It Could Happen Here Weekly 136

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
you can make your own decisions.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Welcome, dick it up and here a podcast that's occasionally
hijacked by the Supreme Court because a bunch of fun
a lucky dipshit's rule us all. I'm your host, me
along with.

Speaker 4 (00:37):
Me as James Hi man, I'm excited to be hijacked.
If they're like a pirate situation is like Samuel alta
Liker one leg and a patch coming in hijacking.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
They are not cool. To be fair, I've made a
mistake here because the Supreme Court justices are not cool
enough to take up a piracy that is that is
a grand and noble tradition dating back millennia.

Speaker 4 (00:58):
Yeah, we've been compulsory. I what's it colled civil asset
forfeited by the Supreme.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Yeah, theft bad. So originally this is gonna be an
episode about how messed up Clarence Thomas is and Samuel
Alito's wives are, because, oh my god, are they a
bunch of right wing fanatics. We haven't really covered it
on this show. But then this episode got hijacked by
a bunch of other Supreme Court news. So we're gonna
talk a bit about Samuel Alito's wife, will We'll put

(01:26):
off Clarence Thomas's qan on wife for another day. But yeah, so,
so this is gonna be a sort of random episode
of the sixteen million pieces of Supreme cour We're not
even getting gatch to them all. There's Supreme Court news
that like we can't even cover, there's too much of it.
But yeah, let's start with the MEPhI pristone case. So okay,

(01:49):
I think people we've talked about MEPhI pristone before on
the show, and you know, there's been a widely sort
of dreaded case where a group called the Alliance for
Hippocratic Medicine been trying to see the FDA.

Speaker 4 (02:01):
Yeah, the amount of these fucking pretend medical organizations, I'm sorry,
I'm deready. The episode that's like the American College of
Pediatrics is another one, like.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
Hey, wait till you find out who these people actually are,
because it's amazing. And two, I think you haven't seen
any of these legal arguments right now. Oh I'm hoping
that we get to Bohemian Grove. That's the only thing
I've followed from a Supreme Court. Amazingly, Supremeia, the Bohemian
Grove did not make the cut.

Speaker 4 (02:27):
Amazingly Damn. Okay, I'm ready for some high tear shit.
I'm so excited. You are about to see some shit.
You are about to see what I genuinely believe to
be the worst legal arguments ever made in a court
of law. And like I say this having watched like
probably four I listen to probably forty hours of Alex

(02:48):
Jones trial depositions from different trials, and I genuinely believe these.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
To be the worst legal arguments anyone has ever made.
So all right, I'm I'm going to quote from an
article on the Nation here, no Elias, So this is
this is about who the Alliance for Hypocratic Medicine is.
Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine is a mismash of anti abortion
doctors nurses and dentists, yes, dentists, amazing though none of

(03:20):
them have ever prescribed the pill, claimed that they are
being they have been harmed by its existence. Their theories
of standing weight range from comical to inapt to offensive
to contemptible. They include arguments such as, doctors who do
not perform abortions are harmed when they have to work
in the emergency room where alleged complications from the abortion

(03:41):
pill arise. And by the way, we should mention this.
By the way, so part of part of this whole
thing is that there's been the right has been trying
to like make up this fake argument that this abortion well, okay,
mess of person can be used for a number of things.
But they've been trying to make up arguments that like
there's like scary side effects with fake studies, and like
even the right wing court was like this is bullshit.

(04:02):
So so again they're saying that again, having a doctor
who has to do work in a place where there's
fake side effects that aren't happening, they're saying this is
this is an injury. The second one obstetricians who do
not perform abortions are harmed because they feel complicit in
the abortions that take place, even if they are not
a part of the procedures. What the fuck? Literally, one

(04:26):
of the justices was like, what do you mean a
complicit Are you handing them a bottle of water or
something like, I'm.

Speaker 4 (04:32):
The the abortion clinic. That's what I do. I'm on
the hydration team. Fucking Planned Parenthood.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
Medical staff are hard via complicity. Also and four and
this is the best one, this one, I rando. People
who do not perform abortions nonetheless suffer from quote unquote
aesthetic injury of being deprived as seeing pregnant people jiggle

(05:08):
around was sore bad. This is also this is a
direct call from the thing. I'm not making this theory up.
This is what Fifth Circuit Judge James Hoe wrote with
upholding the ban on mephipristone.

Speaker 4 (05:20):
Okay, what the fuck like? What this is like that
they're being deprived of the say, this is like a
kink thing. They can't see pregnant people.

Speaker 3 (05:28):
No, no, it's a parent Apparently. The theory is that
being able to see pregnant people is like good and
healthy for you or something, and if you don't do it,
And there's there's another one. There's another one that that
wasn't in this article, but that wasn't some other things.
Is that I one of their other cases is that
doctors enjoy working with unborn patients, and then this is

(05:50):
this is an injury to them.

Speaker 4 (05:51):
Yeah, I think you may want to examine your fucking
social skills, but but.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
Your fucking dentists are being like, I can't work on
the teeth pregnant people.

Speaker 4 (06:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've been deprived from doing fetus orthodontics,
and therefore I will take it to the Supreme Court.
What a wild fucking case. Whate incredible system that this
made it to the Supreme Court.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
Okay, the absolute funniest part about this, the like right
wing dipshit lawyer for the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine is
Josh Halley's wife.

Speaker 4 (06:24):
I didn't juste halle like like Popular Front salute to
the January sixth people. Yeah that little yeah, yeah, I
will not use an adjective that we cannot broadcast.

Speaker 3 (06:34):
Okay, and so sort of, I mean, not that surprise.
So people who are following the trial, I think expected
this well, they expected probably like a sevent too or
an eight one. But this was a nine to Oh no, wait,
this is bullshit, Like I think, I think, you know.
So there's been a lot of like good coverage about
the sort of legal aspects here, and I guess we

(06:55):
should we should before we go for that, we should mention.
So what this ruling does, like effectively is that, Okay,
so there's not going to be a national ban of
MEPhI pristone. However, comma the states that have outlawed MEPhI pristone,
it's that doesn't change anything there. So there are still
a lot of people who cannot access this drug, who
cannot access their life saving medical care because they're ruled

(07:19):
by a bunch of fucking right wing bigots and like
Christian extremists, et cetera, et cetera. But this case has
established something extremely important, which is that there is actually
a legal limit to the amount of bullshit you can do,
even if you are a right wing lawyer who like

(07:41):
the court agrees with like Josh Holly's wife used to
be a clerk for Justice John Roberts. So she was like,
she's like embedded, embedded in this whole right wing ecoism.
She's one of the big sort.

Speaker 4 (07:53):
Of right yeah, yeah, yeah, grooming her for success.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
But these people final for like the first time ever
made made a set of legal argument's sole bullshit. Even
the Supreme Court was like, what the fuck? And I think,
I think, okay, so this is this is where we're
going into sort of MIA's kind of like bullshit theory here.
But the reason this was thrown out was that, Okay,

(08:18):
so this is the part that's like obviously real. So
in American law, I mean, I think this is true
of most legal systems. I don't know any that don't
function like this. But in order so, in the US,
it is very easy to sue someone. You can sue
someone over twenty dollars. It's in the constitution. It fucking rules.
It's very funny. We are extremely ligitious country. But you

(08:39):
need you need what you need something called standing to
sue in order to do this. There's some kind of
complicated parts of this that you know, evolve around jurisdiction
and what court blah blah blah. But the important thing
is that someone has to have done an injury to you.
And this this is the part when this entire case
fell apart because they could not find a single person.

(09:00):
But that's suffered an actual injury from members time.

Speaker 4 (09:04):
Yes, outstanding, just incredible stuff, like yeah, yeah, well, I
mean that's because they could sue on behalf of unborn people.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
Mea, it didn't work, well, I mean to for this,
this one technically wasn't this This one was on behalf
of like of the dentists and dentists and ship. But okay,
I think I think that there's been an important legal
standing here because so you know, we we have covered
on this show the case three h three Creator versus Alenis,

(09:33):
which is the one where the Supreme Court ruled that
is legal to discriminate against queer people on religious grounds
as long as your business is quote unquote creative and
it's like a speech act. That that's the one where
it's a cake one, right, uh no, this is a
wedding website one. This this is this is the more
recent one that was like some woman was like I
was forced to make a wedding website for a gay person. Now, okay,

(09:56):
so what we talked about in that case is that importantly,
this never happened. This woman was never forced to make
a website for a gay person, right, like that that
never happened. But you know, the court. The court still
upheld that and like let them, you know, like like
let them basically institute a bunch of like insane you know,
like potentially like states can institute a bunch of like

(10:18):
insane laws. Now about this, but okay, So, so what
we have in in the wedding website case is you
have a real person who a fake injury happened to,
and that apparently is good enough for standing for if
you're a right wing like activist for the Supreme Court,
you can have a real person that an injury did
not happen to you, but they can imagine an injury

(10:40):
that could have happened to them, and that's good enough.
Now there's an important legal president of being set here,
which is that, Okay, again, nothing has to actually have
happened to You can make up what happened to you,
but you have to have a an actual person who
would injury could have happened to. And b you could
have a fake injury, but if the injur was real,
it would have to be a real injury. Like so

(11:03):
so you could you could you can march up the
Supreme Court with a person who said I was thrown
into a volcano because of Woke. And obviously they weren't,
they weren't thrown into a volcano. But you know, you
you could have Woke outlawed because they said they were
thrown into a volcano because of Woke. But what you
can't do, apparently, the actual line is you have no person,

(11:24):
right is you are a group of people who are
suing who have said that because of Woke, someone somewhere
like hypothetically it might become impossible to flap your wings
and fly, And that's apparently because no, no, no, that's not
true though, because the the sarlac pit could conceivably you
you could build a sarlac pit, right right, Okay, yeah,

(11:45):
it's like if you're you're the fake injury you're imagining
if it were real, like would have to be a
real injury. What you can't do is have is not
have a person and then also have the injury you're
talking about not be a real injury even even if
it did happen, which is what's happening in this case.
So that's the line that has been drawn in the
sand for conservatives is like you absolute clowns, like we

(12:10):
are going to let you break every single law, but
the thing you're pretending happened, if it actually did happen,
has to has to be a real injury. So this
is the light of the sand that's been drawn by
a huge democracy. Yeah. I mean also, like, I mean,
obviously there's some sort of poison pill stuff in this
that's kind of more legally complicated that we're not going

(12:32):
to really get into. Me. There's some stuff in here
that because this is a Kavanall ruling, right, So there's
some stuff in here that like is kind of is
basically Kavnall being like, Okay, if you want to do
this again, but like bring a real case, Like here's
how you might be able to do it.

Speaker 4 (12:46):
Yeah, where he like coaches him through. Yeah, I mean
there's like a little bit of that.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
And there's some stuff here basically trying to make it
harder for civil rights groups to like do cases where
like they have one of their people pose as a
right someone trying to buy a house or whatever. So
those are some stuff. This ruling is still fucking over
some people's civil rights. Like less you think the Supreme
Court did something good, but we have now established the
Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine standard of fake injury. H do

(13:15):
you know what else? Do you know what else will
give you fake injuries but not real injuries?

Speaker 4 (13:20):
What can we say categorically that that's I mean, what
if we get like black rifle coffee, right, that could
do an injury to your to your gut?

Speaker 3 (13:27):
I guess, I guess we can't say that we Okay,
do you know what else? We cannot make any promises about?

Speaker 4 (13:32):
Would that be the products and services to support this show?

Speaker 3 (13:35):
It is and we are back. So speaking of products
and services, there was also a very bad Supreme Court
ruling in a case about the National Labor Relations Board
and Starbucks. So I don't know if we I don't

(13:58):
think we specific covered this. We've covered a lot of
cases on this show of people being fired in retaliation
for stars we covered a different case of a worker
being fired in retaliation for yougan organizing from Starbucks.

Speaker 4 (14:12):
But great stuff.

Speaker 3 (14:14):
Yeah, But so this specific case the NLRB National Labor
Relations Board, if your opponent like breaks labor law or
for example, firings firing so one in retaliation for union
organizing is in fact our violation of labor law. If
this happens, you can file something called an unfair labor practice.
Eventually you go before the National Labor Relations Board and

(14:35):
they make a decision. But one of the things that
the NLRB can do, because this process takes in an
extremely large amount of time, and if this process goes
into like the regular courts, is going to take years
and years and years, and during that time you're still
going to be fired. So you know, one of the
things that the NLRB can do is issue and ask
a judged issue an injunction to force uh to Like, basically,

(14:58):
a judge can tell Starbucks like, no, fuck you, you are like,
until this core case is resolved, you have to rehire
this person. And so basically what happened Starbucks sued over this.
I got to the Supreme Court, and the question that
basically came to, like what standard of evidence does the
NLRB have to have that this worker's rights are being
violated before they conditioned an injunction? The Supreme Court said,

(15:20):
it has to be like a really high standard, which
is bullshit. This was an eight one decision, UHL. So
it's not that's the thing. So okay, this this this
is important here this is being reported as an eight
one decision it's actually not because Katsia Brown Jackson filed
a concurring opinion with slightly like slightly better logic but
also still bad logic about this, so effectively, this was

(15:44):
a nine to zer agreement with Starbucks with like slightly
differing like reasons for concurring. Right. So yeah, and this
is you know, as as I told James yesterday, this
is in fact definitive proof that cop that workers are
not cops CO workers, because if this were a decision
about cops, it would be nine zero in the other direction. Yeah,

(16:06):
so this is very bad. It's already like almost impossibly
difficult to get the National Labor Relations Board to intervene
to stop the shift from happening. It can happen, it's
just a really really long process, and they almost never
file any of these injections in the first place. I'm
going to read a quote from the APA that I
disagree with. The NLARB requested fewer than twenty injunctions last year,

(16:31):
but they serve as a powerful deterrent against firing workers
trying to unionize, said Sharon Block, a professor at Harvard
Law School and a former member of the NLRB, with
a stricter standard in place to win the reinstatement of
fired workers, more companies may feel empowered to crack down
on unionization efforts. Miss Block said, now all offense to

(16:52):
miss Block. I think the fact that you were on
the fucking NLRB and you weren't out there trying to
fucking organize unions makes you, in fact, not a particularly
good person to ask about how effective the NLRB's efforts
have actually been here, because I like the number of
people I know personally unrelated to any of the work
that I do, who have been fired. Your retaliation for

(17:14):
union organizing is extremely high. And yeah, like, obviously this
is gonna make it. You know, this is gonna make
companies more like like more willing to do it. But
it's not like the completely half assed efforts that the
NLRB was making before. We're actually like really seriously deterring
companies from firing you, right, like.

Speaker 4 (17:32):
We have other It's not like there are no other
tools at the disposed of organized labor to respond to
a retaliatree something like this, right.

Speaker 3 (17:41):
Yeah, the best way to get your boss not retaliated
against you is to be well organized enough that if
they fucking try this. You breathe that, you bring your
shout to a stop, and I have seen that work, right, Like,
it is possible to get people reinstated. It's it's hard,
but you know you probably have a better shot of
like doing it by being well organized than you do

(18:01):
with the fucking NLRB ever getting to your case. So
you know, I like, and you know, I don't want
to be completely doom and gloom about this because it's like,
you know, like you can still definitely organize unions, right, Like,
this hasn't made it impossible to like do any of
this stuff. It's just that the legal apparatus is weighted
towards the boss, and the counteraction to legal apparatus being

(18:23):
weighted towards the boss is you and how well organized
you are. So we're going to go from that to
what this episode was originally supposed to be about, which
is a Preme Court wives. Yeah, and again, we were
gonna do war of this, but we're.

Speaker 4 (18:36):
Making reality TV show about it instead.

Speaker 3 (18:39):
Yeah, it's it's nuts, Okay. So the current big story
basically is that Samuel Alito's wife can't stop flying deranged
right wing flags.

Speaker 4 (18:51):
I do love a flag person.

Speaker 3 (18:53):
Yeah, so okay, Samuel Alito, Like, okay, So the story
that has been run within the media, and again it's
not clear how true any of this is Samuel Alito.
So we're gonna talk about a bunch of deranged right
wing flags that've been flying outside the house of Alito property.
Samuel Alito claimed that this is his wife and he
has nothing to do with it. Now do we the

(19:15):
public trust the word of a Supreme Court justice? And
I think the answer I'm not going to give you
the answer for you, but I'm I'm gonna lay that
out in front of you. So all right. So the
first one of these was she flew an upside down
US flag, which I had always remembered as being an
anti war thing. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (19:35):
I think the Chuds have tried to take it back, like, yeah,
very sad. Yeah, they're doing it because of course Joe
Biden is destroying the constitutional republic and say they're signaling
for help from other Chuds.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
Yeah. Originally it was a like January sixth, the US
lection has been stolen thing.

Speaker 4 (19:54):
Right, Yeah? Yeah. I still someone flying the thin blue
line flag upside down the other day. Unclear if they
had to fuck the police flag as well. So, like
I guess once I saw that the situation was clarified,
but I was like, is this incredible? Is a cop
in danger? Like what's happening?

Speaker 3 (20:11):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (20:12):
So?

Speaker 3 (20:12):
And by the way, the other thing I want to
point out about this is that there are like a
bund there are a bunch of journalists who knew about
this like in twenty twenty one and then just sat
on it and didn't talk about it until like this
series the fuck is wrong with you? Yeah, and this
is this is this is this is why I refused.
I like, I largely refuse to call myself a journalist
because these people are fucking hacks and frauds who just
sit on the stupid thing for their fucking book releases. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (20:34):
I mean, those people don't know to be called jeneralists, right,
it's pathetic. Like your job as a journalist is to
hold power to account and if you're not doing that
because you want to sell more books or yeah, grift university.

Speaker 3 (20:47):
And again, this would have been fucking useful to know
in that actual like in the in the because because
in the immediate aftermath of January sixth, there was an
actual sort of a desire to do something about it,
and maybe if if you know, people had fucking know
that the wife of a Supreme Court justice was fucking
flying the shitty ass flag again probably actually a Supreme
Court justice, like was flying this shitty ass the electu

(21:11):
was stolen flag. So that's part one of the flag news. Now.
Apparently partially what's going on is she's been getting into
a bunch of fights with her neighbors who fucking hate
her because she's an asshole, and she's.

Speaker 4 (21:26):
Yeah, absolutely, if you live within eyesight of her house,
I will ship you one big a do crime flag.

Speaker 3 (21:33):
They they apparently have been doing that ship and trolling, controlling,
which is fucking heroes. Hero Get how how mad this
made her later, But one of the other flags that
she's been flying is a flag I had forgotten about,
which is the do you know the Appeal to Heaven flag?

Speaker 2 (21:51):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (21:51):
Yeah, no, yes, unfortunately I do may because I drive
around East County, San Diego.

Speaker 3 (21:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (21:58):
Yeah, A little tree flag for those who are not familiar,
little pine tree on a white background. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:03):
So okay, So this flag has been taken up by
so it's it's been spread around basically, writing is kind
of more generally now, but it was it was originally
sort of reaped. This is a revolutionary war flag that
nobody has flown in like two hundred years, but it's
been taking back up by the New Epostolic Reformation, which
is like the guys oh boy, oh boy. Okay, So

(22:27):
they're a juror, like a deranged Christian nationalist like organization
of churches that has combined the most deranged principles of
the most deranged Christian sect, which is to say, Pentecostalism,
Charismatic Christianity, and like a very specific kind of insane dominionism,
and they have combined all of them together to form
like the super ideology that's like it's it's it's the

(22:49):
fucking like it's it's, it's it's the it's the dragon
ball z fusion of like literally the worst parts of
every insane right wing Christian ideology. And so they have
come out with the belief that like they have been
basically chosen by God to like seize control of the
US and into a theocracy.

Speaker 4 (23:06):
Okay, they're like the power ranges of of Christian chads.

Speaker 3 (23:10):
Yeah. Yeah, Like it's like Marjorie Taylor Green's involved with
like Larry Leo is one of the big Federalist Society guys,
like also was flying this flag, and the Federal Society
has funneled a bunch of money to like a bunch
of like right wing legal cases and stuff. So this
is this is very good.

Speaker 4 (23:29):
So you used to see it a lot in the
Pacific Northwest among that kind of white separatist Christian Yeah,
like inward on their plate carriers a lot and stuff.
That's kind of what I associate it with.

Speaker 3 (23:40):
Yeah, so this is this has been like like last year,
this was flying over Samuel Alito's beach house. So great
things out thing here.

Speaker 4 (23:49):
Fuck me.

Speaker 3 (23:50):
Yeah. So there's there's also a third piece of of
missus Alito flag news, which is that so she got
Project veritosed by a little documentary filmmaker. They like did
a sting operation, like when it bought a ticket to
one of her dinners are pretended to be a conservative
and filmed her. And I'm gonna read this quote from

(24:10):
from Rolling Stowe that's about like what she said. You
know what I want? Miss Alito says, I want a
sacred Heart of Jesus flag because I have to look
across a lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month.
Referencing her husband, miss Alito said, he's like, oh, please,
don't put up the flag. I said, I won't do
it because I'm deferring to you. But when you are
free of this nonsense, I'm putting it up and I'm
gonna send them a message every day, maybe every week.

(24:34):
I'll be changing the flags. They'll be all kinds. I
made a flag in my head. This is how I
satisfy myself. I made a flag as white and yellow
and orange flames around it, and in the middle is
the word of begonia in Italian means shame virgona v
e r g og na virgona shame, shame, shame on you.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
She adds.

Speaker 3 (24:53):
So she's so mad about gay people that she's making
up flags in her head that's gonna fly to own them.

Speaker 4 (25:02):
Homophobic vexillology. That's uh, that's it's a new level of
fucking like having your brain broken by gay people existing.

Speaker 3 (25:10):
It's nuts.

Speaker 4 (25:11):
Do you know what hangs over my head like a
flag that says shame?

Speaker 3 (25:15):
Is it?

Speaker 4 (25:15):
Is it?

Speaker 3 (25:16):
The price of services? Is what this podcast is?

Speaker 4 (25:18):
The obligation to pivot to adverts.

Speaker 3 (25:20):
Yes, okay, So there is one last part of this
story that hasn't been getting any coverage at all that
I'm very alarmed about because and maybe it's the thing
I should have I should have led with. Okay, I'm

(25:43):
gonna read you this, and I am going to ask
you for a conceivable, possible alternative explanation. That is not
that is not. Samuel Leo's wife is openly saying she
is a Nazi. Quote when Windsor, Windsor is the name
of the filmmaker who did the like sting. When Windsor
tells Miss Alito she's being persecuted in and depicted as

(26:04):
a convenient stand in for anybody who's religious, the Justice's
wife gets quieter and her tone turns more serious. Look
at me, Look at me. I'm German. I'm from Germany.
My heritage is German. You come after me. I'm gonna
give it back to you, and there will be a way.
It doesn't have to be now, but there will be
a way. They know. Don't worry about it. God, you

(26:26):
read the Bible. Psalm twenty seven is my psalm mine,
Psalm twenty seven. The Lord is by God and by
Rock of whom shall I be afraid nobody.

Speaker 4 (26:35):
Now, Wow, Yeah, a lot of real emphasis on being German.

Speaker 3 (26:40):
What possible? Genuinely, I defy anyone to come up with
a possible explanation of what the sentence. Look at me,
Look at me. I'm German, I'm from Germany. My heritage
is German. You come after me, I'm gonna give it
back to you. What possible? She is just straight up
saying I am a German Nazi. And this is something

(27:02):
that fucking media has access to, and no one is
leading with a story that says Samuel Aleto's wife says
that she's a Nazi. I'm going insane. I fuck it,
We're we're, we're. I've actually banged my microphone. We're fucking
leading this episode with the title Samuel Aleto's wife admits
she's a Nazi and other Supreme Court news because fuck them,
someone's gotta do this. This is insane, This is nuts.

(27:25):
What the fuck this is?

Speaker 4 (27:28):
This is a bizarre thing to say, like to so much.
She knew to this passing with the journalists.

Speaker 3 (27:33):
No, no, no, no, she thought that they were a conservative activist.
So what's happening here, I think is like like basically
like kind of in private, like like in conservative circle,
she's trying to say old people that like no, like
I'm a fucking Nazi, like I'm down with you fucking right.

Speaker 4 (27:47):
Yeah. Yeah, it's sort of they're not saying the thing,
but saying to sing.

Speaker 3 (27:51):
Yeah, like like it it's like it's it's not even
dog whishing, it's just very openly telling selectives of people
like hey, this is where I stand. So that is
not good. And again this guy is one of the
one of the unelected people who can at any moment,
moment strip any right from you for effectively any reason.
So that's great, Yeah, great, wonderful.

Speaker 4 (28:14):
I'm still yeah, mind boggled at this, Like yeah, I
mean even if yeah, we're German, what are you gonna do,
Like you have a two for two l rate in world.

Speaker 3 (28:23):
Yeah, you're gonna lose a third.

Speaker 4 (28:27):
More, get yours you again, get get divided in half?
Have you given to Russia? Like what.

Speaker 3 (28:34):
It is? Like we we have not done much coverage
of how insane Germany has gotten right now, but like
like there are like there are entire mobs of like
people in dance clubs chanting Germany is for Germans, like
the eight Like there their Nazi party is like about
to take control.

Speaker 4 (28:50):
Disband a number of like police and special force units.
Oh yeah, the Nazis. Yeah yeah, what's not this all
Nazis like that. You can be a Nazi in the
German police force care that much. But it's because they
were specific They keep on specifically getting caught, either with
kill lists of politicians or with the planned to overthrow
the government. Yeah yeah, so like you know, so so
we we like this, this, this is this is my
Like Germany is the one country on earth that would

(29:12):
be improved by an American occupation and then being split
into like thirty five like every single country in the
world gets their one square mile of Germany to rule
over that. This would significantly improve Germany as a country.
I love that. Yeah, turn it turned it into the
model Uan.

Speaker 3 (29:29):
Yeah. So from our plan to make Germany an international
occupied territory.

Speaker 4 (29:34):
At Cott Atcott to Germany, there we go.

Speaker 3 (29:37):
Yeah, we need to talk about there's even more. Just
as Thomas bullshit. I thought there was only going to
be one Justice Thomas story, and then a second Justice
Thomas story broke as I was writing the script. So okay,
So the Senate Judiciary Committee finally sort of got off
its ass and decided to look at Justice Thomas's like

(29:59):
obvious brea money from Harlan crow and a bunch of
other mega donors, and they found lo and behold, Thomas
took three more undisclosed private jet flights of Harlenklowro. Again,
these people are just like obviously taking bribe money. No,
Congress won't do anything. Dick Durbin will issue a strongly
worded statement. Who he's the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee,

(30:21):
will offer a strongly worded statement do nothing. So, yeah,
if anything is going to be done to the Streame Court,
it's going to be done by you, not by the
fucking Congress that you dominantly elect. Uh, because they just
don't give a shit. We also learned, so do you
remember were you on the Clarence Thomas episodes.

Speaker 4 (30:38):
I know, I didn't think I was.

Speaker 3 (30:40):
Oh no, yeah, that might have been a me and
garre one. Yeah. So one of the things that we
learned was that Harlan Crowe had paid an unbelievable amount,
like like hundreds of thousands of dollars to send Thomas's grandnephew,
who he was like quote unquote raising like a son
and send him to like expensive private schools.

Speaker 4 (30:56):
So normal.

Speaker 3 (30:57):
Yeah, so so we learned to we learned today or
like like maybe two days ago that Thomas So okay,
so that this kid that like he had like raised
as a son, they just like completely So someone like
some some media people like caught up with his son
who's now in jail pending charges. Yeah, and his his

(31:17):
his he's not going to be fucking bailed out by
Justice Thomas who apparently like lost interest in him when
he reached high school and just shipped him off to
a boarding school. And then we always at boarding school, he
got he got expelled for failing a drug test and
they just like sen him back to his mom and
cut him off. And he's talked to him like once
or twice in the last fourteen years. Fucking So that's great,
real piece of shit.

Speaker 4 (31:39):
I mean, yeah, what having Clarence Thomas as a as
a as a patental figure in your life. That's to
a motherfucker I can't imagine.

Speaker 3 (31:45):
So yeah, like I I true, I truly feel bad
for this guy. Uh yeah, yeah, fuck Clarence Thomas. Finally
to round up the Supreme Court news literally there like
the board. Like in the morning, the script was like
done right, and then again I wake up and there's
breaking new Supreme Court has struck down Federal Bureau of

(32:07):
Tobacco and Firearms thing banning bump stocks. So I'm gonna
ask you to talk about bump stocks because I think
I know what they are. But I'm not a gun person.

Speaker 4 (32:15):
So yeah, I'm happy to happy to be the token
Cis white guy to talk about guns here. Yeah, So
the ATF under Donald Trump, for a long time, the
ATF it explicitly said that bump stocks were not machine guns.
After the Las Vegas shooting, in which one was used
the bump stock with the rules of machine guns, they
kind of pivoted.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
Right.

Speaker 4 (32:34):
What it bump stock is for those who are not familiar,
It's a device that kind of uses the recoil of
the weapon to kind of re fire. So basically it
allows you to fire much more quickly, right. But crucially,
the trigger is going forward and back, unlike a machine
gun where you hold the trigger to the rear right

(32:58):
and the gun continues to fire. It's sort of you
can look up. I think it's probably much easier if
you can see it. But it's kind of a device
that connects the stock and then the pistol grip of
the weapon, and then it bounces back and forward, and
in doing so moves the finger back and forward. You
can also bump fire a gun without one, which is
just I just don't want to describe how to do that,

(33:21):
but if you probably know already, there are videos on
YouTube like like, it's not not a thing that's illegal,
I don't think, but neither of these are particularly effective.
It's kind of a range toy thing, like it's a
way to quickly turn money into noise. I don't think that.
Like they were massive craze, like a lot of these
gun things right there, there are like five big accounts

(33:42):
on YouTube, which set the fact that whatever they're craze, Like,
gun people are very much like like like preteens, you know,
you know, when you're in school and suddenly everyone's got
a fucking yoyo and if you don't have a yo yo,
you're a complete weave and then fuck your yoyo. It's
Pokemon cards. Yeah, that's the that's a lot of the
firearms industry. So like these were a big craze and

(34:04):
then they kind of weren't, and specifically when when the
Donald Trump ATF banned them, right, a lot of people
were like, oh, you don't need them any way. They
find that they're they're useless. Like they definitely allow you
to fire fire quicker, and you can have the gun
in your in your shoulder, which you can't do when
you're regularly bump firing it, but they're not. It's not
the same as a machine gun in terms of effectiveness
in my opinion. So yeah, now you can buy one

(34:25):
again if you really want one. In certain states. I'm
sure that there are state laws. I'm sure California still
bands him, but well you can't have a pistol grip
on your semi automatic rifle in California unless it's mad glove.
But yeah, I don't think it's a big deal, Like
I'm looking right now, and of course, like you know
NBC and ship, it's like the end of the world

(34:46):
is nigh. Everyone now has a belt fed machine gun.
Not really, it's not. That's not kind of what they do.
You can fire faster, but I don't think it's it's
going to make a meaningful change in the lethality of firearms,
and civilians have access to Some couple use it as
an excuse to be to be a fucking coward like
they were a uvalde, right, But we can't control that.

(35:08):
I think it does signal, like post Bruin, right, which
was a concealed, carried decision, a willingness of the court
to go after the ATF.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
They didn't.

Speaker 4 (35:17):
There's a thing called I think it's called a Chevron
It's not a Chevron rule. Is it a Chevron doctrine?
Chevron doctrine, right, Yeah, where like essentially that they they're
telling lower courts not to challenge legislatives or like opinions.
The ATF is not itself a law making body, but
it can appine on what laws mean, but those can

(35:37):
be challenged in courts. They didn't touch the Chevron doctrine
with regards to the ATF here, but I think we
will see other cases. Three D printed gun cases, for instance,
go up to a Supreme Court and probably get a
favorable decision for gun rights. There's there's, there's this Supreme
Court and the big ones, the ones that would make

(35:58):
a meaningful difference at least to people in restricted states,
would be assault weapons bands like we have in California.
And magazine capacity bands like we have in California, right,
So California, a lot of other states limit you to
ten rounds. California, you kind of have a pistol grape
on a semi automatic rifle and some other features and
less the magazines locked to the weapon. It requires disassembly

(36:19):
to reload. So those would make a meaningful difference to
gun rights for people in those states. This I think
is that big of a deal personally, Like, look, look,
fucking people are all over the place with fully automatic
locks because they bought a little three printed switch on
like either online or I like apparently people are buying
them on the alley Express, which is fucking unwise because

(36:42):
it's coming into the country and like a customer's going
to look at that. Yeah, but I've seen that in
court cases. But yeah, this is not that, you know,
like people are making auto sears for AAR fifteens or
court cases about that too. I don't think this is
that big of a deal, but it may be indicate
that we will see other other changes in firearm legislation.

Speaker 3 (37:04):
Yeah, that makes sense. I think that's our wrap up
Supreme Court news. I don't know it's possible some other
bullshit drops at the end of today. But yeah, this
has been recorded on Friday, the whatever, the fourteenth, So
if there's if if, if the Supreme Court has done
more bullshit, I'm sorry we didn't get to it, but
that that that's all we got for Supreme Court today. Yeah, Flags, friends, Yeah,

(37:27):
my fly fly funnier Flags.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
Welcome to it could happen here. I am Sophieleckerman. I
am the executive producer of all of Cool Zone Media,
and I didn't have time to touch grass today, so
this is the closest I'm going to get to that.
And here with me leading the conversation will be James
Stout And also here is one of my favorite people
on this entire planet, Alli Conger, James, take it away.

Speaker 4 (38:06):
Thank you, Sophie. Magnificent intro. As Sophie said, we're here
today to talk about grass. So no really grass, but
it just like plants in general. I wanted to do
an episode on having a little garden because I think
it is a thing that would make people happy, and
also it's a way to have food for yourself. It's
not free, but once the plants keep growing, you don't
have to pay any more for the food, so it's

(38:28):
a nice thing to do. I enjoyed to grow plants
and I wanted to share that with you. Do you
have little gardens, Molly and Sophie.

Speaker 5 (38:36):
Yes. Oh so, I moved to a new apartment last year,
and in sort of a rare and strange arrangement, my
first floor apartment has like a little dirt patch's I
think it was originally supposed to be where the HVAC
units are, because it's like walled off by this sort
of tall wall. It's this ten foot by ten foot pit,
but the HVAC units are not there. So that's where

(38:56):
I grow my tomatoes.

Speaker 1 (38:59):
Yeah, or is currently a fruit garden. I have a
bunch of things starting in pots. I've got a lemon tree.
I've got a mandarin tree, which I'm really excited about.
I grew a mandarin tree when I lived in California
and then gifted to my dad and then he gifted
it to a friend of his and it's still doing
really well, so that's nice. I have a boys and

(39:22):
berry plant. I have what did I just buy? I'm
trying to think I just bought another fruit thing. Oh,
it's like some citrus hybrid thing. So My porch is
filled with fruit things that should live for a very
long time. And then my friend Sarah is on a
gardening kick and so anything else we grow in her

(39:44):
yard and she's growing literally everything that's good.

Speaker 4 (39:49):
Love to grow everything. Yeah, so if you want to
grow everything, if you're listening and you're thinking, I would
like to be like Sophia money and grow vegetables and trees.
Trees are hid, especially if you're a renter.

Speaker 1 (40:01):
Yeah, you have to start them in a pot and
then depending on climate, I bring mine inside during the
cool times and I have them under a grow bulb.
It's not a quick commitment.

Speaker 4 (40:13):
No, Yeah, it is an undertaking. And yeah, if you
want to let them grow big, then you either have
to get giant pots or put them in the ground.
Did they put them in the ground?

Speaker 1 (40:22):
Which is hard when most people in this country can't
afford to buy a home.

Speaker 4 (40:25):
Yes, it is. It sucks. And then you don't want
to be giving things to your landlord for free because
fucking yeah. Well, let's talk about things that you can
do in a smaller timeframe than trees. So I've just
got a few bullet points here. We're going to go
through them and you can interrupt me with your experiences
or question, should you have any, But if you're making
a little guiden for yourself, obviously you're going to have

(40:45):
to start out with choosing a spot for your garden.
And it depends, I think, on where you live. So
if you're like on the fifth floor and you don't
have access to any ground yard garden soil, that could
be your windowsill, right, it could be your balcony if
you have a balcony. All you really need is somewhere
that has good access to sunlight. All the other stuff

(41:07):
you can bring in yourself.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
Right.

Speaker 4 (41:08):
You can bring the soil yourself, You can bring the
water and all the nutrients that your plants need. But
obviously I guess you could make the sunlight. In my kitchen,
I have a little arrow garden which has its own
little UV light bulb, and you can use those to
grow some stuff. Or people have maybe some other hydroponic
gardening experience. They have done.

Speaker 5 (41:28):
Elaborate setups for their tomatoes.

Speaker 1 (41:30):
Yeah, do you remember that. I think it was like
twenty nineteen when everybody's relative gave them one of those
like indoor herb garden kits that don't oh the arrow garden.

Speaker 3 (41:40):
Yeah, yah, the air garden.

Speaker 4 (41:41):
I have one of those. They work.

Speaker 1 (41:42):
No no, no, no no, not the expensive arrow garden one,
but the knockoff ones.

Speaker 5 (41:46):
Everybody doesn't want to one.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
Yeah, everybody got one of those, and then you saw
them elsewhere.

Speaker 5 (41:53):
And that sort of commodification is so silly, right, because
to grow like a little pot of basil, you don't
need stuff. You don't need to buy a thing windowsill.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
I can't grow basil. I really we're not compatible.

Speaker 4 (42:04):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (42:05):
I love basil. I use it constantly. I try to
grow it. I kill it every time.

Speaker 4 (42:10):
What way is it dying?

Speaker 5 (42:13):
It just wilts.

Speaker 4 (42:14):
Basil doesn't like its feet in the water. It has
to have quite dry soil.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
It wilts. So then I'll try again and i'll ignore it.
It wilts. I'll try it again, and i'll give it
a little bit of water. It wilts. I'll try it again.
I'll give it a lot of water. It wilts. I'll
try it again, and I guess how it ends.

Speaker 4 (42:30):
It wilt.

Speaker 5 (42:31):
I have an abundance of it because I'm constantly topping it.
Because you want to top your basil all the time
so that it branches instead of flowering. So when I
top it, I'm like, why, I don't want to waste this.
I'll root these and I have, like, you know, seven
hundred basils.

Speaker 1 (42:43):
Well it's me.

Speaker 4 (42:44):
Maybe Molly could send one to Sophie and we could see.

Speaker 5 (42:46):
Yeah, you're welcome to some of my basil.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
Yeah, because pesto's one of the greatest things that's ever
happened to anybody.

Speaker 4 (42:53):
Mm hm Oh you need this a little pine nut,
pine tree, I guess, and some basil and a little
sheep and you can make pecorino cheese. There you go,
and then yeah, and some manchovies.

Speaker 5 (43:02):
Of course, you just need your own sheep.

Speaker 4 (43:05):
Yeah, everyone should have.

Speaker 1 (43:07):
Well, Anderson would have the best time hurting one.

Speaker 4 (43:09):
Sheep that the poor sheep were probably not.

Speaker 1 (43:15):
I pictured it. It's really funny.

Speaker 4 (43:18):
You can't just have one sheep. They need friends. Sheep
are not a solitary animal, so yeah, you'd have to
go several.

Speaker 1 (43:24):
Well, Anderson will hurt them all.

Speaker 4 (43:26):
Yeah, we'd love to see that. All right. So if
you've selected your spot right where you have access to sunlight,
the next thing you need is a vessel. So during COVID,
lots of people started gardens. Not that we are not
also in COVID right now, right, but during the lockdown
twenty twenty, when everyone was working from home for the
first time, people started their little guidance, and I think

(43:48):
lots of folks who didn't start back then or you
moved house since then, Like people just built lots of planters,
often in that area between the pavement and the road,
which has an that I've forgotten. Now.

Speaker 5 (44:01):
Oh, that's one of those things that has a different
name in every region of the US, and wherever you go,
if you're calling it the wrong thing, people look at
you like you're an alien.

Speaker 4 (44:09):
Yeah, I don't know what that's called in California.

Speaker 5 (44:11):
I think in New Jersey they call it the Devil's Strip.

Speaker 2 (44:15):
For real.

Speaker 3 (44:15):
I'm pretty sure we're going to.

Speaker 4 (44:17):
Call it the devil Strip in this podcast because that's
a better name than I could come up with. If
you're gardening in the Devil's Strip, that sounds like a
euphemism for growing weed, like when people call it the
Devil's Letters. Yeah, you're growing your Devil's letters and the
Devil Strip. That's a good place to build a planter,
right generally, like you should be able to obtain lumber
for that somewhere like, I don't think you should be

(44:39):
paying for lumber in this day and age. Yeah, and
they're pretty easy to build, right if you are building
a planter some considerations, you probably shouldn't stain the inside
of the lumber that you're using. There's stuff in there
that you probably don't want it if you intend to
eat the plants. I think it's a pretty bad idea.
Or to get lumber which is pre treated. Right, if

(44:59):
you get some think which is naturally resistant to rotting,
like a hot like redwood or something like that, that's
going to last a bit longer, right.

Speaker 1 (45:07):
Yeah, I mean you should be able to find some
kind of cedar or redwood around. I agree with your
assessment that you should not have to pay for that. Yeah,
although it's not something that if you have like a
good local hardware store, it's not something that's super expensive.
But price it before you buy it, that is what
I'll say.

Speaker 5 (45:24):
And it's certainly cheaper to just buy the wood than
it is to buy like a pre made wooden plant.

Speaker 4 (45:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (45:29):
The mark upon that is crazy.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
Incredibly overpriced for something that you would find at a
big box store.

Speaker 4 (45:36):
Yeah. And crap too, there was one in one place
I live that was like maybe a quarter of an
inch thick, and like it dovetailed together, but then like
the dovetails kind of bulged out when they got too
wet and it was not a good figure. Don't don't
buy one, build one. If you have decking screws in
two by fours, you can build your own planetary. Doesn't

(45:56):
degree require a high level of carpentry knowledge. And you're
gonna have to put some soil in your planter, right,
You could grow plants in like leka likers like the
clay composite. Have you seen this little balls? Yeah, but
I think I have. Yeah, just to start off with,
we'll we'll start with soil because it's the easiest thing
to access. I think in lots of cities you can

(46:18):
get free compost if you go to the tip. I
don't know if that's the case where you guys live,
but here you can get free compust if you go
to the tip.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
I'm unfamiliar with that, but now I'm like, wait, can
we do that because we should?

Speaker 4 (46:31):
Right?

Speaker 5 (46:31):
Have I been missing out on free dirt because I've
I've been paying for dirt?

Speaker 4 (46:35):
Okay, Yeah, this is a huge life act. Do you
have those green bins where you put like compostable rubbish.

Speaker 5 (46:42):
Of course, Oh no, we don't.

Speaker 4 (46:43):
So if he lives in Portland, yeah, I like I
live in Portland, of course. Okay, So if you have that,
I'm guessing your municipality is composting it, right, which would
mean that it has a large amount of compost, at
least in San Diego. I would be blown away if
San Diego was leading the way and giving residents any
think other than more cops for their taxpayer dollars, we
can get free. I have a pickup truck. I think

(47:05):
I can get too pick up trucks full of compost.
You have to go and shovel it yourself right into
your truck, and obviously you have to have some kind
of vehicle to transport it. But it's a good way
to get free soil, especially if you're like doing a project. Often,
if you're planting vegetables in your garden, right, the soil
that you're planting them into might not be good quality
top soil, right. That top soil might have been taken

(47:26):
away when you're building's constructed, or you might have all
kinds of aggregate waste sort of mixed in there right,
gravel and stuff like that, it might not be the
best quality growing soil. So if you can going to
getting some of the free compost is the move. What
I like to do when I'm starting a little garden
and I've got my soil is to do a soil
chemistry test. Have you guys done soil chemistry tests?

Speaker 1 (47:49):
I have.

Speaker 5 (47:50):
My style of gardening is more just kind of vibing out, okay.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
More of a violides based hey Portland. As free compost is.

Speaker 5 (48:00):
I get information overload really fast. When I first started
my little garden, I thought like, I'm go do some googling.
I'm gonna do some researching. I'm gonna go to the
Agricultural Extension website and learn about my local soil. And
then like, once i have seventy tabs open and I'm
trying to consume the information, I was like, you know what,
plants grow outside. They'll be fine, They'll be fine.

Speaker 3 (48:18):
It is true.

Speaker 4 (48:19):
There is a lot you can do and a lot
that you don't have to do when it comes to
gre own cliants. My mother was a lecture in agricultural Therefore,
I'm bound to get a little home test kit and
test today do you know what the three essential nutrients are?
We turn it into a quiz format for plants.

Speaker 5 (48:34):
Nitrogen, yeah, a different element.

Speaker 4 (48:40):
That's correct. H These are things, These are real things.

Speaker 1 (48:46):
All I can think of is fat, that's right, salt, fat, acid, heat.

Speaker 4 (48:54):
If your plant isn't hitting its macros, it will not
get swollen exactly. One of the things about.

Speaker 5 (48:59):
I'm feeding much imatos creatine?

Speaker 1 (49:01):
Is that right?

Speaker 2 (49:01):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (49:01):
Yeah, that's why they're hench as fun.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
Are we talking like magnesium?

Speaker 4 (49:06):
Close? U? That two is an element?

Speaker 5 (49:09):
I had nitrogen though, that's right, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (49:11):
Molly is yeah, Muddy got that one right. I was
trying to do it like a ratio. I couldn't work
it out.

Speaker 1 (49:18):
Nitrogen phosphorus, Okay, I was like almost there.

Speaker 4 (49:22):
Yeah, you're very close with magnesia.

Speaker 5 (49:24):
Are you growing a gardener blowing up a federal building?

Speaker 4 (49:26):
James Porque, Nola's do Molly, I'm growing a guarden for
legal and truth based reasons. I'm growing a guard You
want nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Those are your three essential nutrients.
There are fifteen other nkroen nutrients. I guess that plants
need vitamins. Yeah, the little you know omega threes for

(49:47):
their joints. They need MP and K in different ratios
depending on different plants.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
Right, Molly and I are like, we're here to talk
about plants. Why are we in chemistry? What's happening?

Speaker 5 (50:02):
James? I buy a bag that says Tomato food and
there's a picture of a cartoon tomato on it. That's
what I know you're doing.

Speaker 1 (50:09):
Great.

Speaker 4 (50:10):
You can't go wrong with looking at the picture on
the thing. I use this technique for all kinds of things.
It's why I don't buy Quaker oats anymore. Very disturbing.

(50:30):
So you're going to seek to have the soil chemistry
that suits the plants that you want to grow. Right,
You can't really like improve your soil unless you know
where you're starting from. So you're going to look at
the NPK and the pH and then going from there.
When you're buying commercial fertilizers, you can normally see the
balance or sit on the bag or sit on the website, right,
and you're trying to augment that soil to get the

(50:50):
soil chemistry you want to grow the plants that you
want to eat, or maybe not eat, maybe just have.
You can also add organic matters to your soil. If
you're doing that, like, you're just gonna have to like
test and test again kind of think, because when your cowshits,
you don't get a bag which then gives you the
amount of nightgen phosphorus and potassium.

Speaker 5 (51:10):
That's why I buy the cowshit in a bag.

Speaker 4 (51:12):
James, Wow, that's a great business idea.

Speaker 5 (51:15):
No, they sell it a lows.

Speaker 4 (51:16):
They said it lows cowshit in a bag. Okay, maybe
that is a wonderful time to take a break for advertisements.

Speaker 5 (51:22):
Hopefully one of the advertisers is Shit.

Speaker 4 (51:24):
In the Bag, Shit in a Bag. Longtime supporter of
the show, I please enjoy this advert for shit in
the Bag. We are back. We've returned from discussing things
that we could pretend we're shit in a bag, which
we're not going to share with you. You'll have to guess. Okay,

(51:46):
So I like to use chicken manure for mine, but
you do have to rot it down right. If you're
putting manure on your soil, it'll burn it if you
just dump it straight on there. You can't just literally
dump shit into your soil. This hopefully is not used
to anyone.

Speaker 5 (51:59):
Got to age it like a fire. Wine.

Speaker 4 (52:00):
Yeah, exactly. It does improve with age. Buttlet up, cork
it and put a vintage on it and then rotate
it every few years so it doesn't get sediment in
the bottom. If you can get a compost here and
you can go after making your own compust, it's a
fun thing to do. You get one of the barrel
composters that you turn.

Speaker 5 (52:16):
I have one of those.

Speaker 3 (52:16):
Yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 5 (52:18):
Because my dirt patch is like not really supposed to
be a garden. I don't have a lot of room
for a compost. Heap love a compost, eat better way
to do it. But because I just have patio space,
and I have one of those big plastic compost tumblers,
and I love it. It works pretty good, pretty fast.
I was lucky enough last year. This was not intentional.
I did not invite them. But I have black soldier

(52:38):
flies in my compost. Do you know those little guys? Hmm,
they're like pretty long, shiny black flies. But their larva
are these like little grubs, And so I open my compost,
it was like, who the hell are all these grubs?
But black soldier fly larva just devour organic matter and
so they break down They break down your compost really fast.

(52:59):
I love them so much that I just bought some
he gave in the mail today. I got a box
in the mail today that said, like caution, live bugs.
I dump dump tho little babies in my tumbler.

Speaker 4 (53:09):
Nice. Yeah, hope they thrive there.

Speaker 5 (53:12):
Oh yeah, they love it in there.

Speaker 4 (53:13):
Yeah. We had some love I didn't know what they were,
but we had a compost heat that I moved a
couple of years ago. When I moved it, the chickens
had probably the best day of it, just chasing around people.

Speaker 5 (53:24):
Farm Black Soldier fly as chicken feed so that you
can have this coole setup where you're growing them on
purpose and then they sort of fall down the tray
and the chickens eat them. I don't have any chickens yet.
I think my apartment neighbors would not like that.

Speaker 4 (53:39):
Fuck fuck them moneys to play rage against the machine
as you install your chicken cube.

Speaker 5 (53:45):
I mean the dogs would love it. Buck has met
a chicken before, and in his mind it is like
the rawest chicken, right, Like this is the most tempting.

Speaker 4 (53:53):
Treat of the forbidden dog treat, the raw nugget. Yeah,
and then they give chickens could be pretty mean.

Speaker 1 (53:59):
Hey, Reese, featherspoon is a national treasure.

Speaker 4 (54:05):
Yeah, raised featherspoon is. She is not a mean chicken.
She was just sitting on my lap earlier before we recorded.
She sees a friendly chicken. She does. So if there
is blood on me, she will attack even me her
father and friend. So if you don't have any manure,
that's fine.

Speaker 5 (54:20):
You can make your own dirt at home. I recommend it.

Speaker 1 (54:23):
It's great.

Speaker 4 (54:23):
Yeah, you can. It's very fulfilling to take like waste
and turn it into something useful. You can do it
on a city scale like Portland does, or you can
do it on a home scale, which is fun and
it's always nice to you know, reduce your amount of
shit there, especially if they don't compost, Like if you
don't have a green bin. It's less shit going into landfa,
isn't it. So that's always a good thing. So now

(54:43):
you've you've got your vessel and you've got your soil,
and you're going to have to decide about your plants. Right.
One great resource to consult it's a USDA Plant Hardiness matter.
Have you guys been browsy.

Speaker 5 (54:55):
Know your zone?

Speaker 4 (54:56):
Baby m yep?

Speaker 1 (54:57):
You have to or else you could just be committing
plant masker.

Speaker 5 (55:01):
I mean there's a lot of debate right now in
the in the community about the rezoning, the rezone, the
USDA Plant Hardiness Map. Yeah, Like my mom buys all
of her bulbs from this bulb farm and they put
out a notice saying like, we are not using the
revised map or we're sticking the original, We're not changing
the catalog.

Speaker 4 (55:18):
Yeah, being a trad but for the USDA.

Speaker 5 (55:20):
Plant return to tradition.

Speaker 4 (55:23):
Yeah, I'm a USDA Plant hardness believer. And the climate
is changing, so the ship that your grandparents grow might
not work for you if you have colder winters, especially
right if the winter's getting colder where you are, that
might be difficult for your plants. Yeah, so consult that map.
The map isn't going to tell you what to grow
so much as what can make it through your winters,

(55:44):
and so it's a good place to start. You're also
going to want to think about plants that you can
fit into your space. Right. If you want to grow
yourself as sequoia, that's cool, but you know, if you're
operating with a balcony, it's probably not going to be
Maybe you can make a bond size coir that that
was your thing, but you needed to plant that will
fit with your space, right, definitely, If you want to

(56:07):
grow plants that you want to eat, think about things
that are high yielding, right, and perpetual spinach is a
great one. If you're like a first timer. Perpetual spinach
you can cut and come again, so you pick some
and a bit more cums and bit more cums. You
don't have to like harvest it all at one time.
Tomatoes are a classic, right. You can even grow them
straight in one of those grow bags. Just cut a hole,
put tomatoes in. If you've got enough depth, you can

(56:29):
do root vegetables, so things like carrots, turnip, swedes, you
can get of course potatoes or a classic you can
make a potato tower if you wanted to. A great
way to have lots of potatoes in a relatively small space.
So choose something that will also grow depending on the
amount of climate window you have. Right, So, if you
have short summers and you have something that needs a

(56:51):
lot of sunlight to grow, you want something that will
grow and mature in the amount of time you have
right before the weather turns to shit again and it's
too cold for that plant. Something that's suitable for the
climate you have. Like I just harvested some winter giant
spinach because I agree that of the winter and it's
very hardy and doesn't need quite as much sunlight. That
was very good. And I'm about to start having my

(57:12):
early girl tomatoes, which they arrive earlier than you're conventional tomato.
Like there's a tomato for everything, wherever you are, whatever
you need, Like, that's a tomato for you.

Speaker 5 (57:21):
It's overwhelming. So like last year, like I said, I'm
doing this five space, right, So I went to the
garden store and I just picked out a couple of
tomato plants that had names like that were funny.

Speaker 4 (57:30):
I think that's a great strategy.

Speaker 5 (57:31):
Right, that's very valid. But this year I was a
little more selective. Right, So I grew fewer tomatoes this
year because I think last they were a little too
close together. It was a little overwhelming, a little busy
in there. I want to do more cucumbers this year,
so I only have five tomato plants. I have two
different cherry tomatoes, have a Cherokee purple. Oh gosh, who
are the other guys? The other ones were just names

(57:52):
I thought were interesting. I did it again. But the
great thing about tomatoes is on the little tag it'll
say how many days to maturity? Yes, so like you
don't have to guess, you don't have to do a
lot of homeworker research. It'll stay right on the tag,
like eighty five days to harvest.

Speaker 4 (58:07):
Yeah. Going to the garden entry, they're going to sell
stuff that's suitable for the climate you're living in, right,
and then yeah, you can see how long it will
take to harvest. Ideally you could space them out, right,
so you don't just have a g lot of tomatoes
and then no tomatoes for the rest of your life
or the rest.

Speaker 5 (58:21):
Of the year producing, especially if you get indeterminates.

Speaker 4 (58:24):
Yeah, they will keep producing, you can, uh.

Speaker 5 (58:26):
I mean they'll keep producing till the first frost. Yeah,
so we had cherry tomatoes through November last year.

Speaker 4 (58:31):
Awesome. Wow, I thought you guys got cold.

Speaker 5 (58:34):
We're seven b But Charlotte s Fel's kind of in
a valley, so it stays warmer a little longer.

Speaker 4 (58:39):
Nice. Yeah, it's San Diego is of course, you can
almost have this stuff yet.

Speaker 5 (58:43):
Around eternal summer.

Speaker 4 (58:44):
Well, we have winters now. The last two winters have
been very wet.

Speaker 1 (58:48):
Yeah, I had to have a bit of a learning
curve coming from California to Oregon within the different climates.
And I have to say that with the things that
I had in parts, bringing them inside with girl bulbs
has been or older weather has been pretty successful for
me at keeping things alive. Yeah, they're not as fruitful obviously,
but they do not die.

Speaker 4 (59:08):
Yeah, that's a wind. If you're in Portland or somewhere
feather North and like you know that your plant won't
make it through the winter, that's a strategy, right. You
can have a place set aside, you bring it in.
You can have a grow bolb.

Speaker 1 (59:18):
And honestly a lot of lamps. They sell bulbs that
are grow bulbs that can go directly in the lamps
you already have, so you don't need to buy anything fancy.
The bulbs are pretty expensive and they're sold at most
local hardware stores, so you're really spending like five dollars
on a bowlb instead of spending you know, thirty dollars
on some fancy contraption.

Speaker 2 (59:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (59:38):
Yeah, my mom has a shoplight. You know, this is
like a metal lamp seah clip, It's just a cheap
shoplight that she clips onto a shelf to shine at
her plants. Her version of oh.

Speaker 4 (59:48):
Yeah, that guy, Sofie's demonstrating audio listeners.

Speaker 5 (59:52):
Her empty nesting has involved a whole grow situation like
there's no dining room at my parents' house anymore. There's
nowhere for us to eat when we go home to
the dining is a greenhouse. I love like tropical plants
that have to live inside in the winter. She's got
like a bougainvilla that's like ten feet tall that comes
in the house in the winter.

Speaker 4 (01:00:10):
Amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
I just bought some bougain via that I have in
a pot right now, because I grew up with bougainvia
in California, and I finally found a nursery that had
it in an Oregon and I was like home.

Speaker 5 (01:00:22):
I always thought it was a potted plant until I
saw it outside in a tropical environment.

Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
It's not a potted plant, not a part of.

Speaker 4 (01:00:28):
It, not in San Diego. It is a plant that
will take over your guarden.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
Sorry, James, we've gone off the rails. Back to what
you're saying.

Speaker 4 (01:00:35):
It's okay, yeah, returning to the rails. I did want
to plug native seed search. I love native seed search
for finding different and exciting seeds and preserving indigenous people's
horticultural traditions and like lifeways. I have grown lots of
seeds from native seed search with great success. And it's
cool in a world of increasingly like monocultural agriculture to

(01:00:57):
preserve something that is part of one's culture. Zapatistas will
also send you corn. I'm sure anyone on the left
who's over thirty years old is very familiar with zapatis
to corn, I'm sure. But for the youth among us,
you can order corn from the zapatistas that actually comes
from somebody in San Diego who will send you some
of this sort of heritage variety corn. And you're preserving

(01:01:19):
this corn in a world where corn is increasingly commercialized. Right,
things like Monsanto have a lockdown on some of these
corn varieties. Right, they're like patented varieties. Right, even if
you don't sew them, they're sort of invading the genome
of these indigenous corn types. So keeping these varieties alive
is a cool thing to do. I used to do

(01:01:40):
this when I was like sixteen. This is like early activism.
Me was like growing some zappetis to corn in my parents' greenhouse.
But that's the thing you can do if you want
cool corn.

Speaker 5 (01:01:48):
I think it's important too to look up what's native
to your area, and not just because it is you know,
the right thing to do, but it'll grow better where
you live. The pollinators will be attracted to it where
you live. I was just looking up like here in Virginia,
the Department of Wildlife Resources will sell you native seeds
for your area at a pretty good affordable rice. So like,
look up what wants to live where you are growing it. Yeah,

(01:02:11):
totally a lot of things, like ornamental garden plants are
highly invasive and destructive to your local habitat. So things
that might look really nice in your yard are destructive
to your environment.

Speaker 4 (01:02:24):
Yeah, that's a big thing where it's probably a big
thing everywhere, but like in California, and we talk about
like invasive mustard. Right when you see these big yellow
hillsides in California, that's an invasive plant. Of course, there's
the climate changes. What is indigenous to one area may
no longer be suitable for growing there, And that's definitely
happened with some plants. I'd get a lot of plants
as well from Desert Survivors, which is a little nursery

(01:02:45):
in Tucson, Arizona, where I like to go and buy
desert plants because I do not like to have plants
that are extremely thirsty for water. This is my transition
to our watering segment. You need to water your plants.
This is something that people probably know that some tips
for watering. You want to water your plants regularly and consistently.

(01:03:08):
Plants can get stressed if you have a lot of water,
then no water, then a lot of water. Again. If
you're using a vibe space watering strategy, you might be
causing your plant excessive stress. So I like to water
my plants morning or evening because in the heat of
the day you're going to lose more to evaporation. If
you're really going for it, you can set up a
drip feeder, which is a pretty cool system where the

(01:03:31):
lots of little lines and they just drip water onto
your plants. Those are a really great way to irrigate.
You can also do what I often do, which is
drink a lot and then use your plants as an
excuse for doing that. By taking the little glass bottles
and making plant waters out of them as you fill
them up and then basically shove them in the ground

(01:03:51):
as long as you can get a good plug of
soil in the end of the bottle.

Speaker 5 (01:03:54):
And misunderstood where you were going with that. I thought
you were pissing on your vegetables.

Speaker 4 (01:03:58):
Nope.

Speaker 5 (01:04:00):
So I've heard of putting urine in your compost tumbler,
something about the urea and the nitrogen. But I don't
think you're suposed to piss right on the tomatoes.

Speaker 4 (01:04:08):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:04:10):
I was trying to understand what Molly's the gig face
was really.

Speaker 4 (01:04:14):
Yeah, Money's baffled by this bottle idea.

Speaker 5 (01:04:17):
I don't pee on my garden. Yeah, I mean it's
sort of street facing. I think it would be sort
of loud and lascivius.

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
For the record, Yeah, Molly does not pee on her garden.

Speaker 4 (01:04:26):
I want everyone to know that Money's not a guden per.

Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
No.

Speaker 5 (01:04:29):
But watering is a big issue for me, right, So,
because it's not supposed to be a garden there there's.

Speaker 4 (01:04:34):
No hose as a water source.

Speaker 5 (01:04:36):
There's no external like spigott for me to hook up
a hose too. There's so I have to use a
two gallon watering can that I fill in my bathtub
and then take out one at a time, and so
you know you're supposed to, like the equivalent of one
inch of water per week is about average for a
little vegetable garden, which is like zero point six gallons
per square foot. So for my ten foot by ten foot,

(01:04:58):
I'm looking at sixty gallons a week. So every other
day fill up my watering can you know, ten or
twenty times. It's an endeavor, good work, It's an endeavor.

Speaker 4 (01:05:06):
Yeah, it's a commitment to the plants. You could like
do a hose and run out your window from the tap.

Speaker 5 (01:05:13):
I looked into it. So for people who live in
apartments and have a lot of house plants, there's like
an adapter you can get for your kitchen sink that
you can screw a hose onto. But I do not
have the right kind of faucet for that.

Speaker 4 (01:05:23):
Disappointing. I bet someone listening has a solution for Molly's plants.

Speaker 1 (01:05:27):
But first it's time for advertisements.

Speaker 5 (01:05:30):
I hope it's an advertisement for pissing outside.

Speaker 4 (01:05:33):
That would be great. I would read the advert for
pissing outside.

Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
I just feel like that's what we're missing the.

Speaker 5 (01:05:39):
World is a toilet.

Speaker 4 (01:05:40):
Surely like Jocko or someone has done a like pissing outside,
Jordan Peterson that they've done sunning your balls, they must
have done pissing outside.

Speaker 5 (01:05:49):
So if you ask the people that make the shi
Wi a failed sponsor the.

Speaker 1 (01:05:52):
Show, sure.

Speaker 4 (01:06:00):
We are back and we are now going to talk
about and your versus perennial plants, a topic play know
many of you have been wondering about. Would one of
you like to explain? I'm sure you're familiar with annuals
and perennials, which one of you like to take on
the task of explaining them to our listeners?

Speaker 5 (01:06:14):
Sophie, what annuals just live for the one growing season.
Perennials will come back next year, is the short of it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:23):
I definitely could have answered that, Well.

Speaker 4 (01:06:25):
You didn't, did you, Surpi?

Speaker 5 (01:06:27):
So your tomatoes are annuals. Allegedly my halapenna is supposed
to be a perennial. She did not make it rip.

Speaker 4 (01:06:34):
We've had a couple of peppers over winter. I have
a thie bird chili that made it from a couple
of winters. Now, it'll depend a little bit on where
you are as well, if they'll make it through the w.

Speaker 5 (01:06:42):
And I think I should have pruned it back earlier
before the frost. I think they winter better if you
prune them back. It was parted. I could have sunk
the pot in the soil so the soil temperature would
remain more constant, but I didn't do that. I about
a new one.

Speaker 1 (01:06:55):
I respect that.

Speaker 4 (01:06:57):
So some other things to consider. I'm going three things
that you might need to add as your guide growth
would be like frames for plants that creep or plants
that climb. Some tomatoes will need a frame. For Molly's cucumbers,
you're going to need a frame.

Speaker 5 (01:07:11):
Oh, I got a little a frame for my cukees
this year. But I hate tomato cages. Those you've seen them,
the round little at the bottom when they get there,
the horrible round wire cages. They're ugly, they're hard to store.
They live in an apartment. What I'm going to do
with that the other eight months out of the year.
So what I did last year is a technique called
Florida weave, where you use posts and twine and you

(01:07:33):
sort of so you have the posts along the row
and then you between the posts you weave the twine
on either side of the plants, and it worked really
well until my tomatoes became ten feet tall because I
bought five foot posts. But it was good in theory.

Speaker 4 (01:07:48):
Yeah, that's how commercial tomatoes are grown.

Speaker 5 (01:07:50):
It was much more affordable than buying like something large,
because I just went to tractor supply and bought Actually,
the steaks I bought are for putting up electric fences,
so they have clips every few inches along the post
for so convenient to clip the wire into. So I
used that to hold onto the twine and they were
like a buck fifty apiece. So it's a much more

(01:08:11):
affordable and more storage friendly. So Florida weave them great idea.

Speaker 4 (01:08:16):
Love that, Yeah, I love that. Someone gave me a
load of bamboo and I just made frames out of
that and just it's fun to do a little a
frame hitch and make little frame and then you can
just collapse it right because the a frame hitch, it
relies on the spreading of the bottom to give it attention.
So you just you bring them together again and you
can store it over the winter.

Speaker 5 (01:08:35):
Yeah, So there are a lot of solutions out there
that don't involve buying a fifty dollars contraption. It blows
you know, like, don't feel like you have to invest
a lot of money in like objects and gadgets and things.

Speaker 4 (01:08:46):
Yeah, I think generally, Actually, there's a lot of shit
that's marketed at trying to get your plants to grow,
and like, the chances are if your plants you're having
not as much success as you would hope. They're not
getting enough light, they're not getting enough water, or they're
not getting enough nutrients, or too cold or too hot
for them.

Speaker 5 (01:09:01):
You don't need a big gadget.

Speaker 4 (01:09:03):
Yeah, you don't need to buy a thing. And it
is one of those areas where you can find for
useful information on the internet. So if you're struggling with
a certain plant, there is almost certainly someone who's already
had that struggle and you can find their solutions. There
are some pretty good websites for searching up that stuff.
The last thing I wanted to cover was pruning and
weeding and pest management, which can be a bit of

(01:09:27):
a mission. Right now, I'm fighting a uphill struggle against
some gophers. They have targeted me. You have to shoot
this is a problem. I live in a relatively built
up area, I am a person who grew up in agriculture.
I know how to manage pests. But unfortunately all the
things that I would have done are felony crime.

Speaker 5 (01:09:51):
Big government is interfering with your urban farm.

Speaker 4 (01:09:55):
Once again, the boot of the man is on my neck.

Speaker 5 (01:09:58):
I am at war with the squirrels here. That's weird.
They didn't mess with me last year, I guess because
you know, we had just moved in and they saw
the dogs and they were concerned about the dogs. But
this year they're feeling bold and they are digging holes.
Every day. They're digging holes. They are burying peanuts in
my garden, and I keep pulling peanuts out of the.

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
I have a fucking peanut problem too.

Speaker 5 (01:10:17):
I'm not Jimmy Carter. I'm not farming peanuts.

Speaker 1 (01:10:20):
They're not afraid of Buccanatto.

Speaker 5 (01:10:22):
I guess because last year they didn't get got so
this year they're feeling.

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):
Like Henderson keeps the squirrels at bay. They know their
place and that it is her yard.

Speaker 4 (01:10:30):
A buccanotto on patrol though. Are they able to access
the pit?

Speaker 5 (01:10:34):
No, the pit is like not accessible to dog, but
like sometimes you know, they're out on the patio barking.
But the solution that I have found because apparently I'm
not allowed to shoot them a cayenne pepper.

Speaker 1 (01:10:47):
Yes, cayenne pepper is a great solution.

Speaker 5 (01:10:49):
I bought like several pounds of cayenne pepper in bulk,
and I just sprinkle it on all of the surfaces,
like on the surface of the soil along the wall
around the pit because they don't want to like walk
in it and smell it, So it keeps them off
the wall so they don't end up down in the
pit to dig.

Speaker 1 (01:11:05):
I do the same. You get some that some chili oil,
a little bit of water, you put a spray bottle,
and he just keeps a lot of bugs away as well.

Speaker 4 (01:11:12):
Yeah, mace your plants.

Speaker 5 (01:11:14):
Yeah, Unfortunately I don't sprinkle into the wind.

Speaker 4 (01:11:19):
Oh no, Yeah, I've done the same thing. Money. I've
maced myself trying to do that.

Speaker 5 (01:11:27):
As my strawberry start to ripe and I'm thinking, like
maybe I should stop macing the strawberries.

Speaker 4 (01:11:32):
No, just grow mace strawberries. Then you'll be immune. If
you ate enough of them, you could become like the Hulk.
You know, they spray you and you just get strong.

Speaker 5 (01:11:39):
Yeah, I'm doing mithrittism with police brutality.

Speaker 4 (01:11:42):
Yeah, I love that for you, like the guy who
lets his snakes bite him a little bit all the time,
and yeah, but for cops, I love that. There are
lots of solutions to this which don't evolve like spraying
your plants with a butt kind of round up or
round up will probably kill them. But other pesticides, right,
like don't splay your plants is round up might kill
you as well. But yeah, you have to first ascertain

(01:12:03):
what pest you're dealing with, right, So for the gophers,
one of the things you can do is, you know
construction netting. It's like chicken wire bit thinner. Yeah, you
can put that because the roots of the plant can
still get through that. So you put that at the
bottom of your planter, right where it sits on the soil.
The roots of the plant can still get through, but
mister gopher cannot missus gopher, non binary gopher can't get
through their netting, just like a physical block. I've heard

(01:12:25):
people say that cat litter is something you can sprinkle
and they think are cats around. You can also just
make a little house for a cat that doesn't have one,
so that it comes and lives near your plants. We
had that for a while. The little neighborhood cat came
in to stay and it kept the rat problem to
a minimum. You can use things like have you seen

(01:12:46):
the ultrasound gopher preventors.

Speaker 5 (01:12:50):
Yeah, I can't use one of those because they think
it would bother the dogs, right like you would bother
other small mammals.

Speaker 4 (01:12:56):
I have one that I got on Jeffrey Bezos his
website that are not in fact ultrasound. They're very much
just regular sound, and I think Alas missold those, so
they're worth trying. They are all sort of non lethal
methods as well.

Speaker 5 (01:13:08):
You can get a plastic owl, yes.

Speaker 4 (01:13:10):
You can't if you've got a bird problem. You can
also get bird netting if they're eating your berries, And
I would suggest that you can get a variety of
plastic animals.

Speaker 5 (01:13:17):
Actually, my mom has a coy pond, and so she
got a plastic heron to scare away the real heron
that eats the fish. And my dad misunderstood the purpose
of the heron, right, it was a functional plastic bird.
It was to scare away the real bird that eats
the fish. And so he thought like oh, like we
like fake birds now, and so he very lovingly bond

(01:13:37):
a bunch of like different fake plastic birds for the yard.

Speaker 1 (01:13:41):
Oh that's so endearing.

Speaker 4 (01:13:43):
Yeah it's adorable, but it.

Speaker 5 (01:13:45):
Does not keep the heron away. Yeah, he's eating the fish.

Speaker 4 (01:13:49):
Maybe need a more intimidating plastic heron. Keep buying until
you find.

Speaker 5 (01:13:52):
The one, you know, a really buff one.

Speaker 4 (01:13:54):
Yeah, yeah, buff one that's giving the middle finger because
birds do that. H charns do that and they're buff
like that.

Speaker 1 (01:14:02):
What other pest management things do we recommend? Oh?

Speaker 5 (01:14:06):
I love knee oil for thrips and.

Speaker 1 (01:14:09):
Aphids, sneem oil rules.

Speaker 5 (01:14:11):
I don't put any poison on my plants because I'm
I'm against it. But I have a spray bottle that
I put a little bit of knee oil and a
little bit of down dish soap in and then mostly
just hot water. After that, shake that bad way up
and spray them down.

Speaker 4 (01:14:24):
Lady buds are a great one, Lady bugs for the
Americans in the audience.

Speaker 5 (01:14:28):
The only thing I use like is is like, it's
not really a poison, it's a bacteria. I don't know,
debatable buy these bacillisitringiensis. I use that to keep the
caterpillars away.

Speaker 1 (01:14:40):
There's also like a lot of different plants you can
plant with your crops to help keep pests at bay,
you know, thinking like you know a lot of herbs
which you would want to grow anyways, like mint and
rosemary and lavender and cat nip, and then also Merrygold's
always good lemon gras as to Trunella grass.

Speaker 5 (01:15:02):
A coplant marigolden basil with my tomatoes.

Speaker 4 (01:15:06):
It looks nice. Also, I wanted to mention pruning. Yes,
you do want to be pruning your plants with tomatoes.
You want to pull off the suckers, right If you
imagine your tomato is like a V, and then a
third sprout coming up from the middle of the V.

Speaker 5 (01:15:21):
Because you should see what Jess is doing with his
hands right now.

Speaker 4 (01:15:25):
Yeah, for the several thousand people who are not in
the room, making a V with my hand and then
an extra finger in the middle of the V. I
can't do this without making myself laugh now.

Speaker 5 (01:15:36):
My, but yeah, pull off the suckers.

Speaker 4 (01:15:39):
You're generally gonna want to prune your plants, right, This
will encourage them to fruit instead of just growing.

Speaker 5 (01:15:44):
Yes, especially with your herbs. You want to top your
herbs because once they go to seed, they stop growing.

Speaker 4 (01:15:52):
Yeah. Oh they taste like ass.

Speaker 1 (01:15:53):
Cut your rosemary often.

Speaker 4 (01:15:58):
Give it a trim. People get really scared about pruning
or pollidding. If you've got a tree, you poll add it.
But it's really not that scary. Again, like depending on
your plant, you'll find some good videos on YouTube.

Speaker 1 (01:16:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:16:09):
The last thing I wanted to talk about is rotating
your crops. Oh yeah, did you learn about this in
school that we did or is this just a British.

Speaker 5 (01:16:17):
They cheat you guys about crop rotation.

Speaker 1 (01:16:19):
Yeah, that was not in any of my classes.

Speaker 4 (01:16:22):
Really, you didn't have a three field system.

Speaker 1 (01:16:25):
No, I learned that from like some nice YouTuber.

Speaker 4 (01:16:28):
Okay, well there's a niche for you there of your
British person teach American people shit, they should have learned
in school.

Speaker 1 (01:16:33):
On YouTube, it's going to take a long time. That's
a long program.

Speaker 4 (01:16:37):
Yeah, you're overestimating our education system. So you can rotate
your crops. So if you're growing the same thing in
the same soil every year, it's going to pull the
same stuff out every year, right, unless you're replenishing your soil,
which you want to do if you've got your annual
plants right, you do want to errate your soil. Turn
it over. You can get a soil aarator's controversial. You
don't believe in soil aeration.

Speaker 5 (01:16:57):
It's controversial.

Speaker 4 (01:16:59):
My belief is you should augment and erate your soil,
or you can rotate your crops right, which what you're
doing there is not growing the same thing every year.
And crucially, what you want to include in a corp
rotation is a nitrogen fixing plant, which is to say,
a laguminous plant.

Speaker 5 (01:17:15):
The squirrels are actually trying to help me by planting
those peanuts.

Speaker 4 (01:17:18):
Yes, I guess peanuts are in l Agome. I'd never
thought that from a country where peanuts wouldn't grow.

Speaker 5 (01:17:23):
I guess I should apologize to the squirrels.

Speaker 4 (01:17:26):
Yep, little farming squirrels. I like to do peas. They're
a lagome. A lentil. Everyone loves a lentil. It's kind
of fun to grow a little lentil, do you yes,
I remember you said it's on Twitter. This is incredible
to me.

Speaker 5 (01:17:40):
It's because biding into a lentil, the way that surface
tension breaks when you bite it. To me, is exactly
how I imagine it would feel to bite into an
engorged tick.

Speaker 4 (01:17:51):
Just reading about someone who bit a tick.

Speaker 1 (01:17:53):
I just decided I am anti lentil, just based on that.

Speaker 4 (01:17:58):
We can't allow money to ruin lentil. Lentils are your friend.

Speaker 5 (01:18:02):
I know they're great. They are a great source of
non meat protein, but I can't do it.

Speaker 1 (01:18:06):
Apparently, I no longer can do it.

Speaker 4 (01:18:09):
Either cook them enough and there's not the surface engine,
or get split once you know the red lentils that
are split, and then you won't have the tension.

Speaker 5 (01:18:16):
I can do that.

Speaker 4 (01:18:16):
Yeah, okay, okay, we've agreed on I'm like fifty percent
lentil by mass if I didn't have lentils, so, I
don't know if I would make it, make a big
thing on lentils every single Sunday and then I eat
them most of the week.

Speaker 5 (01:18:29):
It never even occurred to me, like what does a
lentil plant look like? Which part of the plant is
the lentil?

Speaker 4 (01:18:35):
It's the seed. I think there's the lagume.

Speaker 5 (01:18:37):
It's the that sounds labor intensive to harvest.

Speaker 4 (01:18:41):
It's not too bad. It's kind of fun. Because lentils
play such an important role in my life. I like
to grow them. It's fixing a n ogen back. We
could put any laguminous plant right, it would fix a
nitchen back in your soil. And if you rotate those
through and even leave your soil fallow for a while
so they don't grow anything, right, if you have a
space to do that, rotating your around, right, so you
have like a fallow and then something else and then

(01:19:03):
the goom, and then you just rotate them around every year.

Speaker 5 (01:19:06):
I just have the pit.

Speaker 4 (01:19:07):
You could segment off the pit. You could do pit
quarters and you could rotate them around. You could have lentils,
you could have tomatoes, basil and the little fallow patch
for the dogs to run around.

Speaker 3 (01:19:19):
It.

Speaker 1 (01:19:19):
Just let you say tomatoes and basils entire time.

Speaker 4 (01:19:23):
Yeah, I'm so glad, thank you, Thank you for not
making me feel feel bad.

Speaker 1 (01:19:28):
I was thinking it. I want you to know, but
I kept I held it in like a winner until
the very end.

Speaker 4 (01:19:34):
So yeah, the very end.

Speaker 5 (01:19:36):
My grandmother says, tomato.

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
Yeah. Good Americans do.

Speaker 5 (01:19:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:19:42):
Really, the ones that I've met, I feel like they're
either doing it. Sometimes people will meet me and then
start talking like me incredible, it's not at all. It's
really weird when you notice someone changing their vowels. Yeah,
it's very weird. I don't know if this happens to everyone,
and it's just a thing that happens to British people.

(01:20:03):
So yeah, that's my message for you. Grow plants. Do
not start speaking like me or anyone. Don't parrot people's
action to just talk to where you talk. It's it's fine, but.

Speaker 5 (01:20:13):
Just like, don't overthink it. Just put some plants in
the dirt. Try it out. The worst that can happen.
It doesn't work, it's okay.

Speaker 4 (01:20:19):
Yeah, they're not very exprected. I get seeds, grow them
up from the seeds.

Speaker 5 (01:20:22):
And never buy cut basil from the grocery store. You know,
you spend six dollars with that little plastic blister pack
of leaves. Don't do it. It's cheaper to buy the
whole plant and then you have unlimited basil.

Speaker 1 (01:20:32):
Unless you're me who can't grow lest you're Sofia.

Speaker 4 (01:20:35):
Yeah yeah, yeah, just Sophie, Please go ahead and buy
cut basil.

Speaker 1 (01:20:38):
No, I'll just steal some from my friends who know
how to grow.

Speaker 4 (01:20:42):
Yeah, that's another thing you can do. Steal.

Speaker 1 (01:20:44):
Oh yeah, that's the other thing. Steal plants from your friends,
bring your friends cuttings, share your plants with friends.

Speaker 5 (01:20:50):
I don't consider it stealing to snap off little cuttings
or seed heads.

Speaker 1 (01:20:54):
No, like I don't either.

Speaker 5 (01:20:55):
No. My fanny pack is full of like mysterious seed
heads that I popped off of plants, and so I
put in the dirt because I couldn't remember what they were.

Speaker 1 (01:21:02):
That's also like a really fun game.

Speaker 5 (01:21:05):
Yeah, I think these are cosmos. We'll find out.

Speaker 4 (01:21:09):
Get some seeds and trade them with your friends and
everyone gets a mystery plant. Be a fun thing to do.

Speaker 5 (01:21:14):
And don't forget to grow a flower too. Yeah, grow
a nice flower, attract some beans.

Speaker 4 (01:21:19):
Grow some pollinators. This is a weird little anecdote to
end on. So beyond the company who make the protective
combat uniform for the US military, they also make some
really nice clothing that I buy for work stuff. Sometimes
I get afraid of being on fire, so I like
to buy fire retardant stuff. And they send a little
tag with all of their clothing. So you're buying your

(01:21:41):
like fire retardant base layer to or under your plate
carrier when you're working and It comes with a little
tag that has plant seeds in it, and if you
plant the tag, flowers will grow.

Speaker 5 (01:21:51):
That's beautiful.

Speaker 4 (01:21:52):
It's wonderful, isn't it. Yeah, it's very nice. And for
that reason line, they're my favorite purveyor of fireproof uniforms.

Speaker 5 (01:21:59):
Oh and get a sun hat. If you're outside gardening,
get a big floppy sun hat. It really helps you
get in the zone and it also protects you from
the sun.

Speaker 4 (01:22:08):
It's a great tape. I think we shouldet end with that. Bye,
by a sun.

Speaker 1 (01:22:11):
Hat, by a sun hat, wear sunscreen and listen to
sixteenth minute of Fame, our newest Cloze media podcast hosted
by Jamie loftus.

Speaker 4 (01:22:18):
Ah.

Speaker 5 (01:22:19):
Wow, so true, so true. Yeah, listen to it.

Speaker 1 (01:22:22):
Wow, gardening wearing a sun hat and sunscreen.

Speaker 5 (01:22:26):
I did that this morning.

Speaker 3 (01:22:27):
That's what I was doing this morning.

Speaker 4 (01:22:28):
So we had to know.

Speaker 1 (01:22:29):
Oh, Mollie, such a legend.

Speaker 5 (01:22:32):
I was propagating my basil tops in my little sun
hat listening to show.

Speaker 1 (01:22:36):
All right, the podcast has ended very well.

Speaker 3 (01:22:54):
Welcome back to you.

Speaker 5 (01:22:55):
It could happen here in a daily podcast about the
widening cracks in society threatening to swallow. I am once
again your occasional host Molly Conger, joined today by your
friend and mine, Robert Evans.

Speaker 1 (01:23:07):
Hi.

Speaker 2 (01:23:08):
Yeah, friends of all people, how are you doing, Molly.

Speaker 5 (01:23:12):
Reilly started things off, I hurt my feelings.

Speaker 2 (01:23:15):
Yeah, well, you know, you and I have been buddies
for a while. We're a special kind of friend that
can only exist in the era of signal loops because
we met in twenty twenty and then since then the
bulk of our socializing has been one or the other
of us being like, so, this fucked up thing happened
to me on the internet.

Speaker 5 (01:23:36):
Yeah, that's friends at the end of the World's.

Speaker 2 (01:23:39):
Friends at the end of the world. Yeah, watching the
long slow slide together.

Speaker 5 (01:23:43):
Well, today I've got sort of an update on the
ongoing cases against the Nazis who invaded my local college
campus seven years ago. I see, it's sort of because
it's some messy story and the end result is nothing.
So we finally got a case to trial and nothing changed.
So for listeners who aren't keeping tabs on my local
county court's effort to apply an old anti clan law

(01:24:06):
to a Nazi rally that happened a lifetime ago, just
a quick reminder.

Speaker 2 (01:24:10):
Yeah, long time ago.

Speaker 5 (01:24:11):
This is about the August eleventh, twenty seventeen, torch march
held at the University of Virginia on the eve of
the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. I've done a.

Speaker 2 (01:24:19):
Couple This is not the rally. This is not the
precise like the rally where there was the James Alexfield
did his vehicle based terrorist attack. This was the thing
that happened before that.

Speaker 5 (01:24:31):
This was the appetizer, right, This was the night before
they all got together and held their torches. And so
I've done a couple episodes about these cases, and I've
been writing about them in my newsletter, The Devil's Advocate.
So if you want a deeper dive into the cases
more generally, that is available elsewhere. So in the year
and change since these cases started getting filed, we've seen
eleven guys charged under this sort of obscure Virginia law

(01:24:54):
that makes it a felony to burn an object with
the intent to intimidate. It's based on an old anti
clan law criminalizing cross burning. But back in nineteen ninety eight,
a couple of clansmen got into some trouble for burning
some crosses. And I'm trying to break myself up the
habit of getting really deep into these sort of tangential
pieces of history that underlie a story, because it turns
out that's my special interest and not actually great podcasting.

(01:25:17):
But the long and the short of it is, Virginia's
cross burning statute had to be amended. The original law
banned it outright, with this sort of built in assumption
that like, obviously, if you're burning across you're trying to
communicate a certain kind of threat. But the law didn't
actually say that. It just made it illegal to do it.
And so the act itself of burning the cross under

(01:25:37):
the old law was prima facia evidence of intent to intimidate,
and the courts ultimately found that that's unconstitutional. So in
two thousand and two, the General Assembly amended the law
and they just added in some specific language that you
have to be doing it with a specific intent, right,
you have to be doing this to intimidate someone. Again,
that's kind of implied, but the implication was not sufficient,

(01:25:58):
so they changed it.

Speaker 3 (01:26:00):
I know that sounds like some really.

Speaker 5 (01:26:01):
Like c span level like boring shit, like legislative history
is not why you're here, But I promise that's going
to pay off. Right, So the law doesn't specify what
you're burning. It's not just crosses, it's any burning object,
but it does say you have to be doing it
with a particular intent and in a way.

Speaker 2 (01:26:14):
Could you theoretically smoke a cigarette in an aggressive manner
and violate this law?

Speaker 5 (01:26:19):
However, the Nazis lawyers keep asking that, and I don't
know the.

Speaker 2 (01:26:22):
I feel like the answer is I have to see
great minds think alike.

Speaker 5 (01:26:26):
I feel like every one of these guys lawyers has
been like, what if I flicked a cigarette at you?

Speaker 2 (01:26:30):
And it's like, I mean, well, flicking as I would
say that that's clearly a sort because you can actually
hurt someone with it, but like just smoking it, right,
like with that tex.

Speaker 5 (01:26:39):
Right, Like if I'm smoking a cigarette while harassing you.

Speaker 2 (01:26:42):
You know, yeah, yeah, be like you're going to go
up like this cigarette, bro, and then I light this cigarette?
Like is that if I violated it?

Speaker 3 (01:26:49):
I mean, I.

Speaker 5 (01:26:50):
Guess maybe, But it's all sort of contextual, right, So
the language of the law is what it is. You
could try to bring that case, I'm not sure that
it would work. So you bring an object specifically in
a way that would make somebody feel like you're gonna
hurt them, right, so placing someone in fear of injury
or death. But since that change was made in two

(01:27:11):
thousand and two, nobody's ever actually been charged with it. So,
like many laws, like Virginia's prohibition on trying to incite
a race war, that is apparently a class four felony.

Speaker 2 (01:27:21):
Yeah, Thomas Jefferson might have had a hand in that law.
That's scance.

Speaker 5 (01:27:25):
Actually it's from nineteen fifty and I'm really interested in
the legislative history. I'm gonna ask a law librarian. But
again I'm lost again. I'm lost again. So this has
just been sitting on the books for twenty years, waiting
for somebody to try it, and so last year somebody
tried it. Last year, somebody finally put the law to
the test and started charging the guys who participated in
that torch march. And what better application of this law, right,

(01:27:48):
I can't think of a clearer example. The torches, they're
on fire, they're chanting blood and soil, they're throwing Hitler's salutes,
they're attacking people. And of the eleven men charged so far,
five have already pled guilty. Four of those have already
been sentenced, all receiving active sentences of a year or less,
and they've actually already completed those sentences. Only half of
those guys actually went home from here, though, and then

(01:28:09):
the little aside Tyler Dyke served a few months here,
and then he got picked up by the US Marshalls
on federal charges for the insurrection. William Fears served a year,
and he actually just got picked up the other day
by a county in Pennsylvania. It's an old bench warrant.
He's been in jail so many times in so many
states for the last twenty years that they've actually been
having trouble getting a hold of him for violating his

(01:28:30):
probation fifteen years ago. They let him off on probation
for lying on a firearm application in two thousand and five,
but then he kidnapped a college freshman and stabbed her
in the face, which I think was a probation violation,
And by the time they got around to bringing him in,
he was already back in prison for strangling a different woman.
Again another digression. Sorry, So, even though we've had five

(01:28:51):
guilty please, we still hadn't actually seen this case taken
to trial, so we know five defendants looked at the
evidence and thought, oh, yeah, well it's a video of
me committing that crime. We still didn't know what a
jury would make of it. And this month Jacob Dix
took his case to trial, and we still don't actually
know what a jury would make of it, because it

(01:29:12):
ended in a mistrial. After twelve hours of deliberation over
the course of two days, which was significantly longer than
they actually spent hearing the evidence, the jury was deadlocked.
They had eight not guilty votes, three guilty, and one
person who didn't have an opinion either way. A source
tells me the jurors all agreed not to make any
public statements or to discuss what happened in the deliberation room,

(01:29:35):
so we don't know for sure what the debate was
like in there. But I sat through the trial, and honestly,
I know what kind of case I would have put
on right. So obviously, obviously I believe a guilty verdict
is achievable in this case. But given what I saw,
I'm surprised even as single juror voted guilty. There's nothing there.

(01:29:55):
But before I tell you about the three days I
wasted sitting on a wooden bench in a courtroom un
to use for clan meetings. Let's hear from some advertisers.

Speaker 2 (01:30:04):
Ah, speaking of the Nope, nope, ads, Ah, we're back.
What a what a time to be alive.

Speaker 5 (01:30:23):
We are alive. The trial started on June fourth, and
it did not go well. I've written about this at
greater length in my newsletter if you want some background
on why the case ended up with a special prosecutor.
But basically, the judge fell for a Nazi conspiracy theory
and that's where we ended up. So the case goes
to try good. Yeah, you know, I I have a

(01:30:44):
problem with the system in Virginia of these substitute judges.
So we had to bring in a substitute judge. And
it's just retired guys. So they take cases if they
feel like it. They don't yea, so they.

Speaker 2 (01:30:55):
Just add yeah, just just ad hoc judging. Sure that
seems good.

Speaker 5 (01:30:59):
Hey, there's a retire age for a reason, Like, I
don't know that you're keeping up with the case law. Anyway,
we had a substitute judge and a special prosecutor, So
the case goes to trial with an out of town prosecutor.
And because of how late in the game this motion
was granted. And there's the speedy trial clock. They had
a pretty limited amount of time to get up to
speed after being assigned the case to prepare for trial.

(01:31:21):
So they didn't know the case. They don't know the
local cops, they don't know the witnesses, they're not familiar
with the clerk of court here, just the basic procedural stuff.
This is not their home turf, and they don't really
have any investment in this case. This isn't something that
they chose to charge. It's just assigned to them. And again,
this is the first time this law has ever been

(01:31:41):
put in front of a jury, so there's no playbook here, right.
They can't sort of look to how this usually goes
and just do that. The real problem, though, is something
that's not unique at all. A prosecutor is desperate for
a good victim. They want something that is clean and uncomplicated.
They want to be able to show the jury a
little morality play with good guys and bad guys and

(01:32:03):
no messy stuff. They don't want the story to have
any elements that could snag on a juror's ideas about
the world. So instead of telling a story about anti
fascists being attacked by fascists, which is what happened, they
shaped their case around testimony from a bystander.

Speaker 2 (01:32:20):
Oh good, the most reliable kind of testimony.

Speaker 5 (01:32:23):
Yeah, now, I remember I promised that boring stuff about
the statutory requirement of intent would pay off. Right, Well,
I'm not sure the prosecutor understood that well. And if
I were to tell you that something was making me
feel intimidated, you know, generally, sort of colloquially speaking, I'm
saying I'm afraid. I'm being made to feel timid. Is
the root of the word, right, I am uncomfortable. I

(01:32:45):
am afraid. But it means something really specific here. It
doesn't just mean being afraid in conjunction with that language
about placing someone in reasonable fear of bodily injury or death.
We're not talking about feeling afraid. We're talking about the
legal idea of a true threat. So a true threat
is something that is not free speech. It is conduct

(01:33:06):
and expression that is no longer protected by the First Amendment.
And I'm I'm not going to go to bat here
for the First Amendment. I'm not going to defend this
sort of like libertarian idea that actually it's good and
healthy for a society that people can march around playing
junior Stormtrooper. But you know, technically they can right loader
hate it.

Speaker 2 (01:33:24):
That's not what we're talking about it. It's the difference
between saying I think the government should round up and
kill this group of people, which is absolutely protected speech,
and saying I am going to murder you tonight in
your home at this address, which you theoretically can get
in trouble for, although a lot of times people don't.

Speaker 5 (01:33:41):
You know, in my experience, people who see that to
me don't get in trouble. But I'm not sure that's. Yes,
it's a legal thing.

Speaker 2 (01:33:47):
It's mainly they get in trouble when they do that
two FBI agents, as that one Trump fan did after
Hunter Biden's conviction.

Speaker 5 (01:33:56):
Or there's been a rash lately of people getting picked
up after they leave a voicemail at a congressional office.
Don't leave a threat in a voice, Okay, don't don't that.

Speaker 2 (01:34:05):
Yeah, Wyatt, what are you? What are you doing? How
do you think this is going to work out? People
are cooked?

Speaker 5 (01:34:12):
So a lot of people are learning lately what a
true threat is right. So you know, up until that point,
there's a lot of shit you could do that sucks.
You can march around and be a little Nazi with
your pals, but what you cannot do is engage in
conduct that constitutes a true threat. And I think drawing
that line in a really clear way for the jury

(01:34:32):
was what this case should have been about. I think
they needed to hold the jury's hand through that, you know,
and say, you know, the defense is making this a
free speech case. And if it had stopped here, if
it had stopped at this point, you know, show them
where it stopped, where it changed. But they didn't do that,
and they left that line really blurry because the problem

(01:34:52):
is the point at which that line was crossed was
when that march encircled the small group of counter protesters, right,
So they spent half an hour marching and then they
got to where they were going, and that's when it
crossed the line. You know, they lit their torches, they marched,
they chanted. It was obviously intended to evoke Nazi Germany.
You know, they're saying blood and soil Jews will not

(01:35:14):
replace us. It's a real Hitler vibe and a lot
of people who are on the fence about the prosecutions
are looking at that and saying, well, yeah, like that's disgusting,
But isn't that free speech? And it is. Most of
that was right, So most of that conduct was not
against the law. You know, if you saw that, you
might feel afraid. People did, and that makes sense. It

(01:35:37):
was very alarming to see. It might make you feel unsafe,
and it could and definitely did eventually evolve into a
situation where people are unsafe. But seeing them pass by
doesn't actually put you in a position where you might die,
I mean not right at the moment anyway, Right, You know,
the law doesn't really extend to the idea that this

(01:35:58):
is part of a larger societal shift that ends violently.
You know, this existential thread of the rise of fascism
doesn't constitute a true threat in the immediate sense under
the law.

Speaker 4 (01:36:07):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:36:09):
Yeah, A guy, a dude in a similar situation in
DC in twenty twenty stabbed a person and got off
because it was very clear that he like, when you
are surrounded.

Speaker 5 (01:36:24):
That's true threat, right, that you are in imminent danger. Right,
And it wasn't just a person that was Jeremy, I know, yeah,
that way. That was Jeremy Bertino.

Speaker 2 (01:36:34):
One of my favorite stabbings.

Speaker 5 (01:36:36):
Yeah, just a weird turn of events for Jeremy because
the month before he got stabbed it was, oh gosh,
it was one of the other Proud Way rallies in DC.
I was surrounded by a group of proud boys that
he was commanding, right, and so I was in that
the same position, and I was getting a little nervous
because they were starting to, you know, get my face
and touch me and try and move me around. Jeremy

(01:36:59):
actually meet them. Stop. You know, you don't chivalry. You
don't got to hand it to Jeremy. But I think
he knew it would have been bad for them if
they stabbed me.

Speaker 2 (01:37:08):
Little did he know, Yeah, he would be there, whereas
the guy who stabbed him was in block and such.

Speaker 5 (01:37:14):
Yeah, just a strange, strange twist of history for Jeremy.
Now he states, witness m hm, anyway, where were we
We could cut some of that. I'm out of it today.
We're both in a bad way right now.

Speaker 2 (01:37:29):
Yeah. I think everyone's always in a bad way these days.
That's it's worth acknowledging. I can't sleep anymore. You're frazzled, like,
welcome to twenty twenty four. It's fine, We're doing as
well as either a presidential candidate.

Speaker 5 (01:37:43):
I had to wait until the recess in the city
council meeting yesterday to go outside and check on the
drive by on my block, Like things are going good.

Speaker 2 (01:37:51):
Yeah, things are things are solid? Uh yeah?

Speaker 5 (01:37:57):
Should I just take the whole paragraph.

Speaker 2 (01:37:58):
From the top, sure, yeah, started.

Speaker 5 (01:38:03):
Because I don't even know where to re starve. Okay.
It wasn't until the march encounter the counter protesters that
there was truly intentional intimidation that placed them in fear
of injury or death. The people who were trapped, and
I mean that literally all avenues of escape were close
to them. The march formed a circle around them that
was ten men deep. Those were the victims of this crime.
They were beaten and punched and kicked and pepper sprayed.

(01:38:26):
It were shoved and hit with lit torches. They thought
they would die. But those people are complicated, aren't they right?
Those people were Antifa, they were activists, they were believers
in Black Lives Matter, they were communists, the anarchists, right,
queer people, trans people, people of color, people who attend

(01:38:49):
protests and have attended more since they were people who
hated Nazis. There were people with skin in.

Speaker 2 (01:38:55):
The game, people whose existence is inherently politicized, and thus
attempts to destroy them can't just be seen as a
human being being assaulted. They have to be seen as like, well,
is the thing that they believe and my opinions on
it as a judge a mitigating factor.

Speaker 5 (01:39:11):
Right, It's messy, it shouldn't be, but it is right.
These were people who believe that we have a duty
to each other to stand in the way of the
march of fascism, and that night that's literally what they did.
And that's murky for a prosecutor. What if the jury
doesn't like that, What if, maybe just a little bit

(01:39:32):
they deserved it?

Speaker 2 (01:39:34):
Right?

Speaker 5 (01:39:34):
Does the law really still protect you if you make
a choice a jury doesn't understand. And so the prosecutor
chose to rest this case on the shoulders of a
young woman whose front door the march past that night
on its way to the scene of the crime. As
a young Jewish woman alone in her room that night,
she was terrified to hear the approaching Nazi march. She

(01:39:55):
took off a necklace in a ring bearing symbols of
her faith and hid them before she fl at her
home and fear. She was absolutely a victim of white
supremacist terror. But I do not think she was a
victim under the language of this statute. And I want
to be so clear about that, right. I'm not saying
what happened to her was okay, or that it's her

(01:40:17):
fault that the case was presented this way. She was subpoena,
she gave the testimony she was required by the law
to give, and she gave it well. And she's obviously
deeply traumatized by this. And so when I say she's
not a victim of the crime, when I say that
the fear that she felt does not meet this legal standard,
I don't mean anything other than that there are far
more ways to harm a person and a community than

(01:40:39):
have been contemplated by our part time General Assembly. But
under this statute, being frightened, however reasonable, that is, however
serious she felt that fear is not the same as
being placed in reasonable fear of death or bodily injury.
I think her testimony could have been really valuable as

(01:41:00):
a supplement to this overall presentation, because she was very emotional.
I think it was very moving for the jury, but
it didn't move the needle legally, And I think it
was a really perilous foundation on which to try to
construct a case. But you know, it would not be
a perilous course of action for you to take, Robert
Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 (01:41:20):
It would be perilous if I didn't get this ad
break in because Sophie has a taser now, so let's
just let's just move right along.

Speaker 5 (01:41:28):
Does it ever stop feeling dirty to do that?

Speaker 2 (01:41:31):
No?

Speaker 3 (01:41:32):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:41:32):
I mean, you know what, what doesn't feel dirty these days, Mollie.
What feels clean probably buy I pay so much in
taxes and that always feels dirty. Like I know where
they're going. I see the celebrities signing the bombs they
helped pay. I don't feel good about anything. We're back,

(01:41:59):
and you know, here's a free ad, Molly. I found
out where I can buy the really good mace. I
learned about this mace the right way to learn about mace,
which is I had it used on me and was like, wow,
that mace was much more debilitating than normal mace.

Speaker 5 (01:42:12):
You've got a free samples.

Speaker 2 (01:42:14):
Yeah, I got a free sample from two different federal agencies,
and it it knocked me at a commission for about
a half hour each time, which is pretty good for mace.
It's called silver Bullet and it's a like a ten
percent OC two percent CS. I maybe mixing those up mix,
but you're not supposed to be able to buy it
if you're not law enforcement. But it's not illegal. So
I finally just found a website that doesn't doesn't check,

(01:42:37):
and now I've got the good mace. I don't really
know what to do with it.

Speaker 5 (01:42:40):
But does it actually have silver in it? Will it
also kill germs?

Speaker 3 (01:42:44):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:42:44):
No, no, I have to use my anti microbial silver
wound dressings for that, but I do have some of those.
Jesus Christ always useful to have molly important stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:42:57):
Well, I'm glad you got yourself a little treat. I
think that's import in these days, a little treat, Yeah,
sort of. One of my guiding principles in this increasingly
awful world is if you can get a little treat,
you should get a little treat.

Speaker 2 (01:43:09):
Yeah. One of my guiding principles is like, whenever I
decide I'm depressed and I'm going to like do retail therapy,
just just a pick up a new kind of weapon,
a kind of weapon I don't have already. I got
a rungu the other day, which is a kind of
stick that you beat people with. You know, I'm making
sure that I'm like diversified my portfolio.

Speaker 5 (01:43:31):
I was thinking more like sometimes at Kroger they have
a new flavor of chips. But your thing's cool too.

Speaker 2 (01:43:37):
Mm hmm, it's good. It's good. Chips can be a
weapon anyway. But let's move back to the subject.

Speaker 5 (01:43:44):
Back to the courthouse. Right, the defense in this case
was right about one thing. I mean, they didn't say
very much. They didn't actually put on a case. They
put on no evidence and no witnesses. But he spoke
a few times, right, the attorney, He spoke a few times,
And in his closing defense attorney Peter Fraser said he
didn't have to put on a case because the prosecutor
made his case for him. The counter protesters could not

(01:44:06):
be intimidated.

Speaker 3 (01:44:08):
Now that means what.

Speaker 5 (01:44:08):
He said, right, the counter protesters in this case, they
couldn't be intimidated because they opted into this. The protesters
brought this on themselves, their mere presence in this public space,
expressing their right to protest was a waiver of their
right to safety, and they consented to whatever happened after that,
and they couldn't be victims of anything. Right. They wanted this,

(01:44:32):
They chose to be there, they knew the Nazis were coming,
and the prosecutor's failure to rebut this, to actively push
back against the idea that entering this space was some
sort of agreement to mutual combat, right, that the failure
to push back on that at all can only be
seen as an agreement they allowed. The court and the

(01:44:53):
defense and the judge himself said, well, no one was hurt,
and they failed to call witnesses who hurt because people
were hurt.

Speaker 2 (01:45:01):
Yeah, yeah, that seems like a massive, like disqualifying oversight.

Speaker 5 (01:45:07):
They you know, they could have sometimes.

Speaker 2 (01:45:09):
Especially with anarchists defendants, that could be hard to get
people who are willing to testify. But I imagine you can
find some people in this case.

Speaker 3 (01:45:17):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:45:17):
So the thing is is I acknowledge that there are
many of the victims and many of the witnesses who
have chosen not to participate in this process. Right. First
of all, I'm not saying it would be good if
this happened, but technically you can subpoena them anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:45:31):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:45:31):
There are people in this case who would have cooperated
had they been called. People like Alan Groves, who in
twenty seventeen was a dean at UVA who was burned
by the flames, or UVA librarian Tyler McGill, who suffered
a catastrophic stroke after being struck in the neck by
a torch.

Speaker 2 (01:45:49):
Free advice there, folks, Free advice there.

Speaker 5 (01:45:51):
Prosecutors, they subpoened, but did not call my own friend God,
one of the counter protesters there that night, who's testimony
about being pepper sprayed put Christopher Cantwell in jail. They
did not call Devin Willis or Natalie Romero, who were
plaintiffs in the civil lawsuit and have already proven their
ability to testify with incredible courage and clarity about being
kicked and punched as they were trapped by the wall

(01:46:14):
of flames. In the civil trial, Devon recalled the moment
he realized he had been doused in lighter fluid. He
thought that they were going to burn him alive. He
was nineteen years old, and he testified that all he
could think about was that he had so much to
live for and he had to find a way out
and Natalie. She testified about being trapped, about how small

(01:46:38):
she felt at the center of the screaming mob, and
that she thought she would be burned to death as
she covered her face and her head from the rain
of fists. And she described that she didn't really understand
the effects of pepper spray. She was a college student,
she'd never been pepper sprayed before. When she got home
that night, she sat down on her shower to cry,
just trying to process the experience of nearly being killed

(01:47:01):
by a crowd of Nazis, and the hot steam reactivated
the chemical irritants, burning her eyes and skin all over again.
They didn't call the people who were hurt, and they
let the jury think that there were none and the
only actual witnessed No, you go ahead.

Speaker 2 (01:47:20):
That's just I just it's such a dereliction of duty.
Like it's such a frustrating Like it's not hard, Like
this is not secret information that you're privy to because
of your deep Antifa connections. You can just like google this.
This is like thirty minutes of reading to have a
couple of those names.

Speaker 5 (01:47:37):
At least the Federal Court transcripts of this testimony exist,
they're free. I already paid for them.

Speaker 3 (01:47:46):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:47:47):
And at one point when the judge said this was
outside the presence of the jury when the judge said it,
but the judge said, we don't want know one was hurt.
And I'm sitting in the courtroom next to someone who
was hurt, and I'm just like, I embarrassed to be
in this room with these people who are behaving this way.

Speaker 1 (01:48:07):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:48:07):
The only actual witness to and victim of this crime
that they put on the stand at all was Emily Gresenski,
and this was not her first time on the witness
stand in that courtroom. She also testified against Christopher can't
well for pepper spraying her that night, and she handled
it well, she's testified before. She's good at it, unshakable.
But a witness can only answer the questions they're asked.

(01:48:30):
A witness can't put on their own evidence. A witness
can't tell you a story. A witness can't do anything
other than give short answers to questions. Right, So even
the best witness is only as good as the questions
they're asked. And they failed to elicit from her the
most important part of the story what actually happened at

(01:48:51):
the statue. So a lot of the evidence they put
on with her on this I don't want to get
too law in order about this, right, but you can't
just put on evidence, right, you have to have a
witness on the stand to testify to it. You can't
just show stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:49:06):
It's not a conversation, Like somebody can't just like raise
their hand in the middle of this and be like,
well I got actually I actually did get hurt at
that thing. Like, that's not the way court cases were.

Speaker 5 (01:49:15):
And so they used much of Emily's time on the
stand to show two videos. One was a video she shot,
so it makes sense to have her testify to this
video that she recorded, right. So she was live streaming
from the very beginning right down where they were preparing
and lighting the torches, and then she was following them
along on the march, just sort of documenting what was occurring.
And that's what she thought she was there to do, right,

(01:49:36):
She's just documenting that this march is taking place. She's thinking, Oh,
they're going to give some speeches. I'll record the speeches
so people can sort of see what this event was about.
She did not go there intending to become trapped and assaulted, right,
So much of her time on the stand was sort
of answering questions about this video as it played, But
they also had her answer questions about a video that

(01:49:57):
was recorded from inside the march, and I'm not I'm
not sure how effective it was to just show thirty
minutes of video of guys walking, and the defense leaned
really heavily into the idea that, well, obviously she wasn't scared.
Look at her, right, So she's clearly not intimidated. She's
really close to this march recording it. And without a

(01:50:18):
concrete theory of the case that establishes that, well, no,
this isn't where the crime is happening, right these guys
walking isn't the crime. She's not intimidated yet, that's that's
not happening right now. So without that sort of concrete
explanation for the jury that the crime occurs at the end,
they might take away from that that will, oh, yeah,

(01:50:38):
she doesn't really seem scared here, right, that this whole
part where she's walking and narrating, she doesn't really seem scared.
And leaving aside the finer philosophical point that you can
be brave even if you're scared. Her testimony was really
clear here she wasn't afraid for her life. Then she
testified that she arrived at the plaza where the statue

(01:50:59):
stands before the marchers did. Right, So they are marching
through UVA grounds and it ends in this sort of
plaza out in front of the rotunda where a statue is,
and she got there before the march did, and she
saw that the group of counter protesters was very small,
and she knew what was coming, right. She watched these
guys get ready. She watched them put on their helmets
and their weighted gloves and their brass knuckles and lighting

(01:51:21):
their torches, and you guys are wrapping their hands like
they're getting ready for an mma fight. So she knows
what's coming and they don't. And so she looks at
this small group of young people and she's afraid for them.
She's afraid for their safety. She feels a duty to
these people. They're mostly college students, and because you can
be brave even if you are scared, she stayed with them,

(01:51:45):
and once they were surrounded by this increasingly violent mob.
Once she was live streaming her own assault. Of course
she was in fear of bodily harm. She was being harmed, right,
There's not a debate about whether someone might be in
fear of bodily harm. You're watching them get harmed.

Speaker 2 (01:52:04):
Yeah, but if you aren't scared of that, then it
doesn't like that. That's I guess kind of the problem.
It should be like, would an average like a normal
person consider this to be an objectively threatening situation?

Speaker 4 (01:52:21):
And that is the standard.

Speaker 5 (01:52:23):
Yeah, this is not a crime that actually requires a
complaining victim to say I did feel this way. It's
a really it's what's called a reasonable person standard. Right,
So what a reasonable person in this situation feel this way?
The answer is yes, okay, a reasonable person would be afraid,
afraid of getting hit in the face.

Speaker 2 (01:52:43):
Yes, I would say so.

Speaker 5 (01:52:44):
And there was a lot of argument pre trial in
this case and some of the others that like, well,
you know, what does that even mean? What does it
mean for a reasonable person to be afraid? I mean,
that is a valid philosophical conversation, but it is not
a valid rebuttal to the idea of this charge, because
that is the standard for many of the of the
statutes in our code, right, that like it. It's the

(01:53:06):
legal standard for assault.

Speaker 2 (01:53:08):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:53:09):
But again, much of the time she's on the stand,
they're just showing thirty minutes of people walking, and there
was so little time spent showing what happened when they
got there. They could have shown the jury the moment
of the video where at the top of the steps
to the rotunda, right, So they're at the top of
these stairs looking down at that plaza below, and these

(01:53:29):
counter protesters are just coming into view to the for
the first time for the marchers, and Daniel Borden looks
down and sees them and yells, you're out numbered, Antifa,
watch out, leftists, scum. And now it matters that that's
Daniel Borton because Daniel Borden was with Jacob Dix. They
came together their friends from back home in Ohio. Daniel

(01:53:52):
bordon is a name you might remember because the following
day he nearly beat a young black man to death.
So you know, he's looking down into the plaza and
seeing these people and stating the intent, right, He's saying, like,
you know, watch out, like I see you. There's more
of us than there are of you. You better watch out.
That is intimidation, right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:54:13):
Seems like it. If I'm the judge, the case has
been made.

Speaker 5 (01:54:17):
But they did not. I'm not though they didn't highlight
this portion of the video. They just this long, uninterrupted
presentation of video evidence without any sort of discussion of
what any of these moments meant. Because moments after that,
after Daniel Borden yells you're outnumbered Antifa, he shouldered a
shoulder with Dix. A few seconds later, they're walking clockwise

(01:54:38):
around the statue. They're starting to form that circle, that
ring that would trap the counter protesters in. Borden looks
at Dix again and says, why can't we confront them?
And then they continue to walk side by side, taking
their place in that ring of men closing off any
path to safety. And you can see in photos that
Jacob Dix is face to face with some of the

(01:55:00):
counter protesters. He's not just in this sort of mob
of people, in this sort of nebulous zone. He's in
the inner ring of people who are choosing to physically
trap the counter protesters. That is the intent that they
needed to show the jury, and they didn't rebut the
conjecture that he was only here because he loves Confederate statues, right,

(01:55:22):
he has Confederate heritage. He cares about the monuments.

Speaker 2 (01:55:25):
Yeah, this is like prosecuting a drunk driver and having
having a breathalyzer test and just not introducing it into evidence,
being like, nah, I'm just going to be like, you know,
vibes wise, it seems like he was probably drinking. Yeah,
that's what it was. It was so irresponsible.

Speaker 5 (01:55:44):
The vibes were bad, and they were the vibes were bad,
but that's not the legal standard.

Speaker 2 (01:55:48):
Vibes are terrible, but that's really not what you should be.
You have a much better case to make based on
the evidence easily available to you.

Speaker 5 (01:55:56):
If there was if none of this evidence existed, if
this was all they had, maybe don't take it to trial.
But this evidence was right there for them, the moment,
the moment where they're looking down the steps that's in
the video they played.

Speaker 2 (01:56:10):
I feel like there were at least six different people
the prosecutor could have just like emailed and they would
have basically put together the whole case for this person.

Speaker 5 (01:56:19):
It's just so available, right, you know. So the defense says, well,
you know, he has Confederate heritage. You see here because
of the statues. They could have rebutted that by showing
the jury his discord posts where he was helping organize
housing for at least eighty other Unite the Right attendees
at a group of airbnbs which he called the Eagles
Nest and from which he was helping organize rides to

(01:56:41):
the rally in what they were calling Nazi uber. That's
not about your Confederate heritage, is it. The Eagle's Nest
was like Hitler's vacation house for people who aren't up
on their their Hitler lore.

Speaker 2 (01:56:54):
Yeah they're hit Lore. If you will, they're hit Lore.

Speaker 5 (01:56:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:56:58):
Yeah, I'm not proud of it, but that happened.

Speaker 5 (01:57:01):
That took me out for a second. And they didn't
show him attending the Nazi rally in Pikeville in April
of that same year. There was a photograph of him
standing shoulder to shoulder with members of the Traditionalist Worker
Party right arm extended a forty five degree angle, palm down.
I think that says something about why he was there, right,

(01:57:23):
And they didn't show his discord post about how he
was getting really hyped about the rally, writing nothing can
replace the feeling you get at a white nationalist rally.
I don't know the evidence exists, right, and once you
get to the base of the statue, that intimidation element
required for the charge is clear. We know people were

(01:57:43):
in reasonable fear of bodily harm because their bodies were harmed.
The evidence of intent is not hard to find. The
marchers saw the small group of counter protesters as they
descended those stairs. They saw them from above, and they
chose to proceed and surround them, Knowing they va outnumbered them.
They hooted and cheered, screaming We're coming for you. As

(01:58:05):
they encircled the statue. There were assigned marshals for the march,
directing people in a clockwise fashion around the statue to
form the circle. This was not an organic event, and
as the ring closed, Richard Spencer's bodyguard, a now former Woburn,
Massachusetts police officer, John Donnelly, can be heard in one

(01:58:27):
video saying that we need to fill in over here
to block these guys off. This was an intentional act.
The defendant himself is visible in these videos as he
moves down the steps, across the plaza and winds his
way around the statue, and as the fighting breaks out,
he holds his position in the inner ring of torch

(01:58:47):
bearers who have these people trapped, unable to escape the violence.
It doesn't matter that he did not commit these acts
of violence. He was holding the line that trapped people
inside of it, and his intent in that moment is inescapable.
But the jury doesn't know that. It's just an incredible failure.

Speaker 2 (01:59:09):
Honestly, Yeah, yeah, I'm glad the case got thrown out.
Is it possible that the next person to be prosecutor
in this will have an IQ that rises above room temperature?

Speaker 5 (01:59:23):
So I asked several lawyers about some of the finer
points of what happens with the mistrial, and I got
different answers from all of them, because this is sort
of like everything in this case is just a little
bit fucked up.

Speaker 2 (01:59:36):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:59:36):
We have a substitute judge, we have a special prosecutor,
we have a mistrial. We've just like so many things
that kind of mess it up a little bit. In
the event of a mistrial, the prosecutor has the option
to try the case again, Right, That's always the case.
There's a mistrial, the prosecutor can say, eh, I'm gonna
let it go. I'm just gonna let it go, or
they can say no, we're gonna bring it again. We're

(01:59:58):
gonna bring it again, and they don't have to bring
it the same way. They can bring in different evidence,
different witnesses. It's sort of a mulligan for everybody. Right
what's not one hundred percent clear is whether the same
special prosecutor tries it again or if it sort of
goes back to Roulette. Several lawyers agreed that it would
be the same prosecutor. I believe her office is under

(02:00:18):
that impression. So right after the mistrial was declared, Shannon Taylor,
the special prosecutor, said she does plan to try it again.
That could just be bravado. It's unclear. There's a hearing
date set for August for there's still some pending motions
in the case, and so the funniest part is is
that there's still a pending motion to dismiss from the defense.

(02:00:38):
So technically, even if the prosecutor says, yes, I'm bringing
this case again, I'm doing it, the judge could be like, actually,
I'm dismissing it. So it could go a lot of
ways right now, but at this point I'm not super
hung up on the particularities of this defendant, right, I
think this mistrial teaches us something sort of more generally
about these cases and the other torch cases specifically obviously,

(02:01:02):
but I think more generally, what does it look like
for criminal charges to be a roadblock in the path
of people involved in white supremacists organizing? You know, at
the end of the day, whether or not some guy
from Ohio serves four months of a six month sentence
on a classic felony, it doesn't really matter, right, Like,
this isn't this isn't an important.

Speaker 2 (02:01:20):
Yeah, it's whether or not anyone is actually scared off
from organizing.

Speaker 5 (02:01:26):
Right, Like not to use the language of the prosecutor.
You know, the master's house, the master's tools, this, that,
and the other.

Speaker 2 (02:01:31):
But part of part of cotton to that logic, right,
be honest.

Speaker 5 (02:01:36):
I mean he used those tools for a reason, right.

Speaker 2 (02:01:38):
But yeah, he used those tools for a reason. Like
if you couldn't bring down the master's house with the
master's tools, then what were all of those formerly t
Czarist troops doing overthrowing the government with rifles the czar
gave them?

Speaker 1 (02:01:51):
You know.

Speaker 5 (02:01:51):
But you know, part of what prosecutors talk about when
they talk about charging, Maybe not these cases in particular,
but just generally speaking, is that bringing cases is intended
as a form of deterrence for everybody, right, that what
happens to this guy is not the most important. But
maybe some other guys see this and think, maybe that's
not a good idea. And so I think in some

(02:02:12):
of these cases, though, you can see, you know, maybe
that this charge is interrupting a more significant pattern of behavior. Right,
So nailing Thomas Rousseau on a felony would obviously change
the trajectory for Patriot Front. I don't know if that
would I don't know what that looks like at the end,
but it certainly changes the trajectory. So Thomas Rousseau is
set for trial in the fall. So he has been charged,

(02:02:35):
and I think that will be an interesting case to
follow because he has the same lawyer. And you know,
if they end up charging Jason Kessler, that would just
be really funny. You know, there's a lot of possible
outcomes here. If they'd arrested these guys in real time
that night, maybe the rally the next day would be different.
If the cases had been brought six years ago. You know,
maybe certain arcs of history would have bent differently. It

(02:02:56):
would have broken some momentum, or discouraged some movement activity,
or broken bonds between people who met there. Some of
the guys who were there and could have been charged
in real time went on to do some real damage
in their personal lives and their communities. But I'm not
sure that's a basket I want to put my eggs into. Right,
if a court case takes a fascist out of the game, right, right,

(02:03:18):
that's some kind of harm reduction, But it's not something
you could count on, and honestly, it doesn't consistently reduce
harm in the long run. You just can't get lost
in the sort of what ifs of you know, what
if the system worked better to actually help us, because
it doesn't. That was never on the table. It's not
like I'm saying, you know, well, we needed a conviction
in this case because the courts are the ones who

(02:03:40):
are going to protect us by putting this man in jail. Briefly, right,
That's that's not the case. I think the lessons are
immediately instructive to the prosecutor who tries the next one. Obviously,
you know, watching the game tapes play better next time.
You know, if they're going to put these cases on,
they need to do it properly. I would rather see
this not happen at all than watch it get fumbled
like this, because that's just a victory for.

Speaker 2 (02:04:01):
Them, right right.

Speaker 5 (02:04:03):
Yeah, And it's a sharp reminder that the courts are
not equipped to interrupt fascism or rein in white supremacy.
That is not what they were built for. That it's
not what this tool does. You are trying to screw
it in with a hammer, because faced with a really
clear opportunity to do that, the prosecutor shied away from them.

(02:04:23):
You know, the state is not the secret weapon that
is going to stop fascism for us or protect us
from the fascists who want to stop us from stopping them.
You know, at best, it is a banana peel on
their Mario Kart track. You know, it is interesting to
watch this play out, but I don't think it is
some I don't think this will bring any sort of repair. Yeah,

(02:04:45):
but it might ruin some guy's day, and I'll be
there when it happens.

Speaker 2 (02:04:49):
I you know, I don't think it's worthless obviously. I think,
in fact, one of the things I will point out
since this is kind of ending on a doomer. And
I think the I think the legal one lot that
was launched by the survivors shall we say mm hm
at Charlottesville against organizers and whatnot is a big part
of why a lot of that most of that crew

(02:05:12):
stopped being relevant, Like it did in fact damage them.
Now did it disrupt and stop fascism nation?

Speaker 1 (02:05:17):
Why?

Speaker 2 (02:05:17):
Of course not. That was never in the cards, right,
Like you're talking about trends and forces that are too
big for a handful of very dedicated leftists to stop
by suing some asshole. But like, you know, one thing
people get wrong a lot is saying like, oh, you know,
when a fucking what's his name got punched, that really
uh knocked him out of public life. And it's like, no,

(02:05:38):
Charlottesville came after that fucker got punched, Like it was
the series of court cases that ruined his life really
to an extent.

Speaker 5 (02:05:46):
And I think there's an important conversation to be how
about what it means to win, right, Because if you're
a lawyer, if you're a prosecutor, winning is really black
and white. You you know, win a judgment, you win
a conviction, but That's not how I view the courts
as a tool in this process. Right That, like winning
a conviction or actually getting paid out that judgment, that's
not the victory we're looking for, right That, this is

(02:06:06):
a tool for sort of chiseling away, and no single
step gets you there. So I wouldn't say that these
cases are not useful or they're not interesting. And that's
why this isn't a huge disappointment, right that, Like what
happens to any of these individual people isn't the point.
This is just part of a process.

Speaker 2 (02:06:28):
Yeah, So I don't know, keep that in mind as
you look at this stuff, like, because it's very easy
to look at one case and just be like, oh,
it's doomed. There's no point in trying any of this.
It's like no. The actual the law fair that people
have launched in response to Charlottesville has been a successful action, like,
if you want to look at it kind of in

(02:06:50):
military terms, it has been an offensive that has broadly
achieved a number of its goals.

Speaker 5 (02:06:55):
The Assigns by Kessler lawsuit against the Unite the Right organizers,
it's sort of established this playbook that's now being used
by others. There are similar similarly structured lawsuits now being
filed against other white supremacist groups, against White Lives Matter Ohio,
against Patriot Front, and it is effective, and again not
in the sense that the lawsuits will extract you know, money, judgments.

Speaker 2 (02:07:16):
Well that everyone's going to go to fucking prison, but
it makes their lives miserable. Yeah. I just don't want
people to walk away being like, well, there's no point
in fighting this way, because there actually is. It works
very well. It's just not a silver bullet. It's not
a sports Ugly and messy and hard. And I will
end at least by saying, you know, I know we
have a lot of anti electoralist type people here. The

(02:07:39):
one place you absolutely should vote, if that is a
thing where you live, is elections for local judges, because
that is a great way to at least reduce the
odds that your friends go to prison. I know people,
I have people I love who are not in prison
because the judge they happened to draw wasn't a piece
of shit. And you're really, you're really just hurting yourself

(02:08:01):
if you don't, if you have the option to pick
a judge who sucks less, and you don't try to
that's where I land on that ship.

Speaker 5 (02:08:08):
There's a lot that we can do, and none of
it's going to do it all. But Yep, in the meantime,
I will continue spending whole days on that horrible wooden
bench and I'll let you know how it goes.

Speaker 2 (02:08:19):
Yep, thank you Molly for continuing to engage with a
system that is not very fun to engage with the
necessary too. Well, everybody, that's the episode, good to hell,
We love you. What's warring my crimes? This is it

(02:08:49):
could happen here a podcast about things falling apart. And
you know what all the kids these days you're talking
about is war crimes. That was me being kind of liathe,
but they actually are because you know what's continuing to
happen to Gaza. More people than probably that I can
recall in recent memory are talking about like war crimes,

(02:09:11):
what it means to commit war crimes violations of international law,
which is good because that's an important thing to be
talking about. The downside of it is, as is often
the case when people talk about things on the Internet,
a lot of people are talking about war crimes and
don't actually know what that means. So I figured, let's
talk about like what war crimes is be do. And

(02:09:34):
I'm going to bring on James Stout, fellow war crimes watcher,
to talk with me about what war crimes be James,
what's your favorite war crime?

Speaker 3 (02:09:45):
My favorite?

Speaker 4 (02:09:46):
That's a difficult one, isn't it because I'm yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:09:48):
Because I asked in the best season a doctor who
you know it is.

Speaker 4 (02:09:51):
Yeah. What I like to do with reference to war
crimes is I wake up, right, and I sort of
you know, you're just waking up. You get your phone
off the charge, you there, and then you look and
there's message on telegram. But that's how that's how I
consume war crimes, just a random If it's on telegram,
there's a forty percent chance it's a violation of the
eighteen sixty four Geneva Convention or the subsequent Geneva Conventions.

Speaker 2 (02:10:12):
Yes, so I wanted to do this because I do
think that one of the things that is unfortunate kind
of about the colloquial way in which, like the positive
side of the way social media has impacted the coverage
of conflicts, is that we are now seeing like for
the first time, this is not the first time Israel
has killed a shitload of Palestinians. This is the first
time that like a really substantial majority of the American

(02:10:34):
populace has been like and that's bad. Yeah, And that
owes a lot to the way in which information is
spread on social media. One of the downsides of that
is because this is happening in kind of a colloquial diction,
people are not always super accurate in a term like
war crimes in particular, often gets used to mean like

(02:10:58):
anything I don't like that happened in a war. And
there are a lot of things that happen like war
is bad, and everything that happens in war nearly everything
is really bad. But most of the things that happen
in war are not war crimes. And I believe me,
I'm not setting us up to say that, like Israel
is not committing war crimes in Gaza, they are. I
actually have a lot of issues with other kinds of

(02:11:18):
conflicts and things that happen in conflicts that get discussed
as if they were war crimes that I think Muddy's
the issue We're going to be talking trying to make
it clear like what international law actually covers and what
kind of that coverage means. And all that stuff, so
that hopefully, you know, people can have a little bit
more information going forward when they try to talk about

(02:11:40):
like is this something that's just bad that happens in
war versus is this a war crime, because that actually
matters when it comes to, you know, the theoretical idea
of a rules based international order in prosecuting this stuff.
So the first thing we have to get into is
the idea that, like, war crimes are a pretty recent conception.
The idea that like there would be a thing that

(02:12:01):
you could do as a country that the international community
would come in and have beef with does not go
back very far, right, Yeah, we are talking the eighteenth century,
So really the last two hundred years has been when
this really all started to get codified. We start with
the Geneva Convention in eighteen sixty four. There are several

(02:12:22):
Geneva conventions. In nineteen forty nine, there's I think two
more in nineteen seventy seven. You also have the Hague
Conventions in eighteen ninety nine and nineteen oh seven, and
these are all so part of what that should suggest
is that like, even within the kind of the realm
of codified war crimes law, it's kind of been a
slap dash catches catch can a fair right. Like, people

(02:12:43):
have come together and made rules that were largely based
on the shit that either had just happened or that
they thought was about to happen. And one of the
consequences of this is that the actual legislation about like
what is and isn't illegal to do in war is
really uneven. A great example of this would be the

(02:13:04):
idea of dumb dumb bullets. Right. This is a thing
that you get kind of around the turn of the century,
which is so bullets, most bullets that are used in
war are what are called full metal jacket, right, And
that just means that there's a copper generally jacket around
the lead bullet and there's not like a hole in

(02:13:24):
the middle or whatever like a modern Like if you
go up to a police officer and take his gun,
which is very easy and safe to do legally, that
was a joke, you will notice that all of the
bullets in that gun have like a little divot in
the middle of them, right, And the purpose of this
divot is so that when the bullet hits a person,
it transfers more of its force into the meat of

(02:13:45):
that person's body. This is the same with any bullet
that like someone carries for self defense generally, and this
is actually a safety device in a way because bullets
like this do not penetrate as much. And you don't
want bullets that you're using in like an urban area
for self defense to penetrate as much because that increases
the risk that if you miss or if you hit
that person, that it goes through them and hits something else. Right,

(02:14:06):
But there was an understanding around the turn of the
century that these bullets, which initially were not manufactured. Soldiers
would literally like cut like crosses in the tops of
their bullets.

Speaker 4 (02:14:17):
I used to do this when I was a child.
I would spend a lot of time shooting rabbits. It
was kind of my thing that I did when I
was a kid, and we used to dumb dumb that
rifle pede.

Speaker 2 (02:14:26):
Yeah. Yeah, And there's this there was this understanding that
developed that this should be illegal because it causes additional harm. Now,
the specific I think this is like like line twenty
or something from the Geneva Convention. But it's employing weapons,
projectiles and material and methods of warfare which are of

(02:14:47):
a nature to cause superfluous injury or a necessary suffering,
or which are inherently indiscriminate in violation of the International
Law of Armed Conflict. Provided such weapons, projectiles and material
and the methods of warfare are the subject of a
comprehensive prohibition are included in annex to this statute by
an amendment in accordance with the relevant anyway, So you're
not supposed to employing employed bullets which quote flatten or

(02:15:09):
expand easily in the human body, such as bullets with
the hard envelope which does not entirely cover its core
or is pierced with incisions. You're not supposed to employ asphyxiating,
poisonous or their gases and all analogous liquids, materials or
devices that one obviously came about as a result of
the horror in World War One, right, people start using
a lot of these poisoned gas weapons, and it's decided

(02:15:30):
by the international community that that absolutely should not be
allowed to be done. You're not allowed to employ poison
or poisoned weapons. Now, most people can see look at
that and be like, well, yeah, I mean, hollow points sound,
extramine poison sounds extramine gas sounds extramine. You shouldn't be
able to use those extra meine weapons in war. But
and I don't have a problem with trying to limit

(02:15:52):
horrifying weapons, But we still allow, for example, artillery shells
that are meant to create huge amounts of shrapnel that
are their whole purpose is to cause grievous wounds to
a large number of people in a large area. And
from where I'm standing, I don't think that like that's
less horrible than a hollow point. I actually think that's
probably a lot worse than a hollow point. Yes, Yeah,

(02:16:15):
So one of the first things that you get when
you look at what our war crimes is they're not
actually all like things that you morally should have an
issue with. Like, really, if you are looking at all
of the weapons employed in war today, there's no reason
a hollow point should frighten you, Right, there's so many
worse weapons right now. On the other hand of that,
poison gas is much worse than the vast majority of

(02:16:36):
weapons that are used in war today, And I think
it's good that that's a crime. Yeah, doesn't stop people
using it, doesn't stop like Bashar al Assade, Right.

Speaker 4 (02:16:44):
End of the show. I was just thinking about barrel bombs.
I don't know if barrel bombs are specifically prohibited, and
they are not, there would be a way to do
that really, that just a barrel stuff would explos.

Speaker 2 (02:16:55):
Well, because I mean they were invented by Israel. Actually,
I think forty seven is the first U It might
have been like fifty yeah, but I believe it was
forty seven was the first recorded use of Because if
you have planes and you have reliable access to planes,
but you know, can't reliably manufacture advanced like rockets and
shit to shoot from them, a barrel bomb's very easy
to make. You're basically just taking a fifty gallon drum

(02:17:16):
and filling it with gunpowder and shrapnel, right, Like, I
mean it's a little more complicated than that, but yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:17:21):
Yeah, the Huntern Memba have started using them as sair
access to Russia munitions drives up.

Speaker 2 (02:17:25):
Yeah, and there's you know, again, that's one of those
things where it's like that's not technically a war crime
other than that if you it can be if you're
like using it indiscriminately in a civilian like against civilians.
But like also they basically no one ever gets prosecuted
for doing that.

Speaker 4 (02:17:40):
So yeah, yeah, right, this is the case with many
of these things.

Speaker 2 (02:17:44):
And again, like barrel bombs can be legal, hollow points can't.
That doesn't really make sense. It's also like I will say,
I've witnessed at least one war crime in person that
I really didn't feel like was a war crime, which
when I was embedded with the Iraqi Army, they tear
gasket an Isis sniper to get him out of his
position so they could kill him, and that's definitely illegal.

(02:18:06):
And also, of all of the things I saw done
in that war, like the fact that somebody threw a
tear gas grenade did not upset me over much, right,
Like the fact that I was watching apartment buildings get
blown up by Apache helicopters really upset me a lot
more than a little bit of tear gas.

Speaker 4 (02:18:22):
Yeah, it's one of these like very sort of like, yeah,
if you want to take the strict legalistic definition, yeah,
that was a war crime. Yeah, you any war crime
that was committed that day maybe yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:18:32):
Yeah. So anyway, I let I want to get into
some of this in a little bit more of an
organized fashion. But first let's let's have a little bit
of an ad break.

Speaker 4 (02:18:51):
Ah.

Speaker 2 (02:18:52):
So we're back and we're talking about war crimes. So
I want to just kind of go through and with
some commentary. Straight up, Lee re a large chunk of
the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Article eight,
which largely defines war crimes as that term has a
meaning in a legal sense, and it defines war crimes
as grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of twelfth August

(02:19:15):
nineteen forty nine, namely any of the following acts against
persons or property committed against the provisions of the relevant
Geneva Convention. These include wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment,
including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering, serious injury to
body or health, extensive destruction and appropriation of property not
justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly,

(02:19:38):
compelling a prisoner of war or other protected person to
serve in the forces of a hostile power. Wilfully depriving
a prisoner of war or other protected person of the
rights of fair and regular trial, unlawful deportation or transfer
or unlawful confinement, and taking of hostages right and you'll notice,
among other things, a lot of that is stuff that

(02:19:59):
you can find Israeli soldiers doing at TikTok, right.

Speaker 4 (02:20:02):
Yeah, yeah, streaming themselves doing.

Speaker 2 (02:20:04):
Yeah, I mean particularly the clear not maybe not the clearest,
but one that comes up to me just because of
some stuff I've seen of like soldiers posing with like
stolen canes from gosms who presumably were disabled and no
longer have their canes for whatever terrible reason. Like these
kind of like joking photos. That's a destruction and appropriation
of property. Right, you have a lot of videos of

(02:20:24):
soldiers like going through people's property, taking stuff, destroying stuff
like those are war crimes you are not as a soldier. Obviously,
property will get destroyed in gunfights, it can get just
like so there's part of why it's kind of hard
to this stuff is not prosecuted as much as it
ought to be. But you are not supposed to just
fuck with people shit as a soldier. That is legal,

(02:20:44):
you know. Is it one of the war crimes that
is probably least prosecuted and most common. Absolutely, I think
that that is very fair to say.

Speaker 4 (02:20:52):
Yeah, Look, Boris Johnson stole stuff from Saddama Saint's Palace
in right, right, you know, like he's yet to be
called today, that.

Speaker 2 (02:21:00):
Would be one of those, Like I don't know, I
don't like Boris Johnson, but also I don't have a
problem with anyone stealing from Saddam Hush.

Speaker 4 (02:21:05):
Exactly specifically, Yeah, of all the bullshit he's done.

Speaker 2 (02:21:09):
But this is I mean, that's one of those because
I would say a lot of soldiers I know who
have been and maybe didn't even realize themselves that what
they were doing was committing a war crime. But just
like you're in somebody's house, they are gone, they ran,
and like you wind up fucking with shit like it happens.
I think what we're seeing, I think willfully is kind
of an important term here, right, And I think that's

(02:21:31):
really what we've seen very clearly in a lot of
these IDF tiktoks, right, is people taking glee in the
destruction of property. And I think that's very easy to
prove as a war crime.

Speaker 4 (02:21:43):
I think anyone can make a moral distinction right between.
Like I was recently in Rajava and I was talking
to some friends and they were talking about how they
a lot of people died in ied blasts because they
were going into buildings to try and get food or tea, right, sugar. Yeah,
there's a distinction between going into the kitchen of abandoned
building and taking some some sugar or whatever rice.

Speaker 3 (02:22:04):
You know.

Speaker 4 (02:22:05):
Then Yeah, these guys going through women's underwear rulers taking
pictures with their underwear.

Speaker 2 (02:22:10):
Yeah, yeah, I know some some US Marines who like
happened upon a cigarette factory during the invasion. I had
like the uncut cigarettes that are like five feet long,
and they just started like smoking up on them. I
guess that's destruction of property. Probably not going to be
my priority as the ICZ, but it also doesn't seem
like the clearer stuff is their priority. So I don't know.

Speaker 4 (02:22:29):
Free my man with the five foot cigarette? He did? Yeah? Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:22:34):
So.

Speaker 2 (02:22:35):
Other war crimes include intentionally directing attacks against the civilian
population as such, or against individual civilians not taking part
in hostilities. There's a video going around right now man
in his fifties in Gaza who was working a market
stall and was shot by an Israeli drone just executed.
There's no way to describe that other than intentionally directing

(02:22:57):
an attack against a civilian, not to making direct part
in hostilities. That is a war crime. That's one example
of I mean, that's just the clearest video that I
saw recently.

Speaker 4 (02:23:07):
Right, Yeah, I heard from people who listen. I think
I think this was in the episode, but when we
talk to our friends at PK Guy that they were
talking about one of the members of their group was
recovering bodies from a bombed building and was shot by
a quad coptail like not like a drone, like ten
thousand feet in the air, dropping a missile like a drone. Yeah,

(02:23:27):
like in the air, firing.

Speaker 2 (02:23:28):
A drone like you can buy at a fucking best
Buy that's been modified. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:23:32):
Yeah, that shoots like it shoots a rifle, like just
like a soldier to shoot a rifle where the operator
is looking and seeing that person and pressing a button
to fire bullet. It's not collateral damage. It's deliberate civilians.

Speaker 2 (02:23:46):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, continue from that list of war crimes.
Intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects, that is, objects which
are not military objectives. A great example of this that's
been happening in Gaza in particular is destruct to mosques, right,
very clear, civilian objects. Now, there are exceptions. For example,
one thing that does sometimes happen. I don't think it happened.

(02:24:09):
It certainly have not seen evidence of it happening often
in most of the places where there are attacks on mosques,
but like periodically, like if somebody, if a fighter, a
military unit sets up inside a mosque or right, or
a church or whatever, which happened in World War Two
a lot, Right, you would have like churches used as
strong points because they're well made buildings. You can attack that, right,

(02:24:30):
Like it's not like magical, right, Like you can't suddenly
not attack soldiers who are shooting at you from a church.
But you are not supposed to intentionally direct attacks against
civilian objects that are not military objectives, intentionally directing attacks
against personnel installations, materiel units, or vehicles involved in a
humanitarian assistance or peacekeeping mission in accordance with the Charter

(02:24:51):
of the United Nations, as long as they are entitled
to the protection given to civilians or civilian objects under
international law of armed conflict. Best example of this from
Gazzer recent would be those World Kitchen employees and their
bodyguards who were essentially murdered by the Israelis. Right, very clear,
internationally recognized humanitarian assistance very clear war crime if you

(02:25:12):
can prove it was intentional. I'm sure there's you know,
that's a court case, right, but I think pretty clear.
And then there is intentionally launching an attack in the
knowledge that such attack will cause incident at loss of
life or injury to civilians, or damage to civilian objects,
or widespread, long term and severe damage to the natural environment,
which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete

(02:25:34):
and direct overall military advantage and dissipated. This is one
of the top things that is a war crime that
never gets punished because it is so hard, because that
it seemed like most I would say, most of what
I have seen planes do in war seems like it
falls under this where it's like, wow, that's a lot
of environmental damage, a lot of incidental loss of life
and injury, but is it excessive in relation to the

(02:25:56):
concrete and direct overall military advantage. Well, the people ordering
those air strikes would say no, right, and like yeah,
And that is one of those things where it's like, well,
I know what looks like crime to me, Yeah, But
could I win an ICC case about that?

Speaker 3 (02:26:11):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (02:26:12):
Now.

Speaker 2 (02:26:13):
I want to actually move over to talk about Ukraine
here because I think that that number one doesn't happen
enough on the left, and I think there's some really good,
clear examples of Russian war crimes here, because one thing
that you're not allowed to do is quote attacking or
bombarding by whatever means towns, villages, dwellings or buildings which
are undefended and which are not military objectives. And both

(02:26:33):
of those last two points make it very clear that
the Russian military committed war crimes against Ukraine from March
fourth to March thirty first, twenty twenty two, when they
occupied the town of Buka, which was about it is,
about thirty kilometers north of Kiv. This is one of
the best, probably the best documented Russian war crime in
Ukraine at the moment. And I'm not saying that this
is only it's not nearly the only, it's just like

(02:26:55):
a particularly well documented example. As of this point, you know,
we're almost two years past when Buka got liberated. The
bodies of more than a thousand civilians have been discovered
in the Buca region. At least about six hundred and
fifty people are known to have been executed by the
Russian army and these our pretty hideous mass executions. A

(02:27:18):
lot of people were held for a week or two
prior to being executed. There's significant evidence of torture of
beatings of civilians before their summary execution. And yeah, it's
a very clear example of a war crime. Like, I
don't know how else to say it. I will read
a quote from this Human Rights Watch article that interviewed

(02:27:39):
some funeral home workers in Buka. Another funeral homeworker, Sergei Makyuk,
who helped collect bodies, said that he personally collected about
two hundred bodies from the streets since the Russian invasion
began on February twenty fourth. Most of the victims were men,
he said, but some were women and children. Almost all
of them had bullet wounds, he said, including around fifty
whose hands were tied and whose bodies had signs of torture.

(02:28:00):
Bodies with hands tied strongly suggests that the victims had
been detained and summarily executed. And that's a I mean,
a thousand pitce a hideous war crime, right, Like, that's
a mass killing of civilians in a crucially there's no
argument and one way in which civilians always die are
killed in war, and it's not usually a war crime

(02:28:20):
because it generally happens while there's gun fights going on,
while you're carrying, and you can claim like, well, look,
you know, you can't stop bullets from going through buildings,
you can't stop people from getting hit by a shrapnel.
You're fighting in a city. Civilians are going to die.
This is a very clear case of this town was occupied,
there was not resistance ongoing in it, and they were
mass executing civilians. That's illegal. You're not allowed to do

(02:28:43):
that theoretically, if international law means anything. Now, I do
want to get to another case of a war crime
that are a thing that people call a war crime
that isn't a war crime. And this we're actually going
to go back to the Iraq the first Iraq war. Desert.
Before you go to desert storm, let's go to these ads.

(02:29:14):
All right, we're back, James. What do you know about
the Highway of Death?

Speaker 5 (02:29:19):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (02:29:19):
I know a little bit about the Highway of Death.

Speaker 1 (02:29:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:29:21):
Let's a throwback, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (02:29:22):
It's a throwback. I hear it described by particularly leftists
on the internet a lot as a US war crime. Yeah,
and as a spoiler, it's not it's ugly, it's really hideous.
It's like a horrifying thing.

Speaker 4 (02:29:36):
But it's just war, right, And it was combatants fighting combatants.

Speaker 2 (02:29:40):
Yeah, it was combatants killing retreating combatants, which people think
sometimes shouldn't be allowed. But it doesn't really make sense
for that to not be allowed if you just like
know what war is. And I'm going to talk about
why here, and like I'm not trying to justify this
because nothing in war make it does. Like, you don't
justify it, just is it a thing that happens, right, Like,

(02:30:02):
it's all hideous. If you've been through it, you see
in humanity every second. But one of the things that
you learn if you study war on an academic level
is that a massive part of it is retreating. Like
all the time, all throughout history, armies retreat, regroup, and
then carry out additional offensives.

Speaker 3 (02:30:21):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:30:21):
That is war in a nutshell, right, And so when
armies are retreating, you're allowed to keep killing them, and
in fact, that's the norm. And most soldiers, up until
the modern era, the vast majority of combat debts we're
during retreats.

Speaker 4 (02:30:37):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:30:37):
This is the primary way in which soldiers are killed.
This is when they're retreating, right, And so what actually
happened is in August, so obviously August of nineteen ninety,
the US leads a coalition against the Iraqi Army who
have invaded and occupied Kuwait illegally. You know, one of
my stances on this is that Iraq very clearly violated

(02:30:58):
international law and they didn't have been allowed to occupy Kuwait. Now,
there's a lot of things about like US involvement in
Iraq prior to this that are you could say extenuating,
including the fact that like we had kind of pushed
them to invade Iran and then played both sides of
that conflict, and that was part of what Saddam was
pissed about. But that doesn't justify it in Kuwait being occupied, Right,

(02:31:22):
You can't just get mad and invade somewhere unless you're America.
Unless you're America, which we're going to do to Iraq
not much longer after this, But in this case, you know,
we're more or less on the on the better side
of things, right, and we basically immediately throw the Iraqi
Army into a full fledged retreat. This culminates in late
February nineteen ninety one with a huge number of Iraqi

(02:31:43):
soldiers and military vehicles jammed up on a convoy on
Highway eighty, which is the highway that connects Iraq to Kuwait.
And what we do is we use our planes to
blow up vehicles on both ends of this convoy of
like three thousand vehicles, which then traps thousands and thousands
of soldiers inside these walls of fire, so we can
spend ten hours bombing them. And this is fucking hideous.

(02:32:07):
The event is memorialized, and this is part of why
people think of it as a war crime in a
picture by a photojournalist of the corpse of an Iraqi
soldier hideously burned, frozen in time as he tried to
flee his flaming tank, and that picture you can find it.
It's I mean, it's horrible. It's a great example of
why war is bad and we should do less of it.

(02:32:28):
And it is, you know, it's one of those things.
A lot of US soldiers who participate in this feel
uncomfortable with it, feel like they are unnecessarily killing a
large number of people. And you can make that case.
You can make a case and I'll listen to it
that this was hideously evil, but it's not a war crime.
Right now, Sodam's going to make that claim, arguing that

(02:32:48):
his soldiers are trying to peacefully withdraw, But there's like
a definition of that, and what the Iraqis were doing
didn't meet it. What actually happened is that the Iraqi
army made contact with the US army and then they
went into a retreat. They were attempting to leave the
area after losing a fight, and they had not formally surrendered.

(02:33:10):
And there's nothing an international law that makes it illegal
to kill soldiers who happened to be withdrawing, right. A
great example of this would be nineteen forty four during
the Battle of Normandy. There are reports of retreating German
soldiers shot by US soldiers and there was debate at
the time as like, well, is this a violation of
the Geneva Conventions, right? And the conclusion that was generally
reached in is that you shouldn't kill an enemy who

(02:33:31):
is number one not in combat and number two surrendering,
And there is kind of a blurry line between that
and retreat. But again, the vast majority of soldiers killed
in war are killed running away, right, Like that's just
kind of how I mean, that's changed a bit in
the modern era, but like this is I think more
falls under one of those things where everyone sees this

(02:33:54):
as a nightmare, because it is a nightmare. Those random
Iraqi conscripts did not deserve to burn to death in
this Charnel house we created on the Highway eighty. And
also like, well, that's just what war is, man.

Speaker 4 (02:34:05):
You think we didn't do that.

Speaker 2 (02:34:06):
To the Nazis. You think the Nazis didn't do that
to the fucking Russians, you think like you think that
hasn't happened to every war, Like that's just what war is, man,
That's why we shouldn't do it. It's really bad.

Speaker 4 (02:34:17):
Yeah, it's fucked. The things are allowed to do a
fucked so you think you're not allowed to do Like, yeah,
we did do some things in the specifically in that incident,
which are now I didn't think they're war crimes, but
like they used cluster bombs on the Highway of tests. Yes,
it's a separate agreement. It's not part of THEMA Convention, right.

Speaker 2 (02:34:33):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a separate agreement. And like
obviously things have like at our doctrine and kind of
internet like has changed as a result of that, in
part because like a lot of American soldiers were like,
I really didn't feel good about this. My kid doesn't
seem like this was necessary at all. Yeah, and I
don't think it was necessary, right, Like, I don't think
it was needed to do this to beat I think

(02:34:55):
the Iraqi army was already beaten. But the question isn't
wasn't necessary? The question is was this not something that
is generally acceptable in war? And it is because war,
Like again, blowing, like making exploding pieces like giant boxes
filled with shards of metal in order to wound hundreds

(02:35:17):
of people at a time is acceptable in war, right,
Like it's.

Speaker 4 (02:35:20):
Bad, Yeah, bad things happening. We should have it if
we can.

Speaker 2 (02:35:24):
Yeah, So let's continue our list of things that be
war crimes. One of them is making improper use of
a flag of truce. So you're not allowed to like
pretend to surrender or pretend to try to negotiate and
then start shooting. That's a war crime. Actually, you're not
allowed to transfer parts of the population of the civilian
population of a territory you occupy to other parts of

(02:35:45):
your territory, which the Russians have done in Ukraine. They
have been taking particularly Ukrainian children and moving them to
elsewhere in Russia, adopting them out to the families. That
is a war crime.

Speaker 4 (02:35:54):
Turkey's done it in Aphree.

Speaker 2 (02:35:56):
Turkey does a hell of a lot of this, right,
They've done a lot of that in Afrin. Yes, as
you said, and obviously these really well I mean these
really military. We're actually going to talk about their abduction
and imprisonment of Palestinians because that also violates that arguably
violates this. But there's a separate segment of the Roman
statues that violates. And then intentionally directing attacks against buildings

(02:36:19):
dedicated to religion, education, art, science, or charitable purposes. I'm
thinking about historical monuments, hospitals. Very easy to find examples
of that in Gaza.

Speaker 4 (02:36:28):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:36:29):
Again, the little bit of wiggle room here is like
if they're being occupied as like an enemy HQ, which
is basically what everyone claims when they bomb hospitals.

Speaker 4 (02:36:38):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:36:38):
The US has done this a lot too, like we have,
especially in Afghanistan. We had a number of hospitals and
it was always like, well we thought.

Speaker 3 (02:36:45):
There were some guys there.

Speaker 2 (02:36:46):
We were trying to write and Russia and Israel both
have extensive histories doing this. During the Syrian Civil War,
Russian planes back in the ASAD regime regularly targeted medical
facilities in Aleppo at least twenty seven times from fall
of twenty fifth to the winter of twenty sixteen. More recently,
Russia has targeted hospitals in Kherson. Per this Guardian article quote,
since December twenty two, the Russian army has been bombarding

(02:37:09):
Karsan from dug in positions on the nearby left eastern
flank of the Knipro River. It has attacked civilian infrastructure,
including schools, private residential houses, hospitals and the railway station.
And yeah, it's pretty hideous, like these are systematic attacks.
The Cinema for in Information Resilience has documented fourteen separate
attacks over six months between December of twenty twenty two

(02:37:29):
and May of twenty twenty three, striking hospital facilities several
times with the apparent purpose of degrading their capacity to
continue to serve the civilian population. The targeting of hospitals
has also been utterly endemic to Israeli activities in Gaza.
In November of twenty thirteen, they killed at least twelve
people in attacks on the Indonesian hospital in bit Lahia, Gaza,
and basically every medical facility in Gaza has been targeted,

(02:37:52):
and more than twenty of the thirty five hospitals in Gaza,
Gaza have at this point been taken out of service
due to damage. The most famous of these was the
Alshifaha Hospital, which held dozens of premature babies, thirty one
of whom had to be evacuated after weeks of losing
power to their incubators and being fed a formula mixed
with poisoned water. Eight infants died at least I'm sure
that number is higher before evacuation. This is obvious war crime, right.

Speaker 4 (02:38:17):
Yeah, A friend Taraklubani, who I've interviewed the show before,
was in the was working with the premature babies at
that time. Yeah, you can find infuse with him. It's
just it's like, I would not recommend reading it venless
you want to traumatize yourself. Is honestly one of the
most horrible things I've ever had to see about.

Speaker 2 (02:38:34):
Yeah, it's nightmarish stuff, and I mean a lot of
these are right. The Rome statues continues with committing outrages
upon personal dignity and particular humiliating the degrading treatment. And
my god, there's a lot of examples of that from Gaza.
Committing rape, sexual slavery, and forced prostitution, forced pregnancy as
to find an Article seven paragraph too, and forced sterilization

(02:38:57):
or any other form of sexual violence also constitutes a
great breach of the Geneva Conventions. Utilizing the presence of
a civilian or other protected person to render certain points,
areas or military forces immune from military operations, So using
civilians as shields, right, if you're hiding military forces among
a civilian populace, you know that is also a war crime.
Intentionally directing attacks against buildings, material medical units, you know,

(02:39:20):
that's supposed to be illegal. Starvation for starvation of civilians
is supposed to be illegal. And conscripting or enlisting children
under the age of fifteen years old into the national forces,
which I've noticed that, you know, when I would report
on the YPG, some of the people that I reported
on that were like seventeen and people like using child soldiers.
You can enlisted the British Army at sixteen.

Speaker 4 (02:39:40):
That's not legal, Yeah, you seventeen year olds have always
been allowed to do war. Yeah, I think they don't
deploy them, right, certainly not sixteen year olds, right, yeah,
But then the yeah, pea, and it's I've often women
at she's off in the witepga, right, because they've come
from abusive homes, and they also make an FM not
to deploy I understand, yes, yes, but you are theoretically

(02:40:02):
you're allowed to deploy sixteen year olds, right, yeah, so
at least as regards international law. So and then of
course we get to kind of some of the some
of our our final war crimes, which you know, I
haven't gone over a comprehensive list, but this gives you
a good list of the things covered, you know, between
the various different statutes and international agreements. Violation to life

(02:40:26):
in person in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel
treatment and torture, committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular
humiliating or degrading treatment, which is maybe the most common
by numbers thing that I see happening at Gaza. Right, certainly,
not like as it does, you know, the killing is
much more offensive, but like there's so many examples of

(02:40:48):
like outrages upon personal dignity, you know, the taking of hostages,
the passing of sentences, and the carrying out of executions
without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court. And
then you get to paragraph two, there's a note like
after this all of this stuff that like, you're not
supposed to do violence to life in person, committing outrages
upon personal dignity, taking hostages, doing summary executions. And then

(02:41:12):
there's a note that like, this does not apply. This
applies only to armed conflicts and not situations of internal
disturbances and tensions such as riots, isolated and sporadic acts
of violence or other acts of a similar nature, which
is fun to me because it's like the international agreements
like well, I mean, countries can do this to their
own people if they want, right, Like, that's not a problem,
you know, go, which I guess is probably we're in

(02:41:32):
a gray area with some of what Israel does to
Palestinians here because like one of the things that has
been happening for a long time is continue to happen,
as there are presently ninety five hundred at least Palestinians
from the occupied West Bank in captivity prior to October seventh,
that was just fifty two hundred people, so this escalated
significantly after that. Most of these were people who had
been arrested before for stuff literally like waving a flag

(02:41:54):
or like posting on social media in sympathy with Gaza.
Fifteen of these people have died since October seventh. A
number of them have been tortured and beaten. This is
the kind of thing that could be a war crime,
except for again, you have that little note that like
this doesn't apply to internal disturbances in the West Bank,
you can say that that's an internal disturbance, right, which
is you know, shit, yeah, yeah, I don't love that.

(02:42:18):
That's the way that that works. And yeah, it's it's
one of those things. And another thing, you know, to
be fair here, one thing I should note, because we're
about to talk about the actual ICC investigation that's going on,
the taking of hostages is a war crime. So it's
there's been a lot of talk about because there's been
disinformation about how many civilians did Hamas kill, right, like.

Speaker 2 (02:42:38):
How many we had that bleak period. If we were
arguing looking at dead babies and arguing where those babies
beheaded or their heads just come off because they burnt
to like, Hamas definitely committed war crimes, and we know
that because they admitted to them. Because they the Hamas
does not deny that they took hostages. That's a war crime.
Right Again, should you be as offended by the taking

(02:42:59):
of hostage as the killing of thirty five thousand people
from the sky? Well, no, But I would also say
that the taking of hostages is not like tear gassing
a sniper. I think that that's bad. You shouldn't take
civilian hostages. Yeah, that makes sense as a war crime
to me. Now this kind of leads us to the
crux of our discussion, which is like, should you actually
care about what a war crime is and isn't?

Speaker 3 (02:43:21):
Right?

Speaker 2 (02:43:22):
And I'm going to argue yes, even though, as we've
made the case here, it's not a perfect thing. This
is not a perfect Whether or not something is a
war crime does not make it a perfect measure of morality.
I don't think a soldier tossing a tear gas grenade
and a sniper because they don't want to get shot
by a sniper is like a thing that is horrifying

(02:43:42):
to me. And I do think that, for example, the
use of shrapnel shells is horrifying to me, having seen
what happens to people when they get gutted by shrapnel.
I don't think those are good, and I know what
I think is a worse thing to do. But even
with that taken into account, I think that a lot
of this does matter, and that it is good that

(02:44:03):
the ICC has recently announced a set of warrants both
against Benjamin Netanyahu and against three Hamas leaders, right. And
I saw some people saying when this got announced that
there were like these warrants against these Hamas leaders alongside
net Yahoo and his defense minister Yo have gallant that like, oh,
they're both sides in it. No, Hamas took hostages. If

(02:44:24):
the ICC is going after Israel for its clear and
obvious war crimes, we know that Hamas took hostages. It's
not wrong that the ICC would issue a warrant there.
That's their job, right, And I think that that actually
it's kind of important to do that because if you don't,
the Israelis are going to be like, well, they took hostages.
That's definitely a war crime. The ICC is invalid because
they're not prosecuting this.

Speaker 3 (02:44:44):
Now.

Speaker 2 (02:44:45):
The reality is that not only has Israel is now
Israel kind of gearing up to go to war with
the International Criminal Court, that they have been doing that
for years prior to the to October seventh, right, and
in fact, a couple of years ago, I think in
twenty twenty one, the ICC launched an investigation into Israeli

(02:45:06):
actions in Gaza.

Speaker 3 (02:45:08):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:45:08):
This started when the former prosecutor of the ICC, Fatu Bensuda,
made the call to like yes, start a formal investigation,
and that culminated a couple of weeks ago in the
ICC issuing an arrest warrant for Benjamin Nan Yahoo. And
when that process started, there is evidence that the former
head of the Massad, the guy who was running the

(02:45:29):
massade at the time, Yo C. Cohen, made contact with
an ICC prosecutor and basically threatened him. And I'm actually
I'm going to read a quote from a Guardian article here.
Cohen's personal involvement in the operation against the ICC took
place when he was the director of the Massad. His
activities were authorized at a high level and justified on
the basis the court posed a threat of prosecutions against

(02:45:51):
military personnel. According to a senior Israeli official. Another Israeli
source briefed on the operation against Bensuda said that the
massad's objective was to compromise the prosecutter or enlist her
as someone who could cooperate with Israel's demands. A third
source familiar with the operation said Cohen was acting as
Netanya Who's unofficial messenger. Cohen who was one of Netanya
Who's closest allies at the time, and it is emerging
as a political force in his own right, and Israel

(02:46:13):
personally led them as sod's involvement in an almost decade
long campaign by the country to undermine the court. According
to account shared with ICC officials, he's alleged to have
told her, you should help us and let us take
care of you. You don't want to be getting into
things that could compromise your security or that if your family,
which is very much mob shit, right like, it couldn't
be more mob shit. And it's like, I don't actually

(02:46:35):
think that is a war crime. I don't even know,
because I guess they didn't even think anyone would do that,
right like that, you would just like, hey, you know,
we could break your fucking legs, you know, misprosecutor a
lady like we the Masad. I don't even know that
that because, at least from my reading over of the
Rome Statutes, that's not listed. Maybe they should add that

(02:46:56):
one in there. But yeah, this has been a brief
overview of what be a war crime. I hope you
find this helpful in your discussions of what be a
war crime. But I do kind of want to end
on the note again, does any of this matter? What's
going to Well? No, do I think that, like Benjamin
Natanyaho's going to actually be taken to Denhag and fucking chains.
I mean maybe someday. Actually, I don't think that that's impossible.

(02:47:19):
I don't think we should give up hope for that,
and this is a necessary precursor to that. And I
think it's good. I think the evidence that this is valuable.
If you actually, if you want my best case for
why this matters, Israel spent ten years previous to the
announcement of this warrant running devoting Masad resources to an
undergrand campaign to sabotage and threaten the ICC. That means

(02:47:43):
they see this as a threat. They consider prosecutions like
this to be dangerous to them. And that means you
should at least passively support what the ICC is doing here.
Right net Yahoo's regime considers this a threat to their operations,
to what they're doing in Gaza, and I think that's

(02:48:03):
enough of a reason to think that it's good.

Speaker 3 (02:48:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:48:05):
Yeah, if they think it's going to stop them murdering civilians,
then yeah, it's good that we don't need to beat
around the bush too much. Like anyway, Yeah, it would
be nice to see someone who wasn't from Africa prosecuted
at the Hague.

Speaker 2 (02:48:17):
That would be Hey, yeah, they got those serbians, right,
I did get they got a couple of serbs.

Speaker 4 (02:48:22):
Yeah, yeah, it's true.

Speaker 2 (02:48:24):
Uh yeah, yeah, let's throw an Israeli or too and
there and yeah some of those some OSK guys. I'm like,
look something, let's try to do something.

Speaker 4 (02:48:32):
Yeah, yeah, maybe maybe let's let's make a statement that
it's bad to murder and kidnap civilians, it's bad to.

Speaker 2 (02:48:39):
Yeah, I don't know. We're very critical of the idea
that there ever was a rules based international order, but
I think we should try that sometime.

Speaker 4 (02:48:48):
It's been nice to have some rules.

Speaker 2 (02:48:49):
Yeah, anyway, James, anything else to add before we cut
out of here.

Speaker 4 (02:48:53):
Don't engage in war crimes.

Speaker 2 (02:48:55):
Don't commit a war crime. Yeah, don't commit a war crime.
Avoid that if you can.

Speaker 4 (02:48:59):
Don't engage in war, if you didn't have to, really.

Speaker 2 (02:49:01):
Try to avoid war. Because one of the things reading
through this, I think about all the things I've seen
that I'm like, well, I could argue that that was
a war cry. You know, they happen a lot, it
turns out, or at least edge cases, are most of
the things you see in war. Yes, anyway, we're done. Hey,

(02:49:24):
We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
now until the heat death of the universe.

Speaker 1 (02:49:30):
It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
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You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
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