It Could Happen Here Weekly 237

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

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

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Hello, dear listener. My name is Carlos Berrios Polanco and
I'm a journalist from Puerto Rico. I'm here with.

Speaker 4 (00:35):
Me James Stown. I'm a journalist who lives in San Diego.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
Thank you for being here, James. Today, I'm here to
talk to you about the Dominican Republic's immigration system and
how it has been shaped by the US's immigration system
to kind of function as a part of the US
border outside of what we would normally consider the US's border.

(01:02):
And instead of diving in immediately to that, I want
to start this episode by talking a little bit about
the tragic death of Ezra Francis Houllett, a transperson from
the United States, in immigration detention in the Dominican Republic.
I should mention that they use both them and he
him pronouns. However, I'm going to be using they them

(01:24):
going forward, because that's what the friends and family of
Hullet put as their pronouns, and the GoFundMe. They were
found dead in the Haina Immigration Detention Center, the biggest
immigration detention center in the Dominican Republic, on June twenty third,
twenty twenty five. The GoFundMe, set up by their family
to bring their body back to the States, describes them

(01:44):
as a compassionate and sensitive person who lived with mental
health issues and the after effects of childhood trauma. They
were twenty four and a really good artist from looking
at their Instagram. Per the Dominican news show Ellen form Conaltega,
who interviewed Hollet's mom, Hullet traveled to Puerto Rico without
their family's knowledge and seemed to be in contact with

(02:06):
a social worker here. I found a local Telemundo affiliate
here in Puerto Rico that reported that they went missing
on September third of twenty twenty four. However, it gofund
me says that they were missing in pr since March
of twenty twenty five. And Hollet's mom told elin Former
that that's when they last spoke. Around that same time,
Hollett flew to the Dominican Republic. According to ellen Form,

(02:28):
shortly after that, they were detained inside a construction site
where it appears that they were squatting alongside a Dominican man.
After being detained by the tourism police, they were passed
on to the Dix Young henerrad Le Megrasciung or DGM,
which does immigration enforcement and manages detention centers. Per ellen Former,
this was about thirty seven days after they entered the DR.

(02:49):
I want to preface this next section by saying that
the DR isn't particularly kind to transfolks, which I'm sure
affected Hollet's experience during immigration detention. Hollet was initially sent
to the male wing of HEINA, not because the DR
is particularly woke and sends people to detention based on
their gender identity, but because they were male presenting and

(03:11):
didn't have any ID on them. However, once the DGM
was able to identify Hullet, they were transferred to the
female wing of HEINA. To be honest, quite a bit
of the reporting around Hullet in the DR and here
in Puerto Rico is quite transphobic, and the way that
these immigration officials talk about Hullet in this kind of
mini documentary by Ellen Former is also quite transphobic. Videos

(03:36):
published by Ellen Former appeared to show Hullet curled up
on the floor next to dozens of other people who
were sleeping in two small rooms inside of immigration detention.
Some of the notes in videos uncovered by Ellen Former
appeared to show that Hullet was suffering from a mental
health crisis Throughout the more than two months they were
in immigration detention. Pullet's mom told ellen fordmher that Hullet

(03:58):
suffered from schizophrenia. They also wrote about having asthma and
being allergic to milk. Per Ellen Fode Ma, Hullett's mom
conferred to them that they needed an inhaler and an EpiPen.
Although news reports say that DGM provided Hullett with some
medicine for the apparent mental health crisis they were going through,
I can't find any reporting that says that they ever
got an inhaler or an EpiPen that they needed. A

(04:21):
coroner's report found that they died from a heart attack,
according to notesjasin a national news website. There, per information
obtained by the Inter American Commission of Human Rights, quote,
at least four facilities are being used as immigration detention centers,
present overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, deficient food, and lack of access

(04:44):
to healthcare. The same report states that a newborn died
in Heina on November fourteen of last year. People I've
spoken to who've been detained in Heina over the years
have described the conditions there as horrific, particularly as the
Dominican government has ramped up deportation efforts massively against the

(05:04):
country's Haitian population. Detention Centers are routinely overcrowded and people
have very little access to food or water for days,
from what they tell me. Further, people I've spoken to
detainnes are sometimes beaten or extorted by guards to be
able to call their families, to get their documents or
for food, and I talk a little bit more about
this later on in the episode. But the reason that

(05:27):
I started with Hullet's story is twofold. First because their
death was significantly undercovered by English language media, and second
because they died as a direct result of an immigration
system the systematically abuses Haitian immigrants and has been historically
shaped by the US military and the American border apparatus.

(05:50):
While they're organized in different ways within the law enforcement
structures of their respective countries, there are a lot of
similarities between the DGM and ICE and the United States,
particularly in their tactics and how they've terrorized immigrant communities. However,
before diving into the current immigration situation in the Dominican
Republic and how a lot of it has come as

(06:11):
a result of collaboration with American immigration enforcement, I want
to give some historical context about how, in a very
real way, the United States created the Dominican Haiti border.
The Demerican Republic was originally a Spanish colony, Haiti was
originally a French colony. Haiti became independent, then invaded the
Dominican Republic, then they fought them back to become independent themselves.

(06:35):
But throughout all of that time, the Dominican Haiti border
was in amorphous space, not the kind of quote unquote
hard border that it is today. There had been agreements
on where the border was supposed to be. People roughly
knew where that border was supposed to be on a

(06:55):
map and on the earth. If they lived near that area. However,
it was just kind of essentially an imaginary line that
ran along the two hundred and forty miles of land
that make up the border between the two countries. However,
in nineteen oh five, the US established a customs receivership
over the Dominican Republic to force the Caribbean nation to

(07:18):
pay its foreign debts and ostensibly protect it from a
possible European invasion, which is a classic Monroe doctrine move.

Speaker 4 (07:26):
Of course, yeah many such cases.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
This agreement was officially ratified for a nineteen oh seven
convention and created the Dominican Border Guard to police the
frontier between the two countries and make sure that all
duties were collected from commerce and people crossing the border.
According to a journal article titled Haitians, Magic and Money,
Drasa and Society and the Titian Dominican Borderlands by A.

(07:55):
Lauren Derby, while these weren't the first border guards, they
were essential to turning the border lands into the border
as it exists today, one of the most highly regulated
and police borders in the Western Hemisphere. And I should
also say that at some points throughout Dominican history, the
military patrol the border. Per a document from the Marines
titled Marines in the Daminican Republic nineteen sixteen to nineteen

(08:19):
twenty four, North Americans were part of the Dominican Frontier
Guard that regulated this border. Some would later go on
to become part of the Guadala National Dominicana, which was
created by the American military government that controlled the dr
between nineteen sixteen and nineteen twenty four. In nineteen twenty one,
the GND turned into the Porcia Dominicana, which also stationed

(08:42):
people of the border. At that time. For more context,
the American government was occupying Haiti at more or less
the same time from nineteen fifteen to nineteen thirty four.
This period of American occupation of L'spanola greatly defined the
relationship that both countries would have with each other go
going forward, as well as both countries military and law enforcement.

(09:04):
The military occupation of the Dominican Republic also led to
laws that prevented the entry of workers who weren't white
unless they came through official border crossings and paid for
temporary residence permits. This is, according to the book More
Than a Massacre, Racial Violence and Citizenship in the Haitian
Dominican Borderlands by Zabine Cadeau. While there had always been

(09:25):
racial prejudice on Hispaniola, this brought even more, leading to
Dominican security forces to arrest people on suspicion that they'd
broken this law even if they hadn't, and it was
later used to strip Dominicans of their citizenship. It also
strengthened the idea of quote unquote Dominican ivad as something
closer to being white and European. That sentiment that continues

(09:49):
to this day and in some ways is even stronger
now than it was then.

Speaker 4 (09:54):
What centering my mind is I think it was a
tweet that said they're coming out with a new version
of white that doesn't include you. Like whiteness is a
liminal concept, is something that can be can be hard
for people from the US to understand. But yeah, I've
heard this directly elucidated to me many times that like
dominicanness and blackness are distinct. Absolutely the Haitian people are black,

(10:18):
which obviously is someone who's who's lived in the UK
and the United States is difficult for me to understand.
But like all of these things are so feally constructed
that doesn't mean they're not real. It just means that
that people made them, people can move them.

Speaker 3 (10:32):
Yeah. Absolutely. I have also had people, to my face
say that the Dominican identity is completely separate from blackness,
you know, and as someone who has lived in Puerto Rico,
which is part of the United States are owned by it,
that also to me was very very strange. And I'd
say this as someone who whose mother is Dominican, right,

(10:54):
So I was just kind of like, yeah, stand when
the first time that I heard it, and sometimes it's
called even at Kiska is how it's it's being marketed
by some people in the current day. Although I will say,
if you've seen the video of the comedian I think
saying I know blacky Dominican, that's a I have pretty
much witnessed something exactly like that said completely seriously several

(11:19):
times throughout my life.

Speaker 4 (11:20):
Yeah, it doesn't mean that like Dominican people coming into
the unit US will not encounter anti blackness, because.

Speaker 3 (11:25):
They will, oh absolutely, yeah.

Speaker 4 (11:26):
Yeah, it's just that it also doesn't mean that on
return to Dominican Republic they cannot slot into a different
structure which puts them above Haitian people.

Speaker 3 (11:36):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, it's a very it's a very interesting
topic how those kind of identities are presented in separate
ways depending on on where you live. Because for me,
for example, if I went to the US, most people
would say that I'm brown, but here in Puerto Rico,
I'm kind of very explicitly a white person here, you know.

Speaker 4 (11:58):
Yeah, it's it's so it's such a short flight as well.
Know that flight from Miami Tominic come by, You got
Punta Kana or whatever at the airport there, that's like
out of Santo Domingo, and so much changes, right like
you can you can literally get on that plane as
someone who is considered to be black and then get
off that and be treated by American law enforcement like
you are ye, within like a one hour flight. And yeah,

(12:20):
it's just this is like the nature of creating hierarchies, right,
they can shift to include people and shift to exclude people.

Speaker 3 (12:27):
To absolutely absolutely, So I know I'm speaking to the
choir about this, but this kind of definition of borders
and national identity are an essential part of the nation
state and immigration enforcement because if you don't have an
established border, it's very hard to define the in group
that belongs inside of the nation and that group that doesn't,

(12:48):
who can then be detained, penalized, and deported for crossing
that imaginative line in the earth. These kinds of steps
by the US military government were essential to creating this idea.
The Dominicans in Haitians are two completely different people, have
it to be clear, It's not that this sentiment didn't
exist beforehand. In particular, the Dominican elite hated Haitians a

(13:09):
lot for the invasion of dr by Haiti. That centem
existed in the borderlands, but a lot of those people
were bilingual, which is very different from kind of people
inside of the metropol who saw themselves as kind of
this one identity versus along the borderlines, which is usually
what happens. Right there is a kind of melding identities

(13:32):
in ways that isn't seen anywhere else.

Speaker 4 (13:34):
Yeah, this is the same where I live, right, Like
San Diegotijuan's effectively like it's not one large city. They're
important and very very very real differences, but like in
many ways, one community, right, like so many of our
community members, Like I have students at at the community

(13:54):
college who cross every day. I've had students who have
to high school classes who crossed every day. Like I've
got friends who couldn't make rent work in California and
so they go to Tijuana and like, obviously, o those
people speak two languages or like both languages at the
same time. I think that's just a nature of living
in the borderliness.

Speaker 3 (14:15):
Yeah, absolutely so. Following the US's exit from the Dominican Republic,
Dictator trafil Throughhillo came to power in nineteen thirty. He
was trained by the US military and eventually rose to
the rank of Brigadier General of the PND. Then militarized it,
and as the word dictator implies, he was not a
good guy. Under him, the already burgeoning and existent anti

(14:38):
Haitian sentiment essentially exploded. He introduced the SEA, a national
identification document for all adult men, so Haitians had to
pay for the SEA and a foreign residency permit, essentially
ending the binational lifestyle of communities on the border. According
to more than a massacre, if the US started the border,

(14:59):
then Trhillo marked it as a sign of utter violence
by ordering his troops to ethnically cleanse the Dominican border
of Haitians. In October of nineteen thirty seven. This was
known as the Parsley Massacre, and estimates of people killed vary,
but the most common number I've seen used is roughly
twenty thousand Haitians killed over the course of about a

(15:22):
week to two weeks. And this massacre, of course came
about as a way for him to define the border
by stripping Haitians of that land because they were It
was mostly done inside of the Dominican side of the
d R. Haiti border. Yeah, it's called the Parsley Massacre
because soldiers reportedly recognize Haitians by their inability to pronounce

(15:44):
Parsley in Spanish prehied. However, experts think that this was
just a myth, another way to separate Haitians from Dominicans.
According to More Than a massacre also is a not
so fun fact. A lot of the violence took place
along the Massacre River, which a lot of people think
is called that because of the nineteen thirty seven massacre.

(16:05):
But from the various Spanish language sources I've read, they
all essentially say that this isn't true that it was.
It's called the Massacre River because of the frequent violence
that took place there. Between Spanish colonizers and French buccaneers
in the eighteenth century. And this is according to an
article by se Montal Driguos Nacola titled Dominican Republic and

(16:27):
Haiti at the crossroads of the Massacre River. The Dominican
Immigration Agency the DGM was also established by Trigo just
two years after the Parsley Massacre. Not only were they
essential to deporting Haitians during Trhiyo's reign, but they also
forced the Haitian population into the sugar producing regions of

(16:47):
the country, and because he couldn't deploy overt state violence
there in the same way that he did along the border,
they came up with a new plan. Any Haitian immigrant
detained in the area would just be brought back to
whatever sugar plantation would pay their immigration taxes, essentially creating
these zones which still very much exist to this day

(17:08):
of Haitians living in and around these sugar plantations that
they also work at. I should say that this wasn't
a codified policy, but that it coexisted with other tactics
throughout the years. The Juhio government also instituted a policy
that made all Haitians who owned land or businesses to

(17:28):
not be able to work outside of the sugar producing regions.
According to a journal article titled Avail of Legality by
Amelia Hinson, I visited some of these sugar plantations in
twenty twenty three, and many of the Haitians and Dominicans
of Haitian descent who live there are descendants of the
ones Trhiyo pushed into the region. While anti Haitianism already

(17:50):
existed before, through Hillyo, he cemented it into the political
structures of the Dominican Republic to the point that it
still continues incredibly strong into the modern day. About fifty
one percent of Dominicans believe that immigration harms the country,
per a twenty twenty four pole by the polling firm
Latin Nobarromtro. Many Haitians come to the Dominican Republic seeking

(18:13):
a better life for themselves and their families, much like
immigrants in the US, and similarly to the US, getting
a visa or becoming a citizen for them is extremely difficult.
This isn't to say that there aren't a lot of
Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic, and I should also
say that they are by far the largest immigrant group
in the country, which makes sense because they're next door neighbors.

(18:36):
The construction and the sugar cutting industry are completely dependent
on cheap Haitian labor. The sugar cutting industry is heavily
reliant on this labor, a lot of which is done
by undocumented immigrants. Many people over the years have called
it a quote unquote modern form of slavery. I've been

(18:56):
to these camps and what they endure for extra dreamely
little pay is horrific. I went there at the tail
end of twenty twenty three. And while there are some
places set up by the companies that own those sugar
producing regions that are they're like they're called batayas inside
of the sugar cane mazes. Some of the batayas have

(19:19):
like houses made out of cement with electricity, and some
are completely degraded, made from wood that's rotting and they
have no access to running water or electricity. There have
been over the years attempts by both human rights groups
and the companies that own those regions. It wasn't benevolently,

(19:43):
is my opinion on it, but more because of the
pressure that they've received over the years. To move these
people into somewhat better conditions, and thankfully for some of
them that they have. For others they have not. A
lot of the Haitian migration in the last decades has
come after the twenty ten Haiti earthquake and the twenty

(20:04):
twenty one assassination of Haitian President Jovenol Moyes. The two events,
as well as other crises, have caused people in Porter Prince,
the capital of Haiti, to experience significant violence and hunger crises.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced out of
their homes and left the country over the last decade,
per the Migration Policy Institute, For many, the national path

(20:27):
of migration out of Porter Prince is towards the border
and towards the Amican Republic. And as we've seen, a
lot of those Haitian migrants have also tried to go
into the US through Latin America. And I mean not
to say that they exclusively go there, of course, but
they try to go wherever they're able to go.

Speaker 4 (20:47):
Yeah, I wor a piece for NBC. God when you
could still write things critical of the Biden deministration NBC,
like in twenty twenty one, right when the United States,
embas See and Haiti had a picture of Biden. It
was translated into kreole right, but it was like it essentially,
do not come that, We'll turn you around sand you
back like this. This is the guy who'd run, you know,

(21:09):
like months before on a kindness where Trump had done cruelty.
I remember like right around that time in twenty twenty one,
so there was a large number of migrants, of course,
who had been stuck in Tijuana because of Title forty two.
They tried to cross and they kept getting bounced back right,
and so I would cross to talk to them. They
moved to like right by where the ped West pedestrian

(21:32):
crossing is now, and they were just camping there in
the square. Like literally, you go over the broad border
bridge that goes over the road, you pop out your
first step on like on the ground, and the bridge
is probably in Mexico at some point, but they're right there.
I remember speaking to Haitian folks there about like they'd
had genuinely hoped for a little bit better from the
Biden administration, which of course they didn't get. Very common

(21:55):
pathway is to Brazil to do underpaid construction work for
the Rio Olympics, and then finding yourself without work, without
much of a chance at citizenship for permanency, deciding to
come Norfolk that that was very common pathway at a
time too.

Speaker 3 (22:22):
So about two hundred thousand display Haitians are believed to
have moved to the DR in the months after the earthquakes,
according to the International Organization for Migration, And after that
flow of migrants to the DR and the rising tide
of anti Haitianism which had been building for a very
long time, in twenty thirteen, the Constitutional Court of the

(22:45):
Dominican Republic ruled that people born in the Dominican Republic
two immigrant parents without a regularized migration status had never
been entitled to Dominican citizenship. This ruling is called lacent
ensia the judgment. What this essentially did was that if

(23:05):
you do not have at least one parent who is
a Dominican citizen, then you do not have Dominican citizenship.
In the US, we have birthright citizenship or jusli, which
means that if you're born on this land or inside
the US, you are an American citizen. This course applies
almost everywhere except certain colonies like American Samoa, so essentially,

(23:28):
in the Dominican Republic, if one of your parents was
not Dominican, you did not have citizenship. The thing about
judicial decisions is that they typically only go forward in time.
But what was particularly evil about La Centensia was that
it applied retroactively to nineteen twenty nine. And I want
listeners to sit with that for a second. Even if

(23:50):
it applied just going forward, it would be a horrible thing,
but going back nearly one hundred years is just horrendous
because what the ruling caused was a chain reaction that
stripped entire families of their citizenship. Because if your grandparents
were in citizens then neither was your dad. And if
your mom was in a citizen then then neither are you.

(24:11):
Of course, this ruling also affected anyone who did legally
still have citizenship but didn't have the documentation going back
that far to prove it if the government came knocking.
So yeah, essentially, imagine if you had to prove that
your great grandparents were citizens in nineteen twenty nine. I mean,

(24:31):
I don't think I personally would have that documentation for
my great grandparents.

Speaker 4 (24:36):
Especially living like in the lower forty eight in the
US it's just more likely that you one might have
documentation of ones like great grandparents and living in parts
of the DA.

Speaker 3 (24:48):
But yeah, essentially for me, it would be incredibly hard
to have a documentation for my great grandparents. I couldn't
imagine someone who has moved throughout their lives inside of
the Dominican Republic to also have a documentation. And that
there's also the fact that because of the antiationism that

(25:09):
was there, a lot of people who did or were
supposed to legally still have citizenship were rolled up in
the people whose citizenship this law took away. In total,
the decision impacted about two hundred and forty five thousand Dominicans,
of which two hundred eleven thousand were Dominicans of Haitian descent,

(25:29):
according to the Center for Migration Studies, I of course
say Dominicans because they were legally speaking Dominicans at the
time that the sentenciad took place, but now they have
been stripped of that citizenship. The Dominican government tried to
backtrack this decision just a year later, after a lot
of international criticism and provide a path to the stateless,

(25:51):
but the damage was done. In twenty twenty three, it's
estimated that as many as one hundred thirty thousand people
remained stateless CMS. There is no law that provides a
path to citizenship for the children of the stateless. So
even after this twenty fourteen law that tried to make
people back into citizens or provide a pathway to citizenship

(26:14):
if you have a child, that child was not going
to have citizenship. Yeah, because so many people were affected
by it, and a lot of the slowness of the government,
the ways that government doesn't work. You have this wave
of denationalizations, and because of a lot of the problems
of the government, some people who should have had that

(26:35):
pathway to citizenship provide it to them still don't have it.

Speaker 4 (26:39):
Right, it's going to be so much harder to get
those people back, and like understandably, it's going to be
very hard to get those people to engage with the
state in any way. Absolutely, because why the fuck would
you that it just told you like that you don't
belong right, that this state is a danger to those people.

Speaker 3 (26:58):
And of course not to mention that the anti Haitian
sentiment that the government has. You know that maybe the
government at the top decided to go back, but that
anti Haitian sentiment is still there from the top down
of course.

Speaker 4 (27:11):
So yeah, yeah, it takes a long time to get
out of something like what happened on the trio, right,
like the massacre and then ongoing like the state being
used as a weapon against you, Like yeah, people aren't
going to just be like, Okay, well this is a
benevolent entity. Now let me go, let me go chat
with him, tell them where I live and make sure
they got all my information up to date. Like It's

(27:31):
just it takes a long time to rebuild that trust.

Speaker 3 (27:35):
Absolutely. So at the same time that this was happening,
the Dominican government created a sprawling immigration enforcement apparatus that
has systemically punished Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent that
they made stateless. These numbers are honestly, quite quite horrifying.

(27:56):
In twenty twenty five, the DGM registered three hundred seventy
nine thousand, five hundred and fifty three deportations according to
their self published numbers. Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean
three hundred seventy nine thousand, five hundred and fifty three
people were removed from the country because of possible double
or triple counting if a person crossed the border more

(28:17):
than once and were detained and deported. But even if
you cut that figure in half or in freeze, that
still is a staggering amount of people's lives who have
been touched and affected by this deportation apparatus. To give
some more recent numbers, in May of twenty twenty six,

(28:38):
the DGM said that they deported thirty five thousand, three
hundred and five migrants according to their own numbers, And
the thing about the Dominican Republic is that essentially every
law enforcement agency does immigration enforcement. The great majority of
those migrants deported in May were detained by the DGM,

(28:58):
the Detectinda. Out of the racion, about five eight hundred
were detained by the Dominican Army and about two thousand,
three hundred by this specialized Land Border Security Corps which
is known as says Front. They essentially patrol the national
border with Haiti, and about one thousand, three hundred of
those people were detained by the National Police. These numbers

(29:22):
are so staggering because all of these law enforcement agencies
are trying to meet a ten thousand a week quota
that President Luis avinade is set for the Dominican government
in twenty twenty four and continues to follow. This number,
to me is really really staggering, and it's kind of
horrific because you read it on paper and it's hard

(29:45):
to really understand the immensity of this mechanism to forcefully
move people out of the country, and as well as
all of the law enforcement work and immigration enforcement work
that goes into detaining the people in the first place,
then sending them to immigration centers, and then deporting them
outside of the Demican Republic. And that the way that

(30:08):
that usually happens is that they are loaded into these
trucks which are converted horse trucks. Sometimes they are like
the little short ones and sometimes are the very long
ones that you see to move palettes of stuff that
have this cage built onto the mac and people are
just stuffed to the brim inside of there. It's really

(30:29):
incredibly inhumane.

Speaker 4 (30:31):
Yeah, damn, that's rough.

Speaker 3 (30:33):
So migrants are routinely extorted while in immigration detention. Per
an anonymous source that spoke with least Indiadio, a national
paper in the dr that detainees are routinely hit up
for bribes during immigration raids and during their detention. For
the article, guards in Haina, the largest immigration detention center

(30:55):
in the DR, we're charging about two hundred and two
hundred and seventy dollars to be freed, which might not
seem like an insurmountable amount of money in the US,
but it's about half of the average monthly salary in
the DR, and these migrants are making much much less
than that. Yeah, the same report says that guards sometimes

(31:17):
charge migrants families so Detanese can get food while detained.
So much of the rhetoric that abin Aleed and other
Dominican officials used to justify their actions, especially in recent years,
is that immigration contributes to the destabilization of their society. Meanwhile,
the vast majority of Haitian immigrants are just trying to

(31:37):
live in peace and escape the violence or crisis that
they're facing in their home country. And like I said earlier,
a lot of industries than the DR rely on cheap
patient labor. And I would be remiss to mention that
a lot of the people that the Dominican Republic's immigration
enforcement are deporting are people that the Dominican Republic made

(31:59):
stakeless first place. So they essentially created this gigantic group
of people that they are now supporting rights. It's the
way that the nation state operates to kind of push people,
to push people that it considers undesirable out of that
nation's borders.

Speaker 4 (32:20):
Yet it this is like Ben Anderson right when he's
writing about nations, says, no nation can be co terminous
with all of humanity. And then when we combine the
nation with the state, that's when we get if no
nation can be co terminous with all humanity, and then
the state is policing who and it's not part of
the nation and expelling those are not like that, that's
when we get what we see here, right, what we

(32:42):
see here in the US.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
We talked about this a little bit earlier, but whenever
I talked to Haitians or Dominicans of Haitian descent about
immigration enforcement in their country, they pretty much tell me
the same thing. So the Dominican government everyone black is Haitian.
And we talked about and how the conception of Dominicanidad
has become separate from the way that they view Haitians

(33:06):
as black. Yeah, many civil society and human rights organizations
have documented how the DGM uses racial profiling as a
justification to detain pretty much whoever they want. It's got
so bad that in twenty twenty two, the American State
Department issued a travel warning for quote unquote darker skinned
Americans about the risks of being swept up in the

(33:30):
country's immigration crackdown. And to me at the time, having
written about that, it's kind of incredible to see American
agency be like, Hey, the racism this country is so bad,
you should be on the lookout. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (33:44):
Yeah, like you might not want to go exactly. Yeah,
that's wild.

Speaker 3 (33:49):
Yeah. So the DGM routinely performs midnight immigration rates on
Haitian communities, break down their doors and drag people kicking,
screaming from their beds, and load them up on the
repurposed cattle trucks and horse trucks that I was talking
about earlier. There are usually about thirty or so people
in those immigration trucks, the small ones pushed up against

(34:11):
the metal bars. And I've seen this personally at the
dr Haiti border, where they're taken from immigration detention centers
and then dropped off and essentially forced to walk into
the Haiti. When I was at the border in twenty
twenty three. The ones I saw and was able to
speak to had grabbed everything that they could as they
were getting detained, because they knew that it was possible

(34:34):
they could never make it back. Some of these people
included mothers carrying small children and babies. One worker who
I spoke with worked in construction, and he claimed that
he was being deported because his boss had called immigration
enforcement on them because they were talking about getting paid more.

Speaker 4 (34:52):
Yeah, tail us all as time with a documented labor sadly.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
Absolutely, and this is big in the sugar cane cutting
regions as well, or at least it used to be. Yeah,
And it's a kind of a recurring system because you know,
they get deported, but there's not really any work or
safety in some cases in Haiti, so they're forced to
come back over the border to do the same job.

Speaker 4 (35:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (35:16):
Many Haitians live in fear, hiding from immigration authorities as
much as they can while trying to work to feed
their families. It's especially bad for pregnant mothers who can't
go to hospitals for fear of being swept up by
immigration rates. There have been several women who were deported
very quickly after being discharged, according to a report by
the Guardian, and I've personally seen a pregnant mother with

(35:38):
a small child forced across the dr Haiti border after
being dumped there by DGM, similar to how the American
government essentially created the Dominican Haiti border and shaped its
border guard in the early nineteen hundreds. They also routinely
provide training for several law enforcement agencies who enforce the

(35:58):
Dominican immigration laws. For example, agencies from the Dominican Republic
routinely received training from International Law Enforcement Academies, which are
international police academies administered by the US State Department where
US law enforcement trained police and other law enforcement agencies
from other countries. A training schedule from twenty twenty four

(36:21):
I found showed that the Dominican Republic participated in nine
sessions throughout the years with agencies like ICE and CBP. However,
when it comes to being trained by the US, no
one beats the Querpo Especial Sado de Segrestre known as
SESSFRONT or the Specialized Land Border Security Corps. They are
in charge of securing and quote unquote protecting the Dominican

(36:45):
border with Haiti. They are in arm of the military
and were created in two thousand and six. That same year,
unidentified quote unquote US experts reported that there were a
quote series of weaknesses that will lead to all kinds
of illicit activities along the border. According to a two
thousand and six article from Dominican Today. For the same article,

(37:08):
the military patrolled the area beforehand, but the study revealed
the lack of and bad shape of the Dominican Armies facilities,
the lack of training, logistics, weapons, vehicles, garments, as well
as low wages and bad nutrition for these these soldiers.
And I should say that's a quote from the Dominican
Today's article, and I wanted to talk a little bit

(37:28):
about the border before I explain it later on in
more detail. But a lot of the border that I've
been to between the Demaican Republic and Haiti is along
the Massacre River where part of the Parsley massacre happened,
and you essentially have this very big cement and iron
and steel border wall going up that has completely separated

(37:52):
this contiguous piece of land where people were once upon
a time over one hundred years ago, able to more
or less walk between and walk over without much restriction.
At all, and you know the place where they've built
the barrier. This was not like what you know whenever
someone from Puerto Rico, whenever someone talks to me about
the US border, I'm imagining the big iron wall throughout

(38:15):
the desert. This, yeh, was not that. This was kind
of very lush, green mangroves. They used to be one
big forest, but now they created a bait strip of
land that now separates that forest that once was won
and then put the border wall there. So a lot
of this modern history of collaboration between the US and
the dr immigration enforcement is recorded in Todd Miller's Border

(38:39):
Patrol Nation and Empire of Borders, both of which I
recommend everyone go read. Yeah, Miller is great.

Speaker 4 (38:46):
Yeah, mid Thiss books are fantastic. I know, we both
really enjoy them.

Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (38:51):
Yeah, a real resource for anyone looking to understand the
border and its history and like how we got to
this situation. Wasn't hard to see it coming, actually, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
And a lot of Orbitral Nation is from the early
twenty tens too, so it was really kind of pressure
in many ways.

Speaker 4 (39:07):
Yeah, very much. So, Like I remember, I remember reading
that book and then like thinking about it a lot
as I was in the Dominican Republic, and even when
I was in Panama last year, like the Biden administration
right was financing deportations from Panama of people who had
just crossed a varian gap, but chiefly to Colombia, almost

(39:28):
entirely Colombian young men. I literally watched these guys get
like I watched a family who had known from the
jungle right, and then we reconnected in La Jas Blancas,
which is a reception center. Reception center is a pretty
euphemistic term there. It's not a great place to be.
I think it's closed now actually, but they would come
and call out names and it was like, what's going on,

(39:50):
Like maybe we're getting taken somewhere, like maybe this is
they want to check out passports and then just start
loading me into same thing like a flatbed truck. And
I remember one guy like having to give his baby
to his wife and I was there and he was like, Hey,
what are they doing? And I was like I don't know, man,
Like I don't know that. Some guy was like this
is how they deport people. It was a very wow, Yeah,

(40:10):
it's horrible. And then his wife was just like standing
there next to me and like I was horrible, Like
I put my arm around her, and she was just
sobbing and of course separated from her partner and the
father of her child. But yeah, it's rough to think that.
Then I went home and did my work and paid
my taxes and paid my little share of that family
getting torn apart. But yeah, that was that was Blue Team.

(40:32):
There wasn't a drump thing like this is. The US
has been trying to move that traumatic violence further and
further from its population for a long time. That's what
strong borders are, right, Strong borders of violence. Strong borders
are tearing families apart. Strong borders are people dying. And
there was an understanding shared by both parties that Americans

(40:52):
don't like seeing dead people. They don't like seeing families
torn apart, as we've seen in the last few years,
a couple of years, and so they have sought to
move that violence further away from the metropol rather than
stopping doing the violence.

Speaker 3 (41:07):
Yeah. Absolutely. Miller talks a lot about this in his
book Right Where. Part of the US's internal migration policy
as it relates to foreign policy, is that if you
can stop migrants from coming into the US at another border.
That means that they won't be able to reach their border,

(41:27):
right yeah. An academic who described it to Todd Miller
as kind of border sets in ways that the borders go.

Speaker 4 (41:33):
There, Yeah, like clusters or something, right yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (41:37):
It was a dude who he's like a veteran and
he was like in Afghanistan and saw border patrol out there.

Speaker 3 (41:43):
Yeah. Absolutely, yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:45):
So the way that better than that person explains it
is that these borders are created in such a way
to keep people from flowing into the United States, but
able for people inside of the United States to more
very easily leave them and pass through them. Right. So,
for example, let's say a migrant from Haiti wanted to

(42:09):
go into the US, they would be faced with an
incredibly uphill battle of passing several borders. It might be
the border from Haiti into the Dominican Republic, than into
Puerto Rico, or it might be Haiti to some Latin
American countries, then a several Central American countries, and then
onto the US southern border. Right yeah. But versus let's

(42:32):
say if I wanted to go to Haiti, it would
be pretty incredibly easy for me to go there, right,
and this is you know what we see.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
Yeah, the way that these this mechanism is constructed for
the in group to be able to move freely around
the world and the out group to have an incredibly
hard time actually coming into the US.

Speaker 4 (42:53):
My friend Erica from Alosta, Alada like to say, we
already have open borders. We already have no borders only
for some people.

Speaker 3 (43:01):
Yeah, exactly. And of course I'd be remiss not to
mention that capital flows very easily through borders as if
they do not exist. Yeah, because they don't for money.

Speaker 1 (43:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (43:24):
As Miller lays out an Empire Borders post nine to eleven,
the US adopted a very strong policy of considering terrorism
against American interest quote over there needing to be regarded
in the same way as terrorism over here, right, And
of course terrorism the way that the US government sees
it is probably extremely different from the way that you

(43:45):
and I see it, James. Yes, So this ideology essentially
pushed the American border everywhere because everything that the US
didn't agree with was a threat to its interest. This
is essentially kind of the same reasoning as a Monroe doctrine,
and the American Empire just massaged it for the modern
world in some ways. This is why international collaboration between

(44:07):
American immigration enforcement and border security agencies his skyrocketed since
the dawn of the millennium, to the point that CBP
agents have traveled around the world to show countries how
to enforce their country's borders so that people inside of
those countries wanting to leave and reach the United States
borders are never able to do. So. We talked a

(44:28):
little bit about this, I can't remember if it was
on air or off air, about how Bavino did that
in Honduras.

Speaker 4 (44:34):
Yeah, that's right, that was something I found recently. I
was reading some document about this border of externalization and
he's one of the people interviewed. Yeah, it's like when
he was in bor Tech, Right, Bavino was a member
of bor Tech and they were going out on patrol
with I guess, I don't know Hondoras has border patrol
or I coudn't quite know what the structure they're under is,

(44:55):
but they were going out on patrol with him, and
then like the bor Tech guy so armed and running
around but not technically not the ones making arrests. Yeah,
Like you can read this in the Miller books. But
this is a thing that the US does all over
the world.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:09):
Absolutely, And Miller traveled to a lot of countries where
people were agents of their countries border security apparatus or
law or an agency. We're like, yeah, I've been trained
by the US of course.

Speaker 4 (45:23):
Yeah, like talking about like the Kaibiles.

Speaker 3 (45:25):
Like in.

Speaker 4 (45:27):
Anyway, everyone should read the book, kind of recount the book.
It's a good book.

Speaker 3 (45:32):
So if you look at the border enforcement or immigration
agencies around the world, you'll find that they may look
like the United States because they are modeling themselves off
of the trainers that train them or help shape their creation.
Says FRONT takes after its border patrol big brother in
many ways, but one of the most salient is in

(45:52):
the wall that they patrol. As I mentioned a little
bit earlier, in twenty twenty two, the Dominican Republic started
construction of a Mexico US style border wall that, if
it's finished, would span almost half of the border with Haiti.
When the project is completed, it will be the second
longest border wall in the Americas, the first being the
Mexico US Wall. It is supposed to be high tech,

(46:15):
containing a series of cameras, radars, and drones that are
supposed to run the length of the wall. This wall,
like many other border walls, has done intense environmental damage
along the course of the border, particularly to the mangroves
that run along the border where the wall is being built.
In twenty twenty three, I visited Dahabong, a town in
the northern section of dr Haiti border, to report on

(46:38):
the Dominican Republic's immigration enforcement apparatus. For myself. The Hobong
is where the Cessfront has a very important base, and
as I mentioned earlier, it's a place where a lot
of the violence of the Parsley massacre took place. Tessafront's
base in the Hobong is painted in a beige brown
camouflage pattern that makes it stick out like a sore

(46:59):
foam against the green forest background where it's stationed. However,
it does blend into that strip of land where they've
cut out to make the border wall. You know, in
many ways the government tries to reshape the land in
nature to fit its image.

Speaker 4 (47:16):
Yeah, it's kind of the same here, Like that's in
the desert this weekend and I was like climbing up
into mountains there, and you can look down at the
border wall and it's like a it's like a scar
across the landscape. You can for miles as far as
you can see it. So looks like somebody sliced through
this in this case, this pristine desert landscape, right, And yeah,
I can see it being only worse in these areas

(47:38):
where like it's so lush and green.

Speaker 3 (47:40):
Yeah. Absolutely, from aerial drone images that I've seen of
the border, it definitely looks like a kind of sand
colored scar, especially in that the Habong area where you
have green on both sides and then that sand color
line running through it. Yeah, so the Dahabon border crossing
is extremely close to cessfront space there. When I was there,

(48:03):
the border between the two countries was officially closed because
of a dispute over the canalization of the Massacre River.
Haitians needed the water for agriculture along the border, but
the Meinican officials said that the canalization would take water
away from their own purposes. A couple weeks after I
was there, they opened up the border again, which was
extremely necessary because border towns like Dahawong and Juanaminthe, which

(48:27):
is the town on the Haitian side rely on each
other a lot for trade, and this has been that
way since time immemorial in that region. Right, the binational
market in Da Howong is pretty much the only place
where Haitians are legally allowed to enter, but they have
to leave the same day they came in. So essentially

(48:48):
this giant market, and there is a steel wall that
runs along the outer perimeter of it, which is where
you have cess front border guards. So if you pass
through the border cross saying you do the whole like
immigration check, you're able to go into the market. Yeah,
and you could essentially do like a circle around it,
so you're able to go into the market and then

(49:09):
you leave the backway which connects to another border crossing.

Speaker 4 (49:12):
Oh so you're like you're in like a like a bubble.

Speaker 3 (49:15):
Yeah, essentially like that you yeah, okay, Yeah, essentially it's
crazy that they're like going that hard to be like
we want your money, we just don't want you exactly exactly. Yeah,
And it's really the it really shows that the hypocrisy
of these these border systems, because you know they're yeah,
these two towns are extremely reliant on one another, but

(49:36):
the countries that represent both towns are like, no, we
need to enforce this this border right yeah. So yeah, this,
this market in the Hubbong is where a lot of
people on the Haiti side of the border are able
to buy and sell a lot of stuff they wouldn't
otherwise have access to. Sure. So the bridge that runs
over the Massacre River that connects the Hobong to what

(49:58):
I mean is within feet of the national and like
I mentioned, all encircled by says Funt's guards. Any Haitian
who would try to pass that fence without going past
the official checkpoint would likely be detained and deported immediately
if they're caught by the border guards. And as we know,
even if a border presents itself as extremely rigid, a

(50:19):
lot of it is for show. At least in my
experience with the Dr Haiti border, right, a lot of
it is theater security theater. Yeah. Yeah. So when I
was there, I spent the better part of my time
there just watching DGM trucks bring dozens of people to
the border, then watched as sysfront guards herded them out

(50:40):
of the Dominican Republic.

Speaker 4 (50:42):
Jesus, Yeah, it was.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
Incredibly inhumane and heartbreaking. I remember taking this picture of
a little girl with a suitcase who was just and
this wasn't a person being deported by the drugs, but
this was a Haitian person who was leaving. Of a
little girl just waiting for her dad with a suitcase.
Jesus out of that. That image really sticks in my mind. Yeah. Yeah,

(51:06):
So the thing about the border, as I mentioned earlier,
even if it seems to be incredibly hard, it's still
pourus in several places. When I was in the bateyas
in the sugar producing regions, which are the little towns
that they have or little settlements that they have inside
of the sugar cane maze, I spoke to someone who
had been detained outside of the sugar cane areas without

(51:28):
their work permit and then deported. His family had to
pay a buskung essentially what the US would call a
coyote to bring them back across the border. However, this
forced him into what's essentially debt bondage to the buskung
because the worker couldn't really pay because of the sugar
plantations pay a pittance, so they were essentially in a

(51:49):
recursive cycle of some part of my money has to
go to the buskung and then whatever's left has to
go to paying for my family and my needs, and
it was never enough. Sadly. Yeah. So, one of the
news videos that I watched as part of research for
this was a PBS like a seven minute clip where
they talked to a Haitian man as they were being

(52:11):
deported along the border, and when they went to talk
to the guy's family the next day, the guy who
had been deported was there because he crossed the border
through the river overnight, and you can hear the astonishment
in the narrator's voice, even though that script reading was
probably weeks later. And it's just an example of how
these borders are more porous than the state wants them

(52:34):
to be and wants them to appear to be. So
I wanted to start finishing off by mentioning that the
Dominican government is now actively collaborating with the Trump administration's
deportation campaign by agreeing to accept for country deporties from
the US under the initiative. This agreement, as I hope

(52:56):
I've shown throughout the course of this episode, is another
action in a line line of collaboration between the dr
and the US when it comes to immigration enforcement. Noticeably,
the agreement leaves out Haitian nationals, and the US is
supposed to provide funding to ensure that these deportees have
a quote unquote adequate conditions per the Global Detention Project,

(53:17):
which really remains to be seen if that's the case.
But if the conditions in the current immigration detention centers
are anything to go by, I'm really not holding out
hope that they're adequate conditions. So before I finished the episode,
I want to return to Hulletts stuff in Haina, a
facility systematically created with a deep racism towards the Haitian

(53:38):
migrants who make up the vast majority of the people
detained there. Hallet was killed by a system that the
United States helped create and then shaped. The probability that
the DGM agents who were at Haina at the time
that Hullet died, the probability that they were trained by
US officials is not zero. And right now we're seeing

(53:59):
the immigration sets that the US helped train outside of
the country boomerang back towards US. What I thought was
only a thing of the Dominican Republic, where you have
a kind of paramilitary style immigration force raiding everyone insight
and you know, kind of systematically terrorizing and population has
now become a common reality for millions of people inside

(54:24):
of the US.

Speaker 5 (54:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:25):
I hope that we live long enough to see these
border walls become ruins.

Speaker 4 (54:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:29):
Yeah, me too.

Speaker 4 (54:31):
I often thought like it would be a good book project,
just got to look at border walls. Absolutely, I just
don't particularly want to do it. Fucking suck. That's a
human experience. But yeah, like, if you've lived in the
US in the last twenty years, you've paid for border
walls and border violence all over the world, and in
Europe to be fair, like the e the EU it
does this too, Right, if you've lived in the global North,

(54:53):
you probably have a hand in the death of migrants
just through paying your taxes, and that fucking sucks. It
shouldn't be that way. Absolutely, Yeah, it's tragic. I want
to thank the person who reached out to us to
share this story with us as well, because, like I
wouldn't have been aware of it otherwise, there's so much
horrible shit happening in the immigration system that you know,

(55:15):
we miss things.

Speaker 3 (55:16):
Yeah, So thank you for doing that, absolutely, thank you.

Speaker 4 (55:20):
Yeah, thank you for sharing that with us. It's a
it's a long time. I used to used to ride
my bicycle around the Dominican Republic a lot when I
was there, and there it was always nice to go
out to those areas, get get out of the Santa
Domingo and like, let's see how folks live in these
rural areas. But then also to be reminded of how
two tiered rural existence was, especially for people like you say,

(55:41):
Clent and Caine, Like it's it's a brutal way to
make a living too, like hard backbreaking work under the
hot sun, like a machete, Like swinging a machete all day,
Like you can fuck yourself up pretty easily.

Speaker 3 (55:55):
Yeah, they'll do this for like between ten to fourteen
hours a day. Day after they you know, it's just
them and sometimes a big hat and some clothes to
protect them from the sun and a little bit of water.
But yeah, it's like backbreaking labor that they're they're working on.
And you know, historically there was a movement of Haitian

(56:17):
labors from the Haiti to the dr who would come
for the sapa, which is the sugar cane cutting season. Yeah,
and then they would leave after about six months. But
as the border hardened, those people had to make decision
whether they stayed in Haiti or stayed in the place
where they could get work. And a lot of them
decided that they had to stay in the places where
they could get work.

Speaker 4 (56:38):
Yeah, much the same as it is in the United States, right,
like got of seasoned agricultural labor is what he did,
the same, of course, Yeah, but it might be kind
of that guy you're saying, you look pot back the
next day over the river. Reminded me of that Woody
Guthrie song where he's talking about the the Los Gatos
Canyon plane crash and how all those people had Many
of those people had traveled multiple time times from their

(57:01):
homes in Mexico to the US whenever there was an
expense so they couldn't cover with like whatever they could
sell from their estantia. Right, they would come come across
in labor, or young people come across in labor in
order to establish themselves in life, and then go back
and then if they needed they had to expend their children.
Whether they would come back in labor some more or

(57:22):
some people would just come back in labor every year
and then one time on the way back. They're plane
crashed and they all died. Like it's uh, yeah, it's
so much needless suffering that happens because of borders. It's
rough to think about people in those detention centers like
that always kind of makes me sad. Yeah, having spent
a lot of time around them, it's pretty fucking miserable

(57:42):
in there.

Speaker 3 (57:43):
Yeah, yeah, especially like for me. You know, I became
a Dominican citizen in twenty twenty four after I had
been there, and I always think about, you know, I
was seeing these people, some of which they had spent
their entire lives in the American Republic and knew nothing
else outside of it, but they were stateless because of
this this twenty thirteen decision, right, And I was thinking,

(58:06):
you know, they've spent their whole lives here, and I
have more of a right to citizenship than them, just
because my mom was born there and then left when
she was a small child. Like to me, I don't know,
it was an extremely bleak, bleak thing to realize just
how how the state prefers some people under it and

(58:26):
then others not. You know, it was, yeah, I always think, like,
you know, this is this is a person who is
a Dominican, like this is so so like culturally more
Dominican than I could ever be. But I'm the one
who legally is entitled to citizenship.

Speaker 4 (58:42):
Yeah yeah, I used think about that a lot more
like I would go there and like we'd try and
have Haitian folks come over to join us. The time,
I always said, helping with some diabetes education, no properly
diabetes education for folks there. And how much harder it
was for the Haitian folks, even if they in some
cases that they had family who were there, they had

(59:04):
spent most of their lives there, like like for them,
it was so much harder than it was for me, who, like,
you know, I'm just a guy from Britain, like, like,
I have no stake in this at all, but I
could you know, no one batted Nilid when you fly
into the airport there and come on through that you
don't even need a visa.

Speaker 3 (59:22):
Yeah yeah, I also think like, and this might be
getting too too into the weeds, but my great great
grandparents had to leave Spain because of the monarchy, and
they were part of the people who were or we
or my family falls into part of the people who
get citizenship through the le memory Storica.

Speaker 4 (59:42):
Oh well, okay, yeah, I've.

Speaker 3 (59:44):
Seen videos of so many videos and read so much
about migrants trying desperately to reach Europe, and that to
me is like, you know, I get to legally become
a citizen because some guy that I've never met had
to leave Spain, And I'm just like, this is crazy,
Like I wish I could just pass it on to

(01:00:04):
somebody else, because I you know, they need it, and
you know, some people who've lived there in their entire
lives deserve it like much more than I ever could, right.

Speaker 4 (01:00:13):
Yeah, right, it's such a strange lottery that gives you
the right to, yeah, to go there, beside their work
there whatever, And someone who deeply wants to and whose
life will be in danger if they weren't able to,
who might die trying to, can't have it, and they're
very determined to keep it from them, Like it's such
a stupid hierarchy or however they want to put it,

(01:00:35):
like system. But yeah, unfortunately, it happens all over the
world and it's only getting worse. Right, Like, as we're
recording this, people in Belfast are fucking attacking people who specifically,
I guess, like I spoke to some people in Belfast
today and they were like, yeah, it's not all of us.
It's a small group of loyalists who are very, very
racist and have been for a very long time. Yeah,

(01:00:57):
but nonetheless, right, like a there's a crime think sticker
that I think of a lot that says the border
doesn't protect you, it controls you. And like maybe Americans
are realizing that now that border patrol and murdering US
citizens in US cities. You know, I said this the
other day, and we're talking about Gregory Bavino, Like there
is no reforming this shit. Like the nature of what

(01:01:21):
we have done for decades with borders is that it
kills people who did nothing wrong. And if we want
to get away from the place where at now when
this shit needs to be torn down, all of it.
The way they're building border wall now, it's very clearly
with the understanding that they just need to build as
much as possible because no administration will ever tear it down. Absolutely,

(01:01:43):
That's what they did in the first truanp administration too.
They literally skip the hard parts. I remember being out
there in late twenty twenty, even after August, September, October, November, December,
and they're like skipping the difficult helly bits just just
to put more miles of wall in. And like they're
building now. They're kind of fellings those gaps and just
building wall in places where we never thought they would
because they have fun, limited money, and like they're doing

(01:02:05):
it because they were right in twenty twenty, right, Biden
didn't tear it down. In fact, he repaired and maintained
and continued to build it. Like we need to really
think about rolling this shit back if we ever want
to make sure that this can't happen again.

Speaker 3 (01:02:21):
Yeah, absolutely, the depths of the mechanism have to be
destroyed because, like you said, there's there's no reforming it.
And I specifically use like kind of mechanism or machine
to describe it, right, because even if you think that
the only thing it applies to is you know, immigration

(01:02:42):
enforcement in the US and seeing ICE and CBP, you know,
terrorizing the streets. Like I hope I have evidenced in
the episode, this is this is a global project. Yeah,
they're not only doing immigration enforcement in the US, They're
helping and sometimes do it immigration enforcement outside in you know,

(01:03:03):
if they could, they would probably go to every country
on Earth and be like, hey, this is how you
hearden your borders and do immigration enforcement. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:03:11):
Yeah, it's just say it's a part of colonialism. It's
spreading our violence around the world. Well, thank you for
sharing that story with us. Where can people find you
they want to read more of your work? Follow you online.

Speaker 3 (01:03:23):
I'm at baco to xl V a q u e
r O two XL on all social media, and I'm
also actually working on a series of many documentaries about
immigrant communities in Puerto Rico for a local website here
called Miami Jonas, and I am an editor at the

(01:03:44):
Latino Newsletter, where I have been reporting a lot of
immigration enforcement here in Puerto Rico. Yeah, thank you, James,
thank you for thank you for sharing it with us.

Speaker 4 (01:03:52):
We'll look forward to doing for you against hun.

Speaker 6 (01:04:07):
With scenes of the genocide and Palestine plastering or screens
over the past few years and increasing analysis of the settler,
colonial and supremacist route of Israel's violence, it's having thinking
more about the concept of settler colonialism. Many people know
now about Israel's settler colonial past and it's parallels with

(01:04:28):
the US Australia, South Africa, and Canada. Those are common comparisons,
but few know much about the settler colonial origins of Liberia,
which has gained a little attention as people have begun
learning more about the concept. So I'd like to take
a look at Liberia, Israel and the parallels of settler colonialism.

(01:04:49):
This is it can happen here. I'm Andrew Sage Andrewism
on YouTube, and I'm joined once again.

Speaker 4 (01:04:55):
By James Again. I'm excited to learn about this.

Speaker 6 (01:04:59):
Yeah, I'm mainly looking ato parallels through the lens of
analysis provided by historian Patrick Wolfe in his famous article
Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Nature, with other
historical resources and articles linked in the show notes pulls off.
Before we start making comparisons, I'll need to introduce the

(01:05:21):
concept for those unfamiliar. Settler colonialism is, in one sentence,
an ongoing structural process where outsiders permanently occupy indigenous lands
to build new societies. Wolf notes that invasion is a structure,
not an event. He calls setler colonialism inherently eliminatory but

(01:05:43):
not invariably genocidal, and calls elimination an organizing principle of
setler colonial society rather than a one off occurrence, Unlike
the kind of exploitation colonialism, which seeks to extract resources
and leave settlers come to state to claim land. As
Wolf quotes, the we bird rose to get in the

(01:06:05):
way of settler colonization. All the native has to do
is stay at home. Settlers tell various stories to justify
their eliminatory ambitions race, religion, ethnicity, civilization status, but it
really comes down to territory. Settlers want to establish lastin
autonomous communities by eliminating the existing indigenous way of life

(01:06:28):
and replacing it with the colonizers culture, economy, and political order.
Wolf says that settler communism destroys to replace point into
the quite visceral example of Israeli settlers of root in
ancient olive trees and replacing them with foreign fruit trees,
or as Israel often euphromizes it, making the desert bloom.

(01:06:51):
Elimination doesn't have to mean the wholesale slaughter of indigenous people,
though frontier homicide tends to be a trend, but elimination
seeks to dissolve indigenous people and their way of life
through various means expulsion, encouraged population mixing and forced assimilation, enclosure,

(01:07:12):
child abduction, missions and board in schools, religious conversion, marginalization,
labor exploitation, and more often several at once. Settler clunalism
tends to remain deeply embedded in the laws and institutions
of the countries foundly that way. But Woth points to
a curious side effect of settler clunalism, which is the

(01:07:34):
way that settler society subsequently attempts to recuperate indigenity in
order to express its independence from the mother country. He
references Australia's incorporation of indigenous symbolism for one example. Australia, Canada,
the US, New Zealand, South Africa, French, Algeria, Rhodesia, Liberia,
and Israel are all examples of contemporary or historical settler

(01:07:58):
colonial societies, but I'm focused on the parallels between just
two of them, Liberia and Israel. In eighteen eighteen, the
American Colonization Society scouted what was then known as the
Grain Coast and deemed it a suitable location for their
planned African colony, meant to be a home for formerly
enslaved people in the US foreign emancipation as well as

(01:08:21):
free black people that already existed in the territory. The
first successful settlement was established in eighteen twenty two after
an agreement with the local chiefs signed in eighteen twenty
one granted the society possession of Cape Mesurado. Now, some
free black Americans had advocated returned to Africa projects long
before the ACS was even founded, so we shouldn't erase

(01:08:45):
the agency in this. But the ACS was led by
a mix of white abolitionists and white and slavers who
mostly just wanted to rid themselves the free black population
in the US. Most free black Americans opposed project, either
initially or in time. Those Black Americans that did participate
came to be known as Americo Liberians. They carried on

(01:09:09):
the American Colonization Society's narrative that the establishment of Liberia
was a return to the promised Land and exodus, a
formally enslaved people return into the ancestral homeland to establish
an independent land of freedom, and as a minority in
that land, the American Liberians would establish a government and
various settlements they ruled that would attempt to expand Liberia's

(01:09:31):
initial territory and to bring civilization and Christianity to the natives.
Those that went were clearly heavily influenced by their American background,
viewing themselves culturally, socially, and educationally superior to the Native
African ethnic groups they encountered. After a few decades of
support from the American colonization Society, independence was declared in

(01:09:54):
eighteen forty seven, but only recognized by the US in
eighteen sixty two, so very quickly fell into a deteriorating
economic situation marked by heavy foreign deck obligations culminating in
multinational intervention and oversight in the early nineteen hundreds, as
well as the establishment of a million eco rubber plantation

(01:10:15):
for the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, which would exploit
the indigenous people in Liberia for decades to come.

Speaker 4 (01:10:23):
Any time is setting up a rubber plantation, I feel
like that should be a massive red flag that you're
one of the bad guys.

Speaker 6 (01:10:31):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 (01:10:33):
People who have been subject to settle a colonial violence
and to like racially motivated sound like a cop, and
I say racially motivated violence like the violence to inherent
and racism and capitalism. The idea that the way to
kind of right those wrongs is to become the one
doing the violence, not the one subject to the violence.

(01:10:53):
It's see in the Anmar, right like, a country that
was brutally colonized by the country that I was born in,
but in which essentially today the state of Myanma is
it's self a colonial entity.

Speaker 5 (01:11:06):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:11:07):
We have a number of different ethnic groups, dozens of
ethnic groups within Meanma, and we have one ethnic group
which is dominated governance, and which has dominated the military,
and which has used the tool of the state to
extract resources, labor, human bodies from the other ethnic groups,
right Like, because they've gone from being colonized to effectively

(01:11:27):
being like a contiguous empire, and they've adopted the logic
of the colonizer in doing so.

Speaker 2 (01:11:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:11:34):
Unfortunately, this is a very common phenomenon.

Speaker 3 (01:11:38):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:11:39):
This is why I tend to view nationalism, even so
called Third world nationalisms, as dead ends, as explicitly counter revolutionary,
as against the liberation.

Speaker 3 (01:11:55):
Of all people.

Speaker 6 (01:11:56):
Yeah, because that construction of the nationisted really of states
in general, tends to come with the establishment of certain
superiors and inferiors, you know, subordinates and rulers. Yeah, and
the privilege in of certain religions, ethnic groups, skin tones,

(01:12:17):
whatever the case may be. Even within so called ethnically
homogeneous societies.

Speaker 4 (01:12:24):
Yeah, you can even.

Speaker 6 (01:12:26):
Look at Japan, right, which is sulted by you know,
supremacists of all flavors as an ethnically homogenous society. Even
within that society there's you know, colorism, and there's also
the exploitation and marginalization of certain groups within that territory,

(01:12:46):
such as the I knew.

Speaker 4 (01:12:48):
Yeah, I think about like nationalism, and there was a
time when there was a movement to try and use
nationalism as a positive thing, the have a brotherhood of nations, right,

(01:13:09):
It existed within catal anti fascism in the nineteen thirties,
like we are a nation which has been suppressed by
the state, so we will build a nationalism that doesn't
suppress people.

Speaker 3 (01:13:19):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:13:20):
It's sort the same thing with Kurdish people, right, with
the Kurdish Freedom movement. Their understanding, i would say, was
more advanced than the Catalans, and that like their their
analysis was what we are a nation that has been
suppressed by multiple states, and therefore we will build society
without the state in order to link create well where
there is no boots, so you can't tread on people, right.

(01:13:41):
I still believe that that is possible, but like in
the last six months, you know, I've seen people back
away from that within Kurdistan, right and start talking again
about the Brotherhood. People's was a mistake. They feel betrayed.
I don't think those people would consider themselves to be
super but they feel that their project didn't work. That

(01:14:03):
really makes me sad. Ultimately, the Brotherhood of Nations like
didn't succeed in Syria, right, and we've seen it effectively
at like Sirious Dog or the Syrian Arab Republic after
hundreds of thousands of people gave their lives for it
to be a place where everyone could be free. And yeah,
it really saddens me to see that that, like, like

(01:14:25):
I really hoped for something better, this idea of Brotherhood
of Nations, which acknowledges people's difference, but it doesn't create
a hierarchy. But we're not. We haven't made it quite
work yet, I guess. And because we live in a
world right where they appeal to nationalism and bigotry and
the idea, like specifically in Syria, I think that like

(01:14:46):
Arabs should not be equal to Kurds was appealing. Through
making that appeal, this project was able to be sabotaged.

Speaker 6 (01:14:54):
I guess now, I think that while we're still fortunate
different approaches to liberation, trying to figure out what that
looks like, we've seen the truck record of nationalism, is
my point.

Speaker 4 (01:15:09):
Yeah, yeah, no, I think it's fair like it's it's
been used much more as a force for dividing us,
in making us hate each other, than it has been
for creating a world where we can all live together
alongside each other.

Speaker 6 (01:15:22):
Yeah, this is a digression, but in my experience in Trinidad,
what I've noticed is that their efforts to kind of construct,
and they have been since the establishment of Trinidad as
an independent country Trance Tobago as an independent country in
nineteen sixty two, first led by doctor Eric Williams, there

(01:15:42):
were efforts to kind of build this kind of cross
racial overarching like Trinidadi and Trindigo Nian identity, which I
mean I use that to trind Diego in some of
my work, but Tobago is kind of attached to Trinidad
against their will. And even now if there are people

(01:16:05):
who try to push that trend bag or unity. But
there are also people who will assert, particularly people from Tobago,
who will assert that, yeah, no, we want greater autonomy,
we want even independence from Trinidad. And so for maybe
certain people unifying purposes that would use the term. But
I try not to give off that impression that I'm

(01:16:27):
using it for kind of unifying nationalism, because I think
with the nationalism of such a young, quote unquote nation,
a nation of nations, of various people from all over
the world, mostly brought here against their will. Yeah, they
are these competitions I think over the proportionality of the
representation of different ratio ethnic groups, the competitions over who

(01:16:53):
gets to define what this Trinidadian nation is, what it
means to be a Trinidadian, and efforts to kind of
balance or imbalance the proportion of representation depending on which
government is in power. You know, our current government is
very much oriented toward a kind of Indo Trinardi and

(01:17:16):
Indian focus and have in many ways marginalized all other groups,
maligned all other groups, disrespected all other groups within the
country to kind of elevate the sense of or get
back for the Indian people in Trona and I don't
want to go too much down that road talking about that,

(01:17:37):
but it's just another example to me or the frustration
and misdirection that comes with investment in nationalism, which currently
holds a monopoly both here and much of the world
on narratives of liberation and anti colonial resistance. So Ima

(01:18:00):
streeted as an anticlonial resistance is synonymous with nationalism. Yeah,
as though the two cannot be distinguished.

Speaker 4 (01:18:08):
It should be a relic of the twentieth century, right,
like it was heavily tied to, like state socialism.

Speaker 1 (01:18:15):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:18:15):
The idea of the way that we fight the wrongs
of colonialism is through creating post colonial nation states and
ignoring the fact that many of those states, many of
the boundaries they find themselves within, include a diverse range
of identities, like you said, of many people, including those
against their will to those places, and many of those

(01:18:37):
identities don't line up with the national identities, and it
almost always results in a change of the oppressure rather
than the absence of oppression.

Speaker 3 (01:18:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:18:47):
I mean you could literally just look at the entire
history of independent Nigeria. Yes, the one very clear example
of that. Yeah, But getting back to the right. I
don't see an explicitly titled ideology behind the founding of
Liberia beyond settler colunalism, I suppose, but the implicit ideology

(01:19:11):
was the supremacy of the elite American Liberian way of
life and the right to that territory and the label
and the resources of its people. While the elite would
themselves be subordinate to the global catalyst order dictated particularly
by America and Europe, so the supremacy the American Liberian
elite did not place them in a position of supremacy

(01:19:34):
in the global stage. They were still in a subordinate
position in some ways. Turning out to Israel. The political
Zionist movement emerged in the late nineteenth century Europe amid
programs and a failure to achieve equality for Jews in
many countries. Its most influential early theorist Theodohood So argue

(01:19:56):
that Jews constituted a nation and that anti Semitism could
not ultimately be solved through integration into European societies. Instead,
they required a state of their own, and Palestine was
not initially the only territory under consideration. Various proposals included Argentina,
Uganda and other locations before Palestine became firmly established as

(01:20:19):
the movement's focus. Not all Jews agreed with this political
Zionist cause that many Jewish socialists, particularly those associated with
the General Jewish Labor Bund, rejected Zionism altogether. They argued
the Jews should fight for libration where they lived, rather
than establishing a separate nation state. Nevertheless, the Zionists colonial

(01:20:41):
settlement efforts began and expanded in Palestine through the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, aided by wealthy benefactors, land
purchases from absentee landlords, and growing immigration. The movement received
a major boost in nineteen seventeen when the British government
and issued the Balfour Declaratia express in support for the

(01:21:03):
establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine. Despite the
fact that Palestine's our population constituted the overwhelming majority of
the inhabitants at the time, a settlement expanded. Sinus narratives
increasingly emphasized the idea of return. The Jews were not
colonizing a foreign land, but return into an ancestral homeland
from which they had been dispersed centuries before, and The

(01:21:26):
state of Israel was officially established in nineteen forty eight,
accompanied by the Nakba or catastrophe, when more than seven
hundred thousand Palestinians were displaced or expelled from their homes
across Palestine. Like Liberia before it, Israel emerged as a
state founded by a population claiming a historic connection to
the territory, and like Liberia, is legitimacy would be built

(01:21:49):
upon narratives of return, civilization, and nationhood, while the indigenous
inhabitants found themselves excluded from the political order being constructed
on top of their home.

Speaker 4 (01:22:11):
Now.

Speaker 6 (01:22:11):
Already, these situations aren't exactly one to one, but they
don't need to be. To apply a settler clonal analysis.
The key questions for ascertaining settler cloninalism are if the
settlers established permanent residents, if they claimed political sovereignty, if
they dominated indigenous populations, if they created institutions that privileged settlers. Basically,

(01:22:33):
what was the political and social order that emerged after
they arrived and who was elevated and degraded by it.
For Liberia, the answer becomes pretty clear once we look
at how the new state was organized over the course
of the nineteenth century America, Liberia and settlements expanded their
territory through a mixture of purchases, treaties, coercion and military expeditions,

(01:22:55):
and outright warfare with inditionous peoples who made up the
overwhelming majority population, who were largely excluded from political life
for generations. They lacked meaningful representation in government and were
treated as subjects to be administered. The elite monopolized state
institutions and eventually established what was effectively a one party
state under the True Whig Party, which ruled Liberia for

(01:23:19):
over a century. The Liberian state extracted taxes and tribute
from indigenous communities, relied on indigenous labor, and by the
early twentieth century, international investigations were uncovering systems of forced
labor and human trafficking, so surveyor that they generated an
international scandal. While the settlers themselves had once been victims

(01:23:41):
of slavery and racial oppression, they recreated similar class and
ethnic hierarchies in their state. Liberia, of course, differs from
many other settler colonies, but they retained the basic framework
of a settler population clearing sovereignty over territory inhabited by
indigenous peoples and conscer treating political and economic power in

(01:24:02):
its own hands. Now, compare this to Israel. From the
late nineteenth century onward. Zionist organizations acquired land through purchases
and violence following the Knappa, which created one of the
largest refugee populations in the modern world. The Palestinians, which
remained within Israel, was subjected to military administration for years.

(01:24:23):
While Palestinians in the occupied territories continue to live under
a different legal regime than Israeli settlers. The nineteen fifty
two Citizenship Law and the twenty eighteen Nation States Law
cemented the Jewish supremacist heart of the Zinis project. As
since nineteen sixty seven, settlement expansion in the West Bank
had steadily increased, accompanied by land seizures, home demolitions, restrictions

(01:24:47):
on movement, and the fragmentation of Palestinian communities and Gaza
has been an open air prison where settlers occasionally mow
the lawn aka slaughter population since two thousand and seven.
It's worth noting a major difference between the two cases,
which is the demographic element. America Liberians remained a small

(01:25:09):
minority ruling a much larger indigenous population, but the entire
history of American Liberian ruled Liberia. Those kind of demographics
are more akin to settler societies like South Africa, Rhodesia,
and French Algeria, which leaned heavily into the exploitation aspect
of clonalism. Israel developed differently intentionally to ensure that Jewish

(01:25:34):
people became the demographic and majority within its territory, so
it's more comparable to settler societies like the US, Canada,
and Australia. Such demographics necessarily led to a difference in
how indigenous peoples were managed between projects. Liberia system depended
upon indigenous labor, while Israel's project has generally prioritized secure

(01:25:57):
in land while minimizing dependence on pasted labor. In many
periods of Zionus history, Palestinian labor was actively displaced in
favor of exclusively Jewish labor. But again, settler colonism operates
according to a logic of elimination that might often be
expulsion and extermination, but it can also mean assimilation, confinement,

(01:26:20):
and whatever else. Again, the settlers want the land, the
native becomes an obstacle, and different set of societies developed
different methods for dealing with that obstacle. The US had
its ethnic cleansings, removals, reservation system and boarding schools. Australia
had frontier wars, stolen generations and land dispossessions. Canada had

(01:26:43):
assimilation policies like reservation schools. South Africa and a wide
rule couldn't expel the black majority, so they maintained apartheid
controlled reservations and extracted labor. But again, what matters for
definance at the clonalism is that indigenous sovereignty is displaced
and settler control over the land is secured. Of course,

(01:27:04):
indigenous people in all cases do not take this abuse
lying down. From the very beginning of Liberian settlement, Indigenous
peoples resisted the crew grabble vy and numerous other ethnic
groups fought against territorial expansion, taxation, forced labor, and attempts
by the Liberian states to extend its authority into the interior.

(01:27:26):
And despite generations of American Liberian dominance, indigenous resistance never
entirely disappeared. Eventually, the political order that had governed Liberia
for over a century began to crack, economic crisis, corruption
and grow and resentment towards settled domination culminated in a
military coup in nineteen eighty led by Samuel Doe, overthrowing

(01:27:48):
the government of President William Tolbert and ended more than
a century of uninterrupted American Liberian political dominance. Now, that
coup clearly did not create a free or egality society.
Liberia would soon face thectatorship, civil war and immense suffering,
but it did mark the collapse of the older settler

(01:28:09):
elites monopoly on state power, and efforts at recovery in
the country are ongoing. Palestinian resistance, on the other hand,
faced a very different structory. From the beginning of Zius settlement.
Palestinians resisted displacement and land loss through protests, strikes, political organizing,
and armed revote. The Great Arab Revolt of nineteen thirty

(01:28:31):
six to nineteen thirty nine saw Palestinians launch a massive
reich An uprising against both British colonial rule and Zonus settlement.
Decades later came the first and second in Defaders mass movements,
a combined protest, civil disobedions, community organized and armed resistance.
Pastidians have built a number of institutions alongside international Solarity

(01:28:54):
movements in an effort to sustain their efforts under occupation, siege, exile,
and apart. Even today, amid the destruction genocide of Gaza,
passing and resistance continues. Liberia and Israel are both settled
clinal projects, but they are different enough in scale and
goals and methods and historical development that obviously treating them

(01:29:16):
must equivalent for be misleading. The point of the comparison
is to identify what these societies have in common. Since
the cool In Liberia, the old American Liberian elite has
lost its monopoly on power, but in Israel, the settler
cluninal project is alive and well was ever expanding settlements, occupation, displacement,

(01:29:37):
and brutality. Whether settler dominance in Israel remains or falls
is yet to be seen. In Liberia, the end of
settler rules not automatically bring justice, equality or freedom. The
liberation through state power has not brought their relief, especially
in the context of a global capitalist order. The replacement

(01:29:59):
of one ruling class for another has not ended the struggle,
but maybe put a semi coola on that struggle. I
believe the aim of deconization must be not merely the
fight against the people at the helm of the system,
but the very helm of the system itself, dismantling the
structures that make domination possible. The first place, for Palestine

(01:30:25):
and for all people's struggling against oppression, ending set localism
is only the beginning in the pursuit of liberation. That's
all I have for today. All power to all the people. Peace.

Speaker 4 (01:30:53):
Hey everyone, it's James. I just wanted to insert a
quick clarification here. Right at the top of the episode,
when we talk about Fort Snelling, we talk about the
largest mass execution in the United State's history. The execution
occurred in man Cato, Minnesota, not at Fort Snelling, the
execution of thirty eight people. Two people were executed at

(01:31:13):
Fort Snelling and Dakota people were incarcerated at Fort Snelling.
Banks wanted to clarify exactly what was being said there
so that we could make sure that everyone got the
right information. Hello everyone, and welcome to the show. It's
me James today, and I'm very fortunate to be joined
by three other people to discuss this indictment in Minnesota.

(01:31:34):
I'm going to ask them all to introduce themselves. So
if we start off with you Mo that would be wonderful.

Speaker 7 (01:31:40):
Sure, good afternoon. I'm Maura Meltzer Cohen. I'm an attorney, abolitionist,
and educator. I primarily represent people arrested in the course
of justice struggles, and I do a lot of popular
legal education. I also teach at Cuny School of Law.

Speaker 4 (01:31:54):
Wonderful, Thank you, Olive, If you'd like to go next.

Speaker 8 (01:31:57):
Hi, I'm Olive.

Speaker 9 (01:31:59):
I'm a legal worker, a movement legal worker based in Minneapolis,
and I also make Outlaw. So you might have heard
my voice on here before.

Speaker 4 (01:32:07):
MiG By.

Speaker 10 (01:32:08):
Hi, I'm Margaret. I am sometimes on this show. You
probably hear me on Sunday's Close and Media book Club,
And like you all, I woke up to a lot
of messages this morning being like, oh fuck, things are
happening in Minneapolis. People are being rated. As always, we
started off with some false information or some like early rumors,

(01:32:29):
but right away people were like, there's a bunch of
people who are getting arrested. And people started sharing that
we were about to see a press conference by the
federal government and they were going to be like, we've
caught this terrible anti foot terrorists, and I thought that's.

Speaker 8 (01:32:47):
The kind of thing I like paying attention to.

Speaker 10 (01:32:49):
So I woke up, well, I've been away for a minute,
and then I watched a press conference, and then I
read a very long indictment, and I think I'm not
the one who's supposed to do the very short version
of it all.

Speaker 8 (01:33:03):
But that's how I was.

Speaker 4 (01:33:05):
That's my narrative version.

Speaker 1 (01:33:06):
Of what happened.

Speaker 4 (01:33:07):
Yeah, I think that's that's a good narrative. We are
going to get on to talking about the indictment, talking
to about what it does and doesn't do, and what
it means and doesn't mean. But I know you wanted
to begin with some really important context about it, the
physical locations where the alleged actions took place.

Speaker 7 (01:33:26):
Yeah, I wanted to ground this whole discussion in the
historical reality of the United States Federal government's violent colonial
history in this specific place. So one of the places
that is mentioned a number of times in the indictment
is Fort Snelling, and Fort Snelling is a US military

(01:33:47):
installation that was built on a sacred site at the
confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. I think it's
really critical that we understand and that not only is
the United States Federal government continuing to perpetuate its violent

(01:34:09):
occupation in the same places that it has historically done
so in ways that are intended to either include or
exclude certain groups of people, depending on what's expedient for
the federal government, but that they're doing it in the
exact same place as I think the largest mass execution
in US history, which was a mass execution of Dakota people,

(01:34:34):
that after it was carried out, was determined to have
been totally unlawful and to have involved totally insufficient legal
process on the part of the United States government, and
to have involved actions that far exceeded the lawful, legitimate
authority of the US government. And of course that's exactly

(01:34:57):
what we're seeing here again, is the United States federal
government taking actions that far exceed its lawful authority and
punishing people who resist those excesses.

Speaker 4 (01:35:10):
Yeah, I think that's really important.

Speaker 9 (01:35:12):
One thing I just want to add, I'm not sure
if you said this clearly, but Fort Snelling is also
the area that where Whipple is located. So you're going
to probably hear us talk about the Whipple Building, and
that is the ice headquarters for the Midwest. It's where
people detained by ice and all of Minnesota are processed
through and protesters arrested by Ice as well.

Speaker 7 (01:35:33):
Yeah, thank you alive. I don't think I did make
that clear.

Speaker 4 (01:35:36):
Yeah, it's very important context if people are looking for
a little bit more context and whipple building, or if
made a wonderful podcast for us that they can listen
to about that. And Margaret and I did some reporting
when we were in the Twin Cities as well. We
will link to all of those in the show notes
subsequently to this, Like Margaret, right, I began to receive
messages that we would be seeing people have been detained,

(01:35:57):
we'd be seeing a presser and ittment, So what's the pressor?
And then they actually really see indictment like fifteen minutes
before the presser, I believe.

Speaker 10 (01:36:07):
Yeah, and they were like mad at people forming not
already read a like ninety four page indictment.

Speaker 4 (01:36:12):
Yeah, they kept saying reading, Well, this is a thing
where they can that allows them when they're answering questions
to say, well, read the indictment. But then for people
not to ask questions about things that are covered or
not covered in the indictment.

Speaker 10 (01:36:24):
Yeah, it was a shitshew. They told people to read
the indictment. The indictment did not say what they claimed
the sun.

Speaker 3 (01:36:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:36:30):
It was a press conference, so it was exactly squarely
what I would expect from a press conference in that
like people ask questions, which are good, and they got
answers which were useless.

Speaker 1 (01:36:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:36:40):
I was impressed with how quick the press was to
point out identify, even without having read the indictment, to
identify the gaping holes in the government's claims.

Speaker 3 (01:36:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:36:56):
And there's been a lot of really excellent local reporting
in this winteries for a long time. Actually, it's one
of the places where like local journalism has not been
gutted just yet, which is a good thing. The indictment
that I have in front of me here indicts I
believe fifteen individuals. From what we know, one of those

(01:37:18):
people was already detained. Another twelve have been detained, and
I believe two are yet to be detained.

Speaker 8 (01:37:27):
As of recording, I think we're down to one is
yet to be detained.

Speaker 4 (01:37:31):
Okay, we're down to one. Yeah, And that they suggested
in the presser that those people are maybe negotiating surrender.

Speaker 11 (01:37:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:37:39):
And at the time we are recording, there is a
bit gathering outside the federal court which is being attacked
by eight Feds of some description. I'm not quite sure,
maybe fbs pepper spraying people. We saw them throwing some
kind of leslieth or grenades. But like there's something that
people who live in the Twin Cities will have become

(01:38:00):
very familiar with at this point, right, which is this
kind of state violence. Yes, as Mahos pointed out in
the chat, these people are being perpostrayed for attending court
proceedings which are public. In the indictment, the district Attorney,
I guess outlines that these people were members of a
group called Damn Direct Action Minnesota, previously known as Twin

(01:38:24):
Cities direct Action. There are a number of other groups
and acronyms here that I don't think is huguely important.
That they are alleging that they were part of a
group that conspired two, among other things, disrupt and obstruct
federal agents too. I'm going to quote here. The purposes

(01:38:45):
of the conspiracy include the following preventing the enforcement of
federal immigration law by force, intimidation and threats, opposing the
authority of the United States government, preventing, hindering or delaying
by force, the execution of the laws governing the identification, detention,
and moval of non citizens, to include the Immigration and
Nationality Act, and preventing impeding and interfering federal law enforcement

(01:39:08):
from discharging their duties, including enforcement federal immigration law by force, intimidation,
and threats. They then go on to detail a great
number of messages from a number of signal chats. They
specifically identify them as signal chats, and a large number

(01:39:31):
of the messages pertained to a protest held at the
Whipple Federal Building on the twenty third of January. That's
a protest that Margaret and I covered, and you will
have heard our coverage of it before you can go
back and listen to it. The specific allegations here are
that the accused people conspired to create a soft quote

(01:39:55):
unquote and hard quote unquote barricade. The soft barricade took
the form of a shield wall that Margaret and I
reported on the time. The hard barricade they're alleging was
a number of trailers that they're alleging the accused people
attempted to flip over in order to prevent fed accessing Whipple.

Speaker 9 (01:40:19):
From my skim read of the indictment. So far, it
looks like the actual actions that the conspiracy charge focuses
on largely about the planning and carrying out of two
blockade actions at the Whipple Building on January twenty third
and March first, and then the participation in the coordination
of commuting or ice watching by car and general ice

(01:40:40):
watch activities after the occupation draw down from March to June,
and the conspiracy charge and the evidence that goes to
those two things takes up most of the ninety four
page indictment.

Speaker 4 (01:40:52):
Yeah, and then as we get to the very very end,
somebody is accused of kicking a government vehicle and somebody
else is accused of getting in a road traffic accident
with a government vehicle, which marg I know you'd read
that before, but that it's being allected they were deliberately
using their vehicle as a weapon, right. Yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:41:10):
The indictment doesn't say that it was a car accident.
The indictment implies that it caused physical contact, and we
don't know whether that was physical contact with a vehicle
or the officer themselves. But in the entire indictment, there
are very few things that the average person reading this
indictment would be like, oh, that sounds like a crime.
And one of those is kicking a police car. And

(01:41:32):
one of those is this using a vehicle as a
dangerous weapon to make quote physical contact and inflict bodily injury.
And that is number two hundred and seventy six out
of two hundred and seventy six not counts, but like
claims made in this document. So they are clearly spending

(01:41:53):
the overwhelming majority talking about other things.

Speaker 4 (01:41:56):
Get a claims MO has that a reasonable way to
refer to him las allegation?

Speaker 10 (01:42:01):
So you go, ah, yes, So there's two hundred and
seventy six allegations and the vast majority are the kind
of things that the average person reading a thing would
say that sounds like the most free speech thing I've
ever read. Not just One of the allegations is that
one defendant made a video calling for people to come armed.

Speaker 8 (01:42:20):
During the press conference.

Speaker 10 (01:42:21):
They actually did a good job, though the reporters were like, cool,
is there any evidence that that person or anyone who
that they spoke to actually came armed?

Speaker 4 (01:42:30):
And they were like, we're not answering that.

Speaker 10 (01:42:32):
Which is more or less what they said to everything,
But overall we are talking about a document that describes
how to organize any protest, how to organize any protest.
It talks about how do we organize our signal groups
so that we can communicate more clearly with each other,
how do we know that the people in our group

(01:42:52):
are who they say they are? And it's it's the
kind of thing that protest organizers have been doing in
this country for at least several decades. That's just what
I can speak to personally, and it has been framed
in a different way. They've done this kind of thing before,
but it is in this current, real bad.

Speaker 8 (01:43:10):
Context where everything gets real intense.

Speaker 4 (01:43:13):
The point that you're making, Margaret is very important because
a lot of people will look at this and be like,
this is standard First Amendment shit. And I don't want
people to think that standard First Amendment shit is illegal now,
because that is what these prosecutions do. They have a
chilling effect or protect the First Amendment activity. So, MO,

(01:43:44):
I know you enjoy the First Amendment. Would you like
to explain to us exactly what conspiracy is and what's
going on here with the charges of conspiracy?

Speaker 1 (01:43:55):
I do.

Speaker 7 (01:43:55):
I am a First Amendment enjoyer, So if you look
through through this indictment, almost all of the allegations that
are made about the quote overt acts, the actions that
were taken in support of the conspiracy are, as you said,

(01:44:15):
really First Amendment protected conduct. So in order to understand
how First Amendment protected conduct can be evidence of criminality,
we have to look at what is a conspiracy, And
a conspiracy is a fascinating legal animal, because what it
is is a claim that a group of people made

(01:44:36):
an agreement to do something illegal and then took steps
overt acts, engaged in these quote overt acts in the
service of carrying out their illegal agreement or their agreement
to do something unlawful. Right, So all of these things.

(01:44:56):
You know, there's so many things in here that are
clearly institutionally protected. They're very preoccupied with people being members
of different groups identifying themselves as anarchists, swearing T shirts
or sweatshirts that are at one point, I think they
say they're ANTIFA branded. I didn't know we had a brand.

Speaker 10 (01:45:19):
Yeah, oh yeah, I could send you some merch sor
I don't know if I should make that joke.

Speaker 8 (01:45:23):
That's a joke.

Speaker 7 (01:45:26):
You know, there are all these things, you know, people
having conversations, people using rhetoric, and all of these things
are clearly First Amendment protected. And then there are people
talking about the Second Amendment, which of course is also
a constitutional amendment, and you know all kinds of you know,
interesting evidence where they talk about people following or identifying

(01:45:52):
ice agents or vehicles driven by ice agents. Well, we
have a First Amendment right to observe law enforcement in
the public discharge of their duties. Looking at an ice
agent or taking notes on what they're doing. Is actually,
it's not only not unlawful, it's clearly First Amendment protected conduct. Right.

(01:46:14):
These people are doing legal observation. And so what is
the thing that's allegedly removing the First Amendment protection from
these behaviors is this claim that all of these things
are being done in the service of this larger agreement
to do something illegal. What is the illegal thing interfering

(01:46:36):
with the discharge of ice you know, I guess I'll
say duties for a given value of duties.

Speaker 8 (01:46:43):
There's a lot of air quotes happening for people who
can't see.

Speaker 7 (01:46:46):
Sorry, I remember that this is not actually a visual medium. Yeah,
thank god, I will verbalize this for the record. So
the thing about conspiracy. That makes it so attractive is
that it makes it possible for prosecutors to criminalize garden
variety lawful and even constitutionally protected behavior and whole communities

(01:47:12):
of people who are engaged in those behaviors by making
the claim that all of those things, and all of
those associations, and all of those beliefs, and all of
those otherwise protected activities are in the service of a
larger agreement to do something illegal. Now, of course, they're

(01:47:32):
not addressing the fact that people are organizing themselves to
prevent Ice from doing things that we know are very
much not lawful, right, like detaining people who are citizens, detaining,
among others, indigenous people, punching through people's windshields and pulling

(01:48:00):
them out of vehicles, like I don't know, murdering two people,
And that's not being dealt with in this at all. Right,
The idea that Minneapolis is organizing itself to prevent this massive,
you know, unlawful occupation, that true to form, exceeds the

(01:48:22):
lawful authority of these agencies.

Speaker 4 (01:48:24):
To your point on Minneapolis organizing itself, it's worth noting
that every single one of these indicted people is from
the Twin Cities, and they're repeatedly said in the press
conference and the endictment that these people try to hijack
peaceful or First Amendment protests. But that's say admitted in
the press that every single one of these people was
from that community.

Speaker 7 (01:48:45):
I would actually like to point something out about that specifically.
One of the things that's happening in this indictment is
that the prosecutors have framed it as these bad protesters
are trying to use use as cover the actions of legitimate,
peaceful protesters. So what they're doing is they're setting up

(01:49:07):
this idea that there are good protesters and bad protesters,
which first of all, is a way to divide in
conquer social movements. But the other thing that they're doing,
and I really want people to be alert to this,
is that they are making it possible by associating the two,
they're making it possible to later come back and go

(01:49:30):
after even those people that they are currently defining as
good protesters. So there's a point in this indictment where
they make a claim that an organization, I think it's
the It might have been the five oh five OHO
one organization. We need to check that.

Speaker 4 (01:49:44):
But they are mentioned in the indicty. I mentioned as
a DA yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:49:48):
And the DSA is and a union is. There's a
point at which an organization asks twin Cities DA for
assistance with a rally. And even though in this situation,
I believe the prosecutors are setting it up like, oh, well,
this legitimate group is working with this the bad guy group,

(01:50:12):
what they've done is created a discourse that will allow
them if they want to, that will allow the government
to come back and say, look at this group purporting
to be a union and doing legitimate, peaceful protests, but
they're actually enlisting the assistance of you know, the Direct

(01:50:33):
Action Group. So on the one hand, you know, I
think the indictment is playing right into this good protester
bad protester narrative, which, to be clear, it doesn't matter
if you are protesting in the air quotes right way,
you will still be subject to police violence.

Speaker 5 (01:50:53):
Right.

Speaker 7 (01:50:53):
The function of this sort of nonviolent protest is that
it exposes how unwarranted police violence is, not that police
are not violent toward you if you are protesting the
quote right way.

Speaker 3 (01:51:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:51:10):
Margaret and I were there very clearly identified as press
on the twenty third of January at the Whipple Building,
and that did not stop us being exposed to police finance.
We saw people approaching the cops to ask what they
were supposed to do and get arrested.

Speaker 1 (01:51:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:51:25):
Yeah, we sawry camera Ben from Italy get Peppa sprayed
in face. Yeah, that was what I was thinking of.

Speaker 10 (01:51:32):
Yeah, And actually, mo, I really like this point because
I actually don't think that the good protester bad protesters
split is going to work in the popular conversation in
this particular case as effectively as it usually does. And
that's part of why ICE is so scared as relates
to Minneapolis is because there is such a I mean, obviously,

(01:51:54):
I'm sure there's divisions, right, but overall there's such a
unity around like the thing that is happening is far
more important than our differences that like, I think they're
not going to successfully split people in the general discourse.
They'll do it a little bit, right, but they're not
going to have nearly the traction they usually do. So
I actually think that this point that you bring up
is so vital, except of course for the fact that
there's no time in history when anyone has ever come

(01:52:16):
for one person in the morning and then a different
person at night. I can't think of any examples of that, Right,
that's sarcasm for Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:52:24):
That's my concern, and that's really the thing I want
to highlight here is that even though they're sort of claiming, oh,
this group is legitimate, this group is not legitimate, they've
done this in a manner that's certainly setting them up
to come for Dsay later, to come for the you know,
the extream liberal groups and behave as though those liberal
groups who are of course protesting in the quote right

(01:52:45):
way are actually engaged in violent, militant revolutionary action.

Speaker 3 (01:52:51):
Right.

Speaker 9 (01:52:53):
I think the veil on this has already kind of
dropped here on Twin City is just how people have
been charged, with the church pro testers facing these Face
Act charges, super serious federal charges, and so many people
facing federal eighteen USC one eleven charges, most of which
have already been dropped with those cases closed, and the
way that we've seen people show up in solidarity has

(01:53:14):
been so cool, just like your average liberal mom is
like drop all the charges. There does feel like this
sense of solidarity among people for being brave and trying
to get out there and support their neighbors. That feels
unique and makes it feel like it would be pretty

(01:53:36):
hard for them to be really successful and pushing this
narrative here.

Speaker 4 (01:53:40):
I don't think you get to do like anarchists bought
the violence to the otherwise peaceful protest when you murdered
a mother in the street and then you murdered someone
else a few days later.

Speaker 7 (01:53:49):
And I think this is part of the thing that
I'm finding interesting about this indictment is on the one hand,
they're making these factual allegations where they're saying things like
paragraph seventies says that ICE was totally boxed in for
half an hour and inconvenienced all morning. Right, It's like, okay,

(01:54:10):
But then on the following page it's very clear they're
talking about, you know, how violent Ice is being, and
it's very clear that the steaks are actually life or death,
and that all of the people who are in the
streets inconveniencing Ice are doing so in defense of others,

(01:54:32):
like and when I say defense of others, I mean
in a legal sense, right, a self defense or defense
of others. And they're not coming there and shooting ICE agents.
They are inconveniencing them and even the indictment itself, even
from the government's own narration, you can see that what

(01:54:55):
is at stake for the community in Minneapolis is true
life or death steaks, and what is at stake for
the ICE agents is that they are inconvenienced all morning.

Speaker 5 (01:55:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:55:18):
One of the things that they spend the great deal
of time talking about to indictment is optick operational security
for those who are not familiar, and how that is evidence.
So they were bad people conscrying to do bad things,
and very obviously this group's operational security has some kind
of breach, and we should talk about the time and

(01:55:41):
place to discuss that breach. So if anyone would like
to take a swing at either of those things, would
be lovely.

Speaker 10 (01:55:49):
I mean, I would say that obviously, if you're reading
someone's signal messages in an indictment, clearly the security did
not fully succeed. Yeah, but I would just say that, actually,
a lot of the indictment seems to be people being
frustrated at the success of the operational security.

Speaker 4 (01:56:06):
A lot of the indictment.

Speaker 10 (01:56:07):
Is like and then they kept vetting, and therefore the
implication is like, and therefore we didn't get to the
next stage with our attempts.

Speaker 7 (01:56:16):
Yeah, I do think it's important to understand that operational
security is not evidence of guilt, and playing who's the
cop in the group chat is a game that everybody loses.
And also, not everything needs to be set on the internet.
I'm going to say it again if you missed it

(01:56:38):
the first time I said it, not everything needs to
be set on the internet.

Speaker 10 (01:56:47):
But what if I want to just explain to everyone
that I'm really cool and radical? Isn't the best way
to do it to just say that on the internet.

Speaker 4 (01:56:56):
If you have an Instagram account.

Speaker 7 (01:56:58):
Hey, remember that crazy chat min song where she says
talking about a revolution sounds like a whisper.

Speaker 4 (01:57:06):
Yeah, but also had a really fast car.

Speaker 10 (01:57:08):
Yeah, sorry, I just really like Tracy Chatman. Yeah no, No,
that's a that's a good point, and stand out in
the welfare line might be a better.

Speaker 4 (01:57:15):
Place to do it than online.

Speaker 3 (01:57:17):
Maybe.

Speaker 9 (01:57:18):
And we also are just seeing that the bulk of
evidence is extensive records of some supposedly vetted signal chat
messages and highly detailed reports from supposedly vetted in person meetings,
both gathered over the course of nearly half a year
since January and there's a lot of ways they could
have gotten this information. Some of these events were public events.

(01:57:41):
There's transcripts of a tour that some people did, a
speaking tour about resistance to Minneapolis. Those were open events
to the public. Of course, there's going to be FEDS there.
But as wiser people than me have always said, your
signal messages, if you can see them on your phone,
and someone else gets your phone, they can also see

(01:58:02):
them on your phone. So a lot of people were
arrested here and had their phone seized as evidence. There's
lots of ways that these messages could have been obtained.
And what Moe is saying, I just think it's worth
elaborating on that.

Speaker 8 (01:58:14):
It won't help anyone.

Speaker 9 (01:58:16):
What did you say about cop looking for the cop
and the chat will never don't play?

Speaker 7 (01:58:20):
Who's the cop in the group chat?

Speaker 8 (01:58:21):
Yeah? Yeah, everybody loses is a good way to describe that.

Speaker 9 (01:58:25):
Yeah, And just to make it explicit. I think it's
because you could read this and be like, oh my god,
somebody snitched or there's an infiltrator, and I just think
that's not clear.

Speaker 4 (01:58:35):
We don't know. Yeah, we just don't know.

Speaker 7 (01:58:38):
And I think the other thing that I would like
to say is I'm looking at a lot of these
text messages and they're not particularly evidence of unlawful conduct.

Speaker 8 (01:58:48):
No, No, they're really not right.

Speaker 7 (01:58:50):
And so I don't think this allusion to that is
to never talk to your friends or to never organize.
I do think that it's in important to remember that
basically anything you say, Hannon, will be used against you.
When I say to my clients, look, even when you're

(01:59:11):
saying you're protesting your innocence, you know, when you're.

Speaker 4 (01:59:15):
Telling people publicly I.

Speaker 7 (01:59:17):
Didn't do anything that can be used against you. Who
don't know what police and prosecutors are going to understand
as evidence or what they're going to understand it as
evidence of. That doesn't mean we don't talk to each other.
It doesn't mean we self censor. It means we have
the courage of our convictions. Yeah, And it means that

(01:59:37):
we're thoughtful and circumspect about what we say.

Speaker 4 (01:59:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:59:40):
I think that's just like the most important point to
all of this. We have the courage of our convictions,
and that doesn't mean we should be fools. Right, Like
the indictment is much more concerned with that they built
shields than it is about their conspiracy to kick police
cars or whatever it is that they're accused of their
overt acts. Yeah, you know, and a lot of it
is around the ideology of these people, and interestingly, it

(02:00:01):
mentions anarchism or anarchists substantially more than it mentions antifa
with emphasis on the wrong syllable, of course.

Speaker 4 (02:00:10):
And that's actually not new. That's actually really old.

Speaker 8 (02:00:13):
In American history.

Speaker 10 (02:00:15):
But it's interesting to me that one of the cases
that it looks like they're trying to build with these
allegations is that all of these people identify as anarchists,
and that they're obviously not being accused of being an anarchist,
because that's not a crime, but that it certainly seems
like they're attempting to say, like, this person identifies an anarchist,
therefore they are more likely to have committed these other

(02:00:36):
crimes or whatever. And I just think that's worth pointing
out that that is a thing that the state is
heavily focused on. But for me, as an anarchist, this
is about the kind of thing where you're like, well,
the courage of my convictions. It's not a crime to
believe that we should organize society and a bottom up,
horizontal structure.

Speaker 4 (02:00:56):
And to add to that, the reason they're doing that
is that they're relying on a popular misunderstanding of anarchism
to mean a predilection for chaos and violence probably. And
the more that we can explain that anarchists mostly just
want to make tea for you and be nice to you,
then the further we can go to dispelling Yeah that,
Like I like to define anarchism as building ways to
take care of people that don't reinforce ways to control.

Speaker 10 (02:01:18):
People, which includes guarding kindergartens, right.

Speaker 4 (02:01:21):
Yeah, yeah, there are many ways that we can do that.
But the fewer people who have that misunderstanding that, the
harder it comes to make that argument.

Speaker 3 (02:01:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (02:01:30):
I think the point in this indictment that perfectly illustrates
the fundamental misapprehension that the government has about what an
anarchist is and what we're up to is the phrase
the aggressive use of shields.

Speaker 4 (02:01:48):
Yeah, that was what I was going to clip out
as well.

Speaker 7 (02:01:52):
Because, as you say, we're not food and bombs, right,
it's food not bombs. We're seeing each other, we're protecting
kindergartens where you know, we're providing security for meetings we're
mostly frankly feeding each other. Yeah, not always very well,

(02:02:14):
right yet a.

Speaker 10 (02:02:15):
Little over emphasis on badly cooked eggplant.

Speaker 7 (02:02:17):
Too many human beings possibly, but you know, but we're
doing our best out here. And maybe I actually think
that the idea that anarchists are people who engage in
the aggressive use of shields is actually, in some respects
really precise.

Speaker 8 (02:02:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:02:38):
If these people will walk, it would be a great
album title for someone. There has been a lot of
reaction to several federal cases in the last twelve months, right,
maybe sixty eighteen, God knows how long we've entered this.
But this is not that this is not prairie land.
As we spoke about before, More than half the eighteen

(02:03:00):
USC cases in this so to have already been dropped.
Can you maybe help situate this in a place that
helps people who are drubbing with the sky is falling
feeling right now? Well?

Speaker 9 (02:03:11):
I think one really nice thing is the arraignments are
I believe still ongoing as we are speaking of the
people who were raided and arrested this morning, and last
I heard, all five whose cases had been called were
ordered released with conditions of not talking to each other
with one exception for people who are roommates. But that's

(02:03:32):
interesting and probably a whole other conversation. But that's a
big deal that people were facing conspiracy charges, which are
very serious federal charges, and were released today at their arraignments.
I think it shows it's an indication of where the
courts are at, and also just these cases are taking
place in these cities where the whole world watched the

(02:03:57):
federal government do absolute terror and people do beautiful human
loving each other in all the ways that they could
to try and keep people alive while federal agents killed people.

Speaker 8 (02:04:10):
So it's just the context that it is in.

Speaker 9 (02:04:13):
It's super different than rural Texas, you know, and even
the facts that we are dealing with in this are
just less hard.

Speaker 12 (02:04:20):
You know.

Speaker 9 (02:04:21):
There's not allegations that someone shot a cop, which is
a harder narrative to overcome in public the court of
public opinion, and the allegations generally also seem even less
serious than the recent indictment that came out in Michigan
for the Palestine protesters. So I just think that's an
interesting grounding thing. And on the other hand, we did

(02:04:42):
recently see it with the Spokane three people convicted of conspiracy,
which was that's the second one after Prairie Land. So
while a lot of these cases around the country have
been dropped, not all of them have. But it's hard
to imagine this being super successful given where it's taking place.

Speaker 10 (02:04:58):
And I think that when we we look at Minneapolis
and we're like, Okay, Minneapolis was the or the Twin Cities.
I'm sorry, Saint Paul. I'm so sorry I keep accidentally
doing that in Saint Paul, You're also wonderful and people
have done so much work and they have been this
like guiding light for a huge chunk of people living
in the United States of America in this past year, right,

(02:05:19):
like looking how people have come together to defend their
neighbors and themselves, and like, I think that it's important
that we say that unity has to continue. And so
it's like the reason that I am optimistic is because
of the actions that I saw in Minneapolis. Sorry I
didn't go to Saint Paul, but you know, the actions
I saw in Minnesota. But that has to continue, like

(02:05:43):
what during court support during you know, so it's not
like just a oh, we've got this right, but instead
by continuing to say we we are looking.

Speaker 8 (02:05:52):
This does matter to us, This matters to everybody.

Speaker 10 (02:05:55):
Yeah, I'm hoping that that kind of continues to influence things.

Speaker 9 (02:05:59):
And I think we've I saw that today the arrangements.
The courtroom was packed, it was overflowing, so people were
outside chanting, and that's when teargas was deployed and there
was unprecedented I mean, it just was unprecedented here at
the Federal Courthouse to see that kind of force used.
But there's tons of people outside. You know, this happened

(02:06:19):
this morning, and the community is not having it.

Speaker 8 (02:06:23):
So Yeah, even though they're car kicking anarchists.

Speaker 4 (02:06:28):
Cause living in fear.

Speaker 7 (02:06:31):
We need to remember too that no action is over
until the last person accused is home and free. Yeah,
we have to keep doing court support, we have to
do prisoner support. I am so relieved, I guess to
know that Minneapolis and Saint Paul have such well developed

(02:06:55):
legal infrastructure, including not only lawyers who have you know,
decades of experience fighting against the politically motivated abuse of
state power against people, you know, on the basis of
their First Amendment protected beliefs, but also legal workers and
jail support and people who have really learned over the

(02:07:17):
course of not just this last winter, but you know,
through the course of many decades of movement struggles, how
to deal with this kind of stuff. And I know
that these particular this particular group is in really good hands.
It's not that this isn't a terrible situation, and it's
not that it isn't going to be potentially devastating for

(02:07:41):
the individuals who've been indicted, but the kind of solidarity
that we have seen and that we saw this morning
at the courthouse is really heartening to me.

Speaker 4 (02:07:52):
Yeah, I guess I'll just say like I had the
misfortune of having to listen to Gregory Bavino's interview at
the remigration conference in Portugal as part of my job,
and one of the things he said was that they
surrendered to Minneapolis and Saint Paul, right, and they felt
like they were defeated there. And I don't think it's

(02:08:12):
a coincidence that this is happening right after they got
their funding bill passed, right, but very clearly the people
of the Twin Cities stood up to ICE and CBP
and one and ICE and CBP know that they are
very upset about it, but that means you can do
it again, and like this takes a different form when
it comes in the form of court support, right, there's

(02:08:33):
a different kind of struggle, but the way we confront
it is the same, which is to say together, we
saw people wholly each other so close in the Twin
Cities and it was really beautiful amidst horrible, horrible shit.
And I think that people can continue to do that
and continue to be this light that the rest of
the country looks up to.

Speaker 9 (02:08:51):
You as a wise mentor. MO has said many times before,
the punishment is the process for anyone going through this.
I hope you don't feel that, however hard this is,
is being undermined. It's incredibly difficult to go through this process.
But staying grounded in the reality of where you are,
the cases that have been dropped, and the fact that

(02:09:13):
there's not yet a conviction to minimize fear is a
way of taking back power from the state which they
get to wheeled over us by doing things like this
to freak us out and make us really scared. And
we don't know if this will hold up in court yet,
so let's keep our feet on the ground and puld
each other close and try not to.

Speaker 8 (02:09:31):
Let them get us down more than more than they
have to.

Speaker 13 (02:09:36):
Yeah, welcome to it could happen here.

Speaker 2 (02:09:50):
I'm Robert Evans. Now. A few days ago I had
the experience of listening to somebody that I've known for
a while and known as a fairly mainstream liberal, someone
who does not, in general support the personal ownership of firearms,
certainly not weapons like ar fifteens react to the recent
race riots bagrams, you know, whatever term I guess is

(02:10:11):
most appropriate in Belfast, where racist mobs ran through the
streets attacking people in their homes, pulling them out of
their homes, lagging their homes on fire, targeting these people
because they were not white. And this person, who I've
known for a while, reacted to watching footage of this
and reading headlines and their general shock and horror by
saying something along the lines of I guess if this

(02:10:33):
kind of stuff is on the table, I understand why
people need are fifteens Now? Nothing had actually changed about
the way the world works to alter this person's opinion
of guns or of reality. They were simply forced to
confront an aspect of reality that had previously been obscured
to them because in earlier days, they had assumed that
in any civilized nation, and they considered Northern Ireland to

(02:10:57):
be part of a civilized nation, police would stop this
kind of behavior. And if you feel like the rule
of law is something you can trust on pretty immutably,
then someone else saying no, I would rather have a
gun of my own than trust a cop might sound
like a mania. Today's episode is not about guns or
gun rights. It is in the most direct sense, about

(02:11:17):
data centers and the current people's war on building more
of them. I see the current vast groundswell of support
for this kind of activism and this fight in general,
as the most hopeful change in domestic politics in quite
some time, and I think this movement could become a
weapon that drives a stake into the hearts of the
silicon oligarchy that currently rule quite a lot of our world.

(02:11:38):
The problem is any mass movement like this, especially one
built on what is essentially also like the biggest name
in the news right now, AI, is going to involve
a lot of misinformation and even disinformation. People don't just
hate data centers for good reasons, they hate them for
bad ones too, Or at least it would probably be

(02:11:58):
more accurate for me to say a lot of people
hate them for reasons that don't reflect something data centers
actually do or make worse. The broader reason that I've
seen some people have issues with this fight, with this
mass movement against the construction of new data centers is
that data centers are utterly necessary modern infrastructure and incredibly

(02:12:19):
crucial to the maintenance of what we would consider basic
daily life. This is something that's true even without AI,
and this is something that was true prior to the
introduction of what Silicon Valley likes to call AI into
all of our lives. Data centers are what make the
age of cloud computing possible, and starting in the twenty tens,
we decided that the cloud was where everything compute wise

(02:12:41):
was increasingly going to happen in the future. There were
pragmatic reasons for this. Having words savior document to a
cloud file that makes it instantly accessible from any machine
with Internet access should you desire. That's a big leap
forward in capability, at least in one direction. Likewise, having
like a watch on your body that cannot just take

(02:13:01):
down your biometric data during a workout, but can store
it and analyze it over long periods of time that
offers people real utility. There's a reason products like this
are very popular. You can't, however, have the entire world
mapped out and accessible for turn by turn navigation without
needing a shitload of data centers somewhere and in fact,

(02:13:21):
in quite a few somewheres to make that possible. Now,
of course, there are also privacy trade offs for all
of these kinds of products. That's been the entire logic
of the Internet of Things era. You hand over your
data and we deliver utility. Privacy advocates have had issues
with this from the jump, but most people didn't because

(02:13:42):
the benefits were obvious and most people don't like to
read or think very hard if we can avoid it.
For almost twenty years, consumers largely ignored the rollout of
data centers around the world, even sometimes into our backyards,
because big tech had reasonably good pr and most people
were happy with their gizmos. All in all, you get

(02:14:02):
a hint of how uncontroversial this used to be. In
a twenty twenty two article I found published on Microsoft's
source Emea website, written.

Speaker 4 (02:14:10):
By Bill Briggs.

Speaker 2 (02:14:11):
The title was critical to our modern society, how data
centers power every day necessities. Now, there was a little
bit about AI in there, but this is twenty twenty
two and the hype cycle hadn't nearly hit its peak
at that point. The article spent much more time emphasizing
how integral data centers are in things that people like quote.
Simply put, they are the physical infrastructure behind cloud computing,

(02:14:34):
and across Europe, Microsoft data centers are operating around the
clock to support a wide spectrum of critical services, from
the life saving work of doctors and first responders to
essential services like groceries and online banking. At the same time,
data centers also empowered everyday necessities like food deliveries, remote work,
and video calls to family. The article goes on to
include a quote from Rahil Nasir, an associate research director

(02:14:57):
at a market research firm, who called data senaers the
invisible infrastructure, which I find interesting because absolutely no one
would call it that today, right People on these saw
them as invisible back then because there hadn't been much
public discussion about these things, and there weren't nearly as
many of them, to be fair. In twenty twenty two,
the del Oro Group estimated global data center capex to

(02:15:20):
have been about two hundred and forty one billion dollars.
McKenzie is currently predicting global spending on data centers will
reach seven trillion dollars by twenty thirty. The number of
data center projects in development or under contract exploded pretty
much right after Microsoft put out the article I quoted
from earlier, and this put millions of people face to

(02:15:42):
face with the reality of data center construction projects, many
of them revolted. Q one of twenty twenty six saw
a record seventy five data center projects blocked or delayed nationwide,
which made it, in NBC's words, the most blocked and
delayed quarter for data center projects on record. Researchers at
Data world Watch told journalists they did not consider this

(02:16:04):
a cyclical spike polygon, instead a structural shift caused as
quote communities internalized an opposition playbook, legislative sessions introduced formal
regulatory uncertainty, and the number of active opposition groups more
than doubled to eight hundred and thirty three across forty
nine states now. The rapid and obviously organic nature of
this growth has alarmed certain democratic and Republican politicians, largely

(02:16:28):
the ones who have taken money from the tech industry.
Some of these folks have panicked and insisted that Chinese
government propaganda is behind the growth and opposition to data centers.
The New York Times published a piece by sociologist Tressy
McMillan Cottam, who argued that Democrats need to make the
issue of data centers their issue because she believes that
these protests could have a significant impact on the midterms,

(02:16:50):
and in twenty twenty eight, in her column, she states
that she wasn't initially sold on the value of data
center protests, but time around activists convinced her that she'd
been wrong, in part because this was not an issue
that inherently drew urban or suburban or rural voters together,
but all of them like it didn't inherently pull it
Republican or Democratic voters, and thus it was a way

(02:17:11):
to bring people together and get them working together uncommon cause,
which is a really beneficial thing to do if you're
trying to pull people closer into like a broader political
alignment with you. And I would add to that point,
just based on my own research and what I've seen,
I feel like the fight against data centers is something
that has what I like to call a high likelihood

(02:17:32):
of fundamentalism in it, or HLF, and an HLF issue
is a kind of political fight that if you get
drawn into it, you're really likely to become some kind
of fundamentalist on the matter. And abortion would be a
good example of this sort of issue, right. That's why
back in the nineteen seventies the Republican Party adopted abortion
as a central concern, because if you get someone to

(02:17:53):
become an anti abortion activist, they'll vote just based on
that right. And if one party is against abortion and
one parties for it, they'll never consider the party that
is even open minded to it being legal in some
limited sense, right, they become an absolutist on the matter.
These are great issues to pull people into like a
voting block with, because if you can get them to

(02:18:14):
associate that issue with your party, you can kind of
immunize that chunk of your voter base from economic concerns
or other points of attack, at least in theory. Now,
different issues tend to create fundamentalists for different reasons. People
who aren't organizing against data centers aren't doing it, usually
because they think the idea of a data center is wrong.
But many of them do believe that AI is evil

(02:18:37):
and immoral, and AI is the reason that so many
new data centers are going up. Many more people oppose
new data centers for the specific reason they see them
as a threat to their own personal environment and to
their own power bills, and to the cleanliness of their
own water and air. It may seem as if this
is the kind of support that would tend to breed
shallow activists. If you just don't want a data center

(02:18:59):
in your hometown, that doesn't mean you give a fuck
about one going up in Mississippi or wherever you don't live.
After all, none of these people presumably cared about the
data centers that had been going up five years ago,
ten years ago, before the issue became salient to them.
But as treci Cottam wrote, the realities of doing this
kind of organism on the ground have a tendency to
transcend the reasons individual start getting into the fight.

Speaker 3 (02:19:21):
Quote.

Speaker 2 (02:19:22):
I have been watching this new groundswall of discent firsthand
and community meetings, organizing sessions, and civic trainings. Here in
North Carolina. The resistance has lifelong joiners, alumni from environmental
and housing movements, and young organizers. There are also a
lot of people who have never dreamed of being disagreeable
in public, much less considered joining a rock as social movement.
The imminent risk of living next to a data center

(02:19:43):
may be why they show up for a meeting, but
they're committing to the issue for bigger, deeper reasons. Political
corruption and corporate mouthfeasance make them feel politically impotent. Voicing
their objections, sharing their anxieties with others, recalling politicians who
override them, and in some cases beating the opposition is
giving them something. Few politicians are offering a taste of
political power. And we'll continue, but first, here's some ads,

(02:20:15):
and we're back. I think it's really important to emphasize
something that Cottam said at the end of that last quote,
which is that part of why the anti data center
movement is potent and why it tends to draw people
in much deeper than maybe the initial shallowness of why
they got in would suggest, is that it offers them
a sense of political power and of agency, and an
age in which people are being trained more and more

(02:20:36):
to feel as if they have no agency. You can't
stop this, you can't fight this, or alternatively, this guy
will do the fighting for you.

Speaker 14 (02:20:44):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:20:44):
People are getting it from all sides wherever they actually
land in the political aisle, and that's quite frankly, not
very much fun. It's really fun to feel like you're
a part of a movement like this that's kicking ass
and taking names. Now. I don't share the long term
goals that led Cottom to that article, at least not
all of them. I get the sense that she wants
to give the Democratic Party a powerful new long term

(02:21:05):
voting block. I don't care so much about that now.
I do, of course, want to see the Republican Party
beaten electorally, and more Democratic votes is the only current
way to do that. But the Democratic Party is not
morally or logistically capable of doing anything but betraying these
people in the long run. I really do believe that
the reason why is the reason why the party has

(02:21:26):
been incredibly slow to embrace these activists in any cohesive fashion.
This movement is death for Silicon Valley, and Silicon Valley
has a lot of fucking money. And when I say death,
don't think I'm exaggerate. Data Center Watch is calculated that
the total value of data centers blocked in early twenty
twenty six. This is just the first three months of
this year, was around one hundred and thirty billion dollars,

(02:21:48):
compared to a total of one hundred and fifty six
billion dollars in projects blocked in all of twenty twenty five. Now,
a huge month last year for data construction expenses in
the US was last Juli, which was actually a historic month,
and that represented about fourteen billion dollars in expenses. So
the value of the projects that have been stopped are significant,
even in tech industry terms. More to the point, nearly

(02:22:10):
all the money that underlies and underwrites these corporations and
their owners is fake. Elon Musk could not produce a
trillion dollars of real, liquid US dollars if he wanted to,
because that simply is not how assets work. Most of
his wealth is in stock valuation, and those stocks are
worth what they're worth because of consumer sentiment as much
as anything objectively real. The entire AI bubble is being

(02:22:32):
underwritten by the belief that this will be worth it.
There are trillions in value here, and we just need
to spend a few trillion more to unlock them.

Speaker 4 (02:22:40):
None of that.

Speaker 2 (02:22:40):
Value can be unlocked without data centers, and if you
throw a wrench in their plans to build more, you
can hobble the whole effort. Any delay or serious setback
creates the risk of a panic, and panic is their
greatest enemy. All it takes is one sufficiently disastrous crash
to kill many of these big overvalued companies. SpaceX and

(02:23:00):
Anthropic and OpenAI and Microsoft and Meta can't all survive
a market collapse, just as they won't sadly all die,
nor can their billionaire bosses all remain masters of the universe.
If they fall off their perch in a ray that
shatters the global economy. We won't even have to bring
all of these guys to court. Some of them will
get done and by their former friends overseas. There's a

(02:23:21):
reason why some VC types have already started trying to
describe anti data center activism as terroristic. They are in
fact terrified of it. This segment from an ArsTechnica article
by Ashley Bellinger should give you an idea of what
I'm discussing.

Speaker 4 (02:23:34):
Quote.

Speaker 2 (02:23:35):
The researchers suggested that the back half of twenty twenty
five marked a turning point as data center opposition emerged
as a national level narrative that showed the AI industry
can no longer see the fights as individual zoning disputes.
It is now reshaping elections, regulation, and site viability nationwide.
Data Center Watch reported last year, where before officials were
criticized for quietly signing deals without discussing construction with nearby residents,

(02:23:59):
now they're in encountering backlash before any deal is in
the books. Data Center Watch found in some cases, research
is reported opposition mobilized before any project was officially filed.
The mere rumor of a data center was enough to
trigger organize resistance. Now, folks, when you hit this level
of cultural inflection with a movement, you are in an
extremely powerful but also very dangerous position. There's a reason

(02:24:23):
that Steve Bannon's also made waves recently by encouraging his
side to start reaching out to the anti data center people.
He knows this energy can be co opted, or at
least he believes it can. For my part, I want
to see this energy harnessed. I want to see it
burn brightly like the working flame of an oxyocettylene torch,
because I want to see it used to cut directly
into the belly of the industry that I hate. The

(02:24:45):
best way for us to do this right now is
to create as many moments as possible where projects to
construct new data centers clash with protesters. Each of these
conflicts has the potential to spark a panic in the market,
and every piece of bad press contributes to the overall
weight of public opinion and expectation against AI and against
big tech. We never know which piece will be the

(02:25:06):
one that breaks this current incarnation of the industry. The
name of the game for us, then, is to create
as many moments as we can that endanger the future
of this market and the industry behind it. And we
can do that entirely legally by forcing them to confront reality.
None of these data center projects are sold to towns
and cities based on real, accurate information about how they

(02:25:26):
will impact the environment and the local community. One good
example of this recently from the United States is a
story earlier this year about a data center project in
box Elder County, Utah. The proposed buildings together would have
been three times the size of Manhattan and stretched across
multiple sites. The project was championed by celebrity billionaire Kevin O'Leary,

(02:25:47):
who was also the VC behind it, for a separate
article in Ours Technica, quote residents' top concern was the
straight out data center project draining local waters, and they
were willing to pay to protect them, most especially the
vulnerable Great Salt Lake. Many locals paid a fifteen dollars
fee to register comments to block the transfer of nineteen
hundred acre feet of water from a ranch to the
hyperscale data center. Other concerns include electricity bills rising and

(02:26:10):
potential risks to air quality, local wildlife and land. Venture
capitalist Kevin O'Leary, chair of o Leery Digital and Shark
Tank Investor, is behind the construction of the project. He
told a local ABC affiliate that he regrets not working
with state officials to be more transparent about the project
from the beginning. We really screwed it up, O'Leary said,
while confirming he was not expecting this intense kind of
blowback from the public. He claimed that he and state

(02:26:32):
officials anticipated that people would be excited about the major
local investment and made huge mistakes by not involving the
public more and discussions based on that assumption. We pissed
off a lot of people, and that's not the way
I do business. O'Leary said, that's not now, even that
he undeniably did business this way. I disagree, but that's
beside the point. The resistance was successful. Now, the project

(02:26:56):
wasn't killed entirely, but it has been massively scaled back
and may yet on the vine. The fact that resistance
to this huge project and many like it, has caused
so much damage to the industry has prompted a scale response.
In late May and early June of twenty twenty six,
I noticed a drip and then a flood of new
articles and viral content critical of the anti data center protests.

(02:27:17):
One good example of this would be a June tenth
article on the website bar Chart by Nash Riggins. It
was titled data centers get a bad rap for using
too much water and energy. It turns out almonds suck
up even more now. In this incredibly snotty little shit
of an article, Nash is reporting on the fact that
a bunch of pro AI influencers had with shocking coordination,

(02:27:40):
started posting online responding to complaints about data center water
usage by pointing out how wasteful it really is to
grow almonds. You know, the almond industry uses even more
water than AI does. And you know, if you want
a good response to that, just say, sure, put them
out of business.

Speaker 4 (02:27:56):
Fuck them.

Speaker 2 (02:27:57):
Another popular article in this genre was a blog post
by Andy Masley. He critiqued the argument that AI was
particularly wasteful by making arguments like this for an interview
with him on azfamily dot com. Almost all of that
one point seven trillion gallons of water per year, specifically
water that is withdrawn in the return to the source,
Masley told me, referring to a widely cited estimate from

(02:28:18):
Karen How's Empire of Ai. The book claimed surging AI
demand could use up to one point seven trillion gallons
of fresh water globally by twenty twenty seven, or half
the water annually withdrawn in the UK. Masley says the
word use in that sentence is misleading. Data centers do
evaporate most of the water they use on site for cooling,
but on site use represents only about twenty percent of
their total water footprint. The other eighty percent comes from

(02:28:40):
power plants that heat water to spin turbines. That water
is then returned, mostly unchanged, to its source. Masley's viral
post got him interviewed by The New York Times and
earned a correction from the author of the book, But
his critiques about specific claims made there shouldn't be seen
as having any overall legitimacy to the broader argument about
data center water use. For one thing, he acts as
if all data centers function the same way basically, both

(02:29:03):
in terms of how they are powered and in terms
of how they do cooling, and thus you can make
the kind of assumptions about water use that is making
and you just fucking can't now. The Environmental and Energy
Study Institute has published an expanse of analysis of data
centers and water consumption. They point out that this is
all much more complex than Masley's quote might lead you
to believe, and I'm going to read from that article quote.

(02:29:25):
In the context of data centers, water consumption refers to
the amount of water withdrawn from blue or gray sources
minus the water discharged by the centers, primarily warm water
left over from cooling the it racks. The consumed water
is generally the water that evaporates or is otherwise taken
out of immediate human usage. Withdrawal of fresh water from
local streams or underground aquifers may lead to aquifer exhaustion,

(02:29:45):
particularly in water stressed areas. Approximately eighty percent of the water,
typically fresh water withdrawn by data centers, evaporates, with the
remaining water discharge into municipal wastewater facilities. The large volume
of waste water from data centers may overwhelm existing local
facilities which were not designed to handle such a high volume.
And again, one of the things that Masley tends to
ignore is that even when you're putting this water back

(02:30:08):
into the system quote unquote, that doesn't mean it's going
back to the aquifers that it was pulled out of.
It doesn't mean that it's going back into the same way,
which can still cause massive issues. Now, how water efficient
a data center is is going to vary depending on
the climate of its location. But because these tend to
require a lot of space, many are built in places
where land is cheap. Those places are often hot and dry,

(02:30:30):
like Utah and Wyoming. Data centers and hotter climates use
more water. Data centers specifically built for the AI industry
also have higher chip density, which requires more cooling, which
uses more water. As time goes on, These increased demands
lead to more and more being demanded of the local
areas that agree to host data centers. Since data centers
don't lend themselves to any other industries or create very

(02:30:52):
many jobs, this often leaves local communities dependent upon them,
which means they have no choice but to say yes
to ever harsher environmental demands. I'm not creating a hypothetical here.
This has happened over and over again, and I'm going
to read again from that article by EESI dot org.
Northern Virginia is considered the world capital for data centers,
with over three hundred operational data centers spread across four counties. Collectively,

(02:31:15):
all data centers in Northern Virginia consumed close to two
billion gallons of water in twenty twenty three, a sixty
three percent increase from twenty nineteen. Luton County, with approximately
two hundred operational data centers, used about nine hundred million
gallons of water in twenty twenty three. This has led Lutenwater,
the county's fresh water authority, to rely heavily on potable
water for data centers rather than reclaimed water. Now activists

(02:31:38):
looking for cautionary tales about what data center addiction could
do to an area should look no further than Northern Virginia.
The region started saying yes to such development decades ago,
when the industry was very much different. Back then, AOL
was based there and their data center was part of
an overall campus that employed more than five thousand people
per an article by the Lincoln Institute. The campus has

(02:31:58):
since been demolished. Three large data center facilities are being
built on the site. There's a big fence around it
for security purposes, so it's totally isolated from the community now,
and it's only going to employ about one hundred to
one hundred and fifty people on the same piece of land.
That's the difference. That's a quote from a local resident,
and well here from some other local residents. But first,

(02:32:19):
here's ads and we're back now. I've mostly discussed the
fight against data centers thus far as an American thing,
and it isn't. I think it is particularly relevant to

(02:32:39):
our upcoming elections in a way that deserves particular attention.
But this is a global fight. And it is a
global fight not just because people hate AI, but because
data centers and the AI they enable have come to
symbolize the tech elite who have bought our world and
who are in the process of burning it to the ground.
Hatred of these people should know no geographical boundary, and
this presents the possibility of internettional outreach as well as

(02:33:01):
collaboration and strategizing. As an example, I'll discuss a small
community in Romania, Mishli, which is located in one of
the poorest sections of the country. In twenty twenty, they
said hello to a team from Cluster Power who wanted
to construct a data center in the area. The mayor
gave a welcoming speech that should sound familiar to many
of you. We are incredibly proud to have an investor

(02:33:21):
on board and to see people talking about the data
center in Mishli. The company contributes to the local economy
by paying taxes here and has chosen this area as
its headquarters. So that all sounds great, But I found
an article for algorithm Watch that notes quote no documentation
was provided to verify the tax revenue actually generated for
the commune. A June of twenty twenty four, only ten

(02:33:42):
jobs had been created, compared to at least three hundred
that had been promised.

Speaker 4 (02:33:46):
Now you can find.

Speaker 2 (02:33:47):
Stories that are almost identical to this all over the
United States, but also elsewhere in Europe, like the Netherlands
and Germany, and in many other places besides. Everywhere these
companies do business, they leave behind broken promises and lies,
like a trail of gasoline reeking behind them as they go.
Why shouldn't we drop a match and watch the fire
catch them. There are dangers to embracing a movement based

(02:34:08):
around opposing the construction of infrastructure that is necessary for
a lot of modern life, But I might argue those
dangers look a lot less scary if we recognize that
necessary for modern current life and necessary for life itself
aren't necessarily the same thing. In much the same way
as I would give up my ability to buy pistachios

(02:34:29):
and almonds year round to avoid California not having water,
I'm willing to reconsider what miracles of daily life are
really worth the cost. If it turns out the cost
is that high, and the scariest thing in the world
to the people who currently run it is this, perhaps
one day soon everyone will start to feel this way.

Speaker 4 (02:35:02):
There you go, The passion fucking fixed it.

Speaker 3 (02:35:04):
And that's what I've always been.

Speaker 2 (02:35:06):
While I've never said.

Speaker 4 (02:35:07):
That there's one thing that sd CODs know. It's passion.

Speaker 2 (02:35:10):
Passion is negotiable.

Speaker 12 (02:35:11):
Deadlines are not welcome to Go ahead, guy, this is
it could happen here.

Speaker 15 (02:35:17):
Executive Disorder or her weekly discast covering what's happening in
the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means
for you. I'm Garrison Davis today, joined by Miawong, James Stout,
and Robert Evans. This episode recovering the week of June
tenth to June seventeenth. Some small news items to start
Elon Musk has become the world's first trillionaire.

Speaker 4 (02:35:39):
Oh good, at least on paper?

Speaker 7 (02:35:41):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (02:35:42):
What other?

Speaker 2 (02:35:43):
There's no other kind of trillionair. It's all on paper.
It's a billionaire. Yeah yeah.

Speaker 15 (02:35:48):
This is following SpaceX going public on the Nastak Stock Exchange.
Eight hundred and sixty six billion dollars of Musk's wealth
is now in SpaceX stock, and space itself is currently
valued it over two trillion on the market.

Speaker 4 (02:36:03):
Not good, Yeah great.

Speaker 15 (02:36:05):
DHCHS has announced it will not comply with Virginia's new
law prohibiting federal officers from wearing masks, and on June eleventh,
the DJ filed the lawsuit against Virginia quote challenging their
unconstitutional attempts to regulate federal law enforcement. The French government
suspects the Israeli quote unquote elite influence cyber and technology
firm Black Core, of interfering in elections in France, Scotland,

(02:36:31):
and the New York City mayoral race by orchestrating online
smear and disformation campaigns against left wing pro Palestine politicians in.

Speaker 4 (02:36:40):
Fucking welcome New Uile?

Speaker 3 (02:36:41):
Did they?

Speaker 2 (02:36:41):
And I wanted to include this because it literally just
broke as we are recording. But Representative Jamie Raskin, a
Democrat from Maryland, put out a letter today that states, quote,
we have been receiving troubling reports that and this is
too cash Betel, that you may be using part of
the budget of the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a
personal slow fund to make tens or hundreds of thousands
of dollars in unlawful bonus payments to loyalist MAGA henchmen

(02:37:05):
who have engaged in misconduct. And I'm going to quote
here from an article on MS now by Kindlanian quote
Committee Democrats have information that Betel has issued more than
one million dollars in awards, the letter says. The letter
says that the money went to special agents serving on
his director's advisory team, which Raskin's letter describes as a
curated group of agents who are willing to carry out
your unlawful and partisan orders. There's very little else known

(02:37:28):
other than that allegedly some of these payments were made
so rapidly that they bounced back like he was sending.

Speaker 4 (02:37:33):
Money to people.

Speaker 2 (02:37:34):
That's when they are alleging.

Speaker 16 (02:37:36):
I'm going to.

Speaker 2 (02:37:36):
Assume Cash is going to deny this, and so will
the FBI. I don't think they've even had time to
make a response yet. The FBI has not responded for
comment by ms NOW, at least according to their article,
this just dropped.

Speaker 4 (02:37:48):
So that's fun for.

Speaker 3 (02:37:49):
Us all to know.

Speaker 4 (02:37:51):
Yeah, yeah, all right, so cool.

Speaker 2 (02:37:54):
So I just felt like that was good.

Speaker 17 (02:37:56):
Yeah, great, lead corrupt administration in history.

Speaker 4 (02:38:02):
Yeah, Okay, let's talk about a bunch of other stuff
that isn't also great.

Speaker 3 (02:38:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:38:07):
Donald Trump issued a broad executive order on Friday which
rescinded previous orders by the Carter and Nicks administrations limiting
offered vehicle access to public lands, although it doesn't immediately
change the rules. This has the potential to do massive
and irreparable damage to public lands by taking away the
pillars really on which they've built regulation and motor vehicle

(02:38:28):
use of public land to the other public land thing. Now,
friend of the show, Mike fucking Lee is back again,
trying to fuck up your public lands again. Fuck Mike Lee,
Utah Senitor, if you're not familiar. So, there was a
bipartisan Wildfire Prevention Act of twenty twenty five Fire Prevention
Act that was going along smoothly in its little Senate

(02:38:49):
journey until Mike Lee decided to put in a spoiler
that would rescind the roadless Rule. We've spoken about the
two thousand and one roadless rule before, so I'm not
going to go into very great detail. I've spoken about
Lee ad nauseum. Lee used his position of chair of
this committee to insert this right, and in doing so,

(02:39:11):
not only is Lee trying for a third time since
twenty twenty five to sell off public lands, he is
also probably ruining the future of the Wildfire Prevention Act,
the funding that this will have, that the effect that
this will have. It's now unlikely to pass because Mike
Lee has spoiled it with his public land sell off shit. Again.

(02:39:33):
People might recall Lee try to sell our public lands
with parts of the Better the Better Business Bureau, No,
the Big Beautiful Bill, the other BBB, and again when
he attempted to justify motor vehicle use in wilderness. Garrison
and I med an episode about that where he was
talking about how you need roads in wilderness areas to
allow border patrol to do border patrol stuff. The Forest

(02:39:55):
Service had previously talked about rescinding the road this rule
through like administrative rule chain that seems to have been
an extremely unpopular choice, but that that process is still
on going. But what Lee's trying to do here is
lock it into legislation as opposed to something that another
administration could change back. Finally, I guess it's all kind
of public lands and related stuff for me. This week,

(02:40:15):
Fish and Wildlife Service agents served a warrant on a
property in New Mexico after two colored Mexican gray wolves,
which are covered by the endangered Species that were killed.
Calling to an Affidavid file in New Mexico. Both wolves
were killed after being caught in the leg hole traps.
One was left to die, the other was shot and
then beaten in the head. I read this warrant today.

(02:40:37):
It's kind of interesting. I saw something very very brief
reporting on it, and Molly helped me find the warrant.
The people on who the warrant was served on were
horse breakers, but I think they worked on a family
cattle ranch. It seems that the Fish and Wildlife Service
agents set up cameras after the collars of the wolves
told them that the wolves had died, and then they

(02:40:57):
realized that they had remained in one area. It suggests
that they had remained one area sometime then died I
either had been trapped. They were able to set up
cameras and film these guys recovering the traps, according to
Jaffa David, and so they are now going to begin
their prosecution. I guess well more from me. Fifteen people
in Minnesota were indicted on criminal conspiracy charges for events

(02:41:21):
and protests around the Whipple Federal Building and Fort Snelling.
We covered this in great detail on a show that
broadcast on Wednesday, the seventeenth of June, So if you'd
like to know more about that. We got some comment
from a couple of lawyers, and Margaret and I were
present at one of the events that this indictment centers on,

(02:41:43):
so we get some more insight there.

Speaker 15 (02:41:45):
For some election news, we still don't have right choice
vote tallies in Maine for the governor's race there. I
will keep an eye on that. But in Washington, DC,
Democratic Socialist Denise Lewis George won the Democratic primary in
the Washington d C mayoral race with fifty two point
eight percent of the vote, and a DSA cadre member

(02:42:08):
named a Perno Raj is in the lead for the
Ward one City Council seat with about forty seven percent
of the vote in the Democratic primary. Both candidates are
not expected to face substantial opposition in the upcoming general election,
so it looks like big wins for the DSA in Washington,
d C. Last Tuesday. Robert California, Yes.

Speaker 4 (02:42:32):
What's going on with it?

Speaker 3 (02:42:33):
Robert?

Speaker 4 (02:42:33):
Why is it the way it is? In short?

Speaker 2 (02:42:36):
James, the sun So, California US House District fourteen is
currently undergoing a special non partisan primary because Eric Swawell,
friend of the Pod in the you know, joking sense,
not literal sense, because we don't like him.

Speaker 15 (02:42:53):
Definitely, definitely not eemy of the enemy of the graced
enemy of the pod.

Speaker 4 (02:42:59):
No longer can his job are avowed nemesis.

Speaker 2 (02:43:02):
Now, the fun thing about that is that Eric Swawall
is genocide denier, and he is currently the number one
person And you know this is just like the first
round of voting. Is Aisha Wahab, who's at about forty
two point six percent of the vote based on the
most recent numbers I have. Melissa Hernandez is number two
at about sixteen point eight percent of the vote. So

(02:43:23):
Aish's got a sizeable lead here, and her politics are
significantly better in some important ways than Eric Swawall's, including
the fact that she is not a genocide denier. So
that's kind of bracing. That's nice to see. Anyway, That's
really all I've got to say.

Speaker 16 (02:43:41):
Yeah, So, in much bleaker news on Sunday, June fourteenth,
police and Senatobia, Mississippi, shot and killed a one year
old child named Cohen Wiley as they opened fire on
a car in the parking lot of a Walmart. An
adult who was in the car, who is a right
just the child's mother, is described as quote critically injured

(02:44:04):
after also being shot.

Speaker 4 (02:44:07):
I think it's.

Speaker 16 (02:44:07):
Important to hear what happened first year, I Cliff of Flessia,
Whiley the mother of comb.

Speaker 14 (02:44:12):
Whiley, it was me, my son, and another friend of
mine was at Walmart. As we was leaving out the Walmart,
they tried to stop her, but I kept walking because
it had nothing to do with me. By the time
in my baby got in the car, she came and
then they when we was bagging up, they was running

(02:44:33):
out the come. I raised my baby up because they
redrawed their gun. She had no tent. I raised my
baby up trying to show them there. He was in
the car. So she was bagging up and she hit
a car as I was opening the door, so the
doe flew back in. By the time I sat my
baby down, it was like three to four shots. One
of the shots hit him and his real cage, and

(02:44:56):
the other shots hit her in her arm and her thigh.
We lived and went to since help your hospital where
he was pronounced did my god.

Speaker 4 (02:45:08):
Yeah, that is fucking heartbreaking.

Speaker 2 (02:45:11):
Yeah, that's just a nightmare.

Speaker 3 (02:45:14):
It's horrible.

Speaker 4 (02:45:16):
Yeah, it looks like Benjamin Crump's representing her, which is
like that guy is a powerhouse.

Speaker 16 (02:45:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:45:22):
Yeah, like any time you're trying to train people how
to use firearms responsibly. One thing you have to drive
home repeatedly is that like, bullets don't stop if you miss,
and they don't necessarily stop just because you've hit the target. Yeah,
and so you always need to be not just aware of,
but paranoid about what's what's around you and around where

(02:45:43):
you're shooting, if you're going to shoot. And police are
trained to do the opposite of that. You know, they're
trained that their lives mean more than the lives of infants.

Speaker 3 (02:45:51):
That's what this is.

Speaker 4 (02:45:52):
Yeah, it God, Yeah that video.

Speaker 16 (02:45:55):
By the way, p W reg so As was mentioned
in the video, the cops were nominally responding to a
claim of shoplifting. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigations, per the
Mississippi Free Press, claims that the car was driving towards
the officers. This is ereally similar to claims made by
federal agents after the murder of a good. Police have

(02:46:20):
yet to release bodycam footage. The footage we do have,
it's not very good. Cell phone camera doesn't show the
shooting itself, but shows the car driving away from officers.
We also had some of the witnesses basically described the
car like driving away from the officers and the officers shooting.
But you're right, it's definitely following the trend that we've
seen a lot with federal law enforcement, but not just them. Yeah,

(02:46:44):
this is a local Yeah, of this idea like vehicle weaponization. Yeah,
and that they have the ability to respond to quote
unquote vehicle leapization with with lethal force. Yeah, or something
we've seen claim a number of lives just this year.

Speaker 12 (02:46:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 16 (02:46:58):
And this is combining and we'll talk about this a
bit more in a second, but this is combining with
sort of the shoplifting panic to create this nightmare of
a situation. Yeah, a police in Senatobia have a history
of police violence. Here's from wrig again.

Speaker 6 (02:47:15):
Quote.

Speaker 16 (02:47:15):
Last year at the same Walmart, the department came under
fire after a woman had a tser pulled on her
and was tackled to the ground after the department claimed
she illegally parked in a handicapped spot. The woman claims
she had just dropped her grandmother off at the store.
In twenty twenty three, the case of a ten year
old boy made national news after he was detained for
urinating in public in an attorney's office private parking lot. Yeah,

(02:47:40):
so this is you know, this is Mississippi. This is
a place where things like this have happened before. The
fact that there was a woman like again last year
who was tackled in this same parking lot by the
police says a lot. Yeah, and continue in the trend

(02:48:00):
of police violence. Yeah, the police tear gas protesters on
Tuesday in the parking lot and like the same parking
lot where protests were going on. All of this comes
in the sort of context of the deployment of a
nationwide panic about shoplifting, deployed by the right as part
of their strategy to bolster support from the police and
roll back the gains of the twenty twenty George Floyd Uprising.

(02:48:22):
Everything about police killings has just just continued to get
worse since the Sharp administration took power. We've had it
now from federal agents, we've had it from the police
in general, and as Gary was talking about earlier, Yeah,
this is kind of this intersection of this panic about
shoplifting combining with this panic about sort of vehicle weaponization
and turning into the cops murdering a one year old.

(02:48:45):
I think it's also worth noting in the context of
this allegedly being about shoplifting that nobody involved, like no
one who was in the car, which is the mother
of the baby, and also the woman driving the car
who the police had initially confronted in the story we
heard earlier. Neither of them have been arrested. So yeah, yeah,
I don't know. This is one of the worst stories

(02:49:06):
for police shooting I've ever encountered. And yeah, yeah, protest
presumably are going to continue tonight. This is again being
recorded on Wednesday, June seventeenth. They may have escalated by
the time you're hearing this.

Speaker 2 (02:49:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:49:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:49:20):
The cops in LA also killed a fucking a Golden Saint,
Bernard doodle Oh this week.

Speaker 2 (02:49:27):
Not to equivocate these fucking cases, I guess this is
just in the news.

Speaker 4 (02:49:32):
Yeah, absolutely not, no, no, this is just another incident
of police shooting when they absolutely had no need to.

Speaker 2 (02:49:39):
Right.

Speaker 4 (02:49:39):
In this case, the lady had been watching the Knicks game.
Somebody called to report screaming, which resulted in the cops
coming and killing this person's dog. It's nowhere near the
same as someone killing someone's child. I'm not suggesting that
it's just yet another example that cops can just shoot
first and ask questions later in this country, Yeah, six

(02:49:59):
years after George Floyd was murdered.

Speaker 16 (02:50:03):
Yeah, and I think to close, one of the things
that I always remember about that protest is every single
city had their own list of names.

Speaker 3 (02:50:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 16 (02:50:14):
I don't know, we like we had our own in
Chicago And yeah, I mean I'm immediately sort of like
just thinking about the killing a time of rice and yeah,
how we just continue to live in this country where
the cops just murder black people constantly, And the only

(02:50:36):
thing that's shanged since then is the police have more money.

Speaker 2 (02:50:39):
Yeah, and they're working to be able to murder other
groups of people more often too.

Speaker 16 (02:50:44):
You know, the feds are expanding out and shooting white
people in cold blood.

Speaker 2 (02:50:48):
Eventually the racism will be less noticeable. Yeah, if the
violence just becomes more all encompassing. Yeah, that's the promise
of the future.

Speaker 3 (02:50:58):
Yeah it won't.

Speaker 2 (02:50:59):
It'll still be noticeable, guys. Yeah that they're not going
to come through on that promise either.

Speaker 4 (02:51:04):
Yeah, that's gonna say. Like this country, like after after Elicha. McLean,
I feel like anyone who could watch it and be like, yeah,
shit's going fine. We just at some point cops just
to say we're never going to change.

Speaker 2 (02:51:17):
Yeah, and it's I'm going to guess the number of
people who stumble onto our shows and don't already think like, yeah,
the cops kill a lot of people they don't need
to be killing. That's pretty low. So I feel like
we preach into the we've done, we've we've we've done
what we need to here like yeah, yeah, not not
that it's not important.

Speaker 15 (02:51:33):
Nope, just said we'll go on a breakdown and come
back to talk about Iran and sports.

Speaker 4 (02:51:40):
Yep, we are back, and we are back to report
peace in our time.

Speaker 3 (02:51:58):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (02:52:00):
Old Trump did it somehow, somehow, he finally brought an
end to a long, lingering conflict that he's started a
couple of weeks.

Speaker 4 (02:52:12):
Yeah, calling him the peacemaker.

Speaker 2 (02:52:16):
This is this is like three or four days after
like a really long bender, when like I'm like, wow,
I actually I haven't gotten fucked up at all, and
it's been like ninety six hours. You know, I think
I've learned a couple of things about sobriety. I've reached
like a new level of wisdom that's allowed me to transcend.
Like that's that's that's how I what I compared to

(02:52:37):
Donald Trump right now.

Speaker 4 (02:52:39):
Yep is he announced that quote oil will flow on
both ends again for the region and the world. So
we initially learned about this this deal via True Social Right,
and I initially wrote this space on what we didn't know.
Then this morning, after a lot of people complain that
nobody knew the details of the deal, State Apartment spokesperson

(02:53:00):
and read the text of the deal allowed to report
us on a conference call. So this is a memorandum
of understanding right the MU is titled quote Islamabad Memorandum
of Understanding between the United States of America and Islamic
Republic of Iran. It'll be signed on Friday. That that
would be the day. If you hit US today comes out,
that will be that day. It's already been electronically signed.
Apparently it's still unclear if it's trumple Von she's going

(02:53:22):
to sign it on behalf of the US.

Speaker 2 (02:53:24):
I love the idea that they've got a DOCU sign
that's like being in back and forth something fucking Darron
is like wait a minute, Like I refreshed my phone, man,
I'm like, I'm still not seeing it. I'm still not
seeing it. Did you Okay, how did you spell my
email address? Let me check the span. Dude trying to
get the Trump administration to spell your name right in

(02:53:45):
an email as any Iranian politician.

Speaker 11 (02:53:47):
My god.

Speaker 3 (02:53:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:53:51):
Quick update.

Speaker 15 (02:53:51):
Here turns out Trump signed the Memorandum of Understanding right
after we recorded on Wednesday in Versailles. So well, it
is an MoU of Versailles.

Speaker 3 (02:54:04):
Back to jams.

Speaker 4 (02:54:06):
Once they sign it, they're going to do a sixty
day intensive negotiation period which will certainly focus on the
nuclear issue. It gets that in a bit. The MoU begins,
quote the United States of America and Islamic Republic of
Iran and their allies in the current war are selling
this MoU to declare the immediate and permanent termination of
military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon. An undicate

(02:54:27):
from now on not to initiate any war military operation
against each other, and to refrain from the threat or
use of force against each other. And it's showing the
territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon. The final deal will
confirm the permanent termination of the war and all fronts,
including in Neblon. We're going to get onto that, don't worry.
Probably the headliner rate is the nuclear stuff zero point

(02:54:47):
eight quote. The Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms that it
shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons. There's still negotiation
on a rich geranium. But CNN had a leaked version
of a previous version of this draft, and it didn't
have the following. So this has been added at a
relatively late stage. And it seems that there is a
quote unquote minimum methodology for like degrading their enriched uranium,

(02:55:12):
which is to downblend it under IAEA supervision. That seems
to have been added very late, so that that's kind
of their like lowest threshold that the US is willing
to accept. I guess, which will be not transferring that
uranium but down blending it. The United States is committed
to withdraw down its blockade and its forced pasture within

(02:55:33):
thirty days. Today we saw Iranian tankers across the USA's
blocke with that an issue claims about the straight up
horror moves on Trump's true social account and those that
we see on Iranian state media and in the document Diverge,
Trump has claimed and equivocally that straight is open without tolls.
This is not something we see in Pakistani PM Shabasha

(02:55:54):
Reef's statement or in Iran. As far as News Agency
fast US, she seems to say that the strait will
be administered by a man in Iran, and then I'll
just read from the MoU here. The Islamic Republic of
Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the
safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for sixty
days only from the Persian Gulf to the See of

(02:56:16):
a Man and vice versa. The traffic of commercial vessels
will immediately start and considering the need for removing the technical,
military obstacles and de mining by the Islamic Republic of Iran,
will be instated within thirty days. The Islamic Republican Iran
will conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of a Man to
determine the future administration and maritime services in the Straight
of Horn Moose in discussion with other Persian Golf littoral

(02:56:40):
states in line with the applicable international law and sovereign
rights of coastal states of the Straight of Hornmos not
entirely clear there, but it does seem to perhaps leave
open some kind of Iranian A man whole agreement.

Speaker 2 (02:56:55):
Yeah, they're definitely going to start charging a service. We're
going to make a sht money off this.

Speaker 4 (02:57:01):
Yep, let's talk about a shitload of money, because because
that's only unfortunately some of the shipload of money. Yeah,
they're going to make of this. So the document includes
three hundred billion dollars in reconstruction funds to total sanctions
relief out of the deal.

Speaker 3 (02:57:17):
Yep.

Speaker 4 (02:57:17):
That's why they call him deal man.

Speaker 15 (02:57:20):
This is tough because we have destroyed massive parts of
their infrastructure and we should we get that. But also, dude,
you started this war, Yeah, spent billions of dollars, and
now we're going to give them three hundred billion.

Speaker 7 (02:57:36):
What is wrong with you?

Speaker 2 (02:57:37):
Fucking ten years ago he was like, you know, the
only thing that stopped around from falling off the brink
was that Obama's that deal game one hundred and fifty
billion dollars.

Speaker 12 (02:57:46):
All this circle back to another version of some kind
of a raw nuclear agreement.

Speaker 15 (02:57:50):
All we've gotten is they say they won't, but now
they get to rebuild all their infrastructure using our money
because we used our money to destroy their infrastructure.

Speaker 2 (02:57:59):
I mean, yeah, they're supposed to be like an international
monitoring thing, but like fuck yeah, that's not new.

Speaker 16 (02:58:05):
And I think more importantly for like America geo strategically,
it's like Trump has managed to end the American protectorate
of open trade lanes, a thing that has been the
core of American power since like World War Two, and
then no one.

Speaker 18 (02:58:22):
Was even thinking about taking away a ran and no
part of Iran strategy it was to do this. This
was not in that like this was a move they
made because they were at a tight spot.

Speaker 4 (02:58:34):
And they had this was always in that if shit
HiT's a found, they will do this, and now we've normalized.

Speaker 2 (02:58:39):
Right, this has always been an option for them, and
they were put in a bad enough position that they
had to do that.

Speaker 3 (02:58:45):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:58:45):
This was their helm's deep thing, you know, is like
well we can strangle global trade, you know.

Speaker 17 (02:58:51):
Yeah, this this wasn't even like a thing in like
the like the I mean, I guess it kind of
was in like the worst nightmares of like Israeli Fezbigoria
about Iron getting a nuke, but like this wasn't even
a thing that was like ooh they could Iran could.

Speaker 16 (02:59:04):
Do this, Like it's it's astonishing what they've what they've
managed to do.

Speaker 2 (02:59:10):
I feel like it's a good time and every thing's
very fine, So.

Speaker 4 (02:59:14):
Let's talk about it. Three hundred million just because I'm
interested in the preconditions for fascism, and of course paying
reparations for a war that you started was one of
them first time around in Germany. It does, if you
do the math, calculate to a lot less in the
reparations that Germany had to pay off to World War One,
of course.

Speaker 3 (02:59:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:59:32):
The document labels the three hundred billion as reconstruction funds,
but does not give a source other than quote, the
United States of America undertakes with regional partners to develop
a definitive, mutually agreed plan with at least USD three
hundred billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the
Islamic Republic of Iran. A separate line item details the

(02:59:55):
United States of America undertakes to make fully available for
use the frozen or restricted funds and assets that Republic
of Iran upon implementation as MoU so they also get
sanctions relief, right, Yeah, so they are getting all of
the funds in the US has had frozen. They're getting
sanctioned relief. And it seems like, it's conceivable with these
two sentences that they're trying to include the unfrozen funds,

(03:00:17):
but also highly conceivable that they're not. They don't seem
to have restricted ballistic missiles, they don't seem to have
mandated anything about changing the in the regime of Iran.
Human rights, women's rights, rights for minority ethnic groups in Iran.
Iran since this, since we first learned as mu, Iran

(03:00:38):
has continued drone strikes against Kurdish groups in Southern Kordistan,
Iranian Kurdish groups who are currently in Southern Kordistan. Yeah,
And then then like with not over yet, because let's
talk about what Israel has to say. Oh boy, yeah,
Israel it just seems to be showing no signs of
feeling themselves to be in any way restrained by this.

(03:00:58):
Many Israeli politicians are public broken with the US on this.
Israel's National Security Minister bank Via, famous for many terrible things,
took to Twitter to announce that he had other plans, saying, quote,
Trump's agreement does not bind us Israel. It's not subject
to the United States. We're an independent sovereign nation explanation mark.

(03:01:19):
Our duty is to the citizens of Israel, to the
soldiers of the IDF, and to the Jewish people, and
our historical duty to the persecuted and murdered Jews over
thousands of years of exile to provide security to Jews
in the land of Israel. Every time we succumbed to
international pressure at the expense of Israel's security, we played
a blood place with interest. So I don't think Bangavia

(03:01:40):
feels bound by this to stop aggression in Lebanon, which
will make the implementation of the whole thing very difficult.
We've seen Trump really break with BB in a way
that we'd heard before, but there have now been several
more reports of Trump being very annoyed at NETN Yahoo
continuing to effect if he sabotage these negotiations. Right, So, yeah,

(03:02:03):
great times, very successful war. Huge dub. Speaking of dubs,
let's talk about sports. Oh yeah, this past.

Speaker 15 (03:02:14):
Weekend, there were three sporting events that I think each
reflect a unique facet of current American politics. This is
the NBA Finals, the World Cup, and of course the
Formula One Grand Prix in Barcelonia. No it says, of course,
the UFC fight in the White House. Yeah, Before we
talk about the UFC, which we will because there's a

(03:02:36):
lot to do there. On Saturday night, the New York
Nickerbockers overcame the curse of James Dolan and beat the
San Antonios Urus five games to one, becoming NBA champions
for the first time in fifty three years. After the
next drought ending victory, the city lit up in celebration,
literally in the case of a school bus in Times Square.

(03:02:59):
But I think thousands, possibly one hundred of thousands of
New Yorkers celebrated in a largely peaceful yet energized fashion
all throughout the streets, buses and trains until the early
hours of the morning.

Speaker 2 (03:03:10):
I love celebrating at a largely peaceful fashion.

Speaker 4 (03:03:13):
Five police cars did not survive the night.

Speaker 16 (03:03:17):
RiPP and pepperoni, as is the youth used to say.

Speaker 15 (03:03:20):
But come morning everything was all cleaned up in the
city was sparkling ahead of the Puerto Rico Day Parade.
On June eleventh, the World Cup kicked off, with matches
being hosted in the US, Mexico, and Canada. And guys,
everyone knows FIFA has tried to cozy up to Trump
the past few years, notably awarding the president with the

(03:03:42):
first ever FIFA World Peace Prize a few months prior
to Trump starting a war, well.

Speaker 4 (03:03:46):
He'd already started a couple. He invaded Venezuela. That was
That was a small skirmish compared to I think he
had a big ward.

Speaker 15 (03:03:55):
The scale of our of our three hundred billion dollar
restitution being paid to Ahurad fair. But the Trump administration's
foreign policy and immigration restrictions have still caused disruptions to
the World Cup. World Cup referee Omar Abdul Kadir Artan
was denied entry to the US by CPB at the

(03:04:16):
Miami International Airport due to quote unquote vetting concerns after
being detained and questioned for eleven hours. Artan is from Somalia,
which is currently on Trump's travel ban list, but Artan
had actually already been vetted by the State Department and
was issued a valid visa to referee at the World Cup.

(03:04:38):
The executive director of the White House's World Cup Task Force,
Andrew Giuliani, son of from the Pod and America's Mayor
Rudy Giuliani, said that Artan was quote talking to some
very bad people right as he was coming to the
United States. There's some classified information we can't discuss now
at some point that may be released unquote. Just last year,

(03:05:01):
the Confederation of African Football named Artan as Referee of
the Year. The Trump administration currently has travel bands against
four of the qualifying countries participating in the World Cup.
That's Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, and Singal, with exemptions for
athletes and team officials participating at certain sporting events like

(03:05:21):
the World Cup. For football fans wanting to attend the
World Cup, there are visa bond waivers for Ivory Coast
and Singhal, but not Haiti in Iran, with the Admin
citing a high visa over stay right among Haitians and
national security concerns related to the war in Iran. The
Iranian travel ban also does have an exemption for certain
religious minorities. Fans from the afric Coast and Stingal still

(03:05:45):
have to deal with restrictions, as fans from those countries
have reported getting their visas denied. It appears that in
order to attend the World Cup they needed to apply
for their visas prior to the presidential proclamation on December sixteenth.
Very few fans from those countries are in and many
have reported getting visas denied. Bomber visa bond waiver just

(03:06:08):
applies to the fee, the visa fee that the Trump
administration has has introduced, and they announced that there was
a waiver for the fee for World Cup countries. Yeah,
so if they did get the visa, they don't need
to pay this extra fee, but they can only get
the visa prior to the travel band going into effect

(03:06:30):
in December.

Speaker 4 (03:06:31):
Yeah, Indonesia was removed as a host for twenty twenty
three under twenty World Cup. They don't have diplomatic ties
with Israel, and they had had opposed Israel's participation in
the tournament, and obviously weren't going to like I believe
they weren't going to allow them visas, but I'd have
to check that last part that at that point, FIFA

(03:06:53):
acted very swiftly, Right, They're not going to do that here.

Speaker 15 (03:06:56):
And despite the acted exemption, the Iranian team has ran
into issues. Their training base camp had to be relocated
from Arizona to Mexico, and the Trump administration has been
making the team enter and exit through US customs on
the same day as their matches.

Speaker 4 (03:07:15):
Yeah, they're right there in Tijuana actually, so like they're
as close as they can be, right whilst not being
except playing the games up in la I think I
played in Englewood, but still I'm guessing they are transiting
to sand They're probably crossing, having to go to San
Diego and then fly north. It seems they said they flew,
so maybe they fled directly to Tijani, didn't they.

Speaker 15 (03:07:37):
Despite the travel band exemption also technically applying to coaches
and non player members of the athletic team, Iranian football
officials have had their visas tonight. Star Iraqi player Amen
Hussein and the Iraq team photographer were detained for in

(03:08:00):
the player's case, seven hours, the photographer's case twelve hours
at the Chicago airport while going through customs. Hassein was
ultimately allowed entry, but the team photographer was not. Finally,
New York City is hosting eight games for the World Cup,
including the final, and in the lead up to the
World Cup, Tom Homan threatened to send quote more ICE

(03:08:21):
agents than you've ever seen on quote to New York
City following legislations signed by Kathy Hokel limiting cooperation between
ICE and local law enforcement. Following Homan's threat, Mary Mum
Donnie said, quote, the World Cup is supposed to be
a celebration of the world as a whole, and some
of the decisions that we've seen being taken by the
federal administration is anethema to what this tournament is supposed

(03:08:43):
to be about.

Speaker 4 (03:08:44):
Unquote.

Speaker 15 (03:08:45):
Let's talk about one more sporting event, and of course
that is the UFC Freedom two point fifty streaming on
Paramount Plus, which happened this Sunday at the White House
South Lawn, which was turned into a UFC stadium arena.

Speaker 4 (03:09:03):
Trump and Donald White.

Speaker 15 (03:09:05):
Walked together from the Oval office all the way to
the octagon and like.

Speaker 2 (03:09:10):
Yeah, it's this is the most idiocracy things have been. Yeah,
it's not like a a even a comparison you can
make anymore. It's just we're just doing the exact thing.

Speaker 11 (03:09:21):
So cool, Welcome to UFC Freedom two fifty. Here is
the President w United States of America, Donald J.

Speaker 4 (03:09:32):
Trump. Cool.

Speaker 2 (03:09:38):
Yeah, that movie's aged. Wow, better than I would have thought, unfortunately.

Speaker 15 (03:09:42):
Yeah, the cold open for the event was narrated by
Ron Perlman, which is kind of the saddest part of
this whole ordeal for me.

Speaker 2 (03:09:47):
Ah, that's upsetting, that's upsetting.

Speaker 8 (03:09:49):
Wait what really?

Speaker 4 (03:09:51):
Yeah, I'm sorry, Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:09:53):
I'm sure UFC offered him a dump truck full of money.

Speaker 4 (03:09:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:09:58):
Ron Perlman's well known to do things for dump dregs
full of money.

Speaker 15 (03:10:02):
In between the fights, they played a series of largely
AI generated videos covering American history and showing how the
UFC embodies the country's fighting spirits.

Speaker 4 (03:10:14):
Are not good.

Speaker 15 (03:10:15):
You can find them on the UFC YouTube channel. They're
titled Americana. There's a series of three UFC Veteran announcer
Bruce Buffer kicked things off in a way that really
encapsulated this entire event. And I do want to play
this clip here.

Speaker 4 (03:10:30):
There's a gentleman.

Speaker 2 (03:10:39):
From the SHOFFM Love the Wide House in Washington.

Speaker 19 (03:10:48):
For you safe Freedom two fipter Perata by Ram Trucks
not Pleased off Ram and by Crypto dot com, the
world's leading crypto cursey platform.

Speaker 16 (03:11:02):
Man just the most cardios bullshit seen Crypto dot Com.

Speaker 12 (03:11:09):
Yep, Wow, it wasn't just Crypto dot Com that had
a presence at Freedom two fifty. The Octagon stage itself
was covered with logos for Red, White and Blue, Monster Energy,
bud Light, Rumble, Meta, Steak, gambling and polymarket.

Speaker 2 (03:11:30):
Such a good country man. I'm just I love this place.
I were nailing it.

Speaker 15 (03:11:35):
The four thousand seat South lond Arena was mostly filled
by members of the military, Trump's cabinets, and politicians and
billionaires like David Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg.

Speaker 2 (03:11:44):
Man the incredible ratio of billionaires to guys with thirty
one percent APR loans on a Ford F one fifty.
I don't know if it's ever existed before in like
this small space.

Speaker 15 (03:11:56):
The normal people had to watch from Olyps Park.

Speaker 4 (03:11:58):
Near the Washington Arnument.

Speaker 15 (03:12:01):
This was a sixty million dollar production.

Speaker 1 (03:12:03):
You know.

Speaker 4 (03:12:03):
There was a military flyover.

Speaker 15 (03:12:05):
The US Marine Band played songs like the Boys Are
Back in Town and of course Trump's favorite YMCA. But
the thing that caused the most headlines after the event
relates to UFC heavyweight to Josh Hokit, who acts a
sort of heel for the UFC while making statements that
pander to a mega fan base. After winning his match,

(03:12:26):
he gave Trump a chain necklace and said, hey, shout
out to Trump for having the balls to put on
some shit like this.

Speaker 4 (03:12:36):
Unquote.

Speaker 15 (03:12:37):
Trump's balls received multiple shoutouts on stage, but following that comment,
Josh Hokit said.

Speaker 8 (03:12:46):
This, Mochelle Hopebama is a man.

Speaker 4 (03:12:50):
Am I right America.

Speaker 15 (03:12:53):
Joe Rogan is on stage at the same time holding
the microphone for Hokit.

Speaker 5 (03:12:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 15 (03:12:59):
Rogan never a d rest the comment for the rest
of the night, and the UFC cut out this comment
from their own YouTube upload and has issued takedown requests
for this clip across social media. Denna White told Time magazine, quote,
I understand that the Obamas are public figures, but I'm
completely against saying nasty and false things about people's families.

(03:13:23):
Everyone knows my position on free speech, but I hate
that kind of nonsense.

Speaker 3 (03:13:27):
Unquote.

Speaker 2 (03:13:28):
Yeah, you make that bed, you get a lie in it.

Speaker 4 (03:13:31):
So that was freedom two fifty.

Speaker 15 (03:13:32):
I watched about an hours worth of the Paramount plus
broadcast and the fights. I did not watch the full thing.
Most of the actual fighting was just like a regular
UFC fight, right. The Hokit comment was the main thing
that was like politically motivated actually on stage, besides the
fact that you know, Trump's sitting right there and you're
fighting at the White House. But according to the FBI,

(03:13:54):
this event could have gone very different. Here's Fox News reporting.

Speaker 20 (03:14:00):
Everyone breaking news out of Washington, d C on a
potential tragedy that's been averted. The FBI, revealing earlier today,
had foiled an alleged terror plot that was set to
target Sunday night's UFC Freedom event at the White House.

Speaker 4 (03:14:14):
That's right.

Speaker 15 (03:14:17):
On Tuesday morning, Fox reported there was a sophisticated multi
step plan involving explosives, drones, and snipers targeting the Freedom
through Fifty event. Vice President JD. Vance addressed the alleged
terror plot on Fox and Friends, saying, quote, so much
of the far left rhetoric is driving itself towards violence,
and also said.

Speaker 12 (03:14:37):
This Unfortunately, I think a lot of my Democratic colleagues
in Washington have got to look themselves in the mirror
and say, why is so much of this political violence
coming from our side of the spectrum.

Speaker 4 (03:14:46):
Maybe they can do something different.

Speaker 15 (03:14:48):
So, according to Vance, this alleged terror plot was coming
from the Democrat side of politics a result of turning
up the political rhetoric. Fox reported that the thwarted attack
was targeting capitalism, millionaires, and a pack with upwards of
twenty three people involved in the plot, five of whom
are in custody, with the details of the plan being
uncovered on the encrypted messaging app Signal. A Fox contributor

(03:15:13):
said that terrorist organizations and countries used by them's open
border to bring people inside the United States. Advance pointed
to the administration's efforts to go after left wing terrorist
funding networks. Almost all of that is not true.

Speaker 2 (03:15:26):
Yeah, it's just lies. It's just lies, complete nonsense.

Speaker 12 (03:15:30):
Yeah, almost all of that is at the very least
stretching what actually happened to a near unrecognizable status, or
is completely lying about the context and background of this attack.
We will get into what actually happened regarding this alleged
planned attack after this app break.

Speaker 15 (03:16:04):
Okay, we are back. On Tuesday morning, the FBI and
DOJ announced law enforcement had thwarted a mass casualty attack
attempting to kill government officials with arrests happening over the
weekend in Ohio, Missouri, Nebraska, and California. But rather than
being the result of the FBI's excellent investigative prowess, law

(03:16:27):
enforcement only learned about this potential attack because the mother
of one of the members of this group as planning
the attack called the police concerned about her son's recent
firearm purchases and contact with individuals online. By the time
the FBI got to this person, nineteen year old Tyson Proper,
he was already in a mental hospital.

Speaker 2 (03:16:49):
Yeah. Literally could not have done this. And just to
be clear that the scale of the plan that they're describing,
I would think would be difficult for like an nation
state actor to carry off successfully in DC.

Speaker 3 (03:17:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 15 (03:17:04):
Absolutely, Yeah, these guys were LARPing.

Speaker 2 (03:17:07):
These guys were LARPing on a signal group and there
was definitely some mental illness involved in that too.

Speaker 15 (03:17:14):
A group of a group of men larped themselves into
federal custody.

Speaker 3 (03:17:18):
Yep, yep, yep.

Speaker 15 (03:17:19):
Now, after police were called to Tyson Propper's home, where
he lived with his parents, he was transported to the
Dublin Springs Mental Health Center for homicidal ideations. Tyson Propper
himself told police and FBI that he and others online
had planned to use drones to detonate explosives on the

(03:17:39):
north side of the UFC arena, forcing event attendees to
evacuate south, where other co conspirators would be set up
with sniper rifles to fire on the fillying crowd, targeting
politicians and other quote unquote high value targets at the
Freedom two fifty event. Proper and for others are charged
with conspiracy to commit murder. A family member told officers

(03:18:03):
that Proper talked about meeting up with people he had
met online to conduct quote unquote missions and quote unquote
recons and that he allegedly spent about three thousand dollars
of his graduation money to buy quote camping gear, food,
ballistic plates, a new shotgun, a rifle, lots of ammunition,
extra magazines, and plate carriers unquote. After searching his phone,

(03:18:26):
investigators found signal chats detailing of planned attack, with maps
highlighting potential sniper locations and drone launch points. The day
after local police first visited Proper's home, the sheriff's office
contacted the FBI. The FBI then searched Proper's home and
found a journal that the criminal complaint says contained a

(03:18:47):
list of approximately forty six names, including celebrities and politicians,
as well as pages quote in which Proper wrote that
the government sought to control people and to sacrifice children
and others to a demonic figure unquote. Family told FBI
that Proper had quote recently began interacting with a group

(03:19:07):
online that was comprised of individuals who represented themselves as
ex military and that may share some Christian based ideology.
Family members said that these individuals were using religion to
manipulate Proper, and that they quote expressed ultra religious and
anti government sentiments, specifically citing grievances about government corruption, the

(03:19:30):
handling of the Epstein files, data centers, taking up all
the water in communities, and other government actions. The Ohio
criminal complaint says that Proper family members also highlighted concerning
statements that he had made in recent months, quote, such
as making sympathetic comments about Adolf Hitler and posting anti
Semitic comments on Facebook.

Speaker 4 (03:19:52):
When will the left stop its violence?

Speaker 14 (03:19:55):
Yeah?

Speaker 15 (03:19:56):
Basic, basic antifa left wing plot against capitalists here.

Speaker 4 (03:20:00):
Yeah, standard leftist Hitler appreciate.

Speaker 15 (03:20:03):
Sacrificing children to demonic figures.

Speaker 4 (03:20:06):
Yeah yeah. Well I don't know if you know Garrison,
but they're still called the National Socialist Party.

Speaker 16 (03:20:10):
You know.

Speaker 2 (03:20:11):
These people were like Christian extremists with I'm sure some
very weird views that will all get elucidated. I look
forward to reading through the signal chats. This is not
really a thing. This is people who are mentally ill
and certainly. I mean it sounds like if you have
a signal chat where you're passing around a map of
targets crossed a line where I'm not surprised one of

(03:20:33):
them was already in a mental hospital, but there was
no danger to the event.

Speaker 4 (03:20:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 15 (03:20:39):
To be clear, he was placed in the mental hospital
after first being interviewed by police. But I think it's
noteworthy the police did not take him into custody. They
sent him to a mental health facility after first contacting him.

Speaker 2 (03:20:51):
Because he clearly had no ability to do this.

Speaker 4 (03:20:54):
Yeah, did he get a get involuntary mental health hold.

Speaker 15 (03:20:57):
There was an emergency request to put him in this
mental hospital based on the homicidal ideation. The application detailed
that he had also sought to join police or military,
specifically just to kill human beings.

Speaker 2 (03:21:10):
Yeah, and like, this kid sounds like he very easily
could have become a mass shooter.

Speaker 1 (03:21:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:21:15):
Like, I'm sure there's a number of those like that.
It does sound like that's something that was going on here.
Ideation is certainly present, So this is very concerning. But yeah,
what Vance's description of what happened is so so far
Afield is to effectively be.

Speaker 15 (03:21:30):
Alie, Oh yeah. As for the sort of group formation
here proper allegedly told police that members of the group
that was planning this attack were primarily recruited through TikTok. Yeah,
and then once they had been vetted on TikTok, they
were allowed in a signal chat. The largest signal chat
investigators found contained nineteen members. There's also some smaller spinoff

(03:21:52):
signal chats.

Speaker 2 (03:21:53):
Even among there, the danger of the spinoff group chat
is impossible to avoid.

Speaker 15 (03:21:59):
The chats was called quote unquote Hunters Jesus God, and
the complaint says it contained detailed instructions for carrying out
the attack, including plans to escape.

Speaker 4 (03:22:10):
They're completely delusional. They think they're escaping from doing something
like that.

Speaker 15 (03:22:14):
Next week, I'm going to do a full episode about
the criminal complaint here and we'll get into more details
about the attack and their planning. And yes, there was
no way this attack as plan was going to happen.
They didn't have the material, the personnel, or the logistical
capacity to pull this off. Now, they weren't just communicating
on signal though, They also were using another encrypted messaging

(03:22:34):
app called simple.

Speaker 4 (03:22:35):
X Y Simplex Messenger.

Speaker 15 (03:22:36):
Where they had one chat called the Vanguard of the
Old Republic.

Speaker 2 (03:22:41):
Oh my god, this has shades that fucking dude in
Texas who got killed by a security guard trying to
attack the courthouse with a Gladys on his belt.

Speaker 4 (03:22:55):
In addition to it, they are fifteen.

Speaker 3 (03:22:58):
I did see that.

Speaker 2 (03:23:00):
Yeah, you'd like a post of himself like a modern
Gladias to defend a modern republic. It was one of
the one of the lamer attempts at a mass shooting.

Speaker 3 (03:23:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 15 (03:23:08):
One of the co conspirators who was arrested in California
wrote on simplex quote to be clear, I intend to
escalate this group. I don't want to take six business
years to do it. Unquote business year's the fuck man. Sorry, Yeah,
that's a fascinating term. I guess I'm just saying a
long time, right, They're trying to say a long time.

Speaker 2 (03:23:28):
Sorry, Garrison, please continue.

Speaker 15 (03:23:30):
Yeah, also writing that everyone in the group should quote
consider yourselves an enemy of the state. In this group chat,
they also discussed imagining executions. Another another co conspirator, also
from California, read about the need for quote unquote gorilla
style warfare and quote unquote raid attacks with quote skilled
operators to work like ghosts to conduct quote infiltration missions,

(03:23:55):
completely delusional stuff.

Speaker 2 (03:23:57):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's the same. The bigger what if
we were really good at being terrorists? Would that work?

Speaker 3 (03:24:04):
Like?

Speaker 2 (03:24:04):
That's what's going on here.

Speaker 15 (03:24:07):
Tyson Proper showed the FBI the TikTok profiles of other
members of the group, and based on those accounts and
chat logs, investigators were able to identify other co conspirators
across multiple states. Part of the plan for the Freedom
to fifty attack was for co conspirators to meet in Fredericksburg, Virginia,
a day or two before the event. This obviously never

(03:24:27):
happened because it appears the group never actually acquired the
explosives or the drones needed for plans. Expensive and we're
still trying to figure out how to get enough money
to purchase materials needed.

Speaker 4 (03:24:41):
For that attack.

Speaker 2 (03:24:43):
Yeah, yeah, that's important. Having the ability to do it
is important.

Speaker 15 (03:24:47):
One of the members allegedly wrote that the attack would
require quote five teams of three, each team consisting of
one sniper, one Tier one operator as support slash lookout,
and one drone operator.

Speaker 4 (03:25:01):
Yeah what tier then Tier one of the.

Speaker 2 (03:25:06):
How many ex Delta guys?

Speaker 4 (03:25:08):
She got hanging out.

Speaker 12 (03:25:09):
In the extending plan, they had like written out like
four different tiers of operators and like what is supposed
to do and how and how and how if the
tier ones get arrested, we have to we have to
try to break the tier ones out of jail.

Speaker 2 (03:25:21):
Right, Yeah, because they're so important. There's they're super important.
We got to get the tier ones out.

Speaker 15 (03:25:26):
One of the numbers from California did try to drive
to DCA, but his vehicle had issues that needed to
turn that out here.

Speaker 10 (03:25:36):
Share.

Speaker 2 (03:25:36):
Yeah, that's uh, you know, honestly, the the Iranian hostage
crisis Delta Force got stopped from doing a rescue something
similar happened.

Speaker 15 (03:25:44):
This guy did admit this to the FBI, but he
claimed that he was only going there to protest the
UFC Freedom to fifty and that he was not involved
in any conspiracy.

Speaker 2 (03:25:53):
That's tier one.

Speaker 15 (03:25:54):
But inside his vehicle agents found firearms, tactical belt, radios,
and other supply. Inside the residents of the other California
co conspirator, agents found firearms, thirty round accided magazines, and
approximately one hundred and eighty rounds of ammunition. One of
the members of the group in West Virginia, who was
interviewed by FBI CAN affirmed that the members communicated online

(03:26:19):
about attacking UFC FREEOM two fifty, but claimed the attack
plan was canceled on June twelfth.

Speaker 2 (03:26:26):
That's fine then, yeah, yeah, and this is this is
the kind of thing again, there's no way this attack
ever would have happened the way the government's presenting this
as nonsense. This community, little community absolutely could have spawned.

Speaker 15 (03:26:39):
One or more mass shooters. Yeah, yeah, totally super glad
that it didn't. I find the sort of organizational structure
of this really interesting.

Speaker 8 (03:26:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 15 (03:26:48):
They also they also discussed doing like attack only power grids.
So you have certain certain aspects of like accelerationist terrorism here,
but not organized on like you know, telegram, not not
still andy Semitic, but not necessarily explicitly just sort of
like neo Nazi like terrorist model. These people are on TikTok.
They're obsessed with like like military tactics. They're very they're

(03:27:12):
very larpie. They wanted to do something like they discussed assassinations,
They discussed various types of attacks, but that they were
interested in a tax for these like general anti government
reasons rather than a specific sort of like niche political
ideology right or ties to neo Nazi accelerationist groups. Like
I said, we will go into more detail next week.

(03:27:33):
Tuesday night, Vance did comment again, admitting that the attack
plan was quote unquote not that advanced and that the
suspects quote weren't in town. They had not really done
that much planning. Great cool, dude, Yeah, so yeah, Vans
kind of changed his tune later on in the evening.

Speaker 4 (03:27:54):
That's good.

Speaker 2 (03:27:55):
I'm glad he eventually said something that was not complete
bullshit speaking of places where everything is complete bullshit. Did
you guys know Peter Teel has a new social network.
Actually it's twenty years old. It's not new at all,
but he does kind of have a social network. It's
a private invite only organization called Dialogue'll have you caught

(03:28:17):
this story that's been dribbling out? No, So this first
got onto most people's radar in like twenty twenty two,
when Andrew Gellman, who's a statistician, posted on his blog
that he had gotten an invite to this like Dialogue
twenty twenty two, which was like that year's event. It
was described as an off the record retreat for global leaders,

(03:28:37):
and there was a list of confirmed participants like this
was part of the like some of the names of
people who have been in this organization we're talking about.
It was going to be referred to as like a
hack revealed some data that had not been like effectively
redacted on the website to this organization.

Speaker 13 (03:28:50):
That revealed a bunch of the members.

Speaker 2 (03:28:52):
But we already had like a list of a like
several dozen of the people in this group, and it
included folks like Peter Brown, who's a CEO of Renaissance Technologies,
Kelly Bayer, rosemarn who's the CEO of Optists, like you
know a lot of CEOs, but also folks like Susan Athey,
professor of economics at Stanford. Grogri Norquist was on that
initial revealed list. He's an anti tax activist, I guess

(03:29:15):
would be like the most basic way of saying what
he is in the email to invite to Andrew said quote.
There are no speeches or panels, only moderated breakout discussions
for eight to twelve participants. Everything is one hundred percent
off the record. The agenda is curated based on your
interests and we optimize for introverts, no small talk. So yeah,
there've been I think a couple of other previous cases

(03:29:35):
where like invites to this have leaked out to different people,
Like several folks who have gotten invited have like posted
about it. This is not a totally weird thing for
billionaires to do. Jeff Bezos has a similar kind of
thing where every year or so he'll have a group
of people he finds interesting that he takes to a
resort or to a nice property or something that he
owns somewhere and they'll all hang out and they'll have

(03:29:57):
like discussions. Sometimes people put on presentation for like three
or four days. And we've gotten that a couple of
people who have been to these have like written about
the experience and in some cases critically.

Speaker 4 (03:30:07):
Yeah, there's a big one at Sun Valley, right, that
might be the one people I'm most familiar with.

Speaker 2 (03:30:11):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's That's that's one of
the big ones.

Speaker 3 (03:30:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:30:15):
So this is not a super weird thing. But the
fact that Peter Teel is who he is, and the
fact that he's only gotten more influential now that Trump
is president again makes this organization a lot more relevant,
which is why. It's particularly interesting that very recently there
was apparently a directory in the website's code, and Swiss

(03:30:36):
activist Maya Arson Crime, who is also a friend of
the pod in the actual sense, was tipped off about
a directory in the code for the website for Dialogue
that basically was not They hadn't done the things that
you would want to do to protect the data of
their members, right, that's that's the basics of this, right,
So something was left undone that should have been handled,

(03:30:57):
and a bunch of information was revealed and Wired got
as a result of this, the names of two hundred
and twenty two people and the records, and these are
a mix of folks who are like members of this organization,
and Dialogue over the years has turned into more than
just every year people meet. There's also apparently like a
dating app component of it where they're advertising it like

(03:31:18):
if you let us know who you're looking for, We've
got this network of influential people will hook you up
with another, you know, the you know, only special and
important people. You know, that's a lot of the appeal, right,
These are a lot of starfuckery that goes on in
the Silicon Valley set but because of all of this stuff,
there's also information on a retreat, the upcoming retreat this

(03:31:39):
year's a bit which is apparently August twelfth to sixteenth. God,
I'd love to get a seat at a venue near Dublin, Ireland.

Speaker 4 (03:31:45):
That's part of why.

Speaker 2 (03:31:46):
And to quote from that that Wired article and this
is talking about like the program for this upcoming event.

Speaker 3 (03:31:53):
Quote.

Speaker 2 (03:31:54):
There's a series of off the record discussions including money,
does by happiness, bring back new clear navigating World War
three battlefield technologies? And how's your sex life? Other talks
and ude build a cult moderated by the founder of
the Christian networking site prey dot com and build a
party run by a former White House National security official.

(03:32:16):
Now I haven't looked in to build a party yet,
that's boy howdy. But I did look into pray dot
com and as soon as I went to the prey
dot com website, it informed me that the founder and
CEO is one Steve Gattina, who has the empty eyes
of the shark from Jawns. Have you guys, Are you
guys looking at this Steve now in the research stock?

Speaker 4 (03:32:38):
Is this the guy with the pray shirt?

Speaker 2 (03:32:39):
Yeah, he's wearing the pray shirt, and I have to say,
he's got like the same phenotype as Peter Teal.

Speaker 4 (03:32:45):
It's it's uncanny.

Speaker 2 (03:32:47):
Yeah, Like he weirdly looks a little like Peter Teal.

Speaker 17 (03:32:50):
Yeah, he looks like his like his grin is about
to start like spreading wider and there's going to be
an alien facetraine like transformation.

Speaker 5 (03:32:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:32:59):
Yeah, that's a said person case to be made here.
So I was.

Speaker 2 (03:33:03):
Upset hearing that there's a build a cult workshop at
Peter Thiel's private club invite. So I wanted to look
into this guy a little bit, and they're read up
on him. Gatina was before becoming an entrepreneur an NCAA champion,
so he's used to having people take advantage of him.
He played college football for the University of Southern California
and won a Rose Bowl championship In two thousand and nine.

(03:33:23):
He started his first company, REP Interactive, at the age
of twenty two. I run into a lot of these
LinkedIn founder guys, and often it's hard to tell what
their many different companies do because they all have like
thirty of them.

Speaker 15 (03:33:34):
Yeah yeah, Or if they're like real companies, yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:33:37):
If they're real, like that's bullshitting.

Speaker 8 (03:33:39):
This seemed it's real.

Speaker 2 (03:33:41):
It's it's a video agency. It's like a marketing agency
that helps do video marketing. It's one of the best
workplaces in America according to INC Magazine. I don't know
if you paid a ban INC Magazine or not, so
I don't know how impressive that is, but it seems
to be a company that makes money. It's a social
media like marketing company. He also has a stock footage

(03:34:03):
company that has like drone stock footage. And after that
he started a business called Prey dot Com in honor
of his mentor and business partner who had just died.
And when I started looking into this guy, I realized
I've been following him before because I periodically on Reddit
will go to the LinkedIn maniacs some Reddit.

Speaker 4 (03:34:24):
Oh, that's gotta be good. That's gonna be good.

Speaker 5 (03:34:27):
Man.

Speaker 2 (03:34:27):
Steve Katina is all over this shit because he's the
CEO of Prey dot com. And I'm gonna read you
one of his fucking posts.

Speaker 4 (03:34:34):
I and you love people who post on LinkedIn.

Speaker 2 (03:34:37):
Yesterday I swung by a twenty four hour diner after
my late shift at work. I saw a waitress in
her fifties sitting in a booth with a teenage boy.
He had a notebook open and she was helping him
tackle some algebra problems. When she got up to refill
my coffee, I asked tutoring after hours? She smiled, looking
a bit tired. That's my son. I can't afford a tutor,
so we study here between my shifts. The boy looked

(03:34:59):
up in said she's the smartest mom in the world.
It turns out she just juggles two jobs but always
makes time to sit with him every night and help
him with his homework. He's going to college, she said,
with determination, whatever it takes. It's amazing what love can
do even when life gets tough. And to prove that
this is a true story, he shows a picture of
some lady and a kid sitting in a booth booking

(03:35:20):
at a notebook. Wow, I love these guys and their
inspirational Definitely didn't happen posts. Definitely not a thing that
happened to you.

Speaker 4 (03:35:29):
Man, I'm such a genre.

Speaker 15 (03:35:31):
He credits the photo to somebody else.

Speaker 21 (03:35:36):
Where.

Speaker 2 (03:35:36):
Did you get it, Steve?

Speaker 3 (03:35:38):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (03:35:39):
Yeah, there's a lot of great, great people who are
going to be at these events, which boy howdy, it
sure would be fun to be a fly on the
wall at weak.

Speaker 15 (03:35:46):
It's also water bott yeah yeah, for illustrative purposes.

Speaker 2 (03:35:51):
You guys are stuck on her.

Speaker 14 (03:35:53):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:35:54):
So to go back into the people who help make
Dialogue the great organization it is. The executive direct of
Dialogue is apparently Raffi Grenberg, and he is also the
author of a self help book titled How to Be
a grown Up. He did not respond to Wired's request
for a comment, but I looked into it Raffi a
little bit in his website, and you get to like
Raffi Greenberg's website. He immediately tries to sell you his

(03:36:16):
book directly above a YouTube video titled do Princeton Grads
know w Anything? And it's like a YouTube prank video
where he runs to prince He's wearing like a green
tight skin tight body suit and he runs up to
Princeton grads like after right after graduation and asked, like,
do you know how to pay your taxes? And it's
also you can like give out a bunch of copies
of a shitty book about like life skills, and like,

(03:36:37):
I'm sure the book sells to like parents who give
them to their kids, but no one reads this.

Speaker 15 (03:36:41):
Man.

Speaker 2 (03:36:42):
When kids need to learn how to pay their taxes,
if they don't have parents who know how to teach them,
they like google it, or like desperately go to h
and R Block, or they just don't pay their taxes,
but they don't read a book like how to be
a grownup. And I'm sorry about that, RAFFI.

Speaker 15 (03:36:55):
Yeah no, that's like homeschooling parent target audience.

Speaker 2 (03:37:00):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Oh man, So yeah, I
don't know. There's like a lot more to say about this.
I think I'm gonna do it like an actual dedicated
episode about dialogue in the not too distant future. This
is fascinating, It does sound really interesting, and I want
to know more about this this fun club. But yeah,

(03:37:23):
you should check out the Wired article. It's really interesting.

Speaker 15 (03:37:25):
You should mention Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 4 (03:37:28):
I was gonna ask if that was an EPs.

Speaker 2 (03:37:29):
She you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right. I
tried to blow through Jeffrey Epstein's involvement in this. Now,
Jeffrey Epstein is tied to this, but not in a
bad way, well, mostly not in a bad way. There's
one email from him where like, someone who is a
friend of Jeffrey Epstein got invited to one of these
events and like forwarded it to him and was like, hey,
should I do this thing? Basically, I don't think we

(03:37:52):
know what jeff responded, but you know that caused because
there's that it like, there's an invite to their twenty
fourteen rich in the Epstein files, there was a lot
of confusional People are like, oh, Jeffrey Epstein was a
member of Dialogue, and this was furthered by the fact
that Jeffrey Epstein was a member of Dialogue, but not
that Jeffrey Epstein, the former CFO of Oracle was also

(03:38:15):
so the fact that number one in the Epstein file
someone forwarded an invite to the jeff Epstein who's a
pedophile and number two there is an actual member of
the group named Jeffrey Epstein, just a different one, caused
people to believe that he was a part of this,
but he does not appear to have been in a
way that anyone is proven.

Speaker 15 (03:38:33):
The former CFO of Oracle should absolutely change his name.

Speaker 2 (03:38:36):
Yeah, I gotta say, very rarely do I extend this
to especially a member of the Oracle c suite, But
no one will blame you. We won't even joke about it.
Like honestly, dude, like Jeffrey, it's not a weird name,
you had no reason to expect. But somebody like this
your name, then you don't deserve to bear this cross.

(03:38:58):
I hope unless you do.

Speaker 4 (03:39:00):
I don't know you actually anyway, I think that's oh man. Okay,
if you want to email us cool Zone Tips at
proton dot me, keep it to story tips.

Speaker 16 (03:39:14):
Put a transcroll on your couch.

Speaker 15 (03:39:16):
We reported the news, We reported the news.

Speaker 2 (03:39:25):
Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
from now until the heat death of the universe.

Speaker 21 (03:39:31):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts can now
find sources where it could happen here listened directly in
episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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