It Could Happen Here Weekly 194

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 (00:27):
Hello, and welcome to It could happen here. I'm Andrew
Siege as soon as andreism on YouTube, and I'm here
with me. It's James, And honestly I shouldn't see welcome
to it could happen. Yeah, I shouldlready see welcome to
it is happening here, because I mean, just just a
second with you, James, how are you doing. You're safe?

Speaker 4 (00:46):
I'm okay, Yeah, I'm safe. Right now. We are living
through wild times in the United States. Every day is
a new hell.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
Indeed, indeed, and although I'm not in the US, the
flames of that hell definitely lack the rest of the
world in weis big and small.

Speaker 4 (01:05):
Yeah, they definitely do. I was just talking to people
in Syria yesterday and like the alavis Ala white whenever
you want to call a levees, so if you want
to say it, are facing quite substantial persecution currently, and
like one of the larger refugee accepting countries in the
world just isn't doing that anymore unless you're a white
South African of course, and like that has these massive

(01:27):
trickle down effects for everywhere. It's just one example of
how America so goes, the US so goes the world.
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
Indeed, indeed, and not just in Syria, are the flames
of conflict tearing up with the part I think most
people I now know what the situation in Palestine, the
way that Israel was carrying on to genocide there. You know,
the Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the civil war in Myanmar,
in Sudan, the you know, struggle between India and Pakistan

(01:57):
over Kashmir and the kashmir people who are you know,
left on the on the wayside. You know, the Tamil
genocide yep, taking place some in Sri Lanka. I mean,
there's so many things happening across the world right now,
it's really difficult to keep up.

Speaker 4 (02:16):
Yeah, the friends in me Emma would prefer the framing
of revolution to civil war. They're pretty explicit about that.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
Okay, yeah, you're right, you're right, you're right, I should
be using that that terminology.

Speaker 4 (02:29):
Yeah, it's not it's not appropriate everywhere. But in their case,
there has been a civil war since forty eight, and
it's a substantial change with the twenty twenty one revolution.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
Right right, right, right, Yeah, thank you for that correction.

Speaker 4 (02:40):
Yeah, yeah, of course.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
I think now is a really good time to have
a general, almost strategic discussion on anti war struggle, and
so today I really want to look at how we
can come to the propaganda around war, the actions that
are possible to take against militarism at home, and we
could build solidarity across oceans and borders. So to understand

(03:05):
how to actuate against war, we first need to agitate
against militarism. And those who don't know, militarism is the
belief or policy that the nation should maintain a strong
military and be prepare to use it aggressively to defend
or promote its interests. It often involves glorifying military virtues
and ideals, and prioritizing military strength and readiness above other

(03:27):
aspects of society such a basic Google definition. My copy
of the Anarchist Encyclopedia is the English version, which is aberged, sadly,
but the original French has the full unabridged Anarchist Encyclopedia.
So with a bit of shaky online translation magic and
managed to pull its definition of militarism as well. Miltarism

(03:48):
is a system that consists of having and maintaining military personnel.
It's essential and avoult goal is a preparation for war.
The recruitment of a standing army in the organization of
the cageris of reserve army. The accumulation that put it
in place turn into the state of service of ever
more modern, more perfected war material. In short, is the
preliminary organization of war. All are the implications of that, well,

(04:11):
all over the world, I think we can see, you know,
the consequences of statism, the might makes right, pursuit of conquest,
the fighting wars abroad or at home, for the strategic interests,
ideological commitments, resource claims, whatever the case may be. The
rivalries within the ruling class, and how that pleas out,
and how it's that that blows back on all of

(04:33):
our faces. You know, the profits the military industrial complex
which keeps this whole system chuning on, you know, the
blood of innocence. Of course, the longstanding consequences and continued
work of colonialism. And of course the way is that
militarism gets turned inward with this suppression of strikes, of activism,

(04:55):
of popular unrest. When the now militarized police aren't enough,
they often bring in the military itself and reports. With militarism,
we also have the narrative component, you know, the building
of patriotism that so plans the seed of fascism. States

(05:16):
can survive without militaries. It is true the state typically
depends upon some effort or some attempt at monopoly on
the legitimate use of violence within the territory by some definitions.
But the states which do not have militaries often can
do so because they've outsourced the military functions to another state,

(05:40):
and or because they have other systems in place to
control descent, to develop a certain degree of social condition
and pacify the population.

Speaker 4 (05:50):
I'm just trying to think of states that are militaries
like in my experience, I guess you have like the
Panama right doesn't have a military, it has the Center Front,
which are like the frontier Protection I guess, but essentially
like a militarized border patrol. And they do have marines
and stuff as well, I guess, so they kind of
do have a military, but it's a kind of a
renaming exercise more than anything.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
Indeed, the same thing of having a militarized police, but
it's not a military technically.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:15):
Well, having a militarized coast guard and it's not a
military technically, you know.

Speaker 5 (06:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (06:19):
Yeah. You have the countries like the Republic the Marshall Islands,
which just outsources its militarization to the United States, right
like the US. Well, I think that is a distinct thing.
The people in the Marshall Islands have seen the horrors
of war very closely and also the danger of militarization,
right like, the United States nuked the Marshall Islands, a

(06:43):
country with which it had no quarrel, with which it
was not at war, just to practice in case it
needed to in Nuk, a country with which it did
have a quarrel. I guess the legacy of that is
very obvious and continues to this day there. But if
marshal Ly's people wish to join a military. They can
join the US military, and the US guarantees the security
and theory that it's it's yeah, it is again distinctly.

(07:03):
For instance, if you join the US military in the
Marshall Islands wish to access your veterans benefits, the easiest
way to do so is to take a five hour
flight to Hawaii. Like, like, they don't have any any
any benefits for victual veterans there. So I guess in
that case, like maybe it does give people a different
relationship to like state violence.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
Yeah, it's I mean, obviously different places to have different
histories as to how they came to those arrangements. But
you definitely see our relationship between colonialism and the outsourcing
of military functions.

Speaker 4 (07:37):
Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 3 (07:39):
Now, historically anarchists have been anti militarists. The encyclopedias call
this aspect of the anarchist struggle, the aim to disqualifying militarism,
to denounce it's terrible and painful consequences, to combat the
warlike and barracks for distigmatize and dishonor war to a

(07:59):
ball the regime of the armies, so abolish and militarism
looks like material relief from the oppression military violence, the
redirection of resources that go toward military toward instead things
that actually benefit the lives of everyday people, you know,

(08:20):
the reduction of pain and suffering throughout the world, the
abolition of borders which so often are the motivating force
behind military exercise. And while no anarchist to deny that
armed struggle is necessary for defense, it's not the same
as having an imperialistic or hierarchical ambition toward you know,

(08:42):
power over towards dominating populations of people.

Speaker 4 (08:46):
Yeah, this reminds me of the discussion that happened in
the CNT and Spain in the nineteen thirties previous to
the Civil War. Even before that, right where they there
was a very profound, an obvious discussion on like how
to defend their evolution, how to defend communities whilst maintaining
anti militarism. And that's why we didn't see like there

(09:11):
was not a like standing army beyond you had affinity groups, right,
and then you had like defense committees of six six
to eight people, and those people like took on the
role of organizing for a potential violent like in order
to defend the community right, like to use violence to
defend the community against violence. But even as it became

(09:34):
clearer and clearer that Spain was like spiraling towards conflict,
they resisted the idea of establishing and I think more
militarized than that.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
Yeah, and I think so core. It's been a really
good place to look at for really some experiments or efforts,
so ideas would have played out, strategies would have played out,
and I think it's really important to take those experiments
and see how we can iterate on them. Yeah, and
build upon them, because I mean what I've always admired

(10:03):
that we've carried on this anti militarist torch. It's very
important to remember the landscape has changed from war times past.
You know, we're not in World War times anymore. You know,
the strategies and the discussions and the approaches that may
have worked back then, it doesn't work this in the
same way now. You don't even have to declare war

(10:25):
officially anymore. In this day and age. You can just
say that, oh, you're doing a special military operation, or
you can just send billions of dollars of aid to
a country that you want to support, and even troops
to the countries want to support, and technically you have
un declared warrior. Yeah, and you know, not only that,

(10:48):
you also get to unleash generational trauma and poison upon
generations of people. But it's okay because you're going after
some terrorists. You know, you just get to push money
and supplies towards this camp or that and whether the
US is concerned and at least used to have to

(11:08):
seek congressional approval, but as we see, that's not really
a thing now, especially post nine eleven. You know, back
in the day, people thought putting pressure on the elected
officials through protests probably enough, and you know there's the
b to be had to the extent to which that
worked for situations like the Vietnam War. But as we've
seen with this song and Dance again and again and again,

(11:31):
the protests are not hitting like they used to. You know,
the response to the protest has been so it's routine
at this point. You know, you just send the police
to bash the heads in or bet to get the military,
because the movers and the shakers on the people who
can actually be reached with these protests, you know, and
no matter how peaceful we proclaim our protests to be

(11:53):
we're talking about moneyed interests here. You know, a military
industrial complex that has to have lyne go up, you
know who, Yeah, doesn't have to give a down about
some people walking on the road. You know, the system
has grown since the nineteen tens, the nineteen fourteen years.
It has grown in such size and complexity to the
point where you know, you don't have to care necessarily

(12:16):
about a single movement part about a single action of protests.

Speaker 4 (12:21):
Yeah, and the two kind of combine. And like what
we're seeing in the United Kingdom right now, right like
there's the complete dismissal of protests and this like I'm
thinking a better word than imprecise, but like the vagueness
of the definition of terrorism has allowed the government of
the United Kingdom, in combination with the absence of a
Bill of Rights in the United Kingdom, right to just

(12:42):
be like, oh, Palestine Action and terrorists like you are
the same as the Islamic State, because Palestine Action undertook
it in non violent direct action. Right, But it's ludicrous
to suggest that that that was terrorism and that it
doesn't mean any reasonable definition of the term. But yet,
where we were in a stage now where governments can
declare anyone the enemy without any particular oversight, and that's

(13:07):
the logical conclusion of two decades of this.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
Yeah, I mean to an extent, that has always been
the case. I think what's different now is that they're
not even really attempting to hide behind any sort of
consistent principles or consistent standards, you know, because even back
back then, you know, the nartists are being called terrorists
and being m m true, you know, chastised for that.

Speaker 4 (13:29):
Yeah, I guess also, like our class system is more
entrenched than it ever has been in a sense, I'm
just thinking, like, wars are not fought by the mass
of middle class, and like the people who become senators
for the most part, right, I mean, in the US
and downs, senators will have done military service. It can

(13:51):
sort of boost their career opportunities. I get that, But
like it is not for the most part, the sons
of the of the people who who start the wars
who die in the wars.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
Right, it's indeed people of.

Speaker 4 (14:05):
A different class in a way that even in a
distinct way from the era of the World wars. Right,
when when large numbers of people of the middle class,
especially maybe not the very privileged people that like did
die in those wars. And I think like the memory
of the First World War probably did have some impact

(14:25):
on like the reticence of some politicians to dive into
the second one. But we don't really have that now.

Speaker 3 (14:32):
Indeed, so we criticize this particular approach of the protest,
and I know that the inavertable question is, so what
can we even do at this point? And you know,

(14:54):
this is why I consider it very important to take
a step back and look at what is actually keeping
the system going right, and what's keeping the system going
is and has always been labor right. Not to say
that labor and labor struggles to be all and and
all of our politics, but it is to say that

(15:14):
if we want to make a significant impact, that is
what we have the greatest control over our labor. And
so when I talk about things we can do to
affect change, I always had to take it back to
the ongoing process of social revolution. The things you do
to oppose and the things you do to propose, you know,

(15:35):
on the opposing side of things, that includes counter messaging.
You know, even though we may not have the resources
of mainstream media or government communications, We have weight of mouth,
we have trust between ourselves, and we have alternative media
that can be, especially in this day and age, just
as powerful if sparked right, especially considering the fact that

(15:59):
the general center and the populist sentiment has, whether coming
from a leftist direction or a right dist direction, the
general sentiment has been moving toward anti establishment poll of sics.
The anti establishment sort of momentum is what's growing right now,

(16:19):
and the issue of course being that sometimes that anti
establishment momentum can be hijacked, such as what Trump did,
you know, to get himself elected the first time he
rode that wave and you know, this whole Epstein situation,
we may see that foundation of his base potentially crumbling
apart a bit. But we have to look at what

(16:42):
is actually motivating people right now and how they can
be reached. An alternative media with an anti establishment mess
message is I think one of the better ways to
do so, you know, wherever you see it.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
He needs to be out.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
There, you know, on social media or through a the
avenue is calling out the ridiculous Cassius bellues used to
manufacture consent for war. You know, to be wary of
potential forced flags can be used as a justification for
military action to consistently poke holes in the narratives that

(17:18):
have allowed you know, nationalists and and xenophobic sentiments to
become the force that they have become today, and of
course even engaged in that message, and of course ty
not to let campus infect your counter message in either.
You know, that's how you get people who are you know,
they gung, who are about a free Palestine, and then they

(17:39):
start when they ask them about Ukraine, all of a sudden,
it's actually really complicated. It's actually the fault of the
US and the EU and na too, and not Russia,
even though Russia is the one who actually invaded and
is actively killing people in distrial infrastructure as we speak, right.
I Mean, there's conversation to be had about the US
and EU and about NATO obviously, but it's very.

Speaker 4 (18:03):
Clear, Yeah, it's very uncomplicated who's.

Speaker 3 (18:06):
Actually killing people right now?

Speaker 4 (18:08):
You know, Yeah, there is one country which is taking
children right and trying to like re educate them give
them to families in Russia, which is committing murders of civilians.
Like we don't have to like resort to like ten
year geopolitical trajectories to say that it's wrong and it
should be opposed exactly exactly.

Speaker 3 (18:31):
And also I want to make this point about counter
messaging because it's a consistent gripe I've had, In fact,
one of the main reasons I started my channel in
the first place. With your comment message in whether it's
in person or on the internet or wherever, does stay
perpetually on the back foot, you know, the words don't
just counter message? Yeah, you know, right now, And it's

(18:54):
what irritates me so much. The right wing sets the conversation. Yeah,
you know, you have people they say, oh, we want
to talk about critical race theory, and then everybody's talking
about critical race theory because they talk to or they
want to target trans people, and all of a sudden,
we have to scrabble to respond to all their erroneous
and ridiculous claims about trans people. That comets messages is important,

(19:18):
is important, but it cannot be all that we do, right, Yeah,
and this is a bit how to let feel. But
you know, of course I'm not the one who is
partialty liketoral approaches. But you can see some of that
not just counter message in but also actively messaging taking

(19:39):
place with Zora Mum. Danny's strategy, you know, when you
look at how he speaks, how he addresses some of
the badly the arguments are made against him. His rhetorical
strength and popularity in part lies on his refusal to
carry on the conversation on the enemies too, you know,
so they will go at him for something and he's
going to spit it right back around owned to talking

(20:01):
about the things that it's just really matter to people
to set the conversations to get people to respond to that,
because all other response is toward him have been trying
to distract from his actual messaging and his ability to
steal on message as something I find really admirable, despite
you know, my concerns about the investment of energy and

(20:22):
electoral strategies.

Speaker 4 (20:24):
Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, there are certain things we can
admire about these people if we don't agree with everything.
And I do think like in that sense, something I
think about a lot with like messaging and countermessaging, especially
around war. It's like I spent some time in the
Anes and what people call Java, and like one of

(20:46):
the framings that I've consistently seen and it's mostly in
like the lib leaning mass media, I guess is that
people went to Rejaba to fight against IS or Dash
or Isis, whatever you want to call it, right, and
like in doing so, that is how the revolutionary Jarba
is not understood by most people, right, and they have

(21:07):
taken the power away from it in their framing of it,
because people didn't just go. Some people did go. Justify
I s right that there. They went because they saw
what I was doing. They understood its inhumane and they
wanted that to stop, and that's admirable. But people also
went because they saw what people were building in Rajava
and they thought that was beautiful and they wanted to

(21:28):
defend it, and that's admirable too. And sometimes the messaging
around specifically ra Java, Mi and Mar to an extent
right there international volunteers there too, and of course that
like folks from the Amma who have picked up weapons
who never thought they would, and they didn't just do
it to oppose the Hunter. They did it because like
in there, despite all the horrible things about war then

(21:52):
and like it should be avoided at all costs. In
the conflict, they have built liberated spaces and they've experienced freedom,
they have experienced how that feels and they've built a
revolution that is beautiful in spite of the war, not
not because of it, and they want to defend that.
And I think that's a messaging that we should we

(22:14):
should consider, right, like, because the messaging that everything has
to be against something bad always sort of it presupposes
that that they can't have been something good, and in
some cases there has been something good, and like, we
won't fully understand what was happening there unless we understand that.

(22:35):
And I think we should push back on that messaging
what we see it, especially in the great legacy media.

Speaker 3 (22:41):
Absolutely absolutely, and that really connects to the you know,
the other aspect of the social revolution paradigm, because it's
not just about a pousion and so it's proposing that
that's something different. Yeah, and that is often far more
energizing than simply talking everything that's wrong with the world.

Speaker 4 (23:03):
Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 3 (23:05):
And I think also for those who maybe have concerns
about the risks of oppositional messaging, there's another area where
you can direct your energy to support the opposition without
necessarily actively being involved in it, you know, because it's
not enough to just oppose the system. You have to
build something else, and you could be part of that

(23:26):
building something else. You know, swim a message and you
want to be able to redirect people's energies to the
actual frustrations and interests, you know, to re center the
conflict and the lens on the actual divisions of society,
such as class, to make money interests known. And you know,
even though it's never been easy to be anti war,

(23:47):
you know, especially in the center of empire, and in
many ways, technologies today have empowered much greater repression. You know,
in Russia, individual and mass protests are met with severe oppression,
massive finds, sentences, et cetera. In the US you can
face police brutality, censorship, even deportation. And in Israel, well,

(24:08):
I haven't seen or heard anything from the Israeli populus
in terms of resisting what Israel is doing to the Palestinians.
But I know that those who do stand against the
mandatory conscription do face jail time for their refusal. So
it's not easy to be anti war, especially in militarized

(24:30):
and empire building territories. I get that stress and that worry,
that opposition is still necessary, but there's other things. But
we can we do it than just message it.

Speaker 4 (24:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:41):
You know, there are things that take on less risk,
such as building an alternative, and there are things that
take on more risks. Now protests, even peaceful protests, are
no longer risk free endeaverts. And I know what most
people hear about, you know, we need to push back.
They hear, okay, that's all going to as a protest. Honestly,

(25:02):
we could use a bit more imagination in this day
and age. Like I said, the protest is not hitten
like I used to. It's become like a pressure valve
or a tool of passification that could be tolerated for

(25:23):
a time and then met with repression the moment it's
time to wrap it up. And they have a couple
of reasons why protests are not you know, able to
do as much. You know, they have the moneyed interests.
You know, they can end up being divided according to
various arguments of a strategy. And I'm sorry to say this,
but protests as of late haven't accomplished very much besides

(25:48):
getting people mutilated or jailed or worse in the past
few years. And in fact, a lot of the resources
that could be spent you know, building alternatives are being
spent instead on you know, paying people's bonds and getting
people out of jail, prison, relieve that sort of thing.
Not to say those things are not necessary, you know,
don't leave your comrades to trot and jail. But I

(26:11):
think we need to consider the free data that we've
basically been giving away to the relaying class in the
form of pictures, names, addresses, identifying data that they can
be used to repress or dis erupt or infiltrate protesters
and protesting organizations down the line, as James Herod and

(26:33):
synother James. As James Herod wrote in the Weakness of
our Politics of protest, we have been getting some of
these critiques of protests from He says, thus, instead of
powerfully concentrate in our mental and physical energies on solving
this problem to eliminate this obstacle to defeating capitalism, we

(26:54):
are taking to the streets once again, mainly protested, merely
incased in what is basically mindless active end quote. Later,
he says, it's easy to agree on what to protest against.
The list of things that need to be stopped on
the capitalism is long, so long, in fact, we don't
even need to agree, there's plenty to choose from, so
just pick something that suits you. Perhaps this is why

(27:15):
I meant so many activists got involved in protesting. It's
not so easy though, to figure out what we want
to replace capitalism with, to work out convincing arguments about
how it will possibly work, and they set about creating
such a social world, especially since so little energy has
been devoted to the task end quote. And you know,
I get why protests are popular. You know, as he says,

(27:36):
it has a low barrier to entry. You just have
to show up. And in a society that has been
so deliberately atomized, where mass collective action has we made
so difficult, protests has become pretty much a very easy
avenue to get those things done. Yeah, and you know,
protests can work in Sydney instances for limits any goals.

(27:57):
But I think that those uses are diminishing dyd in
the cost benefits analysis.

Speaker 4 (28:03):
Yeah, I'm just thinking about Like there was a letter
Georgi or wil wrote to one of his readers on
the subject of anti fascism, where all Well was lamenting
that the anti fascism that he was encountering in England.
Right in between his participation in the Spanish Civil War
and the Second World War was always centered on hate,

(28:23):
and like it's sort of an idea. We get the
two Minutes of Hate later in nineteen eighty four, right,
but maybe it comes from here, And like it never
proposed an alternative. It just said it pointed to something.
It said bad, something I've tried not to do in
my journalism, right. It is very often we do this
with a journalists too. We point something and say bad,
and we don't look for the ways that it could

(28:46):
become better. And so like protesting could become such an
identity for people like you see it. I'm just thinking
of like every time I get sent a link to Instagram, right,
which is a platform m I don't really participate on,
but I will look at things and they'll be like, oh,
San Diego protest news, San Diego protester, so cow protester,

(29:09):
And like, I think we should resist that being an
identity because we want to build something beautiful as well
as oppose what is bad. And if we don't have
something beautiful to propose, what are we doing out there?

Speaker 3 (29:22):
Exactly exactly? And you know there's room for protests. I
don't want to give off the impression that there isn't.

Speaker 4 (29:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (29:31):
You know, but for all the lovely talk about peaceful protests,
that works when there's an actual threat backing up those protests.
You know, you don't just do the peaceful protest. You know,
Gandhi didn't single handedly win India's independence by march and peacefully. Yeah,
you know, there has to be something back, and it's
up or else it's going to be very easy to
ignore and suppress. Yeah, And I think that protests should

(29:55):
not be our default right now. They are our default,
and I think they are better uses of our collective time, energy,
and resources, even though protests are very easy compared to
some of the things that are more necessary right now.
You know, but if protest is where your dead set
on funneling your energy, I would just say that you
should at least learn de arrest strategies. You know, there

(30:17):
are resources online to get some information on that ond
arrest strategies. You can look it up. But if it's possible,
if you see the situation playing out, you know, trying
not to sit by and let your comrades get pulled away,
you know, it is very possible the numbers on your
side to prevent the police from harassment targets and taking

(30:39):
away people. You know, there's other stuff you can do
as well, besides protests that I keep alluding to, because
you know, sadly the media is no longer you know,
a safe space to share things and depth in some cases.
But just remember the key is actual disruption. You know,
the media will not be with you, It'll be trying

(30:59):
to get my factor consent on everything that you do,
manufacturer consent against any action taken on the things that
you do. And the only way to counteract that is
to maintain relationships on the ground, to maintain actual local solidarity.
Because once you have those local relationships and that local solidarity,
there's no amount of things that the media can do
the media could stir up that can prevent the people

(31:22):
who see that you're on their side, see that you're
stand up for them, to turn attention right. What problem
happens is when you don't have any relationships, you don't
have any networks, you don't have any community building, You
just doing stuff. The messaging is unclear. You know, That's
where I think the media could really pounce on that.
I would also say, you know, sabotage you know, hit

(31:44):
their pockets. And the main thing, the thing that I've
alluded to earlier, is to strike, you know, to organize
strikes to use the labor power. Workers power still comes
from a participation in production and the threat of withdrawing
our participation. We have to realize that in this time

(32:05):
we'll live an in even the effectiveness of strikes have
come on the threat in two ways. The first way
is that the permanence of employment is not what it
used to be. And with the rise and spread of AI,
you know, you have to ask yourself how long will
strike since certain fields be effective anymore. You know, I

(32:28):
have my doubt that EI will ever reach a point
where it can replace people. But honestly, for a lot
of these companies, they don't necessarily care about whether it's
capable of replacing people or not. They will still try
and use it to replace people. So we have to
be cognizant of the fact that this is the direction
they're pushing things in, and we have to be able

(32:50):
to stand up against that. Before we reach a point
where between AI and you know, the nature of temporary
work of the gig economy, it becomes was harder and
harder to organize ourselves.

Speaker 4 (33:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (33:03):
The other thing that I've noticed that has made strikeing
so difficult and that we have to be aware of,
is the pacification of the domestication of unions. Right, there
was a time historically where unions were a powerful, influential,

(33:25):
revolutionary even for us such as not the case today unfortunately. Yeah,
you know, they have some legislation put in place that
many unions are terrified of crossing. Every I has to
be dotted, every ts to be crossed, and so the
things that would actually make union action the most effective

(33:45):
after the things that unions nowadays will refuse to do,
sympathy strikes, general strikes, and so, what can we do
if we are in an industry where the union is
collaboration with management, with union is utterly reformist to the
union review U is to actually step up and represent
the people supposed to represent it. And this is where

(34:07):
historically wildcat illegalist strikes have had to come into play.
Strikes that do not depend upon legality, that do not
sit back and wave per mission, that carry far more risk,
of course, that are far more difficult to organize, but
are going to be necessary if we want to liberate

(34:30):
ourselves from this constant capitulation toward the machine. In the
article Striking against the Work War Machine by Jeff Schant
and PJ. Lily, this head quote wartime strikes and sabotage
party because they're illegal and unsanched of nature, bring rank
and file workers together outside of union structures. Workers have

(34:52):
to make crucial decisions work for this strike directly in
face to face meetings or on the picquet lines. Bureaucrats
who are left to their fundamental role of broken with
the bosses can be relegated to the sidelines, and such situations.
In Germany in nineteen seventeen, illegal strikes helped us sweep
the union structures right out of workplaces. Strikes increasingly took

(35:13):
on an anti union as well as anti boss character,
with wildcats occurring in crowing numbers throughout the Armistice and beyond.
So I wanted to of course pull on this example
because this is not a unique issue. Right Even historically,
where unions have stood against the struggle of workers, against

(35:34):
WAW or against you know, actually defending the class interests,
the rank and file have had to organize themselves accordingly.
So that's also something to keep in mind. And last,
but not least. I just wanted to see to Stroy
briefly on the proposed side of the social revolution equation
when it comes to anti war struggle, and as usual,

(35:55):
this is going to take solidarity materially, not just saying
that we stand in sor diarity with such and such
and such, actually share an aid, share a notes, support
and refugees and going fully there, because this, I think
is where a lot of our energy needs to be
right now. Our efforts to oppose are going to be
for the most part, to us as long as we

(36:15):
don't have an underlying structure that we are building upon
that we are seken to defend and to Expand you know,
we are not at a position right now where we
pose much of a threat yet, and we also have
to consider that merely posing a threat is not going
to liberate us by itself. So I wanted to consider,

(36:39):
as we, you know, wrap up this episode, what you
can do to put forward out all seriative to actually
try to create the new social arrangements that we think
should replace capitalist, statist, militarist order. And this is something
that I talk about on my channel, of course, I
talk about building the commons, building alternative media, well sense

(37:00):
of the economy and developing all powers or drives and
our consciousness and so you can check that out if
you'd like. Unfortunately, this is it is happening here and
don't forget. You could check out the YouTube, the picture
on et cetera. All power to all the people.

Speaker 6 (37:20):
Peace, Hello everyone, and welcome to it could happen here.
My name is Daniel Kurd. I'm a writer, analyst, and

(37:42):
researcher of Palestinian and air politics. I'm an associate professor
of political science and a senior nonresident Fellow at the
Arab Center Washington. Today we'll be speaking with Charity, the
policy lead for Oxfam. Our discussion will cover oxtam's work
in occupied passing in territories and the current crisis in
a distribution we are recording end of July July twenty seventh,

(38:04):
twenty twenty five. NPR reported in May of this year
that Gaza has already reached Phase four of the Integrated
Food Security phase classification. The IPC just coordinated out of
the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and an organization called
the Famine Early Warning Systems Network.

Speaker 7 (38:23):
So what does this all mean?

Speaker 6 (38:25):
Phase four means emergency as NPR rights in there may
report hardships deepen, food gaps widen, and people resort to
really extreme forms of coping. So the Famine Early Warning
Systems Network does not have a presence in Gaza at
the moment. This is their best guess. Phase five is
when they declare a famine. We're seeing very terrible images

(38:49):
in the media and on our phone screens about the
level of deprivation in Gaza at the moment because aid
has been blocked off by the Israeli government.

Speaker 7 (38:58):
Writing for Al Ja Zero just a few.

Speaker 6 (39:00):
Days ago, former UN official Munzakhrane accuses the UN of
not declaring famine despite overwhelming evidence, because he says officials
are worried about their careers and possibly worried about antagonizing
the US. But regardless of whether it's Phase four or
Phase five, the situation in Gaza is dire. In July
twenty seventh today, when we're recording, there's reporting that there

(39:22):
might be air drops, that the trucks on the Egyptian
border are moving towards Gaza, after the Israeli government has
received a lot of pressure over the ongoing aid crisis.
But of course that may be too late for many gazas.
As I said, we're speaking with Bush today, who will
talk to us about her work from the vantage point

(39:42):
of ox Jam.

Speaker 7 (39:43):
Bush, thank you so much for joining us, Thanks for
having me.

Speaker 6 (39:46):
So let's begin with first describing Oxfam's work and occupied
Palsitate territories.

Speaker 5 (39:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:51):
Sure, we've been here since nineteen fifty six. We have
offices in Ramala and Jerusalem and Gaza and also was
originally set up as an organization to fight famine, you know,
the first kind of famines that we've seen globally. That's
the originally why Alxlam was got to set up. And
then so a lot of its programming is around water

(40:12):
and sanitation, food security, lively goods, working with farmers. A
big part of our program is water and sanitation, helping
for example, farming communities, providing them with irrigation pipelines. You know,
it could be agricultural inputs needed for growing their crops.
It could be technical support to farmers to support them
and growing, for example, vegetables. How do you grow crops

(40:35):
of vegetables around date trees? You know, So it's kind
of that kind of work in terms of the food
security component of that we have a big part of
our work is with women's organizations, women's cooperatives, women's farming
cooperatives as well.

Speaker 7 (40:49):
Especially in the West Bank.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
And then a lot of a lot of work with
kind of the relevant ministries and relevant trade unions on
for example, agricultural insurance, so getting you know, trying to
get insurance for farmers in case their crops or are
are ruined or sabotaged or damaged for example by settler violence,
et cetera. So there's kind of like a piloting kind

(41:14):
of program where we're looking at the potential of providing
insurance to the farming sector here and palastline. Other things
could be could look like, you know, small grants to
start a small kind of business women for example, ceramics,
women's cooperatives and farming. I mean, so a lot of

(41:35):
it worked like this, and most of our operations are
actually run through partners. So we have about ninety partners
kind of across the OFFI fied filesting territory, and about
eighty to ninety hoard of our operations are actually completely
implemented through partners. But of course after seventh of October,
our programming really drastically kind of shifted to fully humanitarian

(41:57):
where you know, we are now basically providing high eigiene kits,
food parcels, some agricultural inputs as well. Where we could
you know, set in Gaza, it looks like setting up latrines,
hand washing, state like mobile stations. It can be like
water trucking. I mean, it's it's changed, you know, depending
on the access that we've had. So for example, since

(42:19):
March this year, we've not been able to enter anything
because of Israel's full total siege on Gaza, so nothing
kind of entered. So our operations look like psychosocial support
to women, young girls and shelters, trucking water from one
area to another where we've felt like these communities potentially

(42:39):
needed water or had a little access to water. It
could look it looked like a cash for work. We
do a big, big, big, big part of our both
now in the West Bank and in Gaza is providing
cash for work. So for example, we have daily workers
that will remove solid waste with their bare hands unfortunately
because there's no materials to remove waste in Gaza. But

(43:01):
then they would receive like kind of daily daily rates
in order to get paid and then there's like cash
vouchers for the most vulnerable, where they can you know,
have a voucher in a store and they can you know,
purchase items that we've read for example with the store
owner to that you know, people can purchase with our
with our kind of cards.

Speaker 7 (43:20):
So it's very.

Speaker 1 (43:21):
Versatile, versatile and especially in last years, had to adapt
and change, you know, very quickly and flexibly depending on
the situation what's available in the markets.

Speaker 7 (43:31):
But that's kind of like what our programming looks like
across the territory.

Speaker 6 (43:35):
Yeah, thank you for explaining that, and it brings me
to I mean, you touched on it a little bit,
but it brings me to a second question that I
think is important for listeners to to understand is how
has the war in post October seventh really impacted that
the restrictions that the really government is imposing.

Speaker 7 (43:55):
So we know there's a stage in Gaza, but also
in the West Bank.

Speaker 6 (43:59):
Absolutely there is so much happening. How has that impacted
Oxygen's work. It's completely restricted.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
US and not just US, it's all of the international
kind of sector, including UN agencies.

Speaker 7 (44:10):
I mean, we know what they did with in Owa.
We'll maybe explain that.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
Yeah, I'll all, I mean Israel, the Government of Israel's
kind of attacks or let's say, attacks on the humanitarian
civic space. It's been a long standing policy of THEIRS
and started well before seventh of October. It's gotten just
you know, much tighter, much more restrictive since. But you know,

(44:34):
this goes back decades. I would say kind of the
most notorious development in shrinking space we call it shrinking
space is twenty twenty one when they declare six organizations
Palestinian civil society organizations mostly are human rights organizations that
some of the most notorious and well known human rights
organization where they're designated as terrorists organizations. So that was

(44:57):
kind of the first big you know where many of
those partners, those six partners were actually partners of international organizations.
So you know, we found ourselves kind of advocating for
continuing our support to these six despite the designation by Israel.
Never you know, and there was never, of course evidence
provided by the Israeli government as to what evidence they had,

(45:20):
why would they deem these organizations terrorist organizations? But you know,
they continued to operate under very very difficult circumstances. Their
offices were rated, their assets were confiscated, but you know,
they're still operational and we're still certainly supporting them. And
of course, you know shrinking space or the restrictions on

(45:43):
humanitarian civic space, it translates into, you know, into so
many different restrictions. It could be you know, restrictions on permits,
restrictions on what crossings you're able to use as a
humanitarian you know, whether you can go through that crossing
or another.

Speaker 7 (45:59):
It can be visa restrictions.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
And we started seeing that these are restrictions even before
the war. And after the war, of course everything kind
of changed and now we're facing and I'm talking more
about like legal restrictions in terms of our work, and
then I can talk more about like the siege and
the actual blockade of humanitarian aid in Ta Gaza, which
is you know, effectively completely restricted in our operations and

(46:24):
has dismantled really the humanitarians sector in its entirety and
has reverberating impacts to the rest of the terrritory. But
for us, I think the first kind of sign of
turmoil was when there was already a decision but nothing
had been kind of formally communicated of a new registration

(46:44):
process for international organizations that started already in twenty twenty four,
where the civil Administration announced to our respective organizations that
there will be a new registration procedures Israeli Simple Administration,
Israeli Civil Administration. And so it was only kind of

(47:05):
ten months later that the criteria was kind of presented
to us, and only a year later that the criteria
actually came into effect. But in that time where they
were announcing these new measures, there were lots of visa denials.
Permits of course, were completely non existent for humanitarians. So
for example, you know, I had a permit to Gaza

(47:26):
for six months, that of course stopped. All of our
staff in the West Bank had permits to travel both
to Gaza and in Israel. Those stopped on the seventh
of October, and say, and vice versa. Are our colleagues
in Gaza who had permits to come to Israel to
travel through the Allen b Bridge because of course, you know,
policies don't have an airport, so they have to travel

(47:47):
through ALLENB to travel through Ammen.

Speaker 7 (47:49):
Those also stopped.

Speaker 1 (47:51):
So that's one other kind of like you know, measure
that was taken against international organizations. And then when the
new registered rules were made public and the criteria was
made public, there was a new there's a new ministry
set up called the Ministry of Dyspora and something Affairs,
I know, Dyspora Affairs. I forget the full name of

(48:12):
the ministry, but it's it's an interministerial committee that you know,
it's made of basically thucks. You know, if you look
at the background of some of these people that are
in the committee, I mean, you know, it's and they
are now deciding of.

Speaker 7 (48:26):
The registration of international organizations.

Speaker 1 (48:29):
And the criteria is onerous, it's political, it's big, and
you know, even even it crosses some of our red
lines in terms of organization.

Speaker 7 (48:40):
I mean, one of one of the I think the most.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
Contentious criteria is submitting staff lists and all of the
information of our staff to the Israeli authorities, which is
something we never had to do before. It's not something
that is actually in any other context, It's not abnormal
for an authority or country or states to ask, you know,
who is your staff working for this organization you're seeking

(49:04):
registration from. But obviously because of the you know, unrecedented
number of humanitarian workers that have been targeted and indiscriminately
targeted as well. In Gaza, we've got more than four
hundred humanitarian workers killed. At this point, we are unable
to submit our staff lists because of you know, we
have no guarantees of protection. Even though we have guarantees

(49:24):
under protect you know, international law, this is not applied
when it comes to Gaza and in Israel's conducts, and
it's in the hostilities against humanitarian workers in humanity in space.
So that's one of the criteria. But there's also other
criteria where, for example, we would be revoked our registration
or not re registered if we are seen to support

(49:45):
some of the designated organizations that were designated early on,
which most of our organizations do. So many of us
are facing about to face basically being deregistered in Israel
and losing our presence in Jerusalem, which is you know,
has such a big implications, not because you know, we're
so desperate to have presence in Jerusalem, but because it

(50:05):
says a lot about what the future of East Jerusalem means.
Because you're moving aener wha, you're removing the INGOs, and
you're moving all the program and the support that goes
to organizations that are operating in Jerusalem, providing legal services
to people that are losing their homes, that are getting
their homes demolished on a daily basis, legal services for
settler attacks that happen also in East Jerusalem, and school

(50:29):
provision of school services, educational items, educational activities, summer caps,
you know, I mean, et cetera, et cetera. The list
goes on that will be removed. And that's kind of
you know, it's working now in parallel with the annexation
kind of plan that Israel has been threatening and implementing
at the same time, so you know, everything is moving

(50:50):
towards this annexation. It also has fast implications because many
of our organizations operate in areas C because the most
vulnerable communities you know, are in area and so we always,
you know, we as part of our programming is obviously
reaching the most vulnerable Palestinians and those that need to
help and support the most and so annexing areas CE

(51:11):
and de registering at the same time de registering us
from Israel means that we will also have very a
lot of difficulty assing these communities and accessing areas see
as we mention here in organizations, we've not had visas
for international staff for since the.

Speaker 7 (51:26):
Beginning of the war.

Speaker 1 (51:27):
And then when you look at you know, Gaza, so
this is kind of like looking at the West Bank
and what is how it's evolving in the West Bank.
But then you know the fact that we would be deregistered,
would effectively need that we cannot operate in Gaza. Need
because you have to have an Israeli registration in order
to be able to bring goods in inside Gaza. And
so if you're deregistered, you can't bring in goods into Gaza.

(51:58):
This tribulation of the humanitarians civic spaces is all encompassing
in Gaza. Of course, it looks like our materials have
been systematically and deliberately denied, rejected, delayed, you know, over
the course of the last twenty months. But of course,
adding it's worse since March second, when Israel imposed it's
total sea jong Gaza and basically has completely sidelined the

(52:19):
un IGOs and policy in the civil society. And since
then we've not been able to enter anything in Gaza,
and I doubt that we will be able to enter
anything moving forward, especially that the registration kind of window
ends in September. Beginning of September, that's when we'll finally
know who is going to be registered who's not. But
I expect for an organization like OXBAM, it's part of

(52:41):
the registration process. It's very vague, so we don't know
how they will apply it. But there's something about basically
calling again, you know, calling out or speaking out or
calling for accountability of individual soldiers and members.

Speaker 7 (52:54):
Of the IDEF. So what that means I don't know.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
But we call for accountability every day because it's part
of our mandate or not just an operational organization, where
a rights based organization, and so we have a mandate
to also you know, where we witness violations of human
rights or of international law, it is our mandate to
speak out on it. And so there's no operations without that.
So that's where we're at right now. It's an incredibly

(53:17):
difficult space. It is of course deliberate. This is a
deliberate policy of Israel. That is, you know, it's carried
out against the kind of human humanitarians, civic space for years.
It's also there's another law, there's a law that's against
Israel a human rights organization where it will start taxing.
It's really human rights organization that are receiving foreign funding

(53:38):
by fifty to eighty percent or something like that. So
it's just it's it's you know, it's deliberate, it's thematic.
We have been the only ones in Gaza that have
been able to actually report independently on what's happening in Gaza,
like the humanitarians happen, not even the journalists, because of course,
you know, I can argue that, yes, Palestine journalists are independent,

(53:59):
but you know, the most of the world would probably
disagree with that. So really, I mean the independent kind
of eyes and the neutral eyes, or let's say part
impartial eyes, I won't say neutral happened the humanitarians and
UN agencies. Sidelining us means that we'll also see a
reduction of quality reporting on what's actually happening in Gaza.

Speaker 7 (54:21):
So it's terrifying.

Speaker 6 (54:22):
It's an attack on our ability to even understand the
level of the problem. Absolutely that is being left in
the wake of this war, which of course is ongoing.
But also I think it's really important. I mean, the
things you just described, I think it's really important for
listeners to understand this the AID question, the question of
these humanitarian organizations and what's happening to them, whether it's
the registration through the Ministry of Daspreaffairs.

Speaker 7 (54:44):
And I think combating anti Semitism is its full name.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
That's it.

Speaker 7 (54:48):
That's Lacky should have red.

Speaker 6 (54:50):
So yeah, I mean there are so many problems with
this ministry and it has been even internally criticized by
by Tel Aviv University for.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
Example, Yeah, or even at see members of the government itself.
By the way, I think there was a there was
something about somebody in Israel government not attending the intermn
is Serial Committee meeting, you know, because it was wanting
to be associated to it.

Speaker 7 (55:12):
So yeah, it's a very problematic committee.

Speaker 6 (55:16):
But I mean if this kind of committee is responsible
for registering Internet you know, international organizations and humanitarian organizations,
then there's all the blockade of AID. All of these
are parts of the same ethnic cleansing strategy that what
we're seeing in Gaza, whatether you want to call it
ethnic cleansing or genocide.

Speaker 7 (55:34):
You know, people are being eradicated.

Speaker 6 (55:36):
We're seeing large scale displacements in the West Bank, and
as you mentioned, if these organizations also stop existing in Jerusalem.
We'll see Jerusalem next, not piecemeal the way that we've
been seeing it possible, absolutely, you know, a more aggressive way.
And so I really think it's important to kind of
underscore for listeners that this is part and parcel of
an annexation and ethnic cleansing plan that people from the

(56:00):
Religious Zionist Party have been saying since the early twenty tens.
Bazilos Motrich, finance minister today had the decisive plan that said,
you know, you either surrender or transfer, and we're at
that level.

Speaker 7 (56:13):
They are transferring, they are making sure that that happens,
and they are in the West Bank as well.

Speaker 1 (56:18):
I mean, you know, it's quiet and all eyes aren't Gaza,
but I mean we've seen displacement of entire communities in
the last few weeks only, let alone the largest numbers
have forcibly displaced Palestinian since nineteen sixty seven in the
West Bank this year and in the refugee camps that
have been attacked exactly, so you know, and again, I mean,
you know, you can look at the history of smear

(56:40):
campaigns against Ohawa by these really authorities. I mean, that's
just in itself. You know the services that ohwa provide.
You know, we have to re emphasize like education, health services,
I mean, you know, shelter, oh no, what provides key
services that the Pelstine authority is none to respond to?

(57:01):
What is going to happen to all of these people
when you know and already know what So listeners, electricity
cut off and real love.

Speaker 7 (57:12):
This is our lives. Yeah, so we might have to
restart some of that answer, that's fine. Yeah, So did
you want to pick up where you lost up?

Speaker 2 (57:20):
I was, yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:21):
I mean the point is is that this is you know,
a long standing policy by Israel. It's just like very
much accelerated like every other policy if there is when
it comes to you know, forcible displacement, collective punishment, you know, detensions.
I mean, everything is at a record high and accelerating
so quickly with this. You know, right wing, far right

(57:41):
wing government that's you know, has zero checks and balances,
zero nobody holds them accountable to anything, and so you
know they're able to get away with all of this.
So I mean, my my sense is that you know,
very soon you will no longer see kind of the
long standing organizations that have been here for decades that

(58:02):
have very much understood the context very well and have
understood that it's impossible to do the work that we
do without also bearing witness and speaking out on what
we're witnessing. And I think the UN and it's in
that way, you know, even the United Nations, where in Pelsline,
has made sure that the States committed to that mandate

(58:24):
because of how important it is to speak out on
what you're seeing around you. I think like that's purely
I think, like, you know, we're the only ones that
are able to witness and record independently what we're seeing
on a daily day basis. And I think the UN
has been incredible in keeping a record of that. I mean,

(58:44):
I think they started recording in two thousand and eight,
so it's like eighteen years now almost of monitoring violations
all across the territory. And if it wasn't for the
work that the UN has done in that, we wouldn't
be able to say that there is a genocide being
carried out in Gaza, or that the risk of ethnic

(59:05):
cleansing has risen exponentially in the West Bank. The reason
why we're able to say this is because we're able
to see the patterns and the data, and you know,
you can contest the data. But you know, even you
were talking about the IPC, the IPC is not even
reflective of what's really happening, and they say it themselves.
But you know, of course the media the way the

(59:25):
media kind of focuses on what the results because you know,
you only have time for sound bites. But if we
read the IPC alerts, it's clear that one they're always delayed,
so they're always talking about a time that's already passed
and we're way, we won't beyond that. And two it
says that it doesn't have access to Gaza. But look
at the testimonies, you know, just like just reading the

(59:47):
testimonies that some of our organizations have recorded in the
last week, just talking about our own colleagues and how
they're facing starvation themselves. I mean, I think the testimonies
speak to themselves on what is happening, guys. And I
don't need the IPC to tell me that there's a
classification four or five. It's never going to declare famine
when it's not there, Like, there's never going to be

(01:00:09):
a time where the IPC because that's not even the
role of the IPC.

Speaker 7 (01:00:12):
The role of the IPCs not to declare FAM and
the role the IPC is just.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
To collect the data and publish the data and then
it's the role of the UN or another international body
to do so. So we're not going to see if
I'm at declaration because we don't have access, and so
you know, we're not going to be able to say
that with confidence because the IPC is never going to
be able to publish that data.

Speaker 7 (01:00:34):
But I don't think it matters.

Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
I think what matters is what we're seeing on the ground,
what's being reported, and you know, I mean it's undeniable
really by the pictures themselves. I mean that the videos
and the pictures that are coming out of guys are
just speak for themselves really. So it's definitely unprecedented times
for us, and it's going to be a very very
interesting and frightening, terrifying here to be frank.

Speaker 6 (01:00:55):
Yeah, No, I mean, as I said at the beginning,
and there are of course critiques as of the limitations
of the UN, but this idea that they are wanting
organizations as a condition of registering them to somehow not
bear witness to what is happening and not to write

(01:01:17):
reports about what's happening. It's a way of hobbling the
ability of actually creating policies, like if you want to
talk about famine, or if you want to talk about poverty,
as OXGM does, how could you solve it without talking
about the root cause? In every way, in every direction,
the Israeli government is attempting to hobble the ability of

(01:01:38):
international organizations of the Palestinians themselves to be able to
solve the root causes of these problems. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
Absolutely, I mean it will have to be fine, creative ways,
just like you know, our Pulstinian Civil Society partners that
you have been also designated have had to find, you know,
ways to continue doing their work. But you know, I
mean even them, you know, they've lost funding, They've had
to reduce their operations, They've had to reduce their field

(01:02:05):
officers that go to the field and do this work.
So I mean, I I it's it's so uncertain, but
I think the fact that many of these organizations have
been here for so long understand so deeply the context.
I think organizations will also do whatever they can in
order to ensure that they continue the important work here

(01:02:26):
and find ways to continue to work.

Speaker 7 (01:02:28):
I don't know how.

Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
It's really a new time for us, like we've never
been there before, so we don't know what it looks
like how we're going to be able to continue our work,
but we're committed to that, so we will find, you
know whatever. I don't want to say loophole because you
know there are none, but we'll find whatever way.

Speaker 7 (01:02:47):
To continue to continue kind of.

Speaker 1 (01:02:50):
Being here and being present and remain remaining present because
I think it's also part of our commitment to the
work that we've been doing in OPT for decades.

Speaker 7 (01:02:59):
So yeah, yeah, I.

Speaker 6 (01:03:02):
Think maybe we should end on a discussion about the
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. I mean, I've already mentioned it in
a previous episode, so I encourage listeners to look into that,
but I you know, I think it's important we discuss
what is this foundation and what is the impact has

(01:03:23):
had on people in Gaza and on international organizations that
are already doing this work.

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):
Yeah, okay, the GHF for Gaza Humanity and Foundation slash GHF.
I don't like talking about it as such because it's
the issue, of course, is that's one of the issues.

Speaker 7 (01:03:39):
But GHF is part of many actors, okay, and it's
not GHF.

Speaker 1 (01:03:44):
GHF is a facade for many actors that you know,
the US and Israeli's isn't as really planned. And I
don't think we need to we cannot, you know, I
know there's US military actors in GHF at you know,
the border and shooting at people. But this isn't a
really plan, okay, and we have to dub it as such.
This plan actually came into We started hearing about this

(01:04:07):
plan a year and a half ago. It was maybe
May last year we saw the General Islands plan on
what they wanted to do in the north when they
started the ethnic cleansing campaign in the north of Gaza
where they besieged the north and tried to force everybody south.
The idea then was already they had already were already
hearing about something called humanitarian bubbles. And the bubbles are

(01:04:30):
the sites of what it's what's what's become the sites. Right,
But this idea of what has been floating around for
more than eighteen months. It's just that nothing kind of
transpired until May. I guess that's when May the operation started.
So it's really launched. This as an authorization mechanism. This
is how it was originally kind of and that would

(01:04:52):
expand basically Israeli military control over how aid enters, moves
within and is distributed inside Gaza. And of course I
mean that and on its own is a clear attempt
to instrumentalize humanitarian aid. So you know, and I think
it's it's it's it's very important to clarify. You know,

(01:05:12):
our organizations we operate and there's extremely rigorous standards and
mechanisms where we're ensure the aid is not diverted. And
I think a diversion, you know, it's been talked about
like Hamas eight divers A diversion exists everywhere. Its exists
in every crisis we work in. Like it's something that
is part of you know, crisis mode, like this is

(01:05:34):
where when there's a crisis, when there's chaos, that's where
there's space for informal actors to start popping up. So
it's a symptom of every crisis around the world. And
so you know, it's not just a Gaza thing. So
we have totalcols on how we can ensure that a
diversion doesn't happen in operations. And of course as humanitarians,

(01:05:56):
we would never accept military or profit driven intermediaries overriding
what we call principled aid delivery, because it basically means
that you're expanding military control over aid operations by an
actual party to the conflict you know, which, of course,
risks that aid will never reach the most vulnerable you know,

(01:06:18):
of course at a time when it was most needed.
So from our perspective, there is no scenario where we
would accept any attempts to militarize and privatize humanitarian aid,
whether it's a GAZO or anywhere else, because such actions
actually biolate international humanitarian law, but also they undermine the
core principles of humanitarian law, which are in partiality, independence,

(01:06:42):
in humanity. These are principles that guide all of our work.
And of course, what is the most dangerous about this
model is not only the massacres that have occurred near
daily at these food distribution sites run by the GJEP
and other actors. It's it's set such a dangerous precedent

(01:07:02):
where occupying powers around the world will now be able
to dictate the terms of aid based on their political
agendas and their military goals. That is what's effectively now
happened is that if it's happened in gays of why
can it not happen in Uganda and d Orski and Sudan?

(01:07:28):
And I want to also take it a little back.
Let's talk about the peer. The peer last year is
exactly the same.

Speaker 7 (01:07:36):
It's the same thing. It's an international.

Speaker 1 (01:07:39):
Company called Fogbow run by former US military veterans and
soldiers and others, other actors that you know, spent three
hundred and twenty million dollars on a floating pier that
brought virtually nothing in and in fact was used for
one rescue mission, rescue operation by special forces where they entered.

(01:08:03):
I think it was the way that camp the refugee
camp at the time and were able to obviously, yeah,
rescue hostages, but kill I mean, you know a dozens
in that operation using the peer, and hence why we're
like we do not we would distance ourselves and from
the beginning distance ourselves from the peer.

Speaker 7 (01:08:21):
There's no difference with the distribution sites.

Speaker 1 (01:08:23):
It's the same kind of idea that with logistics we
can we can address a political issue. The issue of
Gaza is not an issue of logistics. Something you enter
angios don't know how to do the work policies, So
tell us the use of society has been responding to
the civilian needs in Gaza from before the war, right,
you know, eighty percent of the Gaza population was dependent

(01:08:46):
on humanitarian assistance before the war. So, I mean, you know,
it's not that we didn't know how to do it,
it's that we were prevented from doing it. We were
deliberately prevented from doing it. So it's a political decision.
It's not a logistical decision that prevents us from doing
our work in Gaza. And so branch thing Israel control

(01:09:06):
over who receives the aid, where they received the aid,
and from who has basically turned what is relief what
should be relieved to the civilian population is actually a
tool of coorsion because what we saw is massacres, people
being shot indiscriminately at I mean, we heard doctor Nick
Maynard yesterday. Yesterday he came back from Gaza a week
ago where we've heard of children being shot in the

(01:09:30):
testicles at these distribution sites, you know, and no one
he mentioned on the same date he saw half a
dozen boys with the same injury, sniper shot, sniper shots
in the testicles at food distribution sites. So what's happened
now is that what Israel has done is that it
blurred the line between what humanitarian assistance is, what a

(01:09:53):
military objective is, and of course putting the civilian helstine
civilians and aid workers as well, because aid workers, we
know some of our colleagues in different organizations that but
even themselves I've had to go to these food distribution
sites because there's nothing and we're unable to even support our.

Speaker 7 (01:10:07):
Own staff at risk.

Speaker 1 (01:10:09):
And of course, I mean this entire system has eroded
any protections that are guaranteed to aid workers and humanitarian
responses under international law and under the Geneva Conventions.

Speaker 7 (01:10:21):
So it's not only that it killed people and that
it's harmed Palestinians, but.

Speaker 1 (01:10:27):
It actually it's also a complete disregard for international law,
complete disregard of international law. And at the same time,
I think what people failed to remember is that at
the same time as this plan of the distribution sites
was set being set up in the south, at the
same time Israel every two days was evacuating forcibly displaced,

(01:10:50):
saying basically the population towards the south right and in
less than two months, we've got almost a thousand Palestines
that were killed. But also and in that movement of
the population towards the south, because that's the only place
that they had food, right, So, you know, this is
not protection.

Speaker 7 (01:11:07):
This is complete coercion. You know, when you move aid into.

Speaker 1 (01:11:10):
Fence, supervise spaces under militaries, really military control. Frankly, and
what we saw from the pictures recalls some of the
darkest chapters of humanitarian.

Speaker 7 (01:11:21):
Failure of our history. It's not protection, it's coercion.

Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
And you know, no countries, nobody should ever support a
model that is basically treating civilians as prisoners. And that's
not what humanitarian aid is about. Humanitarian responses have to
be guided by international law. It has to remain voluntary,
it has to be grounded in the dignity of the people,
and it has to be delivered impartially not shaped by

(01:11:47):
Israel's occupation or israel siege or Israel's military control. So
not only has this scheme reinforced military control over the
God's ship, it has completely dehumanized posts by design, like
Palasinians are only worth a box of food. That's that's
what basically essentially What has happened is that we have

(01:12:08):
reduced a humanitarian response that addresses hospitals, medical care, water sanitation,
wastewater shelter. It goes right to dignity, to a box
of flour. You know that you can get killed getting
or you get killed. And not only that, it's the
first come, first serf. You know, it's whoever's the strongest.

(01:12:30):
It's the survival of the fittest. That's not what a
humanitarian aday is about. We're supposed to meet the most vulnerable.
We need to reach the pregnant moms, the people with
di stabilities, the number of record number of amputees in Gaza,
the record number of disabled people than Gaza right now.

Speaker 5 (01:12:47):
Children.

Speaker 1 (01:12:48):
Half of Gaza are children. They are part of some
of the most vulnerable sections of society. Age should be
going to them. They don't have They shouldn't have to
come to us walk for you know, I mean some
people have said twenty kilometers they've had to walk to
go to these distribution sides in the middle of the
night in sand dunes. They have to duck because otherwise
they might get shot by sniper shot. And then when

(01:13:10):
the gates of hell open of these you know, fence zones,
whatever you want to call them. I don't even like
calling them distribution sites because they're not distribution sizes. It
implies that there's some sort of like system to it.
There's no system. It's literally the gates to hell. And
then everybody flows into the you know, floods, and we've
heard of people carrying knives to protect themselves because they're

(01:13:31):
getting looted because's not enough of course food.

Speaker 6 (01:13:34):
And then there are gangs that are being weaponized by.

Speaker 8 (01:13:37):
The stop you know so.

Speaker 1 (01:13:39):
And actually what I what I was saying to people
is that actually, what GDHF has created is created the
perfect it's the perfect recipe for armed gangs and a
diversion to occur.

Speaker 7 (01:13:51):
Like it's actually like providing the perfect environment.

Speaker 1 (01:13:55):
For these informal actors, gangs, criminals to prosper to you know,
this is you're creating that kind of environment.

Speaker 6 (01:14:02):
Because let's just be very directed. This is not about
aid no, of course not no, It's not coercion. It's
about coercion. I mean, as you mentioned from the very beginning,
it was about sequestering Palestinians.

Speaker 1 (01:14:15):
And they said it actually and by the way they
said it, it's really work. Cabinet has said that, you know,
and it's like we have to take things that face values.
Sometimes they said it, they've been seeing it for the
last year. We just you know, waited until it happened
on the ground to be able to now say it
and confirm it. But this was their plan from the beginning,
and there was nothing implied. It was very explicit, right, no,

(01:14:37):
I mean, very very.

Speaker 6 (01:14:39):
Clear, and it really frustrates me personally because you know,
Arab media of Palestinian journalists, Palestinians on the ground testimonies
would would say, we're being arrested at these sites, they're
using facial recognition, they're very much politicizing AID And it
took forever for us to be even be able to

(01:15:00):
say it, to be able to even be able to
report on it, until Western media sources confirmed yesterday a
number of children were released saw that from being arrested
at the at these age sites, and I couldn't mention
that in things that I wrote because they didn't believe
Kalestinian testin I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:15:17):
The GHF contractor themselves themselves have admitted to what is
happening and everything that we've been seeing and saying and
you know and warning. I mean, you know, I'd like
to say as well. I mean, I want to I
want to underscore actually, humanitarians have been underlining this very
very explicitly to everybody since before they were even set.
So you know, I can see for the clear conscience

(01:15:40):
that we did what we needed and we could you know,
what we could do, and we did warn that this
would happen and this would be the result, and now.

Speaker 6 (01:15:48):
Here we are right. No, I mean, it's it's absolutely important, Pauline.
So I want to mention to listeners that I will
put in the show notes a lot of you know,
these citations that you reporting that close to a thousand
people have died at these sites. The doctor Nick Maynard,
speaking to Channel four News in Britain about what he saw.

(01:16:09):
I also want to point listeners to a volume that
was released called Suppressing Dissent, edited by Zaha Hassan and h. A. Hellier,
because full disclosure, I do have a chapter in that book,
but it's about the shrinking civic space prior to October
seventh and the dynamics that we have we have seen,
you know, basically playing out at this point. Thank you

(01:16:32):
so much, Bushel for coming and speaking with us under
such severe circumstances and explaining I think really succinctly the
dangers of this moment, because what is happening in Gaza
will change the world.

Speaker 7 (01:16:48):
It will change everywhere, and.

Speaker 1 (01:16:50):
It already is I think, you know, I would tell
listeners go look at AP's article on fog Bow and
Uganda and Soudan. Remember you're seeing it. It's not even
that it will change the world. We're already seeing the
precedent that Gaza has set for other humanitarying crises and
for these military actors and private contractors to profit from
misery like that's that's essentially what is happening.

Speaker 5 (01:17:12):
That's happening.

Speaker 1 (01:17:13):
So you know, I would also direct you to that
article from AP that came out a couple of weeks
ago about the same companies operating in Gaza and you know,
being complicit in the atrocities that we're seeing unfolded Gaza
now operating in other contexts and prices humanitearing.

Speaker 7 (01:17:28):
Crises really terrible breaking world.

Speaker 5 (01:17:31):
Yeah, I know.

Speaker 7 (01:17:32):
Yeah, Well, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:17:34):
And thanks Dan, thank you, and hopefully see you soon
and talk to you soon.

Speaker 7 (01:17:39):
Take care.

Speaker 4 (01:17:56):
Hello everyone, and welcome to the podcast. It's Media Today,
and I'm very lucky to be joined by Bryce from
No More Deaths And what we're going to talk about
today is this really excellent piece of data visualization and
research that depicts a very sad topic, which is the
deaths of migrants entering the United States. And Bryce, I

(01:18:17):
know he's done a lot of work on this, So
welcome to the show.

Speaker 5 (01:18:19):
Bryce, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:18:21):
Yeah, you're welcome.

Speaker 4 (01:18:22):
I guess maybe we can start off. I'm looking at
this data visualization on a map right now, and we'll
have links in the show notes for other people who
want to look at it. Can you explain, like what
this data set is?

Speaker 9 (01:18:37):
Yeah, So we collected through a bunch of different sources,
medical examiners, Justices of the Peace, SHERIFFISAL partner CBPS owned data,
just a bunch of data on individual micrant deaths along
the US Mexico border. And so this is different data
through each source, but generally we tried to get a
lot of demographic data, location data, posit death than at

(01:19:00):
least some form of the instagram laertive to kind of
get a little bit of the context on how you
produce people guide.

Speaker 2 (01:19:07):
Yeah, if people are looking at the map.

Speaker 4 (01:19:09):
They can see various colored dots, right, and they can
click on that dot and that will give them the
fiscal year the border trail sector. In some cases you'll
see like the type of death, maybe a gender and age,
things like that. I know, looking at it, like it's
one of those things that maybe is more emotionally difficult
to view if you're more familiar, Like I can look

(01:19:31):
at these dots and I can think of places I've been.
I can even think of that the day I was there,
and it's quite it's impactful to see that all these
people have died in places I know so well. Perhaps
we can explain, like the scale of this is huge, right,
do you know how many exactly how many data points
there are on here?

Speaker 9 (01:19:52):
I think there's something like solve a thirteen thousand. Yeah,
it's fast, which overall is like not a great sort
of liking a cater of how many people have actually
died or even know how many people could be reported
to have diet just because the Texas dated all is
so wonky.

Speaker 4 (01:20:09):
Yeah, let's get into that. Then let's talk about maybe
the sources for this data, and then maybe perhaps how
your estimates are much high even with some of the emissions,
Like the data that you have tends to show under reporting,
So like can you explain first, like where does this
data come from and how how did you get it?

(01:20:31):
You were saying the Texas numbers are lower, but can
you explain how like there are these multiple jurisdictions and
how you can't just like ask someone for this information.

Speaker 5 (01:20:39):
Yeah, there's your people were able to disask for it.

Speaker 9 (01:20:42):
Well, generally it all comes from formal public records requests
from medical examiners. When we're lucky because medical examiners usually
have really good, reasonly shapable data.

Speaker 5 (01:20:53):
So so we did for San Diego County.

Speaker 4 (01:20:55):
Yeah, they're very good.

Speaker 9 (01:20:56):
Pima County are the stated in Mexico, al Paso. Other
places have a coroner that are associated with or sheriff department,
and that's usually a little dice year they're a little more.

Speaker 5 (01:21:08):
Reluctant to give up records.

Speaker 9 (01:21:10):
The Imperial County or Yuma County and then Texas it's
just like a medical legal nightmare. So there's if smaller
counties don't have medical examiners, they just had Justices of the.

Speaker 5 (01:21:23):
Peace, which are part of like the courts, and.

Speaker 9 (01:21:25):
They'll go out and investigate deaths and if an autopsy
is needed, they'll send it off to another county to
get an autopsy. There's a huge amount of counties in
Texas like this. So that data all came from this researcher,
Stephanie Luister from the University of Texas Austin, who is
working on a different project, but was gracious enough to share.

Speaker 5 (01:21:44):
Everything that she had collected.

Speaker 9 (01:21:46):
But that was like just a huge amount of work
physically going to each of these counties looking at what
vapor records from justices of the peace, writing down all
that data. There's some that comes from like Sheriff's department,
some that comes from various other sources, so the Texas
data and some for example, Wegg County Medical Examiner. They

(01:22:08):
don't give up their data to anybody, and there's a
lot of issues with them potentially like not having actually
performed autopsy on a lot of autopsies on a lot
of migrants, and there's some potential bookcases about that going on.

Speaker 5 (01:22:22):
But yeah, so.

Speaker 9 (01:22:22):
Texas is really messing and a lot of it you'll notice,
like Texas has.

Speaker 5 (01:22:26):
A lot of the purple dots.

Speaker 9 (01:22:28):
Yeah, the purple dots on their location data from Border
Patrols database.

Speaker 5 (01:22:34):
Yeah, and so that ends in twenty eighteen.

Speaker 9 (01:22:37):
So we have data possible needs in border patrol over
not location data. Yeah, and so a lot of Texas
on that being that's just the Border patrol data unless
we have love specific access to that place. Is Justice
to the Pace data. It's so the Texas data is
pretty limited for about reason.

Speaker 4 (01:22:57):
Yeah, you can see a sort of very few red dogs,
which which are your your other data sources like in
Texas aside from it, So maybe Brooks County you're able
to get Justice to the Peace data there because yeah,
the density is profound.

Speaker 9 (01:23:12):
Yeah, it's just the So it's the Brooks County Checks
Department that actually puts together that data, and they're really
keen on the whole thing. Okay, And partially it's because
the data exists, but partially it really wills just to
reach fluster death in that area because of a checkpoint
south of there where people will get dropped off south
of the checkpoint pipe around and it's just like massive,

(01:23:36):
massive open grade yard in Brooks County.

Speaker 4 (01:23:39):
Jeez. Yeah, I don't think I spent much time in
that part of Texas, but certainly, like some of these
other ones that I'm much more familiar with. Let's talk
about the CBP data, right, you mentioned it there. One
of the things you've found was that CBP has a
systemic issue with undercounting deaths, right, yeah, So where does

(01:24:00):
that come from?

Speaker 9 (01:24:01):
So I've heard from I guess for years Humane Borders
and Pema County Medical Examiner has been documenting this since
at least twenty fourteen. The major undercount on Border patrols data.
But something I've here a lot is just that it's
cases where border patrol wasn't personally involved in the search,
and that they had changed their counting system to only
be counting in cases where they were involved.

Speaker 5 (01:24:23):
And I think that may account for some of it.

Speaker 9 (01:24:26):
But in order to compare these deaths, border patrols data
is just really gnarly and messy, and that there's typos,
there's no spelling. States are wrong, ages are wrong, genders
are wrong. So you really, in order to compare them,
you really have to go person by person, go down
the list, find the death and in order patrol database,

(01:24:48):
look at the Medical Examiner data on time to matches
person by person. So because we have so much of
the incident narratives from the medical examiners. We can actually
tell when Border patrol was involved, and so we mark
when border patrols involved when they're not involved, and then
when that case doesn't actually get counted by Border patrol, okay,
and it doesn't actually really line up.

Speaker 5 (01:25:08):
There's not a huge correlation there.

Speaker 9 (01:25:11):
I mean, there is some correlation, like older skeletal remains
things like that often won't get counted, but generally there
are a lot of cases where they directly involved, where
even they were the first responders on the scene to
a distress call or any number of things, where that
person will end up in Vorda Patrol's database. And then
other cases where it seems like they had no involvement,

(01:25:31):
that person ends up being in Vortical Patrol's database. So,
I mean, they've been in trouble with the GAO multiple
times for undercounting or improperly counting or recording these debts,
and so they have access to medical examiner data. Medical
examiners send them the data, they just don't use it.
We often also noticed that the causes that get really

(01:25:52):
don't match up in a lot of really specific cases
like yeah, for Walfalls, for instance, was the most notable
one see a huge amount of cases that medical examiner
will say one force trauma, and then border Patrols data
will say medical examiner and detainment or exposure or any
number of other things which like for the most part,

(01:26:14):
causes the death seem to line up. So the fact
that these Waalfall deaths it happens to not line up
is like, you know, I don't want to assume they
have that intent, although obviously Bordemtrol is bad intent, but
it seems like it happens regularly enough that it's hard
to feel like it's not at is somewhat intentional that
the cases that they're kind of choosing to change the

(01:26:36):
couses of death.

Speaker 4 (01:26:36):
For right, so let's get obfuscates the lethality of the
border war, right length, it's the amount of people who
it kills.

Speaker 5 (01:26:43):
Yeah, I mean to a huge degree too.

Speaker 9 (01:26:45):
I mean the fact that Bordertrol's data is kind of
our only source of data for micrant deaths and then
specifically for deaths caused by border patrol or like Walfall deaths,
means that the amount of death that we need the
public has access to, like Walhall deaths for instance, is
just a drop in the bucket compared to what's actually happening.
So all of the research and reporting and all the
stuff that happens around these CNC related deaths is drawing

(01:27:08):
off just like truly false numbers.

Speaker 4 (01:27:12):
Yeah, yeah, and that leads to people drawing bad conclusions.

Speaker 8 (01:27:16):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:27:28):
The other thing that you found is that like that,
there seems to be an underreporting of in custody deaths, right,
or an undercounting of people who die in custody. So
can you explain how you were able to ascertain that
difference between the in custody death recorded by the Office
of Professional Responsibility. That's just the ones that you found, right.

Speaker 9 (01:27:48):
Right, So the opposite Professional Responsibility is all part of CBP,
and they're supposed to be recording all the saw CBP
related deaths, including according to the Deaths and Custody Reporting
Act to like twenty thirteen or whatever it was, army
destin plustody. There's a really specific definition of what in
custody means, and so we tried to follow pretty strictly

(01:28:11):
what that definition was to kind of make our own
assessments using the incident narratives.

Speaker 4 (01:28:17):
Yeah, I'm curious, what does it mean, like I'm thinking
about door detention, right, Like, does that count as in custody?

Speaker 9 (01:28:24):
Yeah? So any only time if a person is in
the process of being apprehended, if the person has been apprehended,
if a person has been detained, if the person is
physically in custody, bordertrol, in a bordertrol vehicle, in a
cup facility, all those things, who would count as in custody. Okay,
it's just important because at least one of the cases,
the border patrol agent involved said the person wasn't in custody,

(01:28:46):
he was just detained, which for the purposes of reporting,
there's actually no difference, right, Yeah, but he said that
clearly to not have it be labeled as in custody
death right, and what it seems like that ended up
not being very able to deserve custody death. So it's
definitely I think they're they're aware the fact that these
are being equalted and kind of frown not to have.

Speaker 4 (01:29:06):
That due to case they have too many of them,
like uppere Another interesting data interesting is your own word,
but another data point here was the amount of death
caused by pursuit, right or in pursuit I guess maybe
you should just explain, like what pursuit is to people
if they're not aware.

Speaker 9 (01:29:25):
Yeah, so there's two kinds of pursuit. We listen at
the same gear on their database. You can see the difference.
There's chases on motor vehicle and there's chases on foot. So,
for example, a person's getting chase through the desert and
collapses and dies be considered a death either pursuit or EF.
A person is like in al Paso or San Diego

(01:29:48):
or Imperial County more is chased, ends up going in
a canal or jumping into a canal to escape and
drowns the idea or chase on foot, and then motor
vehicle pursuits are Yeah, the person is being chased by
Border patrol and the glowing passions and people are chilled.

Speaker 5 (01:30:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (01:30:07):
Use of force cases also include some of these chases
through OPR standards and CVP standards. If spike strips are deployed,
or if a vehicle is ran by a Border Patrol vehicle,
that's considered use of force. So that's where a person
died due to that, we would call that a use
of force staff. Yeah, so I guess those are the

(01:30:28):
two to three different times perceived. That's a great doo.

Speaker 4 (01:30:31):
And so like, yeah, those are as you say, they're
broken down the database, right, but in the spreadsheet they
are combined.

Speaker 8 (01:30:40):
What does this data show.

Speaker 4 (01:30:42):
Us about, Like, I guess if we look at the
last half decade or so, let's go back to like
twenty sixteen, right, border policy, Like, what does it show
us about like title eight, Title forty two. We're like
a little too too close to the Biden assylum band
to have I guess, like good data on that yet.

(01:31:04):
But do you see a clear pattern in like the
border rhetoric and border quote unquote enforcement and the amount
of death or the type of death?

Speaker 9 (01:31:15):
Oh, definitely, Yeah, It's it's immediately clear. I mean even
Biden's asylum ban, I think there is an immediate effect.
I mean even just with as a normal desk volunteer,
we started seeing people crossing the border, crossing the desert
that just never would have yet made the attempt previously,
you know, and then started to see as people reported
the death data too.

Speaker 5 (01:31:36):
So I think all of that is pretty clear.

Speaker 9 (01:31:40):
So with Trump's restrictions on asylum, I think the biggest thing,
honestly was all the metering policies rather than just Tiital
forty two or like protection protocols or any of that.
It was just the facts that people weren't allowed to
access the border country. Yeah, I ended up kind of
like going around to enter like other places in the

(01:32:00):
desert border sort of picked them up.

Speaker 5 (01:32:02):
That all this started happening.

Speaker 9 (01:32:04):
Yeah, and so it's kind of like a trickle in
twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, a little bit more in twenty
twenty one, and then twenty twenty two you suddenly seen
just huge amounts of people from countries other than Mexico
and Central America starting to show up in the data.
And then also like people who clearly were trying to
seep asylum showing up in this gap data all the

(01:32:27):
way up until it slowed down after you know, the
end of twenty twenty three, and then but definitely continue
through through full time of four. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:32:37):
Definitely, Like I speaking from my own experience on the
border here, we saw the same thing, right, like people
crossing you wouldn't have seen making that crossing in places
and times that they wouldn't have crossed, you know, before
the Biden asylum ban, and like that definitely resulted in
I mean, there was a weekend September where I think

(01:33:00):
five people died. September twenty twenty four, we had a
heat wave and like it immediately resulted in multiple fatalities
that like wouldn't have been the case previously. I wonder,
like what does this data set in terms of like recommendations,
right in terms of like how we can use this
data set? Obviously, we're at a time when I when

(01:33:22):
I guess the Trump administration like had its complete asylum
band stayed, but we're back at like people can't in
good faith like turn up to a port of entry
anymore and just be like, Hey, I'd like to claim
asylum and really really hope for the best. Like what
does this data set tell us in terms of like
what policies kill more people? And like I guess, like
like what recommendations arise from the data in terms obviously,

(01:33:44):
I guess bit of the recommendation is to have laws
that allow people to fucking enter this country and claim
asylum without walking across the desert. But that seems like
it's too much to ask, So like what do we
learn in terms of like specific policies that are particularly
fatal and like the way is that that could be
mitigated and if it's not already by like water drops

(01:34:06):
and search.

Speaker 9 (01:34:07):
Yeah, that's a hard question, just because talking to the
older people and the more deaths who've been around since
like kind of the early years of prevention to the terrence, Yeah,
they talked about sort of feeling like you know, when
they were first out there, being like, man, this is
really unsustainable. It came out here all the time like
this maybe like a few more years we could probably

(01:34:28):
handle and then hopefully this prevention through de terrence thing
will have like kind of stopped. They'll see like this
is unsustainable, and then here we are all these years
later and it's worse than it's at again. Yeah, and
the original prevention to de terance policy is like this
strategy of essentially killing people in the hopes, I know,
people will stop trying to cross the border or something,
and kind of just is the original thing that it's

(01:34:50):
really hard to get away from.

Speaker 5 (01:34:51):
And yeah, the fact that right now applying the same.

Speaker 9 (01:34:55):
Strategy of death and suffering to asylum seekers is really horrifying.

Speaker 5 (01:35:01):
So I think yeah, Number one, open up ports.

Speaker 9 (01:35:04):
Eventually to allow asylum secret to seek asylum, bring back
like even the sort of minimum asylum projections that we
had back then. Other things like how people are dying
really matters.

Speaker 5 (01:35:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (01:35:15):
So for example, in the Olpasto sector, there was very
very few deaths in twenty fourteen. The last couple of years,
it's been the deadliest single small area in the entire border.
And a lot of that was just because the border
has just become so militarized that even this like urban
area where you know, people are dying a mile from town,

(01:35:35):
people are dying in town. We I was part of
the recovery where we this person was on a road,
had been there for about three days dead. It was
about forty feet from the busiest the busiest road in
the entire town. Yeah, and that's just not something that
really fits in with the ordinary narrative like Prevenual to

(01:35:56):
de Terrance, people getting pushed out to these more remote areas,
and I think just a level of militarization is just
up to the level that it really is just deadly
kind of. I mean even yea, all these deaths in
San Diego, as you know, also do so like all
these Walfall deaths are pretty much all since like twenty seventeen,
we're even more recently so the construction of all this

(01:36:16):
new border wall. You can point very directly to a
huge amount.

Speaker 5 (01:36:19):
Of deaths just caused by walfalls.

Speaker 9 (01:36:21):
There's the canals in Imperial County and al Paso that
there a huge amount of people. There's Alpasa right now
is in the process of revamping their whole canal system.

Speaker 5 (01:36:33):
Would be a great.

Speaker 9 (01:36:33):
Opportunity to add some sort of like safety systems in
place so that people don't die. Yeah, it is all
the pursue deaths which now are not just being caused
the border patrol, but also like the Texas Department of
Public Public Safety now that Operation Lone Star has helped up.
There's all these things where the kinds of deaths and
the kinds of people dying and all that stuff has

(01:36:56):
changed and increased really drastically in the last few years.

Speaker 5 (01:37:00):
And you can kind of point to a lot of them.

Speaker 9 (01:37:02):
But also it's like, yeah, I don't know, it's hard
to really have any smart thoughts on it. Besides, just
like boor control is underformable and.

Speaker 4 (01:37:11):
Just needs to be disbanded entire Yeah, and like this
whole border regime, right, the whole idea of like an
iron border that we enforce in a physical space. The
point of it is to kill people, Like, the point
of it is to hurt people by having perfectly innocent
people who you'd be happy to have with your neighbor

(01:37:32):
die in the desert. Like that's that is, that is
the policy goal. Like I'm just looking, like I'm looking
at Pinto Canyon, which San Diego people will know it is,
Like it's pretty like, don't if you're listening to this,
don't go to Pinto Canyon. You might die. It's not
a place to just go looking around if you're not
experienced traveling out in the desert. But like, even Pinto
Canyon is Gnali. But looking along the wall, the wall

(01:37:54):
kills way more people than this rugged and difficult piece
of terrain in the middle of now. Well, it's it's
things that we have paid a lot of money for
that kill the most people. And that's pretty brutal to confront.

(01:38:18):
One of the other things that you guys were able
to determine was that like a number of United States
residents had died right in this data set.

Speaker 2 (01:38:29):
Yeah, can you explain that for people?

Speaker 5 (01:38:32):
Totally?

Speaker 10 (01:38:32):
So?

Speaker 9 (01:38:33):
Yeah, Like you said, there's people you'd love to have
as your neighbor dying in all these places, and not
just that, but your actual neighbor. The amount of people
whose main residence listed was just in San Diego County,
in Oceanside, in Bakersfield and Indianapolis, places.

Speaker 5 (01:38:51):
That we've all been to.

Speaker 9 (01:38:52):
Yeah, we were able to record for San Diego County
and a few other counties a lot of where people
actually lived in some of the circumstances for why they
were crossing through the desert in the first place. A
lot of it is people who are very recently deported,
or who just traveled to Mexico because they had to
get some paperwork done or wanted to visit family or

(01:39:14):
things like this. Just had entire lives in the United
States and then and then passed away on the way
back ends of the country. Yeah, including I mean, it's
really heartbreaking to even see. There's there's a lot of
cases where the person who actually finds the body or
recovers the body is not person's family members or their
spouse or their children, even which only happens because you know,

(01:39:39):
Board of Control is generally not that interested in recovering
bodies or in looking for people who are lost. So
often Yeah, often it will be yes, somebody's somebody's spouse
who comes when when it is actually the first person
on listening.

Speaker 4 (01:39:53):
Yeah, it's it's very common right for volunteers to be
alerted VIO. You know, I know some of the certain
rescue groups are alerted by like Instagram for instance, that
like someone is missing. Right, It's not like there is
like despite this being massively overfunded, you can't just call
and they won't just send out an ambulance like a

(01:40:15):
lot of a lot of times it is either the
family members or like a bunch of volunteers just driving
out there in the trucks the last night. Like I
can remember in running into some migrants in like twenty
twenty three and then being like, hey, there are some
other people down there and I was like where, how
do you know? And they found them on a snapchat
mat wow, and like that that was you know, the

(01:40:36):
only thing that maybe said those people's lives And yeah,
it's pretty brutal to think that like there's still really
there's no one where there are people you can call,
I'm help you, But it's not the people who are
getting billions of dollars. Let's talk very briefly before we
finish up about desks outside of the United States. I
see you have some data, Like obviously my familiarity is

(01:40:57):
with the Daddy and GAP, which I could like getting.
I don't think that data exists, but like, I see
you have a number of data points within Mexico. Can
you explain like how you came across service and to
what extent that data is if a toll like representative
or complete.

Speaker 9 (01:41:14):
Yeah, so it's not at all representative or complete. It
all comes from the National Institute of Immigration, the.

Speaker 5 (01:41:20):
I and M in Mexico.

Speaker 9 (01:41:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:41:23):
Two.

Speaker 9 (01:41:25):
Yes, the warder working people's data are they're like sort
of like quotun cloth entertain and it were migrants instituted
by the government of Mexico, New Mexico. And so we
through the Mexicano Google Eployer, you're able to get data
from the group of VETA, which throughout the years there's

(01:41:47):
been kind of like changing locations of offices.

Speaker 5 (01:41:51):
So the data we have is just from where their
offices are.

Speaker 9 (01:41:56):
So it's usually just sort of like a number of
deaths for that particular office for that particular year.

Speaker 5 (01:42:01):
Yes, it's very very limited, and.

Speaker 9 (01:42:05):
There's many many, many deaths that we then have other
data to show that doesn't exist here.

Speaker 5 (01:42:13):
So it's really just planet life.

Speaker 9 (01:42:15):
Yeah, it shouldn't be taken as any kind of like
representative sample or it's goodly just the one piece of
Mexican data that we were able to.

Speaker 5 (01:42:22):
Quickly put on the map.

Speaker 8 (01:42:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:42:24):
We shod get other data.

Speaker 9 (01:42:26):
From my specific states in Mexico, but we through because
of time and capacity and just the data itself, we
were unable to turn back into that.

Speaker 5 (01:42:37):
Yeah, we wouldn't do something with that.

Speaker 4 (01:42:41):
Yeah, and I think it still remains true that like
the single deadliest mine of this journey is the United
States border, at least from this data that you're seeing.
Did would you say this data still supports that probably?

Speaker 5 (01:42:56):
I don't know.

Speaker 9 (01:42:57):
Yeah, Yeah, I just don't want to say, because the
data is just so bad in so many places, especially
in Mexico abought.

Speaker 4 (01:43:04):
Yeah, I'm thinking of like the Daddy in right, Like
it's it's very deadly. I've seen people die there, Like
it's obviously a very very difficult and rugged place. But
I think comparatively, probably more people die at the US border,
just because there were more of them and because people
come like people are Yeah, not everyone has to cross

(01:43:27):
a dairy end. Like people can fly to Mexico or
somewhere further south, right and then come up that way.
Where if people want to find this data, or perhaps
there's someone who's like a ninja with with data and
data visualization and they want to offer to help, like
where can people find this and how can they reach
out to no more desks if they'd like to help
in some way.

Speaker 9 (01:43:47):
Yeah, So just on the normal desk website you can
see the report and the map and all that stuff.
And in there there's a link to the media outreach email,
which in the next couple of months is my email,
and just Felker to send send an email there and yeah,
happy to give greater accents. And right now the data

(01:44:08):
is pretty anonymized for privacy and safety. Yeah, and there's
a lot of the fields that we've kind of talked
about that don't look here in the public database. So
happy to share that with researchers, activists, advocacy people, journal.

Speaker 5 (01:44:24):
US and things like that.

Speaker 9 (01:44:25):
And also we desperately would out to help, so interested
in looking at some spreadsheets?

Speaker 4 (01:44:31):
Yeah, yeah, cool, great, Thank you so much your time
and for all the work on this I know this
was a lot of work getting those records, and I
think it I know it gives us something to point
to to show how many people this this ball of
shit is killing totally.

Speaker 10 (01:45:02):
This is it could happen here, a show about things
falling apart. I'm Garrison Davis this episode. I'm joined by
Mia Wong.

Speaker 5 (01:45:10):
Mia.

Speaker 8 (01:45:10):
I have some upsetting news.

Speaker 10 (01:45:13):
Oh no, which is frankly one of the best ways
to start in this episode and one of the best
ways to start the show. So I'm pretty sure that
I found this account called, uh, let's see at Haill Hitler,
and I think he's posting some things that is a
little bit fascist.

Speaker 8 (01:45:32):
Oh wow.

Speaker 10 (01:45:33):
I have decoded some of at Hell Hitler's communications and
I have uncovered a secret a secret Nazi code.

Speaker 5 (01:45:42):
Wow.

Speaker 8 (01:45:43):
This is this is an incredibly unexpected revelation from Hailed Hitler.

Speaker 10 (01:45:47):
He has posted some pictures in like what I would
assume is some kind of military uniform that looks like
I don't know, it's it's some kind of like like
Germanic military uniform. But I've noticed that there's some runes
on this uniform, oh, that look very similar to the
Odal rune. So I'm thinking because of the run, this
guy might.

Speaker 2 (01:46:05):
Be a Nazi.

Speaker 8 (01:46:06):
Thank you for your work, Erison. We can never have
determined this, that's right, I am. You can find me
at osen to Defender online and no that doesn't for
us today, and it could happen here now. So this emisode,
we're gonna talk about something that's been slowly frustrating me
the past few weeks, and that is the misapplication of

(01:46:29):
dog whistles.

Speaker 10 (01:46:31):
And let's just get right into it. People have been
noticing patterns, noticing trends in official communications from the dhs
gov online accounts, which now is the main way the
government sends out communications unfortunately, especially on X the Everything app.

(01:46:53):
But this, this extends outside of X the Everything after,
this extends outside of Blue Sky the Internet in general.
This is about how we understand the messaging of fascists
and understand how rhetoric and anti fascist like education works
and ways that I think it's currently being misapplied.

Speaker 8 (01:47:13):
So bear with me.

Speaker 10 (01:47:15):
This is gonna be kind of an odd episode, but
I think I think it's worth it because I don't
want us falling into the same traps that we maybe
fell into eight years ago. So let's Let's let's start
by talking about some communications posted on the internet by
at DHS gov. A picture of a painting titled American

(01:47:37):
Progress by John Gast, captioned a heritage to be proud of,
comma a homeland worth defending. So on the surface, you know,
maybe a slightly hashtag problematic sentiment here with a hashtag
problematic painting or at the very least of painting depicting

(01:47:58):
the genocide of Native Americans and Indigenous people specifically with
like a white supremacist outlook, with this enlarged white woman
bathed in a white cloak, bringing forth that the tide
of quote unquote progress as Indigenous people are are forced
to flee from the edge of the painting.

Speaker 8 (01:48:20):
It's it's fun because this is a painting we literally
when they had to explain manifest destiny like colonialism good.
This is the painting that was in my textbook in
high school. Is three class like and it is like
the er, the er colonialism good, genocide good painting.

Speaker 10 (01:48:37):
Genocide good. That that's what the painting is. But what
I have found through some hashtag research, there might be
a hidden code in this in this communication from the
DHS who already an agency that only has the best
interests and of really all people who strive for human rights,
the DHS. So if you count all of the words

(01:49:01):
in the tweet, guess how many words there are in
this tweet? Mea fifteen no, so close, so close, fourteen
fourteen words in this tweet, which might remind you of
the fourteen words the Nazi signifier, which I probably just explain.
Surely most people listening to this is familiar with the

(01:49:22):
fourteen words, since it seems everybody thinks they are an
armchair expert on fascist rhetoric. But the fourteen words we
must secure the existence of our people and a future
for white children. This became a popular hashtag dog whistle,
especially in the past. I would say ten fifteen years,

(01:49:47):
usually by implanting fourteen's and usually fourteen eighty eights with
eighty eight meaning Hale Hitler because H is the eighth
letter of the alphabet. This became a common Nazi tag.
You could see this in graffiti, You see this embedded
into into posts, see this in like Nazi artwork. And
going back to this DHS post, we cannot only count

(01:50:12):
fourteen words in this tweet. This is actually a fourteen
eighty eight because two of the h's in this in
this post are capitalized unusually, and that means hal Hitler
Wow because hc eighth letter.

Speaker 8 (01:50:26):
Uh huh oh.

Speaker 10 (01:50:26):
But wait, actually looking at this post again, there's actually
other words in this tweet that are also unusually capitalized.

Speaker 8 (01:50:33):
But don't worry.

Speaker 2 (01:50:34):
Don't worry.

Speaker 10 (01:50:35):
This is still a dog whistle because those other words
that are capitalized in the first sentence are the letters
A and D, which if you convert those into numbers,
are one in four, so it's actually another fourteen.

Speaker 8 (01:50:48):
Oh wow, we're doing we're doing numerology. We're doing jamatria,
where we've become q and on. We're so back.

Speaker 10 (01:50:56):
So if you cannot tell by my, my, my thinly
veiled sarcasm in that last section, I think this methodology
is a little bit silly.

Speaker 8 (01:51:06):
What are we doing?

Speaker 2 (01:51:07):
What are we doing here?

Speaker 10 (01:51:08):
We're converting capitalized letters in the first half of a
tweet into numbers and then rearranging the order of those
letters to get a fourteen eighty eight it's literally jerbatria,
and then also counting the total words in the whole
suite while still disregarding the capitalizations in the last four
words for another fourteen What are we doing? How is

(01:51:29):
this the piece of evidence that sinks sinks the Trump
administration and finally proves that they're fascist. You can just
look at all of the fascist policies the Trump administration
is enacting. Instead of doing numerology on tweets, people are thinking,
ha ha ha ha, I have decoded the secret Nazi
message with AHHD one eight eight fourteen. Nice trigroipers. Meanwhile,

(01:51:56):
you can just look at the actual text of the post.
You can look at the painting. Both of those things
have an inherent fascist quality. It's literally defending the concept
of ethnic genocide, of manifest destiny. While the administration, the
DHS is currently furthering as no nationalist policies.

Speaker 8 (01:52:17):
They are doing this. This is homeland security, right. I
don't know if people realize that ICE is a part
of homeland security, but like, this is the agency that
is literally rounding people up and sending them to camps.
We have camps in multiple countries. Now what I say,
they're being round up and sent to camps. It's genuinely
unclear whether what I'm talking about is the fucking concentration camp.

Speaker 10 (01:52:37):
In Florida see cot In nol Salvador.

Speaker 8 (01:52:40):
Yeah, I mean I think I think people have now escaped,
so I can't technically call the Honduras want a death camp.
But like again there's sending people to South u Dan,
They're like, they're just doing this, Like what are we
doing here?

Speaker 10 (01:52:53):
So this episode I want to focus on how people
are misusing anti fascist edge, or I would argue they're
misusing anti fascist education and kind of missing the forest
for a cardboard cutout of trees, not even trees, kind
of something that could be a tree if you look
at it from one angle, but maybe isn't actually a

(01:53:15):
real tree. And you don't need to sound like a
Da Vinci Code conspiracy theorist to point out the obvious,
like dog whistles don't matter if the regular whistle is
already fascist. If they're just saying things openly and furthermore
doing things, what purpose does a dog whistle haen? And

(01:53:37):
this is something that we're going to discuss. Are not
just saying this and closing the episode, We're going to
get into these And I think part of what's happening
here everybody is so cooked by the paranoid style of
American politics. Everyone is so eager to decode the hidden

(01:53:58):
messages that we're missing what's right in front of us.
QAnon has a total victory. Qwanon does not really exist
in the way that it did in twenty eighteen. That
the q Andon cult conspiracy theory as like a singular
cultish project is kind of no more. But q Andon
has a cultural victory over the entire United States, and

(01:54:21):
not just on the right wing, not just on Mega.

Speaker 8 (01:54:23):
So much of.

Speaker 10 (01:54:24):
American politics now is litigating who is and is not
a pedophile, who is and is not trafficking children, who
can notice which events are staged, who can notice hidden codes,
who can decode anonymous messages on the Internet, And this
is what like everything is. And like the real turning
point I think for the right wing was probably the

(01:54:46):
twenty twenty election in like a massive fracture from reality
in which they think that election was legitimately stolen. And
obviously there was many events leading up to that which
contributed to this. Yeah, and I think one of the
biggest fracture points for liberal was the attempted assassination of
Donald Trump, with people creating whole new alternate realities that
that event was staged and because that door is opened.

(01:55:08):
Now I am seeing such a massive flood of things
that I would label as bluing on conspiracy theories, which
is kind of a nonsense term, but it gets the
point across. And gonna do a whole piece on bluing
on very soon. I've been collecting blueing on conspiracy theories
for a while, but I want to do something specifically
about this fourteen eighty eight and like secret codes thing,
because it's so evocative of like, you know, Q drops,

(01:55:31):
and it's evocative of, you know, searching for Masonic codes,
something that American conspiracy theorists have been doing for generations.
And we're to talk about that more and read a
little bit of an essay on that topic after this
ad break, and I will let you know there's gonna
be two messages in the ad break that if you decode,

(01:55:52):
you win a special prize at the end of the episode,
So make sure you listen to every single second of
the ad in case you miss the code. Okay, we
are back, speaking of the paranoid style in American politics.

(01:56:16):
I want to quote a few sections to kind of
frame what I'm talking about here. This was an essay
written in the sixties by Richard hoff Setter Hofstetter Richard
Hoffstetter one of the first like modern pieces on American
conspiracy culture and politics. I'm gonna I have three paragraphs

(01:56:39):
here that I that I selected as as being relevant
to the current the current topic at hand.

Speaker 8 (01:56:45):
Quote.

Speaker 10 (01:56:46):
There is a style of mind that is far from
new and that is not necessarily right wing. I call
it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately
evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratory fantasy
that I have in mind. Nothing really prevents a sound
program or demand from being advocated in the paranoid style.

(01:57:07):
Style has more to do with the way in which
ideas are believed than with the truth or falsity of
their content.

Speaker 2 (01:57:16):
Unquote.

Speaker 10 (01:57:17):
And I like that section specifically because fourteen eighty eight
is a real dog whistle. We can see this used.
There's aspects of people who are trying to search for
this and trying to search for patterns in the communications
of an admittedly fascistic government agency that I find like sympathetic,
like I can under I can understand because yeah, that

(01:57:38):
is a real dog whistle. I'm going to continue the
quote quote the paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy
in apocalyptic terms. He traffics in the birth and death
of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values.
He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly
lives at a turning point, like religious millinery. Now he

(01:58:00):
expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the
last days, and he is sometimes disposed to set a
date for the apocalypse. As a member of the avant
garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it
is fully obvious to it. As of yet to unaroused public,
the paranoid is a militant leader. Demand for total triumph

(01:58:22):
leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since
these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens
the paranoid's sense of frustration. Unquote, Hofstetter is talking about
something that that me and Robert specifically have have have
discussed a lot on this show before. How everyone in

(01:58:43):
America wants to have access to secret information m h.
Everyone wants to have the exclusive piece of secret intel
that will solve everything, and like having having that like
informational exclusivity in a world of information saturation, right of
a vortex of like meaningless noise. It's such a romantic

(01:59:05):
idea that that I alone have the info or the
clue to pieces together, and it's my duty to inform
the masses. It's a very romantic notion, and it's also
one that is exactly perfectly anti suited for the moment
we live in, which is actually just a moment where
everything that is happening is just so clearingly literal, like

(01:59:28):
it's all out of the Oden, like what is happening
with the Trump administration. Okay, In twenty twenty, there is
a massive uprising to attempt to attempt to fundamentally change
like the structurally racist nature of the United States, to
deal with its fucking class inequalities, to deal with the
structural violence of the state. This was reacted to by
a massive fascist movement that spent half a decade gaining

(01:59:50):
power and then finally took power in the form of
like a bunch of pissed off petite bourgeois fucking car
dealers and like literally a billionaire real estate mogul backed
by the richest tech company guy in the world right,
and they came together to build fascism. This is the
most straightforward, like if this is a conception of how

(02:00:14):
a fascist takeover works that is so thuddingly literal that
it defies narrativization because it's just there. There's no subtlety
to it. They're just saying it. They just want to
do it, and they're doing it. But everyone is convinced
that there's like some kind of secret hitting conspiracy and
it's like, no, they're just doing the thing that they're saying. Yeah,

(02:00:34):
you can argue that we have a griper occupied government
not because of counting words and posts, but because of
not only who they're bringing on for DOGE, but literally
Ice in DHS as of today, which I'm recording this
on Wednesday, I think, because this comes out Wednesday night,
are copying like Patriot Front style tactics of loading up

(02:00:55):
ICE agents in U haul style rentable trucks to do
hunt down people to assault and kidnap, like they're just
copying the Patriot Front playbook. Here the ICE director said
that he wants an Amazon like mass deportation system, calling
it quote unquote Amazon Prime, but with human beings. They're

(02:01:15):
saying this, you can say, listen to the actual words.
I'm going to read another quote here from the Paranoid
Style of American Politics essay quote. A final characteristic of
the paranoid style is related to the quality of its pedantry.
One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is the
contrast between its fantasized conclusions and the almost touching concern

(02:01:39):
with factuality it invariably shows. It produces heroic strivings for
evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing
that can be believed respectable. Paranoid literature not only starts
from certain mortal commitments that can indeed be justified, but
also carefully and all but obsessively accumulates unquote evidence. The

(02:02:01):
paranoid seems to have little expectation for actually convincing a
hostile world, but he can accumulate evidence in order to
protect his cherished convictions from it unquote. And I think
that gets into the psychological mechanisms on why people are
doing this Nazi code hunting. It's actually a form of

(02:02:22):
self coping. Looking at the horrific state of the federal government,
looking at the brazenness in which ICE is operating, and
this is a self preservation mechanism. Someone on Blue Sky
that I was talking to about this is like arguing,
like ICE doesn't need to dog whistle, they have no
reason to.

Speaker 4 (02:02:38):
Like.

Speaker 10 (02:02:38):
Dog whistling is for trying to like sneakily get racists
or fascists into power while signaling to a nationalistic base
that they are like one of them. Right, But these
guys are already in power, and the base already knows
that they're in power. There's no point in dog whistling.
They're just using ICE to establish an ethno state. They're

(02:02:59):
using explicit ethno state rhetoric. In a post from this
morning which has one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
eight nine ten words not fourteen ten words, Wow, DHS
said quote, serve your country, Defend your culture, no undergraduate
degree required. Defend your culture. It's not about locking up

(02:03:21):
criminal migrants. It's about defending a culture from its destruction
through ethnic demographic shifts. It's they're not trying to obscure
what they're doing. In the slightest No, And I want
to return to something else that the Hofstater said that
in that second paragraph that you read about how like
one of the central conceits is that, like, you know,
there's this giant conspiracy that's being unleashed and the American

(02:03:43):
public doesn't know anything about it, and like, yeah, you can.
You know, it is distressing to a large extent, the
extent to which people just don't know what the government
is doing. But also like if you look at any
pulling at all, but anything these people are doing, everyone
hates it. There isn't like a secret thing you can
say to convince people that they're that all these people
are Nazis, because it's like and that's not even a

(02:04:04):
particularly useful project because everyone fucking hates them already, Like
trying to fight this in the realm of sort of
the accumulation of the evidence of conspiracy instead of in
the realm of like, hi, i'm your neighbor, you also.

Speaker 8 (02:04:17):
Fucking hate this. Let's go fucking like do they shoul
people are doing in la and like follow these fucking
ice fans around, right, That is stuff that people are doing,
but it doesn't have the kind of like instant emotional
gratification and register of trying to like accumulate hordes of
secret knowledge, so people do it less even though it's

(02:04:39):
less effective.

Speaker 10 (02:04:40):
In my discussion of this, like online on various cursed
social media sites, I've gotten a lot of pushback to
my pushback of these tactics and what I what I
see as a sort of like abuse of anti fascist education,
right because people, you know, Robert Evans, myself, you know,
Molly Conger, spent the past eight years trying to actually,

(02:05:02):
you know, educate people about like Nazi rhetoric, like in
like Nazi signals and dog whistles, right, and as an
attempt to hopefully prevent them from expanding their power. And
we may have succeeded in education, but we may have
failed in the prevention.

Speaker 8 (02:05:20):
Of them seizing power.

Speaker 10 (02:05:22):
And that also makes me kind of question the effectiveness
of certain tactics. And it's now very odd to see
things that we you know, argued for visibility around to
kind of be used in ways that don't really make sense.
That it's it's it's kind of like trying to tame
a monster that you've partially created. And it's so frustrating

(02:05:43):
to me because I mean, one person who I was
lightly arguing about the line was saying, like, this is
not numerology, and we don't have to be just okay
with a clear attempt to normalize white nationalist rhetoric. And like,
first of all, like codes aren't rhetoric, codes or codes,

(02:06:03):
And the textual fascist sentence.

Speaker 8 (02:06:06):
Is the rhetoric.

Speaker 10 (02:06:07):
What they're actually like saying, which which has like proto
fascist or fascistic aspects, That is the rhetoric and they're
doing it. Is there somebody out there in twenty twenty
five who's gonna finally realize that DHS as an agency
has fascistic underpinnings via a chronically online Twitter user explaining
that if you count words and turn certain captize letters

(02:06:29):
into numbers, it makes a secret Nazi message. Is there
one person is going to become convinced to us, No,
that's not the purpose. So trying to conceptionize this is
like we have to we have to make sure we
call out the use of Nazi rhetoric that doesn't apply
to this specific thing that we're talking about.

Speaker 8 (02:06:48):
Yeah, and also like I think, you know, like I
think we sort of kind of just to some extent,
we've just failed on the normalization from it because again,
like it's the president of the United States. Yeah, this
is the official account of the Department of Homeland Security.
It has already become normalized because they have power. The
only way to denormalize it is not actually to do
media critique. It's to like actually oppose them. But that's scary,

(02:07:11):
that's scary.

Speaker 10 (02:07:12):
Repet Marybia, do you know what's easy posting on X
the everything app Yeah.

Speaker 8 (02:07:16):
This is how this kind of conspiratorial worldview actually empowers
the state, because the central conceit of the conspiratorial worldview
is that there is a nearly all powerful agency that
controls in apparatus that enables it to basically control any
events that it wants. Right, this is why I can
stage things, this is why I can recollection. This is
why it can like I don't know, like it can

(02:07:38):
just like magically like disappear anyone. It can replace them
with anyone. It can stage any protest movement it wants
to right. And I think you've seen this a lot
in the American case, where like I see people who
are like genuinely well meaning leftists who are convinced that
if you do anything to resist the American State, you
will immediately be killed because the American state is all
powerful and irresistible. And that's just fast just propaganda. Yeah,

(02:08:01):
you're falling victim to the panoptic house. Yeah, but but
it's it's fascist propaganda that fits into the narrative structure
of conspiracy. And because the state is dangerous, right and
can hurt you, it's very very easy to you know,
accumulate structures of evidence that support the emotional sort of
core of this thing that is just literally fascist propaganda.

(02:08:22):
People are resisting the state every day, right, Why is
ICE fucking doing patriot prayer tactics and fucking like hiding
people in like fucking U hauls to jump out and
grab people. It's because when they tried to fucking mass
we stomped them, right. And when they drive around in
their cars and you can see them through the window,
everyone follows them. People can follow them around and alert
their community members on where ICE is. Like again, mother

(02:08:44):
motherfuckers and fucking Lulu Levin shit are like screaming at
ICE agents when they try to arrest people, like yeah,
that's the actual condition we're in, and like we get
regular people.

Speaker 10 (02:08:55):
And that's why I find some people who would be
you know, self described as like anti fascists or selfist
described as leftists almost falling into this trap like more
so than others. And it's a little bit evident of
something that like I've described as like the forever twenty sixteen,
how we're all kind of stuck in the mindset of
this twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen era and where

(02:09:16):
we have this unwillingness to realize that that's not the
political situation on the ground anymore. We are actually not
in Charlottesville. This is a different situation. This is twenty
twenty five. And one other like defense of this, you know,
code hunting that I've seen people say is, quote, Nazis
love playing games like this, so it's important that we

(02:09:36):
call it out. And another person saying, quote, this is
a fun little game for their group chats while they
kill and disappear people, unquote, and like, first of all,
this is not a game. This is actual people's lives
are who are being deported, who are being sent to
foreign prison camps. These are not games. And and I
think that view of like anti fascist like education risks

(02:10:00):
repeating like the Okay symbol debacle right where dog whistles
end up being created or spread further due to this
gamified version of like Easter egg anti fascism, It's kind
of like the Barber streisand effect where you end up
almost accidentally making them start doing the thing, which Nazis
always have that like frustrating impulse because they're the little

(02:10:23):
bitch boy ideology. I think as a rat, Limit put
it one of one of my favorite posters, and like,
I'm not saying that Nazi signposting should be ignored, but
I think we should be thoughtful and careful of how
we do it. To recap the Okay symbol thing that
was invented as like a fake dog whistle to try
to trick leftists into convincing like the media, and had

(02:10:45):
then having the media trying to convinceate with people that
anyone who uses like the okayhand symbol is secretly a fascist.
And this scheme worked, and eventually the Oka symbol became
an actual symbol used for fascists to identify each other
through this ironic attachment because it was being talked about
in the news as a secret Nazi symbol, even though
this whole thing was like invented as like a joke online.

(02:11:08):
And I'm afraid I've started to already see a similar
thing happen with the fourteen words dog whistle, with an
increased use of the fourteen words and invoking the fourteen
words among far right accounts, specifically because of this whole
debacle with the DHS gov account and there a heritage
to be proud of, homeland worth defending American Progress like

(02:11:31):
ethnonationalist posting. And I truly cannot say one way or
another if that American Progress post had a intentionally embedded
fourteen words dog whistle inside, I can't. I can't tell
you that. And the point trying to make is that
it kind of doesn't matter, but the way we talk

(02:11:53):
about dog whistles does matter. And as frustrating as it
is that sometimes this feels like we're just living in
the meme where where the Nazi starts shaving his head
because everyone's calling him a Nazi, that is how Nazis
work sometimes. And I don't want to play into this
attention spectacle that they so badly want. But you know

(02:12:14):
what I do want right now?

Speaker 8 (02:12:15):
Is it the process and services that support this podcast.

Speaker 10 (02:12:17):
Another ad break, that's right, be sure to listen for
the third and fourth hidden clue in these ads.

Speaker 2 (02:12:35):
All right, we are back to.

Speaker 8 (02:12:37):
Briefly take a small tangent here. I think there was
something very important about like the fact that role stuck
in twenty sixteen, which was sort of like the peak
of irony right as a social affect has left us
really unprepared for now where everything is just sort of like,
you know, they're just doing it and saying it right, yeah,
And it's not this sort of like irony pill deniability. Shit.

(02:12:59):
They just do it and people are just not prepared
for that.

Speaker 10 (02:13:02):
They're able to wage this war kind of on both fronts,
and I think they are still pushing this. I'm going
to quote from a friend of the pod rat Limit
one of my favorite mutes quote prediction, the Nazi salute
will become common within two years. Right wingers will half
asset for plausible deniability, mimify the backlash, and then start

(02:13:23):
fully doing it quote unquote as a joke to quote
unquote troll the Libs for being hysterical enough to think
that they were doing it in the first place. Fascism
is a little bitch ideology because it's too timid to
enact as cruelty until it can frame its cruelty as
retaliation against others for anticipating it, and this has been
proven right faster than I think what rat limit predicted.

(02:13:46):
There's this current trend on x the Everything app where
white girl aspiring influencers are doing Nazi style salutes and
trying to mimify the backlash. Several posts going going viral
of these. Of these like aspiring influencers either at the
pool or cooking or doing laundry or walking your dog

(02:14:08):
while having a your arm in a Elon Musk, my
heart goes out to you Nazi salute style fashion. Yeah,
and I think focusing media attention on someone like Musk
doing a Nazi salute makes sense, right, he is like
an actual person affiliated with the government. But making a
whole media blitz about random blue check Twitter girls, maybe

(02:14:29):
not so much. Maybe that doesn't have any actual value
if a random like a random Twitter poster from Missouri
is trying to garner backlash by doing a Hyle Hitler
salute in their kitchen next to their instapot.

Speaker 8 (02:14:44):
I keep coming back to the thing that I wrote
about the original Loss salute and about the ways that
everyone you know, like one of the functions of capitalism
is that everyone has been trained to experience the world
and think in the image of action instead of like
actually existing things. That's what I want to talk about next. Yeah, yeah,
let's do this, Let's do this.

Speaker 2 (02:15:04):
Yeah, go for go for it.

Speaker 5 (02:15:05):
No.

Speaker 10 (02:15:05):
I think part of this focus on on on like
these hidden codes and even just like these messages online
is a liberal opposition to the aesthetics of deportation, but
not necessarily the act itself. It's carrying out deportations in
a mode that seems not in line with like neoliberal governing.

(02:15:27):
And that's I think what a bunch of the backlash
being focused on the aesthetics of the Trump administration, like
how they film like gaudy ASMR videos that they post
from the White House account of deportations and use military planes.
Those are aesthetic differences, and those differences may be important,
and they're they're bad, right, It's I'm not saying these
things are good. Those things are still bad.

Speaker 2 (02:15:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (02:15:47):
But when that gets focused on slightly more than just
the pure acti deportation itself, that I think is evident
of being trapped in this like capitalist realism, being trapped
in this like like this neoliberal Yeah, the society of
the spectacle exactly, right, let's like in June, Ice arrested
thirty thousand people and did eighteen thousand deportations. In May

(02:16:08):
it was twenty four thousand arrests in eighteen thousand deportations.
Since February, the Trump admin has averaged about fourteen thousand
and seven hundred deportations of month. The highest number of
deportations ever was in twenty thirteen under Obama, averaging thirty
six thousand a month. The Biden admin averaged almost thirteen thousand.

(02:16:31):
When the Trump administration started using military planes for deportations
back in January, mainly as an esthetic choice, that triggered
backlash and rejections from Mexico and Colombia. Mexico refused to
allow US military aircraft carrying deported migrants to land in
their country. Colombia also barred two military planes full of migrants,
but later caved as Trump threatened unitive tariffs. And you

(02:16:55):
can see the same thing about deploying military to the border,
something that Biden also did, but it has a larger
aesthetic backlash under Trump. Do you have something you want
to say on this like image aspect? I have some
quotes from Fisher and that's kind of all I have left.

Speaker 8 (02:17:09):
Yeah, I mean it is very fitting of our styles
of politics that you're going to Fisher here and I'm
going to Benjamin.

Speaker 10 (02:17:15):
Benjamin is quoted in these sections that Fisher is pulling
from as well.

Speaker 8 (02:17:19):
Yep, yep. So I'll go into the source. I'm not
going through the fucking cru bullshit like pop marks, this
bourmois running doc. But no, but like, you know, like
one of the things that that Walter Benjamin, who people
genuinely really should read. He's one of the great original

(02:17:41):
theorists of fascism, and he fucking died trying to flee
the Nazis. And one of his arguments was that, you know,
one of the cores of fascism is the replacement of
politics with aesthetics, Right, that aesthetics would allow you to
you know, feels like feel representations of do the action.

(02:18:01):
And this is this is an analysis that has been
sort of like folded through a whole bunch of different
analyzes of how capitalism functions. Right, this is this is
one of the three lines of the society a spectacle,
and it's this real issue that we're dealing with now
because again kind of in a sense, what has happened
to everything right, And you can argue to some extent

(02:18:22):
that like our channel being called cool zone Media is
sort of this is that all politics from every side
has been completely reduced to aesthetics. And completely reducing it
to aesthetics allows like allows the fascist mode of politics
to simply draw in a bunch of people who can
sort of just now passively experience living through these sort
of through this sort of collection of images and this

(02:18:43):
emotional aesthetic. Yeah, and it also is doing the same
thing to us. But the thing is they have the
fucking state and we don't, right, And so if you
don't fucking exit, if you don't exit the sort of
mirror world of esthetic of sort of like of fucking
living in images, right, and you know, go do the
actual shit that the board is talking about in the
society a spectacle. Were you when all your friends formed

(02:19:04):
workers councils and fucking start taking all of the ship
back from all of the people who were taking it
from you, You're just gonna live in the fascist nightmare forever.

Speaker 10 (02:19:12):
I mean, you could look at the union resistance to
icedy iportations, specifically in LA with russaurant workers that it's
literally doing that and like I would argue, like now,
it's not so much that fascism is politics as athetics,
but especially now, it is an aestheticized politics. And you
can even see that in so far as its focuses
on you know, like race and like ethnic purity, like

(02:19:32):
blood and soil. That's why they're posting American progress driving
out the indigenous people with the aryan white lady carrying
the torch of progress. It is an aestheticized politics on
like a very pure level. And again, to quote from
my goat, uh this antigoat quote Mark Fisher in captust

(02:19:53):
Realism quote, ultra authoritarianism and capital are by no means incompatible.
In tournament Camp's enfranchise coffee bars co exist, neoliberals, the
capitalist realists par excellence have celebrated the destruction of public space,
but contrary to their official hopes, there is no withering
away of the state, only a stripping back of the
state to its core military and police functions. Unquote. This

(02:20:17):
is very similar to something that me and Mia talked
about right as Trump got elected, in terms of the
state becoming more removed but hostile.

Speaker 8 (02:20:26):
Yeah, although although I see again I disagree official here
because the neo liberals understood what they were doing to
begin with. They were never trying to wither the state away.
That was just the lies that they told the fucking
basses Like sure, I mean that's what contrary to their
official Yeah, yeah, and it's like you know, quote, such.

Speaker 10 (02:20:43):
A blight can only be eased by an intervention that
can be no more anticipated than was the onset of
the curse in the first place. Action is pointless, only senseless.
Hope makes sense. Superstition and religion the first resorts the
helpless proliferate unquote. This is part of what I conceptualize
as this code hunting is almost a form of this

(02:21:04):
hopeless superstition. To continue quote, the catastrophe is neither waiting
down the road, nor has it already happened. Rather, it
is being lived through. There is no punctual moment of disaster.
The world doesn't end with a bang. It winks out, unravels,
gradually falls apart. What caused the catastrophe to occur? Who
knows its cause? Lies long in the past, so absolutely

(02:21:27):
detached from the present as to seem like the caprice
of a maligned being, a negative miracle, a melidation which
no penance can ameliorate the turn from belief to aesthetics,
from engagement to spectatorship is held to be one of
the virtues of capitalist realism unquote. And yeah, that's what
me is talking about with Gidebor and society of the spectacle.

(02:21:49):
That's a trap that I think a lot of people
are falling into right now. And though it's arguable that
living in a liberal contradiction may be preferable to fascist authoritarianism,
that stullsn't mean it's like good, right, That's not what
we're arguing here. Fisher then quotes French philosopher Alawn Badu

(02:22:09):
quote to justify their conservatism. The partisans of the established
order cannot really call it ideal or wonderful, so instead
they've decided to say that all of the rest is horrible. Sure,
they say, we may not live in a condition of
perfect goodness, but we are lucky that we don't live
in a condition of evil. Our democracy is not perfect,
but it's better than bloody dictatorships. Capitalism is unjust, but

(02:22:33):
it's not criminal like Stalinism. We let millions of Africans
die of AIDS, but we don't make racist nationalist declarations
like Lamosovich. We kill Iraqis with our airplanes, but we
don't cut their throats with machetes like they do in
Rwanda unquote. And already parts of this are slightly outdated.

Speaker 8 (02:22:51):
Oh yeah, because.

Speaker 10 (02:22:54):
Now, But this is the thing is both are tragedies
where millions people die, right. One of them is through
the aesthetics of neoliberalism. The other one is through asthetics
of racist nationalistic declarations, which the Trump administration is currently
playing with. That is what they decided to do. Yeah,
and so the reaction to it is on this aesthetic note,

(02:23:14):
not necessarily on this pure actual humanistic opposition to deportations
as a process that is inhumane that we should not
allow at all.

Speaker 8 (02:23:23):
Yeah. I see the logic of this all the fucking time,
talking to people where like we'll be like, okay, like
no deportations, and then you get a whole bunch of
people being like, wow, but what about criminals just like
some some deportation? What do is this is the structural
logic of the original like deportation blitz from Trump.

Speaker 10 (02:23:38):
Creating a class of undesirables that you can then always
add to and press the border on. Like what Karl
Schmid talks about this is the structural logic of fascism. Yeah,
but everyone everyone thinks about deportations this way now, and
they're mad that Trump is doing it and not Biden.
But you know, until people actually break through the sort
of pure opposition to the aesthetics and actually start, you know,

(02:24:00):
having a kind of totalizing opposition to the system that
is doing this, we're just going to be stuck here.
And this is I think one of the limits of
using anti fascism as this like aesthetic code hunting, is
because a few days ago, the ths posted a Woody
Guthrie song, his song America the Beautiful, with the DHS

(02:24:21):
posting the promise of America is worth protecting the future
of our homeland is worth defending. Notably, everyone in this
video is all white people, which this sentiment is the
same thing as the fourteen words, except it has fifteen words,
so therefore not a Nazi dog whistle. We're safe, guys,
we're good. I counted the words. There's fifteen of them,

(02:24:42):
so you can disregard what the actual text is saying.
And I think that is like the prime the prime
contradiction in which I am growing increasingly frustrated So that's
most of what I have to say about the limits
of Nazi code hunting and the the aesthetics of superstition

(02:25:02):
and the paranoid style in American politics. Mia, do you
have any any final wise notes?

Speaker 8 (02:25:09):
The time for Nazi code hunting, if there ever was one,
has passed. It is now time to end the episode
right here.

Speaker 2 (02:25:17):
That's right.

Speaker 10 (02:25:18):
It is related for anything. Oh and if you were
able to decode the hidden message in the ad break,
send the contents of the message via email to your
local congressman to redeem your prize.

Speaker 2 (02:25:30):
Bye bye.

Speaker 10 (02:25:49):
This is it could happen here Executive Disorder, our weekly
newscast covering what is happening in the White House, the
crumbling world what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis.
This episode, I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Tout, and
Robert Evans. Were covering the week of July thirtieth August seventh. Robert,
what is Texas?

Speaker 2 (02:26:08):
So the original root word of the state's name is Tejas,
which means friendship, a thing that no one in Texas
has ever known because it's the angriest meana state in
the country. That's that's Texas.

Speaker 10 (02:26:19):
Garrison up for some stiff competition these days, for some
stiff competition.

Speaker 8 (02:26:23):
But it's still it's still holding out, isn't it.

Speaker 4 (02:26:25):
Everything's bigger in Texas Garrison.

Speaker 2 (02:26:27):
It's it's famed as being the second or third worst
state that borders New Mexico. So you know, rarefied company.
Really it can compete with all of the states bordering
New Mexico except for Colorado. But the state's bordering New
Mexico except for Colorado are Oklahoma and Arizona and Texas,
so not high bars.

Speaker 4 (02:26:48):
Texas has some of the finest abt and breakfasts that
I've ever stayed in, that's right, including one with a
deeply disturbing basement.

Speaker 2 (02:26:56):
Okay, just because they had one torture based on James.
So we're talking about Texas right now because a bunch
of the Democratic state legislators just fled the state for Illinois,
I believe.

Speaker 4 (02:27:08):
Is how the name of the state has pronounced yea French.

Speaker 2 (02:27:11):
It's French. It's French.

Speaker 8 (02:27:12):
Fact check for a real illinoisan wrongsupposed fact checks by
really annoyance.

Speaker 2 (02:27:20):
So when you've got a legislature of pretty much any type,
at least in the US I'm sure there's other countries
that don't do it this way. But you need what's
called a quorum in order to actually do anything, which
means of the total number of elected members of the legislature,
you need a certain number of them. Otherwise you can't
like do anything because there's not enough people there in

(02:27:41):
order to actually have it be a valid vote. And
I probably don't have to explain the reasonings why. There's
some pretty obvious reasons why you'd want it to work
this way. But there are, however, some downsides to it.
You know, potentially you can be depending on whether or
not your side is doing it. It's a downside or
an upside, right, which is that if you have a
side that is the minority in the government and they

(02:28:03):
don't want a vote to go through, they can just bounce.
And if they bounce at the right time, before the
legislature has been called and like no one's there, then
you can't get a quorum and nothing can get done.
And this is big news right now because in order
to stop a redistricting vote, a bunch of Democratic legislators

(02:28:24):
have fled. But this is a thing that has been
going on for well over a century. And it is
a thing that both sides of the aisle have engaged
in with substantial regularity. I'm not an expert on any
of this. The earliest example I can find if anyone
doing this is in Texas. And I'm not saying that
means it's the earliest example of anyone in the US

(02:28:44):
doing this, But the earliest example I found in my
research was from eighteen seventy. So there's an article on
this in that by the Texas State Historical Association called
understanding the rump Senate of the twelfth Texas Legislature, and
the rump Senate is a term applied to the fifteen
radical Republican members of the twelfth Texas Legislature who fled

(02:29:06):
in eighteen seventy to stop a vote on a militia bill.
And this bill gave the governor power to declare martial law.
It gave him the power to establish a state police force.
It increased the appointed power of the governor.

Speaker 4 (02:29:18):
A bunch of stuff that's not all that interesting to
us today because governors, like every state does this today,
right Like there's state police everywhere. Every state governor has
the power to call a militia, you know, a national
guard or whatever. Like.

Speaker 2 (02:29:31):
This is not controversial today, but it was back then.
And it's important that I note that while it was
fifteen radical Republicans who fled in eighteen seventy, those were conservatives, right,
Like the radical Republicans were conservatives in eighteen seventy. Right,
So this is this is kind of a reverse if
you're just sort of looking at things from a liberal
or conservative point of view. This is kind of a

(02:29:52):
reversal of what's happening right now in Texas, although it's
happened a lot of other times since. Right, So this
is eighteen seventy. Should note it didn't succeed, right. This is, however,
one of the fairly rare times when this kind of
thing happens. If it goes on long enough, every time,
the governor basically will declare an arrest warrant for the
legislators who have left, And as a general rule, this

(02:30:15):
does nothing, right, Like, the governor has the ability to
find them a certain amount per day, and it has
the ability to call out an arrest warrant, but it's
not like a real arrest warrant, like if you murder
a guy and then lead to another state an arrest
warrant will be issued that law enforcement in that state
has to abide by. Right because you murdered somebody, this
is not a real crime. Basically, if you flee back,

(02:30:38):
if you wind up back in the state that you left,
you can be taken into custody by law enforcement in
the state, but they can't leave the state to get you.
And almost I would say, like ninety percent of the
time when something like this happens, nobody actually gets arrested. However,
in eighteen seventy several Conservative members were held under arrest
for like three weeks until the Senate could pass the legislation. So,

(02:31:01):
as is usually the case, whenever stuff like this happens,
it only succeeded in kind of delaying the inevitable. It
didn't succeed in actually stopping things. And this has happened
a number of times in Texas, most recently Texas Democratic
lawmakers broke quorum in twenty twenty one. And I want
to quote here from an article in ABC News. Quote

(02:31:22):
Texas state lawmakers left Brookquarran twenty twenty one when Democratic
House representatives fled Texas to prevent measures restricting voting options.
The measures eventually passed after internal democratic fissures led to
enough representatives returning to form a quorum. And this is
the kind of thing where Governor Abbott allowed the Sergeant
of Arms or commanded the Sergeant of Arms to arrest

(02:31:42):
the members within Texas. Weirdly enough, a couple of them
did return. The first was Philip Cortes, who briefly came
back to Austin to handle personal business and there was
a civil arrest warrant signed, but then he fled the
state again before he could be arrested. There were warrant
signed for the fifty two remaining absent legislators, but law

(02:32:02):
enforcement didn't arrest or detain anybody. Eventually, enough democratic legislators
came back into the state for like personal reasons. Some
of them had like shit to handle, like in their
own life. Some of them had other things they wanted
to push through in terms of like legislature, and so
they were like, I guess I'll come back and let
this happen. And eventually the House reached quorum. And this

(02:32:24):
past Democrats did not face the five hundred dollars a
day fine that they'd been threatened by the governor, and
nobody was arrested. Now, I've been talking about Texas here,
but this happens all over the place. In fact, when
this story first broke, the immediate thing I thought back
on was what happened very recently in the state of Oregon,
and has happened a couple of times in the state
of Oregon.

Speaker 8 (02:32:45):
You know it was mine too. They do this all
the time, They do this a lot.

Speaker 2 (02:32:49):
But yes, this is a common thing in Oregon. It
has started, and this is both parties have done this.
I should note right, both Democrats and Republicans in Oregon,
as in Texas, have done walkouts.

Speaker 8 (02:33:02):
They don't even have to leave the state.

Speaker 2 (02:33:04):
They don't even have to leave the state, although they
have recently. This seems to have started an Oregon I
think in the nineteen seventies. There's actually a really good
article that's like an overview of a bunch of different
states history of doing this in Oregon Central Oregon Daily News,
although it's an ap Press article, so I guess Central
Oregon Daily just is licensing this thing. But anyway, in Oregon,

(02:33:27):
the most recent case of this happening was in twenty
twenty three, after Republicans staged a six week boycott, which
is the longest so far in Oregon legislature history, over
a rule a law of the Democratic Party was pushing
to protect abortion rights and the right to gender firming
care for transgender people. This again did not succeed. This
was passed in the legislature and there were actually some consequences,

(02:33:51):
although it hasn't been enough time to see how serious
there will be. Because there was a different GOP walkout
over climate change legislation which also failed in twenty twenty two,
and as a result of that twenty twenty two walk out,
voters approved an amendment to the state constitution in Oregon
which barred lawmakers from getting re elected if they had
more than ten unexcused absences in a single annual legislative session.

(02:34:14):
And as a result of the walkout the next year
over abortion rights and gender firming care, ten Oregon Republican
lawmakers were barred from seeking re election again. As I stated,
this is something that very rarely actually does anything. There's
a twenty twenty one case in New Hampshire where Democrats
walked out in protest of an anti abortion bill. The

(02:34:35):
Republican House speaker locked the doors to maintain a quorum.
I'm going to quote from the Central organ Daily article.
I'm locking the doors right now so that everybody in
the chamber will stay in the chamber. Shout at House
Speaker Sherman Packard, who later refused to let Democrats back
in to vote on the bill.

Speaker 4 (02:34:50):
It's just fucking like representative politics is just snol children
shouting at each other. I want them to fight with canes.
They should be fighting with King agreed. Give them, give
them all enough, let them fights it out.

Speaker 2 (02:35:03):
I would say ninety percent of the time, nothing is
at least from the reading I've done, nothing is achieved
except for a delay, which is not to say that
that's nothing. And also I do believe, like in the
case of the Democratic Party, I don't think what the
Texas Democrats are doing will stop the redistricting. Like the
Republicans are going to win this fight. It's worth fighting. Yeah,
I'm glad they're fighting it. However, very rarely is the

(02:35:26):
actual law stopped or is anything but a delay achieved.
One of the rare cases in which something more was
achieved is in twenty eleven in Wisconsin, Democratic state senators
fled to Illinois as a protest against Governor Scott Walker.
He was attempting to strip public workers of their union
rights and this, you know, this walkout was staged at

(02:35:46):
the same time as a mass pro union demonstration at
the capitol, and after several weeks they won a partial victory.
Republicans weakened the legislation, which is like significant, right, like
the fact that they actually got concessions over this, and
sometimes the delay can be significant. The same year that
that all went down in Wisconsin, Indiana Democrats also left,

(02:36:07):
for for whatever reason, ILLINOI is where you go if
you're doing this. I don't No one wants to come
get you know, wants to go.

Speaker 4 (02:36:14):
No one's coming to Illinois.

Speaker 2 (02:36:15):
It's just not worth it.

Speaker 4 (02:36:16):
I've been to fuck Illinois and sorry, Illinois is the
hero of this story. We love you Illinois. Yeah, Chicago's five,
Chicago's fined for whatever reason. This is the state you
go to if you're a Democrat doing this in the
modern era. If you're in Wisconsin, it's not that far away.
I guess, well, this is Indiana too, and also not
very far away. Yeah, it's also not far Yeah, they
couldn't make it to California. You know, it's further now

(02:36:38):
that Texans are doing it.

Speaker 2 (02:36:39):
Yeah, but Indiana Democrats left in twenty eleven to prevent
Republican law that would have stopped unions from levying mandatory
fees on union members, which would kind of make could
potentially make it impossible to do a union because nobody
wants to pay for a union, but everyone wants won right, Yeah,
every worker does you want the union protecting you. You

(02:37:00):
don't want to have to give up your money, So
it's the kind of thing you could I think the
Republican plan was use the natural greed that people have
in order to hamstring unionizing efforts. Many such cases and
the Democrats left, which left the House short of its
quorum and threatened to stay in the other states until
they were promised that the bills would not be called.

(02:37:23):
Republicans successfully passed the bill, but they had to wait
until the next year. So again, every now and then
you ECO win out here or the side doing this
eeks out a win, and everyone does it, and everyone
has been doing it for more than one hundred and
fifty years. Nothing about this is new, with the exception
of the fact that they actually look to be pushing
some serious legal consequences. The most I've been able to

(02:37:45):
find in the history of this is what happened in
eighteen seventy where a number of people were arrested and
held in custody for a few weeks. Usually no one
is arrested, and usually the fines aren't even actually levy.
Right now, this does cost money. The last text walkout,
Texas Democrats were spending like ten grand a day on
food and board, you know, paying for their hotels or whatever,

(02:38:08):
which was I think Beato Olor raised most of the
money through his pack which is what covered it.

Speaker 8 (02:38:13):
A few hundred grand, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:38:15):
Like six hundred thousand dollars. So you know, this does
cost money to do because you've got to put these
people up. But generally you're not really hiding them, and
generally the legal consequences are more of a threat than
a reality.

Speaker 8 (02:38:27):
Right, and that might not be true in this most
recent year.

Speaker 2 (02:38:31):
Yes case, Yes, And we're going to throw to you, Garrison,
But first you know who does force serious life changing
legal consequences on people?

Speaker 4 (02:38:41):
Jay Pritzk.

Speaker 3 (02:38:42):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (02:38:43):
And the products and services that support this podcast, which
are entirely we're actually backed entirely by JB.

Speaker 8 (02:38:48):
Pritzker from your mouth to God's ears, Robert.

Speaker 4 (02:38:51):
Not like knowingly I stole his debit card, and boy,
that guy has a high daily spending lem let me
tell you yeah, but he has a lot of shadow
companies anyway, Thanks JB. Please don't change your password to
your online bank. Garrison, Hi, We're.

Speaker 10 (02:39:18):
Back, so as Roberts said, Republicans in the Texas Legislature
are trying to jerrymander Texas to increase their total power
over the state, proposing a redistricting map that would add
five more Republican seats, and in an effort to prevent
or delay this, this past Sunday, sixty two Texas Democrats
have fled to Illinois to deny quorum in the Texas House,

(02:39:41):
and only twelve need to return in order for the
redistricting to go through, with the main goal right now
being trying to stay out of the state until November.
In terms of consequences, new House rules adopted back in
twenty twenty three after the twenty twenty one quorum, I
can impose a five hundred dollars fine per day for

(02:40:03):
missing lawmakers, not just from the governor. Now on Monday,
the Texas House Republicans voted to issue civil arrestaurants for
the lawmakers, empowering the Sergeant of Arms and the Texas
State Troopers to locate, apprehend, and transport the rogue legislators
back to the capitol. Governor Greg Abbot announced he had
mobilized the Texas Department of Public Safety to return the
Democrats to the chamber. Now, these warrants really only apply

(02:40:27):
within state lines. These are civil warrants. They're not facing
criminal charges though. Back in twenty and three, during a
similar quorum break due to gerrymandering efforts, fedral resources were
used to track planes with suspected rogue Democrat lawmakers. An
Abbot has already proposed trying to declare their House seats
vacant if they do not return, a tactic which would

(02:40:50):
probably prompt some lengthy legal battles and require new special
elections to take place to fill the seats. So that
still would like delay this process. That's not a quick solution.
But there has been some breaking news as of this
morning recording Thursday. On Thursday morning, Texas Senator John Corbin

(02:41:11):
announced that the FBI would now be investigating and working
to locate the Texas House Democrats saying in a press release, quote,
I thank President Trump and Director Patel for supporting and
swiftly acting on my call for the federal government to
hold these supposed lawmakers accountable for fleeing Texas. We cannot
allow these rogue legislators to avoid their constitutional responsibilities unquote.

(02:41:37):
So the extent of the FBI's involvement in tracking, down, locating,
or apprehending the Democrats is currently unknown. The FBI has
declined to comment, but this is something that's going to
develop in the next week, which.

Speaker 2 (02:41:49):
They always do when ongoing case. Is like, sure, if
you email or whatever the FBI about any ongoing case.
This is what they do, period. It's been their policy
for p Yeah.

Speaker 10 (02:42:00):
So it doesn't tell you anything, just saying that in
terms of like, we do not know what the extent
of their involvement is going to be at this point, right, yeah, right,
And they might not even know either.

Speaker 2 (02:42:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (02:42:10):
This could just be a tech cashpitl TikTok.

Speaker 5 (02:42:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:42:14):
Yeah, there's a good chance they're internally scrambling to like
what are we gonna do?

Speaker 10 (02:42:19):
Like this would be unprecedented sending a federal like law
enforcement arm to to to physically apprehend and return lawmakers.
That is certainly an escalation from using like federal resources
to track planes like they did in twos and three.
This would be a whole new ballgame.

Speaker 2 (02:42:34):
Yeah. As I noted, it's uncommon for them to be
arrested inside the state by the sergeant at arms.

Speaker 10 (02:42:40):
Yeah sure, I mean, like arrest just means, you know,
you'd like accompany them back to the capital or force
them to return to the capital.

Speaker 2 (02:42:47):
You're staying here, You're not going to leave to the state.

Speaker 4 (02:42:49):
Yeah, you've got a guy called sogeant Arms involved. It's
not serious, but even that's purely uncommon. Yeah.

Speaker 10 (02:42:55):
No, I mean, like most corm breaks fail because legislators
just choose to return, whether to do personal business, whether
to do political business. It takes a lot of discipline
to not return to your home for a period of
like three to six months.

Speaker 2 (02:43:09):
Yeah, you get stuff to do. Most people, a lot
of people have what are called familized Famali's something like that.

Speaker 8 (02:43:17):
For media, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (02:43:19):
I think it's a new concept. Yeah, we're still working
at cool Zone to get a handle on it. We'll
have a report on whatever that is, so don't worry.

Speaker 4 (02:43:27):
Yeah, they got to get back to the polycule or whatever.
But they haven't violated a federal law right lately. No,
so federal, they'ven't violated a Texas law.

Speaker 2 (02:43:39):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not a law violation. It is
literally the governor saying I'm sending guys for you.

Speaker 4 (02:43:46):
Yeah, it's just some old timey parliamentarian shit.

Speaker 10 (02:43:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (02:43:49):
And like you know, as I was saying, it's like again,
it isn't this could just be a cash hotel TikTok op.

Speaker 2 (02:43:54):
But also I hate the way that sounds.

Speaker 4 (02:43:57):
I what a fucking way to describe a federal law
enforcement Oh it's on hinge.

Speaker 8 (02:44:02):
This is genuinely okay, I'm gonna take a very very
slight detour, which I said this before. But also, like
the thing that gives me the most hope about all
of this is that, like, look, they found the right
winger to put in charge of the American seecret Police,
and he doesn't want to do his job because he
just wants to be a podcaster.

Speaker 2 (02:44:17):
Hey understand, Look, you make me director the FBI, and
I promise to be more or less the same.

Speaker 9 (02:44:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (02:44:25):
But you know, but if this is actually a thing,
right and federal agents is only grabbing vallmakers out of Illinois.

Speaker 2 (02:44:32):
That is that's a big deal. Yeah, that's a massive escalation.

Speaker 10 (02:44:36):
And that's why, as people fully supported by Pritzker's private militia,
we will be on the front lines defending the Texas
lav makers. That's right, saluting the Chicago flag.

Speaker 5 (02:44:46):
M hm.

Speaker 2 (02:44:47):
Yes, as as governor, Pritzker recently stated blood for the
blood gods, skulls for the skull throne. Classic Pritzker.

Speaker 8 (02:44:55):
I mean, you need to do some Pritzker not even
slander here. So just fuck you. Tiny bit of fun
Pritzker news, which I was gonna talk about a little
bit anyways later. But Pritzker has basically allowed a bunch
of hospitals in Chicago to stop covering gender affirming care
for minors, even though it's like illegal under Illinois state law.
So fuck him for that. Eat shit. Yeah we we

(02:45:18):
we will unfortunately oppose the Kannie of the Great Plains.

Speaker 2 (02:45:23):
And what's the reasoning there? Has he given any He was.

Speaker 8 (02:45:26):
Just like, oh, well they're gonna lose funding.

Speaker 2 (02:45:29):
Ah, oh no, it is over yeah, okay, yeahs it
is over the threats. But like, yeah, a number of
states have been have been something similar as brewing in Oregon,
right now.

Speaker 8 (02:45:39):
Yeah, we've we've Yeah, this has been happening Oregon. We
just had an episode about people resisting this in Pennsylvania.
This will be a continuing, ongoing struggle. But I fuck
you Pritzker eat shit.

Speaker 10 (02:45:50):
Like I do have two science stories for this middle
segment here. First one, I'm gonna call on everyone's I
don't know, probably my least favorite Kennedy.

Speaker 8 (02:46:04):
RFRS Wow controversial. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of bad Kennedys.

Speaker 11 (02:46:11):
After reviewing the science and consulting top experts at NIH
and FDA, HHS has determined that mRNA technology poses more
risks than benefits for these respiratory viruses. That's why, after
extensive review, BARTA has begun the process of terminating these
twenty two contracts totaling.

Speaker 2 (02:46:32):
Just under five hundred million dollars.

Speaker 11 (02:46:35):
To replace the troubled mRNA programs, we're prioritizing the development
of the safer, broader vaccine strategies.

Speaker 10 (02:46:43):
Sure, sure thing, sure thing, mister Kennedy.

Speaker 8 (02:46:45):
Oh Jesus fucking Christ.

Speaker 2 (02:46:47):
Yeah that sounds true, and not like we're throwing away
a holy grail of medical miracles.

Speaker 8 (02:46:54):
Literally won the Nobel Price.

Speaker 10 (02:46:56):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so this is this is some devastating
news where he is removing twenty two contracts researchers and
universities that are developing new mRNA vaccine technology and earlier
in that video. So I'm not going to play because
it's just him basically lying. But he was lying about
how mRNA technology has been ineffective against upper respiratory infections

(02:47:19):
because it only targets a single protein which not only
becomes obsolete due to mutations, but actually accelerates the mutation
process in prolongs pandemics.

Speaker 2 (02:47:27):
This is not true.

Speaker 8 (02:47:28):
You can no, it's not true. This is not true.

Speaker 10 (02:47:31):
And one of the most unique aspects of mRNA technology
is that the vaccines can be developed at a much
faster pace to be deployed against mutations. And even if
a vaccine is not does not one hundred percent prevent
an infection, that doesn't mean they still won't like decrease
the severity of symptoms. He is trying to coat his

(02:47:53):
decades decades long like anti vaccine advocacy in this like
scientific language while actually just like stripping away all of
the funding and removing access to vaccines. And this is
the stuff that he promised not to do. In his
confirmation hearings, he said that he would not take away
vaccines yep, and he would not change who's on the
vaccine advisory panels.

Speaker 8 (02:48:13):
He has done both of those things so far.

Speaker 10 (02:48:15):
Like two months ago, he fired all seventy members of
the advisory panel. I talked with Cave about this, and
he replaced them with eight anti vaxxers. And not only
did he remove a multi billion dollar contract from Derna
to continue mRNA vaccine research, he now canceled these twenty
two other contracts, totally five hundred million dollars of technology.
People are going to die and get sick because of

(02:48:37):
these changes, yes, yeah, which doesn't just affect like COVID
and the flu. It also affects all of the other
ways that mRNA technology can be utilized. A lot of
these research projects are about expanding the possible use of
this technology beyond upper respiratory infections.

Speaker 8 (02:48:54):
So this sucks.

Speaker 4 (02:48:56):
Yeah, this is real bad.

Speaker 10 (02:48:58):
It's I am very nerve about the development of the
HIV vaccine and cancer vaccines, things that we were getting
so close to now being put intojeopardy because this fucking
clown is in charge of health and human services.

Speaker 4 (02:49:11):
A ton of is who I've done at the Salkansche
in San Diego, Itchile.

Speaker 10 (02:49:15):
It was reported earlier this week that some Republicans and
Trump himself might actually not be happy about this. And
Trump has a meeting scheduled with RFT Junior today to
discuss these cancelations, so we'll see where that goes. In
some other science news, Sean Duffy, interm NASA administrator who

(02:49:36):
also has the Secretary of Transportation, who directed his employees
to prioritize funding and grants to towards demographics with high
marriage rates. He announced that he was expediating plans to
launch and operate a one hundred kilowatt nuclear.

Speaker 8 (02:49:52):
Reactor for the Moon.

Speaker 2 (02:49:55):
Great. Look, there's a lot of people living on the
Moon and power outages have been a constant problem there. Garrison,
if this science fiction novel from the nineteen sixties is accurate.

Speaker 10 (02:50:06):
I talk with a friend of mine who is an
anonymous NASA contractor. She gave a quote, quote I need
a cigarette unquote.

Speaker 2 (02:50:17):
Great, because he just got fucked.

Speaker 8 (02:50:19):
It's also worth noting that all of this is coming
in the context of the largest really like the largest
cuts in the history of American science across the board
to anything that's actually like I'm gonna get remotely doing science,
Like yeah, sorry, I just I just want to go
on it, especially space science. Like Duffy's trying to manufacture
this new space race and prioritize like manned moon missions,

(02:50:41):
all while cutting at least fifty percent all NASA science
missions and just like absolutely crippling NASA's capacity to actually
develop technology. Now, Duffy said at a press conference and
end seeing this new directive on Tuesday, quote, we are
in a race to the moon, a race with China
to the moon, and to have a base on the moon,

(02:51:03):
we need energy. Unquote is that fucking nineteen fifty talk?
What are you talking about? That is the time when
the greatness happened Garson.

Speaker 2 (02:51:12):
They want to go back to that.

Speaker 10 (02:51:13):
The NASA contractor I spoke with said, quote, NASA is
already down at least twenty percent of its workforce and
behind on its previously announced to lunar missions and objectives
see the Lunar Gateway and Artemis three. I just don't
immediately see a world where NASA does this successfully, even
if they go the route of contracting it out. If
the success. Specifically, the lack thereof of the Commercial Lunar

(02:51:36):
Payload Services Program and the Commercial LEEO Destinations program has
any indication for how this will go. It will be
mirrored in failure and many years behind schedule at best
un quote. This new NASA directive from Shan Daffey calls
for a Fission Surface Power Program Executive to be named
by the end of August, who will then yes, yes, impleant,

(02:52:00):
and oversee the project while reporting directly to the NASA Administrator.
The directive reads quote. Since March twenty twenty four, China
and Russia have announced on at least three occasions a
joint effort to place a reactor on the Moon by
the mid twenty thirties. The first country to do so
could potentially declare a keep out zone, which would significantly
inhibit the United States from establishing a planned Artemis presence

(02:52:22):
if not their first unquote. And this is I think
a big part of why Duffy is wanting to do this,
and the contractor I spoke to you said quote, if
they're able to extend some quote unquote exclusion zone around
a reactor on the surface where other countries aren't allowed
to land. It's not difficult to imagine that they may

(02:52:42):
try to use this to de facto claim areas of
the Moon for the United States.

Speaker 2 (02:52:48):
Unquote.

Speaker 4 (02:52:49):
Hell yeah, we have colonized the Moon.

Speaker 10 (02:52:52):
And there is even more troubling use cases. Part of
the directive reads that this would quote encourage do will
use civil and defense operational architectures, Yes, for deployed fission
surface power systems in coordination with interagency partners Moon base unquote.

(02:53:13):
Space Force finally getting its moment in the sun on
the Moon.

Speaker 2 (02:53:16):
I guess this really is just like.

Speaker 8 (02:53:18):
The pure unspeakable tragedy is unspeakable first version of colonialism,
because it's like the Moon is the one place that
is actually tyrannualists and there's nothing there and there's nothing
to gain from being there. There's just nothing. But you know,
we got to colonize it.

Speaker 4 (02:53:37):
Yeah, but the sun ever sets on the American Empire
if you've got the Moon on it as well, so
you got that going for you.

Speaker 8 (02:53:44):
It's just just it's just pure drive of colonialism detached
from its actual like material motives.

Speaker 4 (02:53:52):
Having failed to gain Greenland, we will pivot and take
the Moon instead.

Speaker 2 (02:53:57):
I mean, you know, the moon and Greenland are both
similar habitable territories, so.

Speaker 4 (02:54:01):
It's true, but you can't do backflips in Greenland.

Speaker 8 (02:54:04):
So like, this is the plant of despicable meat. Like
that's what we're doing here, We're doing the plaut of
despicable me.

Speaker 4 (02:54:13):
Yeah, many science fiction movies have predicted this, Please send
them all to us.

Speaker 2 (02:54:19):
Yes, as was noted by Robert Heinlend, the moon is
indeed a harsh mistress. Wait, what is that I hear?
Is that the tariff song?

Speaker 8 (02:54:32):
Rocky jazz, rocky jazz. Sorry, rocky jazz, rocky.

Speaker 2 (02:54:42):
Jazz, ah god, every time, every time, it's good.

Speaker 8 (02:54:48):
Let's talk tariff tariffs. There's so many of them. The
tariffs have gone into effect. So all right, we're gonna
do a full episode about this on Monday, because there
is so much tariff bullshit that it quite for needs
its own actual episode in which we're going to be
talking about shit like, for example, the US has maybe
on accident, maybe on purpose, recognized the Junta meen Maar

(02:55:10):
is the legitimate government to the tariff stuff. We're talking
about that on Monday because we don't have time for
that shit. What we instead have time for is the
just massive array of tariffs on a list of countries
so long that we just genuinely can't read them all. Okay,
this is a very very confusing raft of tariffs. In
a lot of ways, it's simpler than the other ones.

(02:55:33):
But okay, so so Persian, And if the US runs
a trade deficit with you and you're not also in
one of the other special categories where we have imposed
a really high tariff on you, it's like fifteen percent.
If we have a trade surplus with the country we
imposed a ten percent tariff. This doesn't make any sense, sure, Okay.
So it's like in terms of the state of motives
of the tariffs, it doesn't make any sense except in

(02:55:55):
terms of like raising money, which these raised very little
actual money run relative to like the amount of money
the US spends.

Speaker 9 (02:56:02):
I mean.

Speaker 10 (02:56:03):
Right wing commentators have stated that the end goal of
this massive tariff program is to abolish income tax because
we can fund the government through TIFFs.

Speaker 4 (02:56:12):
Actually great, yeah, and I just know that, No, you
can't like this, No, this is just yeah. At the
same time as said, driving the deficit into the fucking sky.

Speaker 8 (02:56:24):
Like yeah, And we've talked about the sort of riffs
that this has caused with like the sort of true
believer deficit hawks versus these just completely unhinged fund the
government with tariff weirdos. But Comma, there have been a
huge number of countries that now we have fifteen percent
tariffs on We've also gotten a formal announcement of the

(02:56:45):
one hundred percent tariffs on semiconductors unless you invest do
some kind of certificant investment in the US. It's deeply
unclear what the fuck that means. Apple hasn't pledged to
invest one hundred billion dollars in the US. There's this
very very weird thing on the right where like they
just they think that you can make iPhones here. You can't.

(02:57:07):
You just simply cannot. We you don't have the labor force,
you don't have the technology. Yeah, but Tim Cook did
just bribe Trump with a.

Speaker 4 (02:57:14):
Nice plate golden iPhone, big ing get to gold.

Speaker 2 (02:57:19):
So I thought it was a gold iPhone. There was
some glass involved.

Speaker 10 (02:57:23):
As well, No, it was it was it was a
plate that was on like a gold like brick base.

Speaker 2 (02:57:29):
I love that. Yeah, that's the way we're doing now
beside it under the radar.

Speaker 5 (02:57:34):
Cool.

Speaker 10 (02:57:35):
You have to bribe the Supreme ruler by giving gifts
of gold to grand good favor o.

Speaker 5 (02:57:42):
God it is.

Speaker 4 (02:57:44):
It's like fucking smoke whatever, Like it has this pile
of gold that he's going to be sitting on. It's
going to be Scrooge mcducking in that ship by the
end of four years.

Speaker 8 (02:57:53):
Oh, don't get us started on darktails.

Speaker 4 (02:57:55):
Oh no, no, no, no, Yeah, that'll really inflate the
length of this episode. That's what they call a layup
in nine sports ball. Yeah, what's the tear us up too?

Speaker 8 (02:58:06):
They're calling me the fucking webbin Yabo, fucking a fucking
inflation shop blocking. Fuck this we're talking about. We're talking
about hip infrastructure. People have been trying to develop like
the infrastructure developed ships for a long time.

Speaker 10 (02:58:18):
Now.

Speaker 8 (02:58:18):
The Biden administration did this. The Chinese government isn't boring
a bunch of money into it. And it's basically impossible
to actually develop domestic hip infrastructure other than the kinds
of infrastructure that the US already has, because the really
short version of it is that it's not just a
technological problem, and it is it's really hard to actually
felt the technology. This is why almost all of the

(02:58:39):
direct productions off the're trying to replicate basically just happens
in Taiwan. It's not just a problem of the technology
is really hard. It's a problem of the machines to
make the machines that you need to make. These things
exist in like one place in the world, in Switzerland, right,
So in order to actually scale up production of this

(02:58:59):
would just in theory, what these one hundred percent imported
semi conductor tariffs are supposed to do. Right, You have
to go up three layers of the supply chain. You
have to make the machines to make the machines that
make the machines that make the semi conductors. Right, That's
like the simplest way to explain it.

Speaker 5 (02:59:15):
We don't.

Speaker 8 (02:59:16):
We can't fucking do that, like a we could throw
a fucking hundred billion dollars, that's what they would do. Shit, Right,
So they're chasing just a ghost. But you know, our
entire sort of like trade policy is just being run
by the just weird, fascist, miasmic phantoms of all of
these trade policy people. Now, it's also worth noting that

(02:59:37):
there's been you know, another I guess kind of tariff
that's been enacted other than hilariously the countries that tried
to negotiate with Trump got worse rates than the ones
who just waited until the imposted fifteen percent rate.

Speaker 4 (02:59:49):
Generally that's good, it's funny.

Speaker 5 (02:59:53):
But also so.

Speaker 8 (02:59:54):
Trump has been threatening anyone who buys oil from Russia,
and also I think then is weyla although it's been
less for US on that with fifty percent tariffs. Right
now he's threatening India with fifty percent tariffs because India
has been buying oil from Russia that India's tariffs are
currently a twenty five percent. He has also just straight
up imposed to fifty percent tariff on Brazil for refusing

(03:00:16):
to release Bolsonaro. There's been some updates on that front
where Lula is just straight up refusing to do direct
talks at the US. Lula had an exclusive interview with
Reuters where he said, quote, we had already pardoned the
US interventions in the nineteen sixty four coup, said Lula,
who got his political stri blah blah. Listen, listen to
the Lula episodes we did, They're very good. More more

(03:00:36):
Lula quote, but this is now not a small intervention.
It's the president of the United States thinking he can
dictate rules for a sovereign country like Brazil, it's unacceptable.
It's worth noting that this is actually a pretty massive
change for like Lula specifically relations with the US. Lula
actually had very good relations with George Bush. But he
is writing a massive tide of Brazilian anti American nationalists,

(03:01:00):
and he's attempting to spread this tide elsewhere.

Speaker 5 (03:01:03):
Right.

Speaker 8 (03:01:03):
He's been specifically saying that he's calling on organized resistance
from particularly India and China. But the rest of bricks,
which is a well, okay, bricks was originally a category
of assets that's now kind of a vaguely a political alliance.
Who's made members are Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
It's unclear if this will happen. I kind of I

(03:01:25):
don't know, but Lula is the first person really really
seriously trying to organize resistance to this outside of the EU.
The EU's also wonder a thread of thirty percent tariffs
if they don't just sort of like see the Trump's demands.
But like you know, again, India also negotiated a deal
with the US and then immediately got their tariffs, like
he's now being threatened with eighty percent tariffs, so you

(03:01:46):
can't negotiate with him to escape this. So I don't know, Lula,
maybe this is the beginning of sort of organized, like
large scale organized terriff resistance to the US being framed
in this sort of like collective struggle versus the US thing.
That's an interesting political trend that will be following as
all of this continues. Okay, and the rest of the

(03:02:07):
unhinged amount of tariff news we're going to be covering Monday.
I will make a brief note that the Yale Budget
Lab is estimating like like a twenty four hundred dollars
increase for the average family just in terms of like
inflation prices for this, especially on things like clothing. They
are specifically, I think there's a Ceneta articleipus. They're specifically
talking about running shorts and shoes and anything any goods

(03:02:30):
from South Asia massively increasing in price at talking thirty
percent increases very quickly. So yeah, now, obviously all of
this news is I don't know, the stock market has
kind of like accustomed itself to tariff news. Yeah, but COMA,
we've got a really really bad job support last month, and.

Speaker 10 (03:02:50):
Well actually, well well I don't know if that's true.
I think the jobs report could be completely faked. Yeah,
who can say, Jesus, if the president says it, it
has to be true. It's a Biden did you have
a Biden appointee? All crazy crazy.

Speaker 8 (03:03:06):
The auto pen is issued to his job's report. So yeah, Trump,
Trump has fired the Commission of the Bureau of Labor
Statistics for releasing this report. We are just we are
just truly fully into the deep end of shit now,
Like the.

Speaker 10 (03:03:23):
Report just showed that we didn't have very positive job grouths,
and like anyone who's trying to get a job right
now can confirm that.

Speaker 8 (03:03:31):
It's like a nightmare. Yeah, and yeah, we're just like
we're just like fully going to be in Like, you know,
it's unclear exactly how fast American data collection capacity is
going to degrade. It is worth noting this is the
thing that kind of happens at the end of dictatorships
when they really start going to shit, is that they
lose the ability to trust their artistical apparatus.

Speaker 10 (03:03:50):
Yeah, I mean, like anything that happens that Trump just
doesn't like, you can claim it's fake and rigged.

Speaker 8 (03:03:55):
Whether that's losing an election.

Speaker 10 (03:03:57):
Whether that's his good, his good close personal friend Jeffrey Epstein,
or if that's a Bureau of Labor Statistics job report,
it's all rigged. It's all a hope.

Speaker 9 (03:04:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (03:04:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (03:04:07):
But to tie this back to Lula for a second,
I think it's actually really a really interesting historical parallel
that's worth noting that Lula's rise to political prominence came
off of a series of shrikes that was held because
because a bunch of economists that were working with the
inside the Brazilian labor unions figured out the military dictatorship
of Brazil had been faking their inflation numbers, and like,

(03:04:28):
this is one of the things that caused the end
of the dictatorship. So you know, you can only lie
about the inflation rate for so long before like someone
goes like, hey, you've been lying about this the whole time,
and I don't know this has this has brought down
military katters just before, and that's why we have to
hold archive of our own accountable for faking those inflation numbers.

Speaker 2 (03:04:49):
I agree with you entirely, Garrison.

Speaker 8 (03:04:51):
I don't get paid enough for this. He's lost me
not following and yeah, that has been terriff talk.

Speaker 4 (03:04:58):
You know what will continue to be of available to
our listeners at an excellent price despite tariffs, the products
and services that support this podcast. That's absolutely correct, Garrison,
well done. All right, we're back, so bad And also

(03:05:26):
back is the United Kingdom, where a poll shows that
more than half of Britain's think there are more migrants
in the UK illegally than legally. This isn't true, no,
but feelings matter way more than facts. Failings matter, yes
they do. The actual data, even at the highest estimate
of undocumented people, shows that it's around ten times more

(03:05:47):
foreign people who are in the UK with documents. This
is indicative of a broader issue, right that the discussions
we're having around immigration are nearly all based on massive
amounts of misinformy. Misinformation by a mission was extremely common
in legacy media until very recently, right like, there was

(03:06:09):
simply not people covering immigration in a serious fashion. Even
in the Biden administration, the reporting that was done was atrocious.
This comes as the Labor government's disapproval rating in the
UK hit sixty seven percent in a yugo of pol
which I think is very indicative. What Labor did right

(03:06:30):
was try to adopt right wing culture war positions to
get people to vote for them, and it does not work,
and it is not working for them. You can look
at their policies towards trans people, right, they're atrocious, and
it's not buying them to favor they wanted to moving
back to the United States. Yon sou Go, she's called
Sue by her friends. It's been released by Ice after

(03:06:53):
being detained at a routine hearing. A twenty year old
young woman as a Korean national South Korean evidently right,
and the daughter of a priest. So she's here on
a visa as a dependent of a religious worker. There
are religious worker visas, and she's here as a dependent.
She is I believe in the process of transitioning to
a student visa. She had the hearing, her case wasn't

(03:07:18):
dismissed or evoked. She had another hearing set for October.
I claim that she overstayed her visa. Her lawyer says,
I claim it's not true. I'm particularly interested in this
case because of the intervention of the diocese, the Episcopalian
Diocese of New York, and so it was the Episcopalian
Diocese New York's legal team who fought for her release.

(03:07:40):
She was very quickly moved to Louisiana. We know that
ICE likes so do this right. It likes to move
people to places where it feels like it has a
favorable circuit court. The dioces of legal team was able
to secure her release, but they are still working on
the rease of a fifty nine year old ProView and
asylum seeker who has been detained after having her court
date moved up. So in her case, they said, hey,
we've got a hearing that's opened up. When don't you

(03:08:02):
come in on Thursday and then detained her, which is
just reprehensible. It is really good. I think that these
big religious organizations are getting involved directly in these cases,
that they are taking on responsibility, that they're using their
pulpits as a place to oppose this. I think that's good.
I think, regardless of your stance, aren't organized religion, you

(03:08:24):
should be happy about that. These are institutions that have
power in this country. Talking of institutions that have power,
detainees in Florida's Alligator Alcatraz are being denied their right
to file court documents because federal courts are claiming they're
not under federal jurisdiction. State courts are claiming they're not

(03:08:44):
under state jurisdiction, which is fairly reasonable given that they
have not been charged, whether or accused of, in many cases,
any crimes in the state of Florida. Right then, they're
not being held They were not detained by well, sometimes
they were detained by Florida law enforcement, I guess, but
only in their capacity to enforce federal immigrates law. Yes,
with the special deputized nawty, Yes, it's yeah, it's deputies,

(03:09:04):
which we're about to talk about. There have been some
very funny outcomes of that. This isn't it like I've
seen it report as a loophole. It's not a loophole.
It's extremely fucking clear that they were detained by the
federal government for immigration reasons, and they have every right
to representation in immigration court right that this is not
a loophole. They're just denying people their rights, and I

(03:09:29):
think reporting it as a loophole is entirely ridiculous. A
judge has ordered a document showing who is contracted by
whom at the facility be produced as part of a
civil rights lawsuit. So what that will do would obviously
document in the federal government's.

Speaker 2 (03:09:42):
Paying some of this.

Speaker 4 (03:09:43):
I know Rick DeSantis had wanted to use FEMA money
for some of this breaking news. So Federal Judge Kathleen
Williams has ordered the construction new construction holt. They won't
be allowed to do any new filling, paving, or infrastructre
building for fourteen days temporary pause. They can still continue

(03:10:04):
to hold people right like. This is not going to
stop those people being denied their rights, which is what
sort of stake here. So we talked a little bit
about those Florida deputies right who have been I guess
secondid to ICE orgs. They've been crossworn to do ICE work.
ICE is recruiting very heavily right now. I'm offering fifty

(03:10:24):
thousand dollars sign on bonuses. It has reduced the minimum
age and it seems to have no maximum age cap.
From what I can tell, this thing. Border Patrol has
been issuing all kinds of waivers for years, right for
all kinds of things that it's supposed to have as
like standard for its recruiting. So it isn't particularly new.
ICE has been known for a while as kind of

(03:10:45):
if you want to be a FED and go around
and carry a gun, and you can't get hired to
do gun stuff for the FED. To other agencies, ICE
is probably the place you're going to end up, right,
their standards are lower than other agencies.

Speaker 10 (03:11:00):
And now they're like specifically selecting for the most like
online unhinged right wing free to join their agency as
like a national police force. Yes, and that's like what
they're doing in their messaging online. And also some news
this week Dean Kane has has joined I. Yeah, yeah,
it's most likely in like a promotional capacity, but still

(03:11:23):
worth noting.

Speaker 4 (03:11:24):
Yeah, you might get chased by middle aged superman. So
let's talk about what I was doing to recruiter festival.
It is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on big trucks.
We know Donald Trump himself, it's a found of big trucks,
many pictures of him enjoying big trucks. Over the years,
ICE has spent one hundred and ninety six thousand dollars
on Ford raptors for recruiting purposes. The raptor, for those

(03:11:48):
not familiar, is like a tricked out F one fifty.
They were issuing raptors to field agents for a while.
They're not the best vehicles. Like, I've had plenty of
agents complain about the raptism.

Speaker 2 (03:11:58):
Yeah they're not yeah, yeah know.

Speaker 4 (03:12:00):
And the BP had a special lowest possible trim of
the raptor that like, they're popular now because people will
buy them used as government surplus and make them good.
But they yeah, the raptors they had didn't work too well.
They also bought a GMC Yukon for one hundred and
one thousand dollars, which is a very expensive GMC Yukon.

(03:12:21):
I have also noted that ICE is recruiting from the
police who have been cross sworn into doing ICE enforcement.
This has resulted in some very funny beefs between agencies
including can I share this video? Can I screenshare?

Speaker 5 (03:12:37):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (03:12:37):
Yeah, let's that's what's the video.

Speaker 12 (03:12:39):
And then what has happened is ICE has sent emails
to I don't know how many agencies by no, several agencies.
I've talked to several sheriffs that their debuts have received
these this request and basically it's a recruiting tactic. It's hey,
we got your email, now you got certified, And there's
something like dear colleague, you showed an interest in this

(03:13:00):
and that, and we won't let you know that we
are offering a fifty thousand dollars bonus paid ten thousand
dollars at a time, and it.

Speaker 5 (03:13:08):
Is for five years. Obviously, man, is that not you know?

Speaker 7 (03:13:11):
Biden handed feeds you.

Speaker 12 (03:13:12):
We we went through all of that, took our time,
utilizing our local resource, not ours yet.

Speaker 5 (03:13:18):
But local resources. And then they try to recruit you right.

Speaker 12 (03:13:21):
Out for Monday, using the very emails that we give you.

Speaker 8 (03:13:24):
Finally they've found something bad.

Speaker 4 (03:13:26):
Ice is done.

Speaker 8 (03:13:28):
Yeah, this is a new low even for Ice.

Speaker 4 (03:13:31):
Yeah, Sheriff Chip simmons that calling Ice out for that
poor form.

Speaker 10 (03:13:37):
Sheriff Chip finally found something that shows the true depraperty,
a compromised heart of Ice.

Speaker 4 (03:13:43):
Yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:13:45):
Where will they stop?

Speaker 4 (03:13:47):
Well, let's talk about where they will stop or at
least start spending. Ice has been spending some money this week.
Some of this, I think, like some of the sort
of reporting on IFC isn't hugely responsible. So like I
as to sign a sole source contract with B two
Technologies for example, for quote licenses for the inmate identification

(03:14:07):
A recognition system and the mobile offender Recognition Information System.
They call these IRIS and MORRIS based on their initials. Right,
these are for ers, so that's their enforcement and removal
operations brands BO two pitches. IRIS is being able to
identify people with no physical contact based on the tears
in their IRIS. This technology has been used by police

(03:14:29):
for a while, so you'll notice it was called the
inmate identification so that the way they would obtain these
Irish scans would be scanning people who were detained. CBP
will also have IRIS scans so well. Uscis right. This
is one of the pieces of biometric data that's sometimes
collected from migrants as part of their process and moving

(03:14:50):
into the United States and then getting their documents, etc.
What MORRIS will do is allow them to search a
registry of previous offenders. In twenty twenty four, Niagara County
Sheriff's Office were the first sheriff's office to add IRIS
to their vehicles. But a feeling reported as this is
as a CBP officer or ice officers are going to

(03:15:10):
be scanning people's arises with their phones. I don't see
any evidence of that technology existing either in the contract
that the government has or on the website for the
company that makes it. And guessing what this will do
is if they have somebody who for instance, has previously
been detained, somebody who has done time and come out,

(03:15:31):
then they will users to like as a web of
identifying them right when after they've detained them, before they
take them to wherever. The big issue here, right, is
that B two owns this database of scants. So this
database includes Morris right, which is previous people who have
previous offenders. They have a sex offender registry within it.
They also have databases of seniors who are at risk

(03:15:54):
for going missing, so that I think there's people with
dementia that people can voluntarily sign up to. And they
have a data of missing children as well. They are
two interesting company. They also they offer a bunch of
services for detention companies. They previously partnered with the support
our Sheriff's Foundation to provide lower cost prescriptions to sheriffs
and deputies. They're pretty embedded in this law enforcement world.

(03:16:16):
Other contracts they saw for ice new tech solutions for
fingerprint scanners. Again, fingerprint information is routinely taken from migrants
and many one people getting green cards, people getting visas,
people getting citizenship. Yes, yeah, anyone who has in any
capacity and really engaged with uscis like all those categories
you mentioned, Garrison will have already done this. They did

(03:16:38):
also purchase gray Key, which is more concerning, which is
for breaking into cell phones locked cell phones. Yes, it's
trying to get around the lock on your cell phone.
I've written about grey Key before for Input magazine. Generally,
the way they do this is that they try and
make a copy of the cell phone and work on
a copy so they don't get locked out of your
cell phone. But grey Key is an extremely various piece

(03:17:00):
of technology for breaking into people's phones which you otherwise
wouldn't be able to access. So yeah, that is that
is what I have for ices spending spree this week.

Speaker 10 (03:17:10):
For our last story I related to also talk about technology,
but technology in the news some some AI incidents that
have broken into people's news news gathering process. Former CNN
anchor Chris Clomo has shared a fake AI video of
AOC giving a speech in Congress calling out the Sydney

(03:17:34):
Sweety American Eagle ad as racist.

Speaker 2 (03:17:37):
Damn it, I got to see this. Why does it
have to all be so stupid?

Speaker 13 (03:17:42):
I was tweeting today and saw a clip of AOC
saying that Sydney sweeneyad was racist, and so I replied
to it, and I said, why do you care about
this and ignore what matters most?

Speaker 5 (03:17:53):
Why in all the times that you've.

Speaker 13 (03:17:55):
Called on Israel to stop, why have you never told
Hamas to stop, told Moss to surrender? Why would you
ignore the Saint Louis attack on that Jewish guy who
had his car bomb. AOC tweeted back and said, dude,
that's a deep fake that Sidney tweety.

Speaker 8 (03:18:13):
You suck in so many words, and she was right,
they got me.

Speaker 2 (03:18:20):
She was right, I suck. He has been owned. That's
not bad, that's pretty good. That's funny.

Speaker 8 (03:18:27):
I chose to I chose to cut off the click there.

Speaker 2 (03:18:31):
Yeah, yeah, that's the right place for it to go.

Speaker 10 (03:18:35):
On this AI video of AOC. It is clearly like
like in Boston into the video himself. This is an
AI video from from chat GPT memes plus AI art
on Instagram.

Speaker 4 (03:18:50):
Fucking this, this guy is being elevated as a fucking journalist.
Jesus wept.

Speaker 10 (03:18:57):
He later said on on Newstation on his show They
Got Me AI. It was really good and it did
seem like something she would say, I'm gonna now play
yeah video in question to see if you think this
is something that AOC would say.

Speaker 14 (03:19:11):
Sidney Sweeney looks like an Aryan goddess and the American
Eagle Jean's campaign is nazipaganda. I mean fuck watching that
sultry little temptress squeeze into a Canadian Technice three silent
with her bouncy little fun bags.

Speaker 8 (03:19:30):
Staring at you. Oh my god, I don't know no more,
no more. In the episode they.

Speaker 2 (03:19:47):
Got me, Oh man, what a one of our greatest journalists.
You know, AI really has to be. You know, we've
hit a g I if it can, it can crack
a mind as keen as chrism.

Speaker 8 (03:20:03):
It was really good and it did seem like something
she would say.

Speaker 15 (03:20:07):
Good, even how her voice sounds unbelievable, unbelievable, some one
of the most union things I've I've ever seen.

Speaker 4 (03:20:21):
To watch that and then wonder why she hasn't commented
on hermus in the same breath truating indication of where
our country's hat.

Speaker 10 (03:20:28):
That AI video is eighty seconds long. It gets so
much crazier, but we don't need to say anymore. The
other incident of AI in the News. Former CNN chief
White It's correspondent Jim Acosta interviewed an AI avatar impersonating
a school shooting victim.

Speaker 4 (03:20:44):
Oh noess one of those things that like every town
or someone was doing.

Speaker 2 (03:20:49):
Yeah, yeah, yes, I caught this when it happened. Here's
a video.

Speaker 5 (03:20:54):
I would like to know what your solution would be
for gun violence.

Speaker 7 (03:21:00):
Great question.

Speaker 9 (03:21:01):
I believe in a mix of stronger gun control laws,
mental health support.

Speaker 5 (03:21:04):
And community engagement.

Speaker 2 (03:21:05):
We need to create safe spaces for conversations and connections,
making sure everyone feels seen and heard.

Speaker 8 (03:21:11):
It's about building a.

Speaker 5 (03:21:12):
Culture of kindness and understanding.

Speaker 2 (03:21:14):
What do you think about that.

Speaker 5 (03:21:16):
I think that's a great idea, Joaquin.

Speaker 2 (03:21:17):
That's not even an answer. That's not an answer.

Speaker 4 (03:21:22):
This is one of the good things I've ever seen,
create a culture of kindness and understanding.

Speaker 2 (03:21:26):
Yeah, that'll fix it. Thanks.

Speaker 8 (03:21:27):
Incredible humanity.

Speaker 2 (03:21:29):
Not a person that's someone's child.

Speaker 10 (03:21:31):
That's not someone's child, all right, Jim Acosta, routt is
just a generic Well, no, it's it's it's not a person.
This isn't a humanous Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:21:39):
Yeah, but they've attempted to reanimate through cringeji someone's kid
and they look like a character and it's a small world.

Speaker 10 (03:21:45):
Yes, the parents are involved in this process. Jim Acosta
wrote on Blue Sky at four pm, I'll have a
one of a kind interview with Hakeem Oliver. He died
in the Parkland school shooting, but his parents have created
an AI version of their son for a powerful message
on gun violence. Unquote, you did not interview Lachem Oliver.
That's that's not that's not him. You did not interview

(03:22:07):
that person.

Speaker 8 (03:22:07):
No, you did not.

Speaker 2 (03:22:08):
You didn't interview anybody.

Speaker 10 (03:22:09):
You have helped to spread a fake puppet of someone
without their knowledge and consent, just as just as gross
is doing it for like movie actors right who have
who have died. This is and you know, more more
gross actually actually like significantly more gross.

Speaker 2 (03:22:25):
Yeah, it didn't even suggest like it it wasn't even
like willing to be like ban AR fifteen's or whatever. Yeah,
like there was no nothing suggested here, Like I can't
believe how milk toast for a dead person who was
killed by an AR fifteen. It wasn't even willingness. It
was just like vaguely new gun control and also a

(03:22:46):
culture of kindness. But like can't even be specific.

Speaker 10 (03:22:50):
This ghoul that you've made, You're putting fake words in
someone else's like death mask mouth. It's yes, it's so,
it's so unethical, Like I don't even know what to say.
It doesn't work at CNN anymore. But my god, Like
this is not journalism in any way, shape or form.

Speaker 4 (03:23:08):
No, I don't want to like punch down on the
and I don't understand, Like I know parents who have
lost children right through my work. I've talked to lots
of them what I'd like to and I understand the
desire to get your kid back in some form and
if sure, whoever the fuck came to them and said,
we're going to make an AI of your child so
it can argue with journalists about gun control?

Speaker 2 (03:23:28):
Is a fucking ghoul perival.

Speaker 10 (03:23:30):
No, the the fault here is on the people promoting
technology and in effect that's what Jim Accosta is doing
here as well.

Speaker 4 (03:23:35):
Yeah, totally no, because the journalist is totally irresponsible.

Speaker 8 (03:23:39):
And profiting off of it.

Speaker 2 (03:23:40):
It's so gross.

Speaker 10 (03:23:41):
So anyway, that was our AI news to close the episode. Sorry,
we couldn't end on the aoc ad. Instead had to
end on a bit of a more more sour.

Speaker 4 (03:23:51):
Note, Yeah, I generally want to know where that aoc
ad goes. I'm gonna watch it.

Speaker 10 (03:23:55):
Oh, I'll send it to you, James. Yeah, okay, we
reported the news.

Speaker 2 (03:24:00):
Yeah, I guess we reported the news.

Speaker 10 (03:24:09):
Hey.

Speaker 2 (03:24:09):
We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
now until the heat death of the Universe.

Speaker 7 (03:24:15):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.

Speaker 6 (03:24:17):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 10 (03:24:27):
You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here,
listed directly in episode descriptions.

Speaker 7 (03:24:32):
Thanks for listening.

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