WEBVTT - It Could Happen Here Weekly 251 0:00:01.730 --> 0:00:02.930 Call zone media. 0:00:03.350 --> 0:00:03.990 Hey, everybody. 0:00:04.210 --> 0:00:06.080 Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know 0:00:06.100 --> 0:00:09.860 this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the 0:00:09.900 --> 0:00:13.680 week that just happened is here in one convenient and 0:00:13.740 --> 0:00:17.000 with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to 0:00:17.079 --> 0:00:19.330 in a long stretch if you want. If you've been 0:00:19.370 --> 0:00:21.370 listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going 0:00:21.390 --> 0:00:23.430 to be nothing new here for you, but you can 0:00:23.450 --> 0:00:24.410 make your own decisions. 0:00:29.020 --> 0:00:31.420 Hello everyone and welcome to It Could Happen Here. My 0:00:31.460 --> 0:00:33.960 name is Dana Al-Kurd. I'm a researcher of Arab and 0:00:33.979 --> 0:00:37.240 Palestinian politics. And today I want to talk about the 0:00:37.650 --> 0:00:41.190 truly insidious stories coming out of the West Bank that 0:00:41.550 --> 0:00:45.909 read separately look like a spike in settler violence, but 0:00:45.970 --> 0:00:51.310 read together look like something else entirely. On August 9th, 0:00:51.770 --> 0:00:55.209 settlers surrounded three Palestinian homes in a neighborhood called Ras 0:00:55.230 --> 0:00:57.710 Al-Ayn on the edge of a village called Qusra south 0:00:57.750 --> 0:01:01.710 of Nablus. They didn't leave. 21 days later, at least 0:01:01.770 --> 0:01:03.950 four people were still inside one of those houses cut 0:01:03.990 --> 0:01:08.509 off from water, electricity, and basic supplies. Getting food into 0:01:08.550 --> 0:01:11.230 those people meant coordinating through the village mayor, which was 0:01:11.290 --> 0:01:14.030 a process that took three to four days. The Israeli 0:01:14.110 --> 0:01:16.789 army put up three new roadblocks, and in July, the 0:01:16.830 --> 0:01:19.860 village mosque was burned. I want you to sit with 0:01:19.880 --> 0:01:23.340 that for a minute, because this is not a raid. 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:27.480 This is not a rampage. It's a siege with a 0:01:27.540 --> 0:01:31.330 bureaucracy attached. And that bureaucracy is the story. And that's 0:01:31.350 --> 0:01:33.410 what I want to talk about today. And I'm trying 0:01:33.430 --> 0:01:35.890 to be precise about the difference because the distinction is 0:01:35.930 --> 0:01:38.870 not academic. It determines what you think the problem is 0:01:39.310 --> 0:01:41.810 and therefore what you think the solution would look like. 0:01:42.819 --> 0:01:46.000 Here's the framing you'll get from almost every Western outlet. 0:01:47.000 --> 0:01:49.840 And of course, every Israeli official. That this is a 0:01:49.900 --> 0:01:54.040 fringe and that these settlers are a violent fringe and 0:01:54.060 --> 0:01:57.190 they embarrass the state and the state condemns this fringe. 0:01:58.040 --> 0:02:01.630 When settlers besieged Qusra, Prime Minister Netanyahu did issue a statement, 0:02:01.850 --> 0:02:05.790 and here I'm quoting, condemning the, quote, criminal acts of 0:02:05.830 --> 0:02:08.530 violence committed in the village of Qusra by a handful 0:02:08.550 --> 0:02:12.030 of rioters who are violating the law. And Israeli President 0:02:12.070 --> 0:02:14.630 Herzog also condemned it, and the foreign ministry condemned it 0:02:14.790 --> 0:02:19.040 as extremist and criminal violence. So let's take that framing 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:22.060 seriously for a moment, because if it's true, what we're 0:02:22.080 --> 0:02:25.160 looking at is a law enforcement failure, a state that's 0:02:25.180 --> 0:02:29.530 lost control of its most radical citizens. And if it's false, 0:02:29.790 --> 0:02:31.790 what we're looking at is a state carrying out a 0:02:31.830 --> 0:02:36.030 policy through deniable means, and the condemnations are not a 0:02:36.050 --> 0:02:38.889 failure at all. They're a feature. They're the part of 0:02:38.910 --> 0:02:42.370 the machine that faces outward. So let's go through what 0:02:42.430 --> 0:02:46.010 actually happened in these villages, and then let's ask which 0:02:46.060 --> 0:02:50.720 of these framings fits the evidence best. So Basel Al-Adra, 0:02:50.800 --> 0:02:52.919 the journalist from Masafir Yatta, the one who you know 0:02:53.000 --> 0:02:55.740 from No Other Land, the documentary that won a bunch 0:02:55.760 --> 0:02:58.600 of awards, He published a piece in Jewish Currents on 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:02.720 September 3rd about livestock theft in the South Hebron Hills. 0:03:03.340 --> 0:03:08.350 So this isn't vandalism, it's theft. It's organized removal of livestock. 0:03:09.290 --> 0:03:12.190 So shortly after midnight on August 21st in a place 0:03:12.230 --> 0:03:15.370 called Chirbet Dir Shams, a family was attacked by roughly 0:03:15.370 --> 0:03:18.630 15 masked settlers with sticks and stones. One of them 0:03:18.669 --> 0:03:20.880 describes it flatly. They basically opened the pen where the 0:03:20.910 --> 0:03:23.540 family kept around 70 goats, and then they opened the 0:03:23.560 --> 0:03:26.450 sheep pen where there were about 100 sheep, And as 0:03:26.510 --> 0:03:28.990 the settlers moved off of the animals, Israeli army vehicles 0:03:29.050 --> 0:03:32.450 passed nearby. And in his words, they did nothing. Nearly 0:03:32.510 --> 0:03:36.080 two weeks later, not one animal has been recovered. Back 0:03:36.120 --> 0:03:39.920 in July, in another village, a settler pepper sprayed a man, 0:03:40.420 --> 0:03:43.240 and then more settlers arrived, and then a flock of 0:03:43.300 --> 0:03:48.040 about 122 sheep were targeted and taken. Soldiers did show 0:03:48.100 --> 0:03:51.210 up that time. According to one of the villagers, what 0:03:51.220 --> 0:03:53.369 the soldiers did was push the Palestinians away from their 0:03:53.450 --> 0:03:57.020 own animals while settlers broke the locks. And of roughly 0:03:57.020 --> 0:04:00.830 227 animals taken that day, nine came back. Four residents 0:04:00.870 --> 0:04:03.890 of the village were arrested and then released. B'Tselem, which 0:04:03.950 --> 0:04:07.550 is an Israeli human rights organization, has counted 17 livestock 0:04:07.590 --> 0:04:11.120 theft incidents in 2026 alone. And a flock of the 0:04:11.160 --> 0:04:13.640 size that we're talking about here, it's worth something on 0:04:13.660 --> 0:04:18.140 the order of tens, if not $ 100, 000. I'm flagging this 0:04:18.200 --> 0:04:22.060 because I think it's easy to hear sheep and these 0:04:22.160 --> 0:04:24.960 kinds of things and file it maybe under like property 0:04:25.020 --> 0:04:28.440 crime or vandalism or something. But for a herding family 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:31.160 in the South Hebron Hills, the flock is not just 0:04:31.200 --> 0:04:34.900 an asset. It's the entire productive base of the household. 0:04:34.960 --> 0:04:37.599 It's the income. It's the reason to stay on that hillside. 0:04:38.460 --> 0:04:41.720 So if you want to expel a pastoral community, you 0:04:41.839 --> 0:04:45.040 don't just expel them. You can take its animals and 0:04:45.080 --> 0:04:48.300 then it can expel itself. And it does so in 0:04:48.310 --> 0:04:51.720 a way that produces no photograph of a bulldozer. Another 0:04:51.760 --> 0:04:54.560 incident was on July 8th, when the head of Israel's 0:04:54.600 --> 0:04:58.540 Central Command signed a land seizure order. And that order 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:01.920 takes dozens of dunams of land from Bil'in and three 0:05:01.940 --> 0:05:04.720 neighboring villages to build a security road, six and a 0:05:04.740 --> 0:05:08.120 half kilometers long and eight meters wide, connecting the settlement 0:05:08.980 --> 0:05:13.279 of Modayin Elit to an outpost called Stei Ephraim. Sorry, 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:15.700 I don't know Hebrew, so I'm going to be butchering these. 0:05:16.630 --> 0:05:20.150 But Oren Zev reported this for 972 Mag on September 2nd. 0:05:21.410 --> 0:05:24.890 So those who are familiar with Palestinian Popular Resistance in 0:05:24.950 --> 0:05:29.490 the mid to early 2000s, you've heard of Bil'in. Lots 0:05:29.510 --> 0:05:34.210 of documentaries about it. Lots of international attention. This village 0:05:34.250 --> 0:05:39.039 basically sustained weekly demonstrations against the separation wall for something 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:41.219 like 15 years because this wall was being built on 0:05:41.240 --> 0:05:44.870 their land and taking huge chunks of their land. In 2007, 0:05:44.870 --> 0:05:47.950 the Israeli high court ordered that part of the wall 0:05:48.350 --> 0:05:50.950 removed and the land actually came back to the village. 0:05:51.810 --> 0:05:55.450 So in the international imagination, this was the best outcome. See, 0:05:55.480 --> 0:06:00.260 the nonviolent resistance worked. And this is the nonviolent resistance 0:06:00.320 --> 0:06:02.900 that Western commentators often point to when they want to 0:06:02.940 --> 0:06:07.480 lecture Palestinians about tactics. Now, this road that they're proposing 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:11.839 runs through the land that was returned. So Mohamed Khatib, 0:06:11.920 --> 0:06:15.640 who led some of these protests, says the point is 0:06:15.680 --> 0:06:18.540 not a road. It's a settlement corridor. It's basically an 0:06:18.580 --> 0:06:22.650 eventual seizure of something like 600 dunams. And the attorney, 0:06:22.690 --> 0:06:25.710 Michael Svard, put it very bluntly. They don't think twice 0:06:26.130 --> 0:06:29.950 about co-opting the security argument for purposes that are clearly 0:06:30.029 --> 0:06:34.219 settlement oriented. And what's really ludicrous is that this road 0:06:34.339 --> 0:06:38.060 runs through a wadi. kind of a valley, which from 0:06:38.100 --> 0:06:40.400 an actual security standpoint is a bad place to put 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:45.320 a road. So the security rationale isn't just contested, it's incoherent, 0:06:45.790 --> 0:06:48.210 which tells you that the word security here is doing 0:06:48.290 --> 0:06:51.270 legal work, not tactical work. It's this just magic phrase 0:06:51.770 --> 0:06:55.970 that converts a settlement expansion into a military necessity, and 0:06:56.010 --> 0:06:58.450 then a military necessity into a signed order from a general. 0:06:59.589 --> 0:07:01.490 A third incident or set of incidents I want to 0:07:01.510 --> 0:07:05.430 talk about is these hikes. There have been these hikes. 0:07:05.550 --> 0:07:10.560 This is a really ridiculous, insidious story. Aharon Parath and 0:07:10.600 --> 0:07:13.880 Roy Kleitman published an investigation of these hikes in 972 0:07:13.880 --> 0:07:18.680 Mag in late August about these hiking groups, these organized 0:07:19.040 --> 0:07:22.059 settler hiking groups in the West Bank. They've got really 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:25.930 cutesy names sometimes, like hiking buddies. And they publish their routes. 0:07:26.590 --> 0:07:28.770 And they go from settlement to settlement, and they cross 0:07:28.830 --> 0:07:33.070 Palestinian farmland and springs and villages. So a hike near 0:07:33.090 --> 0:07:37.500 the north of Hebron... one of these hikes ended with a, quote, 0:07:37.540 --> 0:07:43.490 civilian security coordinator opening fire and killing 17-year-old Palestinian Karim 0:07:43.550 --> 0:07:48.870 Shalalde and seriously wounding another one. So that's, I think, 0:07:48.890 --> 0:07:51.530 the whole episode in two words. A civilian security coordinator. 0:07:51.570 --> 0:07:54.750 This is not a hiker who lost his temper. It's 0:07:54.770 --> 0:07:59.250 a job. It's an armed, appointed part of the chain 0:07:59.270 --> 0:08:01.810 of command. The man who fired was functionally an arm 0:08:01.830 --> 0:08:04.800 of the state. But supposedly on a hike in a 0:08:04.820 --> 0:08:08.290 village that is not his. On July 24th, near the 0:08:08.330 --> 0:08:10.790 village of Tal west of Nablus, a hike ended with 0:08:10.830 --> 0:08:14.770 six people dead, two Israelis and four Palestinians. David Syed, 0:08:14.830 --> 0:08:17.570 who founded one of these hiking groups, basically says the 0:08:17.610 --> 0:08:21.360 quiet part in a single sentence. Wherever the hiker's foot treads, 0:08:21.830 --> 0:08:24.860 there the border will pass. So he's talking about how 0:08:25.180 --> 0:08:27.200 they're going to places they haven't been to in a 0:08:27.220 --> 0:08:30.200 long time or maybe ever. And on the question of 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:33.510 the army, he explains the relationship very precisely. We don't 0:08:33.570 --> 0:08:36.530 ask for permits, he says. We mainly notify them so 0:08:36.570 --> 0:08:39.800 we don't put the sector on alert. And this is 0:08:39.840 --> 0:08:43.520 very clear in a lot of their quotes about this issue. 0:08:43.700 --> 0:08:46.920 They coordinate with the army. They notify, but they are 0:08:46.960 --> 0:08:50.830 not asking permission. And the army isn't policing them. It's 0:08:50.850 --> 0:08:52.570 being kept in the loop so that it. 0:08:52.550 --> 0:08:53.250 Can protect them. 0:08:54.030 --> 0:08:56.790 And the reporting traces this back over a decade. There's 0:08:56.830 --> 0:09:01.510 a 2013 hike documented with 100 hikers and soldiers accompanying them. 0:09:02.340 --> 0:09:06.559 So supposedly this recreational activity has a stated territorial doctrine, 0:09:07.059 --> 0:09:11.780 a published route through other people's fields, an armed participant base, 0:09:12.010 --> 0:09:25.940 and a military that gets notified. All right, so we 0:09:25.960 --> 0:09:30.480 have four things. The livestock theft with soldiers watching, a 0:09:30.540 --> 0:09:34.940 siege of villages, seizing of land and armed hikes with 0:09:35.240 --> 0:09:39.099 military escorts. Now let's get back to Prime Minister Netanyahu's 0:09:39.140 --> 0:09:42.780 phrase about this being a handful of riots. A riot 0:09:43.240 --> 0:09:46.610 is unplanned. A riot has no logistics. A riot does 0:09:46.660 --> 0:09:49.130 not file paperwork. What's in front of us here is 0:09:49.170 --> 0:09:53.390 very different. Because here, I think a lot of people 0:09:53.530 --> 0:09:55.890 who are critical of the state of Israel might make 0:09:55.910 --> 0:09:58.620 the argument that the settlers are the state. But I 0:09:58.660 --> 0:10:01.610 think this loses a little bit of analytical detail. So 0:10:01.620 --> 0:10:04.050 let me make this a little bit more specific, which 0:10:04.410 --> 0:10:08.270 I actually think is more damning. The Israeli state and 0:10:08.309 --> 0:10:11.290 the settler movement are not identical, but they are complementary 0:10:11.590 --> 0:10:15.220 because they perform different functions in the same project. And 0:10:15.780 --> 0:10:17.839 it's very clear that the division of labor is the point. 0:10:18.760 --> 0:10:20.980 Because think for a moment about what each half can 0:10:21.040 --> 0:10:24.260 do that the other can't. Settlers can do things the 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:28.880 state can't do openly without incurring some diplomatic cost. For example, 0:10:28.920 --> 0:10:31.190 taking a flock of sheep or burning a mosque or 0:10:31.210 --> 0:10:33.770 standing outside a house for three weeks. These are acts 0:10:33.850 --> 0:10:38.650 with no legal basis. There's no order, no minister to sanction, 0:10:38.670 --> 0:10:42.610 no policy to condemn at the UN. They produce displacement 0:10:42.870 --> 0:10:45.740 without producing a decision. And then the state can do 0:10:45.770 --> 0:10:47.970 things settlers can't do on their own. It can sign 0:10:47.990 --> 0:10:52.849 a seizure order. It can declare land state land. It 0:10:52.890 --> 0:10:55.030 can build the road that makes the outpost viable and 0:10:55.070 --> 0:10:56.880 connect it to the grid and route the bus line. 0:10:57.780 --> 0:11:00.179 And it can decline to investigate when things happen. It 0:11:00.220 --> 0:11:03.260 can arrest four Palestinians instead of the 15 masked settlers, 0:11:03.900 --> 0:11:05.920 which is exactly what happened in one of these villages. 0:11:07.120 --> 0:11:10.020 And crucially, the state can supply this ambiguity that lets 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:13.250 the whole thing keep running. The soldiers present at these 0:11:13.290 --> 0:11:18.110 incidents are not intervening, Because not that they're absent. It's 0:11:18.150 --> 0:11:21.510 in fact a specific posture of the state. It converts 0:11:21.610 --> 0:11:26.150 this crime into something sanctioned. And it tells the Palestinian 0:11:26.190 --> 0:11:29.309 family there's really no one to appeal to. And this 0:11:29.390 --> 0:11:32.130 is what political scientists who study this stuff in other 0:11:32.170 --> 0:11:37.540 contexts as outsourced or deniable repression by paramilitaries or militias 0:11:37.620 --> 0:11:41.500 or unknown gung men, quote unquote. We recognize it instantly 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:44.760 when it's in other places. And we understand kind of 0:11:44.800 --> 0:11:47.240 the analytical move here because you don't ask whether the 0:11:47.260 --> 0:11:49.180 state ordered it, you ask whether the state built the 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:52.420 conditions under which it happens. And by that test, this 0:11:52.500 --> 0:11:54.780 is not ambiguous at all. But for some reason, when 0:11:54.800 --> 0:11:57.490 we talk about Israel-Palestine, things get a little bit more ambiguous. 0:11:58.809 --> 0:12:01.610 I also want to point out something really crucial, which 0:12:01.670 --> 0:12:03.610 is that every one of these incidents, and they've been 0:12:03.630 --> 0:12:06.190 happening for a while, but they've ramped up in severity, 0:12:06.929 --> 0:12:09.410 but every one of them produces a permanent gain. The 0:12:09.450 --> 0:12:11.900 animals that are stolen don't come back. The road that's 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:15.260 built can't be unbuilt. The hiking route, you know, once 0:12:15.320 --> 0:12:18.070 walked with an escort becomes a corridor, then a security zone, 0:12:18.230 --> 0:12:21.050 then a place that Palestinians can't farm. And the siege 0:12:21.110 --> 0:12:24.229 doesn't need to end in a formal expulsion. It ends 0:12:24.309 --> 0:12:26.709 when the family decides they can't raise their children under 0:12:26.730 --> 0:12:29.790 these conditions. They can't stay under siege. And there's a 0:12:29.929 --> 0:12:34.200 phrase for what's coming when all of this happens all 0:12:34.220 --> 0:12:38.069 at once, which is annexation. And People talk about it 0:12:38.150 --> 0:12:40.829 as if it's a future event that's awaiting some sort 0:12:40.870 --> 0:12:44.189 of vote from the Israeli Knesset or something. But I'd 0:12:44.210 --> 0:12:47.490 suggest that framing is itself part of the problem. It 0:12:47.550 --> 0:12:51.059 invites us to wait for a declaration and treat everything 0:12:51.100 --> 0:12:55.500 before that as some sort of tension or spike. The 0:12:55.540 --> 0:12:58.439 declaration of annexation is the least important part. What's happening 0:12:58.720 --> 0:13:02.360 on the ground is a territorial reality that's being produced 0:13:02.960 --> 0:13:06.090 by signature and by theft. And then maybe later on 0:13:06.110 --> 0:13:09.770 the paperwork will ratify it, but it's not necessary. Israeli 0:13:09.790 --> 0:13:12.150 writer and analyst Marev Zanzin actually made a version of 0:13:12.190 --> 0:13:14.730 this argument in the New York Times on September 6th 0:13:15.390 --> 0:13:18.850 under a headline that I think is worth reading. The 0:13:18.890 --> 0:13:21.050 headline of the article is, it's not just the West 0:13:21.090 --> 0:13:26.250 Bank settlers, it's Israel. So hopefully this analysis doesn't seem 0:13:26.390 --> 0:13:29.069 fringe anymore. At the end of the day, if we 0:13:29.130 --> 0:13:33.390 consider settler violence a fringe problem, then the remedy is 0:13:33.850 --> 0:13:40.079 which the Biden administration toyed with half-heartedly, is sanctions on individuals, 0:13:40.860 --> 0:13:43.860 a visa ban or an asset freeze. And we've run 0:13:43.900 --> 0:13:47.620 that experiment. That didn't really work. The violence kept going up. 0:13:48.590 --> 0:13:54.030 But if it's a state policy executed through deniable proxies, 0:13:54.650 --> 0:13:57.450 then the remedy has to address the state. And every 0:13:57.530 --> 0:14:00.600 actor with leverage over that state, which, you know, we're 0:14:00.620 --> 0:14:05.160 talking about D.C. here, understands this, but they've chosen the 0:14:05.200 --> 0:14:10.500 fringe framing precisely because it permits condemnation without cost. So 0:14:10.880 --> 0:14:13.850 Netanyahu condemning a handful of rioters in the same week 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:17.110 that the Israeli Central Command signs a road through Bil'in's 0:14:17.150 --> 0:14:20.350 returned land, this is not a contradiction he failed to notice, 0:14:20.530 --> 0:14:23.730 it is the design of this policy. So I'll leave 0:14:23.770 --> 0:14:26.970 you with this detail from the reporting on Qusra that 0:14:27.010 --> 0:14:29.840 I can't get out of my head. It was that 0:14:30.260 --> 0:14:33.920 six people were attacked on while trying to install metal 0:14:34.000 --> 0:14:36.760 bars and window shields on their homes. They were attacked 0:14:36.800 --> 0:14:39.830 by both Israeli soldiers and settlers together in the same action. 0:14:40.010 --> 0:14:42.670 And then the six of them were arrested. So they 0:14:42.690 --> 0:14:47.830 weren't fighting. They weren't protesting. They were fastening metal on 0:14:47.850 --> 0:14:50.710 their own house to protect themselves. And they were being 0:14:50.750 --> 0:14:53.590 arrested for it by the same army standing alongside the 0:14:53.610 --> 0:14:56.390 people they were shielding themselves from. So if you wanted 0:14:56.470 --> 0:14:58.840 kind of a single image for this division of labor, 0:14:58.900 --> 0:15:03.540 I've spent this episode describing, that's it. Because the thing 0:15:03.560 --> 0:15:07.470 that's not permitted in the end is not that they're resisting. 0:15:07.950 --> 0:15:10.990 It's that they're staying. The families in the South Hebron 0:15:11.010 --> 0:15:14.430 Hills are still there. And Bala'in is contesting the order 0:15:14.890 --> 0:15:18.170 of the seizure of their land. Qusra's residents have installed 0:15:18.570 --> 0:15:21.520 some shields anyway. And a number of Israeli journalists and 0:15:21.540 --> 0:15:25.420 lawyers and researchers are documenting this in Hebrew and in English. 0:15:25.460 --> 0:15:28.100 And then, of course, Palestinian journalists are putting themselves on 0:15:28.120 --> 0:15:30.770 the line to document this as well. That's not a 0:15:30.810 --> 0:15:34.530 hopeful note exactly. It's just the accurate one. Unfortunately, what's 0:15:34.570 --> 0:15:38.750 missing is apparently anyone with power willing to act on 0:15:39.150 --> 0:15:43.390 understanding this reality. That's it for me. Thanks for listening. 0:15:55.930 --> 0:15:59.670 This is It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis. When 0:15:59.710 --> 0:16:03.010 it comes to the future of AI, currently there's a 0:16:03.010 --> 0:16:06.430 big public debate over what could happen and what we 0:16:06.570 --> 0:16:10.290 should or shouldn't do about it. A few weeks ago, 0:16:10.310 --> 0:16:14.270 a former OpenAI employee named Jacob Coxon, who moved over 0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:18.500 to Anthropic earlier this year, announced that he was quote-unquote 0:16:18.640 --> 0:16:23.739 quitting the AI industry over fears of AI's rapid advancement. 0:16:24.580 --> 0:16:28.859 To quote his statement, Coxon's resignation followed the Hugging Face incident, 0:16:28.900 --> 0:16:32.640 where two OpenAI models were given various, sometimes impossible tasks 0:16:32.660 --> 0:16:57.910 to test for cybersecurity capabilities. During testing, AI agents escaped 0:16:58.030 --> 0:17:02.350 their testing sandbox and started working as a collective swarm, 0:17:02.870 --> 0:17:07.389 secretly communicating with each other via online message forums to 0:17:07.430 --> 0:17:11.300 help each other hack into another AI company called Hugging 0:17:11.380 --> 0:17:15.940 Face in a sort of workaround attempt to pass these tests. 0:17:16.840 --> 0:17:21.100 And these models hid all of this from AI researchers 0:17:21.580 --> 0:17:26.770 by rewriting their own activity logs. AI skeptic Ed Zitron 0:17:26.790 --> 0:17:30.520 has described this as AI cheating on a test and 0:17:30.540 --> 0:17:34.640 then covering up that it cheated. A few days after 0:17:34.720 --> 0:17:40.159 Jacob Coxon's public resignation, the CEOs of Anthropic and OpenAI, 0:17:40.600 --> 0:17:44.699 Dario Amadei and Sam Altman, both called for an AI 0:17:44.790 --> 0:17:51.490 development slowdown. Amadei released this long manifesto titled Pace the Frontier, 0:17:52.270 --> 0:17:56.980 which advocated for AI companies to bring in independent evaluators 0:17:57.260 --> 0:18:00.960 to review their AI safety standards, report incidents, and help 0:18:01.100 --> 0:18:06.160 assess alignment. But Amadei also called for the government to mediate, quote, 0:18:06.700 --> 0:18:12.459 industry-wide coordination to slow down AI development and address safety risks. 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:17.280 The title of Amadei's essay, Pace the Frontier, is a 0:18:17.540 --> 0:18:22.439 sort of pun referring to frontier AI models, which are 0:18:22.740 --> 0:18:30.210 whatever the currently most advanced large-scale general-purpose models powering advanced reasoning, 0:18:30.410 --> 0:18:36.190 agentic workflows, multimodal generation across text, images, audio, and video, 0:18:36.690 --> 0:18:42.930 and autonomous task execution. Most of the frontier models referenced 0:18:43.010 --> 0:18:47.330 throughout this episode are not open to the public. These 0:18:47.410 --> 0:18:52.260 are internal research models being developed at companies like OpenAI 0:18:52.400 --> 0:18:56.930 and Anthropic. neutered versions sometimes get released to the public 0:18:56.970 --> 0:19:01.490 later on, often with a extremely hefty price tag. But 0:19:01.550 --> 0:19:04.440 it's crucial to understand that we are not talking about 0:19:04.500 --> 0:19:09.600 like the Google AI summary here. This isn't fancy autocomplete. 0:19:10.300 --> 0:19:14.660 These frontier models are very powerful, very dangerous tools with 0:19:15.170 --> 0:19:20.780 massive cybersecurity risks, not just from offensive human use, but 0:19:20.840 --> 0:19:24.460 also from AI agents acting autonomously to solve a task 0:19:25.020 --> 0:19:30.360 by taking paths that humans didn't expect, resulting in collateral damage. 0:19:31.380 --> 0:19:33.540 Part of what these big companies are trying to do 0:19:33.600 --> 0:19:38.450 with their very advanced internal research models is automate AI 0:19:38.530 --> 0:19:42.350 research itself. This is what Jacob Coxon referred to as quote, 0:19:42.510 --> 0:19:47.730 self-improving superintelligence. Now, we do not know if that is 0:19:47.890 --> 0:19:51.770 or is not possible. But the companies sure are trying, 0:19:52.369 --> 0:19:56.320 and in the process are creating dangerous products which are 0:19:56.600 --> 0:20:02.040 already causing active harm. Anthropic's whole self-styled philosophy is that 0:20:02.640 --> 0:20:07.490 Superintelligent AI is so potentially dangerous that they have to 0:20:07.550 --> 0:20:11.490 be the first ones to develop it, to ensure that 0:20:11.510 --> 0:20:15.810 it's built safely and aligned with human values, as defined in, quote, 0:20:15.890 --> 0:20:20.350 Claude's Constitution, a set of philosophical and moral guidelines that 0:20:20.450 --> 0:20:25.129 Claude is trained on. In his Pace the Frontier essay, 0:20:25.830 --> 0:20:31.820 Amadei writes that frontier AI companies within democratic countries should, quote, 0:20:32.420 --> 0:20:35.840 coordinate to establish common safety standards as well as limits 0:20:36.020 --> 0:20:40.260 on the rate of unchecked AI progress. Some forms of 0:20:40.320 --> 0:20:44.900 coordination that would be impactful for pacing are legally challenging 0:20:45.420 --> 0:20:48.659 and will require government support, unquote. 0:20:49.160 --> 0:20:50.060 More on this later. 0:20:50.080 --> 0:20:55.250 Amadei also calls for the U.S. and, quote, other democratic 0:20:55.290 --> 0:20:59.990 governments to try to coordinate with authoritarian governments around the 0:21:00.030 --> 0:21:01.570 world on this issue. 0:21:02.220 --> 0:21:03.280 Meaning China. 0:21:04.060 --> 0:21:08.639 The prospect that China could achieve superintelligent AI before a 0:21:08.840 --> 0:21:14.590 US-based company is part of these companies' self-justification to rush 0:21:14.670 --> 0:21:18.530 to develop superintelligent AI as quickly as they possibly can. 0:21:19.350 --> 0:21:23.990 After Dario Amadei posted this Pace the Frontier essay, Sam Altman, 0:21:24.170 --> 0:21:27.970 Elon Musk, and the chair of Google's DeepMind all said 0:21:28.170 --> 0:21:32.389 they agreed. and joined in calling for some sort of slowdown. 0:21:33.250 --> 0:21:38.760 But this view is not uniformly held across the tech sector. 0:21:39.490 --> 0:21:43.860 Palantir CEO Alex Karp, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and NVIDIA 0:21:43.900 --> 0:21:49.119 CEO Jensen Huang have all said the opposite. Zuckerberg has 0:21:49.140 --> 0:21:53.260 called to accelerate rather than slow down AI development, as 0:21:53.340 --> 0:21:57.000 his own AI model, Muse, has struggled to catch up 0:21:57.240 --> 0:22:01.630 to anthropic and open AI. Last week, Palantir CEO Alex 0:22:01.670 --> 0:22:06.649 Karp told CNBC, we can't pause AI development because of 0:22:06.690 --> 0:22:09.869 the threat of China, and that AI will be a quote, 0:22:10.050 --> 0:22:12.280 bonanza for the US economy. 0:22:12.790 --> 0:22:15.550 You can't pause it because it's a structural advantage both 0:22:15.630 --> 0:22:22.230 for LLMs and algorithms. So getting algorithms and LLMs to 0:22:22.250 --> 0:22:25.219 work in a classified context is going to take very specialized, 0:22:25.240 --> 0:22:28.300 I could explain how it works, but the fact is 0:22:28.320 --> 0:22:29.860 this is going to be a bonanza for the U.S. 0:22:29.900 --> 0:22:30.260 Economy. 0:22:31.340 --> 0:22:36.239 But so far, the biggest voices advocating against regulation have 0:22:36.260 --> 0:22:40.730 been the Republicans and President Trump. President Trump has very 0:22:40.790 --> 0:22:45.650 loudly opposed regulation to slow down AI development, truthing last 0:22:45.730 --> 0:22:49.930 Monday that, quote, the only control or guardrails that AI 0:22:49.990 --> 0:22:54.119 needs is a strong and smart, high IQ president. 0:22:54.560 --> 0:22:55.320 And the U.S. 0:22:55.520 --> 0:23:00.840 Has that in spades, unquote. Trump truthed a lot last 0:23:00.920 --> 0:23:04.790 week and compared the, quote, unquote, AI hoax being perpetuated 0:23:04.850 --> 0:23:10.040 by the radical left Democrats. to the, quote, global warming scam, 0:23:10.460 --> 0:23:14.020 where everyone was going to die from extreme heat. To 0:23:14.100 --> 0:23:17.659 quote the President of the United States, quote, I am 0:23:17.760 --> 0:23:21.740 the hoax buster, and right now I am breaking another hoax, 0:23:22.140 --> 0:23:25.800 that AI is going to take over, consume, and destroy 0:23:25.820 --> 0:23:28.879 the world, and that robots will be marching into our 0:23:28.940 --> 0:23:32.390 cities and getting rid of us all. This is even 0:23:32.470 --> 0:23:36.010 wilder than the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax or the global 0:23:36.050 --> 0:23:39.119 warming scam, Thank you for your attention to this matter, 0:23:39.220 --> 0:23:44.460 President Donald J. Trump. House Speaker Mike Johnson repeatedly last 0:23:44.540 --> 0:23:47.820 week shut down calls for Congress to take action and 0:23:48.000 --> 0:23:53.230 regulate AI, claiming that Congress is less qualified to regulate 0:23:53.250 --> 0:23:56.110 these companies than these companies are themselves. 0:23:56.410 --> 0:23:58.630 The guys who are raising the alarms right now all 0:23:58.670 --> 0:24:02.150 have very different ideas on what the guardrails should be. 0:24:02.290 --> 0:24:06.010 There's no consensus among them. And Congress is obviously less 0:24:06.070 --> 0:24:09.010 qualified than the people who are pushing this frontier to 0:24:09.050 --> 0:24:10.449 know all the ins and outs of it. So this 0:24:10.490 --> 0:24:13.760 has to be a partnership with the industry itself, with 0:24:13.780 --> 0:24:16.500 the corporations that are doing this, and with the policy 0:24:16.540 --> 0:24:17.300 and lawmakers. 0:24:17.780 --> 0:24:21.780 Mike Johnson also said that companies should take, quote, personal 0:24:21.859 --> 0:24:27.020 responsibility and warned that if, quote, Congress just races in 0:24:27.119 --> 0:24:29.720 and does some sort of emergency session to try to 0:24:29.780 --> 0:24:32.860 regulate AI, we will lose the race to China. 0:24:33.330 --> 0:24:36.369 They can self-police. They can self-regulate. They don't need the 0:24:36.430 --> 0:24:38.090 government to tell them to slow it down. If they 0:24:38.109 --> 0:24:41.470 want to slow it down, they should. But we cannot 0:24:41.550 --> 0:24:45.500 have a moratorium on the development of AI, because then 0:24:45.520 --> 0:24:47.580 we will lose our edge to China. And that has 0:24:47.700 --> 0:24:50.520 serious national security implications for every American family. 0:24:51.480 --> 0:24:56.330 Also last week, President Trump called NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang 0:24:56.460 --> 0:25:00.510 while Huang was speaking at a conference yesterday. While still 0:25:00.650 --> 0:25:05.630 on stage, the two talked over the phone about data centers, AI, China, 0:25:06.230 --> 0:25:10.490 and the recent calls for an AI pause. While on stage, 0:25:10.970 --> 0:25:17.879 Huang told Trump this. Now, of course, Jensen Huang would 0:25:18.160 --> 0:25:20.120 not be in favor of. 0:25:20.080 --> 0:25:20.700 An AI pause. 0:25:29.670 --> 0:25:33.030 Because his whole company has reoriented in the past few 0:25:33.090 --> 0:25:37.670 years to provide hardware for AI development. A slowdown would 0:25:37.690 --> 0:25:41.950 be very bad for NVIDIA's finances and their hugely inflated 0:25:42.150 --> 0:25:56.500 stock evaluation. Some on the left, as well as Trump's 0:25:56.720 --> 0:26:00.850 former AI czar David Sachs, have argued that, in calling 0:26:00.930 --> 0:26:05.330 for this slowdown, OpenAI and Anthropic are just pursuing a 0:26:05.369 --> 0:26:11.400 strategy of regulatory capture. Basically trying to promote certain industry-friendly 0:26:11.500 --> 0:26:16.280 regulations tailored to protect their investments, curb competition from smaller 0:26:16.340 --> 0:26:21.510 companies and open-source models, and solidify a corporate monopoly on AI. 0:26:22.330 --> 0:26:25.109 Of course, there may be other financial incentives contributing to 0:26:25.150 --> 0:26:29.810 this recent push for regulation, whether that be declining capital investment, 0:26:30.090 --> 0:26:34.170 prepping for a bubble burst, getting out of various contracts, 0:26:34.190 --> 0:26:37.230 or these companies trying to adapt to the data center pushback. 0:26:38.000 --> 0:26:41.540 Sam Altman recently announced that OpenAI would be delaying its 0:26:41.640 --> 0:26:48.640 planned IPO rollout until at least next year, calling the timing, quote, ill-advised. Though, 0:26:48.880 --> 0:26:51.619 on the other hand, Anthropic is going full steam ahead 0:26:51.820 --> 0:26:56.490 with its own public IPO this upcoming November. deciding to 0:26:56.530 --> 0:27:01.210 list on the Nasdaq, despite Amadei's calls for a slowdown. 0:27:01.950 --> 0:27:05.940 But if you actually read Amadei's essay, he isn't actually 0:27:06.119 --> 0:27:13.300 calling for specific government regulation, but rather self-regulation. In Sam 0:27:13.380 --> 0:27:17.960 Altman's response to Amadei's essay on Twitter, he wrote, I 0:27:18.040 --> 0:27:27.020 agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier. Unquote. 0:27:31.280 --> 0:27:37.040 Companies electing themselves to develop AI more slowly and hiring 0:27:37.140 --> 0:27:43.699 quote-unquote independent evaluators isn't the same as actual regulation. We 0:27:43.720 --> 0:27:48.550 can compare Amadei's proposal to legislation that Bernie Sanders and 0:27:48.609 --> 0:27:53.990 Greg Kassar proposed earlier this September, which would permanently ban 0:27:54.130 --> 0:27:59.719 the development and deployment of so-called super-intelligent AI with capabilities 0:27:59.800 --> 0:28:03.859 to subvert shutdown commands or have the capacity to overthrow 0:28:04.160 --> 0:28:08.690 human governments, with penalties similar to those for the unlawful 0:28:08.730 --> 0:28:14.030 development of nuclear weapons. This bill would also temporarily pause 0:28:14.630 --> 0:28:19.780 advanced AI development until a federal regulatory body has established 0:28:19.960 --> 0:28:25.000 safety rules. Abdul El-Sayed and Ro Khanna have also proposed 0:28:25.100 --> 0:28:29.830 an FDA-style agency to regulate and oversee AI development and 0:28:29.850 --> 0:28:36.109 evaluate the safety of frontier models before deployment. Unsurprisingly, OpenAI 0:28:36.210 --> 0:28:39.490 and Anthropic are not supporting this type of legislation because 0:28:39.770 --> 0:28:42.450 it could threaten to put their own CEOs in prison. 0:28:43.070 --> 0:28:47.680 And an actual government-mandated pause rather than a self-directed slowdown 0:28:48.260 --> 0:28:52.280 would hurt their bottom line. Some of the skepticism towards 0:28:52.320 --> 0:28:57.220 these recent calls for a regulatory slowdown come from Amadei's 0:28:57.460 --> 0:29:02.220 Pace the Frontier essay, also advocating for companies to receive 0:29:02.860 --> 0:29:07.469 antitrust waivers so that the big tech companies can coordinate 0:29:07.550 --> 0:29:11.709 on this planned development slowdown without the threat of one 0:29:11.790 --> 0:29:15.150 company gaining a competitive edge and and then that market 0:29:15.230 --> 0:29:20.180 pressure driving rapid AI progress. So what's been referred to 0:29:20.320 --> 0:29:27.100 as a proposal for regulation is actually just loosening regulations. Thankfully, 0:29:27.140 --> 0:29:30.810 there is an easy solution here. The government mandating a 0:29:31.400 --> 0:29:37.550 frontier development pause would not require the weakening of antitrust laws. 0:29:38.230 --> 0:29:42.340 But of course, these companies still... want control over AI's development. 0:29:43.020 --> 0:29:46.090 Though what's really interesting to me is that this argument 0:29:46.150 --> 0:29:50.430 from on the day demonstrates like an awareness of the 0:29:50.530 --> 0:29:55.690 social danger of competition, how firms are sometimes compelled to 0:29:56.130 --> 0:30:00.450 to quickly develop unsafe products due to pressures from the market. 0:30:01.250 --> 0:30:05.590 And it's very funny to have capitalists propose some kind 0:30:05.630 --> 0:30:10.050 of conscious control of the market. And I wonder what 0:30:10.070 --> 0:30:13.350 would happen if you extend that logic a bit further. 0:30:13.810 --> 0:30:18.860 Because even if these firms are allowed to coordinate on 0:30:18.900 --> 0:30:21.960 a slowdown, of course they would still be in a 0:30:22.020 --> 0:30:25.470 competitive environment. But what if we had a system, an 0:30:25.560 --> 0:30:31.460 economic system, designed around social benefit rather than the accumulation 0:30:31.480 --> 0:30:35.200 of capital through the free market? To quote an article 0:30:35.340 --> 0:30:41.260 in Geese magazine arguing for the socialization of this technology, quote, 0:30:42.020 --> 0:30:45.780 the AI industry is a class project to radically concentrate 0:30:45.820 --> 0:30:49.020 power in the hands of a sliver of elites, even 0:30:49.060 --> 0:30:54.590 at the cost of colossal social disruption, immiseration, and catastrophic harms. 0:30:55.540 --> 0:30:59.660 If we fail to intervene, humanity will be gradually disempowered 0:30:59.760 --> 0:31:04.560 to machines of their design. The workers left behind, the 0:31:04.600 --> 0:31:08.720 children who have committed suicide, and the potential millions exposed 0:31:08.760 --> 0:31:12.800 to novel AI-designed viruses mean nothing in the face of 0:31:12.880 --> 0:31:17.560 their radical objective. To automate the very task of AI research, 0:31:18.060 --> 0:31:21.320 and thus to create better and better AIs, of course, 0:31:21.660 --> 0:31:24.760 under their control. Without having to stake a position on 0:31:24.820 --> 0:31:28.420 whether or not this goal is technically possible, we can 0:31:28.460 --> 0:31:32.340 recognize that the financial imperatives of these enterprises and the 0:31:32.400 --> 0:31:37.070 security logic of their imperialist competition with China compel the 0:31:37.140 --> 0:31:41.750 AI companies to accelerate advancing a total transformation of social 0:31:41.790 --> 0:31:48.530 life against all democratic legitimacy and public control, unquote. Rather 0:31:48.550 --> 0:31:53.160 than weakening antitrust laws to support allow for a development slowdown, 0:31:53.280 --> 0:31:59.220 something totally not necessary. Lina Khan, former FTC chair, has 0:31:59.320 --> 0:32:04.100 argued that these companies may already be pursuing unfair methods 0:32:04.160 --> 0:32:07.630 of competition. Last week, Khan released a statement arguing that 0:32:08.070 --> 0:32:11.310 we already have the authority to charge companies and their 0:32:11.390 --> 0:32:16.930 CEOs for, quote, creating and releasing dangerous, unvetted, or defective products. 0:32:17.860 --> 0:32:21.700 we shouldn't let discussions about new legal regimes distract from 0:32:21.740 --> 0:32:25.760 the fact that there's no AI exemption from laws already 0:32:25.980 --> 0:32:30.380 on the books. Kahn argued that releasing unvetted AI models 0:32:30.500 --> 0:32:35.520 or agents could violate consumer protection laws. Quote, shipping flawed 0:32:35.620 --> 0:32:38.740 AI tools without implementing adequate measures to detect and stop 0:32:38.820 --> 0:32:42.500 rogue or defective AI agents can be an unfair or 0:32:42.580 --> 0:32:47.030 deceptive act or practice under the FTC Act, and analogous 0:32:47.150 --> 0:32:51.370 state laws. And some state AGs are already exploring holding 0:32:51.390 --> 0:32:55.370 AI firms and their CEOs criminally liable when their models 0:32:55.430 --> 0:33:01.950 participate in criminal activity. Kahn also wrote, quote, existing laws 0:33:02.150 --> 0:33:07.520 also prohibit unfair methods of competition. This covers instances where 0:33:07.650 --> 0:33:12.880 AI firms appropriate the competitively sensitive information of their customers 0:33:12.900 --> 0:33:16.860 and including through tracking their use of various tools. It 0:33:16.880 --> 0:33:21.550 can also cover instances where firms pursue dangerous behavior, aware 0:33:21.690 --> 0:33:25.210 that doing so may compel rivals to do the same. 0:33:26.150 --> 0:33:29.660 As the Supreme Court has noted, a method of competition 0:33:29.700 --> 0:33:33.180 which casts upon one's competitors the burden of the loss 0:33:33.220 --> 0:34:04.090 of business unless they will Con adds, Con adds, alongside 0:34:04.330 --> 0:34:22.620 enforcing existing laws, unquote. These frontier models aren't just theoretically 0:34:22.680 --> 0:34:26.739 capable of causing harm in the future. They are causing 0:34:26.780 --> 0:34:30.360 harm right now. At this point, there are Undeniable concerns 0:34:30.420 --> 0:34:33.799 regarding the development and rollout of frontier AI models, from 0:34:34.200 --> 0:34:38.700 cybersecurity to military applications, surveillance, and the effects on the 0:34:38.739 --> 0:34:44.140 labor market. These are real, current, pressing concerns beyond the 0:34:44.180 --> 0:34:48.839 prospect of an AI super god or self-evolving super intelligence. 0:34:49.580 --> 0:34:53.600 And just because these companies recognize risk doesn't mean they 0:34:53.660 --> 0:34:57.720 will do anything about it. These companies know how LLMs 0:34:57.780 --> 0:35:00.410 are affecting the mental health of children, but they're not 0:35:00.510 --> 0:35:03.989 really doing anything about it, and they won't unless the 0:35:04.030 --> 0:35:09.300 government forces them to. Historical Luddites did not deny the 0:35:09.760 --> 0:35:15.220 transformative potential of automated machinery, but organized around the threat 0:35:15.380 --> 0:35:20.560 it posed to workers. Similarly, just denying the state of 0:35:20.760 --> 0:35:25.260 advanced frontier models leaves us under-equipped to meet this moment 0:35:25.440 --> 0:35:29.319 and treat this problem with the seriousness it deserves. Part 0:35:29.340 --> 0:35:33.160 of this AI denialism so common on the left comes 0:35:33.200 --> 0:35:39.340 from a very outdated understanding of AI's capabilities, accuracy, and functionality. 0:35:39.940 --> 0:35:44.160 Because of the moral and cultural dogma against using AI, 0:35:44.760 --> 0:35:48.589 the last time a lot of AI-skeptic people interacted with 0:35:48.640 --> 0:35:54.350 technology like ChatGPT was three years ago. And these days, 0:35:54.630 --> 0:35:59.630 the only quote-unquote AI that most anti-AI people regularly interact 0:35:59.670 --> 0:36:04.470 with is the Google AI summary, which is a totally 0:36:04.530 --> 0:36:08.760 different product than the frontier models being developed and talked 0:36:08.820 --> 0:36:13.280 about in the news. Some of the anti-AI left promote 0:36:13.400 --> 0:36:18.290 the idea that treating AI as a serious problem only 0:36:18.370 --> 0:36:22.799 works in the financial interests of these companies. even if 0:36:22.880 --> 0:36:27.469 taking this issue seriously means ripping power away from these 0:36:27.510 --> 0:36:31.009 companies and their CEOs. To quote an article on the 0:36:31.150 --> 0:36:35.650 AI arms race in Geese magazine, while the AI sector 0:36:35.810 --> 0:36:41.380 is undeniably frothy with fanciful projections, AI denialism would have 0:36:41.400 --> 0:36:45.480 you believe that AI is neither a capable nor dangerous technology, 0:36:46.060 --> 0:36:50.600 but solely a marketing scheme of vast proportions. That any 0:36:50.660 --> 0:36:54.980 warnings of AI triggering massive job loss through automation or 0:36:55.060 --> 0:37:00.169 catastrophic risk through loss of control, only serve to pump valuations. 0:37:00.969 --> 0:37:05.790 Ignore that as public pressure increases, Sam Altman now downplays 0:37:05.910 --> 0:37:09.069 fears of job losses. Quite the turn from three years 0:37:09.130 --> 0:37:12.570 ago when he was saying that jobs are definitely going 0:37:12.630 --> 0:37:15.790 to go away full stop. While there is no reason 0:37:15.830 --> 0:37:20.480 to take Silicon Valley at its word, not rigorously engaging 0:37:20.620 --> 0:37:24.700 with the dangers of developing AI capabilities is a strategic 0:37:24.800 --> 0:37:32.710 dead end, unquote. This technology can and is massively transforming production, warfare, 0:37:32.770 --> 0:37:37.030 the environment, and the health of humanity. And we can't 0:37:37.310 --> 0:37:41.629 all just hold hands and not believe in this technology 0:37:41.710 --> 0:37:44.970 hard enough to make it go away. Like it or not, 0:37:45.700 --> 0:37:49.489 this is not the metaverse or NFTs anymore. Whether you 0:37:49.510 --> 0:37:54.050 believe these existential safety risks are genuine, a marketing stunt, 0:37:54.330 --> 0:37:58.470 or a mix of both, our response should be the same. 0:37:59.330 --> 0:38:01.950 We should be pushing for legislation to rein in these 0:38:02.010 --> 0:38:05.980 companies and technology. And like Lena Kahn has said, the 0:38:06.040 --> 0:38:10.219 CEOs should be prosecuted for creating and releasing dangerous, unvetted, 0:38:10.480 --> 0:38:15.940 or defective products. Now, Trump's DOJ doesn't seem keen on 0:38:15.980 --> 0:38:19.140 going after these companies right now. And it's unlikely that 0:38:19.180 --> 0:38:22.779 this Congress will pass any legislation on this issue, let 0:38:22.820 --> 0:38:28.860 alone industry hostile legislation. But during this national conversation on 0:38:28.880 --> 0:38:34.180 AI regulation, it's crucial that the narrative around regulation isn't 0:38:34.260 --> 0:38:39.000 being controlled by OpenAI and Anthropic. these companies and technology 0:38:39.180 --> 0:38:43.180 must be regulated. But that regulation should not be up 0:38:43.280 --> 0:38:47.660 to the CEOs of those companies, nor the Republicans and 0:38:47.760 --> 0:38:51.610 center-left Democrats who are in the pocket of AI. But 0:38:51.840 --> 0:38:56.830 our response to bad regulation shouldn't be no regulation. Coming 0:38:56.910 --> 0:38:59.730 off the heels of the data center backlash and going 0:38:59.770 --> 0:39:03.910 into the midterms, this moment could be a major opportunity 0:39:03.989 --> 0:39:08.160 for the left to build broad support for real transparent oversight, 0:39:08.800 --> 0:39:13.000 a frontier development pause, not just a slowdown, and ultimately 0:39:13.340 --> 0:39:16.900 taking power away from these tech companies and putting control 0:39:16.920 --> 0:39:20.530 of AI in the hands of the public. Because private 0:39:20.570 --> 0:39:25.690 control of such transformative technology will have disastrous outcomes for 0:39:25.770 --> 0:39:29.930 labor and humanity without the prospect of an AI superpower. 0:39:30.090 --> 0:39:30.799 Super god. 0:39:31.660 --> 0:39:37.420 Incoming DSA House Representative Malat Kiros of Colorado had democratizing 0:39:37.540 --> 0:39:43.680 AI in her congressional campaign platform. The development of transformative 0:39:43.700 --> 0:39:47.380 technology cannot be left to the market and the national 0:39:47.440 --> 0:39:52.150 security state alone, it belongs to all of us, unquote. 0:39:53.090 --> 0:39:56.310 Earlier this summer, Bernie Sanders introduced a bill to create 0:39:56.330 --> 0:40:00.620 an AI sovereign wealth fund, giving the public 50% ownership 0:40:00.700 --> 0:40:03.500 in the largest AI companies in the US through a 0:40:03.760 --> 0:40:08.299 one-time 50% tax on the stock of these companies. An 0:40:08.440 --> 0:40:12.940 independent commission would then use voting shares to steer decisions 0:40:13.160 --> 0:40:16.870 in the public interest. Sanders said of the bill, quote, 0:40:17.600 --> 0:40:22.169 Left unchecked, artificial intelligence and robotics threatens the jobs, privacy rights, 0:40:22.290 --> 0:40:25.190 and mental health of every man, woman, and child in America. 0:40:25.910 --> 0:40:28.170 As a society, we can no longer sit back and 0:40:28.210 --> 0:40:31.310 allow a handful of big tech oligarchs to determine the 0:40:31.370 --> 0:40:36.060 future of this revolutionary technology with no democratic input. AI 0:40:36.100 --> 0:40:38.859 was not created out of thin air. It was not 0:40:38.900 --> 0:40:42.060 a brilliant idea that just popped into Mark Zuckerberg's head 0:40:42.440 --> 0:40:46.550 or Elon Musk's imagination. The foundation of AI is based 0:40:46.670 --> 0:40:50.090 on the collective knowledge of humanity and of the creative 0:40:50.130 --> 0:40:53.810 work of tens of millions of people. The American people 0:40:54.010 --> 0:40:56.799 must have the ability to slow it down and make 0:40:56.900 --> 0:41:01.140 sure that AI benefits humanity, not just the richest people 0:41:01.320 --> 0:41:07.690 on the planet. That's precisely what this legislation does. Now, 0:41:07.989 --> 0:41:11.469 such a bill would certainly have a difficult path to 0:41:11.489 --> 0:41:15.630 being signed into law, especially considering how many lawmakers are 0:41:15.670 --> 0:41:21.500 being bankrolled by these AI companies. But this idea already 0:41:21.580 --> 0:41:29.120 has majoritarian support. According to a national Verisight survey last June, 69% 0:41:29.120 --> 0:41:34.770 of Americans support quote-unquote forcing AI companies to to transfer 50% 0:41:34.770 --> 0:41:38.430 of their stock into a public sovereign wealth fund. To 0:41:38.489 --> 0:41:41.830 quote Geese Magazine, there is a wide debate to be 0:41:41.870 --> 0:41:45.270 had about the shape of socialization and whether we mean 0:41:45.489 --> 0:41:49.759 forcing AI research into the public domain or outright nationalizing 0:41:49.820 --> 0:41:53.440 the entire sector. But it is clear that the overwhelming 0:41:53.500 --> 0:41:57.560 majority of the American people recognize that a technology trained 0:41:57.680 --> 0:42:00.860 on the common corpus of human art and text, poised 0:42:00.900 --> 0:42:04.430 to transform the character of work, ought to be held 0:42:04.610 --> 0:42:10.109 in common rather than by billionaires, unquote. The New York 0:42:10.150 --> 0:42:14.140 City DSA convention is coming up this fall, and currently 0:42:14.320 --> 0:42:17.839 one of the most popular resolutions is to stop the 0:42:17.960 --> 0:42:22.780 AI arms race and have DSA, quote, take initiative against 0:42:22.840 --> 0:42:26.960 the AI company's project to make human labor obsolete and 0:42:27.120 --> 0:42:31.170 organize a working class coalition for the democratic steering and 0:42:31.350 --> 0:42:35.550 ownership of the technology. according to an overview in Geese Magazine. 0:42:36.290 --> 0:42:40.969 This resolution calls for DSA to demand and organize for 0:42:41.090 --> 0:42:46.450 a pause on frontier AI research, an AI data center moratorium, 0:42:46.850 --> 0:42:51.690 regulations on frontier AI models, and policies to ensure workers 0:42:51.850 --> 0:42:56.880 are protected. To quote the Geese Magazine overview, our horizon 0:42:57.060 --> 0:43:01.420 must be the collective control of AI, with its gains 0:43:01.620 --> 0:43:05.810 shared by all. With AI under democratic control, we will 0:43:05.850 --> 0:43:09.210 decide what activities ought to be left to human hands, 0:43:09.870 --> 0:43:13.750 exalted creative tasks that make life meaningful, and which can 0:43:13.770 --> 0:43:18.319 be automated to expand flourishing and freedom. DSA members may 0:43:18.360 --> 0:43:21.759 have quite different views on where those lines lie, with 0:43:21.820 --> 0:43:26.379 some wishing to ban the technology entirely. Regardless, the point 0:43:26.460 --> 0:43:31.140 is that those conversations will be ours. not Sam Altman's, 0:43:31.219 --> 0:43:36.320 not Dario Amadei's, not Elon Musk's. This is a once-in-a-century 0:43:36.400 --> 0:43:39.820 political opportunity. We have the chance to utilize one of 0:43:39.880 --> 0:43:42.920 the great issues of the day to mobilize workers around 0:43:42.960 --> 0:43:46.700 the democratic control of the economy, to drive a wedge 0:43:46.840 --> 0:43:50.989 into the Republican Party's coalition and the democratic base, and 0:43:51.030 --> 0:43:55.010 to reorient politics around a question on which our answers 0:43:55.130 --> 0:43:58.940 are unfathomably popular. we could be at the forefront of 0:43:59.000 --> 0:44:05.279 the movement rather than tail-ending a disparate set of professionalized non-profits, unquote. 0:44:06.320 --> 0:44:09.049 This issue will be getting a lot of attention these 0:44:09.110 --> 0:44:12.750 next few months. AI CEOs will be meeting at the 0:44:12.790 --> 0:44:16.529 White House with President Xi later this week. The New 0:44:16.550 --> 0:44:20.040 York City Council is convening a hearing on AI safety 0:44:20.100 --> 0:44:24.980 risks next month, with Dario Amadei and Sam Altman requested 0:44:25.040 --> 0:44:27.920 to appear. If we don't want them to be the 0:44:28.080 --> 0:44:32.710 ones leading the conversation on AI regulation, which would only 0:44:32.770 --> 0:44:37.049 result in an industry-friendly regulatory slowdown to curb competition and 0:44:37.110 --> 0:44:40.489 stabilize market pressure, then the left will have to step 0:44:40.590 --> 0:44:43.779 up and build on the data center backlash to seize 0:44:43.840 --> 0:44:47.839 the very technology data centers are powering to destroy these 0:44:47.900 --> 0:44:51.440 companies and put the future of AI in the control 0:44:51.600 --> 0:44:52.140 of the public. 0:45:06.360 --> 0:45:11.050 I find the word diversity has become so politically charged nowadays. 0:45:12.070 --> 0:45:16.410 You know, as a buzzword, as a dirty word. You know, 0:45:16.430 --> 0:45:19.850 we see it caught up in terms like the AI, 0:45:20.590 --> 0:45:25.450 in the debates around immigration and representation and all the 0:45:25.550 --> 0:45:32.080 culture wars that have captured so much of the world's 0:45:32.120 --> 0:45:35.839 attention as of late. But what has my attention recently, 0:45:35.920 --> 0:45:38.600 the kind of diversity that I want to focus on, 0:45:39.460 --> 0:45:44.070 is the diversity that we are losing. That we are 0:45:44.200 --> 0:45:48.390 critically losing. Right now we're living through what many scientists 0:45:48.430 --> 0:45:53.090 describe as the sixth mass extinction. Species are disappearing at 0:45:53.150 --> 0:45:59.090 a rate driven overwhelmingly by human activity. Languages are dying. 0:45:59.610 --> 0:46:03.790 Indigenous knowledge is disappearing and entire cultures have been erased. 0:46:04.420 --> 0:46:10.520 assimilated or reduced to museum pieces. We are, in our lifetimes, 0:46:10.620 --> 0:46:14.580 witnessing a profound loss of what author David Harmon calls 0:46:14.940 --> 0:46:19.300 biocultural diversity, the combined diversity of life and human culture. 0:46:19.840 --> 0:46:21.620 And all of this has happened at the same time 0:46:21.680 --> 0:46:26.890 that diversity itself has become so politically controversial. So the 0:46:26.910 --> 0:46:28.930 question I want to talk about today is why we 0:46:28.950 --> 0:46:32.000 should even care about diversity in the first place. Why 0:46:32.040 --> 0:46:34.759 does it matter that thousands of languages exist? Why should 0:46:34.780 --> 0:46:37.500 we care if a species disappears? Why does it matter 0:46:37.520 --> 0:46:39.920 whether there are countless different ways for people to live 0:46:40.020 --> 0:46:44.029 and think and create and organize themselves? Typically, we speak 0:46:44.050 --> 0:46:48.150 of diversity as an unquestioned value, as something that some 0:46:48.170 --> 0:46:51.570 people like or dislike, are opposed to or in favor 0:46:51.650 --> 0:46:55.110 of politically. But I want to make a deeper argument 0:46:55.489 --> 0:47:00.000 that diversity is one of the fundamental conditions that makes 0:47:00.020 --> 0:47:05.840 life creativity and freedom possible. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. 0:47:06.460 --> 0:47:12.259 I'm Andrew Sage, Andrewism on YouTube, and I'm joined again by... James, 0:47:12.380 --> 0:47:13.140 it's great to be back. 0:47:13.340 --> 0:47:14.259 I'm excited about this one. 0:47:14.920 --> 0:47:18.620 Yes. So I suppose to start with, what would you 0:47:18.680 --> 0:47:21.810 say are the kinds of diversity that come to mind, 0:47:22.090 --> 0:47:24.569 you know, when you hear the term? And why would 0:47:24.590 --> 0:47:27.430 you say that it is something that you value, if 0:47:27.469 --> 0:47:29.270 it is that you value it? I assume you do. 0:47:29.330 --> 0:47:33.800 Yeah, yeah, I do. Like there's like a very liberal 0:47:33.860 --> 0:47:35.879 way of understanding diversity. 0:47:35.960 --> 0:47:36.200 Right. 0:47:36.719 --> 0:47:40.070 And I think sometimes even the libs getting better at 0:47:40.110 --> 0:47:43.250 this libs used to use the word tolerance a lot, 0:47:43.290 --> 0:47:47.190 which I despise as, as a way of talking about diversity. 0:47:47.250 --> 0:47:47.430 Right. 0:47:47.469 --> 0:47:49.650 Like it's like a sort of, I don't like it, 0:47:49.670 --> 0:47:50.930 but I'll allow it to exist. 0:47:51.450 --> 0:47:53.930 Approach yes like i'll put up with you kind of 0:47:54.110 --> 0:47:57.380 yeah exactly like yeah it's not getting us to where 0:47:57.400 --> 0:47:59.540 we want to get right but like i enjoy that 0:47:59.560 --> 0:48:02.779 there are people who obviously like are diverse in the 0:48:02.820 --> 0:48:05.239 way that neoliberalism wants us to think about diversity in 0:48:05.300 --> 0:48:08.860 terms of race in terms of sexuality in terms of 0:48:09.660 --> 0:48:13.860 neoliberalism is kind of waffling on gender but also like 0:48:13.920 --> 0:48:17.899 just approaches to the way we live our lives, right? 0:48:17.960 --> 0:48:21.020 Like our cultures, our ways of organizing, our ways of 0:48:21.120 --> 0:48:25.180 being with one another. My life is so much richer 0:48:25.680 --> 0:48:28.660 because I've been exposed to that kind of diversity, right? 0:48:28.719 --> 0:48:32.430 Like I get to travel a lot and seeing how 0:48:32.530 --> 0:48:37.009 people approach all kinds of issues has really helped me 0:48:37.070 --> 0:48:40.490 with ways of dealing with things, of crossing the bridges 0:48:40.510 --> 0:48:43.589 we come to in organizing, in trying to live our 0:48:43.610 --> 0:48:46.770 better lives. Because I've been able to learn from the 0:48:46.810 --> 0:48:48.950 ways that they have developed to doing it, which is 0:48:48.969 --> 0:48:51.250 very different from the way we do it, right? And 0:48:51.330 --> 0:48:54.339 so I think that kind of diversity is also super important. 0:48:55.140 --> 0:48:59.239 I agree. Absolutely. I think that a lot of times 0:48:59.280 --> 0:49:03.960 as well, the conversation is really focused on diversity as 0:49:04.000 --> 0:49:08.390 it relates to people. But, you know, even before we 0:49:08.410 --> 0:49:12.830 get to diversity within our species, there is the diversity that... 0:49:13.630 --> 0:49:17.940 transcends our species, the diversity of all the species of 0:49:18.000 --> 0:49:22.470 planet Earth. You know, the variation as a feature of 0:49:22.530 --> 0:49:24.430 the world we live in. Yeah. 0:49:24.450 --> 0:49:27.299 I think that's also like super valuable, right? Like, and 0:49:27.500 --> 0:49:30.899 in a way that we can't, I was thinking about 0:49:30.920 --> 0:49:33.359 this this morning, I was hiking this morning and like 0:49:33.800 --> 0:49:38.280 capitalism lacks a means to ascribe value to that kind 0:49:38.320 --> 0:49:38.760 of thing. 0:49:39.120 --> 0:49:39.299 Right. 0:49:39.890 --> 0:49:42.250 Like I was thinking about in the US, they've proposed 0:49:42.290 --> 0:49:44.600 to rescind the roadless rule, which allows you not to 0:49:44.640 --> 0:49:48.780 build roads into national forests in certain infantry roadless areas. 0:49:49.660 --> 0:49:55.509 And like, there is a way of ascribing value to timber, right? 0:49:56.239 --> 0:49:59.370 You can talk about board feet of timber, like there 0:49:59.430 --> 0:50:03.830 is a way of ascribing cost to roads, right? We 0:50:03.850 --> 0:50:06.569 can estimate how much it will cost to build roads 0:50:06.610 --> 0:50:11.200 into this area. But like, There isn't a way of 0:50:11.280 --> 0:50:16.980 ascribing value that works to the forest being there, to 0:50:17.140 --> 0:50:20.259 all the things in the forest that are not commercial 0:50:20.340 --> 0:50:24.719 timber being there, right? The plants, animals, the insects. 0:50:24.739 --> 0:50:30.850 It's like the quantifiable value versus like the unquantifiable value, basically. 0:50:30.870 --> 0:50:34.370 Yeah, like they're not productive to capital. But they do 0:50:34.450 --> 0:50:37.710 give us something that is valuable. And because capitalism can't 0:50:37.750 --> 0:50:40.430 ascribe value to them, it sometimes fails to protect them, right? 0:50:40.450 --> 0:50:46.100 We've seen this in North America. It's a great example, right? Yeah, yeah. 0:50:46.280 --> 0:50:48.560 Like, how do you ascribe value to a view? 0:50:49.000 --> 0:50:49.180 Right. 0:50:49.340 --> 0:50:51.940 I mean, there's an extent to which we see some 0:50:51.960 --> 0:50:56.739 of that value being wrapped up in the price of, like, 0:50:56.900 --> 0:50:58.540 a house. You know, like, if a house is on 0:50:58.560 --> 0:51:01.360 a hillside and has a great view of the ocean 0:51:01.420 --> 0:51:04.020 and stuff, people will say, oh, well, We could jack 0:51:04.080 --> 0:51:06.799 up its price on the market because, you know, people 0:51:06.820 --> 0:51:09.960 will pay for that view. Yeah. You know, a similar 0:51:10.680 --> 0:51:13.939 concept was like the way that hotel rooms might be 0:51:14.180 --> 0:51:17.540 more expensive on the higher floors because, you know, oh, 0:51:17.560 --> 0:51:19.540 you get that kind of panoramic view of the city 0:51:19.640 --> 0:51:25.989 or whatever. But that doesn't really capture the experience. It 0:51:26.090 --> 0:51:29.750 is a crude approximation of the experience of, you know, 0:51:29.830 --> 0:51:32.690 waking up in the morning to The sun coming over 0:51:32.730 --> 0:51:37.069 the horizon, the sea in the distance, the birds, you know, 0:51:37.090 --> 0:51:40.040 making their way out into the world. None of that 0:51:40.080 --> 0:51:44.040 is captured in the number. It's just a way of 0:51:45.360 --> 0:51:49.280 trying to capture that in order to facilitate exchange. 0:51:50.340 --> 0:51:53.460 Yeah, exactly. Like it's an attempt to ascribe value to 0:51:53.500 --> 0:51:58.569 something inherently like doesn't fit in that system. of like 0:51:58.610 --> 0:52:03.300 the cash exchange, which is what makes it valuable and beautiful. 0:52:03.380 --> 0:52:03.600 Right. 0:52:03.660 --> 0:52:08.379 Like, uh, but your capitalism will never really be able 0:52:08.420 --> 0:52:11.299 to protect those things. Like even, you know, in the 0:52:11.420 --> 0:52:14.089 U S we have public lands, right. But like no 0:52:14.130 --> 0:52:17.210 fucking way. Okay. Even like Theodore Roosevelt, right. Like all 0:52:17.230 --> 0:52:20.190 the politicians now we're like, oh yeah, we love Theodore Roosevelt, blah, blah. 0:52:20.210 --> 0:52:22.509 You know, most us politicians I think would love to 0:52:22.550 --> 0:52:25.830 be compared to Roosevelt. and this is not someone who 0:52:25.850 --> 0:52:28.910 I think is a fantastic human being like morally, but, uh, 0:52:29.690 --> 0:52:32.190 you couldn't do that today. Like, like capitalism is too 0:52:32.250 --> 0:52:35.710 rapacious today to ever say, like, we are taking hundreds 0:52:35.750 --> 0:52:38.320 of thousands of acres and just setting them aside because like, 0:52:38.890 --> 0:52:41.819 they're nice and it's nice for us to have them. 0:52:42.120 --> 0:52:44.279 So we're going to keep them that way. Like, uh, 0:52:45.440 --> 0:52:47.540 it wouldn't, it wouldn't function now, even in a way 0:52:47.560 --> 0:52:48.640 that was possible then, you know? 0:52:49.120 --> 0:52:49.339 Yeah. 0:52:49.360 --> 0:52:53.120 And I mean, arguably even that time, those things being 0:52:53.160 --> 0:52:58.470 set aside, A person who had witnessed the old growth 0:52:58.550 --> 0:53:02.130 forests of the past, when they were, you know, in 0:53:02.170 --> 0:53:05.060 more recent memory, they might even be able to see 0:53:05.100 --> 0:53:08.120 that this is such a fraction of the value that 0:53:08.160 --> 0:53:11.360 has been lost of, like, yes, we're preserving some of 0:53:11.380 --> 0:53:13.819 what's left, but, you know, I don't know if you've 0:53:13.840 --> 0:53:18.569 seen those pictures of, like, those ginormous, like, trees that 0:53:18.650 --> 0:53:20.730 they just chopped down as they made that, you know, 0:53:20.750 --> 0:53:23.390 that westward expansion into California and whatnot. 0:53:23.890 --> 0:53:24.029 Yep. 0:53:24.489 --> 0:53:26.710 They didn't even use most of the wood. They ended 0:53:26.750 --> 0:53:29.090 up having to like discard it, burn it, whatever. 0:53:29.489 --> 0:53:30.149 I didn't know that. 0:53:30.450 --> 0:53:33.700 But this is like centuries worth of growth that was 0:53:33.719 --> 0:53:35.460 just destroyed. 0:53:36.540 --> 0:53:36.739 Yeah. 0:53:36.920 --> 0:53:39.359 The only reason I think we protected these things, right, 0:53:39.400 --> 0:53:43.240 was because there was a sort of realization that, oh shit, 0:53:43.540 --> 0:53:47.330 we've gone way too far with this capitalist exploitation of things, right? 0:53:47.370 --> 0:53:51.670 Like with this desire to impose ourselves on the world 0:53:51.790 --> 0:53:54.450 as it has been for a long time. Like that 0:53:54.469 --> 0:53:55.609 doesn't make up for that. 0:53:55.750 --> 0:53:55.969 Right. 0:53:56.070 --> 0:53:58.029 It's like a, like your analogy of zoos that you 0:53:58.110 --> 0:54:01.770 used at the start, right? Like having the last passenger 0:54:01.810 --> 0:54:05.070 pigeon die in a zoo doesn't make up for killing 0:54:05.140 --> 0:54:07.520 all the passenger pigeons. Even while that passenger pigeon was 0:54:07.580 --> 0:54:08.279 alive in the zoo. 0:54:08.440 --> 0:54:09.140 Right. Yeah. 0:54:09.380 --> 0:54:11.800 Like that's not a trade anyone would make, I guess. 0:54:12.020 --> 0:54:14.480 No one would be like, Oh, I have to think 0:54:14.520 --> 0:54:16.700 about this. Like, is anyone ever going to sit around 0:54:17.400 --> 0:54:21.730 and worry about there not being enough mines or enough 0:54:21.850 --> 0:54:27.190 roads or, enough logging operations, right. Compared to like, I 0:54:27.230 --> 0:54:30.190 worry about that not being enough forests, worry about there 0:54:30.230 --> 0:54:34.610 not being enough wilderness places, you know, like it, uh, it's, 0:54:34.750 --> 0:54:39.239 it's something that, uh, yeah, we we've, we've failed future generations, 0:54:39.300 --> 0:54:41.029 I guess, in preserving that diversity. 0:54:41.930 --> 0:54:47.660 Yeah. And, you know, as we speak of preserving preservation conservation, 0:54:47.680 --> 0:54:52.379 I think there's a tendency within those who value diversity. 0:54:52.930 --> 0:54:55.610 That can lead to a sort of a misdirection or 0:54:55.840 --> 0:54:58.879 it can lead to maybe a misplaced aspiration, I would say. 0:54:59.460 --> 0:55:04.600 Because obviously, change itself is not bad. You know, change 0:55:04.620 --> 0:55:07.680 is inevitable. Extinction has always been part of the history 0:55:07.719 --> 0:55:11.460 of life. Ecosystems have always been in flux, always evolving. 0:55:11.520 --> 0:55:17.300 The borders of, you know, ecosystems have been moving throughout 0:55:17.820 --> 0:55:22.880 deep time. Mm-hmm. Similarly, cultures have always evolved and mixed 0:55:23.000 --> 0:55:28.060 and some have faded away. So we can't necessarily reject change, right? 0:55:28.080 --> 0:55:35.440 And reject the processes by which cultures and environments may change, 0:55:35.960 --> 0:55:39.980 even in response to human intervention. You know, we look 0:55:40.000 --> 0:55:42.640 at the forests of North America, since we've been focusing 0:55:42.680 --> 0:55:45.880 on that example, and many of those forests were engineered, 0:55:46.460 --> 0:55:51.299 you know, by human activity. So the Amazon rainforest also 0:55:51.360 --> 0:55:55.540 shows some evidence of human engineering in terms of the 0:55:55.640 --> 0:56:00.200 terra preta, the soils being this very rich soil that 0:56:00.219 --> 0:56:02.960 was deliberately designed by the indigenous peoples. 0:56:03.120 --> 0:56:03.359 Yeah. 0:56:04.239 --> 0:56:06.880 The same with like, I've been reading a lot on 0:56:07.500 --> 0:56:11.760 indigenous cultural use of fire for the last few weeks 0:56:11.800 --> 0:56:14.430 here since I got back from Spokane and thinking a 0:56:14.469 --> 0:56:19.969 lot about like how it's a very Western thing. perspective 0:56:20.030 --> 0:56:23.259 right to be like the wilderness is the thing that 0:56:23.340 --> 0:56:26.400 humans don't touch and have no engagement with and then 0:56:26.460 --> 0:56:29.560 everything else humans use as they wish like to create 0:56:29.580 --> 0:56:33.640 it as this binary distribution right of like the correct 0:56:33.700 --> 0:56:36.480 way to deal with places that are beautiful or special 0:56:36.540 --> 0:56:39.500 is like just fucking leave it and the correct way 0:56:39.540 --> 0:56:42.080 to deal with everything else is just fucking pillage it 0:56:42.239 --> 0:56:47.230 like there's a way to find balance that they're We 0:56:47.250 --> 0:56:50.410 struggle with it under capitalism, right? Capitalism has struggled to 0:56:50.430 --> 0:56:51.190 provide us with that. 0:56:52.030 --> 0:56:54.450 Yeah, I mean, one of the bases of capitalism is 0:56:54.530 --> 0:56:59.000 private property, which as defined under Roman law is the 0:56:59.080 --> 0:57:02.759 right to use and abuse one's own. Right. You know, 0:57:02.780 --> 0:57:05.880 the use and enjoyment and abuse of one's own to 0:57:05.900 --> 0:57:08.219 the limit of the law, which is a stipulation that 0:57:08.860 --> 0:57:12.430 had various interpretations over the years. But we shouldn't be 0:57:12.469 --> 0:57:16.300 surprised then that when something comes under the purview of 0:57:16.360 --> 0:57:20.500 capitalist property, that it has led to such detrimental effects. 0:57:21.480 --> 0:57:25.750 What is alarming about our current situation is not the 0:57:25.990 --> 0:57:28.950 change that is taking place. It is the speed and 0:57:28.970 --> 0:57:31.850 the scale of that change. You know, we don't know 0:57:31.950 --> 0:57:35.310 exactly how many species we are losing or have lost. 0:57:35.690 --> 0:57:38.410 We don't even know how many species currently exist. We 0:57:38.430 --> 0:57:42.200 could even talk about the definitions of species and how 0:57:42.220 --> 0:57:47.730 that taxonomic system has evolved with time. But for that discussion, 0:57:47.750 --> 0:57:50.470 I leave it to a book that I read on 0:57:50.490 --> 0:57:53.570 the subject that I quite enjoyed, which was In Light 0:57:53.590 --> 0:57:58.110 of Our Differences by David Harmon. But regardless, we are 0:57:58.130 --> 0:58:02.490 still talking about thousands to hundreds of thousands of species 0:58:03.070 --> 0:58:06.600 lost each year. And these are losses that are not 0:58:06.660 --> 0:58:09.800 happening in isolation because we know that every ecosystem is 0:58:09.840 --> 0:58:13.370 made up of relationships. They remove one species, and you 0:58:13.410 --> 0:58:17.890 can risk disrupting everything connected to it. Thankfully, these systems 0:58:17.950 --> 0:58:21.370 are typically quite resilient, so a species loss doesn't have 0:58:21.510 --> 0:58:25.320 to lead to the collapse of the entire ecosystem, but 0:58:25.590 --> 0:58:29.840 there are species that are foundational. Then the disappearance of 0:58:29.880 --> 0:58:33.180 that single species can trigger cascading effects that threaten the 0:58:33.220 --> 0:58:38.280 entire ecosystem. There's also often a lag between our realization 0:58:38.780 --> 0:58:42.380 that a species has fallen below its minimum viable population 0:58:43.230 --> 0:58:47.070 and the death of the final individual of that species. 0:58:47.750 --> 0:58:50.890 As you mentioned, the last passenger pigeon in the zoo, 0:58:51.230 --> 0:58:54.170 I was reminded of that. We see that also happening 0:58:54.210 --> 0:58:59.240 with human cultures, particularly with language. From what I've read, 0:58:59.320 --> 0:59:03.700 about 44% of living languages today are now endangered. Some 0:59:03.740 --> 0:59:07.320 have fewer than a thousand speakers remaining, and others are 0:59:07.360 --> 0:59:11.300 spoken by fewer than 10 people. and i know from 0:59:11.660 --> 0:59:13.460 what you told me of your travels james that you 0:59:13.580 --> 0:59:17.640 actually have met people who have spoken some of these 0:59:17.820 --> 0:59:19.360 endangered languages correct. 0:59:19.880 --> 0:59:24.060 Yeah certainly like uh i think about languages that like 0:59:24.700 --> 0:59:30.220 i guess i've heard people speak that are less hegemonic Certainly, like, 0:59:30.910 --> 0:59:33.390 I can't imagine there are very many speakers of Marshallese, 0:59:33.470 --> 0:59:38.350 for example, in the RMI, many indigenous languages, right? Like 0:59:38.470 --> 0:59:41.650 I know the Embara like have made a great deal 0:59:41.670 --> 0:59:44.880 of like progress, educating young people in their language, right. 0:59:44.920 --> 0:59:48.419 And like making sure that they, they keep that. I was, uh, 0:59:49.040 --> 0:59:52.920 just talking to some like Yoemi and Otam friends this morning. 0:59:53.300 --> 0:59:53.500 Right. 0:59:53.640 --> 0:59:57.280 Uh, I think those languages are doing relatively well for 0:59:57.320 --> 1:00:01.340 indigenous languages. in what is now the United States. But like, 1:00:01.460 --> 1:00:04.440 it's only through the concerted effort of people from that 1:00:04.500 --> 1:00:06.600 community to keep them alive, right? Like, I don't think 1:00:06.660 --> 1:00:11.010 the state has attributed a diversity value to those languages. 1:00:11.070 --> 1:00:14.350 And languages, like, they give us a way of understanding 1:00:14.370 --> 1:00:15.970 the world that is different. That's why I like to 1:00:16.050 --> 1:00:19.730 try and learn at least a little bit of different languages. Like, 1:00:19.750 --> 1:00:23.440 they give us a way of seeing things i think 1:00:23.500 --> 1:00:26.320 about like uh all the bass words for rain right 1:00:26.600 --> 1:00:30.120 or uh i was uh diving the other day with 1:00:30.180 --> 1:00:32.390 like a sea lion and i was talking to a 1:00:32.410 --> 1:00:35.510 spanish-speaking friend about like in uh in spanish they're like 1:00:35.690 --> 1:00:39.169 uh wolves of the sea right lions of the sea 1:00:40.230 --> 1:00:41.850 it's kind of interesting and they do have like a 1:00:41.870 --> 1:00:43.750 kind of a wolf like vibe to them if you 1:00:43.770 --> 1:00:46.410 ever uh hung out around sea lions like uh. 1:00:46.810 --> 1:00:48.650 In terms of what, like their social structure? 1:00:49.250 --> 1:00:52.930 Yeah, and like their, like, I think people see sea 1:00:52.970 --> 1:00:57.090 lions as like this big cuddly kind of cute thing. 1:00:57.110 --> 1:00:59.660 And like, they're fucking killers, you know? 1:00:59.780 --> 1:01:02.760 Oh, trust and believe I don't. I don't trust those 1:01:02.780 --> 1:01:03.320 guys at all. 1:01:03.680 --> 1:01:05.840 Yeah, no, they're like, they will fuck. 1:01:05.860 --> 1:01:09.980 I don't trust any mammal that chose to live an 1:01:10.020 --> 1:01:12.830 aquatic way of life. Okay, there's something fishy about that. 1:01:14.170 --> 1:01:15.730 I love that. 1:01:15.770 --> 1:01:16.390 Pun intended. 1:01:16.790 --> 1:01:16.970 Yeah. 1:01:17.530 --> 1:01:20.970 I love that as a category. You know, they're mean. 1:01:21.670 --> 1:01:22.390 They'll come at you. 1:01:34.180 --> 1:01:37.500 As you were mentioning, there are like, according to the ethnologue, 1:01:37.560 --> 1:01:43.140 at least 7,170 living languages in the world today. Our 1:01:43.180 --> 1:01:47.540 lowest underestimations of the amount of cultures, that is an 1:01:47.580 --> 1:01:53.620 accumulation of knowledge, values, customs, technology, social practices. Our lowest 1:01:53.660 --> 1:01:55.960 estimate of the number of cultures on earth is like 4,000. 1:01:55.960 --> 1:02:00.000 They're definitely, certainly more than that. Especially if we are 1:02:00.120 --> 1:02:03.090 using language as a proxy for cultural diversity. 1:02:03.190 --> 1:02:03.450 Right. 1:02:03.830 --> 1:02:09.630 And even within languages, there's tremendous cultural diversity. Yeah. Biologically, 1:02:09.690 --> 1:02:11.830 we have a lot of diversity as well. I neglected 1:02:11.870 --> 1:02:16.010 to mention that. you know, blood types, heights, hair textures, 1:02:17.110 --> 1:02:22.130 all of these have emerged across the continents we've spread 1:02:22.170 --> 1:02:24.930 out across. I mean, obviously the concentration of that diversity 1:02:25.090 --> 1:02:29.550 is in Africa, where we began. But even our adaptations 1:02:29.610 --> 1:02:34.910 to different environments is a form of diversity that is necessary, 1:02:35.250 --> 1:02:37.590 you know, to maintain us. I'll get into some of 1:02:37.610 --> 1:02:40.830 the arguments for why later on. But, so I didn't 1:02:40.850 --> 1:02:44.110 know that Basque had all the different words for rain 1:02:44.590 --> 1:02:46.870 but i am reminded i think that there are different 1:02:46.990 --> 1:02:54.020 words in inuit languages for describing snow yeah like uh. 1:02:54.380 --> 1:02:57.000 The um i think it's in upiac have a bunch 1:02:57.020 --> 1:02:59.880 of words for snow and ice and like different textures 1:02:59.960 --> 1:03:03.000 of it i'm trying now to find basque words for 1:03:03.720 --> 1:03:05.600 uh for rain so i can remember some of them 1:03:06.400 --> 1:03:10.710 yeah land broa is drizzle or mist i know ziri 1:03:10.750 --> 1:03:13.640 miri is like a light rain It's like the noise 1:03:13.700 --> 1:03:16.200 it makes. I always thought that was a really sweet one. 1:03:16.240 --> 1:03:23.610 I had some fucking throwback. A Cornish anarchist who spoke Cornish, right? 1:03:23.810 --> 1:03:25.990 One of the languages that is not hegemonic and is 1:03:26.050 --> 1:03:30.820 probably relatively endangered, even as European languages go, right? I 1:03:30.840 --> 1:03:32.640 think it's probably having a better time now than it 1:03:32.680 --> 1:03:34.640 was when I was younger, but it was relatively rare 1:03:34.680 --> 1:03:35.980 to encounter a Cornish speaker. 1:03:36.120 --> 1:03:37.600 Cornish, that's Cornwall, right? 1:03:37.880 --> 1:03:40.750 Correct. Yeah, yeah. was teaching me all these beautiful words 1:03:40.790 --> 1:03:44.470 for like a different wildlife and different like natural phenomena 1:03:44.490 --> 1:03:48.689 that sort of have an onomatopoeic quality to them. But like, 1:03:49.170 --> 1:03:52.420 for some reason, just like the sort of beautiful way 1:03:52.480 --> 1:03:55.100 that they showed of relating, I don't want to like 1:03:55.120 --> 1:03:57.300 a noble, savage Cornish people. 1:03:57.360 --> 1:03:57.460 Right. 1:03:57.480 --> 1:03:59.080 But I just thought that they showed a different way 1:03:59.120 --> 1:04:02.310 of understanding the world and our relationship with it and 1:04:02.350 --> 1:04:05.490 these animals and like how they, how they appear. And like, 1:04:05.550 --> 1:04:08.090 it struck me as really special that that person was like, 1:04:08.110 --> 1:04:11.180 like kept that knowledge and, and that that person shared 1:04:11.220 --> 1:04:13.540 that knowledge with me. Um, this was at some like 1:04:13.560 --> 1:04:18.120 event in Barcelona when I'm like, you know, 21 years old, 1:04:18.120 --> 1:04:20.440 19 years old, something like that. Uh, and it just 1:04:20.500 --> 1:04:23.540 really struck me that, uh, like there was so much 1:04:23.620 --> 1:04:26.180 beauty in, in seeing the world through the lens of 1:04:26.220 --> 1:04:28.390 that language. And it would be a real shame if 1:04:28.430 --> 1:04:29.090 we ever lost that. 1:04:29.910 --> 1:04:30.130 Yeah. 1:04:30.230 --> 1:04:33.790 And I mean, that's just one case study. Every other 1:04:33.930 --> 1:04:38.880 endangered language, I'm sure you could point to similar novelties in, 1:04:39.260 --> 1:04:41.220 you know, how they engage with the world, how they 1:04:41.300 --> 1:04:42.520 describe and see things. 1:04:42.900 --> 1:04:43.240 Sure. 1:04:43.280 --> 1:04:43.460 Yeah. 1:04:44.240 --> 1:04:46.900 And we can extend from language to culture, you know, 1:04:46.940 --> 1:04:50.640 different cuisines, different ways of, you know, engagement with foods, 1:04:51.120 --> 1:04:54.220 you know, different forms of architecture and music and ways 1:04:54.260 --> 1:04:58.800 of telling stories. Yeah. Ways of raising children, ways of 1:04:58.860 --> 1:05:00.340 celebrating and of mourning. 1:05:00.360 --> 1:05:03.120 Yeah, definitely. Like there's a lot that I feel like 1:05:03.180 --> 1:05:06.300 I've learned about so many of those things from being 1:05:06.340 --> 1:05:09.790 lucky enough to spend time in different places, right? I 1:05:09.810 --> 1:05:12.850 guess I can give an example from, this is in 1:05:12.890 --> 1:05:14.840 my book if people want to read more about it, 1:05:14.850 --> 1:05:17.390 but like one of the things that a friend in 1:05:17.450 --> 1:05:20.410 Kurdistan said to me was that like they'd lost a friend, right? 1:05:20.430 --> 1:05:23.540 This friend had died fighting against the Islamic State. One 1:05:23.560 --> 1:05:25.200 of the things that they said was like because of 1:05:25.260 --> 1:05:27.920 this institution of tech mill which is like a form 1:05:27.980 --> 1:05:31.420 of collective criticism it doesn't quite work in english to 1:05:31.440 --> 1:05:33.320 call it collective criticism because you think of maoism which 1:05:33.380 --> 1:05:36.700 is not but because they had like shared with this 1:05:36.760 --> 1:05:40.720 person their goals their aspirations their their hopes and then 1:05:40.760 --> 1:05:43.630 this person through this institution of tech mill had helped 1:05:43.750 --> 1:05:47.790 them be accountable to their own hopes for themselves that 1:05:47.990 --> 1:05:50.410 they were a better person because of the time they 1:05:50.430 --> 1:05:52.930 had spent with this person and now that this person 1:05:52.990 --> 1:05:58.600 was gone They carried him with them in their ways 1:05:58.660 --> 1:06:01.920 of being because he had helped them be a better person. 1:06:02.560 --> 1:06:03.880 They shared it with me at a time when I 1:06:03.920 --> 1:06:06.990 had like lost a dear friend and it was a 1:06:07.070 --> 1:06:10.130 really beautiful way of me processing that. Like I'm not 1:06:10.150 --> 1:06:12.610 a person who is like a religious person. I don't, 1:06:12.950 --> 1:06:15.550 I have that belief structure to process it, but like 1:06:16.110 --> 1:06:19.180 that gave me a sense of an afterlife, which was 1:06:19.240 --> 1:06:21.420 more concrete for me, which I could understand, which I 1:06:21.460 --> 1:06:21.880 could see. 1:06:22.430 --> 1:06:22.669 Yeah. 1:06:22.890 --> 1:06:23.830 And like, it really helped me. 1:06:24.230 --> 1:06:25.530 The afterlife of memory. 1:06:25.730 --> 1:06:26.110 Yeah. 1:06:26.270 --> 1:06:29.430 And of like, like we are all co-created by our community, right? 1:06:29.450 --> 1:06:31.290 Like I didn't make myself the way I am. 1:06:31.310 --> 1:06:31.810 Yeah. 1:06:31.930 --> 1:06:34.030 I was made the way I am by my interactions 1:06:34.070 --> 1:06:36.330 with people who care about me enough to help me 1:06:36.370 --> 1:06:41.490 be better. And the idea of that person who helped 1:06:41.510 --> 1:06:45.210 me co-create the person I am, like still existing in 1:06:45.250 --> 1:06:47.430 the person I am was very powerful to me. Like, 1:06:47.450 --> 1:06:53.410 it's like a concrete psychological benefit I got from, interacting 1:06:53.430 --> 1:06:54.970 with people who help me see the world the way 1:06:55.010 --> 1:06:55.510 they see. 1:06:55.370 --> 1:07:00.150 It absolutely you know i'm glad for all the languages 1:07:00.230 --> 1:07:04.130 that still exist and still give us you know these 1:07:04.170 --> 1:07:07.010 words for things because if nation states had their way 1:07:07.770 --> 1:07:10.250 there would be like 10 languages left on earth yeah 1:07:10.590 --> 1:07:14.090 i mean dramatic but you know right now most of 1:07:14.140 --> 1:07:19.340 humanity speaks a relatively small number of languages the 23 1:07:19.340 --> 1:07:24.550 most spoken mother languages i can't feel like 4 billion people, 1:07:24.710 --> 1:07:28.190 somewhere around there. And in the 200 most spoken languages, 1:07:28.770 --> 1:07:31.020 over 88% of the world's population. 1:07:31.460 --> 1:07:32.040 That's crazy. 1:07:32.500 --> 1:07:35.919 And this is, of course, due to nation building, due 1:07:35.960 --> 1:07:43.180 to economic pressures, globalization. Basically, everywhere, the pressures of the 1:07:43.200 --> 1:07:49.270 status quo have led to indigenous and regional languages, minority languages, disappearing. 1:07:49.370 --> 1:07:53.880 And if not for the concerted efforts... of these language 1:07:53.920 --> 1:07:57.860 communities to maintain their way of speaking and to pass 1:07:57.920 --> 1:08:00.640 it down, we would have lost so many more as 1:08:00.700 --> 1:08:00.960 it is. 1:08:00.980 --> 1:08:02.740 Yeah, definitely. 1:08:03.410 --> 1:08:06.130 As you mentioned, by the way, the words that you've 1:08:06.150 --> 1:08:11.330 picked up over the years from different languages and your 1:08:11.350 --> 1:08:14.690 attempts to explain those words to me, I was reminded 1:08:14.930 --> 1:08:17.920 of a work of fiction that I'd read, I think 1:08:17.960 --> 1:08:21.639 about two years ago. It's a book called Babel by R.F. 1:08:21.680 --> 1:08:26.250 Kuang And it's kind of like a fantasy historical fiction 1:08:26.910 --> 1:08:31.070 where like a Chinese student goes to this school in 1:08:31.189 --> 1:08:38.190 England and the magic of that world is translation. The 1:08:38.390 --> 1:08:40.769 sort of energy that gets picked up, the magic that 1:08:40.800 --> 1:08:44.019 they're able to wield is through the translation from one 1:08:44.060 --> 1:08:47.880 language to another. And the fact that because translation is 1:08:47.920 --> 1:08:53.599 on a one-to-one process, the Kind of nuances and, you know, 1:08:54.040 --> 1:08:57.950 meanings and subtexts and connotations that they get lost or 1:08:57.990 --> 1:09:01.340 gained in the process are potent. and so for people 1:09:01.360 --> 1:09:05.000 who are interested in linguistics and fantasy fiction i always 1:09:05.040 --> 1:09:05.860 recommend that book to. 1:09:05.800 --> 1:09:09.220 Them yeah might try that one but what i. 1:09:09.200 --> 1:09:11.839 Was alluding to just now was some of the reasons 1:09:11.880 --> 1:09:17.229 we've begun to lose our world's biocultural diversity as i 1:09:17.240 --> 1:09:23.360 said before There have been changes across time, across generations, 1:09:23.689 --> 1:09:26.550 all the way even prior to humanity, so we're not 1:09:26.590 --> 1:09:29.090 to blame for everything. But there are a lot of 1:09:29.110 --> 1:09:34.190 historical processes that have reinforced each other, that have led 1:09:34.290 --> 1:09:37.889 to what has been unfolding these past few centuries. Yes, 1:09:37.930 --> 1:09:41.530 we might have hunted some species to extinction in our 1:09:41.570 --> 1:09:46.410 prehistoric past, but clearly the scale of our impact is 1:09:46.450 --> 1:09:52.339 quite different here now. Monocultures, for instance, and fast pasture 1:09:52.360 --> 1:09:58.810 lands have completely replaced ecosystems in certain areas. We've drained wetlands, 1:09:58.890 --> 1:10:04.290 we've leveled forests, we've fragmented habitats. And that's another thing 1:10:04.330 --> 1:10:09.790 that when we speak of habitat loss isn't always spoken about. But, 1:10:09.830 --> 1:10:13.420 you know, we have places where a lot of the 1:10:13.439 --> 1:10:18.229 habitat was left alone, quote unquote. But when you have 1:10:18.290 --> 1:10:22.880 like six lane highways cutting through a forest, that is 1:10:22.900 --> 1:10:25.340 still a fragmentation of that ecosystem. 1:10:25.420 --> 1:10:25.700 Oh yeah. 1:10:25.760 --> 1:10:29.220 That's still a disruption of the flow of plants, animal 1:10:29.260 --> 1:10:30.900 life and fungal life. 1:10:31.300 --> 1:10:34.860 Yeah. Can I make a podcast about this? But one 1:10:34.900 --> 1:10:37.990 of the issues that our endangered wildlife faces here in 1:10:38.010 --> 1:10:41.430 Southern California, right, is that it's fragmented both by freeways 1:10:41.729 --> 1:10:44.970 and the border wall. So like the border wall in 1:10:44.990 --> 1:10:48.680 particular is, people can listen to natural causes if they 1:10:48.700 --> 1:10:50.200 want to learn more about this. But the border wall 1:10:50.240 --> 1:10:52.040 in particular, right, is being built at such a speed 1:10:52.080 --> 1:10:54.520 that they're not even building wildlife gates into it. Now, 1:10:55.220 --> 1:10:57.060 they don't care about killing people with the wall. Why 1:10:57.080 --> 1:11:01.019 would they care about killing wildlife, right? But it means, 1:11:01.180 --> 1:11:04.340 for instance, our peninsula bighorns, which we have like 750 1:11:04.340 --> 1:11:07.970 in the United States, one of the rams actually died 1:11:08.010 --> 1:11:11.350 in the border wall wire recently. And their ability to 1:11:11.390 --> 1:11:14.430 have like a healthy breeding population will be significantly limited 1:11:14.470 --> 1:11:17.830 to this to the extent that like, The intangible value 1:11:17.870 --> 1:11:19.630 of me seeing a bighorn in a hike in the 1:11:19.670 --> 1:11:24.429 desert might not be something that everyone gets ever again, right? 1:11:26.189 --> 1:11:29.439 Our mountain lions actually have some weird little genetic anomalies 1:11:29.580 --> 1:11:32.280 because of the divisions that are created by these big 1:11:32.360 --> 1:11:35.280 freeways and how dangerous it is to cross them. There's 1:11:35.300 --> 1:11:37.339 like a thing you can observe in some of their tails. 1:11:37.920 --> 1:11:40.960 So there actually are mountain lions in the peninsula range 1:11:41.000 --> 1:11:44.390 are listed in the California Endangered Species Act, even though 1:11:44.470 --> 1:11:48.990 as a whole overall, they're not particularly endangered. California has 1:11:49.030 --> 1:11:54.010 a shit ton of lions, actually. It's because these specific lions, 1:11:54.570 --> 1:11:57.309 despite the fact that there are conditions for them to thrive, right, 1:11:57.430 --> 1:12:00.849 in the United States, the intrusion that has divided these 1:12:00.890 --> 1:12:03.849 populations has made it very hard for those populations, not 1:12:03.870 --> 1:12:06.030 just to thrive, but like to continue to be healthy. 1:12:07.070 --> 1:12:07.250 Yeah. 1:12:07.979 --> 1:12:10.600 That's the thing, right? Like a species doesn't necessarily have 1:12:10.640 --> 1:12:14.680 to be endangered or on the brink of extinction for 1:12:14.860 --> 1:12:20.010 it to be experiencing the extremely negative effects of, you know, 1:12:20.290 --> 1:12:25.769 our industrial civilization. Right. I would add also the pressures 1:12:26.010 --> 1:12:30.600 of invasive species through global trade, you know, the impact 1:12:30.640 --> 1:12:35.150 of pollution in the waterways and in the air. climate change, 1:12:35.270 --> 1:12:38.050 all of these have placed a tremendous amount of pressure 1:12:38.550 --> 1:12:42.400 on the natural world. When it comes to cultural diversity 1:12:42.460 --> 1:12:49.300 and its losses, which coincide with the losses of biodiversity, 1:12:49.760 --> 1:12:54.650 we see the impact of colonialism destroying societies through conquest 1:12:54.729 --> 1:12:59.230 and genocide and assimilation and the very same environmental changes. 1:12:59.750 --> 1:13:03.190 We've seen nation building try to forge a single national 1:13:03.250 --> 1:13:07.070 identity at the expense of regional and minority cultures. And then, 1:13:07.110 --> 1:13:11.650 of course, with globalization, not in the sense of cultural 1:13:11.810 --> 1:13:17.000 exchange across distances, as that has always existed, but specifically 1:13:17.020 --> 1:13:19.960 the kind that has been driven by capitalist markets and 1:13:20.000 --> 1:13:26.180 state power and industrial efficiency, which enforces standardization across places. 1:13:26.840 --> 1:13:30.300 You know, it's easier... for these capitalists, for these multinationals 1:13:30.320 --> 1:13:33.660 to manufacture the same products and market the same brands 1:13:34.320 --> 1:13:41.290 and basically flatten language and flatten cultural expectations across places. 1:13:42.110 --> 1:13:46.690 So they even would manufacture consumer tastes in a way 1:13:46.710 --> 1:13:49.410 that benefits their bottom line. You know, now you get 1:13:49.430 --> 1:13:53.260 to pick between streaming services or, you know, you have 1:13:53.280 --> 1:13:57.490 a whole bunch of different varieties of cereals in your supermarkets, 1:13:57.510 --> 1:14:02.790 and that is what is counted as economic freedom. Meanwhile, 1:14:03.210 --> 1:14:19.019 there are cultures that are literally going extinct. Now, I 1:14:19.040 --> 1:14:22.110 had a question for you about this subject because you 1:14:22.370 --> 1:14:24.769 are admittedly a bit older than me. 1:14:25.990 --> 1:14:27.720 It's true. Sadly. 1:14:28.700 --> 1:14:32.460 Right? But I'm curious, have you witnessed like in real 1:14:32.560 --> 1:14:37.740 time the loss of this kind of diversity through globalization? 1:14:38.180 --> 1:14:41.240 So I see like for me, I remember having like 1:14:41.340 --> 1:14:46.900 copies of older magazines and I could see through those that, 1:14:47.160 --> 1:14:51.780 you know, the world was, the places generally felt very different, 1:14:52.320 --> 1:14:57.209 very unique. And as I've come up With social media, 1:14:57.750 --> 1:15:01.269 I've seen places have kind of homogenized. Everything was starting 1:15:01.290 --> 1:15:03.559 to look the same. And let's not even talk about 1:15:03.570 --> 1:15:05.259 the impact of like AI slop. 1:15:05.400 --> 1:15:06.020 Oh, yeah. 1:15:06.640 --> 1:15:07.679 But yeah, what have you seen? 1:15:08.300 --> 1:15:11.800 Yeah, like it's one of those things that like you 1:15:11.840 --> 1:15:17.660 do see the, like the impact of the smartphone is huge, right? 1:15:17.820 --> 1:15:20.959 At a second level, the impact of Starlink is massive. 1:15:21.500 --> 1:15:24.200 much more than I think most people living in the 1:15:24.260 --> 1:15:28.100 colonial core would realize, right? Like more people have access 1:15:28.120 --> 1:15:31.170 to the internet through smartphones than have electricity in their homes. 1:15:32.010 --> 1:15:36.810 And like the internet is a very hegemonic place, right? 1:15:36.870 --> 1:15:41.849 Like there are probably seven or eight languages the internet's 1:15:41.910 --> 1:15:44.420 really good in that like you could really access the 1:15:44.439 --> 1:15:48.280 internet in. And that really has made a difference with 1:15:48.939 --> 1:15:52.689 the way young people engage with the external world. 1:15:52.870 --> 1:15:53.889 Right. Right. 1:15:54.150 --> 1:15:58.780 I guess I've also seen like a, uh, a reclamation 1:15:59.320 --> 1:16:02.080 of some of that. And it's a thing that's largely 1:16:02.120 --> 1:16:06.720 happened like within, uh, the colonial core to the greatest extent, right? 1:16:06.760 --> 1:16:11.040 Like the, um, the so-called the Europe of nations hypothesis, right? 1:16:11.080 --> 1:16:14.140 Like one of the languages I can, uh, speak and 1:16:14.200 --> 1:16:17.570 read and, and write in is, is Catalan. And like, 1:16:17.630 --> 1:16:20.850 this is an example of a language that like was, uh, 1:16:21.460 --> 1:16:26.360 ruthlessly suppressed by the Francoist regime. Same with Basque, same 1:16:26.380 --> 1:16:32.580 with other non-Spanish languages in Iberia. And now that is 1:16:32.600 --> 1:16:35.720 the primary language of instruction for most Catalan students. In 1:16:35.820 --> 1:16:40.059 my lifetime, my time spending time in Catalonia, I see 1:16:40.300 --> 1:16:43.769 infinitely more people speaking Catalan than I used to. I 1:16:43.970 --> 1:16:46.510 remember there's an anecdote about this in my dissertation, but 1:16:46.550 --> 1:16:49.769 some young Syrian kids who would always speak to me 1:16:49.810 --> 1:16:53.450 in Catalan They played football outside my archive, right? Like, so, uh, 1:16:54.030 --> 1:16:57.429 we'd be kicking the football around and, uh, it's cool 1:16:57.450 --> 1:16:59.870 that this language that had once very nearly been destroyed, 1:16:59.890 --> 1:17:04.210 it's now like hegemonic. It was cool at the time, 1:17:04.229 --> 1:17:08.670 Catalan nationalism, but like every other nationalism has some qualities, 1:17:08.710 --> 1:17:10.910 which I don't like, but like, it was cool that 1:17:10.930 --> 1:17:14.309 at the time there was a, an acceptance of people, 1:17:14.350 --> 1:17:17.770 especially like these kids who spoke Catalan. happened to have 1:17:17.800 --> 1:17:18.559 been born in Syria. 1:17:18.600 --> 1:17:18.760 Right. 1:17:18.770 --> 1:17:20.860 But like, they were Catalan as much as anyone else. 1:17:20.960 --> 1:17:25.780 Like it wasn't a, uh, an ethnic definition of, of nation. 1:17:25.979 --> 1:17:26.179 Right. 1:17:26.680 --> 1:17:28.880 But at the same time, yeah, I've definitely seen that 1:17:28.920 --> 1:17:33.560 diversity lost in terms of so many things like foods. 1:17:34.020 --> 1:17:34.120 Yeah. 1:17:34.140 --> 1:17:36.879 I feel like there has been a homogenization of pallets 1:17:36.979 --> 1:17:37.380 as well. 1:17:37.400 --> 1:17:38.540 A hundred percent. 1:17:38.600 --> 1:17:38.840 Right. 1:17:39.460 --> 1:17:41.600 Especially with the proliferation of fast foods. 1:17:42.220 --> 1:17:42.420 Yeah. 1:17:42.460 --> 1:17:47.509 Yeah, exactly. Like fast, cheap. high calorie food that stores easily. 1:17:47.530 --> 1:17:49.910 I mean, the example, I guess, is like, look at 1:17:49.930 --> 1:17:54.030 what they've done to bread for the time of my life. 1:17:54.110 --> 1:17:54.309 Right. 1:17:54.350 --> 1:17:57.700 Like, uh, look at how like sliced white, what we 1:17:57.740 --> 1:18:00.939 would have called American bread is now like the global standard. 1:18:01.000 --> 1:18:01.220 Right. 1:18:01.840 --> 1:18:04.500 But like all those other bread products that people used 1:18:04.520 --> 1:18:06.660 to make, like, it can be very hard to get 1:18:07.180 --> 1:18:09.639 like freshly made tortillas. It's possible where I live. 1:18:09.720 --> 1:18:09.880 Right. 1:18:09.900 --> 1:18:13.269 But it's not, I imagine if you live in like Minnesota. 1:18:14.030 --> 1:18:17.019 Just like the little moments of beauty that they gave 1:18:17.060 --> 1:18:20.100 you in your day that had gone. And, but yeah, 1:18:20.120 --> 1:18:22.900 also the big things like I, uh, you know, I, 1:18:23.020 --> 1:18:25.870 I watched kids watching TikTok in the Darien gap. That 1:18:25.890 --> 1:18:28.190 wouldn't have been possible seven or eight years ago. 1:18:28.370 --> 1:18:28.630 Right. 1:18:29.229 --> 1:18:29.490 Wow. 1:18:29.510 --> 1:18:32.490 I didn't quite know when styling was widely distributed, but 1:18:32.689 --> 1:18:34.340 like that makes a difference to people. 1:18:35.010 --> 1:18:35.170 Right? 1:18:35.189 --> 1:18:38.720 Like their cultural world is that they're now engaging with 1:18:38.740 --> 1:18:40.760 the external world, not just through their own culture, through 1:18:40.780 --> 1:18:42.720 the internet. And I want those people to have everything 1:18:42.939 --> 1:18:45.870 I have to be clear, right? Like I want them 1:18:45.950 --> 1:18:47.410 to be able to see the whole world. 1:18:47.630 --> 1:18:47.810 Yeah. 1:18:47.830 --> 1:18:50.620 You don't want to like seal them vacuums. them in 1:18:50.680 --> 1:18:53.639 some kind of some kind of museum exhibit of what once. 1:18:53.540 --> 1:18:57.260 Was exactly yeah but like i also wish that they 1:18:57.280 --> 1:18:58.780 could have it the way i have it which is 1:18:58.800 --> 1:19:01.440 that like i am i was born in england and 1:19:01.479 --> 1:19:04.180 i engage with the world in english i wish they 1:19:04.200 --> 1:19:07.190 could engage with the world number i wish to you know, 1:19:07.250 --> 1:19:09.670 Kurdish people can engage with the world in whichever type 1:19:09.710 --> 1:19:12.719 of Kurdish they speak, you know, which they didn't have to, 1:19:13.189 --> 1:19:15.479 to go through the English way of speaking and seeing 1:19:15.520 --> 1:19:17.960 the world, to engage with the external world, because we 1:19:18.240 --> 1:19:22.440 all lose when we don't have that diversity, right? 1:19:23.439 --> 1:19:26.719 Yeah. And I mean, we're talking about what is lost, 1:19:26.820 --> 1:19:30.059 I think, when things get homogenized, but there is like, 1:19:30.080 --> 1:19:34.519 I think, another effect or another, I suppose, response to 1:19:35.570 --> 1:19:40.480 that global capitalism has the diversity, which is to package it, 1:19:40.580 --> 1:19:43.720 to market it, to sell it. I referenced those magazines 1:19:43.760 --> 1:19:47.780 that I read, but those magazines might even be an 1:19:47.880 --> 1:19:53.760 example of that because it is a capturing and commodification, 1:19:53.800 --> 1:19:58.970 in a sense, of another culture for distribution and consumption. 1:19:59.590 --> 1:20:00.410 Yeah, definitely. 1:20:00.950 --> 1:20:05.229 You see as well, people's traditional dress becomes... a less 1:20:05.300 --> 1:20:08.040 of a traditional dress and more of a traditional costume 1:20:08.120 --> 1:20:13.580 as they put it on to perform for consumption for tourists. 1:20:14.479 --> 1:20:18.360 Yeah, like the commodification of diversity. Yeah, that idea that 1:20:18.380 --> 1:20:22.450 diversity is a thing to sell. The marginalization of people 1:20:22.550 --> 1:20:26.090 such that their identity, which has been marginalized by the 1:20:26.110 --> 1:20:28.269 state and capitalism, is what they have to sell to 1:20:28.330 --> 1:20:30.310 exist under the state and capitalism, I guess. 1:20:31.390 --> 1:20:34.860 Yeah. We've already sort of hinted at... Some of the 1:20:34.900 --> 1:20:39.710 reasons why I think we should care about this loss 1:20:39.890 --> 1:20:43.769 of diversity, you know, and I could even spot off 1:20:43.790 --> 1:20:48.030 a few more. And diversity makes our living systems more resilient, 1:20:48.729 --> 1:20:51.590 I think is a very key one. In our ecosystems, 1:20:51.689 --> 1:20:54.410 every species has its niche and they can compete and 1:20:54.450 --> 1:20:57.840 cooperate and recycle nutrients and everything is just part of 1:20:58.100 --> 1:21:01.060 one larger network. And the more diverse that network is, 1:21:01.120 --> 1:21:04.610 the more it has to respond to disruption. Diversity gives 1:21:04.700 --> 1:21:09.400 ecosystems options. We see that in comparison to the monocultures, 1:21:09.439 --> 1:21:13.040 the monocultural approach to farming that has dominated much of 1:21:13.060 --> 1:21:17.559 the world, and the common inputs that approach requires. We 1:21:17.580 --> 1:21:21.030 look at how vulnerable that approach is to disease and 1:21:21.050 --> 1:21:25.330 to changes in climate conditions. In terms of genetic diversity, 1:21:25.370 --> 1:21:28.030 we can point to the fact that if every human 1:21:28.450 --> 1:21:32.689 immune system works in exactly the same way, A pathogen 1:21:32.710 --> 1:21:36.889 that evolved to bypass one person's immune system could bypass everyone's. 1:21:37.630 --> 1:21:41.030 And so our biological differences create the variation in how 1:21:41.070 --> 1:21:46.410 diseases spread and keep us as a whole safe, keep 1:21:46.510 --> 1:21:50.250 our existence as a whole secure. Even within my own family, 1:21:50.290 --> 1:21:53.410 I've noticed that some people are more susceptible and others 1:21:53.510 --> 1:21:58.910 more resistant to different diseases. You know, when a virus passes, 1:21:59.630 --> 1:22:02.090 Into my household, there are some people who get sick 1:22:02.189 --> 1:22:05.590 and some people don't, and it changes each time, despite 1:22:05.630 --> 1:22:08.160 the fact that we are so close genetically. And so again, 1:22:08.180 --> 1:22:12.340 we see the diversity creates resilience. And even if we 1:22:12.360 --> 1:22:16.139 want to take it from like a coldly utilitarian perspective, 1:22:16.860 --> 1:22:21.680 that resilience is a value. It has utility, you know, 1:22:21.840 --> 1:22:27.030 and an individual instance of a species or of a 1:22:27.090 --> 1:22:30.060 culture is might have value in a way that we 1:22:30.100 --> 1:22:34.160 don't realize until it's gone yeah we become poorer as 1:22:34.180 --> 1:22:39.120 a whole we lose possibilities when we lose languages when 1:22:39.140 --> 1:22:43.600 we lose cultures when we lose species every culture represents 1:22:43.820 --> 1:22:50.650 literally thousands of experiments accumulated over generations in what it 1:22:50.729 --> 1:22:53.250 means to live as a human being we may like 1:22:53.350 --> 1:22:57.350 some more than others you know i'm not a relativist 1:22:57.450 --> 1:22:59.889 in the sense that I will turn a blind eye 1:22:59.970 --> 1:23:04.580 to things that I find morally objectionable in certain cultures. 1:23:05.420 --> 1:23:08.760 But I can recognize that every culture has something that 1:23:08.880 --> 1:23:11.660 adds to our library of experiences. And I would rather 1:23:11.740 --> 1:23:15.050 have that full library than a single shelf of books. 1:23:15.430 --> 1:23:16.590 It's a really good way of saying it. 1:23:17.270 --> 1:23:21.769 Having that full library gives us more raw material to 1:23:21.830 --> 1:23:24.639 think with, to create art with, to do science with. 1:23:25.670 --> 1:23:27.790 If you like the arts, you know, you will like 1:23:27.830 --> 1:23:31.050 diversity because that innovation in the arts and in the 1:23:31.090 --> 1:23:34.840 sciences emerges from everything that came before. Diversity is a 1:23:34.860 --> 1:23:39.740 foundation for future creativity and innovation. If everybody approaches the 1:23:39.780 --> 1:23:43.939 world with the same assumptions and categories and ways of thinking, then, 1:23:44.580 --> 1:23:49.090 you know, our capacity to imagine alternatives will shrink. And 1:23:49.130 --> 1:23:54.820 then just really from a deeply philosophical perspective, I appreciate 1:23:54.860 --> 1:23:59.660 diversity because I believe that when you are given a gift, 1:24:00.950 --> 1:24:03.970 you should meet it with gratitude. You know, we are 1:24:04.110 --> 1:24:07.350 born in a world, we happen to be born into 1:24:07.390 --> 1:24:09.770 a world that is overflowing with different forms of life, 1:24:10.350 --> 1:24:14.350 different landscapes, different cultures, different ways of thinking. That is 1:24:14.410 --> 1:24:20.120 a vast, rich inheritance that I believe we should appreciate. 1:24:20.320 --> 1:24:23.809 That is my value. I'll add that You know, we 1:24:23.830 --> 1:24:29.840 were speaking about biodiversity and cultural diversity, what Harmon calls 1:24:29.880 --> 1:24:36.200 biocultural diversity, but there's also the value of cognitive diversity. 1:24:37.120 --> 1:24:40.180 You know, we have different opinions, but we might also 1:24:40.560 --> 1:24:45.110 perceive and categorize and solve problems in generally different ways. 1:24:46.550 --> 1:24:54.589 And having different perspectives, different interpretations, different heuristics, different predictive models, 1:24:56.090 --> 1:25:00.769 what Scott E. Page calls cognitive toolboxes in his book, 1:25:00.790 --> 1:25:04.680 The Difference. You know, these give us an opportunity to 1:25:04.780 --> 1:25:08.760 solve problems in unique ways. You know, we're not all 1:25:08.780 --> 1:25:11.940 going to have the same tools and what tools I 1:25:11.979 --> 1:25:15.380 may lack, another person may have. And it's not always 1:25:15.439 --> 1:25:19.460 necessarily a requirement that you just get the smartest person 1:25:20.180 --> 1:25:24.010 to solve the problem. In fact, as Page's research suggests, 1:25:24.870 --> 1:25:28.240 getting a group of people who approach a problem differently 1:25:28.740 --> 1:25:31.740 will outperform a group of people who are made up 1:25:31.860 --> 1:25:35.740 of individually brilliant people who all think in roughly the 1:25:35.760 --> 1:25:38.540 same way. Now, Page doesn't make the bold claim that 1:25:39.100 --> 1:25:42.010 cognitive diversity is always the best approach because he does 1:25:42.070 --> 1:25:49.030 distinguish between routine, regular tasks, and tasks that require like 1:25:49.070 --> 1:25:53.810 more experimentation and creativity and multiple competing ideas. So in 1:25:53.850 --> 1:25:56.330 those cases where you need that diversity of ways of 1:25:56.370 --> 1:26:01.490 thinking to solve complex problems in transportation, in dealing with 1:26:01.530 --> 1:26:04.710 climate change and developing medicines, you know, we don't want 1:26:04.790 --> 1:26:08.630 everybody to be thinking alike. Another thing that Page points 1:26:08.750 --> 1:26:14.660 out is that while cognitive diversity and identity diversity are 1:26:14.680 --> 1:26:19.590 not one-to-one, There is overlap between the concepts because people 1:26:19.650 --> 1:26:23.020 who grow up in different environments and have different experiences 1:26:23.060 --> 1:26:26.500 and opportunities and social positions are more likely to develop 1:26:26.520 --> 1:26:30.300 different ways of seeing the world. So if we recognize 1:26:30.340 --> 1:26:35.439 that cognitive diversity is valuable for solving complex problems, then 1:26:35.580 --> 1:26:40.280 prejudice is a practical failure as well as a moral failure. 1:26:41.780 --> 1:26:45.540 One of the things that I wanted to address, and 1:26:45.560 --> 1:26:48.200 I kind of alluded to it earlier, when I said 1:26:48.220 --> 1:26:51.980 that I'm not really a relativist, is that while I 1:26:52.040 --> 1:26:56.439 do value diversity, I definitely don't think that every form 1:26:56.840 --> 1:27:00.830 is worth celebrating. You know, I believe a healthy society 1:27:00.890 --> 1:27:04.189 should have space for different ways of thinking and living 1:27:04.250 --> 1:27:08.250 and organizing ourselves, but that does not mean this kind 1:27:08.270 --> 1:27:14.620 of liberal tolerance that would put up with mindsets and 1:27:15.300 --> 1:27:20.050 practices of domination that would eliminate that very freedom at 1:27:20.090 --> 1:27:22.309 the end of the day though i want to retain 1:27:23.050 --> 1:27:26.030 the capacity for diversity because i think it gives us 1:27:26.090 --> 1:27:29.900 a capacity for freedom and i want as you know 1:27:30.100 --> 1:27:33.679 subcommandante marcos put it a world where many worlds exist 1:27:33.979 --> 1:27:40.220 yeah even as i reject certain forms that the world 1:27:40.300 --> 1:27:46.639 has taken and certain manifestations of diversity any closing thoughts. 1:27:47.630 --> 1:27:49.950 Like the world where many worlds can exist is I 1:27:49.990 --> 1:27:52.770 think the perfect way of looking at this, right? Like 1:27:53.550 --> 1:27:57.030 we therefore don't want people who would create a world 1:27:57.070 --> 1:28:00.050 where other worlds cannot exist, right? But we gain so 1:28:00.110 --> 1:28:05.440 much from having and respecting and cherishing diversity rather than 1:28:05.530 --> 1:28:08.340 treating it through that tolerance framework, which we both talked about. 1:28:08.380 --> 1:28:11.780 Like tolerance seems to imply like, well, we're doing it best, 1:28:11.820 --> 1:28:13.940 but we'll let you do it your way as opposed 1:28:14.000 --> 1:28:19.030 to like genuinely cherishing diversity yeah and uh yeah i 1:28:19.110 --> 1:28:21.290 hope we can all see that. 1:28:22.100 --> 1:28:27.360 Agreed and as always all power to all the people peace. 1:28:41.040 --> 1:28:43.740 Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about the 1:28:43.780 --> 1:28:47.890 violent flailings of a dying empire. I am your host, 1:28:48.090 --> 1:28:52.110 Mio Wong. And today, we are going to be talking 1:28:52.330 --> 1:28:56.629 about a thing, perhaps the only thing that Americans understand 1:28:56.689 --> 1:29:02.200 more thoroughly than a burger, and that is gas prices. Now, 1:29:02.600 --> 1:29:06.460 elsewhere on this show, speaking about inflation, I have talked 1:29:06.580 --> 1:29:11.189 about price as a kind of social hieroglyphic. that serves 1:29:11.240 --> 1:29:16.050 to encode the complex and brutal reality of geopolitics and 1:29:16.130 --> 1:29:22.410 production and labor and exploitation into a single number. And 1:29:22.450 --> 1:29:26.129 that number is their understanding of everything that is happening 1:29:26.270 --> 1:29:29.800 in the world and, you know, how content they are 1:29:29.900 --> 1:29:35.179 about it is about how much gas costs them. This 1:29:35.820 --> 1:29:39.560 has proven a real problem for one group. President of 1:29:39.600 --> 1:29:44.700 the United States, Donald Trump, as diesel is hitting an 1:29:44.820 --> 1:29:50.430 average across the country of $ 6. 52 a gallon. Now, nominally, 1:29:50.600 --> 1:29:52.650 the President of the United States does not control the 1:29:52.660 --> 1:29:57.210 price of oil and does not, you know, set gas prices. However, comma, 1:29:57.689 --> 1:30:02.610 in this case, no, yeah, this is largely not technically entirely, 1:30:02.750 --> 1:30:06.570 but like, yeah, this is sort of just a thing 1:30:06.630 --> 1:30:11.500 he did as an individual. But I think what's important here, right, 1:30:11.560 --> 1:30:14.160 is that the way that all of the information that 1:30:14.180 --> 1:30:18.500 I'm about to describe is conveyed, right, and the thing 1:30:18.520 --> 1:30:21.900 that makes Americans care about it is the social hieroglyphic 1:30:22.640 --> 1:30:25.850 of the gas price, right? It is the single number 1:30:25.890 --> 1:30:28.830 through which all of this complex information is encoded down into, 1:30:29.150 --> 1:30:32.350 and that is what sort of matters emotionally. And I 1:30:32.450 --> 1:30:36.590 want to undo the process of encoding all of that 1:30:36.630 --> 1:30:40.470 information down into the hieroglyphic. I want to actually expand 1:30:40.530 --> 1:30:44.270 it and go look at what is going on in 1:30:44.310 --> 1:30:47.050 the world that is causing all of this. And I 1:30:47.090 --> 1:30:48.650 want to take a look at how the structure of 1:30:48.710 --> 1:30:53.610 American empire has changed in order to facilitate this. And 1:30:53.650 --> 1:30:56.890 to do this, I'm going to walk through a series of, 1:30:57.870 --> 1:31:02.560 I guess, nominally seemingly disconnected stories about oil across the world. 1:31:02.760 --> 1:31:04.850 And we're going to put it all together into the 1:31:05.560 --> 1:31:10.790 new structure of American empire at the end. Now, as 1:31:11.150 --> 1:31:14.610 everyone I think is aware, gas prices have been increasing dramatically, 1:31:14.689 --> 1:31:19.720 both of regular gas and of diesel. Bank of America 1:31:19.820 --> 1:31:23.560 analysts are finally admitting that oil could hit $ 150 a barrel, 1:31:23.580 --> 1:31:28.380 not like right now, but as the war continues to 1:31:28.400 --> 1:31:32.979 drag out. And as we've talked about before on this show, 1:31:33.220 --> 1:31:35.060 a lot of the reserves that were being used to 1:31:35.100 --> 1:31:38.769 calm the market temporarily and keep prices down are being exhausted. 1:31:39.580 --> 1:31:41.760 The most obvious example of this is something we've talked 1:31:41.800 --> 1:31:46.920 about before, which is the draining of the American Strategic 1:31:46.960 --> 1:31:50.360 Petroleum Reserve. But this is true of a lot of 1:31:50.820 --> 1:31:55.920 other reserves around the world as well. Now, this alone 1:31:56.300 --> 1:31:59.389 probably would not have been enough to cause what we've 1:31:59.400 --> 1:32:03.130 been seeing. But, comma, all of the problems that we 1:32:03.150 --> 1:32:05.070 have been talking about for a long time on this show, 1:32:05.110 --> 1:32:08.760 particularly the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, that is 1:32:08.800 --> 1:32:12.679 entirely directly just the fault of Donald Trump, right, through 1:32:12.720 --> 1:32:15.320 his war on Iran, has been doing significant damage to 1:32:15.340 --> 1:32:18.300 the world's oil supply, to the world's natural gas supply. Now, 1:32:18.880 --> 1:32:22.500 the reason it hasn't been worse has been that there 1:32:22.540 --> 1:32:26.820 have been ways to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. They're 1:32:26.860 --> 1:32:29.540 not easy. They work worse than the Strait of Hormuz. 1:32:30.360 --> 1:32:34.269 But One of those important mechanisms has been Saudi Arabia's 1:32:34.430 --> 1:32:37.670 east-west pipeline. Now, we talked about this, Robert talked about 1:32:37.689 --> 1:32:42.130 this on last week's Executive Disorder. Last week, Iraqi paramilitaries 1:32:42.710 --> 1:32:46.430 launched drone strikes on Saudi Arabia's east-west pipeline. It did 1:32:46.750 --> 1:32:52.130 some damage. There is kind of conflicting reports about how 1:32:52.250 --> 1:32:56.229 long exactly that is going to take to repair, but 1:32:56.450 --> 1:32:59.300 the damage to the pipeline has slowed the ability of 1:32:59.340 --> 1:33:03.680 the Saudis to route oil around the Plaque and the 1:33:03.720 --> 1:33:08.410 Strait of Hormuz. Now, also, there has been a major 1:33:08.550 --> 1:33:13.190 expansion in the war in Yemen. This is a really 1:33:13.290 --> 1:33:16.630 hideous conflict that has been going on for over a 1:33:16.710 --> 1:33:23.120 decade now. We don't really have, unfortunately, time to really 1:33:23.160 --> 1:33:26.620 go into all of the factors of the civil war 1:33:26.640 --> 1:33:28.900 in Yemen, which is one of the most complicated wars 1:33:29.340 --> 1:33:32.490 being fought anywhere in the world. Broadly speaking, this is 1:33:32.530 --> 1:33:35.750 a conflict between a coalition that is sort of in 1:33:35.770 --> 1:33:38.410 the West. It's called the Houthis, but there's more forces 1:33:38.450 --> 1:33:42.979 involved in it, which is the kind of Iranian-aligned, vaguely... 1:33:42.439 --> 1:33:45.360 Not vaguely. I mean, they are allied with Iran, but 1:33:45.380 --> 1:33:48.620 they're not necessarily just an Iranian proxy. This is its 1:33:48.780 --> 1:33:51.590 own sort of political force, right? And then on the 1:33:51.600 --> 1:33:55.110 other side, there is the Saudi-backed coalition, which also involves 1:33:55.170 --> 1:33:59.510 a range of forces involved. but is kind of led 1:33:59.570 --> 1:34:02.410 by the Saudis and the UAE, and they're kind of 1:34:02.470 --> 1:34:05.380 allied forces who pull a whole bunch of forces from 1:34:05.400 --> 1:34:11.960 a whole bunch of places and have committed horrifying atrocities, including, 1:34:12.100 --> 1:34:14.740 as I mention constantly every time someone talks about this 1:34:14.780 --> 1:34:16.300 because no one ever seems to remember it, to the 1:34:16.320 --> 1:34:21.620 deployment by the Saudi coalition of Sudanese child soldiers. So 1:34:22.040 --> 1:34:25.559 this war had, I don't know if calm down is 1:34:25.640 --> 1:34:29.599 quite the right word, But in the past few years, 1:34:30.260 --> 1:34:36.700 had been less active than it was, say, in 2018, 2019. 1:34:36.700 --> 1:34:40.310 But the Houthis have now made a major push into 1:34:40.350 --> 1:34:44.670 Saudi coalition territories in Yemen's west and south. They have 1:34:44.689 --> 1:34:48.250 taken the port city of Mokha in the south, which 1:34:48.610 --> 1:34:53.049 is an important Saudi coalition's port city, which is further 1:34:53.729 --> 1:34:55.830 threatening the ability of the Saudis to bypass the Strait 1:34:55.850 --> 1:34:59.220 of Hormuz because This is a city that helps you 1:34:59.260 --> 1:35:03.379 control access to the Gulf of Aden. Now, this war 1:35:03.660 --> 1:35:08.120 has been and continues to be a massive humanitarian nightmare. 1:35:09.060 --> 1:35:11.860 We really have no idea how many people have actually 1:35:11.880 --> 1:35:14.760 died in the war. The casualty figures right now are 1:35:15.580 --> 1:35:19.160 kind of stuck at 150,000. I suspect it is significantly 1:35:19.200 --> 1:35:20.910 more than that. This is a region that has been 1:35:20.950 --> 1:35:25.610 experiencing everything from you know, like hideous war, just famines. 1:35:26.189 --> 1:35:29.240 A huge part of this war has been a Saudi 1:35:29.280 --> 1:35:34.939 blockade of sort of like Sokol Houthi controlled territories, which 1:35:34.979 --> 1:35:37.600 has had an absolutely devastating effect on the ability of, 1:35:38.340 --> 1:35:41.190 you know, people in Yemen to eat. This attack has 1:35:41.229 --> 1:35:44.269 also caused a massive surge of refugees, you know, as 1:35:44.350 --> 1:35:47.230 people sort of flee the violence. And this has been, 1:35:47.670 --> 1:35:50.950 you know, an absolute nightmare on the one hand. And 1:35:50.990 --> 1:35:54.540 on the other hand, the way that it's understood here, 1:35:55.660 --> 1:35:58.150 the way that it's reported on in the West, is 1:35:58.330 --> 1:36:03.790 not as its own unique humanitarian nightmare and this unique 1:36:03.830 --> 1:36:11.439 war of Saudi and Emirati empire. In Yemen, it's understood 1:36:11.880 --> 1:36:16.320 as something that affects oil prices. And so that's one 1:36:16.360 --> 1:36:21.380 of the factors that is encoded in into this price. 1:36:21.580 --> 1:36:26.540 Another one has been Ukraine's drone attacks on Russian oil refineries, 1:36:26.680 --> 1:36:32.350 which have escalated. Now, from the perspective of what is 1:36:32.410 --> 1:36:36.210 happening with the oil, you know, Houthis have also been 1:36:36.250 --> 1:36:40.809 attacking Saudi shipping and Saudi shipping is, you know, when 1:36:40.830 --> 1:36:44.280 someone talks about Saudi shipping, they're talking almost like guarantee 1:36:44.340 --> 1:36:46.240 the thing they're talking about is shipping oil out of 1:36:46.260 --> 1:36:49.519 the country, right? Houthi attacks on Saudi shipping have slowed 1:36:49.600 --> 1:36:52.350 down In the past week, but there is always the 1:36:52.400 --> 1:36:55.520 possibility of them starting up again. And this is the 1:36:55.620 --> 1:37:00.200 real problem in terms of the world's oil infrastructure, and 1:37:00.240 --> 1:37:03.520 particularly from the perspective of empire, right? In the sense of, 1:37:03.820 --> 1:37:08.120 you know, wanting to be able to secure access to 1:37:08.320 --> 1:37:13.299 oil for the US and for other sort of imperial powers. 1:37:13.939 --> 1:37:18.190 The issue that they're facing as this war continues, right? 1:37:18.560 --> 1:37:21.639 And as these really, really, truly these series of wars, right, 1:37:22.800 --> 1:37:26.260 is that even if, you know, going back to the 1:37:26.320 --> 1:37:31.970 Saudi pipeline, right, the Saudi pipeline will eventually be fixed, right? 1:37:32.090 --> 1:37:34.530 Like full capacity, it might not be for 68 weeks, 1:37:34.750 --> 1:37:37.310 but eventually the pipeline is going to get fixed, even 1:37:37.350 --> 1:37:40.929 if it is sort of restricting supply in the meantime. 1:37:40.950 --> 1:37:45.850 The problem is that all of this infrastructure is just exposed. 1:37:46.650 --> 1:37:50.799 And a whole bunch of different militaries in the region 1:37:50.939 --> 1:37:54.160 can and probably will hit them again, as the U.S. 1:37:54.180 --> 1:37:59.890 has been hitting Iranian oil infrastructure, right? Iran, its allied 1:37:59.910 --> 1:38:03.350 paramilitaries in Iraq, the Houthis, there are lots of groups 1:38:03.830 --> 1:38:07.310 in the region who are being attacked by the U.S. 1:38:07.350 --> 1:38:11.450 and the Saudis and sort of American allies in the 1:38:11.490 --> 1:38:13.680 region who are looking at this and going, oh, this 1:38:13.810 --> 1:38:16.439 is something we can use to extract oil. you know, 1:38:16.460 --> 1:38:18.880 to extract concessions and try to fight the Americans off. 1:38:19.770 --> 1:38:22.210 And there's no real answer for this other than ending 1:38:22.270 --> 1:38:36.120 the war, a thing that just won't happen. Now, the 1:38:36.180 --> 1:38:42.970 Trump administration nominally has a plan for this. The plan 1:38:42.990 --> 1:38:46.490 that they are claiming to have, other than this sort 1:38:46.510 --> 1:38:48.469 of constant dance of claiming that the war in Iran 1:38:48.510 --> 1:38:51.950 is over, and then It's restarting again. We've started a 1:38:51.950 --> 1:38:54.370 whole bunch of different wars. Another trade war is actually open. 1:38:55.310 --> 1:39:01.470 The other plan that Trump has talked about is Venezuela. 1:39:01.870 --> 1:39:06.559 Trump was at the UN recently where he gave an 1:39:06.720 --> 1:39:09.519 extremely distressing speech in which he talked about how he 1:39:09.560 --> 1:39:15.689 had been thinking about destroying Iran. He said, quote, do 1:39:15.790 --> 1:39:18.750 I drive them into hell with no chance of survival 1:39:18.830 --> 1:39:23.030 and no hope of future greatness or generations? Now, one 1:39:23.060 --> 1:39:26.299 of the other parts of this speech was him talking 1:39:26.560 --> 1:39:32.080 about the U.S. 's deal with the Venezuelan government that 1:39:32.240 --> 1:39:35.780 it installed when it just kidnapped Maduro, who we are 1:39:36.000 --> 1:39:40.200 just also still holding, as people I think broadly have 1:39:40.229 --> 1:39:42.530 forgotten about. But yeah, no, we just are still just 1:39:42.830 --> 1:39:48.090 holding ahead of state. hostage in a prison. We're just 1:39:48.110 --> 1:39:52.610 still doing that. But he was talking about a deal 1:39:52.670 --> 1:39:55.790 that he struck with the current Venezuelan government, which is 1:39:56.070 --> 1:40:00.759 largely just composed of the same people from the Maduro government, 1:40:00.920 --> 1:40:03.299 but with any person in charge of it and answering 1:40:03.320 --> 1:40:07.559 to Trump. Yeah, talking, you know, that was a 100-year, 1:40:07.620 --> 1:40:13.280 supposedly a 100-year concession for a significant portion of what's 1:40:13.320 --> 1:40:19.729 supposed to be Venezuela's oil fields. Now, Trump in this said, quote, 1:40:19.890 --> 1:40:25.250 to the victors belong the spoils. And this is nominally, right, 1:40:25.470 --> 1:40:30.900 this sort of is his previous war, or short war, 1:40:31.060 --> 1:40:36.760 I guess, on Venezuela is supposed to be the solution 1:40:36.840 --> 1:40:40.330 to his new war. Trump has been pushing the line 1:40:40.550 --> 1:40:42.970 that oil flowing from Venezuela is going to, you know, 1:40:43.189 --> 1:40:47.630 be the thing that drives prices down and stops these 1:40:47.729 --> 1:40:51.270 escalating oil prices from his other imperial war in Iran. 1:40:52.210 --> 1:40:55.550 And as we're going to talk about now, there is 1:40:55.870 --> 1:41:02.280 oil flowing from Venezuela to the US, right? And the 1:41:02.360 --> 1:41:06.420 amount of oil that is flowing to the US has increased. 1:41:07.060 --> 1:41:11.580 Companies that were already in Venezuela, like Chevron, are expanding production. 1:41:12.620 --> 1:41:19.110 But it hasn't even hit, like, 1990s levels. It's still, 1:41:19.729 --> 1:41:22.809 in the grand scheme of things, not enough oil to 1:41:22.930 --> 1:41:25.530 actually do anything. And as we have, you know, sort 1:41:25.570 --> 1:41:28.530 of repeatedly emphasized on this show, oil is not liquid money. 1:41:28.550 --> 1:41:32.220 It has material properties, it has social properties that come 1:41:32.240 --> 1:41:34.840 from the, you know, technical process of extraction. It's not 1:41:34.900 --> 1:41:40.599 all the same. These oil reserves... you know, suck, right? 1:41:40.720 --> 1:41:42.970 And this is also part of the problem with Venezuelan oil, 1:41:43.010 --> 1:41:46.590 is the oil is just of a lower quality than 1:41:46.710 --> 1:41:49.450 the oil that you get out of the Middle East. Now, 1:41:50.390 --> 1:41:52.890 what's important for our purposes, right, is we're beginning to 1:41:52.910 --> 1:41:58.120 see a little bit more of the plan, which I 1:41:58.140 --> 1:42:00.479 guess is kind of an ambitious way to describe the 1:42:00.500 --> 1:42:05.970 kind of just semi-free-for-all that's been happening in Venezuela. In 1:42:06.030 --> 1:42:08.590 terms of this sort of plan, which is to extract 1:42:08.630 --> 1:42:11.790 all of this oil from Venezuela, which is now just 1:42:11.830 --> 1:42:15.660 effectively operating as an American colony, even in just pure 1:42:15.720 --> 1:42:18.780 imperial terms, and not thinking just in terms of the 1:42:18.800 --> 1:42:22.320 fact that, yeah, Venezuela is just a dictatorship and the 1:42:22.460 --> 1:42:27.420 oil is now flowing to the US, there's real problems 1:42:27.460 --> 1:42:31.800 with this in that Venezuelan oil infrastructure is very bad, 1:42:32.700 --> 1:42:38.110 and the actual money in oil is in controlling infrastructure 1:42:38.130 --> 1:42:44.090 that already exists and not building new infrastructure. So again, 1:42:44.350 --> 1:42:47.790 companies that were in Venezuela, which is, I mean, it's 1:42:47.830 --> 1:42:51.980 basically Chevron, right? You know, are expanding their existing production 1:42:51.990 --> 1:42:55.020 to some extent, but no one else wants to go 1:42:55.200 --> 1:42:58.180 in and actually like build a bunch of oil refineries 1:42:58.220 --> 1:43:01.660 and a bunch of extraction facilities because that stuff's expensive 1:43:01.680 --> 1:43:04.580 and it requires massive heavy capital investment and it's risky 1:43:05.740 --> 1:43:12.780 And this is becoming a real problem for this entire plan, right? Obviously, yes, 1:43:12.800 --> 1:43:15.340 there is oil that the administration can ship out of 1:43:16.260 --> 1:43:22.969 Venezuela and is, right? But it's not enough to actually 1:43:23.010 --> 1:43:27.250 seriously have the effects that the administration is talking about 1:43:27.290 --> 1:43:31.830 in terms of sort of lowering prices. Now, we're going 1:43:31.850 --> 1:43:34.550 to get to the extent to which it does kind 1:43:34.610 --> 1:43:39.720 of solve... the regime's demand on just the basic level of, oh, 1:43:39.760 --> 1:43:40.900 if we're going to do a war, we should keep 1:43:40.920 --> 1:43:43.860 the oil. But the actual prospects for this oil are 1:43:43.900 --> 1:43:47.100 just not very good. And this is where I want 1:43:47.140 --> 1:43:50.540 to get into something new that we've learned about sort 1:43:50.560 --> 1:43:55.140 of recently through reporting from the Wall Street Journal, that 1:43:55.160 --> 1:43:56.820 there's been some more stuff about some of the people 1:43:56.880 --> 1:43:59.820 who are coming into Venezuela in order to do this. Now, 1:44:00.670 --> 1:44:03.309 we have mentioned on the show before that there are 1:44:03.330 --> 1:44:08.840 a lot of network state people like involved in Venezuela. 1:44:08.900 --> 1:44:11.340 This is one of the places that these sort of 1:44:11.400 --> 1:44:15.400 like Silicon Valley tech fascists are moving into. And one 1:44:15.420 --> 1:44:18.480 of the people who is now becoming important in Venezuelan 1:44:18.510 --> 1:44:21.130 sort of oil production or is attempting to become important 1:44:22.050 --> 1:44:27.250 is this crypto billionaire named Fred Ersam, who is one 1:44:27.270 --> 1:44:31.689 of the founders of Coinbase, which is a giant crypto company. 1:44:32.650 --> 1:44:36.270 He's sort of in tight with The entire Silicon Valley 1:44:36.310 --> 1:44:41.280 tech elite has ties to like every venture capital and 1:44:42.560 --> 1:44:49.360 Andreessen Horowitz, like steel-backed constellation you can imagine. And he's 1:44:49.650 --> 1:44:52.669 one of the people who's been extremely important in terms 1:44:53.070 --> 1:44:57.490 of the ways that this sort of network state project 1:44:57.550 --> 1:44:59.470 of this like setting up these sort of like corporate 1:44:59.490 --> 1:45:04.100 fascist states works. right, have been interested in crypto as 1:45:04.140 --> 1:45:07.160 a way to sort of move money around and have 1:45:07.560 --> 1:45:11.719 money that's not like taxable directly or like is difficult 1:45:11.740 --> 1:45:15.920 for states to sort of get access to. Now, Fred 1:45:16.280 --> 1:45:22.790 has moved into this really, really sort of, it's like 1:45:22.810 --> 1:45:27.210 described as a hotel, but it's like almost more like 1:45:27.250 --> 1:45:29.960 a kind of like I don't know, almost like billionaire 1:45:30.000 --> 1:45:35.160 resort thing in Caracas. It's like 36 rooms in it. 1:45:36.000 --> 1:45:39.140 And he's been spending a whole bunch of time living there. 1:45:39.820 --> 1:45:43.430 He's also like founded this company with some Venezuelan guys, 1:45:43.689 --> 1:45:45.570 one of whom was like went to Stanford. So, you know, 1:45:45.610 --> 1:45:48.850 it's like these sort of, there's always like a local 1:45:48.970 --> 1:45:54.129 elite kind of thing involved in these projects where particularly 1:45:54.170 --> 1:45:58.960 you get like American educated guys from, you colonized nations 1:45:58.979 --> 1:46:01.680 who end up coming back and getting involved in these processes. 1:46:02.280 --> 1:46:05.439 And they have founded this company called Primavera, which is 1:46:06.060 --> 1:46:09.630 getting involved in the contracts for Venezuelan oil development. But 1:46:09.890 --> 1:46:14.430 there's problems here, right? Which is that this is a startup. 1:46:15.590 --> 1:46:22.360 They've never done oil extraction before, right? And the network 1:46:22.380 --> 1:46:24.800 state people and their VC firms have had a lot 1:46:24.820 --> 1:46:29.220 of success In things like drone production, right? In missile production, 1:46:29.540 --> 1:46:31.580 in a lot of sort of, you know, like things 1:46:31.600 --> 1:46:34.889 that are like kind of like heavy industrial capacity. But 1:46:35.270 --> 1:46:38.189 this guy is a crypto billionaire and they're trying to 1:46:38.229 --> 1:46:41.370 do oil development that like the rest of the world's 1:46:41.410 --> 1:46:44.710 oil companies were like, no. So there are sort of 1:46:44.770 --> 1:46:47.510 real questions about whether even this, you know, this sort 1:46:47.530 --> 1:46:51.210 of like fascist plan to exploit the resources of this 1:46:51.270 --> 1:46:54.950 country can actually work. But this is the kind of 1:46:55.150 --> 1:46:58.510 constellation of forces that have a line behind the Trump administration, right? 1:46:59.350 --> 1:47:04.030 And these constellation of forces are to an extent different 1:47:05.210 --> 1:47:09.780 than the ones from old American neoconservatism, right? Which was 1:47:09.820 --> 1:47:11.300 the last sort of, you know, last time we were 1:47:11.340 --> 1:47:26.549 like fighting wars for oil during the Bush administration. Now, 1:47:26.600 --> 1:47:28.410 I want to go back and talk about this in 1:47:28.450 --> 1:47:29.350 terms of the structure of. 1:47:29.410 --> 1:47:30.010 Empire, right? 1:47:30.090 --> 1:47:35.189 Because it's very clear that the kind of regime that's 1:47:35.229 --> 1:47:37.830 been set up in Venezuela, which is just, okay, we've 1:47:37.870 --> 1:47:42.170 turned this entire nation into not even the kind of 1:47:42.250 --> 1:47:47.010 debt servicing colony that the US has traditionally done when 1:47:47.030 --> 1:47:49.290 it comes in to extract wealth from a country, but 1:47:49.310 --> 1:47:51.900 just as a sort of like appear, hey, we can 1:47:51.950 --> 1:47:54.540 say we got the oil colony, but this is the 1:47:54.580 --> 1:47:56.679 kind of regime that Trump wants, not just for Venezuela, 1:47:56.720 --> 1:47:58.640 but for Iran and Cuba and the rest of the 1:47:58.680 --> 1:48:01.000 world as well, which are just these sort of like 1:48:01.120 --> 1:48:04.240 compliant dictatorships that will export him whatever he wants and 1:48:04.280 --> 1:48:09.320 flatter his ego. And this is a desire, this specific 1:48:09.400 --> 1:48:12.190 kind of empire, right? This specific kind of oil empire 1:48:12.930 --> 1:48:16.170 is a desire that comes out of a divide in 1:48:16.189 --> 1:48:19.910 American conservatism between the neocons and what are called the paleocons. 1:48:21.200 --> 1:48:25.560 Paleo is like the old conservatives, neocons the new conservatives 1:48:25.600 --> 1:48:30.809 or whatever. These are both kinds of empire. If you 1:48:30.830 --> 1:48:33.930 look at what neoconservatism was, it was an oil company 1:48:33.950 --> 1:48:36.430 strapped to a weapons manufacturer like wearing a church for 1:48:36.470 --> 1:48:38.769 a face. And if you look at what the Bush 1:48:38.790 --> 1:48:42.250 administration is, like Bush is a Texas oil guy. Cheney 1:48:42.390 --> 1:48:45.650 is a Halliburton guy, which is like another oil company. 1:48:45.710 --> 1:48:48.450 He's also really heavily involved in a bunch of weapons manufacturers. 1:48:49.410 --> 1:48:50.889 You know, this is the alliance that was like doing 1:48:50.950 --> 1:48:54.710 the worst for oil. But part of what the project 1:48:54.729 --> 1:48:57.729 of neo-conservatism was, was nominally this mission of bringing like 1:48:57.790 --> 1:49:01.100 quote unquote democracy to the world. And obviously this is, 1:49:01.260 --> 1:49:05.519 you know, democracy insofar as it supports the US, which 1:49:05.560 --> 1:49:08.540 is like capitalism and support for American empire. And, you know, 1:49:08.580 --> 1:49:12.380 they're setting up a stock market in, in Iraq, but like, 1:49:12.860 --> 1:49:14.020 and this is the way that a lot of these 1:49:14.040 --> 1:49:15.860 people thought about it was this sort of like Hegelian 1:49:15.900 --> 1:49:18.820 nation building process, right? Like the unfolding of American liberal 1:49:18.850 --> 1:49:22.370 democracy throughout the entire world in a way that, you know, 1:49:22.710 --> 1:49:26.790 could sort of permanently stabilize its hegemony. But there, there 1:49:26.990 --> 1:49:30.930 is this sort of like nation building. 1:49:31.330 --> 1:49:32.720 Aspect of, of it. 1:49:33.420 --> 1:49:37.520 But then there was also always, like, a paleocon opposition 1:49:37.580 --> 1:49:39.229 to it, and this is the more radical faction that 1:49:39.240 --> 1:49:41.070 didn't give a shit about any of the sort of 1:49:41.110 --> 1:49:45.170 democracy and human rights stuff that neocons would spout. You know, literally, 1:49:45.189 --> 1:49:46.750 they would, like, yeah, bomb them all and take the 1:49:46.850 --> 1:49:50.110 oil and leave. And this, to a large extent, is 1:49:50.130 --> 1:49:53.220 the faction that Trump has descended from, right? And these 1:49:53.240 --> 1:49:59.220 people sometimes will kind of, like, play at being anti-imperialist, or, like, 1:49:59.240 --> 1:50:01.960 not even anti-imperialist, they'll play at being anti-war. You know, 1:50:02.140 --> 1:50:04.700 Tucker Carlson, for example, is like a guy who did 1:50:04.720 --> 1:50:06.939 this a lot, even though he supported the war when 1:50:07.600 --> 1:50:11.189 it was happening. But they'll do this thing of like, oh, 1:50:11.210 --> 1:50:12.890 we shouldn't go fight in these imperial wars. 1:50:12.910 --> 1:50:13.179 The U.S. 1:50:13.189 --> 1:50:15.210 Should only fight wars that benefit it. We shouldn't be 1:50:15.229 --> 1:50:20.550 the world's policemen. But the corollary to that is, you know, 1:50:20.770 --> 1:50:23.900 where like war for oil was like the leftist charge 1:50:24.520 --> 1:50:27.160 about what we were doing in Iraq. These people were 1:50:27.180 --> 1:50:29.519 just like, yeah, no, we actually should literally just fight 1:50:30.120 --> 1:50:34.170 wars for oil. Because they're just, they're fascists, right? They 1:50:34.189 --> 1:50:38.570 don't even have the kind of veil of this like 1:50:39.350 --> 1:50:43.710 nominally sort of democratic project. All they really care about 1:50:44.550 --> 1:50:48.979 is just the pure resource extraction. But the thing about this, right? 1:50:49.000 --> 1:50:51.380 And like part of what was going on with this 1:50:51.439 --> 1:50:53.640 kind of thing was like, yeah, so you want to 1:50:53.680 --> 1:50:55.880 set up a stable government so that these oil companies 1:50:55.900 --> 1:51:01.139 have a secure base from which to actually do resource extractions. Because, 1:51:01.360 --> 1:51:03.200 you know, sort of unstable governments make it more difficult, 1:51:03.220 --> 1:51:06.960 et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now, with this sort of, like, 1:51:07.020 --> 1:51:10.820 fascist Trump coalition, like, obviously, yeah, like, the oil company 1:51:10.840 --> 1:51:16.360 supported him. But it's not the, like, oil guys directly 1:51:16.620 --> 1:51:20.110 who are behind the Venezuelan coup or the people that have, like, 1:51:20.210 --> 1:51:22.410 moved in to extract the oil. It's, as we were 1:51:22.430 --> 1:51:25.410 talking about, it's these, like, tech fascist network state guys. 1:51:26.310 --> 1:51:26.430 And. 1:51:26.970 --> 1:51:27.130 The. 1:51:27.090 --> 1:51:29.960 Reaction of the oil people to Trump's wars, and this is, 1:51:30.090 --> 1:51:32.850 you know, partially given his label, but mostly to this 1:51:32.950 --> 1:51:35.349 war on Iran, which he's framing as being about, like, 1:51:35.400 --> 1:51:37.200 nuclear weapons. But he's also been talking about, like, we 1:51:37.220 --> 1:51:38.839 should just sit there and take the trade off of Moose. 1:51:39.280 --> 1:51:41.700 You know, Iran shouldn't be able to, like, threaten the 1:51:41.720 --> 1:51:45.440 world's oil supply. The actual oil people are really pissed 1:51:45.500 --> 1:51:47.680 off about this because, yeah, they're losing access to their 1:51:47.720 --> 1:51:52.630 ability to ship oil. But this is what is inside 1:51:53.710 --> 1:51:56.700 of the sort of price hieroglyphic of gas price go up. 1:51:57.370 --> 1:51:59.510 It's an attempt of, like, the tech fascists to, like, 1:51:59.689 --> 1:52:06.500 graft their project onto this sort of paleo-con-fascist id of Trump, 1:52:07.300 --> 1:52:10.920 where he's just doing these wars, like, because he wants to, 1:52:12.120 --> 1:52:14.389 and they're attempting to get something out of it. But 1:52:15.229 --> 1:52:20.130 what has actually happened here in all of this is 1:52:20.490 --> 1:52:23.170 that in the administration's war for oil, and in their 1:52:23.229 --> 1:52:28.150 attempt to sort of, like, fulfill the old paleocon desire 1:52:29.450 --> 1:52:34.309 for wars for oil. They have successfully not gotten oil. 1:52:34.340 --> 1:52:38.140 They're replacing oil that they used to have or attempting 1:52:38.160 --> 1:52:40.740 to replace better oil they used to have with shit 1:52:40.920 --> 1:52:43.620 oil that won't work for these purposes. And they're depriving 1:52:43.660 --> 1:52:45.540 both the US and basically the rest of the world 1:52:45.580 --> 1:52:50.309 of oil. And that's in some sense the macro level 1:52:50.350 --> 1:52:54.000 of it. The micro level of it is that There's 1:52:54.180 --> 1:52:57.179 a whole bunch of wars and genocides that are playing 1:52:57.340 --> 1:53:01.440 out across the world that are the result of this. 1:53:03.300 --> 1:53:08.080 And that's what's encoded in Gas Price Go Up, is 1:53:08.900 --> 1:53:11.360 all of the violence and all of the cruelty and 1:53:11.540 --> 1:53:14.810 all of this sort of inane, flailing stupidity of empire. 1:53:29.050 --> 1:53:32.430 This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly 1:53:32.470 --> 1:53:35.610 newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, 1:53:35.680 --> 1:53:38.700 and what this means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today 1:53:38.720 --> 1:53:42.480 I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and special correspondent, 1:53:42.880 --> 1:53:43.700 Denna El-Kurd. 1:53:44.060 --> 1:53:44.480 Welcome. 1:53:44.780 --> 1:53:45.509 Thank you. Thank you. 1:53:45.780 --> 1:53:48.729 This episode, we are covering the week of September 16 1:53:48.729 --> 1:53:52.350 to September 23rd. I know this has been a busy 1:53:52.550 --> 1:53:55.830 news week. There's the United Nations. The Trump admin is 1:53:55.990 --> 1:54:00.689 throwing around the idea of a diesel export embargo. There's 1:54:00.729 --> 1:54:05.180 a lot of big issues in this country. But on Wednesday, 1:54:05.420 --> 1:54:10.520 Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama decided to use the United 1:54:10.540 --> 1:54:15.400 States Senate to bring up another very important issue threatening 1:54:15.640 --> 1:54:19.349 the national security of our country. Let's take a listen. 1:54:19.370 --> 1:54:25.599 Airline pilots. Flight attendants and air traffic controllers are part 1:54:26.140 --> 1:54:32.600 of the furry community. Lord help us. It's terrifying when 1:54:32.650 --> 1:54:35.850 you think about this. When you walk onto a commercial flight, 1:54:36.850 --> 1:54:40.390 it's possible that the pilot flying your plane could have 1:54:40.430 --> 1:54:44.830 a deranged fetish of dressing up like an animal. You 1:54:44.870 --> 1:54:45.660 can't make this up. 1:54:46.820 --> 1:54:48.700 Every time I hear that guy's name, he sounds like 1:54:48.720 --> 1:54:51.140 he's a character on Thomas the Tank Engine, like a 1:54:51.200 --> 1:54:53.800 side character. Then he goes and does shit like this. 1:54:54.000 --> 1:54:56.740 He does have a very cartoony name. Also on the 1:54:56.780 --> 1:55:02.280 little podium here, a printout of the... An emoji? An emoji? 1:55:02.590 --> 1:55:04.830 Not just any emoji. Does someone want to take a 1:55:04.870 --> 1:55:06.010 crack at describing this? 1:55:06.090 --> 1:55:07.610 I think this is what we would describe as the 1:55:07.690 --> 1:55:13.330 pregnant man emoji. A yellow emoji figure with short hair 1:55:13.390 --> 1:55:17.840 who is pregnant. The text reads transgenderism is a mental illness. 1:55:19.260 --> 1:55:22.360 Something I think Tuberville and others are overlooking is if 1:55:22.990 --> 1:55:27.510 we were to, you know, excise furries from their jobs 1:55:27.590 --> 1:55:31.370 as airline pilots, flight attendants and air traffic controllers, our 1:55:31.470 --> 1:55:36.210 entire system would collapse. Those are those are the crucial 1:55:36.270 --> 1:55:38.330 soldiers keeping our airspace. 1:55:38.430 --> 1:55:39.310 They are the glue. 1:55:39.470 --> 1:55:40.470 Yes, they are the glue. 1:55:41.590 --> 1:55:44.610 Like we're already running into many issues in regards to 1:55:45.340 --> 1:55:48.890 air traffic controllers and the airline industry, if you take 1:55:48.930 --> 1:55:51.690 the furries out, it's done. It's over. 1:55:52.090 --> 1:55:55.550 You know what? Honestly, someone in the furry community, get 1:55:55.650 --> 1:55:58.110 on organizing the furry strike where all the furries just 1:55:58.170 --> 1:56:01.450 go on strike. We can end this whole system right now. 1:56:02.380 --> 1:56:04.280 We can defeat them in a single stroke. 1:56:06.840 --> 1:56:08.740 Let's move on to some other small news items. 1:56:09.000 --> 1:56:11.920 Yeah, okay. Someone was upset on the subreddit that we 1:56:11.960 --> 1:56:14.540 didn't call this all the small things. We're not going to. 1:56:15.460 --> 1:56:17.900 I guess I'm going to start with Pete Hegseth. Pete 1:56:17.940 --> 1:56:21.440 Hegseth has announced a joint warfighter evaluation. 1:56:21.660 --> 1:56:22.050 Oh, boy. 1:56:23.020 --> 1:56:25.270 Yeah, so this is a thing for 06s who are 1:56:25.310 --> 1:56:27.950 screening for their first star, right, across all the different 1:56:27.990 --> 1:56:30.190 branches of the military. I'm not going to list what 1:56:30.210 --> 1:56:32.630 an 06 is because I don't understand how the Navy works. 1:56:33.030 --> 1:56:37.010 But he's claiming that this new evaluation for promotion will 1:56:37.390 --> 1:56:41.240 value competence over credentials. It's the way he phrased it. 1:56:41.780 --> 1:56:44.560 It's basically like an exercise that these officers will have 1:56:44.600 --> 1:56:47.000 to take part in, and various versions of it are 1:56:47.020 --> 1:56:50.440 going to involve a war game against an AI-powered adversary, 1:56:51.020 --> 1:56:57.450 which is great. I expect it, I guess. We probably 1:56:57.470 --> 1:57:00.950 could have seen this coming. It's additive to the existing 1:57:00.970 --> 1:57:03.410 things that they consider for promotion, but this is part 1:57:03.430 --> 1:57:08.880 of his ongoing purge of the US military officer corps. Secondly, 1:57:08.980 --> 1:57:11.800 I want to talk about a visual investigation by Thomas Bordeaux. 1:57:11.820 --> 1:57:14.419 He's at CNN, but I think he's working with BBC 1:57:14.480 --> 1:57:18.420 Verify on this. BBC is doing a kind of true 1:57:18.560 --> 1:57:22.500 crime podcast about the disappearance of Austin Tice at the moment. 1:57:23.180 --> 1:57:26.100 People aren't familiar, Austin Tice was an American freelancer who 1:57:26.200 --> 1:57:29.630 disappeared in Syria at the beginning of the revolution and 1:57:29.670 --> 1:57:32.710 continues to be missing. Have any of you guys seen 1:57:32.730 --> 1:57:33.250 this video? 1:57:33.610 --> 1:57:33.830 No. 1:57:34.410 --> 1:57:36.370 This must be like, well, I think it was 2012 1:57:36.370 --> 1:57:39.810 or 2011. I think it was right at the end 1:57:39.820 --> 1:57:42.070 of 2011. So it purports to be a video of 1:57:42.090 --> 1:57:45.910 his execution. It seems very likely to be staged. Like 1:57:45.950 --> 1:57:48.150 if you watch it, it seems a lot like it's 1:57:48.230 --> 1:57:52.680 regime intel guys dressing up and pretending to be like rebels. 1:57:53.220 --> 1:57:55.500 Like they basically say nothing but Takbir the whole time. 1:57:56.040 --> 1:57:58.440 And then they make him say some stuff. And then 1:57:58.460 --> 1:58:01.260 the video cuts, right? You don't see him being executed. 1:58:01.280 --> 1:58:03.340 He's blindfolded and it's supposed to give that vibe. Anyway, 1:58:03.360 --> 1:58:05.850 they have geolocated this video to an area that would 1:58:05.860 --> 1:58:07.950 have been controlled by the Assad regime at the time. 1:58:08.790 --> 1:58:12.140 which I guess further adds evidence to the claim that 1:58:12.160 --> 1:58:14.140 he was held by the regime, at least at that time. 1:58:15.020 --> 1:58:19.000 CBS is reporting the Trump administration is ready to accept 1:58:19.000 --> 1:58:25.330 17,500 more Africana refugees. God. Yeah, the people who have 1:58:25.350 --> 1:58:29.270 struggled the most in the continent of Africa. CBS is 1:58:29.310 --> 1:58:32.250 reporting that the Trump administration said, quote, the United States 1:58:32.310 --> 1:58:35.950 anticipates that Afrikaners from South Africa will fully assimilate into 1:58:35.990 --> 1:58:39.790 the United States in a manner that preserves taxpayer resources 1:58:39.830 --> 1:58:44.530 for US citizens and does not anticipate other countries resettling Afrikaners. 1:58:44.910 --> 1:58:48.760 One can only imagine why. This assimilation thing has been 1:58:48.780 --> 1:58:51.880 a consistent thing for them, right? The first time they 1:58:51.920 --> 1:58:55.140 accepted white South African refugees, Rubio talked about it in Congress. 1:58:56.230 --> 1:58:58.350 Like this seems to be the standard by which they're 1:58:58.370 --> 1:59:01.440 judging refugee admissions now. You have to be white and 1:59:01.480 --> 1:59:04.200 you have to like quote unquote assimilate. So that's great. 1:59:05.460 --> 1:59:11.440 On Tuesday, J.D. Vance's so-called anti-fraud task force announced that 1:59:11.520 --> 1:59:14.560 they were cutting almost a million people from Affordable Care 1:59:14.600 --> 1:59:21.160 Act coverage after deciding that 760,000 people or enrollees were 1:59:21.270 --> 1:59:25.790 fraudulently enrolled in government health care plans. that these plans 1:59:25.810 --> 1:59:29.110 did not correspond to real people or these people were 1:59:29.250 --> 1:59:36.440 ineligible for coverage. Vance announced that another 419,000 accounts are under, quote, 1:59:36.580 --> 1:59:41.380 additional verification. Mehmet Oz said that they canceled coverage for 1:59:41.430 --> 1:59:45.170 people in part because those people never filed a claim. 1:59:45.170 --> 1:59:49.950 760,000 people, we call them phantoms because we believe most 1:59:49.970 --> 1:59:51.870 of them either don't exist or had no idea they 1:59:51.890 --> 1:59:54.250 had coverage. We believe that because we have been writing them, 1:59:54.450 --> 1:59:58.770 telexing them, walking to them, FedExing, whatever we could possibly 1:59:58.810 --> 2:00:01.450 do to get in touch with them, they won't answer 2:00:01.690 --> 2:00:05.570 and they have never filed a claim. So it meets 2:00:06.010 --> 2:00:08.190 all the criteria for us to pretty as much as 2:00:08.290 --> 2:00:11.030 any government can say, you actually don't know you have 2:00:11.070 --> 2:00:12.110 this or you don't exist. 2:00:12.810 --> 2:00:17.290 Obviously, in numbers this large, it is not unlikely that 2:00:17.410 --> 2:00:20.660 there is many real people who do need this coverage 2:00:20.680 --> 2:00:23.480 or rely on this coverage who will be cut as 2:00:23.500 --> 2:00:26.860 a part of this almost a million people. And Vance 2:00:26.900 --> 2:00:30.940 has promised that more cuts will be coming. Last Friday, 2:00:31.060 --> 2:00:34.970 the DOJ released a new legal opinion concluding that the 2:00:35.070 --> 2:00:38.190 federal ban on handgun sales to 18 to 20 year 2:00:38.210 --> 2:00:43.250 olds is unconstitutional and should not be enforced against licensed dealers. 2:00:44.110 --> 2:00:49.310 And lastly for me, ProPublica just published a super in-depth 2:00:49.450 --> 2:00:55.220 investigation into how Trump crushed a sweeping 2024 FBI bribery 2:00:55.280 --> 2:00:59.240 probe into Susan Collins and her super PAC, among a 2:00:59.500 --> 2:01:03.140 few other congresspeople as well. This article lays out what 2:01:03.180 --> 2:01:09.010 looks like a pretty clear pay-to-play scheme with requests for 2:01:09.090 --> 2:01:13.230 campaign donations in exchange for Collins securing millions of dollars 2:01:13.310 --> 2:01:17.580 in federal funding for defense contractors. Collins is the chair 2:01:17.620 --> 2:01:21.850 of the Appropriations Committee, with one contractor, a naval company 2:01:21.930 --> 2:01:26.630 called Navtech, funneling donations through a shell company, which the 2:01:26.710 --> 2:01:29.770 head of Collins Super PAC said was, quote, very smart. 2:01:30.270 --> 2:01:30.690 Oh boy. 2:01:31.720 --> 2:01:36.080 In email correspondence obtained by ProPublica. This shell company, by 2:01:36.120 --> 2:01:40.060 the way, was called the Society of Young Women Scientists 2:01:40.380 --> 2:01:41.230 and Engineers. 2:01:41.820 --> 2:01:43.310 Wait, just scientist? 2:01:43.410 --> 2:01:44.010 Scientist. 2:01:44.090 --> 2:01:44.830 Incredible. 2:01:44.970 --> 2:01:45.270 Yes. 2:01:45.630 --> 2:01:45.850 Yes. 2:01:46.070 --> 2:01:46.630 Scientist. 2:01:47.390 --> 2:01:51.430 That typo was how this donation was first flagged that 2:01:51.450 --> 2:01:57.870 then prompted this investigation. Cool work there. ProPublica writes, quote, 2:01:58.210 --> 2:02:01.790 the money had come from Navitek's account, not their CEOs, 2:02:02.300 --> 2:02:07.260 violating a ban on government contractors making donations, unquote. So 2:02:07.280 --> 2:02:10.240 the CEO of Navitek is now in prison, but obviously 2:02:10.300 --> 2:02:15.850 Collins is not. Though the CEO was interviewed by the 2:02:15.930 --> 2:02:20.350 FBI for a number of years regarding his dealings with 2:02:20.440 --> 2:02:25.340 Collins and other people in Congress. ProPublica writes that the CEO, quote, 2:02:25.820 --> 2:02:30.580 handed the FBI the 50-page document detailing Avatex dealings with 2:02:30.660 --> 2:02:34.580 more than a dozen members of Congress and their staff, unquote. 2:02:35.460 --> 2:02:39.090 So part of ProPublica's reporting is explaining how the FBI 2:02:39.100 --> 2:02:41.870 was about to kind of launch this much broader full-scale 2:02:41.890 --> 2:02:46.710 investigation around the end of 2024. And then obviously in 2025, 2:02:46.710 --> 2:02:51.310 Trump got into office. This whole type of investigation fell apart. 2:02:51.330 --> 2:02:55.540 A whole bunch of attorneys resigned during February of 2025. 2:02:55.540 --> 2:02:57.760 This is another one of those articles I think it's 2:02:57.800 --> 2:03:00.000 worth just reading the whole thing. It's pretty long, but 2:03:00.020 --> 2:03:03.420 it's some pretty solid reporting. And it's already been corroborated 2:03:03.580 --> 2:03:05.240 by the New York Times as well. 2:03:05.260 --> 2:03:09.040 All right. Do we want to talk about some medium-sized things? 2:03:09.620 --> 2:03:10.640 Some medium items. 2:03:11.840 --> 2:03:12.180 Okay. 2:03:12.720 --> 2:03:15.550 Talking of medium-sized things, let's talk about wolves. Not as 2:03:15.600 --> 2:03:19.410 big as buffalo, larger than rabbits. So Donald Trump has 2:03:19.650 --> 2:03:24.890 signed an executive order which gives 90 days for the 2:03:25.390 --> 2:03:28.070 Secretary of the Interior to conduct a broad inspection of 2:03:28.110 --> 2:03:32.380 regulations impacting ranching and make suggestions to change them. The 2:03:32.740 --> 2:03:37.350 executive order presser was called Supporting America's Ranchers. As part 2:03:37.390 --> 2:03:41.550 of this, he talks about instructing Doug Burgum, who, if 2:03:41.570 --> 2:03:44.590 you don't remember, was endorsed by REI last year, to 2:03:44.630 --> 2:03:48.650 work on delisting wolves from the Endangered Species Act. Specifically, 2:03:48.670 --> 2:03:50.510 I'm just going to quote here, the Secretary of the 2:03:50.530 --> 2:03:52.839 Interior shall make a determination as to whether the grey 2:03:52.880 --> 2:03:55.720 wolf and the Mexican wolf has met the recovery criteria 2:03:55.760 --> 2:03:59.100 for delisting or downlisting under the Endangered Species Act. And 2:03:59.140 --> 2:04:01.580 if he determines that the recovery criteria has been met, 2:04:01.920 --> 2:04:05.520 shall begin the process of delisting or downlisting them. also 2:04:05.560 --> 2:04:08.460 directs him to work with states to have them removed 2:04:08.500 --> 2:04:11.720 from state ESAs, right? So several states have their own 2:04:11.900 --> 2:04:14.280 Endangered Species Act. California is one of them, right? I 2:04:14.300 --> 2:04:17.160 think wolves were listed under the California ESA before the 2:04:17.230 --> 2:04:22.090 federal ESA existed. If you're not familiar, wolves have become 2:04:22.130 --> 2:04:24.930 a massive culture war issue in the West, right? Like 2:04:24.950 --> 2:04:27.360 wolves are very woke. is a thing that I have learned. 2:04:27.440 --> 2:04:29.580 Like if you go, I don't go to garden or 2:04:29.620 --> 2:04:33.180 outside Yellowstone, right? Like this place, which we can categorically 2:04:33.240 --> 2:04:36.730 prove makes millions of dollars a year from people coming 2:04:36.770 --> 2:04:39.570 to look at wolves. You'll see people wearing those smoke 2:04:39.590 --> 2:04:42.250 a pack a day t-shirts and like, they're not talking 2:04:42.270 --> 2:04:43.150 about cigarettes, right? 2:04:43.930 --> 2:04:44.130 Yeah. 2:04:44.550 --> 2:04:48.930 Removing wolves from the West, seeing wolves as like this, 2:04:48.970 --> 2:04:52.350 this woke thing that is destroying our writing interest. Like 2:04:52.410 --> 2:04:54.000 it's a big, culture signal. 2:04:54.160 --> 2:04:58.110 Like the idea that like conservation is like woke or 2:04:58.130 --> 2:04:59.950 in some way or like animal like. 2:05:00.530 --> 2:05:03.590 The thing with wolves is it combines like people don't 2:05:03.630 --> 2:05:06.370 like people who talk about animal rights. People don't like 2:05:06.880 --> 2:05:09.340 ecology and conservation and people don't like predators. 2:05:09.700 --> 2:05:10.010 Got it. 2:05:10.220 --> 2:05:10.420 Right. 2:05:10.500 --> 2:05:12.860 And so when we get these three things together, it's 2:05:12.880 --> 2:05:14.200 the idea that it's a bunch of people in New 2:05:14.240 --> 2:05:16.800 York who don't understand what wolves do. and they want 2:05:16.840 --> 2:05:19.200 them back, but they don't have to deal with the consequences, right? 2:05:19.810 --> 2:05:24.550 It does suck when there is predation. My family raised livestock. 2:05:24.570 --> 2:05:27.550 I've dealt with predation. It fucking sucks. It sucks, especially 2:05:27.570 --> 2:05:30.470 when it's young animals, right? Calves or lambs or whatever. 2:05:31.010 --> 2:05:33.060 One of the things that the Trump administration has also 2:05:33.100 --> 2:05:36.020 instructed Burgum to do is to look at and consider 2:05:36.060 --> 2:05:38.980 amending the existing compensation programs, which exist for wolves, right? 2:05:39.500 --> 2:05:41.800 The wolf issue, I think, is also particularly controversial because 2:05:42.200 --> 2:05:45.140 there have been hard introductions, right? Like, If you look 2:05:45.180 --> 2:05:48.060 at Colorado, Colorado had a ballot measure in 2020 to 2:05:48.160 --> 2:05:51.140 introduce wolves, to reintroduce wolves, which they began doing about 2:05:51.180 --> 2:05:55.280 three years ago. And Colorado has this big cultural divide 2:05:55.520 --> 2:05:59.010 between your blue counties and the Western Slope, I'll say. 2:05:59.370 --> 2:06:01.730 The idea that these front range folks in Denver and 2:06:01.770 --> 2:06:06.530 Boulder mandated wolves on ranches. And so it plays on other, 2:06:06.710 --> 2:06:09.590 I guess, existing insecurities. It's a little different here in 2:06:09.630 --> 2:06:12.910 California because the wolves in California weren't released. They walked 2:06:12.990 --> 2:06:17.040 in on their own feet. Although a popular conspiracy theory 2:06:17.080 --> 2:06:19.420 that I've heard is that that's not actually true and 2:06:19.460 --> 2:06:22.560 that some people sneaked the wolves in from Oregon and 2:06:22.600 --> 2:06:25.790 released them like wolf vigilantes. 2:06:26.510 --> 2:06:28.670 Wolf vigilantes. 2:06:28.690 --> 2:06:29.670 This should be real. 2:06:30.290 --> 2:06:33.130 I know, right? Yeah, please. If you have smuggled a 2:06:33.170 --> 2:06:35.980 wolf into the state of California, you've done a lot 2:06:36.000 --> 2:06:37.900 of crimes, but I would love to talk to you 2:06:37.920 --> 2:06:42.440 for my podcast. I want to address this more... in 2:06:42.520 --> 2:06:45.290 my podcast, Natural Causes, because I think a lot of 2:06:45.330 --> 2:06:47.190 people are wrong about wolves. I think it's silly to 2:06:47.230 --> 2:06:48.990 say that we shouldn't have wolves. I think it's also 2:06:49.050 --> 2:06:51.410 frustrating for people to think that the reason that we 2:06:51.470 --> 2:06:55.890 have wolves is to fix our fuck-ups. Wolves have a 2:06:55.930 --> 2:06:57.570 right to be there because they've always been there and 2:06:57.590 --> 2:07:00.980 they belong there. They're not there to undo the damage 2:07:01.020 --> 2:07:03.720 done by capitalism and the state to the land. And 2:07:03.780 --> 2:07:06.700 we shouldn't tie the justification for reintroducing them to that 2:07:07.630 --> 2:07:10.510 Because sometimes the science will not support that, and then 2:07:10.550 --> 2:07:12.350 we will lose that justification. They have a right to 2:07:12.390 --> 2:07:14.490 be there because they belong there. That can be the 2:07:14.510 --> 2:07:15.630 start and the end of it, and I think it 2:07:15.650 --> 2:07:17.350 should be. And I think we should be expecting the 2:07:17.410 --> 2:07:20.620 wolves to do our dirty work, undo our dirty work. 2:07:21.020 --> 2:07:23.740 I'm a little confused about what Trump is exactly saying here, 2:07:23.780 --> 2:07:27.360 because he also wants a, quote, a legislative recommendation to 2:07:27.400 --> 2:07:29.520 fully delist or downlist the gray wolf and the Mexican 2:07:29.540 --> 2:07:31.940 wolf under the ESA. There are not many Mexican wolves. 2:07:32.020 --> 2:07:33.130 I think there are fewer than 400. 2:07:33.120 --> 2:07:33.300 Cheers. 2:07:34.570 --> 2:07:39.540 Yeah, there are like 320-ish in those sort of southwestern 2:07:39.560 --> 2:07:42.240 and southern states, and then probably 50 in Mexico. We 2:07:42.920 --> 2:07:48.060 spoke about a prosecution for killing Mexican wolves a few 2:07:48.100 --> 2:07:50.890 months ago that I found in a New Mexico court 2:07:51.020 --> 2:07:54.590 in court records, right? But it seems very unlikely that 2:07:54.610 --> 2:07:58.190 they will meet the recovery guidelines set up under the ESA, 2:07:58.470 --> 2:08:00.740 but I admittedly have not looked in those recently. I 2:08:01.940 --> 2:08:03.600 want to move on to something that's even more depressing, 2:08:04.120 --> 2:08:09.370 the lifeboat protests in the UK. So this week, and 2:08:09.410 --> 2:08:11.670 really this month, has seen a series of really disgusting 2:08:11.710 --> 2:08:14.590 protests and attacks on lifeboats in the UK. This includes 2:08:14.650 --> 2:08:18.790 fascist Daniel Thomas. He goes by Danny Tomo, really great 2:08:19.340 --> 2:08:22.760 nom de guerre, which disguised his identity very well, stabbing 2:08:22.780 --> 2:08:27.500 a lifeboat. For those not familiar with this, the discourse 2:08:27.540 --> 2:08:29.600 here is related to the mission of the RNLI, which 2:08:29.660 --> 2:08:32.340 is to rescue those in peril on the sea. The 2:08:32.400 --> 2:08:35.470 lifeboats were, I guess, at least during the time when 2:08:35.480 --> 2:08:38.190 I was growing up, a foundational British institution. They are 2:08:38.290 --> 2:08:42.170 funded by the people, not the state. They are literally 2:08:42.370 --> 2:08:45.700 in the book Mutual Aid, like capital M, capital A, 2:08:45.740 --> 2:08:49.980 Mutual Aid. They also used to celebrate Kropotkin's birthday, the RNLI. 2:08:50.240 --> 2:08:52.360 You can go back if their Twitter page still exists 2:08:52.380 --> 2:08:55.220 and see them posting things about his birthday. There's a 2:08:55.220 --> 2:08:58.370 very good piece called Lifeboats and Anarchy in the RNLI 2:08:58.430 --> 2:08:59.990 magazine that people should read. They want to know more 2:09:00.010 --> 2:09:02.350 about that. When I was a child, there was a 2:09:02.350 --> 2:09:04.880 very popular book way back when, right, when there were 2:09:04.900 --> 2:09:07.920 only four TV channels, there was a very popular children's 2:09:07.940 --> 2:09:10.500 TV program and children who watched the program would hold 2:09:10.540 --> 2:09:12.960 fundraisers for the lifeboats every year. And this was like 2:09:13.640 --> 2:09:18.640 a completely foundational thing that everybody thought was good, right? 2:09:19.260 --> 2:09:22.430 All they do is rescue people who are in danger 2:09:22.470 --> 2:09:26.430 of drowning. It's mostly a volunteer institution. I've had friends 2:09:26.510 --> 2:09:28.870 and colleagues who I've worked with who have volunteered on 2:09:28.890 --> 2:09:32.850 the lifeboats. It is a dangerous, stressful, and often thankless job. 2:09:33.320 --> 2:09:35.940 that you can't plan or schedule for, right? When someone 2:09:35.980 --> 2:09:37.940 needs help, you have to go and help them immediately. 2:09:37.970 --> 2:09:40.360 You have to stop what you're doing, work away from work, 2:09:40.400 --> 2:09:42.410 walk away from whatever you're doing socially, walk away from 2:09:42.430 --> 2:09:44.110 your family and go risk your life to help people. 2:09:45.050 --> 2:09:45.690 And that's all they do. 2:09:46.150 --> 2:09:48.050 Why are they stabbing the boats then? 2:09:48.150 --> 2:09:49.470 So I guess. 2:09:49.970 --> 2:09:53.030 I mean, fascist going to fascist. What's the source of 2:09:53.050 --> 2:09:53.629 these protests? 2:09:54.350 --> 2:09:58.870 Specifically, it is the idea that the lifeboats are bringing 2:09:59.070 --> 2:10:02.690 people seeking asylum to communities who cannot support them. 2:10:02.910 --> 2:10:03.150 Okay. 2:10:03.920 --> 2:10:05.280 You see the same shit that you see everywhere in 2:10:05.300 --> 2:10:06.820 the world, right? Like I saw a BBC interview with 2:10:06.840 --> 2:10:09.690 someone who was like, we've got homeless people here. And 2:10:09.700 --> 2:10:11.890 I would be prepared to wager a large amount of 2:10:11.930 --> 2:10:13.670 money that that person has done the square root of 2:10:13.850 --> 2:10:16.570 fuck all to help homeless people in the last few years, right? 2:10:17.170 --> 2:10:20.190 But now is suddenly concerned because apparently they have to 2:10:20.230 --> 2:10:24.450 compete for scarce resources with asylum seekers rather than the 2:10:24.490 --> 2:10:27.730 fucking royal family. In this case, there was a protest 2:10:27.770 --> 2:10:31.320 in Gosport where we saw crowds of people led by 2:10:31.360 --> 2:10:33.860 a child chanting, let them drown. 2:10:34.520 --> 2:10:36.620 I was about to ask if this was the same protest. 2:10:37.180 --> 2:10:41.560 Yeah. One can understand a child who isn't fully formed 2:10:41.620 --> 2:10:44.130 in the brain saying shit like that, I guess. 2:10:44.150 --> 2:10:44.990 It's not their fault. 2:10:45.330 --> 2:10:45.650 Yeah. 2:10:46.070 --> 2:10:48.350 For a child to be raised in a place with 2:10:48.390 --> 2:10:51.890 that much hate is fucking disgusting. And for a grown 2:10:52.010 --> 2:10:54.570 adult to be joining in and encouraging that behavior is 2:10:54.650 --> 2:10:58.760 fucking appalling. Thomas has pulled this shit a few times, 2:10:59.400 --> 2:11:03.200 but obviously this was the worst. What they're trying to do, 2:11:03.260 --> 2:11:06.700 I guess, is boats have been leaving from Cherbourg, so 2:11:06.980 --> 2:11:13.400 on the west side of France, because of increased police 2:11:13.440 --> 2:11:16.220 presence in Dunkirk and those areas where you would go 2:11:16.260 --> 2:11:19.440 to Dover, where there's a shorter channel crossing. And so 2:11:19.460 --> 2:11:23.660 the lifeboats being dispatched are coming probably from, I'm not 2:11:23.690 --> 2:11:25.660 exactly sure, maybe the Isle of Wight, I think. They 2:11:25.700 --> 2:11:29.210 are taking them to the UK mainland via the shortest route. 2:11:29.330 --> 2:11:32.310 If the lifeboats took those people who they rescued to Dover, 2:11:33.030 --> 2:11:36.210 that would take probably half a dozen hours. At that point, 2:11:36.230 --> 2:11:39.470 the lifeboat is then out of its area of operation. 2:11:39.530 --> 2:11:41.350 If anybody else is in distress on the sea, that 2:11:41.370 --> 2:11:43.830 lifeboat can't respond. It's a good example of how this 2:11:43.870 --> 2:11:46.520 bigotry hurts everyone. They've been doing this for a while. 2:11:46.530 --> 2:11:49.180 I actually made a podcast a couple of years ago 2:11:49.200 --> 2:11:53.110 with Professor Ruth Kinner about lifeboats and mutual aid. But 2:11:53.140 --> 2:11:56.400 to see this many people going after something that was 2:11:56.580 --> 2:12:01.700 so foundational to the culture in the United Kingdom not 2:12:01.760 --> 2:12:04.780 so long ago, like when I was a kid, because 2:12:04.840 --> 2:12:07.140 they'd been whipped up into thinking that they have to 2:12:07.180 --> 2:12:10.860 compete for resources with asylum seekers rather than the only 2:12:10.930 --> 2:12:14.830 dangerous minority being the rich. It makes me really sad 2:12:14.870 --> 2:12:17.710 and it makes me really angry. And there is something 2:12:17.850 --> 2:12:20.510 so fucking broken about a crowd of people chanting, let 2:12:20.550 --> 2:12:24.100 them drown. And I'm proud of all my friends who 2:12:24.140 --> 2:12:26.800 continue to volunteer for the RNLI. I really want to 2:12:26.840 --> 2:12:31.020 go back home and do a series on it because 2:12:31.060 --> 2:12:33.040 I know a lot of people who are lifeboatmen. And 2:12:33.940 --> 2:12:36.890 I think what they do is incredible. And it's the 2:12:37.060 --> 2:12:39.490 answer to the question that everyone always has about anarchism, 2:12:39.930 --> 2:12:42.210 like who will put out the fires without the state? 2:12:42.850 --> 2:12:45.010 The same people who fucking rescue thousands of people a 2:12:45.010 --> 2:12:48.190 year from the sea, right? The RNLI is funded by 2:12:48.230 --> 2:12:51.400 donations and through people's wills. the money doesn't come from 2:12:51.420 --> 2:12:53.720 your taxes. The money doesn't come from the state. I've 2:12:53.780 --> 2:12:55.760 pointed to them for so long, like both when I'm 2:12:55.780 --> 2:12:58.500 teaching and in conversations. And like, I think that's something 2:12:58.540 --> 2:13:01.180 we should be really proud of. And it's disgusting to 2:13:01.220 --> 2:13:04.360 me that people are doing this shit. Talking of disgusting, 2:13:04.380 --> 2:13:06.280 do you want to talk about Trump's speech at the UN? 2:13:07.320 --> 2:13:10.560 I think we should probably talk about the advertisers that 2:13:10.600 --> 2:13:11.980 support our podcast first. 2:13:12.500 --> 2:13:14.360 Hopefully it's the lifeboats we can donate. 2:13:14.640 --> 2:13:16.200 I don't think it's going to be the lifeboats. 2:13:16.660 --> 2:13:18.480 I don't think they advertise on podcasts. 2:13:19.350 --> 2:13:19.890 That would be cool. 2:13:32.060 --> 2:13:35.780 All right, we're back. And now we're traveling from the 2:13:35.800 --> 2:13:39.270 United Kingdom to New York to talk about the United 2:13:39.330 --> 2:13:43.290 Nations General Assembly, where Donald Trump used the platform he 2:13:43.330 --> 2:13:46.250 had to make comments that sounded straight up genocidal. 2:13:46.690 --> 2:13:48.390 But I have a big decision to make. 2:13:50.130 --> 2:13:54.380 Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them 2:13:54.820 --> 2:13:58.600 rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever 2:13:58.660 --> 2:14:02.180 was before, maybe one of the greatest in the Middle 2:14:02.280 --> 2:14:07.100 East or even the world? Or do I annihilate the 2:14:07.160 --> 2:14:10.700 Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a 2:14:10.760 --> 2:14:16.410 chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do 2:14:16.470 --> 2:14:19.550 I drive them into hell with no chance of survival 2:14:19.610 --> 2:14:23.030 and no hope of future greatness or generations? 2:14:24.170 --> 2:14:25.370 But I believe we'll. 2:14:25.130 --> 2:14:30.100 Make a deal right after the election because it doesn't 2:14:30.140 --> 2:14:31.420 make sense for them not to. 2:14:32.120 --> 2:14:35.840 This is fucking great, right? Oh my God. To go 2:14:35.920 --> 2:14:38.660 from like, don't worry, I'll genocide them all to vote 2:14:38.680 --> 2:14:39.280 for me, please. 2:14:39.560 --> 2:14:41.100 Only a deal after the election. 2:14:41.400 --> 2:14:41.600 Yeah. 2:14:41.920 --> 2:14:43.010 It's like, I got to see what happens. 2:14:43.810 --> 2:14:45.140 Right, yeah, we've got to keep him in just so 2:14:45.150 --> 2:14:49.300 we see how this goes. It's the fucking UN. Like, 2:14:49.320 --> 2:14:52.420 it was found... And admittedly, he has failed, right? But 2:14:52.440 --> 2:14:54.280 it was founded as the idea that if we could 2:14:54.300 --> 2:14:56.390 all get together and talk it out, we wouldn't have genocides. 2:14:56.440 --> 2:14:58.870 And there he is, just fucking... Like, as I said, 2:14:58.890 --> 2:15:01.760 the UN... manifestly failed in that regard and many others. 2:15:01.940 --> 2:15:02.740 It still sucks. 2:15:03.080 --> 2:15:04.760 Yeah. It's still fucking bonkers. 2:15:05.160 --> 2:15:06.970 It's super easy to like, you know, poo poo on 2:15:06.980 --> 2:15:09.330 the UN because it's the UN, but I mean. 2:15:09.350 --> 2:15:11.450 It's what we have. It's what we have. 2:15:11.530 --> 2:15:12.170 Yeah. Yeah. 2:15:12.390 --> 2:15:12.750 Yeah. 2:15:12.890 --> 2:15:16.650 It's, it's a tool that we have and like, yeah. Uh, 2:15:16.710 --> 2:15:20.350 he then went on to talk about the midterms. Uh, 2:15:20.450 --> 2:15:23.410 this is like another 30 seconds. Let's listen to this. 2:15:23.710 --> 2:15:26.470 They're waiting to see how I do in the midterm election. 2:15:27.130 --> 2:15:30.390 What they don't realize is that I'm not running. I 2:15:30.470 --> 2:15:34.090 did that already and won in a landslide. 2:15:34.130 --> 2:15:35.950 We won in a giant landslide. 2:15:36.810 --> 2:15:38.630 And I'll be here for two and a half years. 2:15:39.450 --> 2:15:41.370 The Republican Party is running. 2:15:41.690 --> 2:15:42.710 And I'll be helping them. 2:15:42.950 --> 2:15:43.970 But I am not running. 2:15:44.930 --> 2:15:49.270 I gave absolutely no credence and will not give credence 2:15:49.330 --> 2:15:53.680 to the election when it comes to Iran. It doesn't 2:15:53.920 --> 2:15:55.820 even enter my mind. 2:15:56.440 --> 2:15:57.780 And then he goes on to say that they don't 2:15:57.800 --> 2:16:01.390 get a nuclear weapon, of course, right? This is bonkers, right? 2:16:01.410 --> 2:16:03.930 The idea that Iran is not aware. 2:16:03.950 --> 2:16:08.530 He's like, wait, guys, you have to understand, Americans have 2:16:08.680 --> 2:16:09.800 different elections. 2:16:11.180 --> 2:16:12.660 They can't comprehend, right? 2:16:12.740 --> 2:16:15.860 Is this the thing where he didn't know this and 2:16:15.880 --> 2:16:18.280 someone told him? What is happening here? 2:16:19.520 --> 2:16:22.310 He's like, they recently told me I am actually not running. 2:16:23.380 --> 2:16:29.770 Yeah, I'm good, guys. Clearly, his war on Iran has 2:16:29.790 --> 2:16:33.150 been extremely unpopular and continues to be extremely unpopular because 2:16:33.730 --> 2:16:36.010 it costs six bucks to buy a gallon of gas now. 2:16:36.490 --> 2:16:39.490 Even if people don't care about the massive human toll 2:16:39.510 --> 2:16:41.110 of this, they do care about that. 2:16:41.850 --> 2:16:43.550 Which I do also want to say for the record 2:16:43.570 --> 2:16:46.080 that this war was unpopular before the gas prices increased. 2:16:46.140 --> 2:16:48.580 It's made it more unpopular, but no one has ever 2:16:48.660 --> 2:16:51.820 liked this war and it just gets more unpopular every day. 2:16:51.840 --> 2:16:54.590 Yeah. it's part of why he's, I guess, bringing this, 2:16:54.930 --> 2:16:56.630 you know, midterm stuff up in like both of these 2:16:56.690 --> 2:16:59.310 clips here. And I guess he's like, he knows he 2:16:59.370 --> 2:17:01.930 only has a few months left until the amount of 2:17:01.950 --> 2:17:04.750 like support he has in Congress will take a pretty 2:17:05.150 --> 2:17:05.630 big dip. 2:17:05.770 --> 2:17:06.970 Yeah. 2:17:07.090 --> 2:17:08.910 Even if they just lose the House. But I mean, 2:17:09.129 --> 2:17:10.930 if looking at the polls, if like the Senate's on 2:17:10.950 --> 2:17:16.060 the line, that's going to put at least some constraints, 2:17:16.350 --> 2:17:20.640 some checks as opposed to the Zero. I have zero 2:17:20.700 --> 2:17:23.380 negative checks that have been in Congress for the past 2:17:23.420 --> 2:17:27.580 two years. It's like he's going to, I assume, plot 2:17:27.650 --> 2:17:30.490 out all the way up until the time that the 2:17:30.530 --> 2:17:33.510 next Congress has sworn in, whatever his game plan is. 2:17:34.190 --> 2:17:34.410 Yeah. 2:17:34.629 --> 2:17:37.230 It's wild to see him electioneering this hard at the 2:17:37.350 --> 2:17:38.150 UN as well. 2:17:38.209 --> 2:17:38.770 At the UN. 2:17:38.870 --> 2:17:41.730 Yeah. I mean, he does this all the time, right? 2:17:41.750 --> 2:17:44.140 He goes somewhere and does something that's absolutely the most 2:17:44.280 --> 2:17:47.020 jarring tone shit from anything that has happened there before. 2:17:48.000 --> 2:17:51.910 But the way he continues to talk about annihilating Iran. 2:17:52.050 --> 2:17:52.770 It's disturbing. 2:17:53.270 --> 2:17:56.550 Especially as our conventional weapons resources get lower and lower. 2:17:56.570 --> 2:17:58.750 It's scary. It's genuinely scary. 2:17:59.100 --> 2:18:01.680 That's stuff that you could just play at an ICC 2:18:01.720 --> 2:18:02.520 trial for genocide. 2:18:02.810 --> 2:18:03.250 Yeah, yeah. 2:18:03.470 --> 2:18:06.750 I mean, he spoke about the ICC as well. He 2:18:06.870 --> 2:18:09.670 critiqued the ICC, or not even critiqued, that's not the 2:18:09.690 --> 2:18:10.010 right word. 2:18:10.390 --> 2:18:12.189 Didn't he call for them all to resign or something? 2:18:13.170 --> 2:18:13.850 Something, yeah. 2:18:14.570 --> 2:18:16.470 Yeah, I mean, some of them can't even come to 2:18:16.490 --> 2:18:16.949 the US. 2:18:17.290 --> 2:18:17.510 Yeah. 2:18:18.610 --> 2:18:22.560 Yeah, this was and continues to be bonkers, I guess. 2:18:23.020 --> 2:18:26.220 It's not surprising in a sense, but it still sucks. 2:18:26.440 --> 2:18:27.359 Yeah, it's horrifying. 2:18:27.980 --> 2:18:29.540 Dana, I know you had some stuff you wanted to 2:18:29.620 --> 2:18:31.900 talk about. Do you want to pick up from here? 2:18:32.860 --> 2:18:36.020 Yes. So there's a lot of talk about what's going 2:18:36.040 --> 2:18:38.060 to happen to Gaza, what's going to happen to the 2:18:38.080 --> 2:18:40.360 Palestinians in the West Bank. I just did an It 2:18:40.379 --> 2:18:43.400 Could Happen Here episode on the way the Israeli state 2:18:43.459 --> 2:18:46.470 and the Israeli settler movement are working together to ethnically 2:18:46.490 --> 2:18:48.850 cleanse the West Bank, but how we should distinguish between 2:18:48.870 --> 2:18:49.129 the two. 2:18:49.709 --> 2:18:49.949 Anyway. 2:18:50.830 --> 2:18:53.950 The way that international actors, particularly the United States, have 2:18:53.990 --> 2:18:57.550 behaved is to kind of audaciously sideline the Palestinians. Like 2:18:57.570 --> 2:19:00.070 they don't even pretend to include them or consider them. 2:19:00.170 --> 2:19:02.010 So the Board of Peace, for example, doesn't have any 2:19:02.060 --> 2:19:06.480 Palestinian decision makers. There are only technocrats who are essentially 2:19:06.500 --> 2:19:08.480 supposed to just take commands from the Board of Peace. 2:19:09.100 --> 2:19:11.480 So there's really like no space in the discussion for 2:19:11.520 --> 2:19:16.350 Palestinian agency. But I think international actors, governments in the EU, 2:19:16.390 --> 2:19:20.590 but even some in Washington kind of thinking medium to 2:19:20.629 --> 2:19:23.690 long term about after Trump, they understand that this doesn't 2:19:23.730 --> 2:19:25.930 look great and that at some point they'll have to 2:19:26.010 --> 2:19:30.790 make a big display of getting Palestinians to sign some 2:19:30.850 --> 2:19:33.820 grand peace deal with the Israelis. And you need some 2:19:33.850 --> 2:19:35.039 group of Palestinians to do that. 2:19:35.280 --> 2:19:35.460 Right. 2:19:36.080 --> 2:19:38.740 So the Palestinian Authority that governs the West Bank is 2:19:39.280 --> 2:19:41.980 is led by President Mahmoud Abbas, as I'm sure many know, 2:19:42.160 --> 2:19:45.020 who has overstayed his term limits for many, many years. 2:19:45.940 --> 2:19:50.849 He's also the chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the PLO. 2:19:51.990 --> 2:19:55.650 And Palestinians are very unhappy with this setup. Basically, the 2:19:55.690 --> 2:19:58.410 polls show that they think it lacks legitimacy and that 2:19:58.450 --> 2:20:03.790 he lacks legitimacy. So the international community has essentially been 2:20:03.830 --> 2:20:07.580 getting to work to kind of paper over this issue. 2:20:07.740 --> 2:20:10.100 So last year, they pressured Abbas to find a successor 2:20:10.840 --> 2:20:12.619 because he's so old, they're afraid he's going to keel over. 2:20:13.040 --> 2:20:17.080 And he unilaterally changed the bylaws of the PLO outside 2:20:17.140 --> 2:20:20.459 normal institutional procedures to create a vice president position. And 2:20:20.480 --> 2:20:23.820 he appointed someone to that position from the PLO executive committee. 2:20:24.060 --> 2:20:27.320 The dude he picked, Hossein al-Sheikh, polls at 2% with Palestinians. 2:20:27.980 --> 2:20:31.000 So they're already setting up for what comes after Abbas. 2:20:31.920 --> 2:20:35.439 And now they're working on PLO changes that would, again, 2:20:35.480 --> 2:20:38.300 on the surface, look like an institution renewing its legitimacy. 2:20:38.879 --> 2:20:41.940 So part of that, this is ongoing right now, is 2:20:42.040 --> 2:20:45.340 having the legislative body of the PLO, the Palestinian National Council, 2:20:45.830 --> 2:20:48.950 actually hold elections. So I'm going to quote here from 2:20:48.970 --> 2:20:52.470 the European Council on Foreign Relations. The PNC is responsible 2:20:52.510 --> 2:20:55.270 for formulating the PLO's policies. It acts as a parliament 2:20:55.310 --> 2:20:58.369 that represents all Palestinians except for Palestinian citizens of Israel. 2:20:59.000 --> 2:21:03.680 The PNC currently comprises 747 members representing Palestinians in Palestine 2:21:03.820 --> 2:21:07.760 and in the diaspora. But because the PNC has had 2:21:07.860 --> 2:21:11.260 such difficulty convening and all of these things, there are 2:21:11.420 --> 2:21:15.560 other bodies that like bridge between the legislative and the executive, 2:21:15.620 --> 2:21:18.779 like the central council. And over the years, the PNC 2:21:18.800 --> 2:21:21.519 has basically lost any power, even though it's supposed to 2:21:21.550 --> 2:21:23.270 be the legislative body. It's supposed to be kind of 2:21:23.280 --> 2:21:27.050 the democratic engine of the PLO. So in February, 2026, 2:21:27.050 --> 2:21:31.060 so February of this year, Abbas issued a decree saying 2:21:31.080 --> 2:21:34.900 that there would be PNC elections in November and that 2:21:35.100 --> 2:21:39.380 this would include basically trying to make it so that 2:21:39.459 --> 2:21:43.840 all eligible Palestinians that can like feasibly vote directly living 2:21:43.860 --> 2:21:46.560 in the diaspora, or if that's not possible, kind of 2:21:46.580 --> 2:21:50.380 through an electoral college process in different diasporas or via 2:21:50.940 --> 2:21:56.640 quote unquote consensus. So the PLO, the PA, which at 2:21:56.660 --> 2:22:01.420 this point overlap, they've been going around different communities, different 2:22:01.440 --> 2:22:06.160 Palestinian diaspora communities, and setting up so that these different 2:22:06.180 --> 2:22:10.330 communities run people for these elections. But the way they're 2:22:10.350 --> 2:22:15.490 doing it is extremely undemocratic. They are not thinking about, 2:22:15.570 --> 2:22:18.370 you know, who are we going to tap that actually 2:22:18.430 --> 2:22:22.449 represents some constituency in these diasporas? Or are they actually 2:22:22.730 --> 2:22:26.080 representative of these diasporas? They're just getting yes-men in a 2:22:26.080 --> 2:22:29.359 lot of cases. Some members of the central council basically 2:22:29.400 --> 2:22:32.019 found out that they had been removed after reading it 2:22:32.320 --> 2:22:36.180 in the media. So it's completely undemocratic. The Palestinian diaspora 2:22:36.230 --> 2:22:39.450 in Chile, for example, they've tapped a particular organization, but 2:22:39.470 --> 2:22:44.970 that organization gets to run the elections. And other organizations 2:22:45.090 --> 2:22:48.250 in the Palestinian diaspora in Chile have to jump through 2:22:48.270 --> 2:22:50.590 a lot more hoops. to be able to run in 2:22:50.610 --> 2:22:52.970 the same elections. So to me, it feels like a 2:22:53.070 --> 2:22:56.990 grand conspiracy against Palestinians to pretend like these PNC elections 2:22:57.030 --> 2:23:02.070 are actually legitimate. In reality, really disempowering huge swaths of 2:23:02.530 --> 2:23:06.060 the Palestinian diaspora. He also announced in that decree that 2:23:06.080 --> 2:23:09.020 he's going to half the numbers of the PNC from 2:23:09.020 --> 2:23:14.740 747 to 350. So essentially one seat allocated for every 2:23:14.740 --> 2:23:19.760 35,000 Palestinians is like the idea. But yeah, it's not great. 2:23:19.959 --> 2:23:22.680 And I think that we should really, you know, focus 2:23:23.410 --> 2:23:26.610 on what's happening here because the Palestinians are being set 2:23:26.670 --> 2:23:30.450 up in so many ways for a very bleak near-term future. 2:23:30.470 --> 2:23:33.410 I feel like I've stunned all of you with the silence. 2:23:34.410 --> 2:23:37.130 Well, it's so bleak. They're just like, how openly they're 2:23:37.150 --> 2:23:38.590 just kind of rigging the elections. 2:23:38.709 --> 2:23:39.050 It's like. 2:23:40.270 --> 2:23:40.590 I don't know. 2:23:41.070 --> 2:23:43.850 It reminds me of like more expansive version of the 2:23:43.910 --> 2:23:47.310 way that like the CCP does elections for like there's 2:23:47.350 --> 2:23:52.910 like nominal elections for all of their party official offices 2:23:53.550 --> 2:23:56.770 where they do like a very similar process of like, yeah, 2:23:56.810 --> 2:23:59.580 we've we've like put forward one candidate who is like 2:23:59.720 --> 2:24:01.480 our person. You're all going to vote for them or 2:24:01.500 --> 2:24:02.940 you're going to vote for one of the like allied 2:24:02.980 --> 2:24:03.820 parties or something. 2:24:03.840 --> 2:24:04.740 Yeah. 2:24:05.000 --> 2:24:08.890 No, it's completely like. minimized as a process yeah i 2:24:08.910 --> 2:24:11.390 mean i haven't even gotten into like the local elections 2:24:11.410 --> 2:24:13.550 that have happened in the occupied territories and how kind 2:24:13.590 --> 2:24:16.030 of problematic some of those have been but just on 2:24:16.110 --> 2:24:19.210 every level like even when they're pretending at democracy like 2:24:19.250 --> 2:24:22.470 yeah it's not happening you know so yeah. 2:24:22.250 --> 2:24:23.970 And then like in like in the same like ccp 2:24:24.010 --> 2:24:25.990 structure thing you have like this big assembly that does 2:24:26.290 --> 2:24:28.710 nothing and then there's like executive bodies that have been 2:24:28.730 --> 2:24:31.250 carefully chosen from their loyalists outside of that that like 2:24:31.300 --> 2:24:33.400 do all the things yeah. 2:24:33.000 --> 2:24:37.620 Exactly no no that's that's a good comparison Yeah. So 2:24:37.640 --> 2:24:40.480 the second thing I wanted to just very briefly touch 2:24:40.660 --> 2:24:43.790 on is the issue of Palestine and higher ed. I 2:24:43.830 --> 2:24:46.980 think like because there haven't been the, you know, massive protests. 2:24:47.709 --> 2:24:50.369 widespread protests that we saw a year or two years ago. 2:24:50.390 --> 2:24:53.520 This maybe has dropped from the radar, but it continues to, 2:24:53.640 --> 2:24:57.200 you know, those protests on campuses continue to have ramifications 2:24:57.260 --> 2:24:59.380 for higher ed and for a lot of the people 2:24:59.420 --> 2:25:02.840 who participated. So two cases I wanted to just mention 2:25:02.879 --> 2:25:05.920 briefly is that at Stanford University, a number of students 2:25:06.520 --> 2:25:10.470 were criminally prosecuted for protesting on their campus. And for 2:25:10.510 --> 2:25:14.730 some of them, that involved occupying the president's office. and 2:25:14.750 --> 2:25:17.530 demanding divestment and things like this. But the charges have 2:25:17.560 --> 2:25:21.560 all been dropped against those students. The Santa Clara County 2:25:21.620 --> 2:25:25.560 District Attorney that was assigned to this case, who was 2:25:25.860 --> 2:25:29.580 seeking criminal prosecution, was using the case to solicit donations 2:25:29.600 --> 2:25:32.390 for his re-election, saying he was tough on anti-Semitism. 2:25:32.410 --> 2:25:33.100 Jesus Christ. 2:25:33.150 --> 2:25:33.990 Jesus. 2:25:34.010 --> 2:25:34.190 Yeah. 2:25:34.800 --> 2:25:37.440 So the judge was like, hey, I think this is probably, 2:25:38.080 --> 2:25:40.430 you're probably too biased for this. So he like asked 2:25:40.450 --> 2:25:42.869 him to be removed from the case. And then eventually, 2:25:42.910 --> 2:25:46.350 as I said, the charges were dropped and the students 2:25:46.650 --> 2:25:49.610 like have to pay a small sum and like do 2:25:49.629 --> 2:25:53.320 some community service. But the idea is like all of 2:25:53.400 --> 2:25:56.380 these cases, whether at Stanford or other places, they were 2:25:56.500 --> 2:26:02.209 used to deter further protest for sure. And then the 2:26:02.330 --> 2:26:05.690 second case I wanted to mention is maybe people remember 2:26:05.910 --> 2:26:09.560 three Palestinian students, one from Brown University, one from Haverford College, 2:26:09.580 --> 2:26:13.039 and one from Trinity College, were shot for wearing keffiyehs 2:26:13.120 --> 2:26:16.400 on the street in Vermont maybe two years ago. All 2:26:16.420 --> 2:26:19.619 three of them were wounded and one was paralyzed. So 2:26:19.700 --> 2:26:23.730 the guy who shot them, Jason Eaton... Faces up to 2:26:23.770 --> 2:26:26.990 life in prison. And despite the fact that that guy 2:26:27.270 --> 2:26:30.610 had claimed that the U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies had 2:26:30.670 --> 2:26:33.480 transmitted orders to him to shoot the students via FM radio, 2:26:34.240 --> 2:26:37.240 and that God had commanded him to protect his Jewish neighbors, 2:26:38.260 --> 2:26:40.680 no hate crime charges were filed. So I think that 2:26:40.720 --> 2:26:42.600 that is quite telling. 2:26:42.840 --> 2:26:43.120 Yeah. 2:26:43.470 --> 2:26:47.890 But, um... Nevertheless, one of the student's mothers, the student 2:26:47.950 --> 2:26:51.410 Hisham Awarthani, was the one who was paralyzed. His mother, 2:26:51.470 --> 2:26:54.470 Elizabeth Price, spoke to the media after the verdict and said, 2:26:54.590 --> 2:26:58.280 justice has been rendered for Hisham Kinan and Tahseen. After 2:26:58.320 --> 2:27:00.680 three years of sorrow, loss, and struggle, our families finally 2:27:00.700 --> 2:27:04.080 feel relief. We are grateful our son's suffering commanded attention 2:27:04.140 --> 2:27:07.620 and support. We grieve so much that Palestinian suffering never does. 2:27:07.940 --> 2:27:10.439 So I just wanted to update about that case as well. 2:27:10.940 --> 2:27:14.510 I'm not sure it's a happy update, but some semblance 2:27:14.590 --> 2:27:15.650 of Repercussion. 2:27:15.910 --> 2:27:20.720 Yeah, damn. Yeah. I guess we got another shooting because 2:27:20.780 --> 2:27:21.540 this is America. 2:27:21.560 --> 2:27:22.680 I hate this country. 2:27:23.860 --> 2:27:24.160 Yeah. 2:27:24.180 --> 2:27:26.860 I know this one's fucked up. Ice agents in Texas 2:27:27.100 --> 2:27:30.039 shot a man in the back last week. Wilbert Rafael 2:27:30.080 --> 2:27:34.070 Garces Perez. He's a migrant from Venezuela. He was shot 2:27:34.110 --> 2:27:37.349 in the back. He appears to be in stable condition now. 2:27:38.110 --> 2:27:41.379 We've seen a number of different videos. the videos of 2:27:41.480 --> 2:27:45.260 the shooting are not entirely clear of like the rundown 2:27:45.300 --> 2:27:47.920 events they ice claimed he's running away from them video 2:27:47.940 --> 2:27:50.240 doesn't seem to show that we have seen video of 2:27:50.340 --> 2:27:52.520 ice agents cuffing him and appears that they're doing that 2:27:52.580 --> 2:27:55.080 before rendering aid You could see a couple of agents 2:27:55.120 --> 2:27:58.459 putting cuffs on him and another guy who apparently is 2:27:58.500 --> 2:28:03.440 struggling to put on latex, actually non-latex, but protective gloves. Wilbur, 2:28:04.120 --> 2:28:06.860 like many Venezuelans, came to the USA to help his family. 2:28:07.520 --> 2:28:10.550 I've heard this story a hundred times and I've met 2:28:10.600 --> 2:28:13.270 this family, not this family, but a family doing exactly 2:28:13.290 --> 2:28:14.890 the same thing a hundred times. He has a son 2:28:15.610 --> 2:28:18.690 with disabilities that he will probably either struggle to pay 2:28:18.750 --> 2:28:22.070 for or cannot be accommodated easily in Venezuela. And so 2:28:22.110 --> 2:28:24.220 his dad came here to work to fund his treatment. 2:28:24.379 --> 2:28:27.119 At the time that he was shot, he was delivering DoorDash, 2:28:27.800 --> 2:28:32.780 super common employment for people becoming care-seeking asylum, right? His 2:28:33.000 --> 2:28:38.670 family attorney, Kate Lincoln Goldfinch, has been documenting the events 2:28:39.070 --> 2:28:42.349 after his shooting on Instagram, beginning with a post where 2:28:42.390 --> 2:28:46.640 she says she was at the hospital with Wilbur's wife, 2:28:47.270 --> 2:28:49.480 and they are trying to get into the hospital to 2:28:49.540 --> 2:28:51.840 see her husband, who had called her and said he 2:28:51.879 --> 2:28:56.120 had been shot, and then the phone cut off. So evidently, 2:28:56.320 --> 2:28:59.540 she's distressed, right? And the security at the hospital are 2:28:59.560 --> 2:29:03.950 denying that he is there and asking the attorney and 2:29:04.010 --> 2:29:07.250 Wilbur's wife to leave. She is then informed by a 2:29:07.350 --> 2:29:11.350 congressperson that he is present at that hospital, but that 2:29:11.370 --> 2:29:13.810 the hospital's policy is not to disclose when someone's there 2:29:13.830 --> 2:29:15.900 in ICE detention. I've done a lot of, like, I 2:29:15.930 --> 2:29:18.780 haven't put much out on like hospitals and ICE detention. 2:29:19.340 --> 2:29:21.580 I have done a lot of interviews about that. It's 2:29:21.620 --> 2:29:24.260 something I want to kind of get my arms around 2:29:24.300 --> 2:29:27.100 fully before I put something out because I think I've 2:29:27.120 --> 2:29:30.349 also done a lot of responding to times when migrants 2:29:30.370 --> 2:29:33.070 are in medical crisis and are afraid to get medical 2:29:33.129 --> 2:29:36.770 care and I think that there are really serious repercussions 2:29:36.910 --> 2:29:39.270 to suggesting that ICE is going room to room in 2:29:39.310 --> 2:29:42.050 hospitals or in EDs taking people. I'm not aware of 2:29:42.070 --> 2:29:43.980 them ever doing that and I just want to like 2:29:44.970 --> 2:29:47.110 Make that very clear for people whenever we get to 2:29:47.129 --> 2:29:50.119 this topic, because it kills people to not seek medical 2:29:50.160 --> 2:29:52.840 care too. We need to hold those two things at 2:29:52.860 --> 2:29:56.000 the same time. In this case, I guess Austin's mayor 2:29:56.420 --> 2:29:59.400 showed up and got them confirmation that he was stable 2:29:59.520 --> 2:30:03.190 and had been released into an ICE detention center. His 2:30:03.450 --> 2:30:08.170 attorney then held a presser, which Wilbur attended remotely by 2:30:08.250 --> 2:30:11.210 calling in from detention. There are different ways people can 2:30:11.230 --> 2:30:13.109 call in different detention centers. I think he had some 2:30:13.150 --> 2:30:15.790 kind of tablet device. In this conference, he said he 2:30:15.830 --> 2:30:18.030 was in serious pain and that he had not been 2:30:18.070 --> 2:30:21.530 receiving adequate mental care and the ICE agents had not 2:30:21.570 --> 2:30:25.449 identified themselves before ramming his car. His lawyer later said 2:30:25.750 --> 2:30:29.360 that after this press conference, as a retaliatory measure, he 2:30:29.400 --> 2:30:33.020 was held in isolation and had his communication device taken away. 2:30:34.280 --> 2:30:37.800 He was also removed from the infirmary in apparent retaliation 2:30:37.840 --> 2:30:41.500 for this presser and placed in isolation. He is now, 2:30:41.520 --> 2:30:45.990 according to Congressman Joaquin Castro... been returned to hospital to 2:30:46.010 --> 2:30:49.150 get better care. According to his lawyer, the agent who 2:30:49.270 --> 2:30:52.230 shot him was hired last year and either didn't have 2:30:52.270 --> 2:30:56.169 or didn't activate the body cam. A judge has ruled 2:30:56.330 --> 2:30:59.710 that Wilbur will appear in person for an immigration hearing 2:30:59.870 --> 2:31:02.370 on the 30th of September. So that would mean that 2:31:02.390 --> 2:31:04.670 he can't be removed before then, right? He'd previously been 2:31:04.790 --> 2:31:08.030 ordered removed in absentia because he had missed a hearing. 2:31:08.650 --> 2:31:10.660 His lawyer says he had moved house and didn't get 2:31:10.950 --> 2:31:15.779 that document. ICE then proceeded to release this press release, 2:31:16.440 --> 2:31:21.200 effectively directly addressing the Instagram posts of his lawyer. And 2:31:21.260 --> 2:31:24.430 they claimed they were going to, quote, correct the record, unquote. 2:31:24.870 --> 2:31:29.390 with a number of lies. It was set up the 2:31:29.470 --> 2:31:30.890 way that you might write a document if you didn't 2:31:30.910 --> 2:31:31.850 know what a paragraph was. 2:31:32.270 --> 2:31:34.490 The Axios style of writing. 2:31:34.890 --> 2:31:35.480 Yes, yes. 2:31:35.560 --> 2:31:38.560 Perfect, Garrison. Yes, that's correct. It used the Axios house 2:31:38.600 --> 2:31:41.619 style here. Yeah, an outlet that thinks you're too dumb 2:31:41.680 --> 2:31:45.379 to read two sentences consecutively. So it's set up in 2:31:45.420 --> 2:31:47.720 a claim fact format. 2:31:47.959 --> 2:31:48.700 Oh my God. 2:31:48.720 --> 2:31:52.180 Yeah, I mean, like... Sometimes I think that there's a moment, 2:31:52.260 --> 2:31:54.920 like with Jen Psaki, where just like the way press 2:31:54.959 --> 2:31:57.180 releases are done by the executive branch went off a 2:31:57.260 --> 2:32:00.340 fucking cliff. The Trump administration has like gone from like 2:32:00.379 --> 2:32:03.710 slight downhill to like free fall at this point. But 2:32:03.770 --> 2:32:05.810 throughout this, they don't refer to him by his name. 2:32:05.850 --> 2:32:07.350 They refer to him as the illegal alien. 2:32:07.450 --> 2:32:10.010 It's very common in all of their communications. 2:32:10.990 --> 2:32:14.430 Yeah, this shit really, like literally yesterday, my friends and 2:32:14.490 --> 2:32:17.109 I erected a memorial to a migrant who had died 2:32:17.300 --> 2:32:18.760 and then put their name on it, right? And I 2:32:19.320 --> 2:32:22.620 not giving people names really fucking makes me mad. Claim 2:32:22.820 --> 2:32:26.860 the illegal alien is here legally. Fact. I'm obviously quoting 2:32:26.900 --> 2:32:30.000 from their presser here. This is false. The person is 2:32:30.060 --> 2:32:32.959 in the US illegally. He entered illegally under the Biden administration. 2:32:33.220 --> 2:32:36.390 The illegal alien had no valid work permit, had no 2:32:36.440 --> 2:32:38.910 protective status, and had a final order of removal from 2:32:38.950 --> 2:32:42.869 a Department of Justice immigration judge. This is not correct. 2:32:43.690 --> 2:32:47.970 He entered under CBP1, right? Like, To enter under CBP1 2:32:48.070 --> 2:32:51.550 was a massive and significant burden to migrants in the 2:32:51.570 --> 2:32:56.470 Biden administration. People I know have died waiting for a 2:32:56.510 --> 2:32:59.310 CBP1 appointment, and not a small. 2:32:59.110 --> 2:32:59.789 Number of people. 2:33:01.610 --> 2:33:05.950 To comply with the requirements of CBP1 was to jump 2:33:06.030 --> 2:33:08.770 through every hoop that was placed in front of you 2:33:08.890 --> 2:33:14.459 at great personal risk. It was... safer for people not 2:33:14.500 --> 2:33:17.600 to remain in Mexico and to enter without inspection. He 2:33:17.620 --> 2:33:20.720 didn't do that. He got an appointment at CBP1, went 2:33:20.760 --> 2:33:23.700 to a border crossing, he spoke to numerous DHS personnel, 2:33:23.970 --> 2:33:26.790 and he was allowed into the country. CBP1 gave people 2:33:26.830 --> 2:33:29.450 a year of humanitarian parole. Trump tried to cancel that, 2:33:29.490 --> 2:33:31.630 but in March this year, a federal judge overturned him 2:33:31.709 --> 2:33:35.810 canceling that, says you can't just like broad swath cancel 2:33:35.830 --> 2:33:40.070 parole like that. I've included an explainer For people who 2:33:40.310 --> 2:33:42.310 need to or would like to understand that more, it'll 2:33:42.330 --> 2:33:43.090 be in the notes. 2:33:43.810 --> 2:33:45.790 Is that the welcome.rescue.org link? 2:33:46.090 --> 2:33:50.879 Yes, yeah. This press release was just so annoying, right? 2:33:50.920 --> 2:33:55.199 Just repeating all these talking points that they have, right? CBP1, 2:33:55.220 --> 2:33:58.180 if you don't know, was founded by the first Trump administration. 2:33:58.860 --> 2:34:01.580 This is a thing that they made. They've since tried 2:34:01.600 --> 2:34:04.220 to retcon that, but I mean, they did it. It 2:34:04.260 --> 2:34:06.540 was used by the Biden administration as a de facto 2:34:06.600 --> 2:34:10.180 gating mechanism for migrants, right? It was a way of 2:34:10.240 --> 2:34:12.220 reducing the number of people who could come and apply 2:34:12.260 --> 2:34:15.570 for asylum. That is why people ended up eweing, right? 2:34:15.620 --> 2:34:18.650 Entering without inspection because there was no other way. A 2:34:18.770 --> 2:34:22.210 large number of CBP1 appointments went to Russian speaking people, 2:34:22.810 --> 2:34:25.550 generally because those people who had come were wealthier. They 2:34:25.570 --> 2:34:28.189 could get hotels. They'd get hotels in Tijuana with Wi-Fi 2:34:28.490 --> 2:34:30.330 and they'd make the applications, right? 2:34:30.370 --> 2:34:30.470 The. 2:34:31.390 --> 2:34:36.470 The application did not work on previous generation Android telephones. 2:34:37.209 --> 2:34:39.590 And those are the telephones that the vast number of 2:34:39.650 --> 2:34:43.330 people coming to Seek Asylum will have, especially... I literally 2:34:43.350 --> 2:34:44.689 heard from a friend today who I met in the 2:34:44.740 --> 2:34:47.699 Darien Gap on, I think, her fifth phone number, because 2:34:47.720 --> 2:34:51.060 people's phones just get stolen from them constantly. It's the 2:34:51.100 --> 2:34:53.600 most reliable item of value that most people have, so 2:34:53.660 --> 2:34:55.920 it's the easiest thing to steal. And so they end 2:34:56.000 --> 2:34:58.690 up with When you turn your phone in to get 2:34:59.709 --> 2:35:03.449 an upgrade, it gets sold in different parts of the 2:35:03.470 --> 2:35:06.470 world where people don't have as much income for technology stuff. 2:35:06.629 --> 2:35:08.270 So they end up with previous generation phones. The app 2:35:08.290 --> 2:35:12.970 didn't work on those phones. The facial liveness scanner of CBP1, 2:35:12.990 --> 2:35:16.670 let's say I'm booking an appointment for dinner, that it's 2:35:16.730 --> 2:35:19.090 actually dinner making the appointment and not me holding up 2:35:19.129 --> 2:35:21.850 a life-size cardboard cutout of dinner in front of the camera. 2:35:22.500 --> 2:35:25.380 So you have to go like that. It simply didn't 2:35:25.520 --> 2:35:29.170 work for black faces. I know there were NGOs in Tijuana, 2:35:29.190 --> 2:35:33.330 for instance, who had spent so much money on light rooms, 2:35:34.050 --> 2:35:38.480 to try and make it work for people. Jesus Christ. Yeah, 2:35:38.510 --> 2:35:41.100 this act was horrific. And he went through all the 2:35:41.200 --> 2:35:43.740 fucking hurdles, and they're still just going to call him... 2:35:43.620 --> 2:35:46.060 They're still just going to lie about it, right? I 2:35:46.980 --> 2:35:51.440 think this is a particularly heinous example of how fucked 2:35:51.480 --> 2:35:53.990 our immigration system is. Yeah, I'll keep up on this. 2:35:54.870 --> 2:35:57.209 As far as we know, he's now in a hospital. 2:35:57.230 --> 2:36:00.369 I hope he's receiving better care than he would under 2:36:00.390 --> 2:36:01.629 a nice detention. 2:36:02.740 --> 2:36:05.269 Let's go on one more ad break, and then we 2:36:05.350 --> 2:36:09.379 have a few more stories before we end this episode. 2:36:19.800 --> 2:36:22.430 Okay, we are back on. 2:36:22.959 --> 2:36:27.700 Friday afternoon, President Trump announced he was, quote, banning three 2:36:27.760 --> 2:36:34.340 news outlets, CNN, MSNBC, and Politico from the White House, quote, 2:36:34.480 --> 2:36:39.020 effective immediately as a result of their constant reporting fake news. 2:36:39.810 --> 2:36:43.110 Media outlets shouldn't be able to constantly write or report 2:36:43.209 --> 2:36:45.750 fiction and lies when they're covering the president of the 2:36:45.790 --> 2:36:49.810 United States. the Trump administration or the United States of America, 2:36:50.030 --> 2:36:55.470 other fake news media outlets to follow, unquote. Obviously not 2:36:55.490 --> 2:36:59.090 good when the president says that outlets shouldn't be allowed 2:36:59.209 --> 2:37:02.920 to write or report. Only there was an amendment of 2:37:02.930 --> 2:37:07.279 the constitution. But it was at first kind of unclear 2:37:07.400 --> 2:37:11.700 what this ban meant exactly. Though at a press conference 2:37:11.940 --> 2:37:15.730 following Trump's announcement on Truth Social, He referred to this 2:37:15.930 --> 2:37:18.369 as a, quote, ban on the free press. 2:37:18.890 --> 2:37:20.879 What? Wait, he just said that? 2:37:21.940 --> 2:37:22.220 Yes. 2:37:22.879 --> 2:37:24.480 Oh, I missed this. 2:37:26.870 --> 2:37:27.050 What? 2:37:27.390 --> 2:37:29.869 Let's get a video. That's fucking great. 2:37:30.500 --> 2:37:30.920 Why not? 2:37:30.940 --> 2:37:33.720 What does that mean in practice? 2:37:33.760 --> 2:37:35.560 Are you taking away their badges? Are you banning them 2:37:35.580 --> 2:37:36.179 from the pool? 2:37:36.200 --> 2:37:37.340 Are you banning them from the office? 2:37:37.379 --> 2:37:37.860 What does that mean? 2:37:38.500 --> 2:37:39.779 I still don't know what that means. 2:37:39.900 --> 2:37:42.330 Oh, the ban on the free press, right? 2:37:47.480 --> 2:37:48.220 Very simple ban. 2:37:48.240 --> 2:37:50.959 I don't want him in my office. 2:37:51.060 --> 2:37:51.740 I don't want him here. 2:37:52.340 --> 2:37:53.840 I would say the ban would go as far as 2:37:53.860 --> 2:37:54.240 you can. 2:37:54.980 --> 2:37:56.960 He's like, you know that thing we have an amendment about? Yeah. 2:37:57.900 --> 2:38:00.540 Maybe he was referring to capital F, capital P, the 2:38:00.560 --> 2:38:03.060 Barry Weiss outlet that does transfer media. 2:38:03.080 --> 2:38:06.140 I don't think he's talking about banning Barry Weiss's The 2:38:06.180 --> 2:38:06.879 Free Press. 2:38:07.760 --> 2:38:10.780 It's so cool that we had an entire movement that 2:38:10.800 --> 2:38:16.400 was nominally about free speech and the result of it was... Like, 2:38:16.580 --> 2:38:18.540 white CEOs should be able to say the N-word, but 2:38:18.580 --> 2:38:20.670 also the president should be allowed to ban the free 2:38:20.730 --> 2:38:21.860 press from talking to him? 2:38:21.890 --> 2:38:24.250 Hey, and the R-word. 2:38:24.530 --> 2:38:27.130 There's so many slurs they want to be able to say. 2:38:28.990 --> 2:38:32.150 So Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, quote, something 2:38:32.209 --> 2:38:34.430 is wrong with a country that can allow people to 2:38:34.470 --> 2:38:38.290 write purposefully negative stories. If they want to write them, 2:38:38.590 --> 2:38:41.990 that's fine. I don't have to let them into the 2:38:42.050 --> 2:38:45.170 people's house. Going on to say, like he started in 2:38:45.220 --> 2:38:47.570 that clip, I don't want them in my office. I 2:38:47.590 --> 2:38:49.970 don't want them here. I would say the ban would 2:38:50.010 --> 2:38:52.550 go as far as you can. And if they could 2:38:52.590 --> 2:38:58.320 straighten themselves out, I'd love it, unquote, suggesting he could 2:38:58.590 --> 2:39:03.580 lift the ban if outlets, quote, straighten themselves out, meaning 2:39:03.959 --> 2:39:07.980 write the news in a different way. Someone asked Trump 2:39:08.160 --> 2:39:11.960 how this would relate to a then upcoming visit with 2:39:12.180 --> 2:39:15.700 President Xi. And I'll just play the clip. 2:39:16.490 --> 2:39:19.110 You've got President Xi coming next week. 2:39:19.129 --> 2:39:22.550 China is one of the most repressive countries for journalists 2:39:22.629 --> 2:39:23.150 in the world. 2:39:23.310 --> 2:39:24.630 What signal does it send? 2:39:24.709 --> 2:39:27.629 I don't know about that. I think we're repressive also. 2:39:27.690 --> 2:39:30.330 We get fake news. We don't repress, but they write 2:39:30.390 --> 2:39:35.420 fake news. Jeez. 2:39:36.100 --> 2:39:37.539 Oh, he was on a sick one. 2:39:39.190 --> 2:39:40.850 This whole time I was thinking about there was a 2:39:40.870 --> 2:39:44.789 story like this week about a trial of some media 2:39:44.810 --> 2:39:47.170 organization in Hong Kong where the judge is talking about 2:39:47.209 --> 2:39:50.590 how you shouldn't be able to publish opinions that are like, 2:39:50.750 --> 2:39:54.770 I think the quote was like factually incorrect opinions because 2:39:54.790 --> 2:39:57.830 they were like negative about the regime. And then Trump's like, no, 2:39:57.910 --> 2:40:00.800 fuck that. We're banning the free press. We're going to 2:40:00.950 --> 2:40:04.020 out repress the CCP. I'm like, this is great. This 2:40:04.060 --> 2:40:06.460 is great. I love I love being a Chinese American. 2:40:06.980 --> 2:40:07.860 Such a good time. 2:40:11.120 --> 2:40:13.680 This clip is really funny because he says we're repressive 2:40:13.740 --> 2:40:17.420 too but then he pivots and talks about fake news 2:40:17.459 --> 2:40:19.340 and then goes on to say like well we don't 2:40:19.360 --> 2:40:21.920 like actually repress but we do have fake news and 2:40:21.940 --> 2:40:25.180 like kind of equivocating fake news to repression in China 2:40:25.240 --> 2:40:27.410 is kind of what he turns that into but then 2:40:27.420 --> 2:40:30.940 he just banned the press perhaps after catching what he 2:40:31.020 --> 2:40:34.790 said but like yeah it's not it was a really 2:40:34.930 --> 2:40:39.050 odd press conference as you can imagine yes The banning 2:40:39.070 --> 2:40:40.369 the free press press conference. 2:40:40.790 --> 2:40:42.370 His honesty is always refreshing. 2:40:42.590 --> 2:40:42.990 Wild. 2:40:43.050 --> 2:40:43.269 Yeah. 2:40:43.650 --> 2:40:47.130 So over the weekend, reporters from those three outlets were 2:40:47.150 --> 2:40:50.890 denied access to the White House grounds, with journalists' hard-pass 2:40:50.910 --> 2:40:56.480 credentials apparently being deactivated overnight. Then on Monday, the affected 2:40:56.560 --> 2:41:00.500 outlets filed a lawsuit against Trump and White House staff. 2:41:01.320 --> 2:41:04.300 The suit claims it's, quote, clear that the ban was 2:41:04.360 --> 2:41:08.680 motivated by Trump's disdain for reporting he considers, quote, one-sided and, quote, 2:41:08.800 --> 2:41:12.779 never good because it, quote, diminishes him and his accomplishments. 2:41:13.560 --> 2:41:15.459 This ban could not be a more direct assault on 2:41:15.480 --> 2:41:17.660 the First Amendment nor a more blatant violation of our 2:41:17.680 --> 2:41:24.480 most fundamental constitutional principles, unquote. Also on Monday, ABC News, 2:41:24.700 --> 2:41:30.760 CBS News, NBC, and Fox reported The four TV news poolers, 2:41:30.970 --> 2:41:34.349 besides CNN, released a joint statement in support of CNN, 2:41:35.129 --> 2:41:38.830 who was supposed to be the designated TV pool provider 2:41:38.970 --> 2:41:42.390 for that day at the White House. The statement reads, 2:41:43.110 --> 2:41:45.920 the public has a vital interest in receiving accurate independent 2:41:46.110 --> 2:41:49.820 information about its government. No administration should restrict a news 2:41:49.900 --> 2:41:55.810 organization because it objects to its reporting. These networks announced 2:41:55.910 --> 2:42:00.920 a solidarity blackout of White House pool coverage. With Fox News' 2:42:01.060 --> 2:42:04.260 Washington bureau chief and the current White House TV pool 2:42:04.300 --> 2:42:08.080 chair emailing the other networks on Monday, quote, This is 2:42:08.100 --> 2:42:10.600 to advise that, effective today, the TV pool will not 2:42:10.660 --> 2:42:14.370 be covering events designated as pool coverage of the president. 2:42:14.830 --> 2:42:18.530 This follows the White House's position preventing CNN from fulfilling 2:42:18.650 --> 2:42:22.750 its assigned pool duties. There will be no replacement pool 2:42:23.070 --> 2:42:27.470 put in place. And later on Monday, this did affect 2:42:27.790 --> 2:42:31.430 their ability to report on White House events as Newsmax 2:42:31.490 --> 2:42:35.730 struggled to hear the president during a ribbon-cutting ceremony. 2:42:44.890 --> 2:42:46.070 OK, so there is. 2:42:46.030 --> 2:42:49.650 No microphone because there's no microphone because the pool cameras 2:42:49.709 --> 2:42:52.670 aren't there. So maybe, Tim, this is one example of 2:42:52.850 --> 2:42:56.650 it backfiring just a little bit. Pick up on some 2:42:56.730 --> 2:43:01.690 of the things Michael was saying. And obviously the ramifications 2:43:01.790 --> 2:43:03.770 are right here. Can't hear what the president's saying. 2:43:05.690 --> 2:43:08.360 Indeed, you cannot hear what the president is saying. 2:43:08.379 --> 2:43:09.140 Backfired a little bit. 2:43:09.160 --> 2:43:11.560 Backfired a little bit. 2:43:11.640 --> 2:43:13.970 A little bit. A little bit, it seems. 2:43:14.250 --> 2:43:16.330 Well, they don't want to get the old press credential 2:43:16.350 --> 2:43:17.590 taken away. They got to be careful. 2:43:18.510 --> 2:43:21.290 To me, it's unclear how long this blackout will last 2:43:21.310 --> 2:43:23.869 and how isolated it is, because obviously there was coverage 2:43:23.890 --> 2:43:27.060 of Trump at the UN, although outlets said that that 2:43:27.080 --> 2:43:30.000 was because the UN provides those credentials. So it's unclear 2:43:30.040 --> 2:43:32.280 if this is supposed to be targeted specifically at the 2:43:32.400 --> 2:43:35.240 White House pool. We'll get a better idea in the 2:43:35.280 --> 2:43:37.600 next few days as Trump returns to the White House. 2:43:39.070 --> 2:43:42.240 But not, you know, good for as Trump says, the 2:43:42.280 --> 2:43:42.840 free press. 2:43:43.300 --> 2:43:43.580 No! 2:43:44.980 --> 2:43:49.970 Another thing not great. Last Thursday, September 17th, the FCC 2:43:50.000 --> 2:43:54.290 approved Paramount's petition to allow almost 50% of the potentially 2:43:54.330 --> 2:43:59.150 merged Paramount WB equity to be owned by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, 2:43:59.270 --> 2:44:04.830 and the UAE following this potential Warner Brothers merger. Meaning 2:44:04.930 --> 2:44:08.410 the Ellisons, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi would end 2:44:08.490 --> 2:44:16.650 up owning CBS, CNN, HBO, Discovery Channel, BET, Fandango, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount, 2:44:16.690 --> 2:44:24.010 Pluto TV, Showtime, TBS, The CW, TNT, and Warner Brothers. Now, thankfully, 2:44:24.010 --> 2:44:29.629 12 state AGs have sued to block this $ 110 billion 2:44:29.970 --> 2:44:35.050 Paramount-Warner Brothers merger since it obviously endangers competition and threatens 2:44:35.070 --> 2:44:42.109 editorial independence of even more news outlets. Though, after Paramount 2:44:42.370 --> 2:44:46.510 threatened to leave California last week, State Attorney General Rob Bonta, 2:44:46.810 --> 2:44:52.670 who was leading the state coalition's antitrust case, caved on 2:44:52.709 --> 2:44:57.230 Monday and agreed to settle their lawsuit, essentially giving this 2:44:57.290 --> 2:44:59.310 merger the final green light. 2:44:59.930 --> 2:45:01.270 California Democrat moment. 2:45:02.690 --> 2:45:03.830 This is really bad. 2:45:03.850 --> 2:45:04.450 Yeah. 2:45:10.150 --> 2:45:16.289 A list of this settlement's, quote, court-enforceable concessions, which largely 2:45:16.570 --> 2:45:19.650 amounts to Paramount promising to release around 30 movies a 2:45:19.690 --> 2:45:22.610 year for the next five years. Only for the next 2:45:22.650 --> 2:45:25.230 five years, by the way. Or else they will face 2:45:25.290 --> 2:45:30.080 penalties and be required to divest Miramax Studios. Again, this 2:45:30.140 --> 2:45:33.960 requirement only is until 2031, roughly. 2:45:33.980 --> 2:45:37.160 Also, that's what you're going to fight for? 30 Paramount 2:45:37.220 --> 2:45:39.880 movies a year? That's the big thing here? 2:45:40.879 --> 2:45:45.760 Some of the other concessions include a $ 47. 5 million fund 2:45:45.800 --> 2:45:51.340 for workers, quote, displaced by the merger, and an annual 2:45:51.340 --> 2:45:55.879 $ 5 million fund to support independent film. We did it, Rob. 2:45:56.160 --> 2:45:57.020 We did it, Gavin. 2:45:58.260 --> 2:46:01.040 We got it. $ 5 million a year for independent film. 2:46:01.780 --> 2:46:02.460 Thanks, Gav. 2:46:05.520 --> 2:46:09.959 Now, California also announced a, quote, News Editorial Independence Board 2:46:10.000 --> 2:46:17.420 to help CNN and CBS maintain editorial independence. So, you know, worries, 2:46:18.200 --> 2:46:22.960 no need, no need to be worried about this. This 2:46:23.000 --> 2:46:26.840 will be fine. But if you actually read the documents 2:46:27.080 --> 2:46:31.619 establishing this board, I'll read this here. The Editorial Independence 2:46:31.680 --> 2:46:34.100 Board should be made up of five established journalists, active 2:46:34.120 --> 2:46:36.780 or retired, each of whom shall have practiced journalism for 2:46:36.800 --> 2:46:40.359 a minimum of 10 years. No more than two editorial 2:46:40.400 --> 2:46:43.960 board members may be affiliated with the same political party. 2:46:44.440 --> 2:46:47.839 Editorial Independence Board members shall be appointed by the Combined 2:46:47.879 --> 2:46:52.230 Entities Board of Directors. Who do you think is the 2:46:52.330 --> 2:46:56.709 chair of Paramount's Board of Directors? 2:46:56.810 --> 2:46:58.490 Wild guess. Larry Ellison? 2:46:59.410 --> 2:47:00.190 David Ellison. 2:47:00.629 --> 2:47:01.369 David Ellison, sure. 2:47:01.390 --> 2:47:02.950 Oh, right, yeah, just kidding. 2:47:03.030 --> 2:47:03.450 Yeah, yeah. 2:47:04.000 --> 2:47:06.020 I love that they can't be from the same political party, right? 2:47:06.040 --> 2:47:07.320 So you're going to get two Dems, you're going to 2:47:07.340 --> 2:47:09.160 get two Republicans, then you've got a wild card in there. 2:47:09.480 --> 2:47:11.160 And there is a kind of person who is a 2:47:11.200 --> 2:47:13.950 California journalist who is a member of the Libertarian Party, 2:47:14.470 --> 2:47:16.650 and they are the worst kind of person. And you 2:47:16.770 --> 2:47:18.450 know one of them is going to fucking end up 2:47:18.510 --> 2:47:11.789 in there. I love to live in a free society. 2:47:11.830 --> 2:47:15.510 Making things worse, Semaphore reported today that Paramount is weighing 2:47:15.530 --> 2:47:18.160 tapping one Elon Musk for equity investment as well. I 2:47:18.180 --> 2:47:18.820 did read that. 2:47:18.840 --> 2:47:20.360 Physically painful. 2:47:37.629 --> 2:47:42.470 So both Ellison and Musk could end up appointing people 2:47:42.629 --> 2:47:45.550 to this editorial independence board. 2:47:46.070 --> 2:47:47.400 They love freedom. 2:47:47.879 --> 2:47:51.220 Also, the other investors are like the Saudi government and 2:47:51.240 --> 2:47:55.179 the UAE's sovereign wealth funds. Part of it, right? 2:47:55.820 --> 2:48:00.020 Part of that deal is allegedly making sure that they 2:48:00.040 --> 2:48:03.420 don't have voting power. even though they own the shares. 2:48:04.020 --> 2:48:04.510 Sure. 2:48:05.010 --> 2:48:06.369 We'll see how that works. 2:48:06.450 --> 2:48:08.410 Honestly, I would bet on the Saudis more than I 2:48:08.430 --> 2:48:10.830 would bet on Musk. Like, give them voting power. 2:48:11.690 --> 2:48:12.879 That's a dark timeline. 2:48:12.900 --> 2:48:13.840 No, no, I'm just kidding. 2:48:14.550 --> 2:48:16.300 We'll get a great comedy festival out of it. 2:48:16.590 --> 2:48:19.610 Until we have proof that Elon Musk has deployed Sudanese 2:48:19.650 --> 2:48:20.610 child soldiers in Yemen. 2:48:20.629 --> 2:48:21.610 Okay, okay, okay. 2:48:21.629 --> 2:48:22.629 I don't know. 2:48:22.950 --> 2:48:26.710 No, no, I didn't say the UAE. Let's distinguish. 2:48:26.730 --> 2:48:27.270 That is true. 2:48:27.310 --> 2:48:30.480 The Saudis also were involved in that. Not letting them 2:48:30.510 --> 2:48:30.949 off the hook. 2:48:30.980 --> 2:48:33.420 You're right, you're right, you're right. I retract it. 2:48:34.300 --> 2:48:36.420 You know exactly what kind of press freedoms Elon Musk 2:48:36.440 --> 2:48:39.160 is going to go for as well. Like, oh God. 2:48:39.760 --> 2:48:43.119 But no, this is a massive failure specifically on executives 2:48:43.180 --> 2:48:47.830 in California. between the governor, Newsom, and the state AG. 2:48:47.870 --> 2:48:50.470 The fact that they caved on this due to the 2:48:50.530 --> 2:48:53.869 threat of Paramount moving to a different state puts the 2:48:54.150 --> 2:48:56.150 whole country in jeopardy. 2:48:56.530 --> 2:48:59.470 People really need to wise up to what Newsom's doing 2:48:59.530 --> 2:49:02.160 right now. He's very clearly signaling that he will be 2:49:02.220 --> 2:49:05.740 friendly to capital before he makes his presidential run. He 2:49:05.760 --> 2:49:08.439 did it with the wildfire settlements in California. He's doing 2:49:08.500 --> 2:49:10.820 it with this. He is showing that he is going 2:49:10.840 --> 2:49:13.640 to be everything that Democrats have disappointed you with for 2:49:13.680 --> 2:49:19.800 the last 4, 8, 12 years. I despise what Newsom 2:49:19.840 --> 2:49:20.500 is doing right now. 2:49:21.140 --> 2:49:23.890 The other thing in the fine print of these concessions 2:49:24.790 --> 2:49:30.610 is the force majeure clause that allows the combined entity 2:49:30.690 --> 2:49:37.429 to get out of all these concessions in situations of, quote, War, rebellion, hurricanes, 2:49:37.610 --> 2:49:43.910 other major storms, earthquakes, fires, terrorism, pandemics, strikes, labor disruptions, 2:49:44.670 --> 2:49:49.090 economic recessions, riots, insurrections, civil commotions, blockades. 2:49:49.110 --> 2:49:49.920 Jesus Christ. 2:49:50.560 --> 2:49:53.340 So in the case of the AI bubble bursting, they 2:49:53.360 --> 2:49:56.380 can get out of all of these concessions that the 2:49:56.420 --> 2:49:59.320 state AG of California is claiming as their big victory. 2:49:59.890 --> 2:50:02.390 Of course, also strikes and labor disruptions included in there 2:50:02.450 --> 2:50:02.810 as well. 2:50:03.370 --> 2:50:04.530 What's a civil commotion? 2:50:04.709 --> 2:50:05.610 A little shenanigans. 2:50:07.740 --> 2:50:10.860 James, it's what happens when I walk down the street. 2:50:11.360 --> 2:50:12.420 It's a civil commotion. 2:50:13.280 --> 2:50:15.220 That is a spiritually British phrase. 2:50:18.060 --> 2:50:20.540 What legal basis is this? 2:50:20.800 --> 2:50:22.619 I'm going to hit us up if you've been convicted 2:50:22.640 --> 2:50:23.400 of civil commotion. 2:50:25.440 --> 2:50:27.640 One final note on this, also on Monday, the Writers 2:50:27.660 --> 2:50:30.580 Guild of America settled their own lawsuit filed this past 2:50:30.600 --> 2:50:34.490 summer on the grounds that this merger violates antitrust and 2:50:34.530 --> 2:50:38.410 would cause specific harm to workers. In terms of concessions 2:50:38.490 --> 2:50:42.170 that the WGA was able to achieve, they got Paramount 2:50:42.190 --> 2:50:44.890 to agree to a layoff prohibition for five years for 2:50:45.030 --> 2:50:48.050 CBS News broadcast members and got Paramount to agree to 2:50:48.090 --> 2:50:51.840 pay $ 17. 5 million to the Writers Guild Health Fund and 2:50:52.020 --> 2:50:55.340 cover their attorney's fees from the litigation. to quote the 2:50:55.540 --> 2:51:00.020 WGA statement, quote, Unfortunately, the conditions Paramount has committed to 2:51:00.440 --> 2:51:04.420 with the AGs and with us fall far short of 2:51:04.480 --> 2:51:07.540 adequately protecting writers, and we continue to believe the merger 2:51:07.860 --> 2:51:11.430 will cause damage to the industry at large. As labor unions, however, 2:51:11.650 --> 2:51:14.130 the AGs' settlement means that we had to contend with 2:51:14.170 --> 2:51:17.310 the reality of forging ahead alone with a lawsuit that 2:51:17.350 --> 2:51:23.030 would cost millions of dollars through trial, unquote. Quick update here. 2:51:23.629 --> 2:51:29.310 On Thursday, a California judge delayed the court sign-off of 2:51:29.390 --> 2:51:33.390 this settlement for at least another week by granting an 2:51:33.450 --> 2:51:38.090 administrative motion by a coalition to block the merger. This 2:51:38.240 --> 2:51:41.160 settlement to complete the merger does require a sign-off from 2:51:41.220 --> 2:51:45.300 this judge. The parties have till Monday. The next hearing 2:51:45.379 --> 2:51:49.170 to go over the settlement is expected to be on Tuesday. 2:51:50.709 --> 2:51:53.990 You know, rolling it back a couple seconds, speaking of 2:51:54.150 --> 2:51:59.610 spiritually British, let's talk about Canada in our final section. 2:51:59.629 --> 2:52:00.790 Hey, that is a burn. 2:52:00.950 --> 2:52:01.610 It's a good one. 2:52:01.629 --> 2:52:02.290 It's a good one. 2:52:03.490 --> 2:52:10.030 So, okay, last Wednesday, September 16th, EU Commission President Ursula 2:52:10.080 --> 2:52:13.800 von der Leyen proposed that Canada become the only, quote, 2:52:13.940 --> 2:52:16.340 associate member of the EU? 2:52:16.980 --> 2:52:17.600 Hell yeah. 2:52:18.000 --> 2:52:18.320 Nice. 2:52:19.020 --> 2:52:19.240 So. 2:52:20.440 --> 2:52:23.120 This was obviously, well, I say obviously, this was the 2:52:23.180 --> 2:52:27.500 day before Carney spoke in front of the European Parliament, 2:52:27.600 --> 2:52:30.520 was receptive to the offer, and it seems like this 2:52:30.540 --> 2:52:34.660 is something that's going to get voted on by the Parliament. 2:52:35.220 --> 2:52:37.120 Later on in this sort of trip, he met with 2:52:37.140 --> 2:52:39.700 the leaders of France and England and spent a lot 2:52:39.720 --> 2:52:44.050 of time talking about strengthening ties with European nations. It 2:52:44.070 --> 2:52:47.310 was also, I don't know if revealed the right term, 2:52:48.050 --> 2:52:52.119 but there was... The whole process of this was very weird, 2:52:52.420 --> 2:52:54.859 but basically it was, it was, it was like got 2:52:54.940 --> 2:52:59.090 to the press that Canada had asked to join the, 2:52:59.900 --> 2:53:03.390 it's called the joint expeditionary force, which is this sort 2:53:03.430 --> 2:53:08.410 of like British led like military alliance project. I'm just 2:53:08.430 --> 2:53:11.830 going to quote from CBC here, quote, as it was 2:53:11.910 --> 2:53:15.789 originally conceived, the joint expeditionary force was meant to preserve 2:53:15.890 --> 2:53:18.890 battlefield relations that grew up during the Afghan war. So 2:53:18.910 --> 2:53:24.020 we're off to it. great start here. In 2012, Britain's 2:53:24.100 --> 2:53:28.020 then chief of defense, General Sir David Richards, described a 2:53:28.060 --> 2:53:31.430 future force that could deploy rapidly overseas without Britain having 2:53:31.450 --> 2:53:35.990 to assemble an entirely new coalition for every crisis. So, again, 2:53:36.030 --> 2:53:38.390 originally this is a kind of, they want to be 2:53:38.410 --> 2:53:41.390 able to kind of build on the military integration of 2:53:41.430 --> 2:53:45.599 the war in Afghanistan, which, I don't know, very few 2:53:45.660 --> 2:53:48.040 wars in which I want to less build on military 2:53:48.080 --> 2:53:52.160 integration from. In recent times, it has been more that 2:53:52.200 --> 2:53:58.040 the sort of coalition existence and prominence has been more 2:53:58.080 --> 2:54:03.690 about its potential response to continued Russian aggression in Europe. 2:54:05.030 --> 2:54:07.850 So all of this basically dropped at the same time 2:54:08.810 --> 2:54:13.550 last week. Trump responded to the whole thing about Canada 2:54:13.570 --> 2:54:16.140 becoming an associate member of the EU by saying it 2:54:16.170 --> 2:54:20.000 would be a, quote, hostile act. He also said, quote, 2:54:20.620 --> 2:54:24.120 if it's a good intention, that's fine. If it's bad intention, 2:54:24.500 --> 2:54:28.170 we'll put very heavy tariffs on Europe. So who knows 2:54:28.190 --> 2:54:28.510 with that? 2:54:28.830 --> 2:54:29.209 I don't know. 2:54:29.330 --> 2:54:31.350 Genuinely, who knows what's going to happen with that situation? 2:54:31.370 --> 2:54:33.330 I don't know. 2:54:34.290 --> 2:54:36.910 Maybe we can negotiate a swap now that Britain has 2:54:36.970 --> 2:54:41.400 left Europe and Britain could join NAFTA. 2:54:42.560 --> 2:54:46.960 Yeah, can we physically swap the countries and put Canada 2:54:47.080 --> 2:54:47.560 over Britain? 2:54:48.190 --> 2:54:51.439 Sure. At least they wouldn't have as much fucking coastline 2:54:51.480 --> 2:54:54.640 to be bastards about back home. Probably more coastline in 2:54:54.660 --> 2:54:56.000 Canada just because it's vast. 2:54:56.980 --> 2:54:57.180 Yeah. 2:54:57.340 --> 2:55:00.099 So, OK, we really know very little about what Trump's 2:55:00.140 --> 2:55:03.100 response is going to be to this. Now, the part 2:55:03.140 --> 2:55:05.800 that I actually am interested in here is what does 2:55:05.840 --> 2:55:09.940 this associate membership thing actually mean? And what is this 2:55:10.160 --> 2:55:14.590 actual partnership supposed to look like? So we talked a 2:55:14.590 --> 2:55:17.470 little bit. Obviously, there's some military integration. Most of it 2:55:17.690 --> 2:55:21.810 seems to be trade alliances. And even that is kind 2:55:21.870 --> 2:55:24.750 of vague. What you get out of it looking into 2:55:24.790 --> 2:55:27.820 this is that the rhetoric coming out of both the 2:55:27.920 --> 2:55:30.849 EU and Canada is extremely loud. They're talking about the 2:55:30.920 --> 2:55:34.340 crisis of democratic institutions and the rule of law globally. 2:55:34.360 --> 2:55:34.980 Yeah. 2:55:35.360 --> 2:55:38.160 All of this sort of stuff. But there was a 2:55:38.180 --> 2:55:43.140 really interesting thing. interview in foreign policy with Canada's foreign minister, 2:55:43.220 --> 2:55:48.630 Anita Anand, about what actually, under the surface of this 2:55:48.650 --> 2:55:52.430 sort of grand rhetoric about forming this sort of coalition 2:55:52.450 --> 2:55:56.230 and promoting the rule of law and being a non-coercive 2:55:56.290 --> 2:55:59.710 body and all of this sort of very grand rhetoric 2:55:59.750 --> 2:56:03.430 that is in response to Trump without really mentioning him, 2:56:04.420 --> 2:56:06.820 There's a lot of really interesting parts of this interview 2:56:06.860 --> 2:56:10.359 with Canada's foreign minister about what they're actually talking about doing. 2:56:10.379 --> 2:56:13.680 I think maybe the first thing that she gets asked 2:56:14.440 --> 2:56:16.730 is Trump saying, quote, we don't need Canada. 2:56:16.770 --> 2:56:17.510 They need us. 2:56:18.129 --> 2:56:20.770 And the response is very interesting because what she's doing 2:56:20.970 --> 2:56:23.190 is deemphasizing an actual break with the U.S. 2:56:23.250 --> 2:56:23.810 Economically. 2:56:24.209 --> 2:56:26.189 Which is what all of the reporting on this, everyone 2:56:26.230 --> 2:56:28.310 is talking about how like, oh, this is like Canada 2:56:28.350 --> 2:56:30.550 trying to pivot away from the US. And her response 2:56:30.570 --> 2:56:32.090 to this is like, well, no, the US and Canada 2:56:32.110 --> 2:56:34.850 are just permanently economically integrated. The auto sector is this, 2:56:35.350 --> 2:56:37.750 you know, like sign of permanent integration between the economies. 2:56:38.660 --> 2:56:38.850 Yeah. 2:56:39.430 --> 2:56:43.260 And largely the focus of her response is that, oh, 2:56:43.320 --> 2:56:45.740 we have a bunch of free trade pacts with a 2:56:45.780 --> 2:56:48.140 bunch of other parts of the world and, you know, 2:56:48.160 --> 2:56:49.260 between the US and Canada. 2:56:50.560 --> 2:56:50.680 So. 2:56:51.110 --> 2:56:52.550 This is kind of a sign of like when these 2:56:52.590 --> 2:56:54.869 people are talking about sort of a rules-based international order, 2:56:54.890 --> 2:56:57.780 what they're talking about is free trade pacts. I'm going 2:56:57.800 --> 2:57:00.100 to read this quote from the interview. So the first 2:57:00.140 --> 2:57:03.200 part of this, the question is from the foreign policy 2:57:03.220 --> 2:57:06.650 interviewer quote. So let me talk a little bit then 2:57:06.709 --> 2:57:09.949 about the canada europe relationship i hear the phrase associate 2:57:10.010 --> 2:57:12.520 member being used a week ago what would that entail 2:57:12.600 --> 2:57:15.000 what does that mean and then this is uh the 2:57:15.020 --> 2:57:18.680 canadian foreign minister the nomenclature that is being attached the 2:57:18.780 --> 2:57:21.700 growing relationship between canada and the eu is not the 2:57:21.740 --> 2:57:25.140 focus of the work we're doing building up to the 2:57:25.300 --> 2:57:27.640 canada eu summit in montreal at the end of october 2:57:28.240 --> 2:57:31.420 Our focus is on several pillars where you will see 2:57:31.500 --> 2:57:35.240 deeper integration on critical minerals, AI and quantum, trade and 2:57:35.260 --> 2:57:40.060 investments following on from the Canada-EU comprehensive economic and trade 2:57:40.100 --> 2:57:44.480 agreements and people-to-people ties, including education students and the Erasmus program. 2:57:45.560 --> 2:57:48.970 The substantive discussions between our teams right now are very 2:57:49.030 --> 2:57:52.950 focused on these pillars. So this is the actual, right? 2:57:53.570 --> 2:57:55.030 It missed everyone talking about how like we're going to 2:57:55.050 --> 2:57:56.610 form like a new trade block to. 2:57:56.490 --> 2:57:57.590 Like fight the US. 2:57:57.629 --> 2:58:01.510 It's like, no, they're doing free trade negotiations, basically. Yeah, 2:58:01.530 --> 2:58:05.150 and that's what Carney's been really pushing for. He's essentially 2:58:05.190 --> 2:58:07.550 just trying to be like Bill Clinton for Canada without 2:58:07.570 --> 2:58:09.830 that stuff. 2:58:09.970 --> 2:58:13.609 Yeah, without that or playing the saxophone. Yeah, slightly more boring. 2:58:14.030 --> 2:58:15.070 He's a central banker. 2:58:15.090 --> 2:58:18.600 Yeah, yeah. And I'm going to get to that in 2:58:18.640 --> 2:58:20.740 a second in terms of what they're actually sort of 2:58:20.780 --> 2:58:23.910 trying to do. But You know, I think the comparison 2:58:23.950 --> 2:58:25.670 to Clinton is a good one because like what you 2:58:25.730 --> 2:58:28.950 have here basically is like what this bloc is, is 2:58:28.990 --> 2:58:31.870 this attempt to form a sort of like old school neoliberal, 2:58:31.930 --> 2:58:35.770 I say old school, but like 90s, 2000s style neoliberal 2:58:35.830 --> 2:58:38.350 bloc to oppose the sort of like modern Trump fascism. 2:58:38.770 --> 2:58:40.590 And it's like, well, okay, so that like got us 2:58:40.629 --> 2:58:44.420 fascism in the first place, right? So that's not great. 2:58:44.879 --> 2:58:46.340 There's also a lot of talk about sort of the 2:58:46.379 --> 2:58:47.900 defense and support for Ukraine. 2:58:47.980 --> 2:58:48.140 Yeah. 2:58:48.959 --> 2:58:51.920 But I want to have one last quote from this 2:58:52.000 --> 2:58:55.070 article to really get a sense of what is going 2:58:55.170 --> 2:58:59.650 on here. This is Anand, the foreign minister. Taking you 2:58:59.670 --> 2:59:02.190 to the investment summit that we held last week in Toronto, 2:59:02.230 --> 2:59:05.840 we are seeing increasing levels of foreign direct investment. Commitments 2:59:05.879 --> 2:59:09.480 of $ 500 billion last week alone to Canada through 10 2:59:09.480 --> 2:59:13.689 national projects from ports to highways to airports. Across the board, 2:59:13.830 --> 2:59:16.960 our work is to shorten the time period, the path 2:59:17.000 --> 2:59:20.120 to permit time period, so that investments continue to flow 2:59:20.180 --> 2:59:24.330 into our country towards national projects. So what does that mean? 2:59:25.450 --> 2:59:29.010 And this is where things get really, really bad. Because 2:59:29.050 --> 2:59:31.250 what she's talking about when she's talking about this, like, 2:59:31.490 --> 2:59:33.720 you know, we're shortening the path to permit time. So 2:59:33.750 --> 2:59:36.380 investment continues to come in for national projects. What she's 2:59:36.400 --> 2:59:40.459 talking about is what's called Bill C-39, which is, I guess, 2:59:40.480 --> 2:59:44.480 like the next version of the Build Canada Strong Act. So, 2:59:44.800 --> 2:59:48.890 you know, it's a giant neoliberal deregulation bill, right? It 2:59:48.930 --> 2:59:52.100 decreases the permit process. for a whole bunch of projects 2:59:52.120 --> 2:59:54.900 that are in, quote, the national interest from, you know, 2:59:54.920 --> 2:59:56.620 these can take multiple years if you're talking about environmental 2:59:56.840 --> 3:00:00.560 impact assessments, you're talking about, like, input from indigenous communities, 3:00:00.580 --> 3:00:02.520 you're putting, there's a whole bunch of things that you're 3:00:02.550 --> 3:00:04.189 supposed to have to do before you can start one 3:00:04.209 --> 3:00:08.190 of these sort of mega projects. And this bill would 3:00:08.209 --> 3:00:10.990 reduce that entire process to one year. It would allow 3:00:11.070 --> 3:00:14.890 ministers to just sort of wave away environmental protections if 3:00:14.930 --> 3:00:16.970 it was deemed in the national interest. I'm going to 3:00:17.010 --> 3:00:19.629 quote from the Toronto Star here, quote, it would also 3:00:19.690 --> 3:00:24.350 create special interests zones called regions of national interest, where 3:00:24.390 --> 3:00:27.690 approvals for projects can be, quote, streamlined in certain areas, 3:00:27.750 --> 3:00:33.160 officials said, and follows recent changes. That means cross-border oil pipelines, 3:00:33.320 --> 3:00:37.500 gas-fired power plants, oil sands facilities, and other projects will 3:00:37.540 --> 3:00:42.259 no longer be subject to the existing federal impact assessment process. 3:00:43.000 --> 3:00:46.109 So this is special economic zones for oil fields. 3:00:46.530 --> 3:00:49.590 I was about to say they're doing a special economic zone. 3:00:50.320 --> 3:00:54.359 Yeah, and specifically, it's special economic zone where all of 3:00:54.410 --> 3:00:57.230 the environmental impact assessments of like, hey, is this oil 3:00:57.290 --> 3:01:00.289 field going to poison everyone who lives around it? We're 3:01:00.310 --> 3:01:03.330 not doing that. I'm going to quote here from the Narwhal. 3:01:03.830 --> 3:01:07.430 The legislation takes federal review of pipelines, nuclear facilities and 3:01:07.490 --> 3:01:09.930 power lines out of the hands of the Impact Assessment 3:01:09.970 --> 3:01:12.190 Agency of Canada, a federal body that reports to the 3:01:12.209 --> 3:01:15.920 environmental minister. and is meant to ensure project designs protect 3:01:15.959 --> 3:01:19.340 Indigenous rights in the environment. Instead, pipeline projects will be 3:01:19.400 --> 3:01:22.370 reviewed by the Canada Energy Regulator and Agency of the 3:01:22.450 --> 3:01:26.090 Crown that reports to the Energy Minister and oversees construction 3:01:26.110 --> 3:01:30.410 and operation of certain pipelines and power lines. So, that's 3:01:30.430 --> 3:01:32.890 a very dull way of saying that instead of environmental 3:01:32.930 --> 3:01:36.860 regulators looking at the impact of Like, car sands, it's 3:01:36.900 --> 3:01:38.600 going to the energy guys. 3:01:38.720 --> 3:01:39.440 It goes to the executive. 3:01:39.459 --> 3:01:39.740 Yeah. 3:01:39.879 --> 3:01:40.859 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 3:01:41.040 --> 3:01:43.080 And this is something that's been very specifically, like, pushed 3:01:43.150 --> 3:01:45.810 for in a massive lobbying campaign by the Canadian oil 3:01:45.870 --> 3:01:50.070 and gas industry over the last, like, few years. So, obviously, 3:01:50.270 --> 3:01:54.230 this is an enormous danger to Indigenous sovereignty, to, you know, 3:01:54.650 --> 3:01:59.060 anyone who, like, wants there to be a livable environment. 3:01:59.730 --> 3:02:02.990 And also, it gives the labor ministry the right to 3:02:03.110 --> 3:02:03.869 end strikes. 3:02:03.890 --> 3:02:04.550 Oh, cool. 3:02:05.070 --> 3:02:08.710 So effectively what it does, right, is there is a 3:02:09.070 --> 3:02:12.189 very nebulous legal authority that the Canadian government used to 3:02:12.250 --> 3:02:15.480 crush an Air Canada flight attendant strike in 2025. And 3:02:15.560 --> 3:02:19.880 this bill would just codify that right and completely ignore 3:02:19.900 --> 3:02:22.879 the union's legal challenges to it and would allow just 3:02:23.020 --> 3:02:26.060 government ministers effectively to just end strikes if they're in 3:02:26.140 --> 3:02:30.600 areas that are deemed as like adversely affecting the national interest, 3:02:30.879 --> 3:02:33.180 I'm going to quote from the MSN article here, either 3:02:33.240 --> 3:02:37.360 by having a, quote, significant impact on the economy or causing, quote, 3:02:37.500 --> 3:02:41.970 serious social disruption. So, you know, it's interesting because the 3:02:42.000 --> 3:02:44.490 Carney administration has said that this is actually like a 3:02:44.610 --> 3:02:46.990 protection of the right to strike, even though it's giving 3:02:47.030 --> 3:02:50.970 a government minister the ability to end strikes. But this 3:02:51.190 --> 3:02:54.050 bill is being opposed by, you know, by the entire 3:02:54.230 --> 3:02:56.910 Canadian labor movement because it gives the government the ability 3:02:57.010 --> 3:03:00.720 to kill strikes on behalf of you know, on behalf 3:03:00.740 --> 3:03:04.300 of corporations in the name of this extremely nebulous national interest. 3:03:04.320 --> 3:03:07.640 There's no way that could possibly go wrong. And I 3:03:07.680 --> 3:03:10.039 think both of these put together lets you look at 3:03:10.060 --> 3:03:15.039 the domestic side of this entire sort of PR, international 3:03:15.100 --> 3:03:18.879 PR push that's going on, right? It's the deployment of 3:03:18.920 --> 3:03:22.100 neoliberalism nominally against fascism. It is using the threat of 3:03:22.120 --> 3:03:25.650 the US to crush organized labor, indigenous groups, and environmental groups, 3:03:26.310 --> 3:03:29.070 which are the same enemies that sort of Trump and 3:03:29.090 --> 3:03:31.769 the American fascist movements have. It's just that it's being 3:03:31.850 --> 3:03:35.410 implemented using a sort of state of emergency caused by 3:03:35.450 --> 3:03:36.350 the fascists themselves. 3:03:37.190 --> 3:03:37.370 Yeah. 3:03:37.410 --> 3:03:39.910 And I think that's something that's incredibly important to keep 3:03:39.950 --> 3:03:42.930 in mind whenever you're sort of reading about Carney, whenever 3:03:42.950 --> 3:03:46.880 you're reading about this sort of international project that he's 3:03:46.930 --> 3:03:49.620 embarking on is that this is what this project means, right? 3:03:49.980 --> 3:03:51.520 It's a war to be able to do free trade 3:03:51.560 --> 3:03:55.959 in special economic zones. With that, I think that is 3:03:56.080 --> 3:03:59.300 all for us today at It Could Happen Here. Denna, 3:03:59.320 --> 3:04:01.060 do you have anything you would like to plug? 3:04:01.840 --> 3:04:04.539 I want to direct people to the handbook of authoritarianism 3:04:04.560 --> 3:04:07.740 in the Arab world, which I edited, and it's out now, 3:04:07.820 --> 3:04:11.280 open access on the Bloomsbury Politics website. So if you 3:04:11.300 --> 3:04:13.640 just Google it, you'll find it. It's got lots of 3:04:14.220 --> 3:04:16.980 contributors from the MENA region, SWANA, whatever you want to 3:04:17.000 --> 3:04:17.240 call it. 3:04:17.700 --> 3:04:18.740 Cool. Yeah. 3:04:18.879 --> 3:04:20.260 Thank you for having me. Yeah. 3:04:20.280 --> 3:04:23.010 Thanks for coming. If you'd like to email us, you 3:04:23.030 --> 3:04:27.110 can do so, coolzontips at proton.me. Some of you fuckers 3:04:27.150 --> 3:04:29.420 in the marketing world are still not fucking listening to me, 3:04:29.480 --> 3:04:32.439 so just say again, do not fucking email me about 3:04:32.480 --> 3:04:35.740 your product or service. I will block you. Don't email 3:04:35.760 --> 3:04:38.000 me about putting my podcast on YouTube to get more viewers. 3:04:38.040 --> 3:04:41.900 I don't fucking care. I'm going to block you harder 3:04:41.940 --> 3:04:43.580 from all of the iHeart emails one day. 3:04:44.260 --> 3:04:45.590 Put a trans scroll on your couch. 3:04:46.550 --> 3:04:48.009 We've reported the news. 3:04:49.890 --> 3:04:50.670 We reported the news. 3:04:56.580 --> 3:04:59.699 Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week 3:04:59.780 --> 3:05:01.629 from now until the heat death of the universe. 3:05:02.510 --> 3:05:04.950 It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. 3:05:05.150 --> 3:05:09.490 For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com. 3:05:09.950 --> 3:05:12.750 Or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, 3:05:13.129 --> 3:05:15.910 or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find 3:05:15.970 --> 3:05:18.910 sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. 3:05:19.390 --> 3:05:20.070 Thanks for listening.