't know.
Speaker 2: So there's something I was thinking about while I was
Speaker 2: reading this, which is like the English languish, doesn't I
Speaker 2: think part of the issue here is like we don't.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: The English. English doesn't even like have a good word
Speaker 2: for like the kind of coup that Trump was doing.
Speaker 2: Like there's a Spanish word which is auto golpe, which
Speaker 2: is like yeah, Spanish, He's got a great one in
Speaker 2: English and translates to self coup. And we're just like
Speaker 2: we're done. It's like no, no, that sucks. That time sucks.
Speaker 1: It's really I wish I had a better Trump voice
Speaker 1: because then I could do on a golpe.
Speaker 2: What is that is that?
Speaker 1: Like a like a like at seven eleven, the big
Speaker 1: sixty four rounds diet coach that you get yeah, but I.
Speaker 2: Can't do it.
Speaker 1: I can't do a good Trump. So that wasn't as
Speaker 1: funny as it should have. Anyway, whatever me, please continue.
Speaker 2: We had we had it, so you know, I I think,
Speaker 2: you know, I think it's worth kind of thinking a
Speaker 2: little bit and we're gonna sort of come back to
Speaker 2: this as we go through this case. But I think
Speaker 2: it's worth remembering that again, like everything Trump is doing
Speaker 2: in this is based off of like is it is
Speaker 2: based off of the sort of Bush thing into in
Speaker 2: two thousand where he had a bunch of well, okay,
Speaker 2: so a bunch of Bush's political operatives like stormed one
Speaker 2: of the one of the places that was doing the
Speaker 2: recount in Florida and stopped them from counting the votes
Speaker 2: and then they just delayed and long enough that he
Speaker 2: was able to get appointed.
Speaker 1: Now the Brooks Brothers riot Roger Stone was a major
Speaker 1: part of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we've we've done this. You know, we talked
Speaker 2: about this on the show like the end of last year.
Speaker 2: But but again, so the reason this worked though, right,
Speaker 2: is that Bush made really really sure that there was
Speaker 2: like a sound legal case sort of behind this entire thing.
Speaker 2: He made he made really sure to like go through
Speaker 2: all of the proper like checks and balances and.
Speaker 4: Like blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: But Trump just like didn't do this. And the result
Speaker 2: of this is that Jack Smith, like finally two years later,
Speaker 2: Jack Smith, who's this guy he was, he was appointed
Speaker 2: by Merrick Garland to like take over these two Justice
Speaker 2: Department cases about Trump. It has just indicted him with
Speaker 2: this stuff he has. So he's been charged with with
Speaker 2: three counts of criminal conspiracy and but I think his
Speaker 2: accounted obstruction. So I'm going to go through what he's
Speaker 2: actually been charged.
Speaker 1: I want to note something real quick, which is that
Speaker 1: another reason why it worked for Bush and it didn't
Speaker 1: for Trump is that with Bush, it was legitimately the
Speaker 1: election came down to Florida, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like it was.
Speaker 1: It was extremely close. It was really just a couple
Speaker 1: of counties in Florida. With Trump, he was not trying
Speaker 1: to just sort of like jink jink part of a state.
Speaker 1: It was like it was like Biden had a commanding lead. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. It was a big dub for Uncle Joe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and you know, I so yeah, like obviously,
Speaker 2: like Trump like just fails at this spectacularly and the
Speaker 2: law is finally coming after him. They so that they're
Speaker 2: charging him with conspiracy to defraud the United States, which
Speaker 2: again is the thing I didn't know you could do.
Speaker 3: And loan soundstrong, got that? Didn't he did?
Speaker 4: He?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, because USPS was his sponsor. So he was
Speaker 3: defrauding the federal guns.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the don't yeah, don't, don't, don't you post.
Speaker 1: Trump's the first guy who's not rad to get charged
Speaker 1: with that. Sorry James, Okay, I didn't, I didn't.
Speaker 3: Job Yeah, sorry everyone, I'm out.
Speaker 2: So this this one is this is specifically like impairing
Speaker 2: the election, like impairing like the the the votes of
Speaker 2: the presidential election. The first one is mostly we'll talk
Speaker 2: about this more a bit like the illegitimate electors thing
Speaker 2: that he did. The second one is just him being
Speaker 2: charged for They they finally found a thing the charge
Speaker 2: him for doing January sixth, which was they charged him
Speaker 2: with like conspiracy to obstruct an official preceding, and then
Speaker 2: they got him also with obstruction obstructing the official proceeding,
Speaker 2: which again seems like a kind of likeas is, I
Speaker 2: don't know, it's not quite getting out the pop for
Speaker 2: tax evasion but like you'd think they'd have something like
Speaker 2: more prow.
Speaker 1: Over through the government, attempting to make yourself a dictator bonaparteism.
Speaker 1: Well it's not really bonapartism.
Speaker 3: But yeah, like seditions, right there sedition that's a choice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Rightoice, they got him on obstruction. Okay, sure, I
Speaker 2: don't know, like this is I feel like our I
Speaker 2: don't know, our legal system seems to be sort of
Speaker 2: woefully unprepared for this.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it's not. Again, in fairness, everyone has before
Speaker 1: Trump was willing to play the game, right like we are, Like, obviously,
Speaker 1: Jeorge W. Bush stole the fucking election, no argument there,
Speaker 1: so did Nixon. But they did it with enough plausible deniability,
Speaker 1: right that the elite were that there was not there
Speaker 1: was not a fear among the quote unquote deep state
Speaker 1: or you know, the people the elites in this country
Speaker 1: that like this would obviously be someone overthrowing the government, right,
Speaker 1: And Nixon's case, fucking LBJ like basically refused to go
Speaker 1: after him for breaking the law and extended the Vietnam
Speaker 1: War and committing treason because it would be bad in
Speaker 1: his view for the country. Horrible mistake, obviously, and with
Speaker 1: George w.
Speaker 3: Bush.
Speaker 1: You know, he had he had the court on his side,
Speaker 1: and it like so there was there was enough plausible
Speaker 1: deniability that you know, it was not like it is
Speaker 1: with Trump where he was just like I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: a mob like a capital.
Speaker 3: You know, it's due in a ya cat.
Speaker 2: You know, I was thinking about this, like the last
Speaker 2: time someone actually did something like this, I think it
Speaker 2: was the Corrupt Bargain in like eighteen seventy three. Were
Speaker 2: just like like.
Speaker 3: They there was this argument or the Wilmington coup.
Speaker 2: Yeah well I mean I mean like yeah, but like
Speaker 2: like on on on the presidential level of like literally
Speaker 2: someone like like brother Ruby Hayes famously like they had
Speaker 2: basically this incredible thing like both parties were like they
Speaker 2: couldn't decide who was supposed to count the votes and
Speaker 2: which whichever like part of the two parties counted the
Speaker 2: votes was going to declare that they won the that
Speaker 2: they won the election. And so they worked out this
Speaker 2: like incredibly basically they worked out this compromise where like
Speaker 2: the Republicans got Rutherford Behayes like in office, but they
Speaker 2: also ended reconstruction. But that but and that that that
Speaker 2: was a period that was long ago enough that like
Speaker 2: you could do that ship without like involving the courts
Speaker 2: or involving this sort of like massive state apparatus, and
Speaker 2: you kind of like can't, I don't know, you can't
Speaker 2: outside of like Illinois, you can't really be that corrupt anymore.
Speaker 2: You have to sort of like.
Speaker 3: The reason Sandrea goes called en run by the sea Maya.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, look, you have to you have to respect
Speaker 1: you know, local culture with these kinds of things, and
Speaker 1: and Illinois, it would actually be like an act of
Speaker 1: genocide to try to make Illinois politics not incredibly Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean right, like that that's the destruction of a people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, like one of the hated political figures in
Speaker 2: like the entire history of Illinois was this like state
Speaker 2: senator who went down for corruption but went down for
Speaker 2: like one hundred dollars of corruption and despise like one
Speaker 2: of the most hated political figures in Illinois because he
Speaker 2: only went down for he only did one hundred dollars
Speaker 2: of crimes, whereas like our current governor did like a
Speaker 2: bunch of really funny fraud and everyone loves him because
Speaker 2: it's hilarious where he like he like he like took
Speaker 2: all of the bathrooms out of one of his houses
Speaker 2: so it wouldn't be classified the house.
Speaker 3: That's that's kind of that's that's the guy you want
Speaker 3: in charge your legatives.
Speaker 1: When he sees a loophole, that's the guy. If we
Speaker 1: ever have a corruption Olympics, that's our only chance at
Speaker 1: beating the Russians. Illinois is gonna be our dream team.
Speaker 2: Like Prince Kerry is the least corrupt governor I've had
Speaker 2: in my lifetime. This is the least corrupt guy. He
Speaker 2: is like like.
Speaker 3: He is corrupt, but like he never shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I don't know, all aways sort of amazing.
Speaker 2: We should probably get back to this stuff. And so
Speaker 2: the last thing you got was they got him of
Speaker 2: like conspiracy against rights, so like a conspiracy against the
Speaker 2: right to vote and have your vote counted, which sure, yeah,
Speaker 2: do you do.
Speaker 1: A bad thing to do? I think conspiracy?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's it's not good like all of
Speaker 2: the things that he like they're accusing of, like he
Speaker 2: pretty clearly did. Yeah. So I want to also talk
Speaker 2: about the way this has been being talked about in
Speaker 2: the media because one of the things is happening here
Speaker 2: and this is This is sort of a trend with
Speaker 2: all forms of like things that are in the written language,
Speaker 2: is that everyone only reads the first like maybe one
Speaker 2: chapter or like especially the first couple of pages of
Speaker 2: something from any like written document. So this this is
Speaker 2: why like all the like you know, the like abandon
Speaker 2: all hope you you enter here from Dante's Inferno. That's
Speaker 2: that's that's the reason. That's when everyone knows because it's
Speaker 2: in like the first couple of chapters. And in this one,
Speaker 2: with this case, the thing that everyone got to was
Speaker 2: there's this very early part in the entire where the
Speaker 2: guy's like, well, yeah, so like it is legal to
Speaker 2: like lie about the election, like you have the free
Speaker 2: speech right to do that. But then also Trump knowingly
Speaker 2: lied about the election and use it to try to
Speaker 2: like fraud do fraud. And everyone's getting really hung up
Speaker 2: on this thing about like trying to like the court
Speaker 2: having to prove that he knew he was lying, which
Speaker 2: is kind of like an incidental thing to the actual
Speaker 2: like like the actual stuff is getting charged for we'll
Speaker 2: get into it, but like like it's not just that
Speaker 2: he was lying that he was like actively trying to
Speaker 2: get a bunch of state officials to like appoint him. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but but you know, this has led to some just
Speaker 2: like absolutely hilarious shit from Republicans who are like, none
Speaker 2: of you can prove that Trump knew he was lying,
Speaker 2: Like there's there's no way to know Trump is Trump
Speaker 2: is so Trump that like you can't you can't, you
Speaker 2: can't convict him lying because he maybe maybe you just
Speaker 2: didn't know.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, guys, that may not be the defense
Speaker 1: you think it is.
Speaker 3: No, this motherfucker is so dumb, you.
Speaker 1: Can't like this guy didn't even know if he's full
Speaker 1: of shit.
Speaker 2: It's so good.
Speaker 1: It's it's like arguing that somebody who shoots two or
Speaker 1: three people to death is not guilty because he had
Speaker 1: his eyes closed, was pulling the trigger, he didn't know
Speaker 1: where he was shooting. That's not a crime.
Speaker 2: The other one, the only one they've been pulling, is
Speaker 2: the old like he didn't know it was illegal, which
Speaker 2: I wish that that.
Speaker 1: Is absolutely not how the law works. But this is
Speaker 1: you know, who.
Speaker 3: Made that not how the law works.
Speaker 2: By the way, this is all you can tell them, Like,
Speaker 2: none of these people have ever like had to deal
Speaker 2: with the legal system at all ever, except for baby,
Speaker 2: Like I don't know, like what are two of these
Speaker 2: guys like probably caught weird charges for like unregulated securities
Speaker 2: selling or some shit, but like.
Speaker 1: Whom amongst us?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but yeah. So so the Republican side of
Speaker 2: it's been very funny. Okay, So before we get into
Speaker 2: what like specific things they're going after Trump for, I
Speaker 2: want to like talk about what his actual what Trump's
Speaker 2: actual plan was, because I think a lot of it's
Speaker 2: kind of been forgotten. So the first plan, and this
Speaker 2: is the part that is that is not actually in
Speaker 2: this trial at all, right, like not really likes his
Speaker 2: initial plan to steal the election was that. Okay, So
Speaker 2: one of the things that happened in twenty sixteen was
Speaker 2: that like absentee voters like over like not a woman,
Speaker 2: but absentee voters like swung enormously Democrat, right, And that
Speaker 2: was one of the things Trump had been using to
Speaker 2: prove there was like voter fraud or whatever. And then
Speaker 2: you know, COVID happened, and so Trump had this, like
Speaker 2: you know, had a plan which was like on a
Speaker 2: what he's like, okay, so on election night, it's going
Speaker 2: to look like I won because they're only going to
Speaker 2: have counted, like they're only going to have counted the
Speaker 2: votes that were like done in person, and those are
Speaker 2: overwhelmingly Trump. And I remember like that night, like having
Speaker 2: to tell all my friends like no, no, no, these
Speaker 2: are not the real results. This is this is this
Speaker 2: is just the in person votes. The absentie votes are coming.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And his initial plan was to try to just like
Speaker 2: declare victory that night, basically trying to declear victory immediately
Speaker 2: and then get everyone to stop counting. And that didn't work,
Speaker 2: Like even like even Fox News would have eventually like
Speaker 2: stopped playing along with it. Like this got to make
Speaker 2: a huge trouble with Trump because they like called Arizona.
Speaker 1: Yeah he's still pissed that.
Speaker 2: Yeah now and again like this this didn't work, so
Speaker 2: they didn't like he's not being tried for that, even
Speaker 2: though that was also very blatantly steal the election. What
Speaker 2: what they are charging him for was so after after
Speaker 2: so there was like that stuff, and there was all
Speaker 2: these like stop to vote mobs that kept showing up
Speaker 2: in places, Yes, stop the count, right, yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 2: it's not the count. But then also in some places
Speaker 2: they were like we need to count more and somebody.
Speaker 2: Yeah stop, Yeah, it was like it was a it
Speaker 2: was a whole thing. But you know what, once that fails, right,
Speaker 2: Trump and his coup plotters are like legal people are
Speaker 2: just sort of like freestyling it. And that's the part
Speaker 2: where you get to the actual conspiracies that he's being
Speaker 2: charged with here. But before before we get to those conspiracies,
Speaker 2: do you know what else is a conspiracy?
Speaker 3: The sence of products and services which you think will
Speaker 3: improve your life.
Speaker 2: How cheap they are, that's the conspiracy. Yeah, they've lowered
Speaker 2: the price so much it is illegal.
Speaker 3: Of all products and services.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's defacial news. Incredible news. We're back, uh and
Speaker 1: uh yeah, I've got some good news for you. We
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Speaker 1: to Jimmy at ProtonMail dot com. He'll he'll mail you cigarettes.
Speaker 1: You know, you've venmo him the cash, He'll send you
Speaker 1: some cigarettes.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 2: This is probably less illegal than anything we're talking about, right, now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, almost certainly. Look, it's not against the law to
Speaker 1: sell cigarettes that that you don't pay taxes on. I
Speaker 1: think we can all agree that that's fine.
Speaker 2: Actually, no, man, I think you legally can do that
Speaker 2: if you're selling it in an airport, if you're.
Speaker 1: Selling it in an airport. Yeah, if it's duty free, right.
Speaker 1: And I, because I have such a childlike imagination, the
Speaker 1: whole world is really my airport. Ergo, we can always
Speaker 1: sell tax free cigarettes here at cool Zone Media.
Speaker 3: That's why we have the small plane that takes off
Speaker 3: from Roma's house every day. It's like a remote control plane.
Speaker 1: But that's right, that's right. From all textle it technically counts.
Speaker 1: And we are also allowed to run those those Joe
Speaker 1: camel ads again, so you know, everybody who's nineties nostalgic,
Speaker 1: there you go once you made it all right.
Speaker 2: So the first conspiracy thing that he's getting charged with
Speaker 2: is the like fake electors thing. He also has like
Speaker 2: six unnamed co conspirators, and we know we probably know
Speaker 2: who like five of them are. So the first one,
Speaker 2: obviously is Rudy Giuliotti, who is having the time of
Speaker 2: his life. Question Mark he is he is like he
Speaker 2: is melting so funny TV Like it's the second one
Speaker 2: is probably John Eastman. And this is interesting because Eastman
Speaker 2: is the guy who he's like the legal mind behind
Speaker 2: in January sixth. He's the guy who like thinks that
Speaker 2: he's found a loophole in the law that allows like
Speaker 2: the vice president to refuse to certify the election. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so this is I don't want to make something
Speaker 2: clear at the outset, like he does not have like
Speaker 2: Pence does not have the power to do this.
Speaker 1: You're not allowed to do that.
Speaker 2: No, no, like they can't do this right like like
Speaker 2: this is if Pence had gone along with this, that
Speaker 2: would have been a coup, right like that, Yeah, they
Speaker 2: call this a coup.
Speaker 1: Like there's not a clause in the constitution that says
Speaker 1: unless this guy doesn't want to have an election, this.
Speaker 3: Is not right. It's seemed like admiralty flag ta legal conspiracy.
Speaker 3: That's yeah, Yeah, guaranteed it came from Reddit before he found.
Speaker 2: It's it's some it's some real bullshit like this somehow Again,
Speaker 2: this is the legal basis for what they were trying
Speaker 2: to do in January sixth. I I don't know words.
Speaker 2: Words fail me, like tragedy is farce of the Brooks
Speaker 2: Brothers riot, I guess, but like this is like farst
Speaker 2: number three. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think the first one. The first one was Nixon
Speaker 1: extending the Vietnam War in order to uh win his election.
Speaker 1: The farce was the Brooks Brothers riot. And now we're
Speaker 1: at like lead poisoning brain damage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like this is this is this is Marks failed
Speaker 2: to consider that you could have a third or fourth.
Speaker 6: Farce, like he only got to one.
Speaker 2: So speaking speaking of farce, So the third the third
Speaker 2: Koke s Buwer is probably Sidney Powell, who apparently the
Speaker 2: last I heard about Sidney Powell, He's currently like owns
Speaker 2: a bed and breakfast and spends all of his time
Speaker 2: I'm talking with his guest about the Trump administration. So things
Speaker 2: are going great for Sidney Powell, who is on.
Speaker 1: A Trump more or less what I would like him
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I mean if you can just keep sticking
Speaker 3: to doing that, yeah great.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the fourth guy is Jeffrey Clark, who doesn't
Speaker 2: really matter. The fifth guy I just want to like, Okay,
Speaker 2: so I I partially there's only like only really Giuliani
Speaker 2: Eastman in Powell matter. But the fifth guy is named
Speaker 2: Kenneth Chelsea Bro.
Speaker 1: Which that's okay, now you're fucking with us. Now, that's
Speaker 1: not a name. That's not a name I got nothing.
Speaker 2: I don't know, like a name they have like dug
Speaker 2: up members of like the old Chelsea arisocracy that like
Speaker 2: I I got, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I've never never been this angry in my life. That's
Speaker 1: not a naked ship now, like that's that.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's not Cheese Bro, it's Chelsea Brow. I name
Speaker 3: no idea, it's it's.
Speaker 2: C H E s E Bro chessa Bro.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: There's no version of how you outside of Boston.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Know Bro?
Speaker 2: Is he Bro? Okay? So we should also she's really
Speaker 2: that's so bad?
Speaker 3: Yeah no, I know a guy from Central California with
Speaker 3: that name that.
Speaker 2: Is that is viscerally upsetting. Okay, So just speaking of
Speaker 2: viscerally upsetting, So we should find everyone how we should
Speaker 2: remind everyone how American elections work because it's it's really
Speaker 2: one of the worst systems anyone's ever developed. So okay. So,
Speaker 2: like as as most people probably know, you don't directly
Speaker 2: elect the president.
Speaker 4: What you do.
Speaker 2: Instead is each each state, like you vote, well, okay,
Speaker 2: so sorry, let's run this up. Each state selects ecs. Now,
Speaker 2: there's nothing in the constitution that says you have to
Speaker 2: select electors by like voting for them. It's just that
Speaker 2: every state chose to do that. There's like a whole
Speaker 2: crank theory of Republican like legal jurisprudences where they're trying
Speaker 2: to use that to be able to just like not
Speaker 2: basically not have normal elections. But you know so because
Speaker 2: this is like dog shit, right, Like, it's bad for
Speaker 2: a number of reasons. The first obvious one is that
Speaker 2: like this means you the US does not have one person,
Speaker 2: one vote at all. Like the entire American political system
Speaker 2: is just a giant violation of the deference of one person,
Speaker 2: one vote because people's votes are just worth more than
Speaker 2: others because of the electors. The second thing that's really bad,
Speaker 2: right is again, like those individual electors can technically vote
Speaker 2: like however they want to, So you could you could
Speaker 2: be an elector who's posted to vote for someone and
Speaker 2: then vote for someone else. It's actually happened. Although I'm
Speaker 2: not mattering, but like one of Gore's electors I think
Speaker 2: defected to what's his name? The third guy who ran
Speaker 2: I can't remember his name?
Speaker 3: Someone in twenty sixteen or sorry guy, yeah, someone did
Speaker 3: in twenty sixteen as well. I think rogue electa. There's
Speaker 3: a little bit of like, I don't know, this is
Speaker 3: a good I was going to talk about different between
Speaker 3: procedural and substantive democracy. I could talk about it now
Speaker 3: or later, but I think it relates to what you're
Speaker 3: talking about. Sure, yeah, no, do it now. But what
Speaker 3: out Yeah there were there were ten in twenty sixteen. Wow,
Speaker 3: face Spotted Eagle is the one I'm thinking of. Someone
Speaker 3: voted for face Spotted Eagle. But yeah, okay, So one
Speaker 3: thing I wanted to talk about, like with relation to
Speaker 3: what you're saying here, is like the difference between procedural
Speaker 3: and substantive democracy, because I think it's really important when
Speaker 3: we're looking at like what's happening in the US. So
Speaker 3: when we talk about like a lot of this language
Speaker 3: comes from the like nineteen nineties obsession with transitioned to
Speaker 3: democracy that happens a lot in political science, right, like
Speaker 3: and history to an extent, where we were looking at
Speaker 3: these like post Soviet countries and post colonial countries and
Speaker 3: as they like move move towards this like what's considered
Speaker 3: a democracy in the kind of neoliberal frame we talked
Speaker 3: about procedural and substantive democracy. So procedural democracy are things
Speaker 3: which have the institutions and procedures in place. You vote,
Speaker 3: there are elections, the ballots are cast, and that results
Speaker 3: in this case the elector is going to electoral college
Speaker 3: and the e actual college deliver as a president. And
Speaker 3: then substantive democracy is where people have a substantive say,
Speaker 3: a means of deciding who is in charge, right who
Speaker 3: runs a state, And the US is moving further and
Speaker 3: further from substantive democracy, Like it's been interesting to see
Speaker 3: people bringing that like because of course that nineteen nineties
Speaker 3: discourse was centered heavily in the US right as like
Speaker 3: the paragon of democratic virtue, and then it was used
Speaker 3: to condescend to other countries and be like, oh, you're
Speaker 3: not a fully consolidated democracy with them, Lindzen Stepan. If
Speaker 3: people want to look up Linds and step Kind, if
Speaker 3: they're reboard, they can. But they talk about like a
Speaker 3: consolidated democracy being one where democracy is the only game
Speaker 3: in town, and all of this stuff like was heavily
Speaker 3: based on kind of aspiring to be the US, right
Speaker 3: countries in Africa East when you're perspiring to be an
Speaker 3: American democracy. And it's very funny now to see that
Speaker 3: the US doesn't fit most definitions of a substantive democracy
Speaker 3: or a consolidated one, Like it's not the only game
Speaker 3: in town for millions of Americans anymore.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: It's highly amusing.
Speaker 1: My other amusing is what I would call it, absolutely James.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny. It's just funny. Nothing bad will happen,
Speaker 3: it's fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah. My other favorite example of like those of like
Speaker 2: how bullshit those like democracy theorists were was like every
Speaker 2: single one of those people the moment that Zapetas the
Speaker 2: uprising happened, just like immediately shut the fuck up and
Speaker 2: never mentioned it ever, Like it just does not come
Speaker 2: up like in the thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean a lot of the like, yeah, a
Speaker 3: lot of them really had a lot of them also
Speaker 3: were like too busy looking at things, and like in Spain,
Speaker 3: right people looked at Spain's quote unquote transition as one
Speaker 3: of the earlier models and then went on to model
Speaker 3: things off Spain. Spain is at best an incomplete transition now, right,
Speaker 3: people paying attention to the most recent elections will maybe
Speaker 3: have noticed this, Like Spain is Spain is not a
Speaker 3: country where democracy is the only game in town. Right,
Speaker 3: They had an attempted to cop it in nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 3: and so like then they're kind of looking backwards off
Speaker 3: something because Spain was satisfactorly democratic for them, but it
Speaker 3: certainly wasn't for a lot of Spanish people. So yeah,
Speaker 3: not a big fani.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I don't know about you guys, but I
Speaker 1: think there's nothing wrong with the way we did. Side
Speaker 1: things are democracies.
Speaker 3: God gave it on the tablets to some old white men.
Speaker 3: You'll have slaves, and that that is good.
Speaker 4: Great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's been funny also watching those people trying to
Speaker 2: like actually go back and look at like at what
Speaker 2: point the US became like a democracy in any real sense,
Speaker 2: And it's like, really like, if you're going to do
Speaker 2: this seriously, you cannot argue that it was a democracy
Speaker 2: until like after Jim Crow, so like really like like
Speaker 2: the sixties and even then, so like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: like there's been a lot of attempts to sort of
Speaker 2: make this stuff work. But then also you have all
Speaker 2: of this bullshit. Where again, like because because it's based
Speaker 2: on this elector shit, you can like this is how
Speaker 2: Trump was able to like to try to do all
Speaker 2: this very weird stuff. And this is the sort of
Speaker 2: you know, this is the part where we get into
Speaker 2: like Trump's second plan, which his plan, and this is
Speaker 2: the one he's actually getting charged for. So his thing
Speaker 2: was he was trying to get states to just like
Speaker 2: ignore the popular vote and decertified. So there's this process
Speaker 2: where like there's a day on which like the electors
Speaker 2: that do the electoral votes are like certified, and so
Speaker 2: his he was he was trying to do a couple
Speaker 2: of things before that. He was trying to like get
Speaker 2: the actual electors like not certified and then have like
Speaker 2: another set of electors and pointed that would vote for him,
Speaker 2: and then that didn't work, and so he was trying
Speaker 2: to get so like on that same day, there were
Speaker 2: also a bunch of slates of electors that like like
Speaker 2: did like a fake appointment thing, basically like trying to
Speaker 2: claim they were the real electors in a bunch of states. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, And this one was funny too because
Speaker 2: like some of the people who were like who like
Speaker 2: were on these slates, like didn't know that they weren't
Speaker 2: the real electors, like they had just been told that
Speaker 2: they were the real so they like unwittingly were like
Speaker 2: part of this coup attempt. And so the the indictment,
Speaker 2: so that that that that's the second part, and so
Speaker 2: that also was kind of falling apart, and so then
Speaker 2: we get to the sort of third thing, which is
Speaker 2: this entire effort to get Mike Pence to not certify
Speaker 2: the election or so that district versions one was that
Speaker 2: he doesn't certify the election at all, and the second
Speaker 2: version of the conspiracy was like, so there were these
Speaker 2: states set up where Trump had put like a second
Speaker 2: slate of electors, and the plan was to like have
Speaker 2: those are like contested states, and so the plan was
Speaker 2: to have Pence say that like none of those states
Speaker 2: had actually voudly selected electors, so their votes don't matter,
Speaker 2: and then just like say that Trump won the election.
Speaker 2: And none of this makes any And the reason this
Speaker 2: is like incomprehensible is like none of this makes any sense, right,
Speaker 2: Like this is all just gibberish, that's bullshit. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: but into this mess drops Danny Quail. Now I think everyone,
Speaker 2: so you two know who Daddy Quail is. I I'm
Speaker 2: realizing I was running into people when I when I've
Speaker 2: been talking about this sort of story I'm about to tell.
Speaker 2: Who don't know who Danny Quayle is. And I feel
Speaker 2: I have a moral obligation to introduce this guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, give the man his full name here, James Danforth Quail.
Speaker 3: Oh god, I didn't know his name was dann fourth
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh yeah. Determinism at its finest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Quail, I think it is probably most famous
Speaker 2: for So she was Bush's vice president, right, and so okay,
Speaker 2: So I want to tell the actual folls. So the
Speaker 2: common version of the story that happens is that he
Speaker 2: doesn't know he didn't know how to sell potato, and
Speaker 2: that's true, but the actual story is so much funnier
Speaker 2: than that. So okay, Quail is So okay, Quail is
Speaker 2: is George W. Bush's vice president. Right. It's nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 2: like the like they're on, they're like starting to go
Speaker 2: into election season, and Quail goes to like this spelling
Speaker 2: bee that's happening in this elementary school to like promote
Speaker 2: some random harm. Yeah, and so so kid. He asked
Speaker 2: this kid to spell potato, and the kid walks up
Speaker 2: and the kid spells potato correctly. This kid is like
Speaker 2: eight right, this is like it is like mighty so
Speaker 2: and then I Quail looks at it. It looks at
Speaker 2: the Apparently they had a card that was spelled wrong.
Speaker 2: But Quail doesn't realize that the card is spelled wrong,
Speaker 2: so he goes to the board. He looks at the
Speaker 2: kid and goes but you need to ask someone to
Speaker 2: the end. And this kid is just baffled because she's
Speaker 2: spelled it, know correct?
Speaker 1: What you mean? Are you talking about the vice president
Speaker 1: of the United That kid's an anarchist. Now, like there's there's.
Speaker 2: No way someone did a follow up with him. Apparently
Speaker 2: he liked he's like a small business owner or something,
Speaker 2: and he just tells the story all the time.
Speaker 1: Very funny, but okay, this was at a period of
Speaker 1: American history like this, like is one of the reasons
Speaker 1: that George H. W.
Speaker 2: Bush didn't win re election. Like this broke twelve unbroken
Speaker 2: years of Republicans winning every single election based he.
Speaker 3: Does seem like a plant, Like I don't know if
Speaker 3: you've got some of his other ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Oh I'm this quote. Okay, so unless you think Quail
Speaker 2: just had like one flub, Like, no, he's just like this.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna read a couple of So there's like a
Speaker 2: bunch of people who spent a bunch of time extensively
Speaker 2: documenting Dan Quayle quotes because that's what you did on
Speaker 2: the internet in the nineties. Yeah, okay, the Holocaust was
Speaker 2: an obscene period in our nation's history, I mean this
Speaker 2: century's history. But we all lived in this century. I
Speaker 2: didn't live in this century.
Speaker 1: I feel like I want to diagram that one, like
Speaker 1: whats there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, cocaine was really kicking in.
Speaker 2: You know. She has this kind of in the same
Speaker 2: way that Trump has like this cant in which he
Speaker 2: does all of his incorporateensiable things, Like Quail also has
Speaker 2: a can't like he does this kind of thing where
Speaker 2: he does the like he says a sentence and then
Speaker 2: he says, I mean something else, I mean something else,
Speaker 2: and it does nothing. The follows from the other one.
Speaker 2: So she he does one of the other famous ones.
Speaker 2: Why he has always been a pivotal, pivotal role in
Speaker 2: the Pacific. It is in the Pacific. It is a
Speaker 2: part of the United States. That is an island that
Speaker 2: is right there.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Fuck, that's very Famously, he went on to write large
Speaker 1: portions of Wikipedia, so that that makes.
Speaker 3: A lot of sense.
Speaker 2: It's so good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, quails are in Wikipedia calls him an intellectual, lightweight
Speaker 3: and incompetent individual. Well it's not untrue.
Speaker 1: Pretty hard to argue about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Mars is essentially in the same orbit. Mars is
Speaker 2: somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important.
Speaker 2: We have seen pictures where the canals we believe and water.
Speaker 2: If there was water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen,
Speaker 2: that means we can breathe.
Speaker 1: Oh god, Okay, Wow, there's a lot of science coming
Speaker 1: out of that statement.
Speaker 2: This man was vice president of the United States. We
Speaker 2: have a firm commitment to NATO. We are a part
Speaker 2: of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We
Speaker 2: are a part of Europe. Sure, yeah, he's so good.
Speaker 1: Well, you see, Maya, you just you you were not
Speaker 1: you are not up on your your geographic history. Because
Speaker 1: the mountain ranges in Scotland are the same mountain range
Speaker 1: as the Appellachians, so technically we are in Europe.
Speaker 3: In many ways.
Speaker 2: Damn Okay, I've been styled on by Dan Quail.
Speaker 1: There you go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, now.
Speaker 2: Okay, other than the fact that it's really funny, like
Speaker 2: why why am I talking about Danny Quail And the
Speaker 2: answer is that, Okay. So remember Trump needs for his
Speaker 2: like completely nonsense thing to like even kind of go
Speaker 2: to the next step of failing. He needs to convince
Speaker 2: Mike Pence and not certify the election. And Pence is
Speaker 2: like legitimately going back and forward on this. He's like
Speaker 2: he's having this like moral dilemma and like he like
Speaker 2: wants to do it, but he's he's having problems making decisions,
Speaker 2: and so he calls his old friend Danny Quayle. And
Speaker 2: I think this is a really fascinating moment of sort
Speaker 2: of you know, like this, I think it's really fascinating
Speaker 2: indication of like how off the rails everything has gotten
Speaker 2: since we released to twenty sixteen, but like twenty twenty
Speaker 2: sort of just like accelerates the magnitude of this, which
Speaker 2: is that like Quail is like the human symbol of
Speaker 2: the decrepitness of American politics in the eighties and nineties, right,
Speaker 2: Like this is a guy who makes like s Nile
Speaker 2: Reguan look like a genius. And in twenty twenty and
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, like Pence is supposed to be one
Speaker 2: of the like quote unquote adults in the room in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty and Pence goes to Quail and is like,
Speaker 2: what I need. I need to do this coup, Like
Speaker 2: I don't have a choice. I'm under so much pressure.
Speaker 2: And Danny Quail, the man who can't spell potato, instantly
Speaker 2: is like, no, what are you talking about, Like you
Speaker 2: can't do this coup, like obviously can't do this, and
Speaker 2: and Pence Pence just like argues with him. He's like no, no,
Speaker 2: Like he keeps arguing with him, like no, I have
Speaker 2: to do what I have to do it, and Quails
Speaker 2: like what are you talking about? Like of course you
Speaker 2: can't like not certify the election, Like what what are
Speaker 2: you doing? And this actually works and this convinces Pence
Speaker 2: not to not to actually certify the election, And so
Speaker 2: you know, we we have reached a point in history
Speaker 2: where like you can make an argument, I don't think
Speaker 2: it's correct, but you can make an argument that Danny
Speaker 2: fucking Quail saved the American Republic.
Speaker 3: They say it's just from two Republican presidentst I just
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I can't get over this. It's just like Danny Quail
Speaker 2: is the voice of reason and modern ration and like,
Speaker 2: oh god, I don't know this country.
Speaker 3: It's bizarre. The whole thing is is bizarre.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's bleak. We should do an ad brick.
Speaker 2: I don't have a pivot there.
Speaker 1: Speaking of auto golpe gulp down these products automatic maggs.
Speaker 2: Cool, and we are we are back to a bit
Speaker 2: more fraud. So okay, the other thing is being yeah,
Speaker 2: this is actually wait, this is actually fraud. No, I
Speaker 2: guess this is the fraud one. It's still a technically
Speaker 2: a fraud one.
Speaker 1: So that's part of it at least.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So so we we've reached the like third and
Speaker 2: fourth indictments. It's actually really funny if you go read
Speaker 2: the thing, all of the actual texts of the indictment
Speaker 2: with the evidence and stuff is all under the first indictment,
Speaker 2: and then the second, third, and fourth ones are like, yeah,
Speaker 2: go refer to ex paragraphs as like the first one.
Speaker 2: So there's the second, third, and fourth like charges are
Speaker 2: like like one paragraph long. But basically this is about
Speaker 2: the January sixth stuff. They spent much time listing like
Speaker 2: all of the random stuff that Trump said about the
Speaker 2: election that was not true. They also have a very
Speaker 2: funny list of all of the people who told him
Speaker 2: that like this stuff wasn't true, which includes Mike Pence,
Speaker 2: the leadership of the Justice Department, the Director of National Intelligence,
Speaker 2: the head of SISA, which is the Department of Homeland
Speaker 2: Security Cybersecurity Agency, a bunch of White House attorneys, like
Speaker 2: his own staff at all of his politicians was backing
Speaker 2: He's like every single person was like this is not real,
Speaker 2: and Trump was like, no, no, no, hold on, we
Speaker 2: can still win the election, you know. Okay. So there's
Speaker 2: like that stuff, and then there's the stuff that like
Speaker 2: he like specifically did to like try to pressure these
Speaker 2: state politicians into like certifying him as president. So like
Speaker 2: they he had a bunch of calls, and like his
Speaker 2: like staff people had a bunch of calls. We were
Speaker 2: like they tried to get like that the Speaker of
Speaker 2: the House in Arizona to do this by saying there
Speaker 2: was voting fraud, and the Speaker of the House was like, okay,
Speaker 2: there's no we haven't found any fraud. I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 2: gonna read from the thing co conspirator to concluded that
Speaker 2: he quote didn't know enough about the facts on the
Speaker 2: ground in Arizona, but nonetheless told the Speaker of the
Speaker 2: House to decertify and quote let the court sort it out,
Speaker 2: sort it out. So again, this is this is this
Speaker 2: is the Roger Stone strategy, but done like yes, so
Speaker 2: unbelievably poorly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, And there's a bunch of sort of like lists.
Speaker 2: There's like all this list of like this like Trump
Speaker 2: does like identical stuff in like Michigan and Pennsylvania. There's
Speaker 2: like that phone call in Georgia he gets in trouble
Speaker 2: for some from Wisconsin. There's another thing he tried to
Speaker 2: do which I actually hadn't heard about this one.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's either I just forgot it or I just never
Speaker 2: ran into it, where he was trying to like use
Speaker 2: Justice Department letterhead and like the signature of the Acting
Speaker 2: Attorney General to like send a fate like pretend to
Speaker 2: send a letter from the Justice Department to a bunch
Speaker 2: of states to tell them there was fraud and get
Speaker 2: them to like amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, since I'm sick and I can't come to school.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the funny thing is the problem is that they
Speaker 1: so they try to there's a lot that's funny about that.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna I'm not gonna see it. Yes, we
Speaker 1: gotta plaralize that fucker.
Speaker 2: It's so good. And the scheme falls apart because again
Speaker 2: the guy Trump appoints it as the acting Attorney general
Speaker 2: is like, no, like, you cannot just department and they
Speaker 2: keep trying to argue with him and it keeps not working.
Speaker 2: And this is where we get to another part of
Speaker 2: this whole thing that I this has been getting a
Speaker 2: lot of press attention and it's interesting, but I think
Speaker 2: there's more to the story that people haven't been talking about,
Speaker 2: which is so the guy who's probably Jeffrey Clark like
Speaker 2: gets into an argument with the deputy White House Council
Speaker 2: and the wut White House Council is you know, is telling?
Speaker 2: Is telling Jeffrey Clark, who thinks one of Trumps lawyers
Speaker 2: is telling him like like Trump can't stay in office.
Speaker 2: Like there's no version of this where Trump stays in
Speaker 2: office after January twentieth, and he says, quote, there would
Speaker 2: be riots in every major American City. And then the
Speaker 2: guy who's probably Clark says, quote, well, Deputy White House Counsel,
Speaker 2: that's why there's an Insurrection Act. And this is where
Speaker 2: we need to get to another a couple of interesting
Speaker 2: parts of the story.
Speaker 1: One, you know, one clear, when you're saying that's why
Speaker 1: we have an insurrection Act, you're saying, we can just
Speaker 1: shoot those people, yeah, in the streets, Like that is
Speaker 1: what that statement means. Yeah, and that is what the
Speaker 1: stakes were. Everybody was out in the streets in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty was aware of this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and yeah, you know, this is the thing I
Speaker 2: kind of want to talk about, which is that, like
Speaker 2: part of the reason this coup fails is that so
Speaker 2: Trump is talking about doing the Insurrection Act twice in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty. Well, I guess once in twenty twenty. I
Speaker 2: think this might have been the second time. I've been
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one. But like in that last year, he
Speaker 2: tries to use the Insurrection Act against the uprising in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, and his like his Chief of stat like
Speaker 2: like a bunch of like a bunch of generals and
Speaker 2: chief of staff like tell them the fuck off. And
Speaker 2: that's like part of the reason why this didn't happen,
Speaker 2: which which is interesting because like I don't know, like
Speaker 2: there there have been, like there have been times where
Speaker 2: the US Army like has been deployed against like riots
Speaker 2: like this, right like this this happened in the nineties,
Speaker 2: but in this situation, the army just like absolutely completely
Speaker 2: refuse to play ball. And we've we've gotten some really
Speaker 2: kind of interesting So the other thing that's happening here
Speaker 2: is like just the complete hollowing out of journalism as
Speaker 2: an institution where all of these people know all of
Speaker 2: the all these journalists like know a bunch of incredibly
Speaker 2: important stuff and they won't tell anyone because they they're
Speaker 2: saving it for their books, yep, and you know, and
Speaker 2: it's like among the things that we sort of learned
Speaker 2: in this period is like there there's basically this like
Speaker 2: I don't know what you call it, Like you could
Speaker 2: either call it like a quad um for it basically,
Speaker 2: or you could call it like a National Unity government
Speaker 2: which is in power for two weeks basically where Pelosi Miley,
Speaker 2: who's uh, he's uh, the chief of staff who's a general,
Speaker 2: like Mike Pence, Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell basically are
Speaker 2: like running the government for two weeks because they've successfully
Speaker 2: put together this counter coup where the like the military
Speaker 2: has refused to like go along with Trump like trying
Speaker 2: to overthrow the government. And this is very deeply I
Speaker 2: don't know. There's some very deeply interesting stuff here where
Speaker 2: there's there's a there's a book called Iolone Can Fix It,
Speaker 2: which a couple of journalists are coming out with and
Speaker 2: there's some interesting quotes from it from specifically General Mike Miley,
Speaker 2: who's like the chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff,
Speaker 2: who was appointed by Trump. By the way, this this
Speaker 2: is this is an important thing because like Trump, there's
Speaker 2: like seven guys who are like absolute ghouls, like Mike Pompeo,
Speaker 2: like Cia ghoul who are just like look at this
Speaker 2: coup and are like no, and Miley stuff is wild.
Speaker 2: Like Miley directly can like in meetings, is comparing Trump
Speaker 2: to Hitler. He says, quote, yeah, this is a Reichstag moment.
Speaker 2: Miley told aids the Gospel of the Fearer, like and.
Speaker 1: There's there's a I talked about this a little bit
Speaker 1: ahead of earlier. There are some unconfirmed reports that Miley
Speaker 1: and a number of other like US military high ranking
Speaker 1: officers basically had like a book club, and one of
Speaker 1: the books they went through in twenty twenty was a
Speaker 1: book about the Nazis' rise to power in Germany. I
Speaker 1: kind of suspect it might have been Death of a
Speaker 1: Democracy because that was big at the time. But it
Speaker 1: would make sense because he's talking in substantial detail about
Speaker 1: like he's very you can tell he's very focused in
Speaker 1: this period on Nazis taking over the government, Like he
Speaker 1: talks about it a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I'm gonna read a couple other quotes from him.
Speaker 2: He has this thing where I think, I think he's
Speaker 2: talking about payoh here, where he's talking about like this
Speaker 2: coup and he says they may tribe, but they're not
Speaker 2: going to fucking succeed. He told them, you can't do
Speaker 2: this without the military. You can't do this without the
Speaker 2: CIA and the FBI. We're the guys with the guns.
Speaker 2: And he's right about this. And this is a really
Speaker 2: crucial thing that Trump fucks up about how to do
Speaker 2: a fascist coup is that you can't actually like fascist
Speaker 2: coup don't work without the at least passive acquiescence of
Speaker 2: the state. Like, if the state tries, if the army
Speaker 2: tries to stop you, your coup is not going to work, right, Like,
Speaker 2: unless you're someone like Franco who like has control of
Speaker 2: a huge portion of the army, if you try to
Speaker 2: do one of these sort of weird paramilitary things and
Speaker 2: the army just says no, like you're screwed. And this
Speaker 2: I think was always part of trump sort of problem
Speaker 2: was that, like, you know, if he'd sort of spent
Speaker 2: his time consolidating the kind of like fascist institutions, the
Speaker 2: neo cons set up, right, Like, if he'd spent his
Speaker 2: time like you know, actually like actually developing loyalty in
Speaker 2: the FBI and the CIA and like going through and
Speaker 2: like turning Department Homeland Security like you know, into like
Speaker 2: an even more fascist organization.
Speaker 4: He might have been able to do this.
Speaker 2: But like at the very end, like you have Miley
Speaker 2: saying this is this is on h right, this is
Speaker 2: on exercises right before the inauguration, he says, quote, here's
Speaker 2: the deal, guys, these guys are the not are Nazis,
Speaker 2: They're Bugalopo, They're proud voys. These are the same people
Speaker 2: we fought in World War two. Miley told them everyone
Speaker 2: in this room, whether you're a cop, whether you're a soldier,
Speaker 2: we're going to stop these guys to make sure we
Speaker 2: have a peaceful transfer of power. We're gonna put a
Speaker 2: steel ring around this city, and the Nazis aren't getting in.
Speaker 1: Like you know what, credit, Where's That's a pretty cool
Speaker 1: thing to get to have said, Yeah, so something like
Speaker 1: basically him and Zook off.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's like all of like suddenly like the American
Speaker 7: like all of like the senior command of the American
Speaker 7: Army suddenly turned into like nineteen forty two American generals.
Speaker 2: It's like, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I guess again, I try to say this, I try
Speaker 1: to bring this up a lot to like more radical
Speaker 1: folks when you if you want to get a lot
Speaker 1: of like the centrist lib types on your side, you
Speaker 1: could do a lot worse than Hearkening back to that
Speaker 1: whole World War two thing, there's a lot of propaganda
Speaker 1: invested in getting guys like Millie to want to feel
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 3: So and in this case it works out for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, apparently, I don't know, Live Live Antifa has poor
Speaker 2: has pulled one out.
Speaker 1: I guess it's certainly better than if the head of
Speaker 1: the military had been like, I guess I'm fine with this,
Speaker 1: so yeah, what I don't know. Yeah, I have no
Speaker 1: complaints are his performance in that specific moment, uh, other
Speaker 1: than that they did actually get in so you know whatever,
Speaker 1: Like that was it.
Speaker 2: When they were drilling for the inauguration.
Speaker 3: When they stuffed the capital with National God soldiers like
Speaker 3: a sausage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was just I guess it worked. I don't know.
Speaker 2: My other conclusion from this, though, is when when you
Speaker 2: have reached the position of like you're you're trying to
Speaker 2: figure like your top generals are trying to figure out
Speaker 2: who has enough guns to figure out whether a coup
Speaker 2: can happen, like things are things are not good. This
Speaker 2: is a this is a a bad sign TM.
Speaker 1: For no, It's it's like, as nice as it is
Speaker 1: to hear that Milly understood the stakes, which is good.
Speaker 1: It's good that he understood the stakes given his position,
Speaker 1: it's not good that like so much came down to
Speaker 1: the fact that a couple dudes didn't suck in this
Speaker 1: specific way, Like that's not a great sign for stability
Speaker 1: of democracy. Yeah, because no one voted for Miley, Like right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's unsettling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the whole democratic system was more or less of
Speaker 3: the edge of failing. And a dude who was good
Speaker 3: at war step ten and was like, here, okay, we
Speaker 3: can't I don't want to do this one of those things.
Speaker 2: Right, we know what this looks like. With Bush, We're like,
Speaker 2: if you actually know how to press the buttons of
Speaker 2: the system, right, you can't do this. But Trump just
Speaker 2: like didn't have enough control of the state apparatus and
Speaker 2: tried to sort of replicate it with true viles, and
Speaker 2: that just didn't work. Trump's problems here are twofold. One
Speaker 2: of them is that he is not capable of loyalty
Speaker 2: to anyone or anything else, whereas.
Speaker 1: A guy like George W. Bush is, which means he's
Speaker 1: capable of getting teams together who are willing to take
Speaker 1: some of like who are willing to go out on
Speaker 1: a limb for him to some extent. And Bush also
Speaker 1: is system loyal. Now, that doesn't mean he's not willing
Speaker 1: to fuck with the system for his own benefit, but
Speaker 1: he has a vested interest in the system continuing more
Speaker 1: or less the way that it has right as opposed
Speaker 1: to breaking it, specifically forever for his own like power.
Speaker 1: You know, he was not a guy who was interested
Speaker 1: in staying in office. For I don't say this to
Speaker 1: defend the man he killed hundreds of thousands of people minimum,
Speaker 1: But because he was willing, he had a degree of
Speaker 1: loyalty to the system as it was seen by most people.
Speaker 1: There was not this kind of rebellion from sort of
Speaker 1: within it, right like. In fact, that deep state was
Speaker 1: largely sympathetic with him. They were willing to go with
Speaker 1: like the fucking around with the election as long as,
Speaker 1: you know, the broader structures that had given them a
Speaker 1: place to exert power and influence remained intact. And Trump
Speaker 1: was basically saying, if Millie had gone with this, if
Speaker 1: everyone had gone with this, what you are accepting is
Speaker 1: that nothing matters but this guy's opinion. Right There's not
Speaker 1: actually any sort of power in the system that you
Speaker 1: have risen to the top of. There's not any sort
Speaker 1: of power in these unelected structures within the system that
Speaker 1: you clearly think are important because they are how you
Speaker 1: why like, where you have seen success, right like, And frankly,
Speaker 1: you know people aren't willing to do that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And also you're fighting against a lot of people who
Speaker 1: want to whatever fucked up things they are willing to do.
Speaker 1: They have a lot emotionally invested in the idea that
Speaker 1: they serve a democracy. Now is that a morally flawless idea?
Speaker 1: Are they always? In fact? Like no, of course not
Speaker 1: like everyone. They're hypocrites to certain extents, But you can't
Speaker 1: pushed them that far like Bush pushed them about as
Speaker 1: far as you can push people like that. Right, this
Speaker 1: Trump didn't have any respect for making it, for dressing
Speaker 1: it up right, and he didn't have any respect for
Speaker 1: the thing that they were a part of, and so
Speaker 1: of course a lot of them didn't go with him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think this gets back to something I've
Speaker 2: talked about a bit with with what what the neocons
Speaker 2: were doing, which that the neocons are about like the
Speaker 2: state of exception, right, they're about this, like you know,
Speaker 2: we've had the war, we now have the war on terror.
Speaker 2: We've had nine to eleven, and that means the countries
Speaker 2: in this state were like, we have the power to
Speaker 2: be like the people inside the system who are out
Speaker 2: bound by it, you could do whatever you want and
Speaker 2: like that is descriptively right, like this is you know,
Speaker 2: both Carl Schmidt, the like Nazi jurists like that. That
Speaker 2: was explicitly like his model of how you do fascism, right,
Speaker 2: and it's as also like something you know. But but
Speaker 2: the thing is again like that's a very different thing
Speaker 2: than what Trump was doing, right, Like Trump wasn't doing
Speaker 2: like Trump wasn't doing this thing where he like you know,
Speaker 2: uses the as of the state he was, he was
Speaker 2: doing a different, like different kind of.
Speaker 4: One of them.
Speaker 1: This is what a lot of people don't understand about
Speaker 1: the Nazis is that whin Hitler took power and for
Speaker 1: the first half to two thirds of his time in power, uh,
Speaker 1: he was very much concerned about the military and constantly
Speaker 1: making exceptions and altering and moderating aspects of his policy
Speaker 1: in order to keep the military on his side. And
Speaker 1: that continued, depending on kind of where you want to
Speaker 1: put it, either up until the Anschlusser, up until the
Speaker 1: invasion of Poland. Really to a significant.
Speaker 3: Extent he would whereas Trump did not.
Speaker 1: Again, there's no sort of he has no sort of
Speaker 1: respect And I'm not saying like you should have respect
Speaker 1: for the military, no, but I'm saying that because he
Speaker 1: did not just like power. Yeah, the fact that he
Speaker 1: did not, or the FBI for that matter, is one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why this didn't work for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this was this was always a kind of
Speaker 2: a problem he has ideologically, which is like one of
Speaker 2: the things that makes him popular is he was running
Speaker 2: like against the deep state, right, and like yeah, like yeah,
Speaker 2: like I know lots of people in you like I
Speaker 2: don't like the intelligence agency. He's like, the intelligence's can
Speaker 2: fuck off. The fact that like the fact that the
Speaker 2: intelligence agency's finally found a coup they wouldn't support, like
Speaker 2: it's not as something they're good, but the pretended Yeah.
Speaker 2: But like the problem with this is like Trump is,
Speaker 2: you know, he wins the primary, like very explicitly by
Speaker 2: running against a lot of the like like by nay,
Speaker 2: running against neo conservatives. You can argue the extent to
Speaker 2: which he actually broke with it in terms of like
Speaker 2: appointing like gena. You know, he puts a bunch of
Speaker 2: neo kon gorougles like back in power, right, But like
Speaker 2: like nominally he's running against that specific thing. And it
Speaker 2: turns out that like if if you if your appeal
Speaker 2: is you know, being like a nominally anti systemic force,
Speaker 2: and then you have to try to use the system
Speaker 2: to stay in power. It's like, well, you know this,
Speaker 2: this happens like now you are getting charged by Jack
Speaker 2: Smith and you have like seventy eight counts against you
Speaker 2: instead of you are now the fearer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of it is. You know, first off,
Speaker 1: people want to be able to believe nice things about themselves,
Speaker 1: and Trump didn't really give them the option of doing that.
Speaker 1: And second of all, people who are achieved this kind
Speaker 1: of level within the system want you to treat the
Speaker 1: system they've succeeded in as if it matters, Like it's
Speaker 1: that simple.
Speaker 3: I think in a lot of yays when I feel
Speaker 3: validated and valued, and he was just like, no, fuck
Speaker 3: you all, I'm doing my gu and with genuinely shock
Speaker 3: whe people like, well, we ain't coming with you.
Speaker 1: For I don't I really feel no desire or no
Speaker 1: uh no impetus to move with you. Yeah, anyway, this
Speaker 1: is a good idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I don't know, we'll we'll, we'll see what
Speaker 2: happens with these indictments. I don't know. I I genuine
Speaker 2: this is the importance. Yeah, this is the one that
Speaker 2: the indictments. This is the one that matters.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: We'll we'll see if this actually substantively plays a role
Speaker 2: in the election. I mean, I I don't think there's
Speaker 2: a possibility that I can cost Trump the primary, like but.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, yeah, nothing nothing but like a
Speaker 1: heart attack could do that. But it is. I will
Speaker 1: say I had some other stuff prepared that I think
Speaker 1: we'll move to another episode just because of how this
Speaker 1: has gone. But I do want to note I want
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit at the end here about
Speaker 1: is this going to matter like electorally for Trump?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: Is this going to have an impact on his chances
Speaker 1: of winning the general? I think we're all agreed it's
Speaker 1: not really worth talking about the primary. He's going to
Speaker 1: win the primary barring and act of God, and that's
Speaker 1: where what Yeah, anyway, so there's some infol on this. Basically,
Speaker 1: on March twenty ninth, he was averaging about forty five
Speaker 1: percent in national primary polls, which I'm bringing up here
Speaker 1: because they help show the impact of the indictment because
Speaker 1: you don't have a lot of national polls from that
Speaker 1: time a national general election polls. So forty five percent
Speaker 1: in March, after his first set of indictments. In April,
Speaker 1: he was up to fifty four percent, So that first
Speaker 1: set of indictments did not harm him. They have helped
Speaker 1: him consolidate power, may have activated a chunk of his base.
Speaker 1: The second indictment did not work the same way though.
Speaker 1: After June eighth, when it was reported that he was
Speaker 1: being indicted for the classified document shit and obstructing justice
Speaker 1: and getting.
Speaker 4: Them back.
Speaker 1: YEA, his average support in the primary fell not by
Speaker 1: a massive amount, by a couple of percentage points, as
Speaker 1: did his average net favorable rating. So you saw at
Speaker 1: least a he hit a wall and bounced back a
Speaker 1: little bit. Not massive, not a sea change, but enough
Speaker 1: to show that it's not accurate to say voters don't care.
Speaker 1: It's more accurate to say, based on what we've seen
Speaker 1: so far, voters seem to care differently about different indictments.
Speaker 1: And I want to read a quote from a five
Speaker 1: point thirty eight article about his indictment poles here. Although
Speaker 1: we can't prove that all these shifts happen because of
Speaker 1: the indictments, the difference in reaction at least suggests that
Speaker 1: Americans are drawing distinctions between Trump's various legal troubles and
Speaker 1: other polling backs that up ing to do. A Yugov
Speaker 1: Yahoo News poll from July thirteenth through seventeenth, fifty percent
Speaker 1: of registered voters considered falsifying business records to conceal hush
Speaker 1: money payments to a porn star to be a serious crime,
Speaker 1: but sixty four percent of registered voters consider it a
Speaker 1: serious crime to take highly classified documents from the White
Speaker 1: House and obstruct efforts to retrieve them. Similarly, a June
Speaker 1: twenty second to twenty sixth pole from the Associated Press
Speaker 1: NRC Center for Public Affairs Research found that only thirty
Speaker 1: five percent of US adults thought Trump did something illegal
Speaker 1: when it came to the hush money payments, but fifty
Speaker 1: three percent thought he did something illegal with regards to
Speaker 1: classified documents founded his Marologu resort in Florida. By this logic,
Speaker 1: this third indictment could be even more damaging to Trump
Speaker 1: than the one involving classified documents. According to the same
Speaker 1: Yugo of Yahoo News poll, sixty nine percent of registered
Speaker 1: voters considered it a serious crime to attempt to obstruct
Speaker 1: the certification of a presidential election, and seventy one percent
Speaker 1: said the same about conspiring to overturn the results of
Speaker 1: a presidential election.
Speaker 3: So going to take us troublingly low number, but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I wishing way it should be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that that does suggest that this could do
Speaker 1: him some damage, and especially since all of this is
Speaker 1: going to keep getting litigated, right like fucking people who
Speaker 1: get who have a decent lawyer and get arrested for
Speaker 1: like a d u y can drag a court case
Speaker 1: out for a year. This will be going on during
Speaker 1: the election. It may hurt him.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: Again, I'm not willing to like say, oh, this is
Speaker 1: going to fuck the election, make it impossible from beginning.
Speaker 1: I don't think the data suggests that, but it it
Speaker 1: there's a I think a pretty good chance that this
Speaker 1: is a net negative for him in terms of, you know,
Speaker 1: the election and broadly speaking, you know, we gave the
Speaker 1: Dims a lot of shit for a couple of years
Speaker 1: for not doing enough to actually seriously strike back at
Speaker 1: the Republican authoritarian outreach, and so it would be unfair
Speaker 1: of me to not say it's good that they're doing this,
Speaker 1: like it's good that he's facing legal trouble for what
Speaker 1: he's done. That's not enough to stop him. That's not
Speaker 1: enough to stop the Republican Party, but it is good
Speaker 1: that this has been done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, progress. Shame wasn't earlier, should have been earlier.
Speaker 3: You know, h happening during the election is a major
Speaker 3: l in terms of how he can spin this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I think that was probably a strategic error,
Speaker 1: but grand juries take forever.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the other thing that's happens is like there's been
Speaker 2: all of this time for sort of Republican pr machine
Speaker 2: to like spin all of the stuff that happened, and
Speaker 2: we've you know, and I think like part of wasn't
Speaker 2: happening the last three years is like everyone kind of
Speaker 2: just like collectively forgetting what actually happened during twenty twenty
Speaker 2: and how absolutely nuts it was, and everyone sort of
Speaker 2: going back and pretending that like things are sort of
Speaker 2: like normal now, and it's like, no, no, we're still
Speaker 2: we're still living in the eternal twenty twenty and everything
Speaker 2: is still absolutely nuts. But I don't know, it's like
Speaker 2: there's been this incredible sort of like normalization effort, both
Speaker 2: by Biden and also like buy the Republicans to make
Speaker 2: it seem like this was like a normal thing that
Speaker 2: happened as opposed to like the immediate wake if it,
Speaker 2: where everyone was like what the fuck? So hopefully not
Speaker 2: too little, too late, hopefully this does something, but.
Speaker 1: We'll see, yes, indeed, all right, well everybody, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I guess go back to paying rent and stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: sure twenty twenty four will be fine.
Speaker 3: Yet it wouldn't be any problem.
Speaker 2: There's fifteen more months of this.
Speaker 8: By the way, Hi, everyone, it's me James today and
Speaker 8: I'm joined by Glen Pyle, who's a professor of malekhilra
Speaker 8: Kadi and a member of the Impart Network at Dalhousie Medicine.
Speaker 3: Glenn, thank you so much for joining us. Can you
Speaker 3: is there any I missed out? First of all in
Speaker 3: your bio there that might be relevant for people.
Speaker 4: No, I think that's a short and sweet I don't
Speaker 4: need all the details for.
Speaker 3: Sure, Thank you.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, what we're here to talk about today is these
Speaker 3: sudden the phenomenal I suppose of sudden cardiac arrest, specifically
Speaker 3: like in young people and young athletes. Because, as many
Speaker 3: of you will have been aware, this has been increasingly
Speaker 3: an area in which anti vaxxers and conspiracy theorists have
Speaker 3: been trying to leverage what is an unfortunate but not
Speaker 3: unprecedented cardiac arrest, like in this case, most recently Bronnie James,
Speaker 3: but it has happened before in the number of sports,
Speaker 3: and they've been trying to leverage us as of quote
Speaker 3: unquote like prove for evidence that that vaccines are killing
Speaker 3: otherwise healthy young people, which is nonsense. And I can
Speaker 3: tell you it's nonsense. But someone who can tell you
Speaker 3: from much more informed perspective is Glenn so Glinn. Could
Speaker 3: we start up by maybe talking about how common this
Speaker 3: sudden cardiac arrest in young athletes is and what we
Speaker 3: might what hypothethies we might have to what caused it.
Speaker 4: Sure, well, I mean, first of all, we look more broadly,
Speaker 4: it's very common. I'm from Canada and we have about
Speaker 4: thirty five thousand of these every year within young athletes.
Speaker 4: The data out of the US says that about two
Speaker 4: thousand die every year from sudden cardiac arrest, and two
Speaker 4: thirds of these young people do so during some sort
Speaker 4: of exercise or sporting event. So, in the grand scheme
Speaker 4: of things, when you have a country of several hundred
Speaker 4: million people, a thousand or so death like that is,
Speaker 4: but proportion relatively small. But we've known about this for
Speaker 4: a long time and these numbers actually really haven't changed
Speaker 4: very much in decades.
Speaker 3: Okay, so yeah, there's obviously been a particular increase due
Speaker 3: to COVID vaccinations, because they're related. I wonder, actually it's evidence.
Speaker 3: I think I've read some stuff that having COVID or
Speaker 3: having had COVID multiple times might increase your risk for
Speaker 3: cardiac arrest. Is that true?
Speaker 4: Yeah? So broadly so, they haven't looked specifically at cardiac
Speaker 4: arrest because cardiac arrests typically is in a lot of
Speaker 4: times the end result of a number of different conditions
Speaker 4: of cardiac arrhythmias are known to be increased. Patone study
Speaker 4: showed that what I guess the year and a half
Speaker 4: ago by now, certainly early in the pandemic, one of
Speaker 4: the first signs we were seeing people who were being
Speaker 4: infected were having heart attacks, developing heart failure, these things,
Speaker 4: and in cardiac arresk the most common cause or cardiac arrhythmius.
Speaker 4: The Patone study showed. And every time I talk about this,
Speaker 4: I have to go back and look, because the increase
Speaker 4: was several hundredfold after COVID, and so I've never really
Speaker 4: seen anything like that before. So arrhythmias are relatively common
Speaker 4: in terms in the world of cardiovascular disease, and the
Speaker 4: fact that COVID the infection, actually increases it, but the
Speaker 4: vaccines do not means that the risk for some cardiac
Speaker 4: death really would be highest amongst those who are infected,
Speaker 4: not those who get vaccines.
Speaker 3: Okay, do you know offhand if like when we have
Speaker 3: that maybe this was too early in the pandemic to
Speaker 3: tell like that risk that comes with having COVID right
Speaker 3: for having arrhythmia afterwards? Is that risk mitigated by if
Speaker 3: you're vaccinated and then you get COVID.
Speaker 4: So yes, there's been some more recent studies beaks. Obviously,
Speaker 4: early in the pandemic, when we didn't have the vaccines,
Speaker 4: we couldn't answer that. And then early after vaccines were
Speaker 4: looking at things like infections, and some of these cardiac
Speaker 4: issues may not arise until even after the infection is clear.
Speaker 4: So we see that in people with long COVID, for example,
Speaker 4: kardiac issues are most common. And so we've seen in
Speaker 4: some recent studies that people who are in even what
Speaker 4: they described as partially vaccinated for one or two doses
Speaker 4: had a reduced risk of what we call MACE, which
Speaker 4: is a major adverse cardiovascular event. And so that's an
Speaker 4: all encompassing term, which would be things like stroke, heart attack,
Speaker 4: you know, things things like that, those major cardiac events.
Speaker 4: That's data has come out earlier this year, within the
Speaker 4: last year, a couple of studies.
Speaker 3: Okay, so circling back to those cardiac arrests, and I
Speaker 3: guess broke more broadly like cardiac issues in young people
Speaker 3: and specific in young athletes, something I'm familiar with that
Speaker 3: with the background in cycling, like I've known people die
Speaker 3: of cardiac arrests who are otherwise extremely fit. No, I
Speaker 3: wouldn't necessarily say, like sometimes being fit and being healthy
Speaker 3: are not the same thing, and certainly the very like
Speaker 3: point to end of indurance sport. I think the fittest
Speaker 3: people are not necessarily the healthiest, but very fit sometimes
Speaker 3: very healthy people have friends of mine have had these issues.
Speaker 3: Is in those cases and we might not know. I
Speaker 3: don't know is being an athlete like increasing someone's chance
Speaker 3: of having those cardiacorists or is it that they have
Speaker 3: some kind of pre existing condition that's just that's just
Speaker 3: been underlying for a while.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good question. What we do know and
Speaker 4: this this is all data from pre COVID, so it's
Speaker 4: not something that's been impacted by the pandemic or vaccines.
Speaker 4: We do know that the rate of sudden cardiac death
Speaker 4: and the general population is about one in one hundred thousand,
Speaker 4: and that in athletes, which is a very broad term
Speaker 4: and we can get into that how to an athlete
Speaker 4: and things like that, is anywhere from two to four
Speaker 4: times the rate that that's groups of athletes. Subsections are
Speaker 4: actually higher, So we know the radius higher in these athletes,
Speaker 4: typically these high performance athletes. You know why that is,
Speaker 4: It's an interesting question. It could be the training, for example,
Speaker 4: puts a stressor on them. So they may have a
Speaker 4: pre existing condition. They may have a cardiac orarithm of
Speaker 4: like long Qt syndrome or even something called hypertrophic cardiomopathy.
Speaker 4: Sometimes they know about it and sometimes they don't, and
Speaker 4: then the training on top is enough of a trigger.
Speaker 4: So one of the examples I use in my class
Speaker 4: is Anthony Evenlous, a soccer player I believe it was
Speaker 4: in the Netherlands. He was playing. He had a known
Speaker 4: cardiovascular condition so he had what's called it ic D
Speaker 4: or planet cardiodefibrillator while he was playing, and he suffered
Speaker 4: some cardiac death on the field. There's actually video of it,
Speaker 4: and that shocked him back into rhythm. So you know,
Speaker 4: some of these people may not know and discover in
Speaker 4: the course of training, and some may know and opt
Speaker 4: to take that risk anyway, and then it's the training
Speaker 4: that or the competition that brings it out.
Speaker 3: Yeah okay, yeah, yeah, I have a very good friend
Speaker 3: with ICD and it there's certainly been at the end
Speaker 3: of a very difficult process for him to have that,
Speaker 3: and that involve lots of lifestyle changes. And so when
Speaker 3: we let's what exactly is an athlete in these studies,
Speaker 3: like is that somebody goes to gym twice a week?
Speaker 3: Is it someone putting in twenty hours on the bike,
Speaker 3: like what?
Speaker 4: So most of the studies that we're talking about, so
Speaker 4: I assume we're not talking about the people who are
Speaker 4: claiming that the vaccines are linked to athletes, because they
Speaker 4: have a very different definition. I can talk about that
Speaker 4: most of these studies that we're dealing with, where we
Speaker 4: get these rates that are two to four times higher
Speaker 4: than the general population or what they refer to as
Speaker 4: competitive athletes. So for people in the US, these would
Speaker 4: be your NCAA or college athletes. Some of them are
Speaker 4: professional athletes, you know, soccer players and the you know,
Speaker 4: the British League and things like that. So these are
Speaker 4: people who play at a at a competitive level. Oftentimes
Speaker 4: they're making a living. I mean, you can argue whether
Speaker 4: college athletes are making a living out of this, but
Speaker 4: there's there's some high level of competition in these athletes.
Speaker 4: That's generally the people that were that these studies are
Speaker 4: based on, not the guy who goes to the gym
Speaker 4: twice a week or something like that.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, yeah, so fairly elite. And what is it
Speaker 3: that you were saying that's different from the claims that
Speaker 3: these anti vax people or vaccine skeptics or whatever, you know,
Speaker 3: people who want to say that vaccines are giving people
Speaker 3: which isn't true. What sort of the definition that they're
Speaker 3: using or what's the claim that they're making.
Speaker 4: I guess well, they really don't have a definition, is
Speaker 4: the problem. So they'll use the term athletes, and I
Speaker 4: think most people, you know, maybe maybe you don't see
Speaker 4: an athlete as necessarily being a college or professional level.
Speaker 4: It could be like a high school athlete who's competing,
Speaker 4: you know, once or twice a week or whatever, and
Speaker 4: that's that's fair. But when you look at the lists
Speaker 4: that they have, I mean, I've talked about this recently
Speaker 4: and the Died Suddenly movie documentary, whatever you want to
Speaker 4: call it. The list of people that they have on there.
Speaker 4: For example, they have musicians, they have a Thai princess
Speaker 4: on the princess from Thailand on there, and they also
Speaker 4: have people who died of cancer, someone who got an
Speaker 4: eye injury. So I'm not really sure, first of all,
Speaker 4: what their definition of athlete is. I'm not sure what
Speaker 4: their definition of sudden cardiac death is. When you have
Speaker 4: people dying of cancer or suffering an eye injury like that,
Speaker 4: those are are not related at all. There was an
Speaker 4: earlier list. I think it's related to the Good Sciencing.
Speaker 4: I wrote about this probably a year or so ago.
Speaker 4: I went through the list of people that they had
Speaker 4: on at the time. There was about one hundred, just
Speaker 4: a little over one hundred people that they cleim died.
Speaker 4: There were soccer referees on there, there were retired athletes,
Speaker 4: there were people one guy was out for a hike.
Speaker 4: He was listed there. Now, you could argue a soccer
Speaker 4: referee is athletic, certainly, you know, running around the pitch
Speaker 4: doing that. I could see that. But that person died
Speaker 4: at home in their sleep, not in competition. The retired
Speaker 4: soccer player had been retired for six or seven years.
Speaker 4: So even in the cases where they have athletes, they're
Speaker 4: really stretching what we would define as an athlete.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, And I wonder is it data to show that,
Speaker 3: like overall mortality is lower in people who are vaccinated
Speaker 3: than unvaccinated, Like that exists yet?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So that's what some these these studies that I
Speaker 4: talked about that were done earlier this this year, there
Speaker 4: was a it was a JACK study the General American
Speaker 4: College of Cardiology showed that even people who are partially vaccinated,
Speaker 4: there's a reduction in these cardivalcular complications. And the JAMA
Speaker 4: study which was done earlier, specifically focused on am I.
Speaker 4: So the heart attacks at cute mount cardinal functions, and
Speaker 4: stroke also lower risk.
Speaker 3: You were saying earlier that there might be some sports
Speaker 3: that had even higher rates than those those ones you
Speaker 3: mentioned over all for athletes. What what sport to those.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so the one that Spitsman raised recently is basketball.
Speaker 4: They were, at least in some of these studies done
Speaker 4: in the US, much higher than other sports. Yeah. So,
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, basketball is can be an aerobic
Speaker 4: event and that you're running back and forth, you know,
Speaker 4: up and down the court quite freely, but it's punctuated
Speaker 4: by these bursts of of you know, sprints and things
Speaker 4: like that, which somehow speculated that might kind of be
Speaker 4: the issue, right that you don't settle into just a
Speaker 4: simple rhythm I'll say simple rhythm like you know, like
Speaker 4: riding a bike is. It's not it's obviously simple as
Speaker 4: as you describe it, but at least potentially there there's
Speaker 4: periods of time when you can sort of get into
Speaker 4: a rhythm and stay there and hear it's it's rest
Speaker 4: periods punctuated by these rapid bursts. And so there's the
Speaker 4: possibility that that may be related there.
Speaker 3: Okay, and so that that might be why that there
Speaker 3: are higher death rates to there.
Speaker 4: It's possible. Yeah, they're not sure why these things happen
Speaker 4: to specific.
Speaker 3: Sports, Okay, are our friends in anti VAXX community show
Speaker 3: in their own minds why these happened, Like, do they
Speaker 3: have some kind of hypothesia they're advancing.
Speaker 4: Uh. No, so that's a good point. They'll say it's
Speaker 4: the spike protein. I'm sure I've heard that race before.
Speaker 4: But they don't really explain beyond uh that it's interesting
Speaker 4: about the spike protein in the vaccines, as it's been
Speaker 4: modified to not be active. And so you have the
Speaker 4: spike protein in the virus which causes injury, and yet
Speaker 4: they don't seem to, you know, acknowledge that that could
Speaker 4: cause these these issues. And yet the spike protein in
Speaker 4: the vaccine, which has been designed to limit that injury,
Speaker 4: somehow overcomes that and actually causes the injury that's not
Speaker 4: associated with the infection. Like like note that it makes sense, right,
Speaker 4: you have to work live in these parallel worlds that
Speaker 4: don't don't ever mix, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they Yeah, they're suggesting that this protein, which
Speaker 3: is a modified version of the one that's already in
Speaker 3: the virus but it's non harmful with one of the
Speaker 3: virus is harmful. It's because of the modification.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Certainly a good number of people who don't like
Speaker 4: the vaccines also claim that covid itself is really not
Speaker 4: much of a threat. And then so again, I don't
Speaker 4: I don't see how they can reconcile these these points, right,
Speaker 4: especially when you're arguing about the same protein, one of
Speaker 4: which has been modified to be less active, and yet
Speaker 4: you're saying the less active one is actually more dangerous
Speaker 4: than it. Just doesn't make any.
Speaker 3: Sense, right, Yeah, And I think it's kind of not
Speaker 3: people maybe come to it with a sort of predetermined
Speaker 3: desire to conclude that the vaccine is dangerous, And I wonder, like,
Speaker 3: I'm familiar with the exciting cardiac death from my time cycling,
Speaker 3: and I remember in the early two thousands, so there
Speaker 3: was this idea that people were dying because their blood
Speaker 3: had turned like quote I'm quoting from like newspaper articles
Speaker 3: at the time, too treacle and have become so thick
Speaker 3: that their heart couldn't pump it anymore, and that this
Speaker 3: was causing people to die, and the reason that they
Speaker 3: died was because they were taking excessive amounts of blood
Speaker 3: boosters like EBO or exog a CPO. And so, I
Speaker 3: this wasn't true, at least to my knowledge. I don't
Speaker 3: think any of these people had tested positive. None of
Speaker 3: them had like autopsies that suggested that this is why
Speaker 3: they had died. But it seems to me that there's
Speaker 3: this natural desire to try and explain away these deaths
Speaker 3: of what people who are at the peak of their
Speaker 3: physical lives, right, people in their in their teens and twenties,
Speaker 3: are extremely fit, who we can see doing amazing things,
Speaker 3: and doesn't sort of line up for us when they die.
Speaker 3: It doesn't line up with what we think a healthy
Speaker 3: person is and what we think a cardiac patient is.
Speaker 3: And so it seems to me that we create these explanations.
Speaker 3: Is that something you've seen in other areas before the
Speaker 3: COVID vaccine where there are other sort of conspiracies or
Speaker 3: just ways to try and explain this away.
Speaker 4: I don't know about conspiracy. I mean I think people
Speaker 4: understandably have a hard time reconciling what you just said. Right,
Speaker 4: you have elite cyclists or whatever sport it is. I mean,
Speaker 4: cycling is good because aerobically they have to be very fit,
Speaker 4: and then they die potentially of a cardiac condition, right,
Speaker 4: So that that makes no sense, you know, So the
Speaker 4: easiest thing, like you said, is to pay well, they
Speaker 4: must be doping, they must be taking steroids and you know,
Speaker 4: something that's going to harm your body. And so that
Speaker 4: has to be the explanation because it's it's it's easy,
Speaker 4: that's that's a simple way to get to this. The
Speaker 4: reality is that a good number of these people have
Speaker 4: underlying cardiac conditions. Not again, I don't necessarily mean a
Speaker 4: lot of cyclists have that. What I mean is the
Speaker 4: people who have these sudden cardiac desks have undiagnosed cardiac
Speaker 4: conditions long QT. There's a condition called CPVT, you know,
Speaker 4: something like that, and so they're relatively i'll say benign.
Speaker 4: TPVT isn't necessarily but it's triggered. These things are triggered
Speaker 4: by stressful events like exercise and things like that. And
Speaker 4: so they may live a good part of their life
Speaker 4: and to be in our seemingly in good health, and
Speaker 4: then the first sign for many of these people is death.
Speaker 4: That's the real challenge in dealing with these cases that
Speaker 4: lead to some cardiac death, because that's the first symptom.
Speaker 4: People don't feel tired, they don't you know, have chest
Speaker 4: pains like having a heart attack or anything like that.
Speaker 4: It's simply something happens. The wiring goes off in the
Speaker 4: heart and you put the exercise on top of it
Speaker 4: and they die. You know, it's not just these athletes.
Speaker 4: You'll have somebody who has a change in one of
Speaker 4: their genes. They're perfectly fine. Do they live into their
Speaker 4: sixties and then they suddenly die. Well, what allowed them
Speaker 4: to live sixty years with you know, no symptoms? We
Speaker 4: don't really know, but it's not uncommon that the first
Speaker 4: symptom is death. And these people, so your friends there
Speaker 4: who you know, it's it's easiest to accuse them of
Speaker 4: doping because certainly we a lot of us talked about
Speaker 4: it at the time, as I'm sure you know you
Speaker 4: knew about it. There's no secret. So we connect those dots, right,
Speaker 4: we can see that, we can see that, let's connect them.
Speaker 4: We can't let's see long cut. So we don't know
Speaker 4: what long QT syndrome is. For a lot of people,
Speaker 4: it's hard to make that connection when you don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's hard from the perspective of being someone's
Speaker 3: friend or I can only imagine what it's like for
Speaker 3: their families to have this, Like I guess them be
Speaker 3: sort of libeled after they die, you know, or sort
Speaker 3: of acute of something that they may in many cases,
Speaker 3: I don't think did do. It must be very difficult
Speaker 3: to deal with that on top of losing someone you love.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, and we're seeing that again here with the
Speaker 4: people who oppose the vaccines, which is either their assuming
Speaker 4: things or they're speculating on things. And you know, unless
Speaker 4: you're in the circle of care, you don't know what's
Speaker 4: what's going on. So, you know, you talked about Lebron
Speaker 4: James on here. You know, does he have an un
Speaker 4: underlying condition? We don't know, and it you know, it's
Speaker 4: it's really not helpful for me to sit here and say, well,
Speaker 4: he could have long QT, he could have CPGBT like here,
Speaker 4: you know, to speculate like like that. I can talk
Speaker 4: about what are some things that lead to these these
Speaker 4: conditions generally in people, But I don't know anything about
Speaker 4: his health, and so it's not helpful for me to
Speaker 4: sit here and speculate on that while his family and
Speaker 4: then he himself is trying to you know, sort of
Speaker 4: get through that. That's you know, that's I'm sure that's
Speaker 4: upsetting for them. So I'm not sure why people feel
Speaker 4: the need to do that, except to advance their own agenda.
Speaker 3: Right yes, yeah, I think that is the case. So
Speaker 3: let's talk a little bit about how we can I guess,
Speaker 3: mitigate these risks and that exist. I remember when and
Speaker 3: you're getting a license in Spain and they make you
Speaker 3: take a cardiac stress test there, like you get you
Speaker 3: ride your bike on a treadmill and they just ramp
Speaker 3: it up into your heart rates in the one nineties
Speaker 3: or whatever. And I don't know what they were doing,
Speaker 3: but they made us. I think that may only have
Speaker 3: been for like elite athletes, but they made us all
Speaker 3: do that. Is that something where if there was an
Speaker 3: underlying one of these underlying risk factors that you mentioned,
Speaker 3: would would it be spotted on a test like that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a little bit of a controversial area. So
Speaker 4: I noticed you said in Spain. In Europe, the consensus
Speaker 4: is that athletes need to go through these what we
Speaker 4: call pre screening ECGs. So you were probably you know,
Speaker 4: probably had electrodes on your body. Yeah, yeah, And so
Speaker 4: that's a simple, non evasive test. And so you're right
Speaker 4: because some things you can pick up just rest, but
Speaker 4: some of these things don't appear and tell you you
Speaker 4: stress the individual, and so they'll look for rhythm problems.
Speaker 4: The other test is what we call eco cardiography, which
Speaker 4: is basically an ultrasound of the heart, and there you
Speaker 4: can look at function, but you can also look at structure.
Speaker 4: Because there's a condition called hypertrophic cardiomopathy, it's relatively common
Speaker 4: in athletes. It's more common there, and that accounts for
Speaker 4: about fifty percent of these sudden cardiac deaths. And so
Speaker 4: you can pick that up on an ECG, but you
Speaker 4: can also pick it up using ultrasounds. So if you
Speaker 4: scan the heart you see that it's very large, that
Speaker 4: would be a diagnosis. So first in Europe they do that.
Speaker 4: In North America and Canada and the United States they
Speaker 4: do not. The concern is there's a couple of concerns.
Speaker 4: One is the price, so you can you're screening large
Speaker 4: numbers of athletes to pick out a relative small number
Speaker 4: who may be affected. It's crude, but that is an
Speaker 4: argument that people make. So I guess the question comes
Speaker 4: to how much is life worth to you and how
Speaker 4: much do you want to spend. So there is that.
Speaker 4: But there is another issue, which is what they call
Speaker 4: false positives. So you know, had you been diagnosed as
Speaker 4: having a condition, then you maybe pulled out of training
Speaker 4: for a little while while they do more tests and
Speaker 4: stuff like that that could be very stressful on you.
Speaker 4: And so the view in North America's there's an unacceptably
Speaker 4: high number of those false positives, and so they feel
Speaker 4: that it's not worth worth doing the other issue. So
Speaker 4: I'm not sure when when did you do this screening?
Speaker 4: Was it like twenty years.
Speaker 3: Or no, ten years ago? Probably like twenty ten eleven.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So one of the issues that we have is
Speaker 4: when you have these high performance athletes, their hearts change,
Speaker 4: they get bigger, they get more efficient, their rhythms change,
Speaker 4: and they have conditions that we would pick up on
Speaker 4: ECGs and ECHO that would be considered pathological, right, But
Speaker 4: because they're athletes, these are changes that do occur in
Speaker 4: athletes as their hearts remodel, and they're not a sign
Speaker 4: of disease. Right. If you took someone who wasn't highly
Speaker 4: fit and had so for example, if you screen someone's
Speaker 4: heart and you saw that it was very large and
Speaker 4: they didn't exercise, you might be concerned. But if you're
Speaker 4: you know, an elite cyclist where your heart gets very big,
Speaker 4: it's going to be bigger. And so what we have
Speaker 4: struggled with for a number of years, is what is
Speaker 4: normal in the athlete that would be considered abnormal in
Speaker 4: the general population. Italy has done a really good job
Speaker 4: on this. So start going back into the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 4: they started to collect data because that's what we need, right,
Speaker 4: we need data from athletes, and they created a huge
Speaker 4: database which actually used in my class now to teach
Speaker 4: and say, you know, if you have an athlete and
Speaker 4: you see these things, these are things we wouldn't be
Speaker 4: concerned about. Or here's some markers where we might be concerned,
Speaker 4: and so we have to look further. And then here's
Speaker 4: some things where it doesn't matter whether you're an athlete
Speaker 4: or you know, someone who sits on their couch all day,
Speaker 4: that's a problem. But without that data, we didn't we
Speaker 4: didn't have that ability. And so I think the last
Speaker 4: time is twenty eighteen. The Europeans updated their their criteria.
Speaker 4: Each time they update it, you know, we add new
Speaker 4: things or modify things that are in there. So you
Speaker 4: would have had abnormal things. You may have had abnormal
Speaker 4: things on your ACG that the cardiologist would have looked
Speaker 4: at it and said, well, according to our athlete standards,
Speaker 4: that's okay, and we're going to ignore it. And we
Speaker 4: didn't have that until relatively recently.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, I do remember think like having a resting
Speaker 3: heart rate, which we'd be considered like pathologically or like
Speaker 3: dangerously low with the thing.
Speaker 4: Get yeah, braid of cardio. So it's called braid of
Speaker 4: cardia is obviously very common, right, And I give an
Speaker 4: example of my class every year where you know you
Speaker 4: have an athlete, their heart it can be forty beats
Speaker 4: for a minute. And so I said, you know you
Speaker 4: would ignore that. You go, well, they're ear elite cyclist.
Speaker 4: I get that. And I give an example where it's
Speaker 4: a woman, she's sixty three years old. They're resting heart
Speaker 4: rates forty two beats a minute. She doesn't do any exercise,
Speaker 4: and the physicians are like, oh, she must be very healthy.
Speaker 4: I'm like, no, that's not normal. And so it turned
Speaker 4: out so the reason they flagged her was because she
Speaker 4: kept passing out because she was bred a kartick and
Speaker 4: she eventually broke her nose and was sent to the hospital.
Speaker 4: They did a genetic test and found that she had
Speaker 4: a cardiac arrhythmia. Right, So my what I always teach
Speaker 4: my students is don't just look at the monitor, look
Speaker 4: at your patient, right, So when your heart rates forty
Speaker 4: beats a minute and they're cycling away and you know,
Speaker 4: he's like, yeah, that person's very fit. As like when
Speaker 4: you look and they're eighty years old and they're passing out,
Speaker 4: forty beats a minute is not normal, right, And so
Speaker 4: we don't need real high standards for some of these things,
Speaker 4: but some of them we did.
Speaker 3: And I wonder like people listening will probably be sufficiently
Speaker 3: afraid now, but I'm not, hopefully not too afraid. But like,
Speaker 3: lots of people these days are monitoring their heart rate
Speaker 3: all the time, right, They have watches, they have wristbands
Speaker 3: when they're exercising, they have chest bans, so you can
Speaker 3: monitor your heart real kinds of basics the states you
Speaker 3: can wear a ring. Would any of those devices be
Speaker 3: useful in predicting or seeing families things?
Speaker 4: Not really, only because they're they're very limited. So it's
Speaker 4: great people measure their heart rate because it is a
Speaker 4: general sign of health, and so good lowering rest lower
Speaker 4: resting heart rates is very good. And when you're exercising,
Speaker 4: you want to bring your heart rate into certain zones
Speaker 4: have effective worker. So that's all great, So I'm not
Speaker 4: trying to discurage people from doing that. But if you
Speaker 4: want to diagnose long QT syndrome, for example, in somebody,
Speaker 4: that requires calculations. So for sure, you need to measure
Speaker 4: things very accurate. Really, when I'm sure when you had
Speaker 4: your your traits done, you would have had multiple electrodes
Speaker 4: stuck on your your body. Yeah, we typically do what's
Speaker 4: called the twelve lead ECG, and so there's there's multiple
Speaker 4: electrodes and they have to be positioned in certain places
Speaker 4: in order to measure how the heart basically the heart's
Speaker 4: electricity is flowing in a certain directions because that actually
Speaker 4: tells us something. So when you have I mean, I
Speaker 4: have a device that I used to teach and to
Speaker 4: illustrate people, and it's on the back of my cell phone,
Speaker 4: and they could just you know, you put your fingers
Speaker 4: on it and you can you can you can measure
Speaker 4: things and you get an ECG off that and so
Speaker 4: it looks really neat and it's great for teaching. But
Speaker 4: I'm not going to diagnose somebody with Goddess syndrome or
Speaker 4: long QT or any of those those things. Those are
Speaker 4: much more in depth, uh to, It's required much more
Speaker 4: in depth equipment to do something.
Speaker 3: Like that, right, Yeah, yeah, definitely. Like sometimes when you
Speaker 3: ride under electricity pilots, you'll see a heart rate of
Speaker 3: two hundred and forty and it will be concerning Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: it didn't work out what was connected to it. And
Speaker 3: so if these things are occurring, and obviously they care.
Speaker 3: It's sort of at a certain percentage of young athletes
Speaker 3: and certain percentage anywhere else. Are there ways that these
Speaker 3: certain kindiak risks we could reduce the number of them
Speaker 3: that result in death?
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, for sure, so CPR. So the people who
Speaker 4: die quite often die because there's there's nobody there to
Speaker 4: administer CPR, and so you lose that very valuable time.
Speaker 4: And so people are concerned about you know, stepping in
Speaker 4: and doing something and potentially hurting someone. If someone is
Speaker 4: dead like that, you're not going to hurt them, right,
Speaker 4: So you know, please learn CPR. It's not difficulty. Can
Speaker 4: certainly do that. You know. In Canada, abouteen years ago now,
Speaker 4: the Heart instruct Foundation of Canada raised a tremendous amount
Speaker 4: of money to put we call automatic extrung defibrillators or
Speaker 4: AEDs in public places. I think they put fifteen thousand
Speaker 4: of them, plus companies will buy them for o their
Speaker 4: workplaces and things like that. And so if someone goes
Speaker 4: down and their heart stops, you take these things out.
Speaker 4: There's some patches. It comes with instructions, like it will
Speaker 4: tell you actually what to do, and you take it out,
Speaker 4: you put the patches on the individual, you step back
Speaker 4: because it will deliver a shock and it will automatically
Speaker 4: shock their heart trying to get it back into rhythm.
Speaker 4: So knowing where those are, I'll say, knowing how to
Speaker 4: do them, you don't necessarily need to practice because it
Speaker 4: will walk you through it. But at least knowing where
Speaker 4: they are and not being afraid to use them, I
Speaker 4: think is very important. These quick reactions in administering care
Speaker 4: before the paramedics or someone else gets there is super important.
Speaker 4: If you let someone go five ten minutes without any
Speaker 4: you know, CPR or anything like that, there's a tremendous
Speaker 4: amount of damage that's that's done and it can't be overcome.
Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, And I think in a lot of places
Speaker 3: in the US, certainly, like you can access free CPI
Speaker 3: AED training or your employee might pay for it or
Speaker 3: and I didn't do you know any resources people could
Speaker 3: use to find where they can find that free training.
Speaker 4: So in the States, that's the American Heart Association would
Speaker 4: be a good place to go, the American Red Crop.
Speaker 4: I'm sure they'll have resources in Canada's heartstruct Foundation of Canada,
Speaker 4: Saint John's Ambulance. But like you said, a lot of
Speaker 4: just you know, local community centers will put these things
Speaker 4: on a couple of times a year, you know, just
Speaker 4: so that people are familiar with with how to do it.
Speaker 4: Work places will sometimes do it once or twice a
Speaker 4: year have training a lot of people to just learn
Speaker 4: how to how to do it. Yeah, I'm not sure
Speaker 4: where people if you just go on the internet and
Speaker 4: wherever you are and look for first day, a lot
Speaker 4: of times it falls on the first day. But if
Speaker 4: you just google your city and CPR, I'm sure something
Speaker 4: will come up. And I bet there's something this month
Speaker 4: you could go to NICs.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, we've spoken before about to Stop the Bleed
Speaker 3: courses and how they're wills, free and easy to exist,
Speaker 3: so people could do both of those to be really
Speaker 3: set up to help people. Glenn, is there anything else
Speaker 3: you think people ought to know about these seven seven
Speaker 3: kadiak arrisk guy there sort of with the conspiracy theories
Speaker 3: around them, or anything else they can do to protect
Speaker 3: themselves through other people.
Speaker 4: Well, I think there's the perception that that by saying
Speaker 4: that there's not an issue, that it means we don't
Speaker 4: we don't care. In fact, we do care about these
Speaker 4: these issues. Like I said, I've taught about this for
Speaker 4: you know, over a decade. I have a background and
Speaker 4: doing some sports medicine work a long time ago. I
Speaker 4: certainly have a strong interest in helping these people. When
Speaker 4: we say the risk is not going up, it doesn't
Speaker 4: mean that we don't care. And so you know when
Speaker 4: a soccer player, a football player, somebody goes down on
Speaker 4: the court, that we just say, well, yeah, it happens.
Speaker 4: That's not what we're saying. We're saying we know these
Speaker 4: things happen, we do care about them. I would actually
Speaker 4: flip this around the other way and say some of
Speaker 4: these people, the people who I'm talking about, the people
Speaker 4: who are profiting off that's not people who are like
Speaker 4: I had no idea this was happening. That's okay. You know,
Speaker 4: not everybody can know everything. But the people who are
Speaker 4: saying this is increasing and they're making money off these
Speaker 4: things by selling their movies and whatever. Did you not
Speaker 4: care when someone you know died in twenty fifteen because
Speaker 4: they were in twenty nineteen or die and kids were
Speaker 4: doing it? And if you'd like to come to my class,
Speaker 4: I can show you, you know, the pictures of these
Speaker 4: people because you weren't around then. And I'm wondering, I'm
Speaker 4: not really wondering why you're around now. I know why
Speaker 4: they're they're around now. They're they're profiting off of this,
Speaker 4: and so I would actually flip it the other way
Speaker 4: and say, you know, have them ask ask them why
Speaker 4: is this new to them when when we've when the
Speaker 4: data show this has been happening all.
Speaker 3: Along, right, Yeah, And by encouraging people not to get vaccinated,
Speaker 3: they're encouraging those people to place themselves at a higher
Speaker 3: risk for the cardiac issues right for presumably a profit
Speaker 3: motive in some cases, which is very sad. Glenn, Where
Speaker 3: can people you do some excellent threads on Twitter so
Speaker 3: people can learn a lot about heart stuff? There is
Speaker 3: there anywhere else or where do you prefer people to
Speaker 3: find you? I guess online.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, we do a lot of social media stuff.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of I know people complain about Twitter.
Speaker 4: I complain about but there's a lot of really Twitter.
Speaker 4: There a lot of really good people on there who
Speaker 4: you know, present their information. You know, you can just
Speaker 4: want to look for for those people there. What I
Speaker 4: would say is like, how do you identify who are
Speaker 4: the good people who you can trust? And stuff? Is
Speaker 4: the people who are able to be transparent with where
Speaker 4: they get their information. Right. So when I say, you know,
Speaker 4: the vaccines reduced your risk of these major cardiovascular events,
Speaker 4: I typically provide a study or something like that to
Speaker 4: show where I got that information. The people who are
Speaker 4: less trustworthy will say, you know, either go find it
Speaker 4: yourself because they don't know, or well, I can see it,
Speaker 4: I know it's happening. You know, a lot of these
Speaker 4: things are measurable, so we should be able to to
Speaker 4: find those. A lot of us write on things I've
Speaker 4: written for the Conversation Shi It's two point zero things
Speaker 4: will be there. But social media is a good place
Speaker 4: to go because you can interact with people and you
Speaker 4: can ask those those questions. So yeah, yeah, you can
Speaker 4: reach out to me and see who I follow on
Speaker 4: who I interact with if if, if you're interested in that,
Speaker 4: you could take that as a good or a bad sign. However,
Speaker 4: if you.
Speaker 3: Want to, what's your handle on Twitter?
Speaker 4: So my handle is glengey l E and pile p
Speaker 4: y l E. I'm also on the sky. I just
Speaker 4: joined that the other day, so nice.
Speaker 3: Congratulations. Yeah, that's great. I think the last point you
Speaker 3: made is one that we should maybe pursue another episode
Speaker 3: on because we the difference between anecdote and data and
Speaker 3: like so there is an increasing number I think of
Speaker 3: people doing things that look a lot like journal articles,
Speaker 3: are a lot like studies that appear with you that are
Speaker 3: not in trying to kind of leverage the credibility of
Speaker 3: that without actually doing reviewed science because of the stuff
Speaker 3: they're doing wouldn't line up with pay reviewed science. So
Speaker 3: it would be interesting to decrite there.
Speaker 4: Right, Yes, yes, it was a whole episode too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, next time.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you so much for your.
Speaker 4: Time, Jan Thanks very much, Davis. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Hi everyone, it's James here, and we have a wonderful
Speaker 3: episode for you today on heat and heat illness and
Speaker 3: how to protect yourself for your community and your animals
Speaker 3: when it is hot, which it is right now. But
Speaker 3: I just wanted to record this little pick up to
Speaker 3: tell you that this isn't medical advice, right produced every
Speaker 3: time we do these. I am not that kind of doctor,
Speaker 3: and I am not your doctor, and I just wanted
Speaker 3: to reinforce especially that yes, generally, of you're hot, it's
Speaker 3: a good idea to drink fluids and get out of
Speaker 3: the heat. Someone is losing consciousness or really really sick,
Speaker 3: you need to get better medical attention. Then you can
Speaker 3: learn how to give on a podcast. Right, So that's
Speaker 3: when you call someone whose job is to look after people,
Speaker 3: and I just wanted to reinforce it. Obviously, pouring water
Speaker 3: down the throat of someone who's lost consciouness is a
Speaker 3: very dumb idea, so please, if somebody is seriously unwell,
Speaker 3: seek medical care. Enjoy the episode. All right, Hi, welcome
Speaker 3: to It could happened here in a podcast where we
Speaker 3: someone knows that God, which is what I was doing
Speaker 3: just before the podcast began. Maybe we'll include that. And
Speaker 3: today we're here to talk about how God is smiting
Speaker 3: us with massive heat waves. And I'm joined today by
Speaker 3: Margaret Kiljoy and Garrison Davis say hello everyone.
Speaker 6: Hello, everyone one so.
Speaker 9: Called.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my sheeple have joined me. That's what I get
Speaker 3: for doing an episode about sheep. So as you will
Speaker 3: be away if you are in just about anywhere in
Speaker 3: the northern Hemisphere. It is very hot at the minute.
Speaker 3: It's very hot in cities in Europe. It's very hot
Speaker 3: in the United States. It's very hot in parts of
Speaker 3: North Africa and Middle East as well. It's the hottest
Speaker 3: June for how many years? Garrison July July that one.
Speaker 10: It is the hottest July, and it is one hundred
Speaker 10: and twenty thousand years according to the most recent estimates
Speaker 10: released like three days ago as a time of recording.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, And we've had the hottest day in
Speaker 3: history like four times in the last month or something.
Speaker 10: In the in the first half of July, we had
Speaker 10: we had two days in a row where it was
Speaker 10: the two hottest days on record, and then we had
Speaker 10: two other days that were also the hottest days on record.
Speaker 10: It's it's pretty concerning. It's nothing that people haven't been
Speaker 10: warning about for many, many decades, but it's it's bad
Speaker 10: and it's very warm, yep.
Speaker 3: And it will continue probably to get warmer. So I
Speaker 3: think the way we want to approach this is, I'm
Speaker 3: going to start off with talking about stuff related to
Speaker 3: like exertional heat illness, because that's the thing that's most
Speaker 3: acutely concerning for people, right, especially if they work outside,
Speaker 3: if they recreate outside, if they're doing stuff outside where
Speaker 3: they can't get out of the heat. So I think
Speaker 3: to start off if I want to talk about things
Speaker 3: that might make you predisposed, and then I'm going to
Speaker 3: expend a little bit of how the body cools, and
Speaker 3: then some of these different stages of heat illnesses and
Speaker 3: how one might go about treating those or seeking further
Speaker 3: care if you need to. Right, So to start out with,
Speaker 3: there are some things that can make you predisposed to
Speaker 3: heat illness. Right, the biggest predisposition I've come acrossrom my
Speaker 3: reading is previously having heat illness. So I can certainly
Speaker 3: speak to this. Yeah, Like I think I got heat
Speaker 3: stroke for the first time. It was racing by in Spain,
Speaker 3: I think, But I then remember getting it again racing
Speaker 3: bikes in Vietnam, and just like being really bad, like
Speaker 3: having to have ivy fluids, like vomiting sort of even
Speaker 3: some like sort of not loss of consciouness, but definitely
Speaker 3: like confusion and erratic behavior and stuff.
Speaker 6: And the line between that and dying is pretty narrow, right.
Speaker 3: You can have like multiple organ failure and stuff certainly
Speaker 3: if yeah, if you don't respond to that or if
Speaker 3: you misdiagnose that, and that's definitely like I'm someone with diabetes, right,
Speaker 3: so people can sometimes if you're erratic or confused, people
Speaker 3: can assume your hypoglycemic and you need some sugar, but
Speaker 3: you don't in that situation, we need some fluids and
Speaker 3: electrolytes and to be cooled quickly. So yeah, that is yeah,
Speaker 3: you can die. People do die. Actually, the mortality is
Speaker 3: quite high, Like I too prepare for this, so I
Speaker 3: want to look at advanced Weldness Life support course I did,
Speaker 3: and people can look it up. AWLS University of Utah
Speaker 3: does one, and you can act as lots of the
Speaker 3: stuff online for free. But they would think the mortality
Speaker 3: is quite high from these like heat illnesses, and I
Speaker 3: think that's probably especially true in wilderness medicine, because it
Speaker 3: can be hard to cool someone down right if you
Speaker 3: don't have means of like if you don't have access
Speaker 3: to ice, you obviously not got air conditioning out there.
Speaker 3: If the best thing you probably have is running water,
Speaker 3: hopefully you have running water, right, And I think probably
Speaker 3: it's something that people might not have been concerned with
Speaker 3: unless they either lived in a very hot place or
Speaker 3: a very active people, or who traveled a lot before.
Speaker 3: So yeah, if you've had heat illness before, then you
Speaker 3: do need to be careful and you will probably know
Speaker 3: if you've had it before. But if we go through
Speaker 3: all the symptoms, you've had them all and never I
Speaker 3: guess got diagnosed, and lucky you, maybe you just found
Speaker 3: out you had heat illness. Other things that can predispose
Speaker 3: you can be a lack of acclimates. Again, like this
Speaker 3: is one that I think kind of stands to reason
Speaker 3: for most people. But like if you go from a
Speaker 3: cold place to hot place, or the place you are
Speaker 3: suddenly becomes hot having been cold, it's going to take
Speaker 3: you a few days a week to become a climatized
Speaker 3: to that heat, right, and your body will change. Things
Speaker 3: about your body will change, So we don't need to
Speaker 3: go into But it's also.
Speaker 2: I don't think so.
Speaker 3: I think so back when I was exercising more seriously,
Speaker 3: I would we would do heat acclimation by going in
Speaker 3: a sauna after a training ride, and the idea was like,
Speaker 3: you gave yourself this big bout of heat stress and
Speaker 3: then then you could go back and cool down. Right,
Speaker 3: So I think if you were in acy for most
Speaker 3: of the day, it was okay, I'm sort of guessing here,
Speaker 3: But if getting that bout of heat stress and then
Speaker 3: recovering and get just like any other training that you're doing,
Speaker 3: seems so.
Speaker 6: But if you go outside into the heat and then
Speaker 6: come back into the cool, you're still acclimating yourself.
Speaker 3: Yes, compared to just hanging out in you know, somewhere
Speaker 3: where it's cold all the time, and you do want it.
Speaker 3: You don't want to overdo it, right, You don't want
Speaker 3: to be like, oh, yeah, I'm going to acclimate. Time
Speaker 3: to go for a ten mile round, like, ease into it,
Speaker 3: make sure you're hydrating, make sure you're taking breaks in
Speaker 3: the heat. There's also a lack of conditioning, right, So
Speaker 3: that's why you see a lot of heat illness. Maybe
Speaker 3: that's the first time I got heat stroke. Was like
Speaker 3: pre season workouts for like especially like collegiate athletes and
Speaker 3: things or athletes who are more seasonal athletes, So people
Speaker 3: who have been parked on their backside for a few
Speaker 3: months or in class or whatever, and then they come
Speaker 3: and to start doing a rigorous training regime that can
Speaker 3: that can predispose you, right, so they can cause you
Speaker 3: to be more likely to get a heat illness. And
Speaker 3: then there are some medications, right, so you'd probably say
Speaker 3: on your medications, but things like beta block is actually hisstormyines, diuretics,
Speaker 3: you don't want to be drinking too much alcohol, and
Speaker 3: some conditions to write, heart disease, skin disease, existing dehydration
Speaker 3: fever obviously, right, your temperatures high to begin with, and
Speaker 3: diarrhea and vomiting which can cause that dehydration. Right, So
Speaker 3: looking if you have diarrhea and vomiting, it's not a
Speaker 3: good idea to also be going out and exposing yourself
Speaker 3: to a lot of heat. Right, So all of those
Speaker 3: things can make you more predisposed. But you can have
Speaker 3: none of those things and still get heat illness. I
Speaker 3: think the way to understand it is like the way
Speaker 3: we'll talk about the way our body cools, so it
Speaker 3: does that through evaporation. People will be familiar with sweating.
Speaker 3: Most people sweat and so if you the sweating allows
Speaker 3: your body to cool, right, The evaporation of the sweat
Speaker 3: allows your body to cool. So people who don't sweat,
Speaker 3: or people who have injuries which means they don't sweat
Speaker 3: some of their body again, are at a higher risk
Speaker 3: for heat illness.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: More less assurtizes in turn like wet bulb temperature and
Speaker 6: the fact that if you're in a more humid place,
Speaker 6: you have to consider the heat very differently, right, And
Speaker 6: so yeah, yeah, the East coast versus the Southwest, for example,
Speaker 6: of the United States, will have very different options available
Speaker 6: to them, both inside and outside about how to cool down.
Speaker 6: Based on knowing the humidity outside is going to be
Speaker 6: as important for people as knowing the actual temperature.
Speaker 3: Yes, definitely, And most of the time now, if you're
Speaker 3: using a phone app, whichink most people are doing, to
Speaker 3: check the way that you can find that it will
Speaker 3: give you the humidity and give you a wet bowl
Speaker 3: or like a real feel temperature. But certainly, like I
Speaker 3: was recently on a trip to the Marshall Islands and
Speaker 3: I was running and like eighty five and I'll run
Speaker 3: eighty five all the time, and I was dying because
Speaker 3: the humidity was so high. So yeah, whether ho humidity
Speaker 3: is high, you're not going to be able to cool
Speaker 3: as much, right, so you need to be more careful
Speaker 3: radiation that that's when your body is shedding heat through,
Speaker 3: like I guess electromagnetic energy. That makes up most of
Speaker 3: your cooling when the ambrrient temperatures are less than body temperature.
Speaker 3: So once the ambient temperature is above your body temperature,
Speaker 3: I think in fahrenheit's like ninety six point six, your
Speaker 3: body's going to be relying on other methods, right, that
Speaker 3: one's not going to work. Conduction. Conduction doesn't really make
Speaker 3: up much of It's not really that useful way to cool.
Speaker 3: It doesn't really make much difference. But like people will
Speaker 3: be familiar with conduction if you've ever slept without a
Speaker 3: sleeping pad, if you've been camping, you'll realize how much
Speaker 3: colder you get on cold ground. And then the last
Speaker 3: one is convection, right, So that's heat transfer between the
Speaker 3: body and then moving gas or liquid. That's why wind
Speaker 3: chills the thing, okay, because that airs whipping past you
Speaker 3: rate cooling you down. And that's also the convection is
Speaker 3: one that we can use to cool people down if
Speaker 3: they overheat, right, like jump in the create so yes,
Speaker 3: or if we don't have a creek, we can get
Speaker 3: you wet and then fan you. Maybe we can if
Speaker 3: we're outside and we have those big thermorest sleeping pads,
Speaker 3: we can get some air moving that way and help
Speaker 3: you cool down. If we know the ways the body cools,
Speaker 3: then we can maybe use this right. And we we
Speaker 3: have to understand, like you said, the relative humidity read.
Speaker 3: So when our body gets hot, especially when it starts
Speaker 3: to overheat, it will shd some blood to the skin
Speaker 3: right vaseodilation. It will also increase cardiac output and increase
Speaker 3: catecula means which activate a sweat glands.
Speaker 4: So the.
Speaker 3: Hypothalamus will also regulate heat production in the body.
Speaker 6: And there's been two so I don't understand two of
Speaker 6: the words you've recently used. But okay, which way the
Speaker 6: words which are the words about the the cacophony and
Speaker 6: the hypert means. Okay, it's sufficient to say that the
Speaker 6: body you start to sweat more, and your body begins
Speaker 6: a regular our heart it makes itself. Okay, I got
Speaker 6: that one kind of from contact. But what's this next one?
Speaker 3: I gues see hypothalamus is like your your body's kind
Speaker 3: of internal regulator, and what it's doing is it's in
Speaker 3: this case, it's regulating the heat production of your body. Dude,
Speaker 3: it's trying to It's not making you holler from the inside.
Speaker 3: I guess that's probably a terrible explanation. Okay, So let's
Speaker 3: go through the different stages of heat illness. We can
Speaker 3: start off with things so that people will be I
Speaker 3: think we can probably skip like sunburn. Many of us
Speaker 3: will be familiar with someburn and it will have been sunburned.
Speaker 3: Many of us will understand hopefully we're wearing our suncream
Speaker 3: when we go outside, right or just wearing our suncream
Speaker 3: and covering ourselves up from the sun, not just like
Speaker 3: running around with our skin exposed to the sun when
Speaker 3: it's one hundred and ten or what have you. So
Speaker 3: step up from there would be heat cramps, and cramps
Speaker 3: can come from various things, right, Like, I think not
Speaker 3: all cramps are caused by sodium depletion or potassium depletion.
Speaker 3: People sometimes think that it's a potassium thing. Some of
Speaker 3: them can just be caused wherever exertion. It can be
Speaker 3: your body's way of being, like, hey, stop. So, like,
Speaker 3: if you know it's fifty degrees out and you're trying
Speaker 3: to run your fastest tank ca and you have cramps,
Speaker 3: that's not a heat thing, that's just your body being like, okay,
Speaker 3: you're not ready for this.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's kind of my experience with running. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, your body's actively rejected it. Yeah, it's because it knows.
Speaker 6: I tried to join the track when I was in
Speaker 6: ninth grade to impress the girl. Neither part of it worked.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry to hear. That's fine, but it's for the best. Okay,
Speaker 6: I'm glad that you can share that with the audience.
Speaker 6: Oh that was just wait, oh no, someone's listening. Yeah anyway, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, So heat cramps, right, they're mostly going to be
Speaker 3: in your calves, and people will be familiar with the
Speaker 3: sensation of a cramp. I'm sure we're experiencing heat cramps.
Speaker 3: We want to obviously cool off, stop doing the thing.
Speaker 3: So if we're running, it's time to start running. If
Speaker 3: we're cycling, time stuff. Cycling, it's unlikely you're getting the
Speaker 3: where you get you get them swimming that's other kinds
Speaker 3: of cramps. But you know, if we're exercising it's good
Speaker 3: to stop, it's good to cool down, it's good to rehydrate.
Speaker 3: So that's where you're going to start with your ooral
Speaker 3: salt solution. And generally, from what I've seen, it's a
Speaker 3: sodium thing, so that that's just like a quarter to
Speaker 3: a half a teaspoon of table salt and a liter
Speaker 3: of water.
Speaker 6: This is the electrolyte thing that people talk about. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: And as we get further into like these heat illnesses,
Speaker 3: one of the things that you want to be careful of.
Speaker 3: You're trying to rehydrate some when it's overloading a carbohydrate,
Speaker 3: so you want a less than six percent carbohydrate solution.
Speaker 3: That can mean just not pounding gatorade, which I think
Speaker 3: can be like the sort of standard response for some
Speaker 3: people because it just it doesn't empty quite as quickly
Speaker 3: at something which has a lower carbohydrate content.
Speaker 6: Right, Okay, but people who are drinking drinking straight water
Speaker 6: doesn't rehydrate you as effectively as drinking electrolytes. Right, Like,
Speaker 6: if it's really hot out, you pretty much need to
Speaker 6: be hydrating with electrolytes. This is unless you're like eating
Speaker 6: a salty snack or something. This is what I've heard
Speaker 6: from people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a thing called hypernatremia, which is when the
Speaker 3: opposite that's like low sodium, right, then that's that can
Speaker 3: happen sometimes from just drinking straight water without any sodium.
Speaker 3: It happens rarely, but it definitely can happen. It can
Speaker 3: happen in like backcountry travel where people don't think they're
Speaker 3: exerting themselves, they're just kind of walking and drinking a
Speaker 3: lot of water. It can happen in marathons, like it
Speaker 3: happens sometimes in marathons people are just taking the water
Speaker 3: from the age station to just drinking the water. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's never like it's you know, when it's hot, if
Speaker 3: you're having you know, when I was bi racing, a
Speaker 3: to do one drink of water and one drink of
Speaker 3: electrolyte even in the heat, pretty much like one bottle.
Speaker 3: There are two bottles on a bicycle thing. I think
Speaker 3: that's a fine thing to do if you're in the
Speaker 3: heat and in you're exercising. You don't need to be
Speaker 3: smashing gatorade all the time because that's a lot of
Speaker 3: sugar and it might that will also not empty from
Speaker 3: your stomach. So, you know, a modern sports drink should
Speaker 3: have the right solution. You know, there are lots of brands.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to recommend one, but there are lots
Speaker 3: of different brands which should have a decent sort of
Speaker 3: four or five percent carbo hydrate solution, and I think
Speaker 3: one that tastes nice to you. And then we move
Speaker 3: from there into a couple of different things, heat exhaustion
Speaker 3: and heat syncope. Heat syncope is when you'll see people
Speaker 3: like fall over, and it happens often like the only
Speaker 3: time I've seen it happen is people stopping after like
Speaker 3: a long run, like specifically like when they push themselves
Speaker 3: really hard, right, And it can actually be it can
Speaker 3: be people who are not particularly dehydrated or hypothermic, but
Speaker 3: a sort of a long run and heat you're not
Speaker 3: acclimated to. It can blood can pull in the legs,
Speaker 3: and it's it's often people who are elderly are not
Speaker 3: very well acclimated, and it's normally when they're standing at
Speaker 3: stationary and that's something that you can treat by elevating
Speaker 3: the feet where's the personal lies down, and then just
Speaker 3: getting them out of direct sunlight and helping them rehydrate, right,
Speaker 3: So helping them cool rehydrate. You're going to see that
Speaker 3: in nearly all of these cases, cooling someone off it's
Speaker 3: the most important thing to do. So next time we
Speaker 3: talk about heat exhaustion again, like you'll know something is
Speaker 3: wrong in these situations, right, Like if someone's just just
Speaker 3: like falling over, you will know something is wrong. If
Speaker 3: someone's yeah, then in case he's like you'll know like
Speaker 3: having had heat exhaustion heat stroke, like you yourself will
Speaker 3: also know. There are certain like like ecstasy is a
Speaker 3: big one, right when people people quite often get heat
Speaker 3: illness when they're like at raves on ecstasy. And that's
Speaker 3: just because obviously like altered state of mind plus dancing,
Speaker 3: uh plus plus this drug, which is you know, your
Speaker 3: body is not not making its usual responses, I guess,
Speaker 3: and that can be so like, you know, if it's
Speaker 3: one hundred and ten out, maybe that's not the time
Speaker 3: to be doing M B M A and raving.
Speaker 10: Cop cop cop behavior. James, Yeah, yeah, I can't stand
Speaker 10: by and here And just as you spread this M
Speaker 10: D M A slander, people should People should absolutely be
Speaker 10: knowledgeable about what causes their atonin syndrome and be careful
Speaker 10: about mixing other substances but I cannot have you just
Speaker 10: disparage the.
Speaker 2: Good name of MDMA like this.
Speaker 6: Oh I will, I will take it one step further
Speaker 6: and tell you that, at least with my research, both
Speaker 6: caffeine and alcohol make it far more likely for you
Speaker 6: to suffer dehydration and related heat dehydration.
Speaker 10: Yes, this is this is just that, this is an
Speaker 10: actual problem that people should mix like with m d
Speaker 10: m A. This is something to look up because because
Speaker 10: of the way it affects your serotonin levels, it can
Speaker 10: cause you to overheat if you take too much or
Speaker 10: come out with other things, or if you're in a hot, sweaty,
Speaker 10: crowded room you're dancing too much without taking breaks. This
Speaker 10: is a thing to consider.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, I had. There was a person it was
Speaker 3: I think it was reference in the in the course
Speaker 3: they did where they would talk about using a drone
Speaker 3: rave to identify people who are hypothermic and like that,
Speaker 3: like you what you want to step away from the
Speaker 3: dance floor, like to identify beople who at risk, which
Speaker 3: is an interesting idea. That's cool, I think. Yeah, So
Speaker 3: just you know something to consider as you go forward
Speaker 3: with yoursemble plants. So other signs, right, tiredness, weakness, uziness, headache, fainting,
Speaker 3: knows you're vomiting, muscle cramps, nausea and vomiting. It's ralph.
Speaker 3: I remember that the worst heat on this I've ever
Speaker 3: had was in Vietnam doing a bike race. One of
Speaker 3: the rules in a bike races that you can't take
Speaker 3: supplies from your support car in the last fifty kilometers,
Speaker 3: and it was just so hot, and I remember being like,
Speaker 3: I'm baking inside my skull. I'm baking it inside my skull,
Speaker 3: like and I'd been previously in like a little group
Speaker 3: in front of the main group, so I also hadn't
Speaker 3: been able to access water from my car then and
Speaker 3: then drop, we got caught by the main group, is
Speaker 3: what happened. And I remember being like, okay, good, Now
Speaker 3: I can get my eye socks and put them down
Speaker 3: my back and I can get my cold water. And
Speaker 3: then I went back and the guy was like, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: it's like forty nine kilometers and I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: this is bad, this is really fucking bad. And it
Speaker 3: was really bad.
Speaker 5: Did you.
Speaker 3: Be I'm sure? Yeah I did. I finished the race. Congrats, Yeah, No,
Speaker 3: terrible decision at the picture somewhere. My teammates put me
Speaker 3: in a shower with like my legs above my head
Speaker 3: it which was just like waterboarding me with cold water,
Speaker 3: and I was given ivy fluid and they were all like, oh,
Speaker 3: this is bad. He's not in a good way. Yeah,
Speaker 3: yeah that you know, sport is good for you. Keep
Speaker 3: sporting out there, kids. Everyone was very concerned for me.
Speaker 6: My All the stuff I came up with was like
Speaker 6: stay inside, don't exert yourself, like avoid caffeine and alcohol. Yeah,
Speaker 6: if you want to push yourself past your limits.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, don't know it's bad. But we did everything
Speaker 3: wrong right, Like it was in December the race, because
Speaker 3: the Asian Tour doesn't take a break at like the
Speaker 3: December and a few time it takes a break from Ramadan.
Speaker 3: So obviously coming from the United States, we were relatively
Speaker 3: less fit than we would have been. We were not acclimated.
Speaker 3: I had a fat beard, which did not help, and
Speaker 3: like my hair was longer than it is now, My
Speaker 3: body was not losing heat. Everything was I doing this
Speaker 3: this race? Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, going out there like
Speaker 3: full Look if there's nothing that what is more white
Speaker 3: man on the left and you know, got white dude
Speaker 3: with a beard. It's like all of them, right, crook
Speaker 3: and bacuona marks, and you have to try it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: don't do that. Don't do that to yourself. We talked
Speaker 3: about heats and cope and the last one is heat stroke.
Speaker 3: So what differentiates heat stroke from heat exhaustion is that
Speaker 3: higher body temperature above forty degrees celsius, which is one
Speaker 3: hundred and three hundred and four fahrenheit. If you're seeing
Speaker 3: one hundred and three, it's time to pick up the
Speaker 3: telephone and call nine on one if you can, if
Speaker 3: you're in an area where you can do that. But
Speaker 3: it doesn't matter. It's one hundred and three one hundred
Speaker 3: and four. I guess it's that you're very hot. At
Speaker 3: that point, you're going to have hot, red skin, a
Speaker 3: fast strong pulse, headache, dizziness, naughty of confusion. People can
Speaker 3: also lose consciousness. So this is very serious, right, And
Speaker 3: the line between this and really serious lasting complications is
Speaker 3: quite quite small, So you do need to be very
Speaker 3: extremely concerned. I will say that, like when you're taking
Speaker 3: someone's temperature, taking it at the extremities is not necessarily
Speaker 3: going to give you the best idea of what their
Speaker 3: core body temperature is, right, and so that's sort of
Speaker 3: reason that like if if they're hot, if like, if
Speaker 3: it's hot, they're hot on the outside, right, like an
Speaker 3: ear or what have you. And then if you if
Speaker 3: you've then tried to cool the person and you're seeing
Speaker 3: like a lower body temperature in their hand or if
Speaker 3: you're yeah, if their hands been in ice, you know,
Speaker 3: in ice bath, then you might see a cooler temperature there.
Speaker 3: And that's that there are like rectal probes are used
Speaker 3: for this not something to be doing in a sort
Speaker 3: of non consensual manner. They're not really something to be
Speaker 3: doing unless you're like a medical professional. But if you're,
Speaker 3: if so, just don't don't be relying again. So you know,
Speaker 3: people have those little heat guns that they like to
Speaker 3: use and stuff might not be the most reliable source
Speaker 3: of information.
Speaker 6: Although it might be useful for the initial.
Speaker 3: Diagnosis, right, Yeah, even then, like if even if you
Speaker 3: can just do an ooral thermometer as opposed to like
Speaker 3: the temperature if your forehead is ox like, if it's
Speaker 3: one hundred and ten, then the temperature of your forehead
Speaker 3: is going to be hot, right.
Speaker 6: I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, totally okay.
Speaker 3: Versus you know you're trying to get as inside as possible.
Speaker 3: I guess yeah. I remember people doing cooling experiments where
Speaker 3: you have to take a pill when it measured your
Speaker 3: internal temperature and well bluetoothed out or something. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: it's fun times. I think that's cool.
Speaker 6: I want one rescuing it later sounds like not fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does make an exit for the body.
Speaker 3: So with this again, right, you want to cool the
Speaker 3: person down, and the way we can do that it's
Speaker 3: like ice packs right in the groin, neck and scalp.
Speaker 3: So I used to do like just tights, like if
Speaker 3: you're wearing tights, put ice in those and put those
Speaker 3: down my back of my cycling jersey or no cycling.
Speaker 3: You can put them in the groins obviously the person
Speaker 3: has become like a heat casualty. You can put them
Speaker 3: in the groin, armpits, the neck, and you can also
Speaker 3: if you don't have access to AC obviously you've got
Speaker 3: a c you can put the person in an air
Speaker 3: conditioned environment to help them cool down. You can put
Speaker 3: them in an ice bath. You'll see that like at
Speaker 3: hot weather events. I'm trying to think there are a
Speaker 3: lot of other conditions that you'll see a hot weather events.
Speaker 3: We don't really have time to talk about. Things like
Speaker 3: rabdough are very very concerning if someone's exercising in the heat.
Speaker 3: But you'll often see at the end of hot events
Speaker 3: in first day tents they're popping people in ice bas
Speaker 3: to cool them down. They've got some of these symptoms,
Speaker 3: like fifteen twenty minutes I think is how long you
Speaker 3: want to put them in there for. But like if
Speaker 3: you're starting to feel headache, dizziness, and nausea, I guess
Speaker 3: my big take home here is get out of the sun,
Speaker 3: stop exercising if you're exercising, and start hydrating. If you're
Speaker 3: not hydrating with with that carbohydrate solution and you're looking
Speaker 3: to drop that cool temperature, that core temperature below that
Speaker 3: kind of danger zone, right, and I really get it
Speaker 3: back to where what's to be, which which I think
Speaker 3: in fahrenheit's around ninety six point six. You you probably
Speaker 3: don't want to actively cool someone all the way down
Speaker 3: because you can overshoot and they can get hypothermic and
Speaker 3: so like they can they can get too cold if
Speaker 3: you're like you know, dumping them in a freezer or
Speaker 3: like you know, actively calling them to aggressively. So that's
Speaker 3: something to be concerned with as well. And you don't
Speaker 3: want the person to start shivering because the body's trying
Speaker 3: to heat yourself back up at that point, so you
Speaker 3: can't be uber aggressive. But I think having said all this,
Speaker 3: like I said, the big take home is like if
Speaker 3: you start to feel sick, dizzy underwell, when you're outside
Speaker 3: in the heat, to get out the heat, get some water,
Speaker 3: get into shade, if you can, get their conditioning if
Speaker 3: you can. If you're at a job site, you know,
Speaker 3: if there's like a trailer where you with the sad conditioned,
Speaker 3: go in the trailer, like it's not worth your life,
Speaker 3: even if it's your job.
Speaker 6: You want to know it's fun?
Speaker 3: Is that what's fun?
Speaker 6: In the United States, there's no federal law that says
Speaker 6: you can't make people work in the hot weather without
Speaker 6: hell yeah, some states, less than half. I don't have
Speaker 6: the notes in front of me. I have the notes
Speaker 6: for a different thing I recorded recently. Some states, like
Speaker 6: sixteen of them or sometime maybe have laws against working
Speaker 6: people outside in the heat, but most states don't. The
Speaker 6: federal government is like considering one right now, but that
Speaker 6: is like probably years away before it could be enacted.
Speaker 6: But it's like basic worker protections, like don't have people
Speaker 6: work outside without enough stuff to make sure they don't.
Speaker 3: Die of it. Consider forming a union. Yeah, google Blair
Speaker 3: Mountain for more information on how to respond if you're
Speaker 3: not allowed, if you're not allowed to take breaks for
Speaker 3: the heat.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Talking of how capitalism is killing us all, Margaret, it's
Speaker 3: time for us to break for some adverts so things
Speaker 3: people can buy.
Speaker 10: Oh, we have we have some breaking news here, folks.
Speaker 10: We have some breaking sheep news. So it turns out
Speaker 10: during during during James's Last Sheep episode, he talked about
Speaker 10: having texel sheep way when it's actually tessel sheep.
Speaker 3: So this is really no, they're they're definitely Texels.
Speaker 10: Who's pretty exciting here who the largest northwestern islands of
Speaker 10: the of the Netherlands. It's one of those European places
Speaker 10: where the pronuncidation, where the pronunciation does not match how
Speaker 10: it's written. And it's tessel sheep, not textel sheep. So
Speaker 10: this is pretty exciting for me. And usually James gets
Speaker 10: to make fun of how I pronounce words and now.
Speaker 2: And now now now looks so here we go here?
Speaker 6: Well should we? I mean, should we move into like
Speaker 6: machinations versus machinations or should we just move on?
Speaker 3: No, I think we can just move on here where
Speaker 3: We'll just start a Buenos Aires and move from there. Yeah, Garrison,
Speaker 3: the Speaker of Free, I have a hard life. They
Speaker 3: did not teach me how to say words in Canada.
Speaker 2: It was all I know.
Speaker 10: It was all tongues in the school. We couldn't We
Speaker 10: didn't actually learn much much English so much woods.
Speaker 3: Yeah, don't worry. Yeah, we're we're all learning as we go.
Speaker 3: You see, there we go. Yeah, I've just I've just
Speaker 3: learned that the place is called Tehsel and then that's
Speaker 3: the sheep from there.
Speaker 6: Is there an X in it or something?
Speaker 3: No? Yes, when you're yeah, is there an X all
Speaker 3: the time? T E XL Yeah, I always see, but
Speaker 3: X sounds the X sounds like an S. Yeah speaking, Yeah, fascinating. Yeah, wow,
Speaker 3: I like all my life I've been misnaming the very
Speaker 3: sheep that many of you enjoyed hearing about.
Speaker 6: Sad that no wonder the sheep weren't coming when you called,
Speaker 6: they felt no they come disrespected. Yeah, well never mind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, to be fair, I just go out there
Speaker 3: and say sheep, so you know I'm hedging my beds
Speaker 3: with the pronunciation of that one.
Speaker 6: Well, you want to talk about animals and heat waves.
Speaker 3: I would love to, Yeah, tell me. It was like,
Speaker 3: tell me what to do with your sheep.
Speaker 6: I talk about humans and heat and she and heat waves.
Speaker 6: So actually, ironically, one of the things that I learned,
Speaker 6: I don't know whether or not applies to sheep. I
Speaker 6: was talking before this to one of my professional animal
Speaker 6: friends who has worked in veterinary clinics and also as
Speaker 6: a professional horse person. So there's some stuff to know, right,
Speaker 6: for all of the people who aren't humans. Different animals
Speaker 6: need different electrolyte feel formulas if you are going to
Speaker 6: feed them electrolytes, and for example, dogs need more sugar
Speaker 6: and less salt because they their bodies don't get rid
Speaker 6: of salt as much. Right, they don't really sweat nearly
Speaker 6: so much. Occasional pedialyte or some other like non gator
Speaker 6: ady thing is fine every now and then, and probably
Speaker 6: gatorades probably fine every now and then. But don't be
Speaker 6: like you can go hiking and just drink electrolytes right,
Speaker 6: not sugar water, but electrolytes. But don't do that with
Speaker 6: your dog, even if it's super hot out. There is
Speaker 6: dog specific stuff and there's formulas you can look up
Speaker 6: for dog specific making your own. Don't shave your pets.
Speaker 6: This is the one that I do know if applies
Speaker 6: to sheep.
Speaker 10: My friend said, this does not apply to sheep. You
Speaker 10: have to share their You want to have to share
Speaker 10: your sheep or else they will overheat and die.
Speaker 6: Yeah, okay, yeah, you want to share your sheep. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Some animals you want to shave. Some animals you don't.
Speaker 6: If you have animals, you should look this up ahead
Speaker 6: of time. Some people like run out and shave their
Speaker 6: cats and dogs if in the heat wave. This is
Speaker 6: a very bad thing. The hair is designed to protect
Speaker 6: them from the sun. Also, especially like if you have
Speaker 6: a dog with a double coat, it does a lot
Speaker 6: of weird heat transfer stuff and it's really kind of
Speaker 6: cool and magic. Brushing and grooming are very good. If
Speaker 6: your dog is like slow to its summer coat, or
Speaker 6: it's summer is suddenly here eleven months of the year,
Speaker 6: or as I predict, there's going to be two seasons,
Speaker 6: there's going to be summer, which will last for nine months,
Speaker 6: and then there's going to be hell mouth, which will
Speaker 6: replace what was previously summer. Don't take your dog out
Speaker 6: in the hottest weather. It is better that your dog
Speaker 6: pisses inside it gets heatstroke. It is harder identify heat
Speaker 6: stroke and a dog, but if the dog is like
Speaker 6: panting a particular amount, there's like other things about looking
Speaker 6: to the gums and eyes.
Speaker 3: I got bitten by a dog that was having a
Speaker 3: heat stroke on my God, forcedy lie, it was good.
Speaker 3: I feel bad for both.
Speaker 6: The animals involved in that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, could feel fairly secure in saying that people who
Speaker 3: were looking off to dog aren't listening. But like, yeah,
Speaker 3: they made a series of very poor choices. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: and like it wasn't nice.
Speaker 6: Hiking is my main activity and it is like my
Speaker 6: main bonding with me and my dog, and I am
Speaker 6: not doing it during a lot of the heat wave,
Speaker 6: and I'm finding other ways. I'm you know, because I'm
Speaker 6: I have to drive a decent way to go hiking, right,
Speaker 6: so I can't do it early in the morning unless
Speaker 6: I wake up earlier than I want to. But if
Speaker 6: you are going to do austseid activities with both yourself
Speaker 6: or with an animal. Consider doing them at early in
Speaker 6: the morning or late in the evening or mill the night.
Speaker 5: And I don't want it.
Speaker 6: Whatever if you have animals that can't come inside, because
Speaker 6: overall was going to apply to your animals, is it
Speaker 6: was going to apply to humans, like get them into
Speaker 6: the ac Like what are you doing? But a lot
Speaker 6: of animals you don't have a room for inside, right
Speaker 6: unless you're a medieval Irish peasant, in which case I've
Speaker 6: read way too much about how much those animals live inside.
Speaker 3: Yeah, cows under the house, so the warmth comes up.
Speaker 6: So you want a cross breeze in your barn or
Speaker 6: coop or whatever. If it's a coop, you want to
Speaker 6: make sure there's a place at the top for air
Speaker 6: to come escape. And you don't want the box style
Speaker 6: coop with only one entrance. If you're dealing with heat waves,
Speaker 6: you want a lot of cool water that is easy
Speaker 6: to drink. And so a lot of people who normally
Speaker 6: feed their animals with like the nipple style feeders, different animals,
Speaker 6: you have different ways of watering them. No, no nipple
Speaker 6: style feeders. During a heat wave, the animal needs to
Speaker 6: be able to get into the get the water easily.
Speaker 6: For chickens, you might want to bring your nesting boxes
Speaker 6: down to the ground floor where it's cooler. You also
Speaker 6: might want to consider insult lading the coop, like with
Speaker 6: hay bales, for example, you could stack them up next
Speaker 6: to your coop. Horses have yet another electrolyte mix. My
Speaker 6: horse professional friend uses one called Gallagher's Water, but points
Speaker 6: out that it's like mostly bougie people use it when
Speaker 6: they're when most people have horses are bougie, but not
Speaker 6: all of them, right at least where I live. Other places. Okay,
Speaker 6: so it's only necessary in extreme circumstances. It's only better
Speaker 6: than water in extreme circumstances. Most animals do very well
Speaker 6: with just drinking water. And also you can probably consider
Speaker 6: if you live somewhere wester than I do, you can
Speaker 6: consider misting systems if you have the money in the infrastructure.
Speaker 6: And misting systems is basically just like it pumps water
Speaker 6: out into a mist, and the mist cools everything down
Speaker 6: and below about seventy percent humidity, they're fairly effective. Below
Speaker 6: fifty percent of humidity, they're incredibly effective, and so they
Speaker 6: and it's not that you get wet it's that they do.
Speaker 6: It's like it's like the air is sweating, the air is.
Speaker 3: They're like you have in if you go to restaurants
Speaker 3: in Phoenix outside they have them.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I bought some really cheap off like Craigslist, like super cheap.
Speaker 3: Like I think, I actually I just have to go
Speaker 3: and get them.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but no, I'm like so jealous because it wouldn't
Speaker 6: work where I live.
Speaker 3: You can't use them because of a high humidity.
Speaker 6: I mean they do a little bit here, but not
Speaker 6: very effectively.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know your chickens don't want to be living
Speaker 3: in a too damp environment. It could be that that
Speaker 3: a lungs, so don't be running one inside all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and the inside. But I think it's certainly like my
Speaker 3: chickens will go around it when it's hot. It seems
Speaker 3: to it.
Speaker 6: And one person I talked to and this is like
Speaker 6: I did a bunch of research about this, but it's inconclusive.
Speaker 6: One person I talked to during the wildfire smoke actually
Speaker 6: set up a particulate set up a misting system because
Speaker 6: mist picks up and drops particulate matter to the cloud.
Speaker 6: There's a lot of research that says this particulate absorption happens.
Speaker 6: There is no research to say this is how you
Speaker 6: handle wildfire smoke with outside animals, but that is something
Speaker 6: that at least one person I heard from is doing,
Speaker 6: and science backs it up for human animals in terms
Speaker 6: of preparedness. Just to run through all this stuff that
Speaker 6: I've been keeping track of the way that you're going
Speaker 6: to deal with all this if you're not outside, right,
Speaker 6: if you're outside and you're dealing with the stuff, you're
Speaker 6: going to use what James talked about and like keep
Speaker 6: track of how you're feeling and get into the AC.
Speaker 6: I mean, the main thing you want to do is
Speaker 6: get into AC right. You don't want to do strenuous exercise.
Speaker 6: You want to check alerts on your phone or your
Speaker 6: weather radio. If you're a cool prepper and have like
Speaker 6: a little weather radio, you probably want to use the
Speaker 6: buddy system outside if it's getting really hot, if you can, right,
Speaker 6: just like having someone who can keep track of what
Speaker 6: you're doing. If you don't have another way to get
Speaker 6: to AC, consider public libraries in other places. This is
Speaker 6: a very good active time. Look after your neighbors, and
Speaker 6: some of your neighbors are housed and might not have AC.
Speaker 6: Some of your neighbors don't have houses and probably don't
Speaker 6: have AC unless they live in their vehicles, in which
Speaker 6: case they might have some AC, but not all vehicles do.
Speaker 6: And so there's a very good time to look after people,
Speaker 6: whether it's giving people rides to public cooling centers, or
Speaker 6: whether it's setting up public cooling centers, or they're just
Speaker 6: letting your neighbor who like come over because your AC
Speaker 6: is working and theres isn't you want to I mean,
Speaker 6: one thing that you want to do is to accept
Speaker 6: that what we're dealing with isn't normal. And I'll get
Speaker 6: to that in a moment. But so if you're a renter,
Speaker 6: you have fewer options, right in terms of like structural preparedness,
Speaker 6: there are some things that you can do. Running fans,
Speaker 6: unless you're a podcaster, running fans is a very good idea.
Speaker 6: If you have ceiling fans, you want to make sure
Speaker 6: that during the summer they run counterclockwise and during the
Speaker 6: winter they run clockwise. So it's just look and be
Speaker 6: like I wanted to push air down, and you can
Speaker 6: visualize the direction it'll turn to push air down, and
Speaker 6: that's the summer one I want change the direction they spin. Yes,
Speaker 6: there is a little switch on every ceiling fan. I
Speaker 6: can see the one behind you.
Speaker 3: I can see it.
Speaker 6: Don't do it well if you look on screen.
Speaker 3: No, don't be a coward. Garrison, walk me through it.
Speaker 2: Okay, I think I see it now.
Speaker 10: Yeah, but closer off and want me to put my
Speaker 10: arm up and then do it.
Speaker 3: It's less because you're going to stick your head in
Speaker 3: there so you can get a good look at Oh ah, no,
Speaker 3: Garrisons deceased.
Speaker 6: Oh well, good thing they left me their Gester costume.
Speaker 3: You'll never find out any more about cops.
Speaker 6: I'm city has to end because there's no other way
Speaker 6: for us to find out about it.
Speaker 3: They finally stopped.
Speaker 6: All right, So other things that you can do. Evaporative
Speaker 6: cooling is the coolest thing.
Speaker 4: In the world.
Speaker 6: Again, if you're not in a human area. This is
Speaker 6: why humidity is absolutely terrible. And I picked the wrong
Speaker 6: part of the country to be from wet bandanas, wet clothing.
Speaker 6: There's actually like, it's kind of sad. I was saying
Speaker 6: that there's no labor protections about heat. Some farm workers
Speaker 6: like developed a like an immigrant farm worker developed a
Speaker 6: cooling vest system that she's like working on that. There's
Speaker 6: like articles about where it just uses a vaporative cooling
Speaker 6: to cool people. And it's like one of those things
Speaker 6: where I'm like that rules. And also it's absolutely awful
Speaker 6: that that's like where we're at. Where we're at, you know,
Speaker 6: is not like, oh, let's have better labor practices and stuff.
Speaker 6: And if you have a house, if you have like
Speaker 6: a place that you can really do preparedness for, there's
Speaker 6: I mean, we'll just get an air conditioner. Don't run
Speaker 6: your air conditioner as like low as it'll go. It
Speaker 6: just doesn't actually make things any cooler. Air conditioners are
Speaker 6: generally designed and only cool things. I want to say,
Speaker 6: was it like thirty degrees below outside temperature or something? Yeah?
Speaker 3: And I think also depends on the size of the
Speaker 3: relative space you're cooling in a BTUC.
Speaker 6: Well, so I'm saying that they're sized for that by
Speaker 6: like regulation. If someone comes in it is like, oh,
Speaker 6: what size AC should I put into this house, it's
Speaker 6: going to be I want this size house to be
Speaker 6: be cooled thirty degrees. I think it's thirty degrees. It
Speaker 6: might be twenty four, okay, And so if you run
Speaker 6: your fans. You actually can keep your thermostat up about
Speaker 6: four degrees and if you don't have it, If you
Speaker 6: don't have AC, there's a lot you can do with
Speaker 6: like thermal mass right is your friend, Like if you
Speaker 6: have a if you can choose which house you're going
Speaker 6: to live in, living in brick houses is great or
Speaker 6: adobe houses. It depends on where you live and what
Speaker 6: your climate is. You want to keep your curtains closed
Speaker 6: during the day and open at night if you're trying
Speaker 6: to keep out the sun, but then let out the
Speaker 6: heat into the cool night air, assuming that there's still
Speaker 6: cool night air. Depends on where you live. As we
Speaker 6: enter into this nightmare world, Reflective window insulation y things
Speaker 6: like the thing that you put in your windshield can help.
Speaker 6: There's like stuff you can do when you accept that
Speaker 6: it's an emergency and you can okay. But then the
Speaker 6: other thing is that running AC's puts a lot of
Speaker 6: strain on the power grid, and we're already starting to
Speaker 6: see more grid failure, usually in the brown out style
Speaker 6: rather than the blackout style. But when everyone's running their AC,
Speaker 6: the grid is not designed to handle it, and there
Speaker 6: are problems, and so one you get these like city
Speaker 6: wide text alerts that are like, hey, everyone, please turn
Speaker 6: up your AC like turned down whatever, make your AC
Speaker 6: less cold cold. And this is an example of something
Speaker 6: that we should do and listen to. But it's really
Speaker 6: fucking annoying because it's not our fucking fault that the
Speaker 6: world is heating up, right, And they're not like turning
Speaker 6: off Times Square. They're telling everyone, you know, they're not
Speaker 6: turning off the ads. Yeah, speaking of ads, it's a
Speaker 6: good time to pivot to some some more stuff. Even
Speaker 6: it is waste, wasting power, and even in the emergency,
Speaker 6: there's still the ads. Here you go and we're back.
Speaker 3: Hopefully. It was for gold, which is useless in the heat.
Speaker 3: Death of the nurse. I just want to throw that
Speaker 3: out there.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but it does keep its value compared to.
Speaker 4: Cash, just.
Speaker 3: Until neither of them have that.
Speaker 6: That's why whiskey Oh wait, no wait, mutual aid.
Speaker 10: Now, that's why I've been stacking on my on my
Speaker 10: series of John's Version inspired n f T s that
Speaker 10: I minted last year, and oh boy, have they only
Speaker 10: grown in value?
Speaker 4: Am I?
Speaker 10: I'm telling you this is that this is what's going
Speaker 10: to hold me through whenever, whenever, you know, the thing happens.
Speaker 3: Yep, I will be at your door with my wanting
Speaker 3: to try ammunition for apes as I always am. Find
Speaker 3: me in the group yet.
Speaker 6: But there's one other group of people that I want
Speaker 6: to talk about really quickly about who we should check
Speaker 6: in on, and that is prisoners. There is no way
Speaker 6: from my point of view, I'm gonna have a lot
Speaker 6: of bias here. There is no way for us to
Speaker 6: justly face a climate emergency while we live in a
Speaker 6: carcoral society in Texas. This is where most of the
Speaker 6: news is right now. But that's not like it's better
Speaker 6: other places. As far as I can tell, in Texas,
Speaker 6: since mid June, between nine and twenty three prisoners have
Speaker 6: died from heat, but no one knows because Texas refuses
Speaker 6: to say that anyone has died from heat. They haven't
Speaker 6: done that since I believe twenty twelve is the last
Speaker 6: time they admitted someone died from heat. However, two thirds
Speaker 6: of Texas prisons don't have air conditioning, and a bunch
Speaker 6: of people are dying randomly of heart attacks in their
Speaker 6: thirties because they're dying of heat.
Speaker 3: Jesus correct.
Speaker 10: I think earlier in the first few weeks of July
Speaker 10: when it was getting very, very hot.
Speaker 3: I believe it.
Speaker 10: It was a pretty young woman died in the Fulton
Speaker 10: County jail here in Atlanta. Yeah sure, and it's they're
Speaker 10: doing an investigation to see why.
Speaker 3: So yeah, oh.
Speaker 6: Good, don't worry. The Texas State House passed money to
Speaker 6: put AC into prisons, and then the Senate rejected it.
Speaker 3: Cool, big thing is for money, because not much money
Speaker 3: in law enforcement, so I can see how they're struggling
Speaker 3: to afford that.
Speaker 6: Otherwise, Yeah, there was a oh I didn't write down
Speaker 6: the numbers in my script, but there was like a
Speaker 6: many millions of dollar budget surplus that they didn't apply to. Oh,
Speaker 6: I don't know. Not having people die for having been
Speaker 6: accused of owning weed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Whatever.
Speaker 6: I get really fucking mad about this, and I think
Speaker 6: that it is.
Speaker 5: Like it's fucking horrific.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 6: And then the last thing I really want to say
Speaker 6: is that this was the hottest month, right that any
Speaker 6: of us have ever experienced. It will be the coolest
Speaker 6: month in our memory at some point, you know, or
Speaker 6: rather whatever, it's not getting.
Speaker 2: Coolest July our in our memory at some point.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, like next year might be a little bit
Speaker 6: cooler because of natural cycles or whatever, right, but it's
Speaker 6: not coming back. We're not going back to normal. And
Speaker 6: for me, this month marks a sea change literally and
Speaker 6: that the Arctic Antarctic ice did not come back this winter.
Speaker 6: It's winter right now in Antarctica, and there's a five
Speaker 6: or six standard deviation away from normal amount of ice
Speaker 6: there right now. Five to six standard deviations is more
Speaker 6: than if you flipped a coin one hundred times and
Speaker 6: it came up heads every single time. It is like
Speaker 6: more than a one in three point five million chance.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 6: It is a very big number. It is a very
Speaker 6: abnormal thing. Nothing like this has ever been seen before.
Speaker 6: And I don't want to say this to make people afraid,
Speaker 6: because I don't think we need to be. For whatever.
Speaker 6: Fear is complicated. You can't be brave unless you're afraid.
Speaker 6: That's what I will say. You cannot have courage. Courage
Speaker 6: is the act of responding to fear, and we should
Speaker 6: notice the fear and not let it control us. But
Speaker 6: it really is time for people to very seriously look
Speaker 6: at not what's going to happen by twenty fifty, but
Speaker 6: what is happening now, what is happening now, what will
Speaker 6: happen in the next three years, the next five years,
Speaker 6: the next ten years, and start making decisions based on that.
Speaker 6: That is what I want. I don't want to tell
Speaker 6: people what those decisions are. I want people to get
Speaker 6: together with the people that they care about and figure
Speaker 6: out what those decisions are. One of the things that
Speaker 6: I would recommend is building resilient communities is looking at
Speaker 6: how to build communities right. And there's a lot of ways.
Speaker 6: A lot of like scenes can become communities, a lot
Speaker 6: of extended families can become communities. A lot of religious
Speaker 6: organizations are communities. Okay, how and then how to make
Speaker 6: them resilient? How to collectively look at how to handle
Speaker 6: these things. Whether it's literally just having a plan for like, Okay,
Speaker 6: if the power goes out, who has the whole house
Speaker 6: generator where I live? Someone around being has god to
Speaker 6: have a whole house generator. I don't have one. I
Speaker 6: want one, but they're expensive. Whose ac is still going
Speaker 6: to be running when the power goes out?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 6: Or whether it's like, hey, how can we collectively help
Speaker 6: each other's houses have rain water catchment systems?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 6: How can we collectively be building up food sovereignty as
Speaker 6: well as food storage. How can we have I want
Speaker 6: to see personally, I want to see days of workshops
Speaker 6: at community centers of all different ideals, compositions getting together
Speaker 6: and being like, here's how you can food, here's how
Speaker 6: you dry food, here is how you set up mesh networks.
Speaker 4: I just.
Speaker 6: I think it's time. I think that I'm tired of saying, hey,
Speaker 6: bad stuff might be coming, because it's not might be coming.
Speaker 6: Now it's here and it's really bad. And I think
Speaker 6: people stick to the might be coming because they're afraid
Speaker 6: of despair. And I will say that despair is not good, right,
Speaker 6: but that is something that we can fight. How do
Speaker 6: we fight despair is also part of this? And the
Speaker 6: answer to that is agency, and when we can find
Speaker 6: ways to act with agency, that is I mean, there's
Speaker 6: like studies about like in disasters, people who express agency
Speaker 6: have like less PTSD right when bad things happen, Yeah,
Speaker 6: and even if the agency, like I mean, I remember
Speaker 6: all at one point getting arrested, right and being like,
Speaker 6: all right, well, I'm keeping track of like I know
Speaker 6: that cops badge number, I know this, I know this,
Speaker 6: I'm keeping track of stuff in case there's a lawsuit later.
Speaker 6: I totally lost that lawsuit, but like that helped me
Speaker 6: get through that situation.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 6: Everyone else won the lawsuit, but because I was in
Speaker 6: black block, I did not win the lawsuits. That's funny,
Speaker 6: that's funny. Yeah, anyway, Actually it might have been because
Speaker 6: I refused to give my name anyway, whatever, it was
Speaker 6: a long time ago.
Speaker 2: And fill this.
Speaker 6: And just so yeah, act with agency. That is the solution.
Speaker 6: The solution it is. It's like, like, it's not the
Speaker 6: solution to the spar it's a way to deal with
Speaker 6: it in the same way that we're not looking at
Speaker 6: solutions to climate change anymore. We're looking at ways to
Speaker 6: deal with it, right because it's already here.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Yeah, some of the episodes that me and Robert research
Speaker 10: to put together for the original, like could happen your
Speaker 10: Season two.
Speaker 6: Stuff is yeah a lot.
Speaker 10: I was talking about like a mitigation versus adaptation, And
Speaker 10: almost every day it looks like we're getting more and
Speaker 10: more committed to just full a full adaption model because
Speaker 10: these things are really not going to be like the
Speaker 10: most common widespread effects is not going to be mitigated.
Speaker 10: There's still a few like cataclysmic scenarios that that probably
Speaker 10: could be averted, but things are going to get so much,
Speaker 10: so much worse, and that will be to deal with that,
Speaker 10: we will have to adopt a large variety of adaptions
Speaker 10: and it's gonna suck, but it's it's what we're gonna
Speaker 10: have to do. I don't know, I've there's there's a
Speaker 10: variety of reactions to this. I mean, I think I
Speaker 10: should just put together an episode on this sometime in
Speaker 10: the future. But like there's as this as the intensity
Speaker 10: of the situations more and more, like, as as it
Speaker 10: becomes more and more clear, we're going to get a
Speaker 10: variety of reactions from especially for people on the right
Speaker 10: who used to be very much pure purely like ignoring
Speaker 10: or denying this problem. Some some on the right have
Speaker 10: like have skipped over the whole part where they've been
Speaker 10: wrong for so many years and are going to start
Speaker 10: up applying extremely authoritarian and like nationalist solutions to this.
Speaker 10: Others are just doubling down on denial because facing the
Speaker 10: facts of the horrible situation we're in is more and
Speaker 10: more like frightening. It's it's it's harder to admit that
Speaker 10: you're wrong and realize the terribleness of the situation of
Speaker 10: the most recent example of this is I've been checking
Speaker 10: on the replies to to CTV News, which is one
Speaker 10: of the biggest Canadian like television news stations. They've they've
Speaker 10: put out a few stories about how July is the
Speaker 10: hottest month, and the in the replies to this story,
Speaker 10: it's there's just a shock and honestly shocking amount of
Speaker 10: of pure like flippant denial of what's going on. And
Speaker 10: this has been an increasing problem in Canada. And it's
Speaker 10: it's which is ironic because actually Canada's economy is probably
Speaker 10: going to grow during climate change because they're going to
Speaker 10: take over a whole bunch of agricultural production from the States.
Speaker 10: They're actually going to become a much bigger economic player.
Speaker 10: But the amount of just pure denial that that that
Speaker 10: we're that we're seeing in Canada and we're seeing get
Speaker 10: like increased is extremely worrying. Yeah, and it's one of
Speaker 10: those things that's really hard to deal with. Like it
Speaker 10: it's also something I talked about it in my hyper
Speaker 10: object episode. But like it's like it's the same thing
Speaker 10: if someone's like in QAnon, you can't like you can't
Speaker 10: like out logic them from qan on. You have to
Speaker 10: you have to, you have to tell a better story.
Speaker 3: So this is you need a solid place to stand,
Speaker 3: like before you can push someone, if you see what
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 10: Yeah, but like I don't know's it's just been it's
Speaker 10: been concerning because I've been seeing a whole bunch of
Speaker 10: a whole bunch of these things about how this is the
Speaker 10: hottest month in one hundred and twenty thousand years. And yeah,
Speaker 10: that is an a that is a like a horrifying
Speaker 10: thing to learn and you can like look at know
Speaker 10: what what the sources for this are. But the fact
Speaker 10: that so many of us are just just denying this
Speaker 10: is that like as you like you can go outside
Speaker 10: and feel it as well, like it's like it's and
Speaker 10: that's not how climate works all the time. But like
Speaker 10: I've certainly I think many of us have have felt
Speaker 10: the effects of this. And also like the death numbers
Speaker 10: can't lie either. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And like I just got back from a trip
Speaker 3: which will be a podcast soon to the Marshall Islands,
Speaker 3: where it is extremely evident that sea levels are rising
Speaker 3: and if they continue to rise they're rising, then these
Speaker 3: places will be uninhabitable within the lifetime, so people who
Speaker 3: are alive today, And it's it's very odd to or
Speaker 3: very sort of discordant to see that. And then you
Speaker 3: log on when you get home and see someone being like, oh,
Speaker 3: it's natural variation, or you know, like oh, it's snowed
Speaker 3: last winter, or you know some something which shows like
Speaker 3: a name incomplete understanding, but still like just a knee
Speaker 3: jerk rejection of of like all the evidence we have
Speaker 3: that the climate is changing and it's it's not coming back.
Speaker 6: But I find myself the same that I have that
Speaker 6: same feelings sometimes when I see people refuse to engage
Speaker 6: with solutions, even with people who just are like, sure,
Speaker 6: oh that's real. There's nothing we can do about it,
Speaker 6: so we're not gonna try. Like feels very like and
Speaker 6: I don't mean like, I don't even mean a specific
Speaker 6: way of trying. I don't mean everyone has to go
Speaker 6: get arrested gluing themselves to famous things, or everyone needs
Speaker 6: to go set things on fire, everyone needs to only
Speaker 6: focus on growing food or like. But just when I
Speaker 6: see people like just being like, well, there's nothing, so
Speaker 6: I'm just gonna not take it into account in my
Speaker 6: decision making. I'm like, even if you're just vision making this,
Speaker 6: like like I made the decision to move near my
Speaker 6: family because a climate change. I didn't move to where
Speaker 6: the climate is going to be magically stable. I move
Speaker 6: to where I can spend more time with people I
Speaker 6: love and be in a better position to take care
Speaker 6: of them, you know, Like I just I feel so
Speaker 6: like I don't know, it was whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, no it is. And it's very difficult to
Speaker 3: see people just sort of fiddle as a Titanic scene,
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 10: Really shutting down is the is one of the easiest
Speaker 10: reactions to stress and ignoring both both the both like
Speaker 10: the like the like the v admitt like denial of this.
Speaker 10: As things are obviously getting more and more intense, the
Speaker 10: denial gets more and more intense. But so is like
Speaker 10: the types of like the type of dumerism that leads
Speaker 10: you just to like checking out of being like, oh
Speaker 10: this is so bad, just there's nothing I can do,
Speaker 10: so I'm just going to completely ignore this. And then
Speaker 10: that's that's also another way of just like sectioning off
Speaker 10: this party your brain so it doesn't actually impact you.
Speaker 6: It's it's functionally quite the same. And I can't blame
Speaker 6: people for it. And that's what I think. People often
Speaker 6: think that I am judging for them for that, and
Speaker 6: I'm not. I just feel like i'm it's just it's
Speaker 6: hard to engage with sometimes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But I think a good point to end is like,
Speaker 3: maybe the best prep you can do for climate change
Speaker 3: is not like buying a bigger air conditioner or moving
Speaker 3: to somewhere where you think there is a better chance
Speaker 3: that you personally as an individual will be better, but
Speaker 3: it's building a community that can be resilient and that
Speaker 3: can like weather the storm. And like having seen a
Speaker 3: country which is losing its very minimal amount of land
Speaker 3: to climate change and how communities have come together to
Speaker 3: protect each other during that, it's kind of reinforced to
Speaker 3: me how important community is as opposed to stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, Also with communities you can get more stuff.
Speaker 3: You can make your own stuf.
Speaker 6: That's true, seize the means of production. But not for
Speaker 6: the pure Marxist point of view, but from the I
Speaker 6: like joking, but I'm actually like, this is what people
Speaker 6: should be preparing to do. Like, yeah, a climate revolution
Speaker 6: that's less about like, oh, we're going to put in
Speaker 6: someone smart in charge's going to fix everything and more
Speaker 6: a climate revolution that's like we're going to create bottom
Speaker 6: up solutions and not let people stop us from creating
Speaker 6: bottom up solutions.
Speaker 3: Yes, that would be good. It would be a good revolution.
Speaker 3: Consider implementing that.
Speaker 2: It's it could happen here the podcast where things happen
Speaker 2: and sometimes things maybe don't happen. And once again the
Speaker 2: thing maybe not happening is the strike at UPS. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so stuff has happened since we lash recorded. And also
Speaker 2: there was the thing that happened to the middle of
Speaker 2: the recording, which was the announcement of the tentative agreement,
Speaker 2: and so to talk more about what's been happening since
Speaker 2: and what's sort of in this deal because we now
Speaker 2: know more details about it is once again Rehee Smith
Speaker 2: and Oliver Rose, who are too rank and file UPS
Speaker 2: teamsters and once again they do not represent the union,
Speaker 2: are speaking as individuals, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: welcome back.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I'm good to be back.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thanks for having us on again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad, I'm happy to talk to you. So
Speaker 2: all right, so last last time, we found out in
Speaker 2: the middle of recording that there is a deal struck,
Speaker 2: and I guess I wanted to start by talking a
Speaker 2: bit about what's been happening since then and what the
Speaker 2: sort of what sort of organizing has been happening, what
Speaker 2: the sort of union bureaucracy has been doing.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's uh, well, it's been kind of kind of crazy. Basically,
Speaker 9: you know, we had that highlight reel that we all got,
Speaker 9: and then it was a bit before we got the
Speaker 9: actual contract, at least like a few days. And since then,
Speaker 9: you know, you're in union bureaucracy has been promoting uh
Speaker 9: these contract Q and A sessions and stuff like that,
Speaker 9: and they had three of them last Sunday and one
Speaker 9: of them this Monday, and voting has opened up. Uh yeah,
Speaker 9: it's it's been a bit been a bit uh crazy feeling,
Speaker 9: to be honest. Uh yeah, yeah, it's been wild.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Of course, you know, while we're recording, you know,
Speaker 5: we get the tenet of agreement, uh drop, and you
Speaker 5: know it's framed us you know, this big historic uh
Speaker 5: you know, this game changer. So and you know, of
Speaker 5: course for the first day, we just had what was
Speaker 5: in the press release. Even some of that language was
Speaker 5: a little little bit confusing. Wasn't until Team Series for
Speaker 5: a Democratic Union also had their own like press release
Speaker 5: clarified some language, and then you know we're kind of
Speaker 5: just like, okay, we'll get you know, we're told we'll
Speaker 5: be getting the kind of agreement language next week and
Speaker 5: chance to you know, debrief with the local but really
Speaker 5: like the the I think it was the following day
Speaker 5: the actual language comes out, you know, and some of
Speaker 5: the things where it's you know, there's like a promise
Speaker 5: with the uh all the general wage increases going on
Speaker 5: top of those market rate adjustments we're speaking about, which
Speaker 5: are basically wages that are that ups can you know
Speaker 5: add or even remove that's not actually tied to the
Speaker 5: contract wages and you know, so one of the things was, yeah,
Speaker 5: getting those raises on top, but there was no contract
Speaker 5: language you know in there, which definitely caused I think
Speaker 5: a lot of confusion concern among rank and file members.
Speaker 5: And it actually took one of the locals, you know,
Speaker 5: having a no endorsement before we even saw this memorandum
Speaker 5: of understanding between the company and the IBT, you know,
Speaker 5: guaranteeing this was going to happen, you know, that we
Speaker 5: would be getting those raises on top. It was just
Speaker 5: kind of one of those things where you know, there
Speaker 5: was this kind of really vague language that was used
Speaker 5: and I think definitely caused you know, people to not
Speaker 5: really fully understand, you know, what was going on. Specially
Speaker 5: I think it was about seventy five percent of part
Speaker 5: timers are currently have a market rate adjustment. You know,
Speaker 5: that's kind of a very big portion of the workforce.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it was a I'm gonna be honest, it was
Speaker 9: a real it was kind of a real calm shit
Speaker 9: show from from union leadership. Releasing the information in the
Speaker 9: way they did it absolutely led to a lot of
Speaker 9: misunderstandings about what was in the contract, which you know,
Speaker 9: kind of spread like wildfire. And the union response to
Speaker 9: what I think is a lot of just genuine misunderstanding
Speaker 9: is to just label it all as misinformation from people
Speaker 9: that have, you know, their their own agendas, right, and
Speaker 9: you can't you can't like trust those people. You can
Speaker 9: only trust what's what's coming from the union. And Yeah,
Speaker 9: that definitely didn't inspire trust from the people that were
Speaker 9: leaning no, because in between a lot of these like
Speaker 9: and there is definitely was some misunderstanding about what was
Speaker 9: initially into the in the contract but there is also
Speaker 9: genuine critique about certain things that are in the contract, right,
Speaker 9: and so instead of like substantly, substantively like looking at
Speaker 9: these genuine critiques, we're all forced in the situation of
Speaker 9: sorting out what is quote unquote misinformation or you know,
Speaker 9: more accurately, people not understanding legalese and also a bad
Speaker 9: role out of information versus okay, but what is in
Speaker 9: the contract that really needs improvement? And instead of like
Speaker 9: substantively getting into the ladder, it's just been a pure
Speaker 9: focus on the former. And yeah, it's it's been it's
Speaker 9: been kind of tense. Uh, it seems like, you know,
Speaker 9: it seems like there's a real mix, it's real kind
Speaker 9: of even even uh, how rank and vile members are
Speaker 9: responding to this contract. You know, some have kind of
Speaker 9: bought in full sale that this is a historic contract,
Speaker 9: and others, you know, you know, such as myself, like,
Speaker 9: you know, there's still things in this contract that to
Speaker 9: me are unacceptable and it's going to be interesting to
Speaker 9: see where it goes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, you know, I kind of feel like
Speaker 5: it's hard to get a gauge of where everyone's at,
Speaker 5: and of course I only have the you know, kind
Speaker 5: of my local experience in my specific shift, you know, definitely, yeah,
Speaker 5: I haven't I haven't come across you know, someone I
Speaker 5: work with yet, you know who's totally just like, yeah,
Speaker 5: this is superhistoric, this is you know, game changing.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 5: You know, as they were saying, or the Union was saying,
Speaker 5: a lot of people, you know, especially long timers, like yeah,
Speaker 5: this is a really good contract with you know, the
Speaker 5: best I've seen, uh, you know, in my days here.
Speaker 5: And then there's you know, there's been another few other
Speaker 5: people who are like, yeah, I'm gonna vote yes, but
Speaker 5: it really doesn't really seem like you know, it's matching,
Speaker 5: you know, the framing of you know, this historic contract.
Speaker 5: And then also know there's yeah, I mean other people
Speaker 5: who are just kind of like, no, this seems I
Speaker 5: mean I was kind of like too little, too late,
Speaker 5: Like the games aren't quite there. Yeah, it's there's there's raises.
Speaker 5: They're also kind of done in weird way where they're
Speaker 5: more or less like kind of proNT loaded towards the
Speaker 5: first and last year, and everything in the middle is
Speaker 5: a lot lower to the point actually where and it
Speaker 5: gets confusing because everyone's kind of at a different rate
Speaker 5: with those market rate adjustments. You know, the more you're
Speaker 5: making from you know, that supplemental pay, the worse this
Speaker 5: is going to keep with inflation to the point where
Speaker 5: it's kind of you're only actually going to be just
Speaker 5: above inflation towards the end of the contract. Especially one
Speaker 5: of the definitely one of the weaker things in the
Speaker 5: contract is all new hires or current people without seniority
Speaker 5: are going to be on a different tier. And this
Speaker 5: is where the part timer inside warehouse positions, so you know,
Speaker 5: the uh yeah, so if you have seniority, it's minimum
Speaker 5: of twenty one an hour to start, and that goes
Speaker 5: up to twenty five seventy five an hour versus those
Speaker 5: new hires or no seniority employees are going to be
Speaker 5: at one with the progression to twenty three the fifty
Speaker 5: cent raises, and of course, uh you know, once you
Speaker 5: know tack on the average you know a little bit
Speaker 5: over three percent inflation, you know can kind of quickly see, uh,
Speaker 5: it's those new members who are getting the worst part
Speaker 5: of the deal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that comes to I think another thing that
Speaker 2: is like I don't know so, but when this was
Speaker 2: all first happening and I've seen this like a lot
Speaker 2: from people talking about this is people talking about this
Speaker 2: is like a contract that like ends the tier systems,
Speaker 2: and that just like doesn't seem to be true at all.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and so one of the things, So there's the yeah,
Speaker 5: I believe we spoke to this last time. The two
Speaker 5: two four is what it's called, where it's a combo
Speaker 5: driver and inside warehouse position and most of the time,
Speaker 5: you know, they were just more or less practically full
Speaker 5: time drivers, except for a few times where you know
Speaker 5: they es'ch like earlier this year they tried to transition
Speaker 5: them to mostly like inside full time. But so the
Speaker 5: thing is, yeah, those will all get you know, converted
Speaker 5: to the package car drivers with that, I believe, with
Speaker 5: that raid or at least very similar.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so we did get rid of the twenty two fours,
Speaker 9: and that was the big promise, you know, going into
Speaker 9: this contract fight. But yeah, no, there are definitely still
Speaker 9: remaining tiers within ups. You know, there's this new one
Speaker 9: that's been created, which is the you know, the tier
Speaker 9: between the what they call the unborn. That's how they
Speaker 9: refer to people that have not yet been hired by
Speaker 9: ups that have like stipulations in the contract, right, Yeah,
Speaker 9: they call them the unborn. It's it's kind of funny.
Speaker 9: And you know, their whole thing is that they just
Speaker 9: have a completely different wage progression than the rest of
Speaker 9: us do. But in addition to that tier which was introduced,
Speaker 9: you know, there are tiers elsewhere. Sometimes it's a tier
Speaker 9: between the hubs, like all of the hubs are making
Speaker 9: different MRAs and stuff like that. But additionally, there are
Speaker 9: some hubs that don't have a daily guarantee of hours
Speaker 9: like regular hubs do, like for instance, air hubs. Right,
Speaker 9: so like that's another basically another tier, because it's you know,
Speaker 9: people doing the same work but not guaranteed the same things.
Speaker 9: And yeah, yeah, so there's definitely tiers remaining in this
Speaker 9: contract for sure, and it's really unfortunate to see that
Speaker 9: the one existing didn't get addressed and that they just
Speaker 9: created a whole new one, even though they are adamantly
Speaker 9: insisting it is not a tier.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and that's you know, and this goes back to,
Speaker 5: I believe the nineteen eighty two contract, which is when
Speaker 5: the full time and part time pay was changed to
Speaker 5: different different tiers, with part time getting like four dollars
Speaker 5: less than full time, which was I think twelve twelve
Speaker 5: an hour back in eighty two versus eight an hour
Speaker 5: for the part timers, you know, so that that's continued,
Speaker 5: you know, across all these decades. And so now with
Speaker 5: the current contract, provided you're getting paid the contract minimums, Yeah,
Speaker 5: you're looking at full time inside warehouse, their top rate
Speaker 5: going to thirty six dollars an hour, I believe, and
Speaker 5: then you're gonna have part timers who have seniority just
Speaker 5: below twenty six an hour, and then you're gonna have
Speaker 5: those people who weren't quite in the door yet at
Speaker 5: twenty three. And of course, you know it's doing more
Speaker 5: or less the you know, the same work the inside.
Speaker 5: You know, you're doing your loading, unloading, sorting, the other
Speaker 5: you know, various positions there. And of course, you know,
Speaker 5: one of the things I've seen, you know, particularly online,
Speaker 5: I haven't heard this on the shop floor. It's just like, oh, well,
Speaker 5: you know they're working more, so of course they're going
Speaker 5: to get paid more. But it's like, okay, well, yeah,
Speaker 5: they have more hours, so they would get more paid,
Speaker 5: but that doesn't mean that they should be at a
Speaker 5: higher hourly rate. Yeah, there's going to be other things too,
Speaker 5: like the pension of CRUL and you know, vacation time
Speaker 5: where you're working more, you're going to get more of
Speaker 5: that too. It's kind of has its own reward. There's
Speaker 5: really no reason to have, you know, like a ten
Speaker 5: dollars discrepancy for that type of works performed.
Speaker 1: Also, I was doing some quick math in the background,
Speaker 1: and the.
Speaker 2: Nineteen eighty two I wagees like thirty six dollars an
Speaker 2: hour and with inflation. Now, so that's FRAE. That's fine.
Speaker 9: Sorry, Yeah, I don't know. I think it's when I
Speaker 9: think about, you know, this union being touted as historic,
Speaker 9: I like actually think about, like what are the actual
Speaker 9: historic wins of the labor movement, And you know, I'm
Speaker 9: thinking about, like, you know, the right to a five
Speaker 9: day work week. Meanwhile, this historic contract, you know it
Speaker 9: ended six day punches, but that's that's not a new
Speaker 9: historical thing. That was something we lost and then regained
Speaker 9: with this contract. So it's you know, in my mind,
Speaker 9: it's not really breaking any barriers or like you know,
Speaker 9: blowing anyone's minds, you know, especially when we have Sean
Speaker 9: Faine of the UAWD, who is talking about, you know,
Speaker 9: one of their demands is a thirty two hour work week, right,
Speaker 9: Like he's he's advocating that every worker needs a forty
Speaker 9: percent increase in pay because the CEO got a forty
Speaker 9: percent increase in pay. And yeah, it's just yeah, our
Speaker 9: contract just you know, it isn't at that level by
Speaker 9: any means.
Speaker 5: When you s that word historic, you know, like I
Speaker 5: think there could be times where you can, you know,
Speaker 5: call something historic before it stands the test of time.
Speaker 5: But this is kind of like, Okay, this is kind
Speaker 5: of I feel like the contract, you know, you would
Speaker 5: expect a union to bargain. Maybe it's I mean partly
Speaker 5: it's historic because there just really hasn't been really any
Speaker 5: gains and so it's kind of like, Okay, you've got
Speaker 5: us wage increases. Isn't that kind of just like what
Speaker 5: you should be doing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean, I mean this is this has
Speaker 2: been there's been like this has been like the there's
Speaker 2: been a bunch of unions in the last like maybe
Speaker 2: like eight months who have like settled and been like
Speaker 2: we've gotten historic races, and it's like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's the thing that seems actually historic about it is
Speaker 2: essentially averting like averting this massive strikewave.
Speaker 5: Yeah, one of the things I want to add was,
Speaker 5: you know, especially with those combo positions, uh, you know,
Speaker 5: ending that tier. That was something that was introduced in
Speaker 5: the previous contract, which rank and file members voted down.
Speaker 5: It was a no vote, but it was just because
Speaker 5: of this uh you know, kind of obscure you know
Speaker 5: rule in the constitution where it's just like fifty percent
Speaker 5: of people don't vote, then it required the two thirds
Speaker 5: you know, no vote. So you know, that was just
Speaker 5: completely you know, over overruled by the union, like we're
Speaker 5: going to do this anyways, So kind of you know,
Speaker 5: it's good that we righted that wrong. You know, it's
Speaker 5: good to reduce a tier. Of course, I'm not going
Speaker 5: to knock that, but just kind of those things where
Speaker 5: it's like, yeah, but membership already didn't want that, or
Speaker 5: at least.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you guys, did you guys introduced this in the
Speaker 2: first place, like come on, yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah. It's also worth note that the twenty two to
Speaker 9: four position, you know, it wasn't working for our members,
Speaker 9: but it also wasn't working for the company either. They
Speaker 9: were having significant trouble trying to fill all the shifts
Speaker 9: that were needed and required by the position, and to
Speaker 9: the point that workers ended up kind of being slotted
Speaker 9: into one or the other with like really bad schedules,
Speaker 9: and it wasn't It wasn't working for either, is the thing.
Speaker 9: So it is it's great that we got rid of it,
Speaker 9: but it seems like it was somewhat of an easy
Speaker 9: thing to win. It made mutual sense, right, and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 9: it's just there were you know, there were bigger there
Speaker 9: could have been bigger fights over other things in this
Speaker 9: contract that weren't pursued, right, So.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's that's the thing. From everything that
Speaker 2: I've seen from it, it seems like it seems like
Speaker 2: the goal of this contract is to get a contract
Speaker 2: that's like exactly good enough to get like fifty one
Speaker 2: percent of the vote in a contract to avoid UPS
Speaker 2: having to like actually deal with a contract that a
Speaker 2: strip would produce.
Speaker 9: Mm hm oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah. It's kind of the I mean, whether I mean
Speaker 5: probably intentional where it's just like you know, it's like
Speaker 5: just good enough you know to maybe warrant like a
Speaker 5: yes vote, and especially i mean in context of you know,
Speaker 5: the last however many contracts, but it's kind of one
Speaker 5: of those things where it's like, okay, by comparison, it's good.
Speaker 5: But again, you know, I don't think it quite goes
Speaker 5: far enough either on the wage side, you know, on
Speaker 5: the on the wages or you know, especially one of
Speaker 5: the issues I've been focused on a lot is the
Speaker 5: heat protections.
Speaker 2: Yeah, can we can we talk about well specifically the
Speaker 2: heat protections, but then also kind of talk a bit
Speaker 2: about what's what is in the contract and what like
Speaker 2: isn't in the contract that should be Oh yeah, you
Speaker 2: can start with the heat production stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So one of the things, so they'll be rolling
Speaker 5: out air conditioners in the the uh All trucks package
Speaker 5: cars purchase to believe after August of the next year,
Speaker 5: and they'll be kind of distributing them by zones and
Speaker 5: current ones will be retrofitted with my heat shields and events.
Speaker 5: I'm not quite sure how effective that'll be. One of
Speaker 5: the things for the inside people, you know it's there.
Speaker 5: You know, they'll be installing you know, tens of thousands
Speaker 5: of more fans, which you know, I'm not gonna lie
Speaker 5: that that will feel really nice because those trailers just
Speaker 5: get so hot and stuffy. There's no airflow, especially like
Speaker 5: if it's been sitting for a while, you open the door,
Speaker 5: it's just like a blast of heat. But the problem
Speaker 5: with fans is they're only so effective, particularly once it
Speaker 5: reaches ninety five degrees. They don't do anything. And so
Speaker 5: you know, there's a lot of places where it'll probably
Speaker 5: feel nice and it might help to some degree, but
Speaker 5: you know, especially like right now in you know, like
Speaker 5: the Southwest and the south where you've just had these
Speaker 5: you know, one hundred and ten plus degree days, you know,
Speaker 5: like over a month, like that's not going to do
Speaker 5: really do much, especially if you're anywhere depending on if
Speaker 5: you've got dry heat or you know, higher humidity. In
Speaker 5: the latter, fans can and sometimes make it worse. I'm
Speaker 5: also worried it's going to kind of be like this
Speaker 5: kind of like a comparison to a like security theater,
Speaker 5: but like more like safety theater, where it's this appearance
Speaker 5: of doing something to say like, look, we're doing this thing.
Speaker 5: It's going to keep you safe. But whether that's you know,
Speaker 5: actually true or not, well, I mean, we'll kind of
Speaker 5: find out. But definitely I'm pretty worried about, you know,
Speaker 5: what's going to happen, especially in the next five years
Speaker 5: we already have and I think it was the it
Speaker 5: was it. It was the World Meteorological Organization, you know,
Speaker 5: now has a their researchers have like a ninety eight
Speaker 5: percent certainty that we're going to reach a high mark
Speaker 5: for global warming before twenty twenty seven, so, you know,
Speaker 5: and I'm pretty sure last July was already the the
Speaker 5: hottest month on record globally, and it's something to read.
Speaker 5: There's and I think in that report was like a
Speaker 5: sixty six percent chance of passing that one point five
Speaker 5: degrees celsius warming global warming between now and twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 5: So it's kind of one of those things where you know,
Speaker 5: I don't think we necessarily have five years to to
Speaker 5: you know, address this contract language and add further protections.
Speaker 5: Especially we've got other unions like the International Longshorn Warehouse Union.
Speaker 5: They had an article that's talking about their heat protections,
Speaker 5: which have things like stewards that are equipped with heat
Speaker 5: monitoring equipment versus the current contract language for us would
Speaker 5: be they can just use like the OSHA app or
Speaker 5: you know, like weather service to check you know, like
Speaker 5: a weather station versus like the actual specific conditions you're
Speaker 5: working in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, that seems like there'd be a huge it
Speaker 2: seems like there's a huge discrepancy there because like the
Speaker 2: indoor temperatures and temperatures in these trailers are way hotter
Speaker 2: than like the reported conditions.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it can be like five ten degrees hotter
Speaker 5: at least. I bought a little thermometer and hydrometer, hygrometer
Speaker 5: something like that whatever, measure to humidity, because that's kind
Speaker 5: of how because there are states with heat protections, there's
Speaker 5: like seven of them. A lot of times they're using
Speaker 5: the heat index when you're factoring in the temperature and
Speaker 5: humidity to get the fields like temperature and yeah, with
Speaker 5: the il WU, you know, they're also getting rest breaks
Speaker 5: as part of their contract language, which I believe two
Speaker 5: or three states have those of the seven total that
Speaker 5: actually have heat protections. And you know, the il WU
Speaker 5: is kind of talking about even though they have heat
Speaker 5: protections that kind of match or even kind of exceed
Speaker 5: partly what some of the states have. You know, they're
Speaker 5: kind of saying, this isn't enough for the current extreme
Speaker 5: heat we're facing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, and you know, we've talked about this
Speaker 2: on the show before, but like whatever heat protections get
Speaker 2: negotiated in a contract, like the company is going to
Speaker 2: basically the instant negotiations are over, is going to figure
Speaker 2: out what the a what the cheapest possible way to
Speaker 2: do this is with the shittiest equipment, and then be
Speaker 2: like try to They're going to immediately try to figure
Speaker 2: out like how you know, like how how to actually
Speaker 2: subvert it. And you know, this is this is the
Speaker 2: thing we've seen all over the world, even in places
Speaker 2: that have sort of national heat protection laws, is that
Speaker 2: you know, even even if you have a law, or
Speaker 2: even if you have a thing in the contract, even
Speaker 2: if you have something in your contract, it doesn't necessarily
Speaker 2: mean it's going to be enforced. And that requires a
Speaker 2: you know, it requires like a pretty significant degree of
Speaker 2: organization to make sure it stays enforced. And that's you
Speaker 2: know that that's true both of stuff that's in contract
Speaker 2: and stuff that's like legally required, and so like if
Speaker 2: if if if the thing that they're nominally required to
Speaker 2: do is still insufficient, it's going to end up being
Speaker 2: way worse than that on the ground.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we're seeing that with art I mean existing heat
Speaker 5: protections at the state level where they're you know, falling
Speaker 5: short and especially you know there's either you know, there's
Speaker 5: kind of loopholes or even just kind of like murky
Speaker 5: language that makes it really hard to enforce in some.
Speaker 2: Cases, do not have a good transition.
Speaker 1: But it's hot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, here here are some ads that are i don't know,
Speaker 2: hopefully not making the climate worse. And we're back. So
Speaker 2: outside of the sort of of the experience around heat,
Speaker 2: what what else has been going?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 2: What else is in the contract that there's been sort
Speaker 2: of dispute over?
Speaker 9: So if you look online, and this is an instance
Speaker 9: of not really quite understanding what's in the contract. But
Speaker 9: if you go online, a lot of people think that
Speaker 9: there are pension freezes in the contract and one once again,
Speaker 9: I think we can contribute this misunderstanding to a calm
Speaker 9: strategy failure as well as a lack of open bargaining
Speaker 9: the the dot coms. The pension contribution rate has decreased,
Speaker 9: but money is still going in to the pension fund,
Speaker 9: not as much as it was. Is my understanding. The
Speaker 9: way the union broke it down for me was like
Speaker 9: there's a dollar and twenty five cents of that dollar
Speaker 9: is going to healthcare. Twenty five cents of that dollar
Speaker 9: is going to the pension and then fifty cents of
Speaker 9: it is going to wages. And I'm gonna be honest
Speaker 9: with you, I don't super understand all this money stuff either,
Speaker 9: but we yeah, they showed us a thing where like
Speaker 9: the contributions are going to keep happening. Other things that
Speaker 9: have been in the kind of in the like what
Speaker 9: we've all what people have been thinking about is the
Speaker 9: full time jobs, which I know we talked a lot
Speaker 9: about on the last one, and uh, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 9: I think we we were using the seventy five hundred
Speaker 9: for newly created jobs, but apparently the contract also specifically
Speaker 9: requires them to actually fill the twenty two thousand some
Speaker 9: full time jobs that exist that they just have not
Speaker 9: been filling. But even with that additional twenty two thousand,
Speaker 9: that's still roughly thirty thousand full time jobs, that is
Speaker 9: for the full time workfor for the whole workforce of
Speaker 9: three hundred and forty thousand people. And something I learned
Speaker 9: is that full time drivers can bid into those positions
Speaker 9: and get them because they will likely have the seniority
Speaker 9: to do so. Because that's how we determine how to
Speaker 9: fill jobs. It's by seniority. You know, how long have
Speaker 9: you been there? And usually you know, I think that
Speaker 9: makes sense, but you know that really just contributes to
Speaker 9: the long long wait of part timers trying to get
Speaker 9: full time work, right, And yeah, like the thing like
Speaker 9: kind of related to that. You know, we have these
Speaker 9: like if you have a market rate adjustment and you
Speaker 9: get your two seventy five, for me, that's going to
Speaker 9: be twenty six seventy five an hour, And that looks
Speaker 9: great until you remember that we are part time. It
Speaker 9: is like we are supposed to work half a work week.
Speaker 9: I work less than because of the hub that I
Speaker 9: am at, which is not great, but you know, we
Speaker 9: need the hours and there's not the there isn't enough jobs,
Speaker 9: and that's stimulated by this contract. I think that there
Speaker 9: probably could be a lot more jobs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to see something about that specifically too,
Speaker 2: which is that like when when like you random listener
Speaker 2: who's not working EPs whenever you see someone like talking
Speaker 2: about a wage number, and it's for part timers, Like
Speaker 2: if if you want to try to figure out can
Speaker 2: this person's your vibe? You need to divide that number
Speaker 2: by two at like at the very least divide up
Speaker 2: by two, possibly divide it by more, because again, like you,
Speaker 2: they don't. No one's like if you're a part timer,
Speaker 2: like obviously, yeah you're not. You're not getting the hours
Speaker 2: that you know, that that that you that you would
Speaker 2: norbly you know if you can't just immediately convert that
Speaker 2: to what would the salary be if you worked, if
Speaker 2: you got like forty hours a week or whatever, Like,
Speaker 2: you can't do that. I've seen a lot I've seen
Speaker 2: this a lot, a lot, like on the internet. I've
Speaker 2: seen pundits talking about it like this, and it's just
Speaker 2: like a incomprehensible misunderstanding of the act of like how
Speaker 2: how this stuff actually works for you to be going like, oh,
Speaker 2: look at all this money that people are making, assuming
Speaker 2: that like you know, and then and then using calculations
Speaker 2: that are based on like someone working full time, which
Speaker 2: is most of the workforce, like a significant significant majority
Speaker 2: of the workforce is not is not working full time
Speaker 2: and will not be even after this contract.
Speaker 9: Yes, yeah, it's yeah, it's estimated there are sixty percent
Speaker 9: of the workforce is uh is part timers. So yeah, no,
Speaker 9: that that is a that is a huge issue, you know,
Speaker 9: a lot of people also, like when this is brought up,
Speaker 9: a lot of people like to then say, well, you know,
Speaker 9: get a second job, but our jobs aren't flexible. Like,
Speaker 9: first of all, fuck fuck having a second job. I
Speaker 9: am kind of staunchly opposed to the entire concept. But
Speaker 9: even if I wasn't, this job is not flexible enough
Speaker 9: to account for a second job, not unless you never
Speaker 9: want to sleep in your second job. Is when you
Speaker 9: should be like sleeping because you know, we have our
Speaker 9: start times, those are given to us a week in advance,
Speaker 9: but we don't know when our end times are because
Speaker 9: the end times are when we run out of packages.
Speaker 9: So you know, some days, you know, like in my hub,
Speaker 9: it's always just going to be the two hours, but
Speaker 9: like in other hubs, you could be there, you know,
Speaker 9: you could be trying to get your three and a
Speaker 9: half hour daily guarantee, like employing that when they're trying
Speaker 9: to send you home, or you could be there six
Speaker 9: seven hours, and you know, how, how how is another
Speaker 9: employer supposed to operate with that? You know, you call
Speaker 9: in like three times saying like, oh, I can't actually
Speaker 9: leave my first job. You're not gonna have that second
Speaker 9: job much longer. So yeah, in addition to the lack
Speaker 9: of full time jobs, the way this job is makes
Speaker 9: a second one impossible. So a lot of our part
Speaker 9: timers really are relying on that on that part time
Speaker 9: wage to get them through and picking up doubles when
Speaker 9: they can, which means you kind of end up having
Speaker 9: a ten hour day because there's like about a two
Speaker 9: hour like space of time in between the shifts. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 9: it's uh, yeah, those are those are some some of
Speaker 9: the big issues.
Speaker 5: So yeah, that's one of my worries. You know, if
Speaker 5: I about you know, if I want to go full
Speaker 5: time or not, is you know, can be at least
Speaker 5: in the hub I work at, I would say usually
Speaker 5: I'm getting like twenty four hours a week, you know
Speaker 5: if I'm going full time, but double that because now
Speaker 5: I'm marking two shifts. But also you know, got to
Speaker 5: have that like hour or two of wait time between shifts.
Speaker 5: So you know, it's just a lot of time to
Speaker 5: be spending at work, especially on paid time at work.
Speaker 5: That is that is the worst. You know, it's not
Speaker 5: quite long enough stretch to like go home or at
Speaker 5: least you know you have a decent commute to work.
Speaker 5: And you know, another thing kind of came to my
Speaker 5: mind a little earlier earlier was that and it sounds like,
Speaker 5: at least talking with new hires, that this is still continuing,
Speaker 5: which is kind of this really deceptive hiring practice where
Speaker 5: the hours are posted. When I got the job, you know,
Speaker 5: it was posted as part time for get, it was
Speaker 5: something like I don't know, nine to four, but you know,
Speaker 5: had that schedule for five days a week, seven hour shifts,
Speaker 5: thirty five hours a week times. By the twenty six
Speaker 5: starting pay, I was like, oh, perfect, I'll be making like,
Speaker 5: you know, somewhere like mid forty thousand. That's that's livable
Speaker 5: at least for for my specific you know circumstances. But
Speaker 5: then of course get there and you know the yeah,
Speaker 5: we get two days notice for a start time. It's
Speaker 5: posted on our either you know, end of the week,
Speaker 5: so don't know exactly when I'm working, you know, until
Speaker 5: right before the next week, and you know, at least
Speaker 5: there an orientation. So when I asked, oh, like, what's
Speaker 5: actually the end time, I was just like, well, when
Speaker 5: the last package is loaded. Of course, if you know
Speaker 5: what when the next shift starts, you can kind of
Speaker 5: get a better idea of when you'll actually be out
Speaker 5: of there. But still it's just kind of it's, you know,
Speaker 5: it's this claim flexibility, but it's very difficult you know,
Speaker 5: to actually work a second job or even you know,
Speaker 5: they offer tuition reimbursement, and there's a number of students
Speaker 5: who have had you know, a hard time actually like
Speaker 5: you know, getting the time off to attend their classes.
Speaker 5: And I also say, in anywhere that's part time work
Speaker 5: that offers tuition reimbursement, you know, I would say there's
Speaker 5: an expected expectation that Okay, well you're going to school
Speaker 5: and you're working part time. You would think the wages
Speaker 5: then should at least you know, provide enough for rent, food, gas, textbooks,
Speaker 5: all that.
Speaker 9: Yeah, to piggyback off of what Oliver just said regarding
Speaker 9: you know, like this is a wage that is good
Speaker 9: for you know, their situation when they were assuming it
Speaker 9: was at the you know, thirty five hours a week.
Speaker 9: You know, another thing to think about is a lot
Speaker 9: of these part timers, you know, they have families, they
Speaker 9: have significant others that they're caring for. Like, you know
Speaker 9: a lot of people look at this wage and one
Speaker 9: make the faulty assumption that you talked about earlier by
Speaker 9: multiplying it by forty to get the forty and then
Speaker 9: they assume that's for just that one person, And like
Speaker 9: there are part timers of every age, right, and they
Speaker 9: all have their own their own families and stuff like
Speaker 9: that that they are expected to care for as well.
Speaker 9: So like when you look at all of this and
Speaker 9: the you know, the rate of inflation and the way
Speaker 9: the economy is, and you take all of these things
Speaker 9: into account, like the gains that are provided for in
Speaker 9: this contract is not enough when you consider the whole
Speaker 9: of everyone who works at UPS. You know, it's leaving
Speaker 9: behind families, right, Like yeah, it's it's wild.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think another thing that isn't talked about that
Speaker 2: much in terms of this is like the actual physical
Speaker 2: effect on your body of doing this kind of work,
Speaker 2: because this is like.
Speaker 1: I don't know, this kind of work is.
Speaker 2: Intense enough that I mean, there's there's there's very rare
Speaker 2: risk of injury, and there's also I mean just like
Speaker 2: you know, over the course of time, doing this kind
Speaker 2: of shit is going to like fuck up your body,
Speaker 2: and you know, like part part of the sort of
Speaker 2: bargain of like like part part of the bargain of
Speaker 2: this work is that you're getting you know, it's it's
Speaker 2: in some ways, like it's in some ways like you
Speaker 2: could think about it, like if you're a midlevel football player,
Speaker 2: like you're gonna get your fucking brain destroyed by just
Speaker 2: repeated head trauma, right, and you know, so, so there's
Speaker 2: only a limited amount of time your body can physically
Speaker 2: handle this. And it's like, yeah, okay, it looks like
Speaker 2: you're getting a lot of money in a very short
Speaker 2: amount of time, but you have to, you know, you
Speaker 2: have to live with the sort of physical consequences of
Speaker 2: what happened of what happened to you on that job
Speaker 2: getting the money. So that money also like not just
Speaker 2: doesn't just have to get you to like now right,
Speaker 2: like it also it has to also essentially be compensation
Speaker 2: to the physical damage that you're doing to your body
Speaker 2: by doing this shit. And you know, I think I
Speaker 2: think it I think like these ways look even worse
Speaker 2: when you look at like, you know, when you when
Speaker 2: you think of it in terms of you know, in
Speaker 2: in in like in like not even not just in
Speaker 2: terms of immediate rent, but like in in the really
Speaker 2: long term of having to you know, live with the
Speaker 2: sort of physical damage that you take from doing this stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and that's fine. I just had a coworker talking
Speaker 5: about that today actually, And because that's I mean, there
Speaker 5: are a lot of like college age kids, you know,
Speaker 5: the early twenties. They've at least from you know, my
Speaker 5: experience of notes kind of usually they're kind of like
Speaker 5: the quick turnover. I feel like a lot of people
Speaker 5: are staying more like their you know, thirties, forties. You know,
Speaker 5: we have people older older than that too on my line,
Speaker 5: and I think part of that's just like kind of
Speaker 5: we understand the importance of i mean a gold tier
Speaker 5: health insurance plan and a pension, but you know, of
Speaker 5: course with you know, being older, uh, it's going to
Speaker 5: you know, have even more of an effect on the body.
Speaker 5: And yeah, I know, I know. I've heard people talking
Speaker 5: about this where it's just like, oh, well it's just
Speaker 5: part time or it's you know, entry level you know,
Speaker 5: quote unquote, uh you don't need a degree for this,
Speaker 5: so like why do you think you should be paid more?
Speaker 5: And it's like, well, it's it's brutal. I mean, we
Speaker 5: get a ten minute break, we're working up to six
Speaker 5: hours that is it. Why don't have to do a
Speaker 5: lunch break. I don't know. It seems like UPS just
Speaker 5: always gets there their way, and uh that's you know,
Speaker 5: like state, local, federal law that they don't care. Yeah, right,
Speaker 5: even this last contract and there's so many violations. Of course,
Speaker 5: you know we got to whether you know this is
Speaker 5: yes or no, whatever the next contract is. You know,
Speaker 5: that's going to be a big part of the fight
Speaker 5: is just holding them accountable and to the terms.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Like I you know, I've had coworkers
Speaker 9: out on you know, uh workers comp for like you know,
Speaker 9: doing physical therapy for the injuries that they got on
Speaker 9: the job for like months at a time. Right, these
Speaker 9: like you know, we're sitting around loading boxes all day
Speaker 9: and some of them are very light, but some of
Speaker 9: them are really fucking heavy. Some of them are really
Speaker 9: awkward to hold. They're weirdly shaped. Like, there are some
Speaker 9: boxes where, like they tell you about, UPS tells you
Speaker 9: about methods the eight keys of lifting and lowering that
Speaker 9: you know should make it safe, but like there are
Speaker 9: some boxes where it's impossible to follow those. Those methods
Speaker 9: the absolute bane of my existence, and I recognize them
Speaker 9: every time I see them. I swear to God, these
Speaker 9: things must be just filled with lead because you look
Speaker 9: at them and it's a very small box. You know,
Speaker 9: it's not more than like probably twelve inches long, you know,
Speaker 9: like no, not even twelve inches, probably more like seven
Speaker 9: inches long, you know, like six seven inches wide, and
Speaker 9: then like two and a half inches you know deep,
Speaker 9: And that should be a very easy box, but it's
Speaker 9: like filled with lead. And for whatever reason, it can
Speaker 9: weigh like thirty five to fifty pounds Jesus, And it's
Speaker 9: like one that box is too small to like have
Speaker 9: a team lift on because you can't have two people
Speaker 9: around something like that. And like, you know, when you
Speaker 9: pick up a box, you're supposed to keep the natural
Speaker 9: curve of your back, but do not over extend the curve.
Speaker 9: And you have to for those like packages like that, right,
Speaker 9: Like there's not a way to position yourself to lift
Speaker 9: them safely, and you kind of have to a little
Speaker 9: bit jerk up, which they tell you not to do,
Speaker 9: but that's the only way to get leverage on it.
Speaker 9: And yeah, like and you know, I've been in trailers
Speaker 9: where like a box like that was loaded precariously, like
Speaker 9: just slightly above my head. And one time it came
Speaker 9: crashing down and I like neoed out of the way,
Speaker 9: like I was like in the fucking matrix, and I
Speaker 9: was just like, oh, if I had just been a
Speaker 9: little bit less responsive, that could have been a very
Speaker 9: serious head injury for me. And so yeah, the risk
Speaker 9: of like very severe injury. Like, you know, I busted
Speaker 9: my face open on a grate outside of where the
Speaker 9: what we call the cans, which are like the things
Speaker 9: that have all the packages they bring them to the
Speaker 9: bay doors. I was unloading and I had to go
Speaker 9: between them, and I like there was motor oil spilled.
Speaker 9: I tripped and I like smashed my open my face
Speaker 9: open on a fucking grate and had to get stitches.
Speaker 9: Like it's yeah, no, the safety involved with this job
Speaker 9: is not extremely guaranteed, and yeah, the risk of injury
Speaker 9: is high and we should be preemptively compensated for that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like and even somehow if you managed to
Speaker 5: go like your whole career without a single injury, you know,
Speaker 5: there's well at least like more the kind of like
Speaker 5: accidental injury because it's still it's a lot of repetitive
Speaker 5: motion and you're gonna I mean eventually it's going to
Speaker 5: take its tall.
Speaker 2: If we were doing we're doing, we're doing some more ads.
Speaker 2: Yeah by things, all right, we are back. So I
Speaker 2: guess I know. Another aspect of this that I wanted
Speaker 2: to talk about has been the sort of broader strategy
Speaker 2: of trying to avoid strikes. And this has been both
Speaker 2: sort of to some extent run by union, to some
Speaker 2: extent like imposed from the top down. One of the
Speaker 2: things I wanted to sort of talk about. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: think in a sort of kind of underdiscussed aspect of
Speaker 2: what's been happening in the last sort of year or
Speaker 2: so has been Biden's willingness to get involved in strikes. Earlier,
Speaker 2: you know, Obama eventually got involved in a couple of
Speaker 2: strikes during his tenure, but he tended to not get
Speaker 2: involved until like a strike had been going on for
Speaker 2: like nine months or whatever. And Biden's been taking like
Speaker 2: a very very proactive approach to sort of I don't know,
Speaker 2: strike mitigation. I guess is the sort of of like
Speaker 2: sanitized term you take you to there, like keeping labor piece.
Speaker 2: But he seems to have a sort of you know,
Speaker 2: he's to be getting very very involved very quickly in
Speaker 2: trying to make sure that strikes don't happen. And you
Speaker 2: know the consequence of this is that we didn't get
Speaker 2: the rail strike that we should have gotten, and there's
Speaker 2: been a few other strikes that has sort of been
Speaker 2: a verdant And I wanted to ask, I guess how
Speaker 2: you're thinking about this strike, not just sort of in
Speaker 2: terms of like the immediate benefits, but in terms of
Speaker 2: what it would actually mean if like another major strike
Speaker 2: sort of get shut down before we can get going
Speaker 2: in a year that is, I mean, still even if
Speaker 2: the strike doesn't happen, a pretty sort of full year
Speaker 2: in labor terms.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, well one, I guess I gotta say thank
Speaker 9: you to the most pro labor president of our life.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 9: No, he yeah, you're absolutely right. He seem to be
Speaker 9: getting involved early and mitigating them. If I was, if
Speaker 9: I had to speculate, I you know, I he's very
Speaker 9: concerned about this whole economy thing that we keep talking about, right,
Speaker 9: and he doesn't want to see any big shocks to
Speaker 9: the economy. And you know that's something where I guess
Speaker 9: I disagree. I think, you know, I think a shock
Speaker 9: to the economy that is brought about by workers going
Speaker 9: on strike is a reminds them of what they have
Speaker 9: and what they move and what they create, right, And
Speaker 9: I think, yeah, the ruling class, you know, our politicians
Speaker 9: and the capitalists who own our politicians, they they don't
Speaker 9: want us to experience that. You know, Like I remember
Speaker 9: even during the you know, the Trump administration, when you
Speaker 9: know it was when during the government shutdown and Sarah
Speaker 9: Nelson got all the flight attendants to do a sick
Speaker 9: out and stuff like that, and kind of just like that,
Speaker 9: the government shutdown had ended and they all went back
Speaker 9: to do government things, whatever those government things are. And
Speaker 9: you know, like people on Twitter, you know, they were
Speaker 9: talking about like, yeah, this is like workers have power
Speaker 9: to affect not only their own work conditions, but they
Speaker 9: can have broad implications on society, on the political climate,
Speaker 9: on what's going on. And yeah, there was absolutely, I
Speaker 9: think a contingent of centrist liberals that were like really
Speaker 9: frightened by that idea. You know. They they like a
Speaker 9: society in which the right people with who went to
Speaker 9: the right schools and all of that, like where they
Speaker 9: are the ones that are in charge and they are
Speaker 9: the ones that are shaping history with the pen strokes
Speaker 9: on like, you know, whatever bills they're legislating, and yeah,
Speaker 9: I think they have a vested interest in making sure
Speaker 9: that workers don't get to experience that sense of autonomy
Speaker 9: that they can experience by going on strike and by seeing,
Speaker 9: you know, exactly what kind of power they have and
Speaker 9: what it does, because they don't want it. They don't
Speaker 9: want it to get beyond what's going on in the workplace.
Speaker 9: They barely want it there, you know. Like so yeah, yeah,
Speaker 9: I think there is a vested interest. And yeah, I
Speaker 9: have not been able to see it confirmed, but I
Speaker 9: have seen in articles where they will say that, you know,
Speaker 9: Sean O'Brien had met with President Biden, but then there
Speaker 9: isn't a link click through, so I can't figure out
Speaker 9: what the initial thing is. But I'm not surprised. I'm
Speaker 9: not surprised, Like, and it's it's a it's a damn shame.
Speaker 9: It's you know, it's a shame that the president of
Speaker 9: our local union, you know, should that have happened succumb
Speaker 9: to it, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing. Whe's like, it's been really hard
Speaker 2: to get reliable information on. It's also possible they were
Speaker 2: sort of behind the scenes talks that we just don't
Speaker 2: know about. But you know, the place we know this
Speaker 2: happened is we know this happened between the rail strikes,
Speaker 2: right there was a lot of pressure from rail unions
Speaker 2: to like like on on their rank and file to
Speaker 2: like get to just like sign on to some kind
Speaker 2: of agreement. And I think I think this is something
Speaker 2: that you know, in terms of sort of political repression,
Speaker 2: Like it's something that's not understood in the same way,
Speaker 2: but like that is also still like that, Like that
Speaker 2: that like negotiating behind the scenes and putting pressure on
Speaker 2: and then you know, eventually Biden does just actively like
Speaker 2: mandate that the strike can't happen, right, Like that is
Speaker 2: like that I I I will argue that that is
Speaker 2: in fact a full of strike breaking.
Speaker 9: Mm hmm, I agree.
Speaker 2: And I think I think people are tend to be less.
Speaker 2: But but you know, specifically, the ability to sort of
Speaker 2: cut deals with unions like this is something that the
Speaker 2: republic Bloks have a like aren't like really good at
Speaker 2: Like it's not it's not an ability that they really have.
Speaker 2: It's it's something that like is largely limited to the Democrats.
Speaker 2: And but you know, but this this means that they
Speaker 2: have sort of they have a unique capacity to repress
Speaker 2: social movements that isn't as obvious as sort of like
Speaker 2: you know, just like a bunch of strike breakers showing
Speaker 2: up or the cop showing up, But is there all
Speaker 2: the same and I think is in some ways more
Speaker 2: dangerous because you know, like you get these arguments with
Speaker 2: like with the rail strike, where like technically eventually Biden
Speaker 2: was able to get some kind of deal through for
Speaker 2: some sick time, right, but you know, and you have
Speaker 2: you have this sort of like liberal conception of what
Speaker 2: labor is where they're like, oh, well, everyone was wrong
Speaker 2: to like be mad at Biden for this, like they
Speaker 2: got the thing eventually. But you know, the problem here
Speaker 2: isn't it isn't just you know, strikes aren't just about
Speaker 2: the immediate thing that you're fighting for, right, Like they're
Speaker 2: they're also about like moving the class as a whole.
Speaker 2: They're about the experience of striking. They're about i mean,
Speaker 2: you know, and they're also about the fact that you
Speaker 2: will get a better deal if you win a strike.
Speaker 2: Then you will if you get like you know, if
Speaker 2: if you get one of these sort of like negotiated
Speaker 2: deals like cut in the back room by Biden and
Speaker 2: like seventeen unions in the Manufacturer's Association, and so I think,
Speaker 2: I think, I think it's important to understand that, you know,
Speaker 2: the like there is a fundamental sort of difference between
Speaker 2: like liberalism sort of conception of you know, you you
Speaker 2: achieve material gains and it doesn't really matter what the
Speaker 2: process is, right or you know, the process is like
Speaker 2: you go through the legislative domain. There's an actual difference
Speaker 2: between that and the things that happens Drae to strike,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, there's there's an actual process of
Speaker 2: like the building of power of workers and you know,
Speaker 2: building the economy of the class itself. And I don't know,
Speaker 2: I think I think those are very different. And I
Speaker 2: think I think a lot of what we've been seeing
Speaker 2: here is an attempt both by unions themselves, by and
Speaker 2: you know, by by business leaders and also buy like
Speaker 2: the president and the Democratic Party to try to make
Speaker 2: sure that this doesn't happen and that they can sort
Speaker 2: of contain this really explosive labor moments and prevent it
Speaker 2: from sort of turning into anything more.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I think that's very true. I think that you know,
Speaker 9: the unions, you know, have long been divorced from their
Speaker 9: original roots. As like, you know, this was a communist
Speaker 9: social This sprung out of communism, socialism, anarchism. It was
Speaker 9: about workers banding together to not only collectively bargain just
Speaker 9: for the workplaces, but for society wide issues.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 9: Unions used to be explicitly political, and I you know,
Speaker 9: as we've like seen this rise in political conscience, you
Speaker 9: know over like this last decade. The ruling class and
Speaker 9: you know, the entrenched union bureaucrats that have long been
Speaker 9: you know, divorced from those origins, I think have a
Speaker 9: very vested interest and you know, not having labor go
Speaker 9: back to those roots to and stuff like that, you know,
Speaker 9: it threatens it obviously threatens the working or the ruling
Speaker 9: class power, excuse me. And you know it threatens your
Speaker 9: union bureaucrat jobs when workers start like demanding more from
Speaker 9: like what the labor movement can provide for them.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 9: So I think that's all, that's all very true, And
Speaker 9: it's just that this is another avenue where collective change
Speaker 9: is possible, and the state and capital will always clamp
Speaker 9: down on any avenue where change can be achieved through
Speaker 9: those means. So I think that's really really what we're
Speaker 9: seeing here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I don't know, I mean, I think I
Speaker 2: think another thing that's worth pointing out is that like
Speaker 2: part of the reason that, like part of the reason
Speaker 2: that you know, if you if you go back to
Speaker 2: sort of like when when the error of the sort
Speaker 2: of decline of unionism happened, right, like, part part of
Speaker 2: the reason why the Reagan era repression worked was that
Speaker 2: a lot of these unions had already sort of hollowed
Speaker 2: out the radical core of like what had been their
Speaker 2: union organizers. They had purged, you know, like the the CIO,
Speaker 2: I mean even back as there's always like the forties,
Speaker 2: like the CIO purged like all of its leftist members,
Speaker 2: and you know, you got these successive like these these
Speaker 2: successive sort of iterations of unionism that were less and
Speaker 2: less militant, and you know, like you can you can
Speaker 2: you can literally see what the result of that has been,
Speaker 2: right like union density down to like six percent. And
Speaker 2: so you know, if if, if if it keeps going
Speaker 2: like this and we keep getting these sort of like
Speaker 2: sustained efforts to make sure that it never redevelops again,
Speaker 2: Like yeah, like it's we're gonna we're gonna be stuck there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it's just yeah, I mean specific to
Speaker 5: those ups contracts. Can absolutely see that, you know, by
Speaker 5: looking at the wage growth you know, through the last
Speaker 5: forty years, or maybe the lack thereof more of the
Speaker 5: stagnating wages just you know, between either you know, union
Speaker 5: officials or you know, even in the you know, Biden
Speaker 5: coming in. I think it's like, you know, more or
Speaker 5: less like these people who aren't going you know, who
Speaker 5: didn't enter the economy, uh, you know within the last
Speaker 5: you know, decade or two. You know, I don't know
Speaker 5: at all really what what our experiences are, you know,
Speaker 5: what kind of challenges and struggles and burdens we're facing,
Speaker 5: and I mean especially and not prepared at all for
Speaker 5: you know, just world with a drastically changing climate.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 9: And then like you know, also to go back to
Speaker 9: like you know, the decline of you know, how unions
Speaker 9: have operated you know, over these last like for some decades.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 9: I think this is something I talked about a lot,
Speaker 9: and I talked about it, I think on the last podcast.
Speaker 9: But you know, once the the organized left was kind
Speaker 9: of purged out of all of these unions, you know,
Speaker 9: unions kind of became about a service model, and you know,
Speaker 9: that's when the union leadership you know, does you know,
Speaker 9: like you on the floor are enforcing your contract. You're
Speaker 9: bringing your grievances to the union, and the union is
Speaker 9: getting something done about them, right. And I think you know,
Speaker 9: that model in and of itself is indicative of a
Speaker 9: decline of a collective action, right. That reduces the union
Speaker 9: to Yeah, that's the entity you're going you go to
Speaker 9: when there is an issue in the enforcement of your
Speaker 9: contract and they negotiate a new contract for you, and
Speaker 9: you know, that's that's the service model type, right, And
Speaker 9: that's like what we're seeing a lot of. That's what like,
Speaker 9: you know, a lot of the business unions do and
Speaker 9: stuff like that. Some of them do it better than others,
Speaker 9: you know. But then there's also the organizing model, where
Speaker 9: you use the union as it means to make your
Speaker 9: members militant, and they do contract enforcement on the floor,
Speaker 9: and they like you know, organize protests at their work site,
Speaker 9: and they like you know, they get involved in you know,
Speaker 9: issues outside of the work site, right, And I think, yeah,
Speaker 9: like watching the service model kind of prevail over these
Speaker 9: last you know, some decades over. The organizing model is
Speaker 9: just yeah, it's absolutely just another sign of collective action
Speaker 9: being stamped down wherever it can be.
Speaker 2: You know, there's this an interesting thing with the there's
Speaker 2: an interesting thing with the service model that I see
Speaker 2: a lot where it's like, you know, when when when
Speaker 2: when you're getting like sort of union inoculation, uh like stuff, right,
Speaker 2: they'll be like, ah, I like the management is going
Speaker 2: to tell you that like the union is an outside
Speaker 2: force and it's not.
Speaker 1: The union is actually you.
Speaker 2: And it's like this is true. But also like, damn,
Speaker 2: I wonder where the idea that the union is an
Speaker 2: outside force it is not actually you came from, Like
Speaker 2: it couldn't you know, It's it's like it could it
Speaker 2: couldn't possibly have anything to do with the way you
Speaker 2: run your union, Like okay.
Speaker 9: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think we were talking about that last time, like
Speaker 5: the kind of like the lack of onboarding engagement by
Speaker 5: the union. Yeah, I mean especially yeah, I mean yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean I know this. I mean other union members too,
Speaker 5: where like does kind of feel like they're like, oh,
Speaker 5: I don't have all these benefits or higher pay or
Speaker 5: or you know, we're thinking about striking, but we don't
Speaker 5: even have a strike bund. You know, we don't know
Speaker 5: how exactly well whether the storm. I mean that's something
Speaker 5: I hear you know a lot on the shop floor.
Speaker 5: It's like when talking about, you know, our union, you know,
Speaker 5: it's it's always the union. I know I say that
Speaker 5: a ton too, but I mean I kind of feel
Speaker 5: like the language we just use like day to day
Speaker 5: talking about it, you know, I kind of there's not
Speaker 5: like inherent separation when it's like, oh, it's the union,
Speaker 5: it's the some you know, it's this outside thing. It's
Speaker 5: not oh, it's a collection of all you know, rank
Speaker 5: and file members. It's us really yeah, and it doesn't.
Speaker 2: The thing is, yeah, it doesn't become that unless you
Speaker 2: have a really high level of participation and then also
Speaker 2: like a systemic effort to make sure that to make
Speaker 2: sure everyone's involved and to make sure that you know,
Speaker 2: the the union functions in such a way that even
Speaker 2: that that like you know that that decisions, membership action matters.
Speaker 2: And I don't know, I think I think I think
Speaker 2: it's really I think it's really easy to you know,
Speaker 2: in this moment where unions are incredibly like you know,
Speaker 2: with the totally the actual amount of like unions in
Speaker 2: the US is really small. And also simultaneously, like you know,
Speaker 2: we're seeing a sort of resurgence of union organizing. I
Speaker 2: think it's really really easy to sort of fall into
Speaker 2: this trap and like be be completely uncritical of the
Speaker 2: way that unions have functioned, because again, like if the
Speaker 2: current model of unions that exists right now, like if
Speaker 2: that stuff worked, like we wouldn't be in in in
Speaker 2: the sort of conditions that we're in now. And that
Speaker 2: calls for you know, like that that that calls for
Speaker 2: collective action, and you know one of the things that
Speaker 2: calls for is being willing to go on strike.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you have anything else that you wanted to add?
Speaker 9: Yeah, no, because like something that you know, when I
Speaker 9: think about, like, you know, how do we get back
Speaker 9: to like this sort of you know where a union is.
Speaker 9: You know, we are the union. A union is a
Speaker 9: like is a collective of workers advocating for their rights.
Speaker 9: Right they are banding together, you know, they're negotiating together.
Speaker 9: And when I think about you know, the teamsters, you know,
Speaker 9: and how they operate right now, and you know, we
Speaker 9: just had that big reform slate when where Seawn O'Brien
Speaker 9: won and then you know, delivered us this contract. And
Speaker 9: you know, Shaun O'Brien did do like they they did
Speaker 9: in TDU, did do other good things. They got rid
Speaker 9: of that constitutional rule that Oliver mentioned earlier. But I think,
Speaker 9: you know, when we talk about like bringing down that
Speaker 9: barrier between the union and the members, the next most
Speaker 9: obvious step for me is that we need to get
Speaker 9: to open bargaining in this union. And frankly, I think
Speaker 9: open bargaining, or the fact that this bargaining was closed,
Speaker 9: you know, is behind it's behind closed doors. You know,
Speaker 9: there were NDAs signed, there were rank and file members there,
Speaker 9: but they also couldn't tell us about it because of
Speaker 9: those you know NDAs. Open bargaining is what's going to
Speaker 9: solve this because this, like the whole fiasco about this
Speaker 9: tentative agreement and now all the kind of resulting hostility
Speaker 9: that is felt between members and leadership and members and
Speaker 9: even other members. I think it's you know, like so
Speaker 9: much of this is due to a failure of comms
Speaker 9: and the fact that we did not know what was
Speaker 9: being discussed in this in these negotiations at any time
Speaker 9: except for the vague highlights that they could tell us about, right,
Speaker 9: and then you know, they release a highlight reel that
Speaker 9: has very confusing language. They eventually do release the contract,
Speaker 9: but not all of the memorandum of understanding that would
Speaker 9: help us understand what is actually in that contract. And
Speaker 9: you know, they they're releasing all of this information in
Speaker 9: a way that is going to result in people not
Speaker 9: understanding what's in it. And I really do think open
Speaker 9: bargaining is the next step that you know, reformers in
Speaker 9: this union need to be advocating and organizing for because
Speaker 9: this has just kind of been a real shit show,
Speaker 9: to be honest, and I yeah, I think it's a
Speaker 9: Comms failure to be perfectly honest.
Speaker 5: So yeah, yeah, and I would I would absolutely agree
Speaker 5: with that, you know, and I know, like there was
Speaker 5: there was a IBT webinar with Sean O'Brien, and you know,
Speaker 5: he even spoke to misinformation, but didn't you know, elaborate
Speaker 5: on what it was or you know, how or why
Speaker 5: it's wrong, And it's just like, hey, you got our emails, addresses,
Speaker 5: phone numbers, We're here on this webinar, Like you can
Speaker 5: correct the record anytime, you know, it's uh, if you're
Speaker 5: worried about something that's not true and may may or
Speaker 5: may not influence people's votes, like you can do something
Speaker 5: about that, Like you you have a lot of money,
Speaker 5: you have you know, a comms team to use it.
Speaker 5: It's you know, just talk to your members like they're
Speaker 5: real people. Uh, you know we can we can understand shit. Uh,
Speaker 5: you don't got to just you know, get get angry
Speaker 5: or even kind of like I was saying earlier, where
Speaker 5: it's just like it's almost just like feels like this
Speaker 5: framing where anything you know that's a dissenting view or
Speaker 5: a critique you know, so oh, it's just it's almost information.
Speaker 5: Don't don't pay any attention to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is you know, I don't know, like I
Speaker 2: I've seen this in a couple of.
Speaker 1: I don't know, like.
Speaker 2: I've seen this in a couple of sort of union
Speaker 2: things we've coverled on this show.
Speaker 5: Is like.
Speaker 2: I don't know, And and an incredible unwillingness of union
Speaker 2: leadership to even like consider a position as not their
Speaker 2: own and to just sort of like immediately, you know,
Speaker 2: when confronted with another things just immediately attempt to completely
Speaker 2: delegitimate them and that sucks. Yeah, it's just not a
Speaker 2: not a great way to run a union.
Speaker 9: No, No, you definitely, you know, and I've been seeing
Speaker 9: this this uh, this closing like sort of rank around
Speaker 9: around leadership, right, and it's not something that inspires trust
Speaker 9: in union leadership whatsoever. Right, Like, you know, you could
Speaker 9: be a member that you know doesn't understand something, just
Speaker 9: has a question and then you kind of getting and
Speaker 9: you kind of just end up being stonewalled, and you know,
Speaker 9: you're told, well, you know, go to this meeting where
Speaker 9: we're going to explain things, and dah da da da
Speaker 9: da da da da da. And it's like, yeah, but
Speaker 9: you know, I have you on the phone, now, can
Speaker 9: you explain it now? And you know, and it's as
Speaker 9: it's like they're taking all of these concerns as a
Speaker 9: personal blow to their ego, right, Like they're taking it
Speaker 9: personally as if people having concerns about what this contract
Speaker 9: does and does not stipulate is like an attack on
Speaker 9: their moral character. And it's just really fucking frustrating. I
Speaker 9: gotta be real with you. And you know it doesn't
Speaker 9: say a lot for the overall democratic nature of the
Speaker 9: union either, right, Like, you know, this is like, you know,
Speaker 9: you're kind of being told, well, you know, keep your
Speaker 9: opinions to yourself, accept our word for it. Like you
Speaker 9: can vote however you want. You know, this is one member,
Speaker 9: one vote. But you know you can't be going online
Speaker 9: talking about it. You like can't be going talking to
Speaker 9: your coworkers about it because you don't have all the information.
Speaker 9: You're not understanding it correctly, and it's just like, well,
Speaker 9: can you get better at explaining it? Can you not
Speaker 9: react this way? Like can we have like a thing
Speaker 9: where like we can just like fucking talk about what's
Speaker 9: in it and what's not in it? And yeah, it's
Speaker 9: it's just again been real fucking frustrating.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: It's another thing I mean too, is you know, any
Speaker 5: contract language maybe it should either be more clear or concise,
Speaker 5: or if it's going to be more on the legal
Speaker 5: east side, you know, put out a little like contract
Speaker 5: like explainer guide maybe especially around key language or language
Speaker 5: that they know is maybe vague or going to cause
Speaker 5: you know, issues of like understanding it. And even you know,
Speaker 5: one one other thing about like you know, open bargaining,
Speaker 5: was you know, looking at the IBT press release, you
Speaker 5: know there's one paragraph and it starts rank and file
Speaker 5: members served on the committee for the first time. It
Speaker 5: continues on later saying, you know, our hard work has
Speaker 5: finally paid or our hard work has paid off, and
Speaker 5: I you know, and goes on to then say, you know,
Speaker 5: this is the most historic contract we've ever had. So
Speaker 5: it kind of seems like right there where it's like, well,
Speaker 5: if limited member participation found by NDA has led to
Speaker 5: this historic contract, maybe it's time to involve all of us.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 9: And also, you know, the rank and file that are
Speaker 9: on these committees are appointed by leadership, so we don't
Speaker 9: we don't get to choose who these people are. And
Speaker 9: it's like leadership absolutely just has the ability to be like, well,
Speaker 9: I'm gonna, you know, appoint the ones that I like
Speaker 9: the most, that I have the best really relationship with
Speaker 9: that I know thinks the sun kind of shines out
Speaker 9: of my ass. And yeah, there's just this absolutely overall
Speaker 9: lack of a democratic lack of a democratic internal culture.
Speaker 9: You know, we elect you know, our officers, most of them,
Speaker 9: but we don't elect stewards. We don't really we don't
Speaker 9: elect our business agents or like anything like that. We
Speaker 9: vote on our contracts and that's it, you know at
Speaker 9: our union meetings. I've had one union meeting where we
Speaker 9: did a vote that was introduced by leadership. Right, It's
Speaker 9: just it's yeah, it's not the most democratic culture. And
Speaker 9: that's another thing that needs to that needs to change
Speaker 9: as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean I think that goes back to
Speaker 2: a sort of like, you know, a fundamental political conflict,
Speaker 2: which is like, is democracy when you've for someone else
Speaker 2: to make every decision? Or is democracy when people collectively
Speaker 2: make decisions themselves? And the sort of slipperyess of those
Speaker 2: two things causes you know, like causes you know, allows
Speaker 2: people who essentially want to be the only ones who
Speaker 2: ever get to make decisions to be able to claim
Speaker 2: that they are in favor of democracy or whatever. But
Speaker 2: you know mean like mean that they get to make
Speaker 2: all decisions after they get elected, and not mean actual
Speaker 2: people sort of make decisions for themselves.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, like we need a you know more so
Speaker 5: only serves it's more of a delegate role than ah,
Speaker 5: you know, representative.
Speaker 2: Okay, I guess I guess my my final thing is
Speaker 2: I yeah, you two are both encouraging are going to
Speaker 2: encourage people to vote no on this contract for the
Speaker 2: the the the surely long list of both technical, procedural,
Speaker 2: I material and like broadly social reasons.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's correct, I'll be Yeah, I'll be voting no
Speaker 5: and also advocating for that, and also I mean just
Speaker 5: also advocating people to vote as well.
Speaker 9: Yes, big same on that low low union participation sends
Speaker 9: a bad message to the company. So definitely definitely doing
Speaker 9: both and continuing to have those conversations on the shop
Speaker 9: floors with folks explaining my concerns and stuff like that.
Speaker 9: But yeah, no, I'm I'm also going to be voting
Speaker 9: no on this contract as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that is Yeah, I guess I guess that
Speaker 2: that that that is our coverage of this. There is
Speaker 2: still time for there is still time for there to
Speaker 2: actually be a striker, for this contract to fail and
Speaker 2: for people to fight for a better one. And yeah,
Speaker 2: I wish both of you too good luck in fighting
Speaker 2: this and yeah, and thank you both for coming on.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, thanks so much for having us. I was
Speaker 9: excited to give you guys an update about all the
Speaker 9: crazy shit we talked about in the first episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad, glad, glad I got to talk about it.
Speaker 5: That's a pleasure. Of being on and yeah, I appreciate
Speaker 5: the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you do you have anything to plug before?
Speaker 5: You know? Yes or no? Vote solidarity all all workers
Speaker 5: and everyone on the shop floor. And you know we'll
Speaker 5: got to keep on fighting for better conditions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you too, dear listener, can fight for better
Speaker 2: conditions in your own workplace. And yeah, one day, one day,
Speaker 2: fight for a world we don't have. Workplace is like
Speaker 2: this at all?
Speaker 5: Amen, hallelujah.
Speaker 1: What foreign my policy? I don't know. I don't know, Guys,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I got like trapped into this like
Speaker 1: pattern of doing introductions a certain way and I don't
Speaker 1: really I don't really feel good about it. But how
Speaker 1: do you how does one break their patterns? Speaking of patterns,
Speaker 1: let's talk about Syria beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I understand exactly what that meant.
Speaker 3: I feel like one of the basketball guys when someone
Speaker 3: lays him up and then he just does a dunk.
Speaker 3: That's what I feel like. I don't know about.
Speaker 1: Green Bay Packers swish mm hmmm.
Speaker 3: Yeah, go Tom Brady. Okay, uh okay, sports talk aside.
Speaker 3: I'm wearing my Rwanda football shirt today. We we are
Speaker 3: gathered here today to talk about Turkish drone strikes on
Speaker 3: their sts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not funny, not funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the sday funny. We're talking about like Turkish the
Speaker 1: continued Turkish military operations across their border in northeast Syria,
Speaker 1: the area commonly known as Rosjava, and also in southern
Speaker 1: Turkey as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So just to give some some numbers around this
Speaker 3: to start off, right, and you're twenty twenty two, which
Speaker 3: there wasn't a territorial offensive, so like you're not seeing
Speaker 3: like troops on the ground. Turkey carried out one hundred
Speaker 3: and thirty drone strikes in the Autonomous Administration of Northany Syria. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's the place is more commonly known as Rojhova, and
Speaker 3: they killed at least eight YPJ members. YPJ would be
Speaker 3: the Women's Protection Forces, who are a unit within the
Speaker 3: Syrian Democratic Forces, which is the armed forces of the
Speaker 3: ans Autonomous Area of North Easyria. I will come at
Speaker 3: you really hard with acronyms in this. I think if
Speaker 3: people haven't listened to Roberts series Women's War, maybe the
Speaker 3: Women's War, that would be a good place to start,
Speaker 3: because like we only have half an hour of forty
Speaker 3: five minutes or whatever, and we can't explain an extremely
Speaker 3: complicated conflict which has been going on for twelve years
Speaker 3: in that time. So I think some grounding in who
Speaker 3: is who and what is what you can find it there,
Speaker 3: I guess. But it's that a fair summary of who
Speaker 3: those people are.
Speaker 1: Robert, Yeah, basically, so you had kind of the gist
Speaker 1: of the story is that for a very long time,
Speaker 1: starting in southern Turkey, there's been a Kurdish militant group
Speaker 1: called the PKK. They were way back in the day,
Speaker 1: originally Maoist. They had a bunch of internal power struggles
Speaker 1: within their own organization and then wound up taking a
Speaker 1: pretty uh wide turn away from Maoism towards a kind
Speaker 1: of political theory heavily influenced by the work of an
Speaker 1: American anarchist thinker named Murray Bukchin. This was largely due
Speaker 1: to the fact that their leader, a guy named abdulah Ajalon,
Speaker 1: got while he was in Turkish prison kind of pilled
Speaker 1: on a lot of these this kind of like fringe
Speaker 1: American libertarian ish sort of political philosophy. Yeah, with with this, basically,
Speaker 1: the gist of it is this this kind of this
Speaker 1: kind of synthetic this kind of synthesis of a lot
Speaker 1: of Bukchen's ideas with some of the stuff that Agelog
Speaker 1: had been had been thinking about for years, kind of
Speaker 1: culminated in uh political philosophy called libertarian municipalism, which is
Speaker 1: more less the governing philosophy that these different armed militant
Speaker 1: organizations kind of clustered around the PKK in Northeast Syria,
Speaker 1: because the PKK for years were just kind of like
Speaker 1: cross the border in the northeast Syria when they were
Speaker 1: fighting with the Turks and they had to get away,
Speaker 1: and they had a bunch of inroads with local Kurdish
Speaker 1: organizations in northeast Syria. And when the Asad regime pulled
Speaker 1: out of the area in the early stages of the
Speaker 1: Syrian Civil War, a lot of these groups that were
Speaker 1: affiliated with the p PKK were kind of the best
Speaker 1: organized organizations in the area, and so they took over
Speaker 1: a lot of civil administration and basing a lot of
Speaker 1: their plans and you know, functional activities around these ideas
Speaker 1: that Ajalon had been you know, writing about for years
Speaker 1: and years, and so you kind of have this mix
Speaker 1: of all these armed organizations that are to some extent
Speaker 1: descended from the PKK, but are now much broader than
Speaker 1: just sort of a Kurdish liberatory organization. These are the
Speaker 1: folks who fought and defeated ISIS in northeast Syria. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I don't know, there's there's so much to get into,
Speaker 1: but I guess that's kind of the the broad strokes
Speaker 1: and all of these different because there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: different militias. You know, There's there's militias that are kind
Speaker 1: of more traditionalist Arab militias. There's there's Armenian militias in
Speaker 1: the area. There's obviously these Kurdish militias, the YPG and
Speaker 1: the YPG primarily Kurdish militias, but they all fight under
Speaker 1: the banner of the SDF and to the Turks, they're
Speaker 1: all the PKK.
Speaker 11: Yes, I'm glad you mentioned all the different militias and stuff,
Speaker 11: because it gets really confusing. Like even I mean, I'm Syrian,
Speaker 11: I'm just like I cannot keep up. I talked to
Speaker 11: my parents about it too, and they're just like, that's
Speaker 11: it's it's it's complicated. So I think you did a
Speaker 11: good job breaking that down. I also want to mention
Speaker 11: they were the only people fighting ISIS in Syria. Yeah,
Speaker 11: so I think it's pretty notable to mention.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I got a list of the found in groups
Speaker 3: of the SDA. So this happens in twenty fifteen, right,
Speaker 3: sort of earlier in the fight against ISIS. And some
Speaker 3: of these groups are descended. Latian said, not not from
Speaker 3: the YPJ or the YPG, And Robert said this to
Speaker 3: you that they come from the FSA, the Free Syrian Army,
Speaker 3: Like there's specifically the FSA around the Kabani area contributing elements.
Speaker 3: There's a Syriac Military Council, so that's a distinct ethnic group.
Speaker 3: There is the jayash or al If. I said that right,
Speaker 3: Uh no, but I can say it if you are
Speaker 3: please do magical thank you.
Speaker 11: Jish means army or like yeah, army, yeah jeish. It's
Speaker 11: annoying because the English is spelled jyish, but it's just
Speaker 11: a Jewish.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, the revolutionary army, army of revolutionaries, I guess
Speaker 3: more accurately, who are another mixed ethnicity group, they, like
Speaker 3: Robert said, include Turkmen, Armenians, all kinds of different ethnic groups.
Speaker 3: So I get this point that the entity that is
Speaker 3: the SDF is a majority Arab entity. It's not like
Speaker 3: an ethnic Kurdish thing, and and and the autonomous Administration
Speaker 3: is not like a Kurdish f no state, which I
Speaker 3: think is something that people can sometimes either confuse or conflate.
Speaker 3: But like that that's not the case, right that, That's
Speaker 3: not what this sort of democratic federalism is about, nor
Speaker 3: is it what's represented in terms of the composition of
Speaker 3: the people there people doing the fighting, right, So sometimes
Speaker 3: these groups will be referred to on masses like quote
Speaker 3: unquote the Kurds.
Speaker 1: You should by how kind of messy. My explanation was,
Speaker 1: it is hard to walk people through this. Folks eyes
Speaker 1: tend to glaze over, for one thing, when you mention
Speaker 1: a certain number of acronyms. But this leads to a
Speaker 1: situation whereby the US news is just like the Kurds
Speaker 1: defeated isis in Northeast Syria.
Speaker 2: It was like no, there was.
Speaker 1: There were a whole lot of other people who did
Speaker 1: a lot of dying when involved, and some cards who
Speaker 1: were not involved.
Speaker 11: So it's also just so much infighting. I think that
Speaker 11: it gets I don't know, it's it's a lot.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 1: It is a lot like saying the Americans defeated the Nazis,
Speaker 1: and it's like, well some other people.
Speaker 3: Who involved in that word yeah, yeah, well yeah, I've
Speaker 3: seen some films from let me tell you, Yes, I
Speaker 3: think I think Rubedy's right, Like it collapses two things, right,
Speaker 3: like the heterogeneity of of Kettish people, right, Differentkaddish areas,
Speaker 3: of different Kattish movement and the heterogeneity of the SDF.
Speaker 3: So yeah, mainstream use sometimes yeah, because it shocking.
Speaker 1: It is also worth noting like Kurds are not certainly
Speaker 1: not a like a monolithic group. For examining North the
Speaker 1: Assyria is like flat lands lowlands, and there's a big
Speaker 1: difference between the mountain Kurds and the Kurds who live
Speaker 1: in these like lowlands, and traditionally even like a lot
Speaker 1: of like bad blood and stuff between different groups, because
Speaker 1: you know, that's just the way human beings are, Like yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really easy, I think for when we're consuming news,
Speaker 3: especially news about the part of the world that the
Speaker 3: populace here hasn't been spectacularly well informed on, to break
Speaker 3: things down into easy groups, right, Like you'll see a
Speaker 3: lot as well, like Sunni and Shias, like the two
Speaker 3: categories that can exist within like and then people get
Speaker 3: very confused when there are categories within that when when
Speaker 3: they're where there are Sunni groups fighting each other, and
Speaker 3: the same with like Kurds, Turkmen or whatever. Like, none
Speaker 3: of these groups are homogeneous. And sometimes yeah, if you do,
Speaker 3: I get it. If you're doing a five minute piece
Speaker 3: for TV, that's what you do. But here we are
Speaker 3: not doing a five minute piece for TV. So this
Speaker 3: is this has not been like Kurdish history one O. One,
Speaker 3: please read some more books about that. I'll put some
Speaker 3: in the sources. But what I want to talk about
Speaker 3: today is some of these barakhtar attacks on specifically YPJ. Right,
Speaker 3: so the YPJ would be the Women's Defense Forces, So
Speaker 3: that's a women's militia within the SDF that, as Robert said,
Speaker 3: it's based heavily, I guess on the outlook of Abdulah Oscelin,
Speaker 3: who's sometimes called Appo, so we might use that for
Speaker 3: brevity here. So in one attack in April twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: three YPGA fighters were killed. Di Lahaleb, who had participated
Speaker 3: in the resistance of the Sheik Masoud district of Aleppo
Speaker 3: in twenty twelve. She become a leading YPGA commander and
Speaker 3: participated in the fight against isis playing a leading role
Speaker 3: in the liberation of the city of Mimbic Rahani Kabane.
Speaker 3: It's worth noting, I guess sorry I stop every fifteen
Speaker 3: seconds to explain context that you'll hear sometimes place names
Speaker 3: in people's names. That's because they're like norm de gear
Speaker 3: rather than that this is not their legal name necessary,
Speaker 3: but it's it's standard practice for these people to take
Speaker 3: like a movement name or a nom de geer, much
Speaker 3: like Robert and I explained in the episodes on Miamma.
Speaker 3: A lot of people do this, a lot of places
Speaker 3: that fair.
Speaker 1: Robert, Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of like oftentimes
Speaker 1: people just like take a name based on their city
Speaker 1: that they came from, like Kobani or whatever. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty much the norm that most people, most
Speaker 1: fighters will introduce themselves by some sort of nobdaghear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, even some of the I know people who are
Speaker 3: like British or American who have been over there, who
Speaker 3: are over there, and they also have these.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's a there's a lot in that. One
Speaker 1: thing you have to keep in mind is that like
Speaker 1: a lot of these people who are revolutionaries, who consider
Speaker 1: themselves revolutionaries, have family in regime controlled parts of town
Speaker 1: or or parts of Syria or in you know, in
Speaker 1: id Lip, which is largely controlled by these like more
Speaker 1: Turkish backed Islamist groups. And so part of why you
Speaker 1: do this is like, I don't want my family like
Speaker 1: getting caught up in this shit, like if they live
Speaker 1: somewhere else, like I don't want to like bring that
Speaker 1: down on them. It's just safer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just like when we did episodes, right, we had
Speaker 3: Miaowka and Andy and Sarah. Another woman, as I said,
Speaker 3: Rohani Kabane joined the YPGA in twenty fourteen. She fought
Speaker 3: against ISIS. She was wounded. She participated after recovering in
Speaker 3: the liberation of Rakka, and she was the co chair
Speaker 3: of the defense committee in Kabbani. And then there was
Speaker 3: the youngest, the youngest woman she just joined. I guess
Speaker 3: or her joined at a young age. And she was
Speaker 3: called Kabani and she uh like she joined after the
Speaker 3: fight against ISIS. She she was very young. There are
Speaker 3: pictures I'll include the report. It's very sad to see
Speaker 3: someone I think, so yeah.
Speaker 11: They look they look like there's a couple of them
Speaker 11: that looked like babies. Like, it's really devastating because it's
Speaker 11: I don't know, their lives are taken from them and
Speaker 11: they joined to.
Speaker 9: It's it's empowering, and then.
Speaker 11: It's devastating because it's just like they fought so hard
Speaker 11: and then they they were assassinated, literally they were murdered.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's when especially when you consider that so many
Speaker 3: of these, like the women who fought against ISIS, right, like,
Speaker 3: and I think we could all probably understand where women
Speaker 3: would would want to do that, like wanted to create
Speaker 3: a place where young girls could grow up and be
Speaker 3: who they wanted to be and do what they wanted
Speaker 3: to do, and like not have to obviously, like cowtows
Speaker 3: that it's extremely violent, misogynous organization like ISIS, but also
Speaker 3: like not necessarily have to fight either, and you know,
Speaker 3: could be self realized and whatever way they wanted to.
Speaker 3: And so to see these people having achieved their goal
Speaker 3: largely of I guess I still exists, right, and I
Speaker 3: still continues to kill people. It killed ten people yesterday,
Speaker 3: but that's the eighth of August because you won't hear
Speaker 3: this today. But to see these people who have like
Speaker 3: successfully at least liberated the territory, and then their young
Speaker 3: women are still dying but not finding ISIS. But fink Turkey,
Speaker 3: I can go on and give like there are dozens
Speaker 3: of examples of this report another one I'll just give.
Speaker 3: In July twenty twenty two, there was a YPG commander
Speaker 3: called Raj Kabur and a fighter called Barin Botan, so
Speaker 3: one of them had been and then another one called
Speaker 3: another YPJ commander called Jian Tall Hidden Tall Hidden. So
Speaker 3: these two women have been involved in the fight against
Speaker 3: ISIS like from the beginning, having like liberated cities, liberated territory,
Speaker 3: and then they were with this young woman who was
Speaker 3: nineteen years old and had relatively recently joined the YPG
Speaker 3: right and was killed by a dreat strike. It's like
Speaker 3: it's particularly galling, I think for me at least two
Speaker 3: so that the YPG Information Office is someone that I
Speaker 3: communicate with, like for work stuff, and it's particularly galling
Speaker 3: to like wake up Brent and see that on your phone,
Speaker 3: like to get a message and look at a report
Speaker 3: see pitch of a car like blown to pieces. At
Speaker 3: the same time as like the directories to drowne the
Speaker 3: Turkey hassaulta Ukraine in large numbers, right, which has been
Speaker 3: hugely effective in destroying Russian armor and like it's.
Speaker 1: Curler on at least was it's it's it seems to
Speaker 1: not really work. I mean a lot of stuff has
Speaker 1: changed obviously, like new technology is extremely effective early on
Speaker 1: before there's countermeasures anyway, whatever, we don't need to get
Speaker 1: nerdy about this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's certainly like in the first months of
Speaker 3: their war, like the war in Ukraine became like a meme.
Speaker 3: You can buy a stuffed birector on etsyo eBay, like
Speaker 3: like a soft toy, like a Teddy Bear. There are
Speaker 3: songs about it.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not great, Yeah it was, and it
Speaker 1: was one of those things where like obviously I was
Speaker 1: happy to see effective tools being used by the Ukrainians
Speaker 1: to like defend their home, yes, of course, but I'm
Speaker 1: not ever going to get up and stand the the
Speaker 1: Turkish defense industry or yeah, defense industry. And for the record,
Speaker 1: I feel the same way about like the people standing
Speaker 1: standing you know, different US defense contractors making stuff like
Speaker 1: you know, long range missile systems, Like no, I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not really a fan of that, Like I get it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you know, when you're being invaded, you use the
Speaker 1: tools available, But that doesn't mean we need to celebrate that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. I think the tools are largely kind of agnostic,
Speaker 3: and anyone who's sort of is making things to kill
Speaker 3: people purely for profit, it's not necessarily a good a
Speaker 3: good thing to do with your life, I guess, uh.
Speaker 3: And like, it's just troubling to me to see people
Speaker 3: like cheering this on without like it highlights one, like
Speaker 3: the way that people engage with conflict, especially online, especially
Speaker 3: in the US, which and yeah, it's not a computer game,
Speaker 3: it's someone's nineteen year old fucking daughter. It's someone's mum
Speaker 3: or sitta or brother or uncle or dad or the
Speaker 3: binary relative.
Speaker 11: The fact that you can buy like a stuffed fucking
Speaker 11: weapon like little drone thing on Ebays. It's it's just
Speaker 11: so disturbing. I really just don't like humans when I
Speaker 11: think about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I understand why it happens this way, and I
Speaker 1: understand why if your country is being invaded and you
Speaker 1: can get more support from the international community by leaning
Speaker 1: into this shit, you lean into this shit. But I
Speaker 1: don't like the idea of like some I don't know,
Speaker 1: fucking accountant in Iowa watching hundreds of videos of like
Speaker 1: Russian soldiers being killed and then like getting a fucking
Speaker 1: Lockheed Martin tattoo, like the like the like like turning
Speaker 1: turning your support for people you know in a deadly
Speaker 1: military conflict into like fandom, treating it the way you
Speaker 1: treat like a Marvel movie or whatever. I find not great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just not like I understand why. Like I
Speaker 3: wouldn't blame anyone in Ukraine for being super excited about
Speaker 3: having bairaktars because it stops people burning their homes and
Speaker 3: killing their children. Yeah, like I would want that to no.
Speaker 1: Just like if you're if you're like I have a
Speaker 1: friend who I went like we were in fucking of
Speaker 1: Divka together, like sheltering with people from Russian shells and stuff,
Speaker 1: who then went on to join the Ukrainian military and
Speaker 1: has been fighting since the expanded invasion. If he wants
Speaker 1: to share videos or watch videos of like, you know,
Speaker 1: dead Russian soldiers from telegram, like that's war. It's unpleasant,
Speaker 1: but I get it. Like again, if you're some dude
Speaker 1: in fucking Wisconsin doing the same thing, I find that
Speaker 1: pretty unsettling, like, yeah, because you don't need to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, you don't need to. You don't need to
Speaker 3: dehumanize those people so you can kill them because you're
Speaker 3: not killing them. Yeah, but you just seem to have
Speaker 3: engaged in that same dehumanization which is necessary for people fighting,
Speaker 3: because I don't know, maybe you think you're helping.
Speaker 1: It's hard to shoot people otherwise, Like, yeah.
Speaker 3: There's a reason it's hard to fucking bayonet people, right,
Speaker 3: there's a reason that bayonet training is one of these
Speaker 3: things that's particularly just kind of it has to be violent.
Speaker 3: You have to be horrible, you know, like it's there's
Speaker 3: no nice way to stab someone. But the yeah, it
Speaker 3: doesn't mean that you need to tweet about it, especially
Speaker 3: folks who maybe aren't perhaptice on the ground familiar as
Speaker 3: what this looks like. So I wanted to maybe get
Speaker 3: into a little bit. And there are, as I said,
Speaker 3: dozens of these corone attacks. They really ramped up in
Speaker 3: early twenty twenty three, along with like a kind of
Speaker 3: a larger air offensive. Right, they continue to happen like
Speaker 3: almost weekly. If people want to, I guess keep tabs.
Speaker 3: YPJ info is the YPG's kind of public facing press website.
Speaker 3: Rosier Information Center is a good English language resource. Both
Speaker 3: of those you can find on X or if you
Speaker 3: you can also search of them website. We just say X.
Speaker 1: Absolutely nudge, yeah, yeah, X is not in fact gonna
Speaker 1: give it to.
Speaker 11: Us, only like you will understand that way that I
Speaker 11: like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a narrow overlap there, buddy, Yeah, you shut
Speaker 3: the get there. Yeah, you know what is going to
Speaker 3: give it? And by it I mean the money that
Speaker 3: pays our wages to us. What is it, James, It's
Speaker 3: it's combination of products and services.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I love a good product, need to. I
Speaker 1: don't love services. Actually very anti service. But you know,
Speaker 1: we'll see, yeah, we'll see it.
Speaker 3: Might it might change your opinion, might be something amazing, unlikely,
Speaker 3: probably gold. But let's hear from the advertisers. All right,
Speaker 3: we're back and we hope you enjoyed those adverts as
Speaker 3: much as we do. So I want to talk about
Speaker 3: in the second half of the episode, why Turkey is
Speaker 3: using these drones to bomb people who, like we said,
Speaker 3: have fought and largely defeated the territorial Caliphate Ofvisis. I
Speaker 3: did want to bring up one more drone instant actually,
Speaker 3: which is particularly bad. So one of the things that
Speaker 3: you're often to see the SDF and specifically the YPG
Speaker 3: and the YPG kind of accused of is having child soldiers,
Speaker 3: are having recruiting people who are under the aged to fight.
Speaker 3: Part of a program they've implemented to stop this with
Speaker 3: consultation with the United Nations is building education centers. Right,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to comment morally on who should be
Speaker 3: fighting at what age, because I think it's one of
Speaker 3: judgment for us to make when like we GNATALIZI in
Speaker 3: the fucking street. Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Look, I think there's a degree to which people are
Speaker 1: being unreasonable about this. I met a number of seventeen
Speaker 1: year olds. It's generally when people talk about child soldiers,
Speaker 1: they are talking about seventeen year olds. I have friends
Speaker 1: who joined the US Army when they were seventeen years old.
Speaker 1: Like I have friends who were learning how to drive
Speaker 1: a tank for the US military at age seventeen. And
Speaker 1: quite frankly, if you look at where like wars in
Speaker 1: history sixteen to twenty years old, that's most of the
Speaker 1: people who have fought most of the wars in most
Speaker 1: of history. That's like the way that it is. It's
Speaker 1: not pleasant. But like when we are talking like I
Speaker 1: certainly I would be very supportive of laws put in
Speaker 1: place in our country to raise the age at which
Speaker 1: people can join the military so that they are not
Speaker 1: young and not getting taken advantage of to as much
Speaker 1: of a degree. But we are not fighting in any
Speaker 1: conflicts for our survival.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I think people that point the finger and like
Speaker 11: talk about child soldiers whatever the shit and they're in,
Speaker 11: they are referencing like, yeah, basic teens. They have the
Speaker 11: privilege of doing that. They don't have to even think
Speaker 11: about protecting themselves or their family or whatever.
Speaker 9: I think when you are raised and.
Speaker 11: In like a situation of violence, like Palasine's a great
Speaker 11: example of that. You see like boys like trying to
Speaker 11: defend their country. It's like the same situation where there's
Speaker 11: you don't have the privilege of waiting until you're fucking
Speaker 11: twenty one or whatever. It's just like you have to
Speaker 11: you have to like protect yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not the it's not a situation you are
Speaker 1: not being It's not like again, it's not like it
Speaker 1: is often when we talk about child soldiers, like in
Speaker 1: the Liberian Civil War, right, where you've got kids being
Speaker 1: pulled in, you know, for the advantage of some warlord.
Speaker 1: Nor is it like in the United States where you
Speaker 1: have seventeen and eight year old eighteen year olds being
Speaker 1: recruited in a predatory way off and by military recruiters
Speaker 1: and sent overseas in conflicts that are not necessary. We
Speaker 1: are talking about like isis is five blocks away, and
Speaker 1: like God knows what they'll do to my mom and
Speaker 1: my sister if they take over, Like I'm going to
Speaker 1: pick up a fucking.
Speaker 3: Gun, you know what else? What else are you going
Speaker 3: to do?
Speaker 1: That's the that's the world. Like they're living in a
Speaker 1: different set of realities than we are.
Speaker 11: Yeah, and anyone that places judgment on that is just
Speaker 11: ignorant and non understanding of the reality of the world.
Speaker 9: They're just like in their little bubble.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So on August the eighteenth, twenty twenty two, Turkish drone
Speaker 3: targeted one of these un affiliated education centers. Right, It
Speaker 3: was two kilometers from the US coalition base, and targeted
Speaker 3: group of teenage girls playing volleyball. It's very hard to
Speaker 3: see these education centers as like anywhere in military target right,
Speaker 3: They're literally designed to divert young people from becoming fighters
Speaker 3: and to you know, they're set up with the consultation
Speaker 3: United Nations, with the you know, like with as much
Speaker 3: oversight as one can expect an area which is in
Speaker 3: the middle of a civil war and to be drone
Speaker 3: striking schools. It's pretty callous. It's also worth noting that,
Speaker 3: like a phraser constantly gets thrown around a lot in
Speaker 3: discussion about the Middle East. Right, it's the only democracy
Speaker 3: in the Middle East, and it's let me tell you,
Speaker 3: it's not normally referring to this part of the world.
Speaker 3: It's referring to Israel, and a I don't think that's
Speaker 3: true Israel, Yeah, it does it what fucking definitely, Well,
Speaker 3: democracy is an extremely nebulous concept. So like, this is
Speaker 3: this scenaria where people's votes have a substantive impact on
Speaker 3: how their lives lives, certainly more so than people who
Speaker 3: are Arabs in Israel.
Speaker 1: And Kurds in southern Turkey, Sirius in Syria.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, yep, yeah, yes exactly, people in parts of
Speaker 3: Iran like Iraqi.
Speaker 1: People in northern or in in the Baghdad government controlled
Speaker 1: junks of Iraq for that matter.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, like all over, right, like, so, this isn't
Speaker 3: just an attack on like individual women. It's an attack
Speaker 3: on a state which is genuinely at least attempting to
Speaker 3: establish a new form of democracy, right, like a more participatory,
Speaker 3: more horizontally organized democracy. It's an attack on a state
Speaker 3: in the Middle East which is like anti patriarchal, which
Speaker 3: is something that we don't have here in the United States. Right,
Speaker 3: Like it's it's like we have still failed to have
Speaker 3: a woman being president, Like it's it's an attack on
Speaker 3: these things which most decent human beings should be able
Speaker 3: to get behind. These attacks also don't just affect the
Speaker 3: people who are killed, right. They continue to displace families,
Speaker 3: They contribute to fuel shortages, they create power cuts, they
Speaker 3: suspend schools, they stop aid organizations working in the area
Speaker 3: because it's too high risk, or they perceive it to
Speaker 3: be too high risk, and they stop the SDF continuing
Speaker 3: their operations against ISIS. Right Like, ISIS, as I said,
Speaker 3: continue to exist. They have sleeper cells. There was an
Speaker 3: attempted prison break last year. Two of the women from
Speaker 3: the YPG who had fought to stop those ISIS prisoners
Speaker 3: breaking out of their prison were later killed in the
Speaker 3: drone strike. It's very hard to see this as not
Speaker 3: helping that like that ISIS insurgency that they're fighting and
Speaker 3: hindering their operations. And I'm not just saying this based
Speaker 3: on sources that are there Roger Information Center, are people
Speaker 3: in their anes, but this is the policy of the
Speaker 3: United States. Right before we started this, I looked up
Speaker 3: some of the Inspector General's reports from Operation Inherent Resolve,
Speaker 3: which is the United States operation to lead a coalition
Speaker 3: which includes the SDF against ISIS, and they were talking
Speaker 3: about how the sdf's operations are hindered because they keep
Speaker 3: getting shot by durants, right, and that there's not much
Speaker 3: that they can do about it. Right, Unlike like Ukraine,
Speaker 3: we're not sending a ton of surface to air missiles
Speaker 3: or like things that you could use to defend yourself
Speaker 3: against drones, right, not that it's very easy to defend
Speaker 3: yourself against the drone. So why is Turkey doing this?
Speaker 3: I think thirsty because, as Robert said, it sees SDF
Speaker 3: and the PKK is the same thing, right, And so
Speaker 3: the PKK mostly operates, like Robert said, in the mountains
Speaker 3: of southeastern Turkey, and it's been fighting this asymmetrical war
Speaker 3: against the Turkish state since nineteen eighty four. So Urdigan
Speaker 3: as Urdigan is the president of Turkey, right. He entered
Speaker 3: off his in two thousand and three, and he's sort
Speaker 3: of pivoted on Turkish issues and Kurdish issues. Sorry, he
Speaker 3: continues to be Turkish. But he was initially in favor
Speaker 3: of like a negotiated peace with the PKK. In his
Speaker 3: early years included like propose for linguistic autonomy, the right
Speaker 3: to a Kurdish press, and even like the return of
Speaker 3: Kurdish place names, which is a big deal still yeah, right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you'll see like comishlo or al chemishli, like one being
Speaker 3: Arab their latter being Arabic, that the form of being Kurdish.
Speaker 11: Right, Yeah, I mean it's just it's a huge deal
Speaker 11: because you're not just killing like people, you're killing a
Speaker 11: culture that's like in like it's not it's still like
Speaker 11: a different word to say extinct, like it's in danger
Speaker 11: of like not being there if it's not for the
Speaker 11: people protecting it. Right, And I think it's like a
Speaker 11: classic tactic to stop people from using their language or
Speaker 11: customs or whatever, to just like try to erase them
Speaker 11: and like make them Turk or whatever they want them
Speaker 11: to be. And so the proposal of that, I think
Speaker 11: is significant. But then obviously the follow through is a
Speaker 11: different story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the follow through is not there, right, So after
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen, he's really pivoted and he's pursued like a
Speaker 3: really violent antique Kurdish policy. And it's worth noting, as
Speaker 3: you said, that for much of the twentieth century, the
Speaker 3: Turkey state denied the existence of Kurdish people together. They
Speaker 3: call them mountain Turks in even in March twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: the Turkish Military of Education released a book in the
Speaker 3: Kurdish majority. It's a province called Diabakir. Diabakir, I guess
Speaker 3: it's Turkish, which it doesn't mention Kurds. It's a Kurlish
Speaker 3: majority province. It doesn't mention the Kurdish language. It claims
Speaker 3: that it's a Turkish dialect that's spoken there. They changed
Speaker 3: the name in August twenty twenty one of seventeenth century
Speaker 3: Mosque from the words translating from the Turkish to the
Speaker 3: Kurds Mosque, and they call it the Turks Mosque. In
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three, Turkey dropped its objection. So subjection is
Speaker 3: an effective vito right to Finland and Sweden joining NATO
Speaker 3: when the latter pledged to devote more attention to the
Speaker 3: PKK and effectively end its decades old tradition as giving
Speaker 3: protection an asylum to Kurdish refugees. So if people aren't familiar,
Speaker 3: Sweden has been a country that's offered asylum to a
Speaker 3: lot of different groups of people, Like I have a
Speaker 3: lot of friends from various stories I've done all over
Speaker 3: the world who have ended up living in Sweden, and
Speaker 3: Curtish people are among those people, right who have found
Speaker 3: a home and a safe place in Sweden. So encouraging
Speaker 3: Sweden to not do that gives people one less safe
Speaker 3: place to go, right, Yeah, and this was kind of
Speaker 3: Turkey's like cost of entry for those people into NATO. Now,
Speaker 3: obviously there's a reason that Sweden and Finland want to
Speaker 3: join NATO, right, and that's the Russia is like right
Speaker 3: there and has been doing some invasion recently, and so
Speaker 3: they want that as kind of mutual aid, that mutual defense,
Speaker 3: and so they're being forced to give up this very
Speaker 3: reasonable policy of offering people asylum. Hi, everyone, it's me
Speaker 3: James and I am back after what I hope was
Speaker 3: a fruitful and enjoyable advertising break for you. It is
Speaker 3: just me, and the reason for that is that someone
Speaker 3: outside is currently severing my telephone cable, judging by what
Speaker 3: I can hear and the fact that I no longer
Speaker 3: have the Internet. So the second part of this episode
Speaker 3: will be me reading my script by myself without the
Speaker 3: interesting and often entertaining input of my colleagues. So sorry
Speaker 3: about that, but you will just have to make do.
Speaker 3: Turkey's been involved in a Syrian civil war since the beginning. Initially,
Speaker 3: it armed and equipped the Anti Assad FSA, but in
Speaker 3: August twenty sixteen it began a direct occupation of parts
Speaker 3: of northern Syria under Operation Euphrates Shield. In twenty seventeen,
Speaker 3: it facilitated the establishment of the Syrian National Army in
Speaker 3: the Syrian Entering Government, which it finances. Turkey has accused
Speaker 3: of Syrian Democratic forces, to which the YPG and YPGA belong,
Speaker 3: of quote seizing and ethnically cleansing territories which don't belong
Speaker 3: to Kurds. There isn't really any credible evidence for this,
Speaker 3: and the UN has refuted these claims. Some people have
Speaker 3: have moved right, like as happens in many conflicts, but
Speaker 3: the SMI saw was like twenty five families. Erligan has
Speaker 3: openly expressed a sentiment that Kurdish people don't belong in
Speaker 3: North and East Syria, saying these areas are not suitable
Speaker 3: for the lifestyle of Kurds because these areas of virtually desert,
Speaker 3: deportations of Syrians who have been who have sought refuge
Speaker 3: in Turkey. Right, so people from Syria who have fled
Speaker 3: the civil war. But three and just over three and
Speaker 3: a half million people are living in Turkey. Right, Turkey
Speaker 3: has to Cloud's intention to move one million of these
Speaker 3: people back to Syria, and it has already begun moving
Speaker 3: these people back to northwest Syria in the area as
Speaker 3: it occupies.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: The US State Department in a press conference on the
Speaker 3: fourth of August deny that this constituted a demographic change.
Speaker 3: But I think that that's very heavily disputed by people
Speaker 3: on the ground. Certainly, the YPJA and the YPG would
Speaker 3: dispute that right that the Kurdish people who have been
Speaker 3: driven out of some of the Turkey occupies are being
Speaker 3: replaced by these people that are being moved back in
Speaker 3: by Turkey. Turkey was of course the entry point for
Speaker 3: much of the weaponry and many of the people who
Speaker 3: joined ISIS in Syria. Foreign Policy the Publication has estimated
Speaker 3: that more than thirty thousand people across Turkey along the
Speaker 3: so called Jihadi Highway. Later Turkey clamped down on this
Speaker 3: a bit, but certainly in my coverage of the smuggling
Speaker 3: of weapons and equipment to ISIS, they were going through Turkey.
Speaker 3: Turkey was also directly engaged with the defeat of ISIS
Speaker 3: right Turk Turkey's troops for ISIS in parts of northern Syria. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Turkey is also enforced an economic blockade of the Autonomous
Speaker 3: Area of Northeast Syria, and it's even restricted water flowing
Speaker 3: into the region. Right, So, at some point weapons and
Speaker 3: humans have flowed through Turkey to ISIS, and at this
Speaker 3: point water is not flowing in sufficient quantities through Turkey
Speaker 3: to the Autonomous Area of North and East Syria. And
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen, Turkey started what's called Operation Olive Branch. It's
Speaker 3: a military operation in which Turkish and Syrian National Army
Speaker 3: forces took control as the city of Afrin. The assault
Speaker 3: included the alleged use of chemical gas, shelling of civilian areas,
Speaker 3: and shooting of fleeing refugees. Kurdish shrine flags, cultural and
Speaker 3: historical sites were targeted destroyed by Turkish military forces. A
Speaker 3: hospital was bombed. Reporters Without Borders noted that reporting on
Speaker 3: the conflict had been handstrung by the Turkish government and
Speaker 3: more than thirty thousand Kurdish people have been displaced and
Speaker 3: their homes have been taken by those relocated refugees who
Speaker 3: we spoke about. Olive arms in the area have been
Speaker 3: seized and then leased to fund the operation of the
Speaker 3: pro Turkish Syrian National Army. The Syrian Observatory for Human
Speaker 3: Rights has documented these forces threatening to be head Kurds,
Speaker 3: and The Independent, that's the newspaper, has noted that some
Speaker 3: of the people fighting alongside the SNA are themselves former
Speaker 3: cardrids of Isis. In its reporting, the Independent reported that
Speaker 3: and I quote video posted online shows three uniformed Jahadis
Speaker 3: singing a song in praise of their past battles, and
Speaker 3: it says, quote how we were steadfast in Grossny, that's
Speaker 3: in Chezhnir, Dakistan, and we took the Tora Bora. That's
Speaker 3: Tora Bora's cave complex, formerly the headquarters of Osama bin Laden,
Speaker 3: and now Afrien is calling to us. There's the song
Speaker 3: they were singing, right, that's suggesting that they're sort of
Speaker 3: a fight. There's casting this in in a long line
Speaker 3: of these battles that have been fought by these various
Speaker 3: I guess Islamist groups, just to be super clear on
Speaker 3: Islamist versus Islamic, because I don't want people to confuse
Speaker 3: the two things. One is a political outlook, right of
Speaker 3: being an Islamist is a political outlook in it it
Speaker 3: focuses on, It uses an interpretation of Islam, which is
Speaker 3: certainly not the mainstream one. It's not my place to
Speaker 3: say whether or not it's a correct one, but it's
Speaker 3: certainly not the one that most Muslims in the world
Speaker 3: agree with. And it's the interpretation of that faith that
Speaker 3: you'll have seen with groups like ISIS and al Qaida. Right,
Speaker 3: But that is not to say by any means that
Speaker 3: all Muslim people agree with this, because they don't. There
Speaker 3: are Muslim people, many thousand, hundred and thousand of them
Speaker 3: who have been targeted killed by these people, right, And
Speaker 3: just wanted to be super clear on that distinction. The
Speaker 3: Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has also noted members of
Speaker 3: the Turkish fascist group the Gray Wolves, fighting alongside the
Speaker 3: SNA SO standing in the United States, it is easy
Speaker 3: to see this Turkish operation as a consequence of Trump's
Speaker 3: choice to abandon the SDF and the people who defeated ISIS,
Speaker 3: and to a large degree it is, but it also
Speaker 3: represents a long term goal of verdigans Turkey, which is
Speaker 3: tried without success to get support for its plans to
Speaker 3: build a buffer zone thirty kilometers deep a long its
Speaker 3: border with Syria, and to fill that buffer zone with
Speaker 3: Syrian refugees who increasingly end up in Turkey. In particular,
Speaker 3: Turkey has objected to plans by the United States train
Speaker 3: and equip for thirty thousand person strong border force. This
Speaker 3: went through several different naming iterations. It's don't really matter,
Speaker 3: it's a border force. Right before the attack, Russian military
Speaker 3: officials proposed handing over a freeing to a SAD as
Speaker 3: a compromise. So we haven't talked about Russia much. Robert
Speaker 3: talks about this in his series, But Russia is in
Speaker 3: Syria as an ally of the Aside regime, and it
Speaker 3: has sort of acted as a go between between the
Speaker 3: SDF and the Side regime, and it has proposed in
Speaker 3: this instance right that the SDF withdraw from a freeing,
Speaker 3: which is the area that Turkey invaded an operation out
Speaker 3: of Branch of twenty eighteen, and it said, if you
Speaker 3: guys put out and you hand us over to a SAD,
Speaker 3: the Turks won't invade, they won't directly take on a
Speaker 3: SAD like that. The SDF refused. Right authorities are in
Speaker 3: a very tense relationship with Damascus, which is where Asad's
Speaker 3: government is based. Right, they've both received aid from them,
Speaker 3: have been attacked by them. After they were abandoned by
Speaker 3: the US and Russia, and they knew that Turkey Russia.
Speaker 3: Russia was aware that Turkey had plans to invade right
Speaker 3: and obviously didn't do anything to stop it. So they
Speaker 3: these SDF felt that they were abandoned by US and Russia,
Speaker 3: with very very good reason to feel that way. The
Speaker 3: A and E s scrambled to find new ally to
Speaker 3: protect them, and they found one in the Side government.
Speaker 3: This wasn't like, I don't think a choice that they
Speaker 3: wanted to make. I think the rest of the worldn't
Speaker 3: leave with many options. So I'm quoting here from most
Speaker 3: Luma Beidi, the SDFS commander in chief. He wrote an
Speaker 3: OpEd and foreign policy. It'll be linked in our sources
Speaker 3: at the end of the month. If we have to
Speaker 3: choose compromise in genocide, we will choose our people, he said.
Speaker 3: Numerous fighters who for ISIS and foreign volunteers have died
Speaker 3: in a so in that initial operation right when the
Speaker 3: SDF opposed Turkish invasion, numerous people died. One of them
Speaker 3: was a Britain named Anna Campbell. As she went by
Speaker 3: Helene Kera coox. I matter fuck that pronunciation of but
Speaker 3: not my attempt to be disrespectful I have. She was
Speaker 3: killed by Turkish Michelle and Afree and her father, Dirk Campbell,
Speaker 3: has been campaigning ever since tav his daughter's remains returned.
Speaker 3: His case remains with the courts and has been entirely
Speaker 3: crowd funded. He submitted a claim to the European Court
Speaker 3: of Human Rights after hearing nothing from the Turkish courts,
Speaker 3: and when he did that, the Turkish courtse picked up
Speaker 3: the case he'd submitted there. You can also find a
Speaker 3: link to this in the sources, but it's crowdjustice dot com,
Speaker 3: slash case slash help Hyphen bring hyphen Anna Hyphen home.
Speaker 3: They've raised all the money they need her at the moment,
Speaker 3: but doubtless they will need more in the future. So
Speaker 3: where does all this leave the people of North and
Speaker 3: East Syria?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 3: These are people who have been impacted by the territorial
Speaker 3: caliphate of the Islamic State and all the horrific things
Speaker 3: that people will be aware happened that. They're people who
Speaker 3: have successfully fought for and achieved their freedom only to
Speaker 3: be attacked by another state. And they are people who
Speaker 3: have suffered the same earthquake that Turkey suffered. In February
Speaker 3: of this year twenty twenty three, four thousand people died
Speaker 3: in a freed right, which is the city which is
Speaker 3: now occupied by Turkish and SNA troops, and Turkey pushed
Speaker 3: a little bit further east in Operation quote unquote Peace Spring,
Speaker 3: a year after Olive Branch, and currently Turkey is cutting
Speaker 3: water flow to pumping stations it controls that feed water
Speaker 3: to the area. It combines with the impact of the
Speaker 3: earthquake and the ongoing burden of controlling one of the
Speaker 3: largest prisons in Earth, which is the Al Whole Prison
Speaker 3: which holds the majority of the ISIS fighters and their
Speaker 3: families who were not either killed or returned to the
Speaker 3: states from which they came. And we'll have more on
Speaker 3: that Alhole Prison next week. There's infighting between militias in
Speaker 3: the Turkish areas, which obviously impact Turkish controlled areas. Obviously
Speaker 3: that impacts civilians is arbitrary arrests. There's the increasing Turkification
Speaker 3: of areas like a free right, including instruction in the
Speaker 3: Turkish language. Like Shurin said earlier, it's one of the
Speaker 3: things that's integral to maintaining national identity is education.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: In my experience studying cattle and identity leetting education in
Speaker 3: Catalan was vital to fermenting and continuing Catalan identity. Kadish
Speaker 3: identity is not national in the same way the identity
Speaker 3: in the A and S I guess is not national.
Speaker 3: But this turkification, right, the flying of Turkish flags above
Speaker 3: buildings which are not military buildings, right like above hospitals,
Speaker 3: and that kind of thing again is a marginalization of
Speaker 3: the people who already lived there and who have lived
Speaker 3: there for a long time. SDF guerrilla units like Wrath
Speaker 3: of Olives and a Free and Liberation Front are involved
Speaker 3: and fighting with a Syrian National Army, and that fighting
Speaker 3: kills civilians right and throughout a Free and there have
Speaker 3: been things like car bombs. The a Free Liberation Front
Speaker 3: goes by HRI from the Kurdish initials right, and they've
Speaker 3: carried out some attacks on SNA militias in the last
Speaker 3: few days. You can often see videos of those online
Speaker 3: and it's the sort of thing you'd like to see.
Speaker 3: There are still land mines that kill civilians in the area,
Speaker 3: and there are still ISIS sleeper cells bombing and killing people.
Speaker 3: Last week, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria
Speaker 3: responded to Turkey's ongoing aggresion, bashing a statement claiming Turkey's
Speaker 3: operations are forcing the SDF to divert personnel away from
Speaker 3: countering ISIS and threatening the stability of the area. Obviously,
Speaker 3: this is all after an earthquake which killed four thousand
Speaker 3: people in a free people that have access to as
Speaker 3: many hospitals there. For instance, Dots still have to travel
Speaker 3: to Turkey to get cancer treatment, right and so IS.
Speaker 3: This leaves that people of North and Eastyria in a
Speaker 3: very precarious situation right in which there are. They're now
Speaker 3: left largely without the solidarity that they experienced when they
Speaker 3: were fighting. Isis right, and it's very difficult, Just like
Speaker 3: in so many cases, I feel this way about Memar two.
Speaker 3: To see the US and Europe expressing solidarity and solidarity
Speaker 3: in the form of lethal aid. Right, solidarity in the
Speaker 3: form of surface to webissiles and tanks and rifles and
Speaker 3: bullet proof beests and medical aid and all the things
Speaker 3: that you need to sustain a fight to Ukraine, and
Speaker 3: they should they should do that. I'm not saying for
Speaker 3: a moment that they shouldn't. Right. Ukraine has been invaded
Speaker 3: by a much bigger and more powerful military and it
Speaker 3: has every right to defend itself. And I'm glad that
Speaker 3: we're helping, but I wish that we would help other
Speaker 3: people too, especially people who we have sort of made
Speaker 3: promises to that we've not kept, or people who we've
Speaker 3: encouraged to believe, in the case of Memr right, that
Speaker 3: they have a right to a better life, and then
Speaker 3: when they decide to defend that, we don't stand behind them. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's my episode. I'm sorry for a weird juxtaposition of
Speaker 3: me doing the love part scripted, but somebody outside is
Speaker 3: drilling through my phone cable. So yeah, thank you for
Speaker 3: joining me.
Speaker 1: Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
Speaker 1: from now until the heat death of the Universe.
Speaker 6: It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 4: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
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