It Could Happen Here Weekly 228

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

(00:23):
you can make your own decisions.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to it could happen to hear a podcast about
things falling apart and how to put them back together again.
I am your host, Mia Wong, and today we are
going to be talking about, frankly, the largest and most
raconian trans healthcare band in the country and the unexpected
place that well, I don't know if unexpected is the
right word, but the ignored place that it's come from.

(00:52):
And with me to talk about this band is David Forbes,
who is an editor and a journalist with the Trans
News Network. David, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
Always good to be here.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
I once again back to my I wish I could
have people on the show to talk about like cool
and normal things, but you know, we get that sometimes
this is not one of those stories.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
I mean, we're trans journalists and a dying empire, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Let's yeah, So, speaking of bad things happening in dying empires,
do you want to take a sort of to the
start of this healthcare ban and what we're even talking
about here, because it's not a government healthcare band in
the way I think people expect.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
No, And that's actually really important to all this story
because a lot of the attention in healthcare bans has
been on governments and occasionally hospitals like secular hospital systems
refusing to revide care because they're scared of the federal government.
So it's been a portrays a fight between governments or
a fight over stuff happening at legislatures. And to be clear,

(01:59):
that's off is absolutely important.

Speaker 4 (02:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
However, this ban wasn't put in place by a legislature.
It's not any institution that people have even the facade
of an ability to really influence. On November twelfth, twenty
twenty five, a complete and total trans healthcare ban medications
as well as surgeries adults as well as youth was

(02:23):
put in place throughout every healthcare system run by the
Catholic Church in the US.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah, and that has not really like I don't know,
like I've talked about it, like we've mentioned it on
the show before. I don't know if I've really seen
any other like systemic, large scale coverage of it. I mean,
there were like a couple of articles when it came out,
but other than TNN, like this has been almost completely ignored,

(02:53):
even though it is more draconian than any any healthcare
band that has gone into effect anywhere in the country.
It is it's again, as you said this, Yes, this
is a total healthcare band for children and adults.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
Yes, and for all types of trans healthcare yeah, for everything. Yeah,
And that's the thing. So I've honestly been a little
surprised by that, even old and cynical as I am.
But TNN, as far as I know, is one of
the only outlets, including a queer and trans media I
won't say the only, but one of the only that
has done ongoing coverage on this, let alone in depth,

(03:29):
extensive what are the roots of this? How did we
get here? Kind of coverage. I've done two articles on it,
and those were in December, so a few weeks after
it passed. We kind of went in detail on what
it meant and the implications of which were and have
proven to be pretty horrifying. And also the Catholic Church
is pretty horrific history as an institution. While individual Catholics

(03:51):
have a as we'll get to, have a wide range
of beliefs, including on trans rights, the institution itself has
always been highly abusive, highly reactionary, an incredibly opposed to
our very existence, and that just hasn't changed as actually escalating.
And then we did one just last week that was
on the actual impact, Like we talked to trans people

(04:13):
around the country who'd encountered the impact of the bishop's
ban as I've heard a few folks call it, and
I called a few downs myself, and what it means
for their lives in the ground.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
So I guess there's two points we should hit immediately.
One is sort of how this happened, like how this
band sort of came together and was voted on by
like who. And the second one is how many people
this affects, because I think this is the part that's
really been ignored, which is that like Catholic hospitals, it's
not like they're running like ten of these. I mean,

(04:45):
it would be bad if they were running ten of these.
But this is a significant part of the entire US
healthcare system, Yes, a massive.

Speaker 3 (04:50):
Part of it. Yeah, So I think I think that's
very important to kind of touch on. So this was
passed in November at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops,
which they have regular meetings and decide policies and stuff,
and it's one of the things, and this is going
to be a recurring theme. And this is the degree
to which I think even people think of themselves as
progressive fairly left have kind of bought hook line and

(05:11):
sinker some of the propaganda. And it is overwhelmingly propaganda
coming out of the Catholic Church since the mid twenty
tens when Pope Francis got in. So you were seeing
from this conference the big news in a lot of
progressive circles was, oh, well, they made this statement against
the Trump administration immigration. But here's the thing. That was
a statement. Certainly it's better than if they supported ice,

(05:34):
but it was a symbolic step largely.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah, Like they didn't even do like the very baseline thing,
which would be like excommunicating JD.

Speaker 3 (05:42):
Vance.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
The thing they could do and did it because they're
fucking hours.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
Yeah, but they didn't even do that. Yes, and we're
going to get back to that and often worse than powers. Yeah.
So at this conference that got most of the headlines,
but they also passed this very draconian anti trans healthcare band.
It passed overwhelmingly. This was not like some narrow victory
by the conservative faction.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
No, it was almost everyone.

Speaker 3 (06:03):
It passed two oh six to seven. Yeah, Jesus Christ. Interestingly,
it was interesting listening to some of the proceedings of
this which may not be great for mental health, but
was quite informative and one of the one of the
bishops involved, Robert Barron, cited Pope Francis, who was held
out even sadly by some queer media as being this
step forward for queer and trans rights, which I think

(06:25):
was completely a farce, held out his rampant transphobia, which
was always very clear about, and quoted him saying that
viewed the existence of trans people, they used the far
right term gender ideology as and I quote, repugnant to
the Bible and to our tradition. You could not ask
for a more clear statement of hatred and extermination against

(06:47):
trans people. Yeah, I mean, that's it. This is non
institution that you know is slowly but surely getting better.
This institution that outside of the PR is getting worse
yet is digging in on doing real variactionary harm. And
so the effects of that we're pretty devastating and immediate.
I mean, we'll get into some folks who dealt with
stuff later that same month due to this band in

(07:09):
a little bit. But like the Catholic Church's healthcare networks
are massive. By some estimates, one in six one in
seven of all people in the US go through a
Catholic health care system at some point in a given
a year. It doesn't just include a few hospitals and
includes an incredibly sprawling network of clinics and specialists and

(07:29):
doctors practices, plenty of them are not outwardly Catholic. Even
so people maybe going to a practice owner rum of
the Catholic Church and not even be aware of it.
It's also expanding, it's taking over and buying out previously
secular practices. And this is a multifacet problem. Goes along
with cuts in federal aid, It goes along with the

(07:50):
general like capitalist fervor that kind of grips secular healthcres
as well. So if they cut services, the Catholic Church
often buys them up and expands, so it affects everyone
in that everyone who deals with that, and the kind
of tears has never been pro trans remotely. But previously,
prior to this band, there was kind of a hodgepodge

(08:11):
and some local ambiguities, and there were cases that we'll
get into some of them a second, where local pro
trans Catholics are folks working at those networks could and
did provide pretty substantial trans care through like one ambiguity
or loophole or another that just ended all of it.
So throughout that entire network in some states and ones

(08:32):
you wouldn't necessarily think, including the ones like Oregon and
Washington that are ostensibly supposed to have like pretty strict
trans healthcare protections, Catholic hospitals comprise like over a third
of hospital beds, and I think Washington's over forty percent,
So we're talking about of healthcare beds. We're talking about
a substantial part of the American healthcare system. Four and

(08:55):
ten of the largest healthcare networks are Catholic. That's how extensive.
If this was and now trans healthcare is banned and
all of them absolutely.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
Yeah, And that's something that has an absolutely massive rolling impact,
right because again it's not just that it's like outwardly
Catholic hospitals, and it's something I think you're going to
talk about more later, but it's also like it's people
who have healthcare plans through like something that's affiliated with
the church. There are all of these ways in which

(09:28):
you know, suddenly just enormous numbers of people had their
healthcare taken away effectively overnight. Because the primary way that
anti trans healthcare oppression has been understood has been for
the state level. And I understand why it's like that
because like a lot of it has been coming from
the state both on this is where you get into
confusing American terminology, but both in terms of the federal

(09:49):
government and the state state level governments. Right, people, there's
been a huge focus on that, but the distribution of
the Catholic health care system is cutting through the lines
of what people sort of have previously assumed to be safe. Yes,
and this is something that is a threat to trans
people effectively everywhere. And it's compounding, as you're talking about earlier,

(10:12):
with the sort of crisis of affordability and coverage because
a lot of these healthcare clinics and hospitals and practices
are the ones that are actually covered by insurance. Yes,
and you can switch to like their secular ones, but
you can't go to them because they're not covered by
your fucking insurance. They're unbelievably expensive.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
And this gets to a reality that goes through a
lot of our coverage, which is that trains people are
an overwhelmingly working class demographic.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
I don't think that gets sad enough. It doesn't get
picked even in some queer in trans media, but that
is incredibly important here. I began the second story with
an interview that we published with an interview with Beth,
who's a transom in the Midwest and found it nearly
impossible to find healthcare outside of their networks because, like

(11:00):
a lot of trans people, Beth has an ACA plan,
and because the secular networks are a little more expensive,
some cases a lot more expensive, the ACA plans that
are available to most trans people, you know that they
can remotely afford, don't cover healthcare there, so you kind
of have to and then they don't provide your health
care at all. Yeah, And in that case, this was
someone she'd been going across state borders, which she noticed

(11:23):
kind of wild to get healthcare anyway, to go to
Planned parenthood. Finally thought that she had found a practice
closer to home. Went there before the bishop's ban, like
right before it hit. They'd seemed very welcoming. She knew
other trans people that had gotten a care there before
and everything seemed great. Goes back after the ban and
it's like, oh, I'm sorry, we can't help you. And

(11:44):
this wasn't a practice that was obviously Catholic, you know,
didn't no giant cruise fixes or anything hanging on it. Yeah,
it was just one that was, oh, it's a doctor's
office some other trans that you have gotten care there.
It beats driving at least an hour each way, if
not more.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:59):
Again, when you're working glass, a two hour you know
roundtrip commute is a lot. That's you know, especially with
gas being up more like, that's a lot of money,
and it's strained things even further. And so she had
to go back to traveling across state. But you know,
I think some folks assume and she points out, like, oh,
you just go another provider. You often can't. There's not

(12:20):
that option.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yeah, there isn't one.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
Even in some fairly major cities. There is not that
option unless you have a lot more money or healthcare
through a fairly well healed employer, and a lot of us,
don't you know.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
This is another one of the problems here, which is
that trans people are overwhelmingly working class. It is one
of the worst demographics at poverty rate of any any
demographic group in the US. Yes, the unemployment levels are
like like this was like totally three back when the
economy was like working was like nineteen thirty six, great
depression levels.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
Yes, incarceration rates, education rates, it's all among the poorest
of the poor.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
Yeah, yeah, so all apocalyptically bad.

Speaker 3 (13:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Then there is the issue, and this is an issue
that we've covered on the show from other lenses, which
is that like, yeah, like we're dealing with these like
large scale waves of hospital closures and the less hospitals
that exist in an area, and particularly in the sort
of working class areas where these people are living, right,
the more those hospitals close, because those are the ones

(13:31):
that are closing because they're losing a whole bunch of
funding from the government. Yeah, and you know, there's like
there's a series of other economic pressures there. The more
those options disappear, the more reliant people are on on
these Catholic hospitals which have just implemented an adult healthcare band,
Like the Republicans in Congress aren't pushing that right now, No,
Like I cannot emphatasize how unbelievably draconian and reactionary this is.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
Yes, well, and also they're doing it the same time
that you have major progressive media figures, legislators praising the
current pope for uttering some words about universal health care.
They don't practice universal health care, not just with trans people,
but definitely not with trans people.

Speaker 2 (14:16):
It's like they have the money too, like they could, yeah,
and they don't.

Speaker 5 (14:21):
Like.

Speaker 3 (14:22):
There's a story in investigating this that really set out
to me, and it was from a pharmacy intern. Basically,
someone as I'm studying to be a pharmacist and did
a you know, a stint, a training stint in a
Catholic hospital right before the bishop's ban hit and said
that they were doing at least one gender affirming procedure

(14:42):
a week Jesus Christ a week, and that actually, you know,
this was someone who who had dealt with the situ
to the Ford and had not their great experiences and
was actually heading into this, you know, kind of this
twelve week stint, expecting to have to deal with, you know,
the problems of being a transpersonal with a religious institution.
And I actually said, know that this particular hospital, the
folks who worked there were super pro trains, super accepting,

(15:05):
they were actively providing trains care and mentioned even because
it was a moral area and that's that sat alone,
that was you know, a gender firming care procedure most weeks.
Should be a reminder that a lot of trains people
also don't live in major cities. They live in smaller cities,
They live in small towns, rural areas, even by a mile. Actually,
the region of the US with the largest trans population

(15:27):
is the South, and the Midwest is very closely tied
with the West, which includes the West Coast. Per second,
so they mentioned that there's this was a sentiments of
the staff like, look, if you're in La Okay, there's
a bunch of Catholic hostles with a bunch of other
ones too. So the people seeking out Catholic hospitals may
be a bit more conservative there are more likely to
be other alternatives now to healthcare access can be a

(15:49):
problem there too, But in our area, the kind of
staff had a sense, look, if we don't do it,
no one else will. Yeah, and so they didn't be
pretty pro trains. The loophole they used the ambiguit I
guess the art we're gonna use was if an ensure
secular or otherwise said hey, this procedure is necessary, they
didn't question it. And under the previous pre bishops band situation,

(16:11):
there was kind of that bit of that leeway. This
is an example of you know, some of them Catholic
pro trans folks in a royal area actually doing some
real good and then because they kind of maneuvered in
this gray area and this band just completely into that.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:26):
They also described because they actually had top surgery scheduled
at this same hospital and the band hit and they're
very thankful to the doctor who did you know, surgeries
at that hospital, who intentionally just kind of kept them
on the schedule.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
Incredibly incredible.

Speaker 3 (16:41):
Yeah, but like we need way more of that. But
also it just got a lot more difficult and a
lot more hurdles were placed in the way of that.
So like what was happening just got cut off.

Speaker 5 (16:51):
Yeah, And this is.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
Also a really a really stificant issue because trans healthcare
is already even before this, you know, like the wait
list for think things like top sers and things like
bottom surgery or sometimes years long, even in places that
have like quote unquote like good healthcare, right like even
in places like Oregon or like yeah, you know, in
places like LA, Like you're dealing with multi year wait

(17:14):
lists to get these procedures, and suddenly like a seventh
of all the people doing this are just gone, and
that just contributes even if you can get.

Speaker 3 (17:22):
And someplace is half yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
Yeah, And the number of people who do these procedures
is so small that if you are looking to get
these procedures, like you can talk to the trans people
in your area and they will know every single doctor
who does it, right, Yes, because there's like three maybe
if you're lucky, there's like three.

Speaker 3 (17:40):
Usually there's like one, like even on the HRT front
sometimes and I can speak from experience on this, you know,
it's often kind of an icebreaker of like, oh, you
know which medical practice is giving you your hr T
down because there's like two maybe three if you're lucky. Yep,
and that's might be for a whole region. Yeah, and

(18:01):
you know, a lot of transform maybe even most live
outside of what you think of the few, you know,
major metropolis. But also there was a while I was
looking into this, there was a case in twenty seventeen,
is before the bishop's ban, where at Catholic Hospital in California,
which on paper at least has fairly strong trans healthcare
protections for the US, where a priest with no medical

(18:22):
experience comes in last minute, veto's the top surgery for
a transman, and they kick him out on the streets,
still on the drugs, the pre surgery drug.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
What the fuck Jesus Christ.

Speaker 3 (18:35):
He sued them rightly. Yeah, like you know, this is
this is a hospital in your California. We could go
into it a little bit in the story. So like
that was happening before, but that's not everywhere. Yeah, and
the few cases like the hospital that we mentioned, where
there were folks working around that to still provide some healthcare,
that's probably gone round. I would say it's almost certainly

(18:56):
gone less. Folks are really just breaking the rules, which
they should.

Speaker 2 (18:59):
Yeah, but this is sort of the systemic problem with
having the church hierarchy having control over these healthcare institutions,
which is that even if you are just like in
the institution, trying to do good and you believe on
the right thing, and you're trying to do the right thing,
it doesn't matter, yeah, because suddenly just the hammer can

(19:20):
come down on you from above, and even if you
keep doing it right, there's always just the risk that
they're just going to fire you all.

Speaker 3 (19:27):
At best, it is highly precarious.

Speaker 2 (19:29):
Yeah, And it's this really kind of I don't know,
this kind of like brutal demonstration of the reality that
in a hierarchical institution, it kind of doesn't matter what
the people on the bottom believe, because at the stroke
of a pen, two hundred reactionaries who run your fucking
institution can just come in and be like, no, fuck you,

(19:50):
none of you get healthcare.

Speaker 4 (19:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:52):
Well, and not just that, but run a substantial amount
of the entire American health care system.

Speaker 4 (19:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:57):
Yeah, I mean, and this is actually why, and this
is a a larger factor. I have survived the literal
fundamentalist Christian violence when I was when I was younger,
and I think this is actually something we will probably
get into it a little bit like I've ever gotten
the aversion, especially from queer and trans organizations, to criticize
their distitutions. And didn't always used to be this way,
but it's definitely been this way, including on this issue,

(20:21):
because you know, you will look in vain for a
major national organization that's like taking the Catholic Church and
task go for this, yeah once with millions dollars of budgets,
you know, apparently their higher ups they are too busy,
you know, taking first class flights and raking in nearly
a million dollars a year, while trans people can't find jobs,
you know. But like, yeah, so I've never gotten the

(20:45):
aversion because for a lot of us on the ground,
for a lot of us, who are you know, among
the many, many many trans people that are working class
that live outside some of the like you know, handful
metropoli that we often get depicted as exclusively living in
fundamentals violence, you know, to be and to be clear
from plenty of like Protestant evangelicals as well. Yeah, never

(21:05):
stopped it never stopped being a very serious and real threat.
Their numbers have gone down since the nineties, you know,
in the early two thousands. Yeah, but it's never stopped
being something you really have to have to account for,
whether it's institutional. Even if it's totally illegal, they'll still
do it like it in California, or literal like street violence,
literally like people attacking you with weapons. So I think

(21:28):
that's definitely a factor in all this, and I think
it's a sad factor in why folks haven't heard about it. Yeah,
and you know, in some of the stuff I've talked
about before on the show and elsewhere, I've mentioned that
I think that whatever in the intent behind it, the
gay ink, as it were, the structure of you know,
these larger nonprofits which even send down like the local
and state level at some points, and the culture from

(21:50):
them that kind of is more satisfy and more so
much just kind of dictates a lot of like official
at least queer in trans politics has been a disaster failure.
And I think that's even you know, even more apparent.
Here this is again the largest motorconian trains healthcare in
the US. It's already happened, already in place, and you
will look in vain for any organizing from the issuations

(22:13):
they're supposed to protect trains rights against it Yeah, there
aren't like big lawsuits being filed. There's not like you know,
Expass being run. They have far more resources than they are,
you know, worker run newsroom would do a lot with
what we have. We encourage people to support us, but
like they have a lot more resources to make those
things a large national issue. They have chosen not to,
and a lot of people are going to suffer for that,

(22:34):
are suffering for that.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
Yeah, and I should mention too on an actual policy level,
like a full scale healthcare ban on adult trans healthcare
is like hideously unpopular. Like there's a reason that Republicans
haven't done it, Yeah, right, because it's not popular. So
this is this is a winning issue, yes, right, And
they won't fucking take up the fight because they're too.

Speaker 3 (22:57):
Busy glazing the papacite. Not just them, I mean progress
of us in general are are lately in the papacy
way too much.

Speaker 2 (23:03):
Yeah, And it's just this issue that trickles down to
to like the fact that the SBC, right, the Southern
Baptist Convention, the fact that there hasn't been a sort
of broadscale offensive against them, you know, even though they've been.

Speaker 3 (23:14):
Like drawing some massive problem.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah, yeah, driving those like all of this ship for
fucking ages, and they were like, you know, like there
was a point, like a couple of years ago where
they were genuinely seriously weakened by their series of like
eve general abuse scandals. Yes, and like even though like
these are like the church groups that are also backing
the healthcare bands on the legislative level, there's no sort

(23:37):
of political will to actually go to war with the
right wing churches that are doing this stuff.

Speaker 3 (23:43):
Well, so, any this is an interesting difference, and it
relates to what we're just talking about. The sentiments I
hear among trans folks in the ground, you know, working
class trains folks. It's pretty anti clerical, like to put it,
to put it mildly, it tends to be more gentry types,
especially ones more in Scotts's institutions or like you know,

(24:05):
official political culture, the gang stuff we've been mentioning that
have more of this aversion. And I will have to
say it wasn't always this way. I am old enough
to remember when queer organizing taking aim at mocking, even
go directly going the attack against suing definitely religious institutions
was a pretty common fixture a prominent example, and I

(24:28):
deal with this in the earlier piece as well as
touching on the more recent one was act UPS nineteen
eighty nine stopped the Church Action, which you imagine a
queer or doing an action with that title today, in
which case they militantly disrupted services to Saint Patrick's Cathedral
in New York because of the ridiculous homophobia of the
Catholic Church. That's werell in the ation asides. Yeah, and

(24:51):
if there's some video of this that we that we
linked in that first story from act UPS archives, and
I've had the signs hilarious, but there's stuff that you
would immediately see tone placing about even from some trans
queer and trans media today. Yeah, you know, oh, we
shouldn't alienate normies. All this, all that, and no, hey,
there was a big backlash of the time, a huge one.

(25:11):
The President condemned it, you know, the federal officials condemned it,
the Congress critics condemned it. You know, there was this
giant attack. This was unacceptable beyond the pale. It also
worked the Catholics did start backing off their stances because
they didn't want to be attacked more. And I think
it's a good example that stop looking at the damn
poles and just fight them. Yeah, you know, it's generally

(25:33):
a much better approach. And I think I have to say,
I think part of this, as you've seen, especially with
how you know, the co option of some of the
results of equal marriage, when you saw after that era
gay and groups use that to become like the predominant
force and keep a lot of other organizing and queer
and transactivism. You saw this backing away from ever criticizing

(25:56):
religious institutions. I mean, the advocate named Pope Francis in
twenty thirteen their person of the Year.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yeah, and like this is the guy who said that
she said that gender ideology is more dangerous to the
world than nuclear weapons.

Speaker 3 (26:07):
Yes again Yeah, individual Catholics of their own sets of
beliefs and differ. Some are very obviously pro trans, but
like the institution is very unequivocal on this. It has

(26:27):
never stopped being that. Yeah, and long time journalist covering
the Catholic Church, you know, caution that. Look, the term
they used was changing the tone but keeping the same
music for Francis's papacy. Yeah, and Leo is very much
in that now. I think that actually opens up a
weakness because with the you know, revelation of the horrific
levels of serial child abuse within the Catholic Church, with

(26:49):
the you know, atrocities on massive scales involvement indigenous genocide,
with the attacks in the eighties and ninety and two
thousands about their homophobia and the role in the agent
asides as well, like there was actually starting to be
this giant institution despite how higherarchical and an accountablies were
starting to be on the back foot. And you know,
in some places like Ireland, this has led to its
power numbers being like taking a massive hit. So there

(27:13):
was a shift, like any institution, to give a hinder face.
And the depressing thing is that among a lot of
people should know better, it's largely worked. Yeah, and I
really wish it would be less taken it by symbolism.
It's also like the facto with theocrisy, because one of
the people we talked to, Allison, would try to get

(27:34):
testoster and right off the bishop's ban they're not Catholic,
their doctor isn't Catholic, their pharmacy is not Catholic. Yeah,
so you'd think, okay, well you should be able to no, no, no.
The insurance that their spouse had was technically provided through
a Catholic health care network, so it took them months
before they finally got the test saster or not, and

(27:54):
so now they have to pay out a pocket for it.
They can for the time being, but for working class
trains people, that's one more costs on top of everything else,
and eventually those are costs you often can't bear. So
like that, that's the reality.

Speaker 2 (28:07):
Yeah, and the realities is unaccountable the deocratic rule. Yeah,
in areas where it's not supposed to be.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
Happening exactly well, and potentially any area you know, if
you have a secular practice today delivers you HRT no issue.
It could get bought out by one of these networks tomorrow. Yep.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
Why the fuck do these religious institutions have the ability
to influence like healthcare at all?

Speaker 3 (28:31):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (28:31):
Right, It's something you would think would be not a
place where someone else's religion can suddenly yeah, and not
even like that person's religion. It's like the religious hierarchy
of a church should not be able to dictate whether
someone gets healthcare. And yet yeah, this goes well beyond

(28:52):
the you know, even supposed power in a secular side
that you know, religiouship have all we can you know,
they can make this pronouncement that applies to those who
believe in that religion or that specific denomination or institution
or whatever. Now this is affecting plenty of people who
have never set foot in a Catholic church, Yeah, who
are remotely Catholic. Even the providers that they're going to

(29:13):
aren't Catholic.

Speaker 3 (29:15):
And this is still happening because that's the kind of
sway and power they have, and it's not been seriously challenged,
including by the liberals and even to me leftists and
given to the Southern Baptis Convention earlier. It isn't just
the Catholic Church, but because of the sheer scale and
the centralized nature of its hierarchy, they are certainly probably
the single most damaging institution on this front. The SBC

(29:37):
is a problem. While they operate on far too vast
a scale, they don't operate in the scale the Catholic
Church does.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
Yeah, this is you know fundamentally, like part of the
issue here is just is just there's a I don't
know if advantage is the right term here, but like
the centralization of the Catholic Church relative to like the
sort of divided Protestants and nominations allows them to wield
power like collectively in a way that is a lot

(30:06):
harder for something like the SBC where just like it
just doesn't have the scale that like that that the
Church does and like that the Catholic Church doesn't. Because
the Catholic Church is this large, is able to just
buy out this much of the hospital system. And then
because of the of the top down structures where the
bishops can just go and and vote and do and

(30:27):
implement this stuff. It's a really really really significant problem. Yes,
that is just not being dealt with. This is not
a problem that you can just like snap your fingers
and solve by like running stuff through a state legislature.
Like you actually have to go after the institution. You
have to fight them on their ground.

Speaker 3 (30:48):
Yes, And also this is you know, it's it's kind
of what I ended the December piece with. But also
it's something I have sized in the second one. Anyone
who wants any kind of liberatory future, regardless of whatever
their personal beliefs are, tight clericalism has to be part
of it. It's not the same against being it's every
individual of a certain religion. It is specifically against this
kind of theocratic hierarchy and its power over people's lives.

(31:12):
You do not get to anything remotely liberatory without directly
attacking and challenging that. And for too long that struggle
has largely been abandoned and not shockingly fundamentalist of various varieties,
and let's be honest, primarily Christian fundamentalists have played a
major role in American fascism and in stripping rights from

(31:34):
entire groups. And it's interesting because you mentioned the Council
bishop beside this, but that's true, but he gets even
more centralized than that, the progressive pope that's getting praised for,
you know, condemning the Iran war, and it's always condemning
or statements or this or that. Yeah, the Catholic Church
is still kind of an absolute theocratic monarchy in some ways.
You know, you could just say, hey, American bishops, don't

(31:55):
do that, like I'm overruling you. You do have to
provide trans health care under whatever circumstances are, regually all
of them. He's chosen not to. And if you look
at his history of transphobia before he became pope. Ye,
it's not particularly surprising.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
Yeah. I think sort of like the very baseline kind
of anti clerical stance here is like the moment your
religion is able to dictate the behavior of people who
are outside of it. Yes, you have crossed the line
into sort of like into this kind of clerical rule
in ways that I think everyone should be like deeply

(32:32):
opposed to.

Speaker 3 (32:34):
Yes, like universally that should be regarded as unacceptable and oppressive.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yeah. And this is what we're dealing with here, which
is that when there isn't this you know, because like
we talk a lot about sort of the separation of
church and state, which has always been kind of a
joke in the US to like a broad extent, right,
But like you know, there are like other spheres that
exist in our lives, right there's you know, like they're
econ always here is there a health scarce sphere? They
were like social spheares, And you know, like the fact

(33:03):
that a church can just be like no, fuck you
and cut off unbelievable numbers of trans people from their
healthcare in a way that even the sort of like
right wing theocrats in office wouldn't be able to do. Yes,
is something that has to be has to be a
posed because fuck.

Speaker 3 (33:24):
That it does. And I will add while you know,
obviously and we deal with some of the story of
you know, an example of pro trains folks at a
Catholic hospital in the Cafe hospital, overwhelmingly the staff were
pro trans. Yeah, but I do think and polls, to
the extent that they matter, you know, do show repeatedly
that opinion within Catholics themselves eventually is pretty split on this.

(33:47):
There are the substantial number who are pro trains right,
some pro trans healthcare. I also have to say though
that at this point I think there is a specific
obligation among them to speak up and act against this loudly.
And you know, I think the example of the doctor
who who when people I interviewed, you know, get around
the band to get top surgery. I think that's the minimum, honestly,

(34:11):
like like, okay, if you support trains rights, start here,
because I think pressure from that quarter, as we've seen,
hits even harder on some of these institutions, you know,
because while they claimed, you know, be this above everything
kind of hierarchy, we have seen worries about losing numbers

(34:32):
of Catholics being involved in the church has driven their
decisions before, and more pressure will drive them again potentially,
you know, like, yeah, I think it will. Like what
we've seen pretty clearly just in my lifetime is when
these institutions are under attack, when folks go on the
offensive against them culturally, you know, socially with direct militon

(34:54):
organizing like Act UP did, then we see some of
our rights and liberation advance shockingly quickly in some cases
compared to where they were. And when that is relaxed on,
when they are given space to gather power and plan
and go back on the attack, then things get a

(35:15):
lot worse very quickly. Yeah, this can be fought. The
first part of fighting it is to talk about it,
to be vocal about, to be loud, and to talk
about how it is unacceptable. I think, frankly, a lot
of pressure can also be exerted on some of these
gay ink works, like if they want any donations or
any support, I don't think they should get a lot
of nation supporting. I think there's better places to put it.
But if they don't want to become pariazed and queer

(35:37):
in trans communities, that needs to be a message like
you need to fight this. You need to fight this hard,
need to fight this now, because to do otherwise, I
think it's just an act of unforgivable cowardice and treaties
and new more time to kind of use a metaphor, Yeah,
but you know, we always end our pieces of T
ANDN because I think, I mean, there was a joke
about it I saw recently of like it is the

(35:57):
sacred role of trans journalism to you know, unnecessarily scared
trans people beyond all measure. Yeah, and I think people
should take that to heart that among like trans folks,
some trans journalism is getting that. And I've termed these
pieces of panic slop when they're badly sourced exaggerate some things.

Speaker 2 (36:13):
Yeah. Yeah, the day we're recording this, uh, the episode
came out. So I don't know if like if like
some other unhinged thing has happened between now and then,
and you're like, wow, why are you not mentioning like
the public max executions of trans people or some shit
like I don't not just like paddicts up, Like that's
why because this is this is being recorded on the
day in which our episode about this dropped. But yeah, yeah, yeah,

(36:36):
like this panic slop shit.

Speaker 3 (36:37):
Is just like, yeah, but it's you know, it's become
a real problem in some quarters. And yeah, I you know,
I think kind of it's to be a nerd, like
any reckoning with conflict, and even like the warfare level
of conflict is always like you have to have acurate information,
you know what actually is a threat, what is not.
And I think communities under fire, which we're all part of, yeah,

(36:59):
have to have that even more so, and especially now.
So I tried to exaggerate the very real threats and
the Catholics band is definitely one of them. But also
like people have fought this stuff. They fought the stuff
even when the odds looked more dire. It can be
fought again, Yeah, like d'reing the age shed of side exactly.
They fought them in one, yeah exactly, and it can
be fought against again and one. But it has to

(37:20):
be fought and has to be fought hard.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
Yeah. But and I think I think the last thing
I want to mention this is something I say a
lot with union organizing, but like the people in Act
Up who went and fought are just you Yeah, there's
nothing like special about them. They were just people who
were forced to act and who took up the fight
and did it.

Speaker 3 (37:42):
Yeah, And I think that actually kind of can can't
transmit something that has been seen as a bad trend
within trans communities. I don't think that always is of
like all transmunities like crucify their heroes too much. They
pillary people too much. In a lot of cases, if
it's a public figure the Oxer McBride, it has done
some some really terrible stuff. They're acting out of frankly
a just sense of grievance. But also I think there

(38:04):
should be a shift away from individual figures on pedestals,
from looking to like a set of leaders, you know,
guide everyone else. I think we're at our strongest when
the organizing is coming from everywhere, the fight is coming
from everywhere. It's not singular figures. And honestly, I think
pedestals are bad for everyone involved. But you know, and
doesn't exact what you're saying, Like people can start acting now,

(38:26):
they don't need to, you know. Certainly, I think it's
good to pressure large organizations and figures with power, partly
because I think give people's sense of empowerment as well
as occasionally fear works and they can see and you know,
something improves a little bit, or something worse as avoided,
but also just for like it's just us, y'all, you know, like, yeah,
that's what's going to have to solve this.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
And that is why we start. I don't know, I
don't have a percentage on the episodes that we start
with things falling apart, but also putting them back together
again because we can and we can make it better.

Speaker 3 (38:57):
They're building something better entirely. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, And on
that note, if people want to support trans News Network,
they can find out how to do so at Transnews
dot Network. We are a worker run nonprofit and kind
of trying to set a model for trans media that's
in depth and hard hitting and unrepentently radical, but that

(39:19):
also is you know, goes in depth and investigates stuff
and gives an accurate picture of what's going on, the
threats but also real victories.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
Yeah, and the best reporting on us is going to
be done by us. Yes, so you can help make
the possible. We appreciate any support we get. We do
a stunning amount on a fairly shoe string budget. Yeah,
it's unreal.

Speaker 3 (39:44):
Well, I appreciate that comple of it, but yeah, It's
an awesome crew of people. I am incredibly fortunate to
work with all of them. Yeah, and actually shout out
to my head Myralizene, who did a great job of
going through this piece and also has done some incredible coverage.
But yeah, everyone who worked ten and I'm really fortunate
to work with. And you know, this is trying to
set kind of an alternative in trans journalism that is

(40:07):
worker run and is underpent to hell.

Speaker 2 (40:09):
Yeah, you too can go to war with the bureaucrats
and the theocrats and the politicians who are trying to
destroy your life.

Speaker 4 (40:17):
Indeed, woman life freedom. Such was the slogan of the
women's movement considered key to the project of the Democratic

(40:38):
Autuonamous Administration of North and East Syria or soon as Rajafa.
Though originating in the Kurdish liberation struggle, the project quickly
became polyethnic Syrians, Arabs, Armenians, Czds and other groups involved
in that project, and in fact, the internationally recognized name

(40:59):
or Java has fallen out of use by the project's
administration in an effort to de ethnicize the project. I'm
going to keep using Rejava simply because it's quicker to
say than DAA nes so then yes or any other combination,
but just wanted to put that disclaimer of in the beginning.

(41:23):
So in the midst of the Syrian Civil War, the
region gained its de facto autonomy in twenty twelve and
pursued a somewhat unique political experiment for crassroots governance and
social legal reforms that have attracted significant international fever and support.
Do not recognize internationally as autonomous except by the Catalan

(41:43):
Parliament for obvious reasons. For the past decade plus, the
people in the region have fought fiercely for independence from
ISIS patriarchy, Turkish incursions, and other Syrian opposition groups, but
recent events led to the newly minted Assyrian government having
seriously jeopardized the autonomy of the project. Welcome, take it

(42:04):
happen here. I'm Andrew's age also Androism on YouTube and
I'm joined once again.

Speaker 5 (42:11):
It's me.

Speaker 4 (42:11):
It's James, Yes, and I had to talk to you
about this because I know that you have contacts there,
you have experience with that project, with the people involved,
and yeah, we're here to discuss the feat of Rajava.

Speaker 5 (42:23):
Yeah, I'm always excited to talk about Rajava and I
think it's super important that we talk about it right now, Like, yeah,
there's a lot of bad stuff happening currently, but this
is really bad. Like in Rajava, we had the opportunity
to see people living without gods or masters, people building
democracy without the state. We had the opportunity to and

(42:47):
we have the opportunity, right, So Rashava's not gone, But
like anarchism didn't have to be like an ideological construct
that only exists in our little punk hows it's it
existed in it in an area where millions of people lived.
And yes, but we should talk about how we can
be in solidarity with him in this very difficult time
right right.

Speaker 4 (43:06):
In fact, as we're on that topic, I think it's
useful to have a brief explanation of the history and
ideology behind the Java project before we talk about what's
happened most recently. Yeah, So in brief, the project really
began into Oky, where the Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK

(43:27):
was banned and some of its supporters moved to Syria
and founded the Democratic Union Party or PYD. Now this
party shared an ideological foundation with the PKK and its
founder Abdullah o Chilan, with the ideology of democratic confederalism,
which alex plain in a second Brajava came into being
following the Arab Spring of twenty eleven as various factions

(43:49):
of Syrians rose up against President Bashar al Asad, and
in such a climate of conflict, ISIS rose to prominence
to threaten the region as a whole. So Alasad was
dealing with other opposition group in Damascus, he withdrew forces
from North Syria, which left the region vulnerable to ISIS
and to key Kurdish groups in North Syria. Then formed
the Kurdish National Council to secure the area, but after

(44:11):
an ideological split, the project of Rajava would emerge as
a polyethnic polity composed of the cantons of Afrin, Jazira,
and Kubani. The PID operates Java within a political coalition
called the Syrian Democratic Council or SDC. The IPG or
People's Defense Units and the YPG or Women's Defense Units
are the paramilitaries forming the bulk of the political assemblies

(44:34):
and military coalition, which is called the Syrian Democratic Forces
or SDF. I know, it's a lot of acronyms being
thrown at you at once.

Speaker 5 (44:43):
Yeah's alphabet too. I think until relatively recently, the bulk
of the sdf's forces were Arab. You have ideological groups
that are allied, right than Northern Democratic Front JI Shelter
War at one point, and then you have these groups
which are more tribally based. Those groups had allied to
the SDF to fight the Islamic State, right, Yes, yeah,

(45:04):
they always want to push back on it being a majority,
but it's now. But that's that's that's a creation of
the last eight weeks.

Speaker 4 (45:12):
Right, Okay. I remember reading that they were the WIPEPG
were forming a good chunk of the SDF. I suppose
that was more recent information that I had seen then.

Speaker 5 (45:23):
Yeah, I think it probably would have been or like
you will see that published in broadsheet newspapers and have
done for decades. Like it just wrong. But there was
this tendency in the I guess the Western press, right,
and some of this is somewhat orientalist in a way,
Like they referred to the SDF as the Kurds because
Kurds were somehow seen as closer to European people than Arabs,

(45:47):
and like it attempted to sort of I guess, to
make it more palatable to an audience.

Speaker 4 (45:53):
Right, a kind of a racial elevation of some kind.

Speaker 5 (45:56):
Yeah, and I think the friends, we can talk about
friends versus whatever else. Slater, but would push back on that.
They would tell you the SDF was majority Arabs certainly
at the time it fort the Islamic state, and of
course there were Assyrians and Armenians and your CDs and
international volunteers as well.

Speaker 4 (46:15):
For sure. For sure. So you had these Syrian Democratic
Councils or the STC, led primarily by the PID right.
They were taking on the task of both fights and
the Islamists while engaged in an ideological project to bring
democratic confederalism into practice in North Syria. So, democratic confederalism

(46:36):
is a transitional political movement that tries to move beyond
the nation state by refusing to seize state power. Instead
of organizing society through the state, they seek to organize
society through local assemblies that manage their own affairs while
coordinating action through confederations. Democratic and federalism emphasizes pluralism, more

(47:00):
nationalism and secularism, or for religious government and restorative justice,
gender liberation, ecological sustainability, cooperative and communal economic forms. Democratic
and feralism was seen as is seen as a pragmatic
way of building collective self organization within the purview of

(47:22):
the existing dominant state model of the world while gradually
undermining its authority. Now, the gender liberation component in particular
has received a lot of international attention thanks to the
pewide's efforts to put it into practice. They established gender
party quotas in all administrative, political and decision making bodies
and leadership roles. They established women's councils to address women's issues.

(47:46):
They established the Women's Protection Units or YPG, which is
an all female army which is very popular. And they
established laws to ban honor killings and child marriage while
strengthening the divorce rights of women. So these efforts and
others within Ora Java have gotten a worldwide admiration for
the project, and many international volunteers have visited Rajawa to

(48:08):
help them fight. And if you're in a lot of
online anarchist circles, you've probably heard a lot about Java
and solidarity with deliberation, but I think it has created
a misconception that the solidarity that anarchists feels for Java
is equivalent to one to one ideological alignment yeah, right,
what they're doing is not anarchism, it's kind of its

(48:31):
own thing. It's democratic confederalism. Yeah, and this has been
a bandit in solidarity to the people, of course, but
it just means, you know, being clear that we are
fighting for a will in which many rules exist, and
so are they, and we are just willing to stand
with and observe that project and you know, wish for
the best and hopefully the best and see what comes

(48:52):
of it.

Speaker 5 (48:53):
Yeah, there are anarchist formations within the SDF right technosy analysis.
It means anarchists struggle. It's like a more doctrinally anarchist formation.
And like the way that they would phrase their like
participation is that they are there in solidarity, right, and
like you say, we want a world where many worlds
can exist, and so they can offer and like if

(49:15):
you go to Rijava, people will ask you to offer
feedback right at the Curtish Worlds Techno report of feedback.
They are willing to hear an anarchist critique and engage
with it. That doesn't mean that they are anarchists, but
it doesn't mean that they are like opposed to anarchists either.

Speaker 4 (49:35):
They're more willing to engage with anarchism than most Yeah, then.

Speaker 5 (49:39):
Almost anywhere else have been in the world, maybe aside
from Myanmar, but yeah, they will engage with and have
these discussions, and they're on an ideological journey, right that
the movement began within what they would call the nation
to state paradigm.

Speaker 4 (49:56):
Yeah, I mean the PKK was originally Marxist.

Speaker 5 (49:58):
Lends and olger Land thinking has very much been like
his journey has led the movement on a political philosophy journey,
I guess, and there are different interpretations of different movements
in different parts of Kurdistan that the draw on his
political philosophy. But as his thinking while he was detained
in Turkey moved towards this democratic confederalist outlook, influenced about

(50:23):
reading Marie Bookchin among others, the movement also moved and
I think it was very well placed when the Assatist
state withdrew to try and implement this, like you've mentioned
right self government, the brotherhood of people's, all these things,
but it wasn't always there, and it has been willing

(50:44):
to change and willing to move its ideology over time.

Speaker 4 (50:47):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean that's the thing we want to
look at people and projects and judge based on where
we are in our position and our ideological alignment. Because
one of us necessarily started off as anarchists, right and
while we may wish that as an anarchist, I would
wish that, you know, these projects would move closer to

(51:09):
anarchy and would pursue and explore an experiment with that
ideal and that idea. Everybody's on their own journey, and
you know, at this stage in capitalist global dominance and
status global dominance, we have to let whatever experiments exist
or explore the different angles. You know, there's not one

(51:31):
right way quite yet or they may never be, you know.
As one on the topic of disclaimers, I suppose I
think it is important to address that, you know, the
SDF is not all sunshine and ruses. You know, there
have been allegations of war crimes, including the recruitment of children,
and the allegations are forced to target a displacement. Now,

(51:54):
not all of these allegations have been conclusively verified, and
there are a lot of actors have been involved in
over the years that I push in narratives and common
to narratives that have to be scrutinized on a case
by case basis. Some of the war crime allegations, for example,
have been made by Turkey, which is pretty suspect considering
their track record of both hostility towards Rajava and Ni

(52:16):
Kurdish autonomy, and also their practice of war crimes on
a cell a regular basis. Yeah themselves, you know. Yeah,
but still hypocrisy has said, I think it is important
to not turn a blind eye to these kinds of
problems and allegations when they are made.

Speaker 5 (52:32):
Yeah, I totally agreed. Like, if people are being compelled
to do things through violence, that is what the state is, right,
and that is what we want to stop. And so
if that is happening, then we should condemn it, right,
be that where they're being compelled to fight or compelled
to leave their homes, Like that is a thing that
we are opposed to inherently, right, and it doesn't matter

(52:53):
who's doing it is the action itself is something that
we are opposed to. And yeah, we should again, like
we should look at this like not through like roase
To I know talk a lot about this, but I
translated a piece from French a couple of years ago
from an anarchist who had fought in Spain, and it's
called refuting the legend, and the main thesis of the

(53:14):
piece was that we should engage with the Spanish Civil
War as it was not as we wished it to be. Yeah,
and that way we could learn from it and and
get better as opposed to just creating a hagiography and
like a you know, like saints' lives, and same applies.

Speaker 4 (53:29):
Here, I think, yeah, because the anarchists ferments have been
you know, few and far between. Unfortunately the major experiments,
that is, the massive ones, the ones that make historical headlines.
And I think there is a temptation to, as you say,
in constructor a hagiography, to glorify and venerate these these attempts.
I think it's very important for us we treat them.
It's scrutiny, you know, to hould them up to certain standards,

(53:53):
and to evaluate their missteps, and to highlight their missteps
even more than we highlight thiss successors, because I see
when we were going to succeed in the future. So
if we were willing to address and engage with those mystiques.

Speaker 5 (54:05):
Yeah, absolutely, I think on that point, the way that
I see what's happening in Rojabre is not in a
monolithic way. Their are tendencies and organizations within the revolution, right.
There are some who are probably operating in a paradigm
that is not that far from the like ethno nationalist

(54:26):
or kind of nationalist Marxist paradigm. There are some that
are operating closer to an anarchist paradigm. There are some
who are somewhere in between those two things, right, And
there are some who would just want the Islamic state
or the New Syrian state or the Assadist state to
go away and leave them alone. And that's why they

(54:47):
picked up arms, and that's what they're fighting for. And like, yeah, again, right,
we shouldn't. We should be suspicious of a movement which
is entirely homogeneous. We should be concerned. But I have
concerns about the way some dissenting voices have been treated
in the A n E s in the past year.
We should raise those concerns. But like it would be

(55:09):
inaccurate inter view this movement as a monolith.

Speaker 4 (55:11):
Yeah, yeah, And that's the thing. It's simple, and tour
is concerned. It's it's sad that this phrase has been
vastardized because it's a useful phrase, right, that is, you know,
critical support, yeah, or critical solidarity. It's been taken by
certain Internet actors to you know, to propagate apology yeah,

(55:35):
for atrocities and the reasure of state violence. But it
is a useful way of I think freemen, the way
we should engage these projects. That solidarity doesn't imply that
you keep your aull shut, that you don't seek to learn,

(55:55):
that you don't respectfully criticize. That is, I think the
best way to engage these projecs not to you know,
close your eyes and just follow.

Speaker 5 (56:05):
Yeah. Absolutely.

Speaker 4 (56:16):
Getting back to I suppose what's been happening more recently,
things have not been easy for the movement really since
the beginning in twenty twelve. It has for a long
time been caught in a web of conflicting and conversion interests.
In addition to fight Genisis and not the Giadist groups,
Rajava managed to receive back in from the US out
of a coincidence of interests and tactical necessity, as I

(56:38):
would put it, which is confused in some circles of
the idea that Rajava is a US designed puppet through
and through right. So, after the SDF liberated Raka, they
began taking more heat from two Key, which saw the
YPG as inseparable from the PKK and thus a threat. Remember,
the YPG is the defensive army, the protective services rather

(57:01):
and the PKK is the Kurdish party in Turkey. So
they launched several military operations to prevent the Kurdish regions
from linking up and having territorial continuity within Syria. At
the same time, Rojava faced economic blockades, restricted movement, and
strained relations with their fellow Kurdish political groups in Iraq

(57:22):
that were aligned with Turkey and aligned with the PYD's
political rivals, which had lost influence since the establishment of Rajava.
Then you also had the occasional alignments with Russia as
a strategic leverage against Turkey, and similar coincidences of interest
with the governments of Iraq and Iran, and even cooperation
between Rojava and Asad government. It's interesting to me that

(57:44):
the US alignment is what receives the most attention, when
it seems to me the Rajava had quite a roster of
affiliations of convenience, not to say that those partnerships or
affiliations necessarily benefit them in the long run, but it's
important to police those affiliations in context. Rajava has been

(58:04):
seen and treated as a chess piece essentially by both
global and regional powers as they attempt to put out
a voice of their own and echoed their own autonomy. So,
just before the twenty nineteen Turkish invasion, the US abandoned
Rajava entirely, withdrawing its troops and suddenly leading into the

(58:27):
tragic fall of several settlements to Turkey and Diggish aligned groups.
Whether that moved with a draw or also raised the
international profile of the Rajava struggle, as people on both
sides of book spectrum were pointing out this American decision
to abandon its allies in the Middle East. So, before

(58:49):
we get to the fall of US SAD, is there
anything critical did you say I missed?

Speaker 5 (58:54):
I do a pretty good storary. I've written, literally written
a book about this, so I like, there's always things
I want to say. I was there during a time
when Turkey was bombing. In addition to going to report
on them, I just saw places as I was going
about my day to day life that had been bombed
the night before. Right, I think there's this misapprehension that
America is by America. I'm amuseneting correctly, the United States

(59:17):
is allied with the PYD. That's not the case. The
SDF was the US partner for specifically in what's called
Operation Inherent Resolve, which is the operation against the Islamic State. Right,
while I was there, the US shot down a Turkish
drone because it flew too close to their bases. They

(59:37):
also didn't shoot down the dozens of other Turkish drones
that killed little children while I was there, right, And
I don't think anyone would reasonably expect them to because
US was not there in solidarity with the revolution. It
was there fighting alongside them in this one specific thing.
And while that doesn't take away the fact that it

(01:00:00):
is disgraceful to abandon these people who gave ten thousand
plus of their children alongside the United States, Right, that
is shameful. It is also what we should expect from
the United States people that use the word haval, which
means friend right as opposed to like the way a

(01:00:22):
Marxist movement might use comrade. The friends there understood the
terms of their agreement with the US doesn't mean that
they were not disappointed doesn't mean that they would not
ask for assistance when their children are dying. Of course
it would. But those are terms on which the US
was allied with them, and certainly the US did not

(01:00:42):
ideologically influence them. Perhaps the opposite is the case. There
are certainly some people in the US military who went
over there and came back seeing the world differently. Turkey
actually called the US government because some of the US
soldiers were wearing Abdulahi learned patches at one point and
raised complaints about it. But yeah, I think it's important

(01:01:03):
to understand the terms of the arrangement between them. Otherwise,
I think that's a pretty good praisie of the way
things were. Do you have anything about Shengal?

Speaker 4 (01:01:12):
No, I don't.

Speaker 5 (01:01:13):
I'll do my potted. People can read my book if
they'd like to hear more about its operation. I've sent
one to you Andrew. Hopefully it's making its way across
the ocean.

Speaker 4 (01:01:21):
Awesome.

Speaker 5 (01:01:21):
So Shengal the sacred mountain of the the Azds, or
a group of people have their religious group whose religion
is probably closest to Zoroastrianism. They have like a peacock angel.
The Islamic state targeted the Azds because it considered them
to be apostates, and it subjected them to genocidal violence. Right,
this is the Uzd genocide. The states of the world

(01:01:46):
largely abandoned the Azdi people. They tried to defend their communities,
but they were overwhelmed by the Islamic state, and they
gradually fell back to Shengol, which is their mountain, and
they went to the top of their mountain to make
their last stand. I guess right, that was their place
where they had always gone back to. And there were
some US special forces on the mountain, and from what

(01:02:07):
I understand, also some British special forces, but it was
the friends from Kurdistan who decided to go. It should
be noted that they're like fighting the Islamics stayed at
home at this time. Right their own villages, their own
towns are being subjected to the same violence. They went
onto the mountain and they built humanitarian corridor to extract

(01:02:29):
the Azli people right with their bodies, with their blood,
And if they had done nothing else since twenty twelve,
that would be reason enough for us to stand in
solidarity with them. Right like in that moment when the
world letting the asdis die. Right when Obama and the
United Kingdom and everything else was letting these people be

(01:02:49):
subjected to genocide, it wasn't a military superpower who went
to their assistance. Who wasn't the French or the British
or anyone else who was willing to risk Again, there
were small numbers of special forces, but it was regular
folks from Kurtis down with Kalashnikov's who went to save them.
And I think at this time, when like Western analysts

(01:03:12):
who perhaps either don't have a proper grasp of what's
happening in Syria or do and are just willing to
lie about it, are condemning the a and Ees as
some kind of kurdishcheth no nationalist project, we could point
to this and we shouldn't forget the sacrifice that those
people made at that time.

Speaker 4 (01:03:29):
Yeah, that's an important event that I didn't come across
my reusage, but thank you for sharing.

Speaker 5 (01:03:35):
Yeah, of course.

Speaker 4 (01:03:37):
So I suppose we are now approaching the critical moment
in Rajawa's recent history. Asad's government collapsed at the end
of twenty twenty four and the Hayat tari al Sham
or HGS and Islamist militia with roots in Al Qaeda
stepped into the vacuum and rapidly took control of large

(01:04:00):
parts of the country. Then HGS leader Ahmed al Shara
was recast on the international stage as Syria's new president,
welcomed by regional and western powers, received in diplomatic capitals,
and rewarded with the lifting of many sanctions. Turkey emerged
as his strongest backer, as they were pretty coold with

(01:04:22):
a SAD and they aggressively lobbied on behalf of the
HGS government, reframing it as a stabilizing partner, and not
long after the fall of a SAD, In fact, after
Loachlan himself called for the PKK to this arm the SDF,
which is only loosely affiliated with the PKK, though said well,
you know not us, we will continue to find So

(01:04:44):
Western governments, particularly the United States and its allies, appeared
willing to accept this transformation of THEHGS. The calculators that
are fragmented and internally weak authority could be more easily
stared to serve their long term geopolitical interests. So the
ESHTS certain government had a little press tour, but within
Syria they moved pretty predictably, engaging in violent for pressure

(01:05:08):
and displacement and massacre of the Alawite, the Druze, and
the Kurdish communities in Syria, and for the Kurdish initiated
the project of Rajava. The rise of the HDS government
would mark the beginning of an end, greater isolation and
a renewed pressure from within and outside of Syria's borders.
After consolidating power, the HTS government pushed into the Kurdish

(01:05:30):
regions and encircled Kobani, the historic border city that once
symbolized resistance to ISIS. So for days, coordinated attacks targeted
Rajava itself, threatening not only the survival of Kurdish ol government,
but the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians, as food,
water and electricity would deliberately cut off and the city

(01:05:51):
placed under siege. The violence had been especially devastating in Aleppo.
From early January, the Kurdish districts of Shikh Maksud and
Ashrafiya became the focus of sustained assaults by Turkish backed
militias and units aligned with the Syrian Transitional government.

Speaker 5 (01:06:07):
They would tell you that hik Maksud was a diverse district,
and I'd probably used to describe it as Kurdish as well.
By there they will point out that is CD people
and a lot of the indigenous Christian peoples of the
region who lived in a Leppo tended to live in
shick mac food as.

Speaker 4 (01:06:21):
Well, right, right, Okay, thanks for that contexts Yeah, of course.
So civilian infrastructure was systematically hit at homes, schools, mosques
and public buildings being shelled, while abductions, torture and executions
reported nearmedical facilities. The bombing of Zalid Fekir Hospital devastated
the local health care system and with mountain casualties and

(01:06:44):
entire neighborhoods emptied, local councils in the SDF agreed to
a cease fire and withdrawal on the eleventh of January
twenty twenty six to allow evacuations. More than three hundred
thousand people fled, many seeking refuge in areas still control
by the Autonomous administration, but fighting expanded eastward. Jihada's forces

(01:07:05):
began targets in Raka, the Ressoul Hassaka and critical infrastructure
like the Tissrian down prisons, who within thousands of Jihada's
detinees were located in these areas, and amid the chaos,
Islamist fighters escaped, ISIS symbols reappeared and memorials to Kurdish
fighters were destroyed.

Speaker 5 (01:07:23):
There's one example which I think is particularly revelatory. It
was consistently cast once again by like think tankers who
either know that they're talking speaking things that are n't true.
I was going to say something else there, or they
just don't know and they're being paid to pretend they know.
But though the one in Tabka that was destroyed, it

(01:07:44):
was a statue of a YPG fighter, which she was
in arab It was portrayed as like local people celebrating
their liberation from the SDF, But it was a whole
group of men destroying a statue of a woman, a
woman from that community who had fought to liberate that
community from the Islamic state, right, And I think that like,
when that context is deliberately excluded, that tells us an

(01:08:06):
awful lot.

Speaker 4 (01:08:07):
Yeah, that's that's an extremely critical point, I think.

Speaker 5 (01:08:09):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 6 (01:08:23):
So.

Speaker 4 (01:08:24):
As the Syrian forces pushed further east, some non Kurdish
villages in the region affected from Rajava to the new
Syria and government.

Speaker 5 (01:08:32):
Yeah, mostly in Lake Daris or, right, which is an
area where you have this longstanding that they're referred to
as tribal communities like that. I guess that's a fine phrase,
but sometimes the word tribal, I think, is used in
a derogatory way in the West, So I want to
be clear, that's not what I tend to mean here,
just that they have a different form of political organizing,
right of course, And like there had not been among

(01:08:56):
those communities buy in I guess today an e S project.
There was to the SDF as a military force, but
not not so much to the project. And it was
those communities that switched their allegiances.

Speaker 6 (01:09:10):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:09:10):
This happened even in Aleppo, and we can look at
various economic and political and social reasons for that, and
maybe at some point we should, but I don't think,
like now it's the time that you know, we're concerned
with ongoing struggle there. But yeah, especially in de res Or.
What really saw the SDF frontline crumble was that people
who were in the SDF suddenly became allied with the

(01:09:32):
STG Syrian Transitional Government Syrian government, right.

Speaker 4 (01:09:37):
Right, And so these defections and with this onslaught of violence,
I delivered an ultimate one to the goods and to
the other groups involved in the Automouns administration North Eastyria
was the dissolve the SDF and submit to incorporation under

(01:09:59):
his command office and Irat. So in response, the SDF
commander mass loom Abdi appealed outwill calling on the support
of anyone who are be willing to assist. And this
is something that particularly made headlines, anyone included Israel, which
had previously intervened in Syria for the claim justification of

(01:10:22):
aiding the juris community. I think the way that question
was posed to the SDF commander was definitely leading, like
they were fishing for headline for sure, from what I
saw of that exchange. But in the context of the
Pastimeian genocide and the worlds awareness of the genocide, I
think that even with that desperation for survival in mind,

(01:10:45):
that statement was I think a misstep.

Speaker 5 (01:10:49):
Yeah, we constantly see like this allegation that the SDF
specifically is like some kind of Zionists for sort of
funded by Israel. That's been around for decades, right. I
will say a couple of things. First of all in
the early Kurdish Freedom movement. You know, Kurds died for
Palestine right with the Democratic Friends for the Liberation of

(01:11:10):
Palestine and Bofort Castle. If the Israelis were genuinely allies
of the Kurds, no one would dare touch them. We
have seen what Israel is prepared to do to Muslim countries.
They don't need much excuse. They would do the same
in Syria. Furthermore, Israel has continued to invade Syria and

(01:11:32):
has held Syrian territory for decades and has continued to
take more of it under al Shara, and al Shara
has not done anything about it. So like I find
the idea that he's like eliminating Zion is going to
be very frustrating when the ideaf is literally inside his
country invading it. And the Kurdish Freedom movement as a

(01:11:52):
whole has been pretty forthright about the genocide. So on
October seventh, twenty twenty three, I was in Kurdistan and
we watched what happened first in Israel and then in Palestine, right,
and they were pretty forthright about that no one should
be killing civilians, and as the genocide in Gaza began,

(01:12:14):
they were forthright about calling it a genocide, and I
think they didn't have to. No one was particularly asking
them in twenty twenty three, right, and they did, and
they made statements about it. And like I think seeing
them as somehow ideologically inclined towards Israel when the it

(01:12:36):
largely was in Israel who was fighting the Islamic state, right,
it was largely them in the US. I think it's
just people understanding the politics of the Middle East in
terms of Marvel movies that there can only be two sides.
And like, I'm sure at the time when they were
facing genocide themselves they would have welcomed any support. But
that doesn't mean that they support the murder of civilians

(01:12:58):
in Gaza. They have been big, extra remaly clear about
that for an extremely long time.

Speaker 4 (01:13:03):
Absolutely, I don't think I should becording to the question
just because of the statement of one commander.

Speaker 5 (01:13:08):
Yep.

Speaker 4 (01:13:09):
So, after much fighting, the SDF signed acreements relinquish and
control of Araka, dies Azor and remain in territory west
of the Euphrates Britain in only Hassaka and Kobane after
withdrawing from the Tishrian Dam. But even after concede in
so much government forces violated ceasefire terms, so the SDF

(01:13:30):
declared general mobilization across the Kurdish regions of Syria and
neighboring states as a last desperate attempt to rally resistance.
By the end of January, the Autonomous Administration had lost
roughly eighty percent of the territory it once governed. The
SDF was forced to retreat almost entirely into Hassaka Governorate,
and on the thirtieth of January, the SDF formally announced

(01:13:53):
a cease fire with the Syrian government and accepted a
framework for folding both their military structures and civilians into
the Syrian state. Syrian authorities set timelines on this agreement.
Within a month, they would retake control of water crossings,
oil and gas infrastructure like Crimelane, and also Wadi detention
camps holding ISIS members and their families, and strategic sites

(01:14:16):
such as Kamishli International Airport. Interior ministry units were scheduled
to deploy to Hassaka and Kommissili almost immediately, and Syrian
security forces would oversee the absorption of the Kurdish Internal
Security Apparatus the SAISH into the state's police in structures. Militarily,
the SDF estates to be absorbed under the Syrian Ministry

(01:14:37):
of Defense, but on an individual vetted basis. Up to now,
the fate of the female fighters and non Syrian fighters
within the SDF is unknown, and on the civilian side
of things, the institutions created by the Rajarafa administration are
to be absorbed as well. Kurdish officials have thus far
secured the governorship of Hassaka and limited commander rules within

(01:14:58):
the military in extreme for their surrender, because gained some
recognitions on people. The government claims the firm national civil
and educational rights, promised the return of displaced populations and
issue decrees recognizing Kurdish as a national language taught in schools,
declared the Curtis celebration of Nauru's public body, and reversed

(01:15:20):
decades all citizenship policies that shripped tens of thousands of
Coods of their citizenship. Thus far, most of these promises
are on people.

Speaker 5 (01:15:28):
As I said, yeah, I think they'd see it. It's
like a rebranding, not a surrender in agreement. Like from
what I understand, the Yeppigates still see themselves as the
WHITPG still see themselves as the YPG. The YPG very
much still see themselves as the Women's Defense Force and
so like, as you say, like, all of this is

(01:15:49):
a paper agreement currently and we will see how I mean,
there are now Syrian Ministry of Interior forces in Hesseka
and Commichhlo, but like some of that has come to bus.
But what this means. Talking to my friends, they're like,
we will continue to see exactly, like what the extent

(01:16:13):
they still have autonomy and to what extent they are
integrated into a state which has in some instances banned
women from wearing makeup for instance.

Speaker 4 (01:16:22):
Yeah. Yeah, So the US and franz CO signed this
agreement and pledged oversee its implementation, and the President of
the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq has also welcome disagreement.
But it still remains to be seeing what happens next.

Speaker 5 (01:16:39):
Yeah, I did see a hundred people who are non
Syrian Kurds. I would imagine they would mostly be Turkish
from northern Kurdistan had withdrawn from Syria and Gaunt Candyal,
which is kind of the stronghold of the various other
parts of the Kurdish Freedom movement, and so that that's

(01:16:59):
in so than Kurtistan or Iraq. It's near the border
with Iran. But I saw that a number of them
had withdrawn post disagreement that was probably on the tenth
of February somewhere around there.

Speaker 4 (01:17:10):
So yeah, sadly this is an outcome of the imperialist
world order that empires and regional actors will crush any
threats to their power, will attempt to crush such threats.
And as long as such power remains concentrated in these
states and militaries and ruling classes, whether they are secular

(01:17:30):
or nationalist, or Islamist or anything else, none of us
then be free. Yeah, we could sit around on our
armchairs and speculate, but what Moves or Java could have
done differently, whether it be an affiliate to advance further,
whether it be insufficient integration of and a buying of

(01:17:51):
other groups into the project, whether it be the alliances
or agreements or affiliations that they engaged in. We can
also sit around lit all the limitations they face. Some
they managed to overcome and others not so much. But
the blame doesn't lie in their failures to play this
game of geopolitical chess as ruthlessly as other powers in

(01:18:13):
the region. I think the blame lies in this game
of geopolitical chess, in this ability of imperial powers to
treat the people of the region as a whole as
tools to be used and discarded. And the end. I
continue to hold to the position that only a shared
uprising from below, one that refuses compromise, one that cuts

(01:18:35):
across nationalist lines, has the potential to create a new world,
and that fight must happen both within Syria and beyond
around the entire earth. The fight is not over in Rajaba.
I find it hard to believe that a people engaged
in such a project would let go of that instinct

(01:18:56):
and that drive toward greater and greater freedom. It remains
we seeing what happens with them, but also remains we
seeing what happens with us, what we decide to do
to push our what's want to mean forward. And that's
all from me for today, or power to all the people. Peace.

Speaker 7 (01:19:27):
This is it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. A
revolution is igniting across America, at least according to viral
posts on social media and TikTok videos with hundreds of
thousands of views claiming that anywhere between three to six
to nine warehouses have been set on fire this past

(01:19:47):
week for not paying their employees a living wage.

Speaker 4 (01:19:51):
The revolution might be happening.

Speaker 6 (01:19:53):
We got a warehouse fire in Ontario, warehouse fire in
New York, warehouse fire in Bakersfield, Amazon warehouse fire in Ohio.

Speaker 3 (01:20:00):
When they set a mall on fire too.

Speaker 1 (01:20:01):
It hasn't just been factories at this point, it's also malls.

Speaker 4 (01:20:04):
It seems as though people have begun to eat the.

Speaker 7 (01:20:09):
Rich workers of the world ignite. Like most instances of
viral misinformation, there is a kernel of truth to this story,
and one worth focusing on. But through a massive game
of cross platform telephone facts and causality get warped and misconstrued.

(01:20:30):
Selective reporting of similar but unrelated events can be used
to assert a connection between certain events even if there
is none. But let's start with that kernel of truth.
Just after midnight on April seventh, a twenty nine year
old warehouse worker named Schamel abdul Karim allegedly set fire
to a toilet paper warehouse in Ontario, California, after multiple

(01:20:55):
pallets of paper products were lit on fire. The flames
overwhelmed the fires oppression system and collapsed the roof. The
blaze took over twelve hours to contain and ultimately destroyed
the one point two million square foot distribution center leased
by Kimberly Clark, the company behind Kleenex, Huggies, and Cottonell

(01:21:15):
toilet paper. Local officials and the Justice Department has said
the fire caused over six hundred million dollars damages. The
twenty employees who were working midnight shifts the warehouse when
the fire started all evacuated safely, and there were no
reported injuries. The day after the fire, videos uploaded to

(01:21:36):
social media the night of the fire resurfaced, appearing to
show the suspect intentionally lighting three fires inside the distribution
center while speaking aloud about low wages, corporate profits, shareholders,
and poor working conditions.

Speaker 4 (01:21:51):
You know, if you're not going to pay us enough
to live or afford a live, I always pay us enough.
Not to do that. All you had to do was
pay us enough to live.

Speaker 3 (01:22:02):
All you had to do was pay us enough.

Speaker 1 (01:22:06):
There goes your inventory.

Speaker 7 (01:22:08):
The affidavit filed with the criminal complaint alleges that Abdul
Kareem filmed himself setting fire to multiple pallettes of paper
goods inside the warehouse, and as he lit the fires,
he stated quote, if you're not going to pay us
enough to fucking live or afford to live, at least
pay us enough not to do this shit unquote. Beyond

(01:22:30):
the short videos abdul Kareem posted to his social media,
the affidavit alleges he made further statements to friends and
co workers on the phone and via text message related
to his motive for setting the fires. He allegedly texted quote,
I just cost these expletive billions and wrote that the
quote one percent is an expletive joke. US attorney Bill A.

(01:22:53):
Sale said in a press conference that after setting the
fire quote in a phone call to one witness, abdul
Kareem compared himself to Luigi Mangioni. Abdul Kareem also allegedly
texted quote, all you had to do was pay us
enough to live, Pay us more of the value we bring,
not corporate. Don't see the shareholders picking up a shift unquote.

(01:23:18):
This past Monday, abdul Kareem pleaded not guilty to arson
charges in court, though the warehouse stored Kimberlee Clerk Products.
Abdul Kareem was actually employed by NFI Industries, a third
party distribution company. N FI Industries is a family owned
private company and does not report its profits, but last

(01:23:40):
year said they generated more than three point seven billion
in annual revenue and had over eighteen thousand employees. The
average executive at the company has a two hundred and
thirty five thousand dollars salary, with the highest paid making
seven hundred thousand dollars annually. Meanwhile, the average pay of

(01:24:00):
an NFI Industry's warehouse worker in California, per job listing
sites is eighteen seventy four an hour, with forklift operators
and warehouse specialists making twenty two dollars and thirty nine
cents an hour. The median household income in Ontario, California
is eighty two thousand, eight hundred and six dollars a year,

(01:24:22):
and the average salary is over seventy three thousand dollars
a year or thirty five dollars hourly. Ontario, California has
a twenty eight percent higher cost of living than the
national average. Last year, Kimberly Clark made two point four
billion in operating profit. The footage of this worker allegedly

(01:24:45):
lighting the warehouse on fire went super viral on TikTok,
with millions and millions of us sparking meme edits and
hype videos. Then, in the days after the toilet paper fire,
footage of other where house fires sorry to spread around TikTok,
leading some people to believe that copycat incidents might be

(01:25:05):
taking place across the country. Here's a clip with over
three hundred thousand views of a left wing TikTok influencer
claiming that since the toilet paper arson, more people have
begun setting their workplaces on fire.

Speaker 8 (01:25:20):
So apparently that guy that burns down the toilet paper
warehouse because they were not paying him a living wage
or anyone the living wage for that matter, who the
Internet has dubbed wall Luigi for warehouse Luigi, was not
the only one with that idea or to execute on it.
And I will say I am not one hundred percent

(01:25:41):
shore on the timelines of all of these.

Speaker 7 (01:25:44):
Oh you're not one hundred percent suore, Well, then that's
that's fine. Continue anyway. This guy goes on to say
that since Wa Luigi, he's seen quote four to five
to six other warehouses that have quote burned down or
at least been set on fire unquote. A lot of
this social media reporting does not differentiate between a warehouse

(01:26:08):
completely burning down and a small fire that is quickly
put out. Neither do these social media reports provide evidence
to the cause of these fires. One of the most
circulated videos of one of these other fires is from Queen's.
At seven point thirty pm on Friday night, someone reported
smoke at an industrial complex in College Point, Queens. Firefighters

(01:26:31):
soon responded to a rapidly growing fire inside a lumberyard warehouse.
After the building was searched and no one was found inside,
three hundred firefighters worked all night to contain the blaze
to the sixty four thousand square foot warehouse. The lumberyard
did burn down, but no injuries were reported, and the
cause of the fire is still under investigation. But a

(01:26:54):
post on x the Everything app with almost a million
quote unquote views read quote an other disgruntled employee strikes
at the heart of American capital. That TikTok influencer I
already mentioned was very excited to share news of an
Amazon warehouse on fire, despite not being quite sure of

(01:27:15):
the details or how many warehouses were actually on.

Speaker 8 (01:27:19):
Fire, at least one of which I am beyond happy
to announce one an Amazon warehouse, which is not to
say more than one morn effect did. I've seen multiple
videos of an Amazon warehouse on fire. I'm just not
sure if it was multiple Amazon warehouses on fire or
just multiple people recording the same Amazon warehouse that was

(01:27:41):
on fire. Either way, either way, bottom line, people are
setting Amazon warehouses on fire.

Speaker 7 (01:27:47):
There is no evidence anyone set this Amazon warehouse on fire,
and yes, it is just one warehouse, not multiple. On
April eighth, firefighters responded to a fire at an Amazon
warehouse in West Jefferson, Ohio. The fulfillment center was evacuated
as smoke billowed from the roof of the warehouse. The

(01:28:07):
fire was extinguished quickly and caused quote unquote minimal damage
to the underside of the roof. According to Jefferson Township
fire Chief Dan Gatley, there is no evidence that this
fire was intentionally set by an employee or by anyone,
and was possibly caused by a simple solar panel malfunction.

(01:28:28):
Investigators believe seventy five to one hundred solar panels on
the roof of the warehouse caught fire, which burnt through
quote just a little bit of the rubber membrane on
the roofing and some of the insulation quote. According to
fire chief Gatley, this insulation fell onto two racks of
Amazon products, but Gatley estimated that more damage was caused

(01:28:51):
by the water used to put out the solar panel
fire than from the smoke or the fire itself. The
exact cause of the fire is still on investigation. A
post on x the Everything app with one point one
million quote unquote views and twenty seven thousand likes, shared
video of smoke billowing from the roof of the Amazon

(01:29:12):
warehouse and was captioned, this is beginning to feel like
something of a movement. Another post from a monetized blue
check account with one million quote unquote views and twenty
six thousand likes, also shared footage of the Amazon fire
with the caption another warehouse fire, this time in Amazon
fulfillment center in West Jefferson, Ohio. Warehouse employees across the

(01:29:36):
country are using their unique position to attack the substructure
and base of the Epstein class unquote. We'll return to
talk more about these fires after this ad break.

Speaker 2 (01:30:00):
Okay, we're back.

Speaker 7 (01:30:02):
By the weekend, this warehouse fire meme really exploded and
people started collecting reports of warehouse fires from all across
the country. This next video went viral across TikTok and
also spread to Reddit and Instagram.

Speaker 9 (01:30:16):
I was tagged about this. This is an Amazon warehouse
that also just caught on fire. So this is the
third one after we just heard about New York and
Queens and then the other one in California where we
saw the big video behind it. Right now, this is
breaking news. I don't know much about it. I was
tagged in this, this happened. I think perhaps today I'm.

Speaker 7 (01:30:37):
Gonna pause right here because next she includes a severe
weather alert warning for risk of fire spreading in the Northeast,
as if wildfires, and this weather alert was somehow related
to warehouse fires on the other side of the country.

Speaker 9 (01:30:54):
And I haven't been able to find any news about
it online yet. But there's this special Weather statement moderate
for a fire spread in Pennsylvania right now. So that's
four five right here where somebody said a Jene's store
was set in fire in California. Again, I can't corroborate
these things right now, these are just comments. And somebody

(01:31:15):
also said New Jersey for another warehouse fire, so that
is literally California, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey. I'm
getting comments and reports in right now that there have
been five different warehouse or storefront fires in the last
three days. This shit is fucking wild. Holy six. I

(01:31:42):
think that's six because it's two in California, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
and New Jersey. And again, I'm trying to find these
items online right now, but like, I don't think the
new cycle is caught up fast enough to it. So
like who class war twenty twenty six shit?

Speaker 7 (01:31:58):
This person describes for off on TikTok as a quote
unquote gorilla journalist, and that video got almost half a
million views on TikTok and seventy four thousand likes by
baselessly claiming that a string of fires that may or
may not even be real are actually intentional arsons in
an escalating class war hashtag eat the rich. Let's go

(01:32:21):
over some of the details of a few of the
fires that she and others have mentioned. In New Jersey.
There were actually three fires this past week, one at
a chemical plant, one at a battery warehouse and a
wildfire which sent smoke into Pennsylvania. On Thursday, April ninth,
a three alarm fire spread through a chemical warehouse in Newark,

(01:32:41):
New Jersey. Over one hundred firefighters brought the fire under
control that afternoon. No employees were harmed and the cause
is under investigation. On the morning of April thirteenth, there
was another three alarm warehouse fire in Rawway, New Jersey.
While searching the structure, firefighters discovered the blaze emerged from
palettes of lithium ion batteries. The exact cause of the

(01:33:05):
fire still remains under investigation, and this past weekend, a
wildfire spread through South New Jersey, burning up to one
hundred and sixty acres and sending smoke into Pennsylvania. The
National Weather Service worn beforehand that there was an elevated
risk of wildfires last Saturday due to low humidity and
twenty five mile per hour wind gusts. On the afternoon

(01:33:28):
of Friday, April tenth, firefighters responded to a commercial structure
fire at a trash disposal business near Atlanta, Georgia. The
blaze stemmed from a garbage fire in the warehouse that
grew out of control when adult was sent to the
hospital with non life threatening injuries. Per a Gwinette County
news release, quote, the incident presented several operational challenges, including

(01:33:52):
a downed power line, a deep seated fire within large
debris piles, structural components exposed to prolonged teat, and nearby
hazards involving liquid petroleum gas tanks, and a diesel fuel reservoir.

Speaker 3 (01:34:07):
Quote.

Speaker 7 (01:34:07):
Firefighters brought this fire under control in less than four hours.
According to employees, the fire originated from a small trash
fire near the edge of the warehouse. Workers attempted to
remove the burning debris before the fire rapidly intensified and
spread to the structure. The fire was ruled accidental, and
department spokesperson Lieutenant Jessica Joyner said that it appears to

(01:34:30):
have been caused by trash piled in an unsafe manner,
which can combust when mixed together at such garbage facilities.
But two days later, a viral post read quote Atlanta
Queen's Bakersfield, Ontario. I'm starting to lose track. Many people
are saying only living wages can prevent warehouse fires. Speaking

(01:34:54):
of Bakersfield, a quote unquote communist Twitter account quote a
video of a warehouse fire in Bakersfield, California from a
monetized news aggregator account and got twenty one thousand likes
by writing let it be a pattern. Another account shared
a different video ripped from TikTok, captioned it's almost like

(01:35:15):
electing billionaires was a bad idea. A socialist branded monetized
account posted another angle of the Baker's Field fire, getting
fourteen thousand likes with the caption is a rebellion actually
brewing in the Imperial Core. On the afternoon of April eleventh,
firefighters responded to a fire at a thirty thousand square

(01:35:35):
foot warehouse in East Bakersfield. The Kerrn County Fire Department
said this is the third time buildings at this warehouse
complex have caught on fire in the past few years,
with similar fires in November twenty twenty four and January
twenty twenty five. The cause of this new fire is
still unknown and under investigation, but we know it was
definitely not caused by warehouse employees because this is an

(01:36:00):
abandoned warehouse. The previous owner of the buildings told local
news that the fires have been started by quote unquote vagrants.
A massive fire engulfed another lumberyard last Saturday night in
Wayne County, Ohio. It took twenty four fire departments across
three counties working together to extinguish the flames. This lumberyard

(01:36:20):
was home to a wooden Pallette manufacturing business. On Sunday afternoon,
the owners of the Pallette manufacturing plant said in a statement, quote,
we are grateful no one was injured and that the
fire was contained. We are working with investigators to determine
the cause and with our insurance carrier to begin recovery.
Southwood Palette has served this community for forty two years,

(01:36:43):
and we intend to rebuild and be stronger than ever.

Speaker 2 (01:36:46):
Unquote.

Speaker 7 (01:36:47):
Footage of this fire racked up over half a million
quote unquote views on a socialist branded monetized ex account captioned,
now there is a five alarm fire at a lumber
Pallette warehouse in Wine County, Ohio. There are too many
fires to be a coincidence. The working class has had
it and quote. Tweets of the video got tens of

(01:37:09):
thousands of likes, with users writing, quote love to see
people finally standing up against their employers. Eight in a
week and no more thoughts and prayers, only fire unquote.
Here's another video with over three hundred thousand views from
that TikTok Gorilla journalist going through a few more of

(01:37:31):
these warehouse fires that I've mentioned.

Speaker 9 (01:37:33):
Based on all of my comments and my research online,
based on what people are telling me and from what
I can see, the ones that I can corroborate right
now was that last one was Ohio in a lumber yard,
and then we had the Ohio Amazon, which was apparently
due to the solar panels, we'll say. And then we
have one in the Queens, New York one which was
a lumber as well. New Jersey was a chemical warehouse.

(01:37:54):
Georgia was a commercial structure. And then lastly, the one
that you all been tagging me in is the California
Jane Store which spread throughout the mall. From what I
can hear and have seen online, so that is a
total of seven since our original Luigi Man set fire
to the toilet paper facility that one. So that's where
we are right now, a total of seven in about

(01:38:17):
three four days of warehouse storefront fires throughout the United States.
Now we don't know about all of them, but these
are the ones that are on the radar right now.
So if there's more out there, let me know. But
we're up to seven now.

Speaker 7 (01:38:31):
Out of all the fires that she's talked about, the
only one that we know is ourson. Besides the toilet
paper warehouse, is this fire at a mall in the
same city in California, where a man who does not
work at the mall allegedly lit multiple fires across several stores.
The mall reopened later that same day, and authorities have

(01:38:51):
said there's no connection to the warehouse fire, though the
investigation is still ongoing. Before I discuss what's actually happening
with all these warehouse fires, let's go on one more
at break.

Speaker 5 (01:39:14):
All right, we are back.

Speaker 7 (01:39:16):
So what's really going on with all these warehouse fires?
Is all this reporting just a coincidence? Are these fires
really labor related? Are these all disgruntled employees? Is there
even more fires happening than usual? All good questions. Even
if the exact cause of most of these fires hasn't
yet been determined, it does seem from watching all these

(01:39:38):
videos that there's been an increase of warehouse fires since
the first toilet paper inferno. Though, just because you're more
aware of warehouse fires happening across the country doesn't mean
that these fires are actually happening at a higher rate.
A report from the National Fire Protection Association found that

(01:39:59):
for from twenty to twenty twenty four and estimated one thousand,
five hundred and forty four warehouse fires occur every year.
That's an average of four fires per day. Warehouses are
home to a lot of high heat equipment and materials
that are easily combustible, like lumber, paper products, batteries, and chemicals.

(01:40:23):
The recent National Fire Protection Association report found that most
warehouse structure fires had an unintentional cause twenty nine percent,
ten percent were caused by failure of equipment or a
heat source, and intentional fires accounted for just seven percent
of warehouse fires. Operating equipment was the leading heat source

(01:40:46):
in warehouse fires, responsible for forty three percent, and shop
tools and industrial equipment were involved in the ignition of
nineteen percent of warehouse fires. Misuse of material or product
and electrical failure are the leading factors contributing to ignition.
Improper storage of flammable materials and human error are also

(01:41:07):
contributing factors. Intentionally set fires or arson does happen, but
it's not the most common cause of modern warehouse fires.
And again, warehouse structure fires happen four times a day
on average, So not only is there no proof that
underpaid employees have begun a free of lighting fire to

(01:41:28):
their workplace, but there hasn't even been a recent increase
in warehouse fires. On Monday afternoon, footage spread online of
another warehouse fire outside Miami with the caption living wages
prevent warehouse fires. But this fire actually took place over

(01:41:48):
a month ago on March fifth, twenty twenty six, and
an inventory storage warehouse. An employee told NBC Miami quote, Apparently,
there was a short circuit and a spark fell on
one of the carpets we have, and that's how the
fire started. We try to put it out, but it
happened too fast. Officials have not yet confirmed those details,

(01:42:11):
and the exact cause the fire is still under investigation.
But it is literally impossible for this fire to in
any way be related to the toilet paper warehouse because
it happened a month prior, and the footage is just
circulating now to boost social media engagement. The video of
the employee allegedly setting fire to Pallette. Toilet paper channeled

(01:42:35):
such a strong feeling across American workers that people invented
and circulated a whole fake news cycle about a string
of copycat incidents.

Speaker 6 (01:42:44):
Something comes me, We're not done with the warehouse fires,
just a hunch, because only if you had paid us
a livable wage. And I'm pretty sure everyone is fucking
over corporate America at this point.

Speaker 4 (01:42:55):
Like over it.

Speaker 6 (01:42:56):
People are starting to realize that there are more of
us than there are of them, and the only thing
that they care about is their profits, not the people.
So if you burn down the profits, the people will
find other jobs. Companies have to assure it the message
really sends. I'm not concerning it or encouraging it, but
I am saying it makes.

Speaker 7 (01:43:13):
A point that TikTok clip demonstrates why people are so
primed to share these fire spree claims and memes of
Smoky the Bear saying only living wages can prevent warehouse fires.
This whole warehouse fire social media news cycle is an
instance of selective reporting, which happens when there is a

(01:43:33):
big national news story like someone filming themselves burning down
a one point two million square foot warehouse and then
that causes people to share what they believe are related stories,
often from local news reporting, even if the connection is
minor or tangential at best. A local report from Wayne County,

(01:43:53):
Ohio ordinarily would not circulate as national news, but on
social media a relatively unremarkable lumberyard fire can become part
of a new, increasing trend. Sometimes local news agencies themselves
may be incentivized to cover smaller stories in a certain way,
to ride the coattails of a national story that shares

(01:44:15):
a few similar details, or national news outlets fishing for
clicks may themselves cover what would typically only be a
local story if it relates to a currently viral topic.
A post on X the Everything app with one point
four million quote unquote views and sixty seven thousand likes
read quote, We're up to six warehouses set on fire

(01:44:38):
now across the country, and I feel like it's being
severely underreported un quote. If anything, these fires are being
over reported. Another example of selective reporting is aviation accidents,
where in the weeks after a high profile commercial airline crash,
local news reports will spread around social media about even

(01:45:00):
more plane crashes, even if these are mostly small private
planes which get into accidents semi regularly Allah Harrison Ford,
or minor runway incidents that usually don't make the news.
A twenty twenty five poll from Data for Progress showed
seventy two percent of likely voters believed plane crashes were

(01:45:20):
becoming more frequent. A CNN report analyzing National Transportation Safety
Board data from January twenty twenty four to March twenty
twenty five found that out of one thousand, two hundred
and eight flight safety incidents, only sixty incidents involved commercial carriers.
Some of these incidents included turbulence or incursions that's unauthorized aircraft,

(01:45:42):
vehicles or pedestrians on the runway. Half of these sixty
incidents resulted in injuries, and two involved fatalities, the helicopter
collision in Washington, d c. And a plane crash in Alaska.
While those fatal tragedies and other high profile incidents like
the runway flip in Toronto and the door flying off
an Alaska Airlines plane mid flight, have sewed fear in

(01:46:05):
the general public, Statistically, air travel is not getting more dangerous.
The number of yearly safety incidents have remained mostly steady
the past decade and only dropped around the pandemic due
to a decrease in total air travel. In fact, on average,
flying has only gotten safer, even including private and recreational flights.

(01:46:26):
The average number of annual deadly incidents has fallen by
more than half since two thousand, excluding nine to eleven.
Despite viral news clips of near misses on the runway
and an air traffic controller shortage, those runway incursions have
also steadily dropped in recent years. But such data can
be heard to stomach if in the days after a

(01:46:48):
high profile aviation incident, you keep seeing more reports about
plane crashes all across the country, but that itself is
selective reporting. On average three to four planes crash every day,
and these are typically small private planes, not commercial airliners,
and typically a small Cessna crashing in Kentucky doesn't make

(01:47:10):
national news. The same thing is happening with these warehouse fires.
Lefty TikTok influencers and many others participating in this warehouse
fire meme are ascribing the motive of one person onto
a collection of unrelated incidents, trying to create a pattern
when there probably isn't.

Speaker 8 (01:47:29):
One saw that this one guy said that he did
it because of his anger towards capitalism. And I don't
know if that was the original toilet paper guy or
like another one of these warehouse fires, but to each
and every one of them, period, keep it up again.
Out of all the incidents I mentioned, the only two
we know were intentional was the toilet paper warehouse and

(01:47:51):
the Ontario mall, And the only one we have a
suspected motive for is the toilet paper warehouse. An Emerson
College poll found that forty one percent of young voters
thought the actions of the United Healthcare assassin were acceptable.
Another nineteen percent said that they were neutral on the question.

(01:48:13):
Luigi Mangioni. Memes and reactions to this toilet paper fire
do demonstrate a form of class consciousness. This same week,
people have cheered the attacks on the home of open
Ai CEO Sam Altman. Even if influencers are just trying
to make a profit, there is an active willingness among
the consumers sharing memes and this living wage warehouse fire

(01:48:37):
content to rally behind such action. The working conditions at
these warehouses can be inhumane. Just last week, a forty
seven year old worker at an Amazon warehouse in Troutdale, Oregon,
collapsed and died. Supervisors prevented someone with CPR training to
assist with chest compressions and instructed employees to continue work

(01:48:59):
as usual as the body laid still on the floor.
Oregon Osha has said the death was not work related.
In a catastrophic vibe shift, Let's go back to our
left wing TikTok influencer for his analysis. I really hope
this is a sign of of what we all hope

(01:49:23):
it to sign up. I can't be the only one
who has felt like the tides are turning, the tables
are turning, the winds are shifting. It really feels like
there's actual movement being made in just the last few days,
and now all these warehouse fires, which sure could be
a coincidence, but I don't think so, at least I
hope not.

Speaker 2 (01:49:44):
But what do you guys think?

Speaker 3 (01:49:45):
Come up?

Speaker 8 (01:49:46):
Blow and if this really is truly the beginning of
it all ending, give me a follow for more like this?

Speaker 6 (01:49:54):
Huh?

Speaker 7 (01:49:55):
Everyone knows the most important thing to do when the
revolution starts is to get give me a follow. Speaking of,
there is just two days left of webby voting for
it could happen here behind the bastards and migrating to
America and we may need a supermajority to beat the
ms NOW filibuster, So go make your voices heard before

(01:50:17):
voting ends on April sixteenth. That does it for me today,
at it could happen here. See you on the other side.

Speaker 5 (01:50:38):
It's been more than a month since the US in
Israel began raining down bombs in it Run. We've covered
the weekly developments every week on Executive Disorder, but I
decided that it was high time made a full episode
to get people up to speed with the USA's latest aggression,
the IDF opening up another front, and it's multifront war
against the people of the Middle East. Normally, one would
expect a major war with a major power like this

(01:51:00):
fundamentally destabilized the region and ground world trade to a halt,
caused massive inflation, to have some kind of very clearly
defined set of goals. That is not the case here.
We have seen various justifications, but the most common one
seems to be that Iran is just weeks from creating
a nuclear bomb. This is a claim that specifically Benjamin

(01:51:22):
Nette Yahoo has been making for almost the entire time
I have been alive. Here he is saying something similar
a decade ago.

Speaker 10 (01:51:29):
The foremost sponsor of global terrorism could be weeks away
from having enough and rich uranium for an entire arsenal
of nuclear weapons.

Speaker 5 (01:51:40):
His claim was fanciful then, and it remains even more
so now after twenty twenty five to Operation Midnight Hammer
saw the USA and Israel attempt to bomb nuclear facilities. Indeed,
the White House itself publishes statement on the twenty fifth
of June following Operation Midnight Hammer, in which they quoted
the Israel Atomic Energy Commission saying, quote, we assessed that

(01:52:00):
the American strikes and around nuclear facilities, combined with the
Israeli strikes on other elements of Iran's military nuclear program,
has set back Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons by
many years. The achievement can continue indefinitely if Iran does
not get access to nuclear material. It also include a
quotation from Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, saying quote, based

(01:52:23):
on everything we have seen, and I've seen it all,
our bombing campaign abliterated Iran's ability to create nuclear weapons
that was less than a year ago. It seems unlikely
that they destroyed much or any of the uranium that
was stockpiled, but they certainly would have delayed plans to
enrich that uranium or to build into a bond. Nonetheless,

(01:52:45):
on the twenty eighth of February this year, a massive
campaign of air strikes, high mars beraches, and ballistic misstile
attacks on Iran began under the code name Operation Epic Fury.
The acronym OEF will be familiar to many as the
same one used by the USA for more than a
decade of war in Afghanistan and other parts of the
world during what it called the Global War on Terror.

(01:53:07):
On the day I'm writing this, it's exactly twenty three
years since United States marines tore down the statue of
Saddam Hussein that stood outside the seventeenth of Ramada Mosque
in Ferdo Square in Baghdad, removed his regime from power.
Since then, for my entire adult life and much of
my childhood, the USA has been dropping bombs on the
Middle East. This month, the temper and ferocity of the

(01:53:30):
aerial bombardment took a step up to a tempo we
haven't seen since perhaps the peak of the Coalition war
against the Islamic State, or perhaps even the shokuan Ow
bombing campaign. Of March two thousand and three, and I
want to go back to that campaign to explain exactly
how we got to this one. The shakan Or campaign
was based on a doctrine called rapid dominance that sought

(01:53:51):
to establish a post Cold War military ethos United States.
The theorist behind it, named Alman and Wade, explicitly outlined
that to work, the shock and awe bombing campaign had
to achieve a level of national shock like that of
the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan, and that
power and other civilian infrastructure might well be targeted. In

(01:54:11):
an interview in February two thousand and three, Olmand said, quote,
what we want to do is create in the mind
of the Iraqi leadership and their soldiers this shock and
owe so they're intimidated, made to feel so impotent, so helpless,
that they have no choice but to do what we
want them to do. So the smartest thing to say
is this is hopeless. We quit. The US attempted to

(01:54:34):
pummel their adversary so hard in two thousand and three
that it would demoralized troops and lead to a rapid
victory through the use and display of overwhelming force. In
Iraq twenty three years ago. It sort of worked. The
regime crumbled in less than a month, the USA got
its quote unquote victory, and by the first of May
of that year, George W. Bush had landed on the

(01:54:55):
USSA Abraham Lincoln off San Diego and given a speech
in front of a large that read mission accomplished. Twenty
three years later, the Lincoln is in the Middle East
and bombs are once again raining down on Iran and Iraq,
while one way drones and missiles Iran slam into targets
all over the region. In Iraq, twenty three years later,

(01:55:19):
the United States embassy is once again being attacked, the
US journalist was kidnapped, and the State Department it's telling
citizens to avoid the region. The US bombing campaign in
Iran this year dwarfs the two thousand and three Shock
and All campaign, with the first day of Operation Epic
Fury being almost twice the scale of the two thousand
and three bombardment. However, they do have several things in common,

(01:55:43):
Just like the bombardment of Iraq. Even twenty three years later,
the US and Israeli air war showed us that there
is no such thing as a precision bombing campaign on
this scale. On the very first day of the war,
the twenty eighth of February twenty twenty six, a missile
slammed into a girls elementary school in Mina, then another,
and then another. When the dust settled, more than one

(01:56:05):
hundred and seventy five people have been killed, mostly schoolgirls
between the age of seven and twelve years old. The
school was located near an Iranian Revolutionary Guard base, but
the school building itself had not been part of a
military facility for a decade. And yet, despite targeting technology
that allowed three missiles to scream across a continent hit

(01:56:26):
a relatively small target in quick succession, Apparently the US
military had not been able to ascertain, or perhaps did
not care to ascertain, that the result of their strike
was the death of as many as one hundred school children.
The fact that I am reporting this forty odd days
into the war suggests that despite an even larger scale
campaign than the USA deployed in two thousand and three,

(01:56:47):
despite the killing of little girls, the Iranian state has
not said this is hopeless. We quit as Almond Hoby
might around. Supreme leader Ali Hamani was assassinated in initial attacks.
The power has since passed on to his son. Iran
remains very much in the fight, despite the massive display
of force by the US and Israel. Instead of quitting

(01:57:08):
and giving up, they have been sending ballistic missiles and
one way drones into targets throughout the Gulf States, Israel,
and southern Kurdistan. This is in part because the United
States and Israel had no clear shared plan for this war.
In two thousand and three, the US aimed to remove
Sada Pasan, and it did that. It made a massive
cock up of everything it did after that. But this

(01:57:29):
time we have two belligerent nations with very distinct goals
who share a common interest in bombing the people of Iran. Israel,
which by some accounts hit more targets in the USA
early on in the war, is fighting to totally cripple
the Iranian state in a no holds barred, no laws
of war respected, campaign that has seen it bomb factories,
oil infrastructure, and, most horrifically of all, desalination plants. The

(01:57:51):
goal for Israel is to make it impossible for Iran
to recover. It seems to leave the region mired in
poverty and resource constraint and make sure that no Iranian state,
be it this one or a different one, can ever
be a threat to Israel. Again, it has assassinated many
of the figures who have the ability to negotiate for peace,
and the recent c use fire seems to have been
something that Israel does not feel itself to be beholden to.

(01:58:15):
For the US, the goal seems to be to use
something similar to shock and or to force Iran into
conceding its position and allowing the USA some access to
its significant petrochemical resources. Perhaps emboldened by its success in Venezuela,
the US might be expecting a similar client state relationship here. However,
this has not been the outcome. Over the weekend of
the eleventh and twelfth of April, JD Vance, Jared Kushner,

(01:58:38):
and Steve Whitcoff flew to Pakistan as part of a
Pakistani broke and cease fire to engage in peace talks
with Iran. Before these peace talks, we saw both the
US in Iran circlating very different bases for negotiation, with
Iran demanding tolls for ships passing near its coastline, an
end to sanctions, and the removal of US forces from
the region. The US demanded an end to the nuclear

(01:59:00):
program in Iran, and at one point the President proposed
a joint US Iranian toll on ships passing through the
Straight of horm Moos. Straight of horn Moose is one
of the areas where there has been significant disagreement, and
so I want to explain a little bit about what
the Strait of horn Moose is for listeners who are
not familiar. Geographically, the strait connects the Persian Golf and

(01:59:20):
the Gulf of Verman, thus the open Ocean. It's just
about thirty nine klumeters wide across its narrows point, with
about a quarter of the world's liquefied natural gas and
seaborne oil passing through the strait. Because of its geographical location,
Asia and Europe are especially reliant on these energy products.
Many of the Golf states will have no maritime export
routes without transitting the street. In response to the United

(01:59:41):
States and Israel's bombing campaign, Iran effectively closed the Straight.
So a combination of missile threats, claimed mining, very high
frequency radio broadcast warning ships of the two previously mentioned threats,
and uncrewed surface vessel attacks that blew up and damaged vessels,
including oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. At the time
of writing, Iran is threatening ships transiting Distrait, and the

(02:00:04):
US is attempting to blockade all ships that gaim to
go to Iran. Iran has previously allowed some ships a
right to pass safely if they pay a toll payable
encrypto currency or Chinese yuan. Some ships appear to have
certainly transited Distrait, but many more have not, and this
presents a serious issue for global trade. Luckily, the problems
with global trade have not affected our advertisers, so here

(02:00:27):
are some goods and services that will probably cost more
than they did a few weeks ago. The United States
has a lack of capacity when it comes to mind sweeping.
Many of the ships it does have which can do that,

(02:00:48):
are not currently very close to the trade four moves.
On the twelfth of April, it did send two destroyers
into Distrate normally to begin mind clearing operations, but these
aren't really a sort of ships that would do that
so much as they would work a lotongside the ships
that do that to provide them with security. There is
currently a safe lane through the Strait that Iran seems
to be sending ships through, but it's a little unclear

(02:01:09):
to what extent, if at all, the strait is mined,
and what kind of minds were used. Naval minds can vary.
They can be pretty simple contact fuze minds like the
ones you might have seen in the Mind Sweeper computer game,
or bottom mines triggered by a number of mechanisms. Clearing
a body of water this large would take a significant
amount of time. Stopping transits through the strait was not

(02:01:31):
Iran's only response to the attacks. They have launched a
massive fuselade of one way drones and missiles a targets
across the region. Their Shaheed drones are one of the
most significant military innovations of the last decade. They're cheap,
one way drones that can do tremendous damage at a
very low cost. If you've ever heard of Shaheed drone,

(02:01:51):
you won't forget what they sound like. It's like a
lornmow flying over you. These drones have been so successful
that the US has cloned captured drones to make it
so in one wadrones, which it calls Lucas drones, and
Iran has licensed production to Russia, which uses them in
massive numbers against Ukraine. These drones have provided a cheap
and relatively easy to launch platform for Iran strikes, which

(02:02:12):
has focused on US allies Israel, and Bushur Kurdistan. Bashur
meaning Southern or Iraqi Kurdistan has taken a particularly heavy toll.
Much as this has been due to reporting in the
early days of the conflict, which began with notorious fact
check Eveder barak Ravid. Much as its reporting heavily implied
or outright said that Curdish ground forces were repairing an

(02:02:35):
assault into Iran. Raved's piece, which reported that Trump had
spoken to two major Curtist leaders, was particularly shocking because
it erroneously conflated Iraqi Curds with Iranian Curds, those from
Eastern Kurdistan and Roja lad It's true that the majority
of anti regime Kurdish armed groups from Iran retained bases
in Iraq, but it's extremely unlikely that the KDP in

(02:02:58):
the p UK, the major actors in Iraqi Kurdistan, will
be storming the border into Roju Lat anytime in the
near future. However, I have spoken to several of the
Roja Lati arm groups who are part of the Alliance
of political forces of Iranian Kurdistan. The groups involved in
a Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan or the PDKI, the
Free Life Party of Kurdistan PJAK, the Kurdistan Freedom Party PAK,

(02:03:22):
two of the Komala parties, and the hubbut or the
organization of the Iranian Kurdistan Struggle. The alliance predates the
United States and Israeli campaign came around earlier this year.
Arash Saleh I spoke to him for the PDKI told
me quote at this point, the whole coalition is built
upon some type of self rule instided Iranian Kurdistan as

(02:03:42):
the main demand for all of them, and that as
a main demand for all the Kurdish people in Iranian Kurdistan.
This unity of groups is a positive step and it
represents a real opportunity for the liberation of the people
of Rojaa. But none of these parties are willing to
be the spearhead of an American and Israeli offensive without
guarantees that they will recive' support for their own goals,
which are very different to those of the USA and Israel.

(02:04:05):
In more recent weeks, President Trump has insinuated, and Fox
News has claimed that he said this but haven't seen
any recording of it, That the United States sent weapons
to Iranian protesters through Kurdish groups, but that the Kurdish
groups kept them instead of giving them to the protesters.
Here's the clip of Trump implying this, and you'll have
to forgive me for the gringly awkward light jazz background

(02:04:26):
music here.

Speaker 11 (02:04:27):
They don't have guns. You know, we said some guns,
but the group that were supposed to give which I said,
what happened to my people? I said it. I called
it exactly.

Speaker 4 (02:04:36):
We sent guns, a lot of guns.

Speaker 11 (02:04:38):
They were supposed to go to the people said they
could fight back against these lucks. You know what happened.
The people that they sent them to kept them because
they said, what a beautiful gun.

Speaker 5 (02:04:47):
I think I'll keep it.

Speaker 11 (02:04:49):
So I'm very upset with a certain group of people,
and they're going to pay a big price for that.
But the Iranian people who will fight back as soon
as they know they're not going to be shot and
as soon as they yet weapons.

Speaker 5 (02:05:02):
The Kurdish groups I've spoken to have denied this, and
it's not really logistically feasible. Hamno knox Bandi, a member
of the General Command of the Kurdistan National Army, which
is the peshmerger associated with the Kurdistan Freedom Party or PAK,
said that quote Donald Trump's message is unclear to us.
What is there is that we as our army have

(02:05:23):
in no way received weapons from the US or any
other country, not even a single bullet. And the PAK
confirmed that statement to me this morning. At the time
you're hearing this, that will be yesterday morning. I checked
in with them. Then transiting the mountains to that part
of Kurdistan and then smuggling weapons all the way to Tehran.
It's not what they do and it will be very

(02:05:43):
hard for them to do it. Also, at the time
of the large anti regime protesting around in January, we
saw groups, notably the PAK the Kurdistan Freedom Party using
weapons that really don't appear to be US supplied, like
pump act and shotguns. Nonetheless, this rumor, combined with the
fact that Trump really did call Iraqi Kurdish leaders at

(02:06:04):
the start of the conflict, presumably to ask for support,
has led to a raqs Kurdistan region been targeted a
great deal. These drone and rockets rights have not just
hit military targets, but also the refugee camps where the
families displaced from Rojaalat live, and many other civilian targets
in major Kurdish cities. To quote a PDKI a statement quote,

(02:06:25):
since the beginning of the war with the United States
in Israel, the Islamic Republic of Ruan has so far
targeted the family camps, medical centers, and educational facilities of
the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan with more than one
hundred and ten missiles and drones. These tags have continued
even during the ceasefire between Iran and the United States.
But it's not just Iraqi Kurdistan being bombed. In fact,

(02:06:48):
a Rak has a distinction of being the only country
bomb by both sides in the conflict. This is in
part this is Popular Mobilization Forces, sometimes referred to by
the Arabic name hashtal Shabi in Iraq have strong ties
to Iran. The Popular Mobilization Forces or PMF if you're
not familiar, were formed in twenty fourteen and fought against
Islamic State in Iraq, but some factions within the PMF

(02:07:11):
are also now listed to terrorist groups themselves by the
United States. I want to resist doing the rather purel
Sunni Shia Kurd analysis here because I don't think it
explains the whole situation, and it's far too often seized
upon by commentators seeking to oversimplify things. Many Kurds are Sunni,
for example, but some are Shia, some the Christian or Jewish,

(02:07:32):
or have no religious beliefs. There are other groups in
the region who are not Muslim or Christian. I think
it's unnecessarily reductionist, but nonetheless it's worth noting that the
PMF are mostly Shia, as is the ratiome in Iran.
The PMF have been using drones, rockets, and mortars to
attack both the US bases and those of the Kurdish

(02:07:52):
pesh Merger, who they see as tied to the US.
On the telegram channels, PMF groups have shown successful attanks
used to be Camp Victory near the Baghdad airport and
against the US embassy facilities. While we can talk to
Rogulati groups and see PMF statements on telegram getting information
on the conflict from inside Iran, that's not regily propaganda,

(02:08:13):
it's very hard. An Internet blackout by the Iranian government
has lasted more than a month. The information that we
see coming out of Iran is either state sanctioned or
from people going to the border with Iraq to get
cell phone signal, or from people using satellite Internet devices
like starlings. Iran has been actively hunting people using starlings

(02:08:33):
and further militarizing the Kurdistan region near the Iraqi border
where people might get cell phone signal. Zenni Arbazisi and
Siavan Amini, a Kurdish couple, were arrested on the seventh
of March this year and they have been detained ever
since for the crime of using a Starlin. This repressive
capability is not unusual or unique Terranian Kurdistan. I think

(02:09:05):
we need to understand the structure of the Iranian state
to understand why it will be very hard for the
United States to achieve regime change simply with an air campaign.
Iran has a conventional army known as the Arteche. It
also has the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, better known by
the initials IRGC, which has a specific remit of protecting
the Islamic Republic. Within the IRGC, people may have heard

(02:09:29):
of the Kutz Force. The Kutzforce sort of acts like Iran,
CIA and Green Berets, combined by assisting other actors, mainly
non state actors in the region like Husbolla, for example.
Then there's also the Busiege, which is an element of
the ILGC but is a paramilitary auxiliary force with as
many as half a million members available for immediate call

(02:09:50):
up and many more in reserve. The Busiege are in theory,
directly loyal to the Supreme Leader, and they have participated
in a significant oppression of the population. Combined, these forces
represent a massive apparatus for state violence that is dispersed
among the civilian population. Recent reports say they are even
garrising schools and other civilian buildings. While the United States may,

(02:10:14):
for example, have destroyed Iran's conventional navy, its big gray
boats with the Iranian flag on them, it has not
and cannot destroy all the small civilian craft that these
groups could easily use to haras shipping or even plant
sea mines, nor can destroy the many one way surface
drone Iran has along its coastline. If you're not familiar

(02:10:36):
with these, think of a remote control boat that explodes
when it hits its target. Israel has killed many ILGC
figures but many more LGC units and besiegs remain untouched,
are willing to turn their weapons on any potential uprising
in the country. With this in mind, let's talk a
little bit more about those peace negotiations that happened last

(02:10:58):
weekend in Pakistan, and particularly let's talk about the composition
of Iran's delegation. Amongst Iran's negotiators was Mohammad Jaffiri Sahra Rud,
who participate in the murder of doctor Abdul Rahman Gaseemlu
during negotiations between the PDKI and Iran in nineteen eighty nine.
Doctor Gacemlu had been a notable Kurdish leader for some time,

(02:11:24):
was sentenced to death by the Iranian regime and then
kill when he came to the negotiating table. In a
statement sent to me, the pak said quote the composition
of the Iranian delegation, largely made up of military and
security figures, clearly indicates that the primary objective was not
to advance a genuine diplomatic process, but rather to manage
the situation in line with strategic goals Iran seemed to

(02:11:47):
achievely see negotiations as a way to buy time it's
been able to dig out many of its missiles which
were buried but not destroyed by its strikes, and in
this pause it can shore up its pasture against domestic
dissenters as well. It does not seem, in short, to
be acting in the way the sharkan or doctrine might
suggest and hope that it would. Indeed, in recent weeks,

(02:12:07):
it's been able to mobilize civilians to go two power
plants and the hope that their presence will prevent bombing
of those facilities. Despite this, and despite it being a
violation of various international treaties, some of which is right
is not signed up to, Israel has continued to hit
power plants, oil infrastructure, and bridges, despite the civilian costs.
It certainly seems that after a weekend of negotiating face

(02:12:29):
to face in Pakistan, the United States was not able
to get what it wanted out of the negotiations. They
have chosen not to accept our terms. Vice President J. D.
Van said, here's him talking about the negotiations at a
press conference on Sunday morning local time.

Speaker 12 (02:12:43):
But the simple fact is that we need to see
an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon,
and they will not seek the tools that would enable
them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon. That is the
core goal of the President of the United States, and
that's what we've tried to achieve through these negotiations. Again,
their nuclear programs, such as it is, the enrichment facilities

(02:13:05):
that they had before, they've been destroyed. But the civil
question is, do we see a fundamental commitment of will
for the Iranians not to develop a nuclear weapon, not
just now, not just two years from now, but for
the long term. We haven't seen that yet.

Speaker 3 (02:13:20):
We hope that we will.

Speaker 5 (02:13:22):
Trump, however, has been talking about a more diverse range
of goals than Balancelest's here talking about ending quote forty
seven years of extortion, corruption, and death. In one truth,
this suggests regime change, which Trump then went on to
falsely claim he has already achieved, saying in a truth quote, However,
now that we have complete and total regime change, where different,

(02:13:45):
smarter and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful
can happen. Who knows. This was incidentally in the very
same truth in which Trump said, quote, A whole civilization
will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I
don't want that to happen, but it probably will. This
was part of a threat which he hoped to result

(02:14:06):
in Iran reopening the Strait of Horn News. Trump also
posted on Easter Sunday, quote, open the fucking strait, you
crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. Obviously, this
statement seems odds with any idea of liberating the Iranian people,
and when it comes from the guy with the nuclear arsenal,
it sounds like a threat of genocide. While Trump has

(02:14:26):
not launched any nuclear weapons in Iran, this does not
mean that the death toll has not been heavy. According
to a report by human rights organization Hengor, at least
seven six hundred and fifty people have been killed during
the US and Israeli bombing, including one thousand and thirty civilians.
Iran has also continued attacking its own population. Despite the

(02:14:47):
massive scale of the killing, Iran has not ceased, for example,
executing political prisoners. Hengor estimates that at least one hundred
and sixty political prisoners have been killed in the first
quarter of this year. United States groups have been killed
as well, thirteen of them according to the Military Times,
hundreds more have been wounded. Survivors of one deadly drone

(02:15:08):
attack on a US facility in q Eight have disputed
official accounts of the attack, saying their facility did have
vertical blast barriers, but no overhead protection against the kind
of drones that killed six of their colleagues, and the
kind of drones they could reasonably expect to be attacked by,
given that Iran has been using these very same drones
for a long time in Syria and other parts of

(02:15:28):
the Middle East. To quote CBS who interviewed one of
them on condition of anonymity, quote, painting a picture that
one squeaked through is a falsehood. I want people to
know the unit. And then there's ellipses here where they've
removed part of the quotation. Was unprepared to provide any
defense for itself. It was not a fortified position. So

(02:15:49):
where are we now? While the US government continues to
edit supercuts of bombs hitting buildings and vehicles to music
ladies does not have permission to use. Families in the
United States and Iran are both burying their loved ones.
Despite the ceasefire, the US in Iran are theoretically held
to there has been no cease fire for the Kurds
who are still being bombed. No ceasefire for Lebanon, whereas

(02:16:11):
where is still carrying out a massive bombing campaign. And
on day two of the USA's blockade of Iranian ports,
traffic through the Strait of Hormos remains in the single
digit numbers of ships. We have not achieved, and it
seems that we likely will not achieve liberation for the
people of Iran. In fact, it may be the case
that the regime moves closer to the IERGC becomes more hardlined,

(02:16:34):
more repressive, more violent. Just like in Caracas. The only
thing the US seems interested in liberating is oil. Iran's
nuclear threat remains like Schrodinger's cat are once terrible and
non existent, destroyed last year in the justification for thousands
of deaths this year, as always, our solidarity should be
with people and not with states. We can perfectly coherently

(02:16:56):
hold that the people of Iran do not deserve to
be killed by the US or the ring government, and
that what we want for them should be what we
want for ourselves, peace, freedom, and a beautiful life.

Speaker 7 (02:17:20):
This is it could happen here. Executive disorder, our weekly
newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world,
and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis today
I'm joined by James Stout, Mia Wong and Robert Evans.

Speaker 1 (02:17:33):
Yes, happy to be back once again stretching the definitions
of the word.

Speaker 7 (02:17:37):
Here across time, space and the Internet. We have gathered
to discuss the news, and this episode we are covering
the week of April eighth to April sixteenth. James, you
want to start us off with some short news items.

Speaker 5 (02:17:53):
Yep, I got quite a few this week, so lock in.
There have been two Turkish school shootings this week. One
killed ten people, the other wounded at least sixteen. Since then,
there have been one hundred and sixty two arrests for
either sharing footage of the shooting or suggesting that similar
attacks might happen at other schools. One suspect, according to BBC,

(02:18:18):
made references to US mascular Elliott Roger on his WhatsApp profile, which, yep,
not great. Just to yeah. I do find it somewhat
frustrating when people say this stuff only happened in the
United States.

Speaker 1 (02:18:31):
No, no, it doesn't. Now it is a fair point
note that like most foreign mass shootings these days are
inspired and influenced by American mass shootings. We are foundational
to global shooter culture. But it ain't just us.

Speaker 5 (02:18:46):
Yeah, it's not just us. Unfortunately, like culture is global
and this is part of that. We also have like
your regular terrorism, but this is not that. This is
part of that culture. Secondly, SOUTHCOM, the United States military
command responsible for, among other things, the Eastern Pacific as

(02:19:08):
it calls it, has announced four strikes on small boats
again this week, killing at least eleven people, according to
the totals I added up from their announcements. It's probably
worth noting that this either suggests that they are not
striking drug boats, or that their strikes on drug boats
are so spectacally unsuccessful that they are still coming across

(02:19:32):
in such volumes that SOUTHCOM as having to kill people
at this continuing rate.

Speaker 6 (02:19:37):
Right.

Speaker 5 (02:19:37):
Either way, it doesn't point to a successful operation. Next,
the Nigerian military seems to have doubled down on strike
in Jili. If people haven't been paying attention to this,
Jili is a place where a market was bombed. They
claimed that the market contained Boko Haram fighters more than
one hundred people were killed in this strike, and.

Speaker 13 (02:19:59):
I want to miss on what happened recently at Jilli
to tell them that now our new strategy is anybody
a friend of a tief is a chief. I've said that,
so really, anybody that is doing any trade in any
support to them, we find you together with them. We're
going to deal with you like the bandit, like the terrorists.
So people should know, if you don't want to be harmed,
please avoid where those terrorists are.

Speaker 3 (02:20:17):
I'm going to give them any support.

Speaker 5 (02:20:19):
The suggestion here is that being present in a market
where these people who are terrorists will also and justifies
to targeting them.

Speaker 4 (02:20:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:20:29):
Place worth noting the US has been supporting this campaign right,
and this is not the first instance in which civilians
have been killed over in about this. My news letter
and appeals caught in the DC circuit has prevented Judge
Boseberg from continuing an investigation into whether Trump officials sent
migrants to a Salvador despite his order. DC Judge Raw wrote,

(02:20:50):
the government has a clear and indisputaful right determination of
this judicial investigation because it is premise on an order
that is insufficiently clear and specific to sustain a ar
to criminal contempt. A long time court interpreter, the only
one for several South Asian languages in Texas, has been
detained by Ice in airport. She has withholding of removal

(02:21:12):
to India, but with third country removals now increasingly on
the table, that is presumably what they intend for her. Finally,
in court news, another DOJ attorney has been fined for
missing deadlines in a habeas case, and once again that
attorney cited a crushing caseload is the reason why they'd
missed those deadlines.

Speaker 7 (02:21:33):
This week, both the House and the Senate failed to
advance a war powers resolution compelling the President to cease
military action in Iran. The House vote in particular was
very close, with two hundred and thirteen votes to two
hundred and fourteen, with only one Democrat, Jared Golden, voting
against it, while one Republican, Thomas Massey, voted in support.

(02:21:58):
On Monday, the Trump administration agreed to restore the Pride
flag to the Stonewall National Monument as a part of
settling a lawsuit over its removal. This weekend, President Trump
got into a fight with the Pope over the statements
against the US and Israel's war in the Middle East.
The president truth that the pope was quote weak on
crime and terrible for foreign policy, before sharing an AI

(02:22:22):
image of himself depicted as Jesus Christ. The next day,
Trump claimed quote, I thought it was me as a doctor.

Speaker 3 (02:22:31):
Quote.

Speaker 1 (02:22:31):
Great stuff, great stuff.

Speaker 5 (02:22:34):
Just a briefly fact check, he is neither of those things. No,
as far as I'm a west or a doctor. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (02:22:42):
Yeah, legally, I.

Speaker 2 (02:22:44):
Think it is notable and very funny that this has
now shifted sniff. No, I'm not a significant but it
shifted a discourse on the right to whether or not
Trump is the Antichrist, with Enemy of the Show Rob
Dreer saying quote, he's given off anti Christ energy. So
incredible things are happening for Donald Trump among his nominal base.

Speaker 5 (02:23:09):
Meanwhile, Franklin Graham thinks it was an honest mistake.

Speaker 2 (02:23:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (02:23:13):
I'm sure. I'm sure, I'm sure he does.

Speaker 5 (02:23:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (02:23:16):
On Wednesday, police responded to a bomb threat at the
Illinois home of one of Pope Leo's brothers, about forty
miles southwest of Chicago. No explosive was found.

Speaker 1 (02:23:27):
So Congress is in the process of deciding whether or
not to reauthorize section seven oh two of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act or FAIZA. It's going to sunset on
April twenty. We're recording this on the sixteenth, so in
four days if Congress does not reauthorize it. Section oh
two is what lets intelligence agencies in the US collect email, phone,

(02:23:50):
and text communications from foreign nationals outside of the United States,
which often leads to communications of American citizens being caught
for obvious reasons. Right well, they get kind of swept
up in that big net. The FBI once has asked
for and has gotten some permission to like look into
that database to get information on American citizens. Congress puts

(02:24:11):
some limitations on that in twenty twenty four, but it
remains very controversial and basically, like one of the big
debates over this is and there was a vote in
twenty twenty four as to whether or not to require
intelligence agencies to get a warrant before accessing American communications,
and that failed to pass by a single vote in
the House two twelve to two twelve split in twenty

(02:24:31):
twenty four. So right now, you know there's both the
question of is this going to get reauthorized by Congress,
in which case is like the FBI is certainly going
to use it to go after like the communications of
quote unquote antifa, right of like people who have been
caught because they've been naming foreign groups, anti fascist groups,
like foreign terrorist organizations. That's very obviously like one of

(02:24:57):
the things this is going to be used for kind
of unclear, like what is going to happen here where
Congress is going to land. I did find there's an
interesting article in Just Security where they're very worried that
because of how very obvious it is that federal law
enforcement will abuse this section seven h two will just
kind of go away entirely, and the useful aspects of

(02:25:19):
it as they see it will no longer be possible.
That's not my primary concern, but it's interesting to read
someone being like, oh my god, if these guys go
so crazy, like if they keep refusing to like allow
warrants to be entered into the process and keep insisting
on going after like anti fat like left wing domestic terrorists,
they're going to lose our ability to like surveil foreign

(02:25:39):
nationals entirely. Is kind of the concern from a lot
of security people. Anyway, Just probably good that you're aware
of that. So probably the biggest international piece of news
this week that we're covering is the defeat of Victor Orbon,
who was often considered to be like a quasi dictatorial figure.

(02:26:00):
I mean, he arose to power in Hungary legally, but
his party like as soon as he took power more
than a decade ago, he's basically been cracking down on
the ability of counterparties to like organize. There's been like
massive crackdowns on the like ability of like it's a
lot of prototype Trump stuff, Like they went after professors,

(02:26:23):
they went after colleges, they went after like public funds
to educational institutions, to libraries.

Speaker 7 (02:26:28):
Yeah, he pioneered the modern tactics of undermining liberal democracy
via the legal system.

Speaker 2 (02:26:35):
Yes, yes, it's like him and Aired Wanner sort of
like yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:26:38):
Two, he went after the LGBT community, tried to criminalize
like criminalize like pride events and stuff. And also like
in a big a big part of like Orbon was
obviously very anti migrant, like anti we don't want to
take in, you know, particularly during the Syrian refugee crisis
that was like a big moment for them. But he
was also really anti EU. You know Hungary is a

(02:27:00):
part of the EU, but Orbond's party was very e
like the Fidez Party was super EU critical, and in
the last decade and change that they've been in power,
the Fidez Party has been massively corrupt and in fact
has kind of turned the Hungarian government to the extent
like you know, there was corruption before obviously, but he's

(02:27:21):
woven his party into the very workings of the government,
primarily as a way to collect money from people and
to distribute government funds to like these right wing pet
projects that they had, which we'll I'll talk about a
little more in a second. But this started to piss
people off in Hungary, particularly because the government wasn't doing
a good job of governing, like the Hungarian economy remained

(02:27:44):
one of the worst in Europe. Unemployment remained high. Like
none of the promises that like, well, if we're if
we kind of pushed the EU away, and if we
keep all if we keep these migrants out, the economy
will get better. What really happened was fides robbed everyone blind,
and Orbon robbed everyone blind and put his cronies in
positions of power in the hope that he would never

(02:28:05):
be forced out. Now, Orbon's an interesting figure in part
because he got his start as a pro democracy figure
during the latter years of communism in Hungary. He was
a liberal like democratic activist, and in fact, the guy
who just beat him, Peter Magyar, we'll talk about his
name also in a second, grew up with like a

(02:28:26):
poster of Orbon on his bedroom wall because Orbon, you
know again, communism was coming to an end. Everyone was
very excited, all the young people were very excited about democracy,
and Orbon was like a figure and he was still
he was never like a leftist figure when I say liberal,
but he was a figure of like democratizing values. Now
Magyar himself is an odd guy. He's forty five years old.

(02:28:50):
And the party that he ran with, the Tisa Party Tisza,
was a party before him, but like not a living
one really, like it had been a political party and
it had basically died out to irrelevance. I think they
had a couple of dudes kind of kicking around. It's
almost like if there were still a tiny wig party

(02:29:11):
that like four or five guys met in like twice
a year to like have their little wig meeting.

Speaker 5 (02:29:16):
The bold coming back that.

Speaker 1 (02:29:18):
Some guy who's like a Barack Obama level political mind
in terms of his skill in organizing and charisma came
in and turned that party into a fucking electoral powerhouse
that completely annihilated the previous leading party in an election.
Like that's basically what happened in Hungary. It's a very

(02:29:41):
weird story. And Magyar is definitely brilliant in terms of
he is someone who is objectively very intelligent when it
comes to how to build power in a political organization
and how to win elections and how to message to people.

Speaker 3 (02:29:58):
He's very good at all of that stuff.

Speaker 1 (02:30:00):
Now, this is not like a leftist or a progressive
like hero type figure, and he has not pretended to be,
to be very clear, that's not how he built himself
at all. In fact, in some ways he's more conservative
than Orbon. His party that is a party is like
even like Orbon at least had like a guest worker
program and stuff, and Maggar's against even a lot of

(02:30:21):
that stuff, Like he is actually more hostile to having
like like immigration, but he's not anti EU and he's not.
What's interesting is like he's really kind of hedging in between,
like hedging his I don't know entirely how to describe this.
He's like writing a very weird line because he is
not anti Ukraine, but he's also against Hungary sending weapons

(02:30:44):
a directly to Ukraine. But his oldlatitude is like, I'm
not super pro what you guys are doing, but I'm
not going to fight anything in the EU Parliament. Hungary's
going to stop. Hungary has been like a spoiler in
EU politics for a while, where they would just kind
of to fuck with whatever the EU wants to do,
especially used to regards aiding Ukraine and Magyar's whole thing

(02:31:06):
is like, I'm just gonna stop, like I'm not gonna
ful throatedly support the stuff you guys want. I'm just
gonna stop being an anchor weighing you down, which is
enough like for the EU to be excited about this. Yeah,
like finally, this guy Hungary is not gonna be Hungary
is a weird history of acting like an anchor on
other polities. Sometimes that's kind of what was going on

(02:31:28):
in the Austro Hungarian Empire in like the pre World
War One era, where Hungary saw itself as very separate
from the Austria Hungary aspect of things, and would vote
to like fuck with the military because they wanted their
own military to get more powerful. It's not entirely the same,
it's just interesting the level of like contrarianus that's kind
of baked into a lot of Hungarian politics. I mentioned

(02:31:52):
something about Peter's name. So the Magyars are like the
original like nomadic horse warrior people of the area we
know as Hungary today, the name Magyar just means Hungarian now,
but it came from the most powerful of these tribes
of nomadic warriors. And someone had made a point of
this on I was ad of Twitter or Blue Sky
around the election that like Peter Magyar is basically if

(02:32:14):
a guy was named Johnny American, right, Like that's like
literally like his name could not be more patriotic.

Speaker 7 (02:32:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (02:32:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:32:23):
Adolf Hitler defeated by a yeah in Germany.

Speaker 1 (02:32:26):
And Maggar became a force on the political stage in
Hungary very suddenly. He wasn't really a major figure. He
was kind of actually connected to a lot of because
again he was a supporter of the Fadez party. He
had a lot of friends who were members of Orbon's government.
One of his buddies was Orbon's chief of staff. In
two thousand and six, he married a woman, judyte Varga,
who was the Minister of Justice for the Fadez party

(02:32:47):
under Orbon right, and he'd worked as like a diplomat
in Brussels, so he's like a guy who's part of
this government apparatus that Orbon puts into place. But in
twenty twenty fours there's this huge scandal where the Ministry
of Justice and like his wife by which I mean
his well now his ex wife because they split, and
then his ex wife pardons a man who had gotten

(02:33:10):
convicted for covering up a sex abuse scandal at a
children's home, and Magyar becomes like one of the most
visible figures on the backlash, being like this entire party
is corrupt, this is super fucked up, and he's coming
from a position of and I was a part of it,
so I know, like I'm an insider who's broken from
the group because how corrupt and bad this is, and

(02:33:30):
there's some messed up stuff in there. Magyar does attack
Orbon and Fidez because his ex wife gets fired along
with another woman. When this scandal becomes a problem, and
he accuses the government of like hiding behind women's skirts.
But he's also got he's an odd pers There's some

(02:33:52):
uncomfortable not damning or anything, just some like uncomfortable realities
about him. And I want to read a quote from
an en PR article that came out recently that talks
about some of this. Magar has blamed the end of
his marriage to Varga, at least in part on political disagreements. Notably,
just months before the divorce was finalized in twenty twenty three,
he secretly recorded one of their conversations, and it Varga

(02:34:14):
was talking about an attempt by government aids to interfere
in a corruption case. Maggar released a recording in the
wake of the pardon scandal the following year, which only
added fuel to the fire and credence to his corruption claims,
and his wife resigns from public life altogether after this.
She has accused him of verbal and physical abuse, including
like locking her in a room, and obviously, like the

(02:34:35):
whole recording account, there's a lot of there's some uncomfortable
stuff about this guy. But that said, she's also super
corrupt and like doing a lot of really so I
don't know, and no one really does if you read
a lot about this guy. One of the things people
point is that we don't etually know a lot about
him other than he's really good at whipping a party
into shape and winning an election.

Speaker 5 (02:34:57):
Right like, he proved that much, But we.

Speaker 1 (02:34:59):
Don't know much about him. Even Orbon has made anti
LGBTQ rights a big part of his platform, especially as
his position has gotten weaker, He's tried to like supercharge
that as a way to hold on the power. Magyar's
not pro queer rights, but he's not anti queer rights.

(02:35:19):
He has criticized the Orbon government from going after LGBTQ
people and says that they're doing it to distract citizens
from the issues, which is true. He said that he
supports the right to assembly, he has not said that
he supports LGBTQ rights. That said, if going from a
guy who's like, I actively want to prosecute people for
being queer to a guy who's like, I just don't

(02:35:40):
want to talk about it is probably an improvement.

Speaker 7 (02:35:44):
It's worth noting that in his victory speech he did
make two references to LGBTQ rights, saying that quote everyone
can live with whoever they love, as long as they
do not violate laws or harm others, and also said, quote,
we want to make a country where no one is
persecuted because they think differently, or because someone loves in

(02:36:07):
a different way to others.

Speaker 2 (02:36:09):
Unquote.

Speaker 1 (02:36:10):
This is again broadly, a really good thing, and it's
also good. It's good in Hungary, it's also good worldwide
because Hungary has been for years not just a major
supporter of far right groups. One of the things Magyar
pointed out as soon as he won election is that
there's evidence that they have found that the Fidez party

(02:36:32):
was using Hungarian governmental funds to support a couple of
number one to support Seapack because they hold like a
foreign seapac gatherings in Hungary. So like Seapack has been
getting money from the Hungarian government, and Magyar said, like,
that's not fine, We're not okay with that. I think

(02:36:53):
that's actually illegal. And he has also noted that that
government money was going to support the Matthias Corvinus Call
or MCC, which was receiving funds from the Orbanne government,
and that that is going to stop now. The MCC
is both like it's an organization in Hungary, but they
also have a bunch of like foreign They've got one
in like Romania, there's one in Brussels. They have like

(02:37:14):
a bunch of foreign branches and they use the MCC
and fund it in order to fund the fire right
in other European countries. Right, Like the MCC supports like
the one in Brussels supports in Brussels local fire right groups.
And it's been very a fairly effective way of like
funding some of these like and oftentimes like Nazi adjacent organizations.

(02:37:36):
And that money is looking to go away. And there's
an interesting Politico article about some of this that talk
to the MCC Brussels people, like the offshoot of this
in Brussels. For its part, MCC Brussels said that Sunday's
election result will have no bearing on its work in
the city. As an independent organization. We will continue to research,
analyze and advocate around our core concerns and continue to
hold the European Union institutions to account. That's the communications manager.

(02:38:01):
And the article goes on to note MCC Brussels gets
almost alledge cash ninety nine percent, coming to just over
six million euros according to its listing in the last
financial year as part of a grant from Matthias Corvinus Collegium,
which received a ten percent stake in Hungary's lucrative oil
and gas company MOL from Orbonn's government in twenty twenty.
That's certainly going away too. This is a major blow
to far right organizing in Europe and in the United States.

(02:38:24):
And it's more than just losing money, losing a space
to gather, it's losing a proof of concept.

Speaker 3 (02:38:29):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:38:30):
Orbon was the guy they pointed to, is like, this
is what we want to do in America, not just America,
but very directly, and Orbon just flamed the fuck out
because he sucked at governing. Now, what happens next is
going to depend on whether or not Magyar prosecutes Fede's
party members prosecutes Orbon and his cronies. He said he's
going to, so we'll see, and that's all I gotta

(02:38:51):
say for now.

Speaker 5 (02:38:53):
Yeah, I think it's worth noting that, like in Europe,
we had this somewhat with Donald Tusk in Poland right
and what we have seen there, for instance, on immigration,
has been a continued movement to the right. Right like
Tusk has been like talking about not complying with EU
immigration rulings. And I think that's probably something that people

(02:39:17):
who are interesting which way this might go should look at.
But that doesn't mean that it's a bad thing. That
all that is out now that Aubank conceded, right Like,
he had multiple US politicians, including the Vice president, campaigning
for him, and he lost, and he admitted he lost,
and that is a very good sign.

Speaker 1 (02:39:36):
Part of why he conceded is he thinks that he's
got enough people in the woven end of the government
that he can return to power, or at least his
party can so. Meg again, Magyar's big challenge is going
to be making sure that doesn't happen.

Speaker 2 (02:39:50):
Yeah, yeah, and whatever else. I think it's very very
unlikely that Magyar is going to be doing shit like, hey,
we're going to use face We're going to threaten to
use facial cognition on everyone who shows up to a
Pride protest and a Pride march and arrest them, so,
you know, hopefully getting better.

Speaker 1 (02:40:07):
Yeah. I again, he was willing to wire tap his wife.
There's no evidence that he takes like pleasure in fucking
with people. Like that doesn't seem to be as vibe,
so hopefully not.

Speaker 5 (02:40:23):
Yeah, all right, should we take a break? We shall,
all right.

Speaker 7 (02:40:27):
Then we will be back for more news.

Speaker 2 (02:40:40):
So one of the other pieces of news coming out
of the right wing sphere is this really incredibly staged
photo op that Donald Trump had where he like got
this really well photographed, like fake door Dash order and
then tipped tip them in one hundred dollars. That was

(02:41:01):
supposed to be a promotion for his note taps on
tips thing. There's a lot of stuff going on here.
There's been a whole bunch of stuff because people immediately
figured out that this person is someone who's been basically
used to lobby for this policy a bunch. She shows
up all over the place, like testifying in front of
congressional committees and stuff about no tax for tips and

(02:41:21):
like or like legislatures all over the country. There's a
whole bunch of kind of funny stuff where she gets
asked if she would vote for Trump and whether she
supports trans athletes, and she's just like there's also a
whole story about sort of door Dash's pr person just
having a crash out and getting extremely mad online.

Speaker 1 (02:41:42):
Me don't don't put it in the newspaper that they
got mad.

Speaker 2 (02:41:46):
It's really amazing. But I think the actual story here
is about no tax on tips as a political project,
and I think the actual most egregious part of this
whole event was the White House. They operate like fifty
five Twitter accounts. One of them the Guardian points out
as this like rapid response thing, and it posts this

(02:42:10):
video where that's captioned about how this woman said she
saved eleven thousand dollars in taxes on tips. That's not true,
it can't be true. It's just mathematically a lie. The
actual policy and the Guardian's doing some good work on
this lays out quote. But the no tax on tips

(02:42:31):
policy is only a temporary deduction of up to twenty
five thousand dollars in tips for eligible workers annually. Tipped
workers still have to report their tips as income. So
there's a lot of things going on here. One this
is all all of the tax on tips off is temporary.
We talked about this when it came out. It was
designed to sort of phase out the moment Trump leaves

(02:42:51):
office or supposed to leave office, and b. Dordash also
later had to say oh no, no, no, no, she did
not save eleven thousand dollars in tax money on tips.
They were like, no, no, no, she made eleven thousand
dollars in tips and didn't have to pay taxes on it.
But first off, she did not make eleven thousand dollars
on tips. Like, you can't make eleven thousand dollars in

(02:43:14):
tips doing DoorDash delivery. It's basically impossible. And I'm very
sure that she didn't do this because also if you
look at and the Guardian with you or not the Guardian,
I'm ink with you some of the earlier you know, interviews,
because she's been on a PR circuit about this for
a while. She was on Fox News, and on Fox
News she claims that she'd saved three to four thousand

(02:43:34):
dollars and that eventually that like number amount of money
that she'd saved eventually gets bumped up to eleven thousand.
I think, though, what happened is that she maybe got
she's claiming originally that she got like three thousand dollars
in tips. There's also another issue here, which is at
like eleven thousand dollars, it's like not clear if that's
even enough money to qualify as having to pay income

(02:43:55):
taxes in Alaska. Like this is all, this is all
basically just a night there. And but the reason this
is all actually happening is that the note tax on
tips thing is this giant pr campaign that DoorDash, particularly
DoorDash but also some of the other uh, some of
the other companies have been doing as basically a propaganda

(02:44:17):
thing in order to avoid there being attention on the
fact that they just don't pay their workers a living
wage and what so. One of the really important things
that's almost never talked about with DoorDash and with with
all of these sort of like these these delivery apps, right,
is that if you are a restaurant worker and you're
making something for a DoorDash order, and this particularly like

(02:44:39):
you know, for example, if you work at a coffee shop, right,
you don't get tips on DoorDash orders. So when when when?
When when these things? When these orders started coming through
in like sort of the past like five six, eight years, right,
what happened was that this was basically a giant everyone
who's working like in a restaurant or in a in

(02:45:01):
like a cafe or whatever, you're getting it from those
people all had massive speed ups where they just don't
get and they don't and they don't get paid the
regular tips that they would you know, be relying on
to even sort of have a living gage wage. Right,
So these people all got speed ups. And then on
top of that, right, so you are, if you're ordering
from one of these sites, right, you're probably are paying
a tip. But that tip money has basically been you know,

(02:45:24):
it's been extracted from the restaurant workers. But then now
it's being used as a way to subsidize, right, as
a way to subsidize door Dash not paying actual fucking wages.
And so what this entire project is is is it's
this It's this giant attempt to basically continue this process
and solidify this process and stop all of the organizing

(02:45:45):
campaigns that have been happening against door Dash to get
them to like actually fucking pay people. And what's happening
instead is that they're trying They're trying to shift everyone's
focus to like, oh, hey, we can give you like
no tax on tips, even though what these tips are
and what the system that they've built is is is
it system to basically exploit both restaurant workers and also

(02:46:05):
specifically to make sure they don't ever have to fucking
pay their workers any amount of money. And that's the
actual that's the actual political ramifications of what's happening here
beyond guy has funny crash out in social media, and
I think it's very bleak that there's been basically no
coverage of the sort of totality of what this is

(02:46:28):
doing to people.

Speaker 7 (02:46:30):
To circle back to the potentiality of the new Prime
Minister of Hungary prosecuting the former corrupt administration, let's turn
to California. The former front runner in the California governor's race,
Eric Swalwell, dropped out of the election last week and
subsequently resigned from Congress amidst sexual assault allegations from multiple women.

(02:46:53):
The new front runner is billionaire Tom Steyer, who ran
for president back in twenty twenty. You might remember him
from the Yeah, good, okay clip of where he tried
to talk to Bernie Sanders as Bernie and Elizabeth Warren
were beefing on stage after a presidential debate.

Speaker 2 (02:47:11):
Well, is she the guy? Is she the guy who
had that story about killing someone in Vietnam? Or was
that was another one of the unhinged guys that.

Speaker 7 (02:47:19):
Ye Stire wasn't super unhinged. He was a little bit boring,
but nominally one of the more progressive people in that
overstuffed race despite being a billionaire. A lot of his
poll is talking about we should tax billionaires like me more.
I know, I'm a billionaire. I'll be fine. That's kind
of his that's kind of part of his stick.

Speaker 1 (02:47:40):
Look, my opinion is as a former Californian and just
someone who's voted in California in the long grand history
of California governors, he would be one of the better options.
That California is fat, which is the bar, really low bar.

Speaker 5 (02:47:58):
Yeah, and the race this year is just shite.

Speaker 1 (02:48:01):
It's it's again like Arnold Schwarzenegger was the governor and
like firmly middle of the pack.

Speaker 5 (02:48:08):
Like it's absolute bollocks. Now, Like sorry, I know I'm
saying very British words, but it is upsetting.

Speaker 7 (02:48:14):
It is funny to describe the California governor's racist bollocks.

Speaker 1 (02:48:19):
It's bollocks many times.

Speaker 5 (02:48:22):
I have to live here, I have to pay taxes
to these clowns.

Speaker 1 (02:48:26):
I mean, it's California, baby, Like you're gonna periodically have
governor raises that are just like shit shows, largely to
provide content for the media.

Speaker 5 (02:48:36):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:48:37):
Now.

Speaker 7 (02:48:38):
This week, Stier released part of his immigration platform titled
how California Can Put Ice in Jail, echoing cries that
activists have been tried to circulate into popular consciousness for
the past year. Now, Stier doesn't just advocate for ICE
to be abolished, which he does, but says in this

(02:49:01):
new platform released on substack, quote, it's not enough for
Democrats to simply engage in rhetoric and quote unquote stand
against Ice or Trump. California must build a system that
fights fire with fire to stop this authoritarian takeover. We
must counter Ice head on and go after both their
agents on the streets and their leadership within the DHS.

(02:49:23):
How do we do this the same way we took
on the mob, put ICE agents and their leadership in
jail for their crimes, because that's how you take on
a violent extremist group and win unquote. Steyer promises to
do five things as governor to build this strategy to
take on Ice. First, passing aggressive legislation building on current

(02:49:43):
California statutes to outlaw any law enforcement agency from profiling
based on race, ethnicity, language, occupation, or location. This directly
takes on the Kavanagh stops, which were approved last fall.

Speaker 5 (02:49:59):
And a lot of others Supreme Court decisions of for instance,
Board of Patrol operates under.

Speaker 7 (02:50:05):
Then, Stier says he'll grant the state Attorney general authority
to hold ICE's leadership accountable for violence by pursuing quote
unquote supervisory liability. Stire writes that quote this body of
law empowers the California justice system to criminally prosecute and
imprison not just the ICE agents who are committing these crimes,

(02:50:26):
but the leadership directing them to do so.

Speaker 3 (02:50:29):
Unquote.

Speaker 7 (02:50:31):
Stire promise is to appoint and fund a special investigative
unit that's specifically tasked with enforcing these California laws, quote,
including laws related to the conditions at detention facilities. This
unit will collect the evidence the Attorney General can use
to prosecute offenders and their leadership.

Speaker 3 (02:50:48):
Quote.

Speaker 7 (02:50:50):
That's how he plans to take on ICE and leadership
at the DHS and to prosecute crimes committed by ICE agents. Now,
Stire also says that he will quote bring those detained
and kidnapped by ICE back home quote by expanding the
immigration legal defense infrastructure in the state of California, including

(02:51:11):
funding for quote more attorneys, investigators, and accredited representatives, as
well as legal aid and law school programs to assist
and help those who have been imprisoned without due process unquote.

Speaker 5 (02:51:25):
This is the one like that I'd like. So there
are counties in California the fund that we had an
episode about this about two years ago, right that there
will fund legal defense for migrants. Traditionally this has been
Ice works around this by moving people who have that
legal representation out of the state as quickly as they

(02:51:45):
can and then refusing or making it very hard for
WebEx motions for their attorneys to attend their hearings remotely.
And what that does is effectively like bleeds to program, right,
because then this attorney has to fly to Texas for
a fifteen minute hearing about rescheduling or something similar. I

(02:52:06):
would need to There's a lot of other stuff here,
like law school programs. That's interesting. I don't know what
those would be. There needs to be something that stops
them doing that, because that is what they did under
Biden too, like a this is not a Trump era thing.
This is very much something that happened under Biden, and

(02:52:27):
it will happen again if the state of California does
this on a statewide level, I will imagine, I would imagine,
especially like let's entertain the idea that we have an
election in twenty twenty eight, we have a Democrat president,
I still has a massively expanded detention capacity. It could
very easily move people out of California very quickly, and

(02:52:50):
so we need, like there need to be awareness of that.
I would also say that, like, one of the tools
that I don't see mentioned here that I think should
be mentioned is SB fifty four in CALIFORNI SB fifty four.
They're obviously there are different SB fifty four when I'm
talking about a California Values Act here, the one that
prohibits law enforcement cooperation except for cerchin exemptions with immigration authorities.

(02:53:13):
That already exists. It's already there. And like this is
his statements, pretty brief for his PDFs, only three pages.
It might not go into all this detail. I would
like to see that flagged, at least in in further
detail or when he's speaking about this, right, because SB
fifty four prosecutions of cops are important, right, because there

(02:53:34):
are California agencies which appear to be flouting California law
in order to comply with Trump's immigration goals. And if
we don't do that first, then I have a lot
less faith that any of this other shit is going
to matter.

Speaker 7 (02:53:50):
Yeah, I mean, obviously, funding legal representation for immigrants regardless,
like is a good thing. But it but the effect
that it could have could be curtailed by Ice, as
James is said, by moving people quickly out of state.
And it's unclear if Stier is also talking about trying

(02:54:10):
to help trying to help residents of California.

Speaker 5 (02:54:14):
Is it people who Is it people who reside in
California and have been taken by ICE? Or is it
people who are in iced detention in California California? Yeah,
Like those are different categories, right like, anyone or any
other people in immigration attention broadly in California, to include
anyone who would cross the southern border and then be detained,
right Like, this is all stuff that I'd like to
see fleshed out. Maybe it will be. I am going

(02:54:34):
to email his office and ask some of these questions.

Speaker 7 (02:54:37):
The last thing that Stier has in this five list
of promises is promised to launch a statewide no Your
Rights public education and public awareness campaign, and Stire writes
quote backed by expanded protections against racial profiling. Legal representation
empowers detained individuals to report ICE's crimes to the Special

(02:54:57):
Investigator and California's Attorney General and take the agents to
court unquote. So he sees all these things like working
in conjunction together to prosecute ICE agents and give immigrants
legal representation so that this so that the investigative unit
can be aware of certain crimes by ICE agents. It's

(02:55:20):
the most that I've seen any politician like put down
as like an actual plan to go after ICE. Like
some other people have employed this sort of this sort
of rhetoric, but in terms of actually producing a plan
to go about this, this is the most detailed that
I've seen. And as James said, it'll be good to
learn more about how he envisions this actually going into

(02:55:42):
effect and those certain details that it would be nice
to have more detail on. But as as as rhetoric
and as as an actual policy proposal, this is like
the most advanced thing I've seen on actually trying to
prosecute ICE and DHS.

Speaker 5 (02:55:58):
All Right, so it's talk a little bit more about
immigration things around the topic. First and foremost in this
what I want to talk about is this court filing
by the ACLU and associated groups pertaining to the South
Florida Soft Sided Facility South aka Alligator Alcatraz. Right. The
court filing has some really disturbing stuff and it basically

(02:56:21):
details what they claim to be the continued abuse of
detainees despite a court order that should have prohibited some
of this or prevented it. Rather, in their filing they
are led to the attorneys were prevented from meeting with
their clients, forced to make appointments, and we've seen some
reporting on the physical abuse. I have not seen as
much discussion of this, which I think is extremely concerning.

(02:56:43):
Attorneys have been asked to submit copies of legal documents
that they are bringing or to go over with their
clients right like this would be a very clear violation
of their attorney client privilege right that those communications should
be private between the attorney and the client. And the
facility denied detainees access to phones. This was part of

(02:57:05):
the previous co order. They were to have access to
phones and communications with their attorneys as well as some
other stuff. They had to be advised of their rights
posters explaining some of this stuff. This resulted in demands
and the parts of the detainees to restore their access
to phones. I want to quote at length from the
filing here just so I don't make any false representations.

Speaker 2 (02:57:26):
Quote.

Speaker 5 (02:57:27):
After not having access to phone calls all day, people
in their cages were getting frustrated with the situation, as
these phone calls are the only way people can contact
loved ones, speak with and secure an attorney. Detained individuals
in mister Morphi and mister Hernandez Galband's cage began complaining
loudly about the phones not working. Mister Morphi and mister
Hernandez Galband both reported that several guards who work for

(02:57:48):
crs a's, the entity managing the facility, came to the
cage and were taunting the detained individuals inside. Detained individuals
began raising their voices in protests. The guards got more
aggressive and were yelling and threatening to enter the cage.
Mister Hernandez Galband went to the guards to try and
deesperate the situation and advise the guards not to enter

(02:58:09):
the cage at that time, fearing it would lead to violence.
Mister Morphy and mister Hernandez Galband both reported that another
detained individual then went to the guards and an officer
punched that person. Then the officers targeted mister Morphy. Neither
mister Morphy nor mister Hernande's garband know why they targeted
mister Morphy. The guards threw mister Morphy to the ground

(02:58:31):
and severely beat him up. An officer came in and
punched mister Morphy in his right eye and began to
beat him. He was taken out the cage and thrown
to the ground and beaten by multiple guards. He suffered
injuries to his shoulder and arm, and was kicked in
the head. A guard placed their knee on his neck
when the guard was trying to restrain him. Mister Morphy

(02:58:53):
does not know which guards are involved, as they do
not wear id badges, but he believes he would recognize them.
The officers beat so for other people during this incident
and broke another detained individual's wrist. The officers then pepper
sprayed everyone in the cage. A detained older gentleman passed
out as he could not breathe. That's pretty horrific, like.

Speaker 7 (02:59:16):
This is just one day in one detention center.

Speaker 5 (02:59:19):
This I was going to say, this is one cage
on one day in one facility. And like, if these
people had not been brave enough to speak out, then
we wouldn't know. Or if these people had been deported
before they could speak out, we wouldn't know. Right, they
didn't even have telephones to report this, if they hadn't
had attorneys, we wouldn't know. Yeah, this is an insight

(02:59:43):
into what's happening in this facility, and it is horrific.
There are images that go with this, if people want
to look them up. You can see some very clearly
injured people, or you can see at least one very
clearly injured person.

Speaker 7 (02:59:57):
Let's go on an ad break and then talk about
Iran some all the part partails.

Speaker 5 (03:00:12):
All right, we are back and in our final segment
of today's show, we're going to talk about the ongoing
war with Iran. Right this past weekend, jd Vance and
Jared Kushner's what a Steve Witcoff master negotiator, A guy
who doesn't know the difference between a tweet that is
public and a DM that is private. Incredible. They flew

(03:00:36):
to meet an Iranian Delegation in Pakistan, which serves to
mediate and host ceasefire talks between the United States and Iran. Ultimately,
this did not result in an enduring agreement between the
US and Iran, and as a result, the United States
has begun blockading Iranian ports. So far, several vessels have
been turned around by the US blockade, and at least

(03:00:58):
one that tried to run it was eventually turned back,
even though it attempted to hug the Iranian coastline in
order to avoid consequences. The US Navy has also issued
instructions which seemed to suggest that it could target shadow
fleet vessels globally as part of the blockade if they're
carrying a number of contraband items, which includes basically Iranian

(03:01:20):
oil all its derivatives, weapons, some metals, and industrial supplies.
It's a very broad list of contraband. In the thirteen
claimed instances of ships being turned around so far, I
have not seen any in which it was a physical interdiction.
It seems that the United States ships contacted them by
radio advising them of the blockade. The blockade has not

(03:01:44):
currently stopped some types of cargoes entering Iran noticed a
mariner suggests humanitarian supplies can enter, but those vessels are
subject to inspection. If this causes a cooling effect or
just a reduction in the ability of Iran to bring

(03:02:05):
in more food, this could cause serious food shortages. There's
a there's already been massive food price inflation since the war.
Brigan and Iran had previously tried to work around this,
but a complete blockade would make that harder. It does
seem that negotiation between the US and Iran and ongoing.
We're recording this on Thursday, and the latest thing that

(03:02:28):
I had seen has suggested that Iran is saying it
might allow traffic through the Strait if its assets are unfrozen.
This hinges on the idea that Iran gets to decide
who goes through the strait. Right, the strait is wider
than twelve twelve miles is generally the territorial waters right

(03:02:49):
just so it is international waters, So the idea that
Iran controls it. If the US signs some kind of
deal which implies or outright says, that would be a
massive victory for a run right at least in that area. Meanwhile,
the United States is amassing a massive naval force in
the region with three carrier strike groups either there or

(03:03:10):
heading there. That is approximately forty percent of the USA's navy. Interestingly,
the George H. W. Bush is going around Africa to
go there.

Speaker 7 (03:03:21):
The ship, not the man, that's correct, George H. W.

Speaker 5 (03:03:24):
Bush himself swimming, he's gonna wet to No, Yes, the
United States ship George H. W. Bush is going around
the southern tip of Africa. Geography understanders will notice that
that is the long way. The short way would be
through the Suez Canal.

Speaker 2 (03:03:43):
Right, Oh, no, they're doing They're doing the Russia the
Resar Japanese war thing that always goes great for the
imperial power.

Speaker 5 (03:03:53):
Moving because yeah, I'm guessing they're doing it because they
don't want to get hit by yea many groups right
going through the Red See And that seems to be
the only explanation I can think of. Two Avenger class
mind countermeas ships also left Singapore. They will also likely
be headed to the region right for demining the straight Yeah. Meanwhile,

(03:04:15):
it's worth noting that this ceasefire has not been universal,
where bombing has not ceased. In Kurdistan. This week, a
pesche Murger of the Commala of the toilers of Kurdistan.
Ghazal Molan, a young Kurdish woman, died after sustaining injuries
in a strike on Tuesday. It seems that it was

(03:04:36):
very hard for the Kammala to find medical care for her.
I'm going to quote from a piece by the Hannah
human rights organization here quote. She then required urgent, higher
level treatment, including advanced imaging, specialist trauma care, and intensive
care support. Hannah has received serious allegations that the necessary
treatment was not provided and that the subsequent efforts to

(03:04:59):
secure your admission or transferred to other hospitals were delayed
or refused. The central allegation under review is that once
the case was understood to be connected to a drone
strike and to carry political sensitivity, non medical considerations may
have affected decisions concerning her admission and treatment. That's pretty
bleak if it's true relativity, that this person could have survived,

(03:05:21):
but hospitals either feared political consequences or being struck themselves,
they decided. And there's a you can look at the
show notes right that they link, and they talk about
a number of hospitals that they basically drove her around
trying to find care it's really heartbreaking. Again, other strikes

(03:05:42):
have hit civilian facilities, including refugee camps sort of associated
with the rogulati groups in Kurdistan, and that seems to
be that there is no cease fire for the Kurds. Right.
It's the long and the short of it. I run around,
it's taking this time of peace negotiations to kind of
reorganize its military and to reassess its supplies. Even they

(03:06:05):
have dug out some missiles and anti air systems that
were buried but not destroyed by strikes, and so they
will be preparing for whatever comes next. If people want
to know more about this, I made a whole episode
which will have come out the day before this in
the same feed, so you can listen to it there.

Speaker 7 (03:06:25):
This morning, also Trump announced a ceasefire deal for ten
days between Israel and Lebanon. We'll see if that turns
out to be real, if Israel well abide by this.
But that is like as of for like an hour
ago while we record Thursday afternoon.

Speaker 2 (03:06:43):
And it's worth noting there were literally thousands of violations
with the last use fire that are on it's supposedly
agreed to you with Lebanon. So yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 (03:06:54):
Trump had said that it was a quote separate skirmish
in Lebanon and thus didn't it wasn't included in the ceasefire,
which is a hell of a way to describe what's
happening there.

Speaker 7 (03:07:04):
For our last story, let's talk about Sam Altman. Last week,
a twenty year old college student named Daniel Moranogama traveled
from Texas to San Francisco, California, and at three point
thirty am on April tenth, allegedly threw a molotov cocktail
toward the home of open AI CEO Sam Altman. The

(03:07:26):
molotov hit the top of the security gate on the
driveway leading to Altman's residence. Then, at around five am,
Moranogama arrived at the open Ai headquarters and tried to
use a chair to break into the building through the
glass doors, but was stopped by security. According to security
personnel on site, Moranogama stated that he came to the

(03:07:48):
headquarters to burn it down and kill anyone inside. A
federal affidavit alleges that after detaining Moranogama, officers recovered quote,
incendiary devices, a jug of keras, a blue lighter, and
an ANTIAI Document unquote. This document was a three part
manifesto apparently authored by Moranogama. The first part was titled

(03:08:12):
quote your Last Warning and allegedly states that Moranogama quote
killed slash attempted to kill Sam Altman, also writing quote,
if I'm going to advocate for others to kill and
commit crimes, that I must lead by example and show
that I am fully sincere in my message. The document
then listed the names and addresses of investors, board members,

(03:08:35):
and executives of AI companies. The second part of the
document was titled some more Words on the Matter of
our Impending Extinction. This section discussed the purported risk AI
poses to humanity. The third part of the document was
a letter addressed quote to Sam Altman, if you make
it and read some part quote, if by some miracle

(03:08:57):
you live, then I would take this as a sign
from the divine to redeem yourself unquote. Moronogama's Instagram user
name was but larryan Jie Hottist, in reference to the
crsede against AI in the Dune novels.

Speaker 5 (03:09:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (03:09:13):
This account had a collection of Instagram stories saved about
the existential threat of AI. Now we don't have a
copy of this three part manifesto in full, but his
sub stack is still online and it contains other writing
about his belief that AI poses this existential threat to humanity.
In this writing, his opposition to AI is not based

(03:09:35):
on fears of disruptions to the economy, loss of jobs,
or labor rights, but the belief that AI will become
a superior race and wipe out or enslave humanity. In
a post from January sixth, twenty twenty six, he writes
that AI will quote lead to human extinction because of
the quote rapid progress in artificial intelligence unquote, as well

(03:09:58):
as that AI models are not aligned with humanity's interests.
To quote this essay, ignore for a second these models
current limitations or questions on how truly intelligent or conscious
these models may actually be. The truth is all of
these nuances are completely irrelevant to my argument. There are
only two questions we should be concerned about at this moment.

(03:10:20):
Is it willing to kill to preserve itself? And is
it capable of doing so? Signs indicate that AI is
willing and becoming potentially capable of doing both these things,
and that is all that matters. We are dead if
we do not act now unquote. He recommended that people
read Eliezer Yudkowski's book If Anyone builds It, Everyone Dies,

(03:10:45):
and other posts on his substack also mentioned Yudkowski's work.
Who's one of the four fathers of quote unquote rationalism
rationalist thought, and writes a lot about Ai Doom. Ai
will bring apart the the end of humanity.

Speaker 1 (03:11:01):
This is very much a normal, like less wrong kind
of mindset, right, Like, this guy's not normal. He's clearly
suffering from some disordered thinking and is not like. This
guy does not represent the average person who uses those things.
But his justifications for what he did and his media
diet is clearly all like less wrong stuff, all rationalist stuff,

(03:11:25):
all Yudkowski stuff. So's he's been kind of marinating in that,
and you know, this is what somebody who's not like
this is unfortunately kind of the logical extent of Yodkowski's ideas,
Like he would say he doesn't want anyone doing stuff
like this, but his literal contention is that this is
going to kill everyone and everything like and it will

(03:11:48):
inevitably do it unless stopped. And if you really do
believe that, you're kind of like left to act like
these guys do. I think the responsible thing is for
there to be an anti AI movement that's not rooted
in nonsense, which is again why we do the stuff
that we do, because I'm very much against a lot
of this shit. Not because it's going to create a

(03:12:09):
god that kills everybody, but because it makes the Internet
a lot worse and makes human thinking a lot worse,
and it puts a lot of money into shitty people's
hands and is just often unnecessary in many of its
applications and outwardly like making some things worse, and that's
not great.

Speaker 2 (03:12:27):
Yeah, And like you know, if you want to talk
about like oh this is actually going to like end humanity,
it's like, well, yeah, it's also intensifying climate change, the
thing that you would think these people would care about, but.

Speaker 1 (03:12:35):
Yeah not, I mean sure, yeah, it's like that's the
that I'm not. I don't tend to focus on the
fucking water use aspects of people complaining about AI because
there's so many things we do that are like horrible
in those terms.

Speaker 2 (03:12:51):
Well, I mean also just like like the energy, like the.

Speaker 3 (03:12:56):
Yeah, like the cost thing is massive.

Speaker 2 (03:12:58):
Yeah, yeah, and like that is like we're just resources
for but like scam bots.

Speaker 1 (03:13:05):
Yeah, it's just useless and a lot of like a
lot of what it's being used for is pointless. Like
if you're able to, you know, create machines that are
more accurately able to like scan for cancers or whatever, fine,
I don't have a problem with that, but like, we
don't need to be burning the resources that we're burning
to replace like people writing local news articles with slop advertisements,

(03:13:28):
you know, like that's not a benefit to society. And
I'm really angry at it, and it's frustrating to see
people getting radicalized to it literally attack AI people for
bullshit reasons like and honestly, Altman's partly to blame for this.
He's one of the people who has fanned the flames
of we might be making an evil god.

Speaker 7 (03:13:48):
Yes, because that is really good for investors, because it
makes the pain seem actually impressives.

Speaker 5 (03:13:53):
Like world changing.

Speaker 3 (03:13:54):
This is their preferred opposition.

Speaker 1 (03:13:56):
Yeah, if you are getting rich by saying I might
be making sky nets, somebody stop me. Someone might stop you, Sam,
you know, like realistically, don't do that.

Speaker 7 (03:14:07):
This substack also contains writing on pseudospiritual philosophy about the
quote tree of ultimate reality, the operation of man, the
genealogy of being, and the warrior and the martyr.

Speaker 5 (03:14:21):
Unquote sure man, a little too much Internet.

Speaker 7 (03:14:25):
Yeah, there's a lot of stuff there. But I want
to briefly touch on this other essay about political extremism,
where the writer Moro on Gama describes himself as a consequentialist,
defends discrimination, and advocates for quote ending mass migration and
initiating mass deportations. He proposes a system of IQ or

(03:14:47):
merit based nationalism, basically a country where citizenship is determined
by IQ, and a program to advance quote ethical eugenics
in the third world to promote IQ growth genetically on weves.

Speaker 4 (03:15:01):
Geez.

Speaker 2 (03:15:01):
Yeah, that's also that's like amazingly this is one of
these This is one of those sort of like you
look at the Hong Kong protests and it's like they're
on maoists on both sides, where both of like both
him and his enemies also believe this.

Speaker 7 (03:15:16):
Yeah, I mean this is a certain strain of like rationalists.
Post rationalist is really into this sort of like IQ
merit based yeah, and intelligence and meritocracy.

Speaker 2 (03:15:25):
Yeah, And they're like and so are like a bunch
of the tech people who are letting yeah, I stuff.

Speaker 7 (03:15:29):
I mean, this essay specifically is very disordered and it's thinking.
I do not think a lot of other rationalists would
would take some of the sort of beliefs and statements
made in this essay at face value, or like, would
not agree with the way that he would not agree
with the way that Moron Agama like writes, writes about
these sorts of like policies or ideas. It's very self contradictory.

(03:15:52):
He writes both kind of in favor and not in
favor of like I Q to vote or to become
a citizen. It's all very kind of confused. And on Tuesday,
Mornagama's public defender set in court that he has quote
a history of autism and mental health illness, and that
his actions quote appear to have been driven by an
acute mental health crisis quote now Interestingly, two days after

(03:16:17):
the Molotov cocktail attack, Sanltman's home was apparently targeted again
in a drive by shooting. A man and a woman
in their mid twenties have been arrested connected to that,
and on Tuesday morning, a molotov cocktail was thrown at
the entrance of a Teslas sales office in New Orleans,
igniting a fire at the front door. No arrests have

(03:16:39):
been made connected to that incident. I think I should
also just briefly mention the warehouse fire thing, which I
did a full episode on earlier this week that you
can listen to, but kind of in short, just as
for midnight. On April seventh, a twenty nine year old
warehouse worker named Schammel Abdul Karim allegedly set a toilet
paper warehouse on fire in Ontario, California, least by the

(03:17:00):
company Kimberly Clark. Adilkarim allegedly filmed himself igniting three pallets
of paper products on fire while saying aloud, if you're
not going to pay us enough to fucking live or
afford to live, at least pay us enough not to
do this shit. All you had to do was pay
us enough to live. There goes your inventory unquote. According
to the DOJ, this fire caused over half a billion

(03:17:23):
dollars in damages, it's five hundred million in profit and
one hundred million in infrastructure. In the days after the fire,
people started sharing viral clips of other warehouse fires across
the country, asserting that a wave of copycat incidents were
occurring where underpaid employees were setting their workplaces on fire. Now,
none of these subsequent warehouse fires have yet been deemed arson.

(03:17:46):
Most are still under investigation, but some do have suspected
accidental causes, such as electrical failure, exploding lithium ion batteries,
and improperly mixed waste. At least one fire was at
an abandoned warehouse, so there was no scruntled worker setting
his workplace on fire in that instance. Most certainly, and
warehouse fires themselves, are actually pretty common. A report from

(03:18:07):
the National Fire Protection Association found that from twenty twenty
to twenty twenty four, an average of four warehouse fires
occurred per day. The idea that the number of warehouse
fires has suddenly increased is an instance of selective reporting,
where a big national news story causes people to share
local reports that appear connected even if there is no

(03:18:27):
direct connection. This happens a lot with aviation incidents, where
after news of an accident involving a big commercial airliner,
people will share local news reports of plane crashes, even
if these just involve small private planes which crash much
more frequently.

Speaker 4 (03:18:43):
Now.

Speaker 7 (03:18:44):
I wrote about the warehouse fire story and the viral
misinformation associated with it because I've been pretty consistent about
the need to have an accurate understanding of the world
in order to change it. But also, even if viral
claims of copycat fires are unfounded, the memes and the
reactions to the story, like Luigi Mangioni, do demonstrate a

(03:19:06):
form of class consciousness and do show an active willingness
to rally behind such action. And the toilet paper arson
story specifically is really compelling because this is just an
everyday worker. This isn't like a maoist bombing plot, this
isn't an anarchist affinity group. It's not hard to grasp
the motivation and politics of a worker saying all you
had to do was pay us a living wage. That said,

(03:19:29):
passive engagement with content promoting individuals to venturism can serve
as a cathartic substitute for taking political action, including the
relatively tedious and difficult work of union organizing. Memes like
this warehouse fire trend can have a positive outcome if
the sort of energy that's channeled through this direct action
and associated content could then be utilized towards actually building

(03:19:52):
a labor movement instead of just being a way for
influencers to attract engagement, which is why a lot of
this story has kind of perforated through Reddit, TikTok, Instagram,
and blue sky and Twitter. So that's kind of why
I talked about the story the way I did in
that episode. And if you want more details about this
viral meme, you can check out that episode from a

(03:20:14):
few days ago. Let's see, I think that's everything.

Speaker 5 (03:20:18):
There is no more news left.

Speaker 7 (03:20:21):
We did it. We did all the news, all right,
We reported the news.

Speaker 5 (03:20:25):
Goodbye. If you want to email us, you can do
so with your story tips. You can do that by
emailing cool Zone Tips at proton me. If you want
to email us with your marketing or to suggest that
your boss be a guest on our podcast, just don't.

Speaker 7 (03:20:44):
We reported the news.

Speaker 10 (03:20:48):
Hey.

Speaker 1 (03:20:48):
We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
now until the heat death of the universe.

Speaker 14 (03:20:53):
It could happen. Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
on media dot com or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts,
you can now find sources for it could happen here,
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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