It Could Happen Here Weekly 239

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

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

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Hey everyone, it's me James. I wanted to flag before
you start listening to this that if you're listening with
the advertisements, which you probably are about six minutes in,
there is a mistake. I'm sure it's just like a misspeaking.
But a unionist, of course, in the Irish context, is
someone who wants the union of what is today Northern
Ireland with the United Kingdom to continue. It is not

(00:47):
someone who wants the union of Northern Ireland with a
Republic of Ireland in an independent Irish republic void of
any British rule. I wanted to flag that that we
could maybe draw a difference between lowness and unionist, but
the important thing here is that the unionist in the
Irish context is not a Republican. Hi everyone, and welcome

(01:09):
to the show. It's me James today and I'm very
lucky to be joined by Alee A. Yub who's a
UK based researcher and journalist with an academic background in
memory studies and a particular focus at the moment on
the far right. Also the host of The Fire in
These Times of Podcasts, which is an excellent podcast. I've
been a guest on that one before. Ellio, Welcome to
the show. Thanks for joining us. Oh, thanks, thank you

(01:30):
for having me. Nice to be talking and we are
talking today about I guess the kind of explosion explosions
are on word. I think actually because it's more like
with the iceberg when you only see the tip of it,
you know, the more visible acts of bigotry that we
saw in Belfast a couple of weeks back, and the

(01:50):
response throughout the UK. And I guess also the discourse
around it online, which you know, a lot of online
discourse is generated by Americans in America, it ends up
being divorced from context because of that. Yeah, so I
guess to begin with right, Like I know, I'm personally
intimately familiar with the English far right that let's maybe

(02:11):
distinguish a little bit between the far right in Northern
Ireland and the far right in England. And I'm saying
England consciously here, not the UK. I'm wondering if I
should pause here to define terms for people. Do you
think most people have an operating analysis?

Speaker 1 (02:28):
I guess we can at least say that the whole
four nations and one nation kind of thing.

Speaker 3 (02:32):
Yeah, exactly. So I'll just break it down, like Britishness
is a national identity. If we talk about the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, we're talking about England, Scotland,
Wales and Northern Ireland. There are four nations within that. Right.
If you want to know what a nation is, we
can read Ben Anderson. But I like Linda Colley's analysis

(02:55):
of Britishness, which suggested it is Englishness exported. Like that,
the Britishness is essentially an English colonial project that co
ops eleapes, it's gone welles in Northern Ireland and bites
people within those countries against each other. So, given given that,
and have already recommended two academic books which we find
five minutes in, perhaps you could explain this this this

(03:16):
distinction between like Northern Ireland and England as it attains
to the far right.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
So there are similarities in the sense that a lot
of this is transnational these days anyway, a lot of
it is online based. There are also a lot of
reports of England based far right agitators like you know,
most not interesting Tommy Robinson and whatnot kind of almost
visiting Northern Ireland and leaving over either's kind of dipping
their toes in a sense. So are there are similarities there.

(03:44):
And the dominance of England cannot be overlooked because it's
it's still kind of like the the powerhouse or the
capital of the UK is and just has this oversized
influence right, but also pretty important differences. Northern Ireland, I
don't know how much we're going to get into the
entire history of it, but has had a different trajectory

(04:05):
in terms of the fog Eite than than England. There
is the added sectarian element. There is the added pro
whether you're pro Ireland as a Republic of Ireland or
whether you pro United Kingdom.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
In the UK and Ireland terms.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
This means a loyalist is someone who wants to remain
in the UK and the unionist is someone who wants
to work for Ireland to be unified basically to be
confusing because union and United Kingdom and whatever. Yeah, so
there is that sectarian element. Historically, the UK has one
of the UK as a British government. One of the
ways it has faced what it sees as this nationalist

(04:41):
threat by nationally fear, I mean like Irish nationalist threat,
which of course has crowns as well in Northern Ireland,
particularly but not exclusively, among Catholic communities. It has essentially
armed and the factor armed these periamilitary groups that are
today kind of a de facto mafia.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
Like for me, as the Lebanese.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
That really similarities with how Sector and the Lads operate
in Lebanon. They have carved out parts of the what
is essentially the state there in parts of in different areas.
They even to some extent even provide services, you know,
stuff like that. Again, not that dissimilar, I would say,
I would argue from how one might picture like a mafia.
And so a lot of the violence that we're seeing

(05:23):
today enacted against like people of color, it's the same
sort of rationale that was enacted against just like Catholic
working classes not that long ago, and in many ways
that same kind of supremacist ideology has just been kind
of transferred from one community against another one to another one.
But it doesn't mean that it's completely gone from the

(05:43):
sort of like anti Irish and anti Catholic sentiments either.
There it's aftely do those things you don't see in England,
you know, I mean, it's just not as prominent. Are
like different dynamics here.

Speaker 3 (05:52):
I guess, like especially if you're watching from the outset, right,
it can be easy to miss that because like, yes,
in England every year in November we symbolically burn a
Catholic in effigy, right, I say, we are the English
as a tradition, But like the anti Catholic sentiment is
not as present as it is in all sis, it's
completely different. Fish you talked about like where we want

(06:14):
to get into history, and I do because I think
that that's really important, right, especially if we understand Britain
as the beginning of the English colonial project, and especially Ireland.
I guess if we understand, just to stick with conceptual clarity,
the British Isles and especially the beginning of that colonial project,
in Ireland and to an extend in Scotland. Then I

(06:35):
think it helps with an analysis of this. And I
think something you'd mentioned which I really like the idea
of is when we talk about sectarianism as like a
fixed point, we ignore how we got to sectarianization, right,
And I think you're obviously very familiar with the British
and the Lebanese context, something that you talk about as
my grandmother actually who spent a good amount of time

(06:56):
in Lebanon, that overlaps with these things. But perhaps you
could explain that people, because I think it's very easy
to come especially the history of Ireland qua Island with
an s as like a pre set sectarian kind of
situation and that's not really the case. Like a process,
it could get us to where we are.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
Oh yeah, I mean kind of a simple way of
explaining it. At this is how I do when I
when I speak to like relatives, you know, is that
no one is born like sure they could be born
into a Catholic or a Protestant family, but that doesn't
necessarily mean that they therefore feel a certain way towards
a member of that other community. Yeah, that is a
process and so sectarianization is something that is crucially active.

(07:40):
It is ongoing, like it never stops. It cannot stop
because it can otherwise, Like again using that simple another
simple example of like you have a baby that's that's
born into a Catholic family and a baby that's born
into a protest family. If you don't put them in
a certain context that includes this thing that you call siictanism,
they won't necessarily developed like hostile feelings towards the other baby.

(08:02):
You see what I mean when they grow up. Yeah,
kind of like a simplified the way of putting it.
But sectarianization, whether in Lebanon, whether in Northern Ireland, whether
in Bosnia or whether and then it gets complicated and
you have added nuances whenever you added different context of course,
but is something that is active as in like there
are ruling elites that have a certain specific interest in

(08:23):
maintaining the status coo in a certain way or in
some cases worsening the status quo and so on. It
is directly intersected with things like capitalism, like like the
other types of supremacy. You cannot have in a sectarian
society if you if you have like a very strong
let's say welfare state where everyone is given the basics,

(08:46):
where everyone has access to everything, and you don't have
these these inequalities. And there are lots of case studies
and you know studies. I mean of the worst inequality gets,
the more likely you are to get like these sectarian intentions.
So it doesn't come out of nowhere. People aren't just
born like that. It's not just something that people are
born with. They are raised in a certain society. They

(09:07):
are sectarianized to view members of a different community in
a certain way. And also, most importantly, resources are allocated
before one is born, often based on where.

Speaker 3 (09:18):
You live, so there's a regionalism to it as well.

Speaker 1 (09:21):
But also like in the case of Northern Ireland and
in case of Lebanon for that matter, based on sext
and so on.

Speaker 3 (09:26):
Yeah, you're understanding of Lebanon preps. That gives you an
interesting perspective to analyze this, right, because it's somewhat more
formalized to an extendison that it's not formalized. The gland
very much is like the vision of resources, allocation of
state power, even that is sectarian. So like, do you
think that helps you analyze Northern Ireland?

Speaker 1 (09:50):
It does because it's one of the things I always
bring up because it takes everyone by surprise when I
talk about sectarianism and Lebanon, which is that the average
person isn't necessarily sectarian and the sense that the average
person doesn't necessarily think in Sectaian terms certainly not like
the primary identity. In fact, it's a poor I keep
on mentioning, I can send it to you if you want,
but whenever you've had these pan airports, like across the region,

(10:12):
of the question would be something along the lines of
like do you primarily see yourself as being let's say, Muslim, Christians, whose, etcetera,
or as as your nation as your national identity. And
the Lebanese and the Palestinians are often the ones that say.
They're more likely to say like first Lebanies or Pedestinian
and then Christian, Muslim, etc.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
Yeah, And with Palestinians can maybe.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
More well known story like there's a cause and so
that cause has become the primary identity before even one
is a Muslim, one is a Christian. Us On in Lebanon,
it takes people by surprise because Lebanon, those who know
anything about it, is like, what that's the sectarian place.
That's where you have the president has to be a Christian,
the Maroni, the Prime Minister has to be Sony Muslim,
and the speaker of problem has to be Shere Muslim,

(10:53):
which is true, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they
They're like the individual who's the president wakes up today
and said I'm going to act on behalf of Maronites. Yeah,
it doesn't work. It's much messier than that. And most importantly,
my personal beliefs in Lebanon, like I was raised in
a Maronite family, But if I was an atheist or whatever,

(11:14):
it just does not matter as far as the state
is concerned, because my legal status as a citizen is
one that is a Maronite, and so it affects how
I vote, it affects how I do certain things, whether
certain services have access to in certain that and then
it's like a region specific and in Northern Ireland that's
kind of the thing that you see, Like, of course,
there is a process by which certain communities are already

(11:36):
separated in the sense of like you grew up in
a majority Catholic area and you go up in a
Protestant majority area, and in some cases you may depending
on where you live. Within parts of Belfast, you may
not know a Protestant and or a Catholic, I mean
either up until a certain age, right before you you know,
you're sixteen, you go to college or whatever it might be,
and those of course reinforce certain certain tendency. But most importantly,

(11:58):
you might be a you know, you go up in
a Protestant family, maybe middle class and whatnot, but you
don't share the politics of your neighborhoods. It doesn't necessarily
then translate into that affecting the politics of the whole
because there's something that's already in build there that's difficult
because it's entrenched. Now yeah, and so it's about something
that's entens something that's difficult to change, and also something

(12:19):
that can't stop. At the same time, it has to
be both.

Speaker 3 (12:22):
Yeah, I think it's a very good analysis. Like I guess,
I get like another example people cite for like I guess,
the way these things can so rapidly be becoming trench
and like they can disappear, but it can become less important,
like if we look at the example of Rwanda, which
is obviously long way away from better those places, but

(12:43):
being Hutu Tutiotis frustrates me a lot that analysis of
the rewarded genocide overlooks the toy people. But that's another topic, right,
that they suffered some of the worst ravages of the genocide,
that that was such a fixed identity, that became the
salient identity, right, and even if individuals were not buying
into that increasingly opposed identities. So those identities, well, what

(13:05):
would affect the outcomes of their lives very clearly in
nineteen ninety four, right, And that is now less the
case because in part the key to maintaining state power
became decreasing those tensions or exporting those tensions in the
case of Rwanda to the Congo. Right. And we can
talk about how we got there, because it wasn't a
great process. It isn't a great process, but it's a

(13:27):
good analysis point for people. I guess we've spoken about
how these identities are so enshrined and how they're codified
now because it's not the case, like you said, that

(13:47):
everyone believes in this shit. And what we've seen since
what happened in Belfast is that the vast majority of
people in the UK reject this shit, right, the vast
majority of people. That's the other thing I do want
to harp on, Like when people say, oh, this is
Northern Irish groups in Belfast or whatever, it's a relatively
small portion, even a relatively small portion of Protestants, even

(14:10):
a relatively small portion of people who have strong loyalist feelings.
Not all of those people are biggots, you know. It
is a small, relatively small group. As you say that
it's now somewhat links transnational hate networks, but the bulk
of people think that that shit is absolutely repugnant. Right,
So should we talk a little bit about the backlash

(14:30):
because I know you attended a massive protest right and
also like half a dozen a dozen fascists showed up
to be like escorted out of town again.

Speaker 1 (14:41):
Yeah, so the backlash to the belfast ones. What happened
in Belfast? I can give some contact.

Speaker 4 (14:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
Yeah, So there was an attack by this so the
news person against this white person.

Speaker 3 (14:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
And the reason I'm framing it in those terms because
that's how it was portrayed in the media. Understands that, Yeah,
the attackers ethnicity and national origans and and whatnot has
been front and center of that coverage, and it's not
like a small detail in the story. It's why it's
been linked to the Southampton murder that happened in December
and the case, like the person the attacker was sentenced

(15:14):
a few weeks ago or not long before the Belfast
program happened. Yeah, the reason these two are linked is
media framing. One was in Southampton, was one in Belfast.
There's no connection between those two other than the attacker
had a specific skin color and the victim had a
specific skin color.

Speaker 3 (15:30):
That's basically it.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
Attacks have happened in between between December and in June
that don't fit that framing, don't fit that description and
have been kind of left out of the discourse of
that of that framing. Yeah, and so it's contributed to
this perception that is now Again I wouldn't say it's
a majority of the population, but like it's this higher
percentage of the population that now at least thing that
there's some problem with immigration and criminality, and that is

(15:55):
something that doesn't is not borne out by the facts whatsoever,
but it's the dominant perception. It is. You tune into
BBC Question Time on a weekly basis, it's almost certainly
going to be a funt and center of the conversation.
And I put conversation maybe in quotation here. It's more
like rage, debating and whatever. Yeah, So what happened in

(16:15):
Belfast is, as I said, this Sudanese person attacked this
white person. Initially the media was reporting that a Somali
person attacked a white person. So again it tells you
how these filmings is in inherently racial. They immediately went
they what they thought was the most likely demographic. Yeah,
in response to that attack, despite the fact that the
family of the victim explicitly asked people not to politicize

(16:38):
this and that they rejected the politics of hate. Yeah,
the same after the Southampton won for that matter, it
made no difference to these part right fascists and agitators
and so on, And they basically went on a program
throughout parts of Belfast and some I think twenty plus
people who were rendered homeless, including like kids and so on,
anyone who's a person in color in Belfast. A bunch

(17:00):
of people who have written about it since I reported
feeling unsafe that day, you know, and arguably probably to
this day as well. It hasn't been that long. Some
people didn't go to work, some people went back home early.
Some people ask their white colleagues to either you know,
take their kids to school or you know, walk with
them home, you know, stuff like that. All of that
because they felt unsafe, and the reason why they felt unsafe,

(17:21):
that was very obvious that those people who were engaging
in these in these programs were looking for people of color.
Their response to that is you had this kind of
a pretty big reaction from a good chunk of the
of the population in a bunch of different city including
where I live, which is in Brighton in the south
of England. Belfast itself also had like a pretty huge mobilization.

(17:41):
We saw one in I believe Sheffield, and I believe
one in Liverpool as well. In Glasgow as well, where
usually it would be a fairly small number of fascists
and far right activists agitators. In Brighton, I think it
was like two hundred of them versus some four or
five thousand of on the other side.

Speaker 3 (18:00):
Yeah, I'm fairly certain.

Speaker 1 (18:01):
I can't say this one certain, but I'm fairly certain
there were more police officers than there were like even far.

Speaker 3 (18:07):
Right people there.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
And Belfast as well, there was a huge reaction. There
was even like a pretty huge fundraiser by this collective
of women people of color in that are based on
Belfast called the Anaka Women's Collective that as of now
they were aiming to raise one thousand pounds and they've
raised two hundred and fifty three thousand pounds as of today.

Speaker 4 (18:27):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (18:27):
Nice to help those who were this place in, those
who lost their homes and so on. Yeah, and it
was even condemned like at the national level, like Belfast,
the dominant party is actually not like it's it's Shinfein,
which is not a.

Speaker 3 (18:40):
Loyalist party, so they're the people who did this act.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
There very much in the minority in terms of you
like popular sentiment in northern Linland but even specifically in Belfast.
This didn't stop the ongoing kind of tensions between me
we can get into that on the far right in
the UK and not the un included especially the UK
of Badley, between the Reform which as of now is
the dominant party on the fog out yeah, and this

(19:04):
new party that came out of Rephone called the Restore UK. Yeah,
there are fighting with one another now Iton Mask has
back to the rupert lower but the Restore UK guy Yeah,
we see things that that fact just to walk you know,
a lot of different things are happening.

Speaker 3 (19:18):
It's a fucking insane It's quite insane. Yeah. Yeah, Nigel
Pariety people are familiar, like long time bloviating shithead fixture
of the UK fi right. Yeah, many funny eclips of
Nigel Pariety being made to look like a tool. Let's
talk about this distension right, because we do have this
like and this has been a constant on the on
the UK far right for a long time. I remember

(19:40):
the BNP which was getting on for twenty years ago. Yeah,
that like, essentially, you will have a electoral party that
stakes out a position on the right, and then a
movement slash party it seeks electro legitimacy will outflank them
to the right and they will stake that position and
have electron or success and then someone will outflank him

(20:02):
to the right. That is the process through which British
politics has moved to the right for my entire life.
But let's talk about restore and reform and then maybe
explain the two categories for people who they are not familiar.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
Reform is led by Nigel far Is maybe the better
known one He's the one that was like a close
Thomp associate for a while. Then he was even friends
with the Elonnmosk until they had likely falling out. He
used to have this party called YUKIP, the UK Independence Party,
which was very pivotal in the exit vote. Nigel is
definitely an interesting figure for all the wrong reasons in

(20:38):
British politics because he started off being pretty small, like
a small fish, not a lot of supporting the poors,
not a lot of people knew him, but he had
one thing he did have was like a disproportionate media appearance.
He would be featured constantly on the various shows BBC
Question Time is the one I just mentioned. Even when
he was not like now he's a man of Parliament,

(21:00):
but he for the longest time he was a member
of the European Parliament. He wasn't a member of parliament
in the UK. And his entire thing was UK independence,
as in what they call independence, as in leaving the EU,
because the UK obviously was already independent. And the way
they framed this is anti immigration and racism. Essentially. At
one point even they weren't even focusing on like as

(21:22):
they currently are on like you know, people from Africa
or people from Afghanistan or whatever they're hated. Was focused
on Romanians and Poles and other members from Eastern Europe
was center in Europe. I'm saying this because when Henry
Novak was killed and Henry Henry Novak was Polish British. Yeah,
they all pretended to suddenly include Polish people in the

(21:43):
white category. But that's a very much a recent convenient thing,
because just a few years ago they were absolutely not
doing that. Out of Reform UK, a lot of Reform
MPs and councilors are ex stories, ex Conservatives, so Reform
has been taking a lot of the conservative votes and
even conservative personalities, including most of their high ranking members.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
Out of that came out.

Speaker 1 (22:07):
This new, relive, new party called Restore, which some people
would say is further to the right than Reform. What
I would the way I would describe it is that
they're both vying for the far right position in the UK,
and Reform is signed to position itself as the more professional,
the more kind of like you know, with the new
Toys kind of thing, and the Tories failed, but we

(22:27):
will be better than them.

Speaker 3 (22:28):
Wels.

Speaker 1 (22:29):
Restore is just like directly like we would just deporting
millions of brown people and black people back to where
they came from and whatever, like Registrate the closest thing
to the BNP really historically speaking.

Speaker 3 (22:40):
Yeah, they don't have a.

Speaker 1 (22:43):
Huge percentage from last I check was like three percent
restore UK. But and this is why it gets back
to the to the to the media problem in this
country again. The BBC started one of their coverages off
the Belfast Programs with a code by Rupert Low. Fuck
who is like again maybe in terms of parties the
sixth or the seventh or the eighth in the UK currently. Yeah,

(23:06):
but they have this this proportionate media presence because their
position keeps on being framed as like the default position,
as if everyone has some concerns about and put some
concerns and quotations about foreigners or immigrants or what have you.

Speaker 5 (23:22):
You know.

Speaker 3 (23:23):
Yeah, and they like anchor the debate on the right
there like the BBC or anyone else is running out
like let's have a debate about the humanity of people
who weren't born in the United Kingdom or people who
are white in the United Kingdom. They anchor that debate
on their terms. They get to define the terms exactly. Yeah,
I think Nick Griffin like would be a place where

(23:45):
I could like to see this, this particular tendency starting
right like the sort of new I guess Nick Griffin
comes out of the National Front, so it's really continuous
just for people who an't familiar, like hate groups from
the eighties to hate groups in the two thousands, is
Nick Griffin to hear, You're right, they are the new
analog for that, Like there's a reason the BMP funds
a British National Party, but like British Nazi Party isn't

(24:08):
a fucking accident there if you look at these guys
like to dress up, but like that's how we get here.
I guess it is a real problem in the British media, right,
Like I know Americans are very familiar with the Charlie
kirkstick and the debate Me stick, but like Britain has
been doing that perhaps for even longer. I remember Nick
Griffin attending the Oxford Union in two I mean two

(24:31):
thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, and I remember
big protests at that time. Like Britain has been doing
this for a while, and like most people when when
it's this hate is so evident if it wasn't Belfast
and as it has been in many other places, right
reject it. It's not it's not the mainstream British dance.

(24:52):
The hate is somewhat different in the UK. That's the
other thing that we should mention. I guess, like you know,
like you say that it's not entirely racialized. In the
Polish people are athered from British myth added from whiteness
unless it is useful for them. So like, I guess
what did you see when you participate in this Brighton
merch Because what we don't have in the UK as much, right,

(25:13):
like Labor is pretty shit at this, Like we haven't
we haven't had a similar thing on the left. So
let's say, like explain how people are going about rejecting this,
which is largely an extra parliamentary process, it is.

Speaker 1 (25:26):
It is largely an extraperniamentary process. Brighton historically has had
a different rejectory than other parts of the UK.

Speaker 3 (25:33):
Yeah, breaking is quite unique. So it's the only Green MP,
for example, was from Brighton.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
Now it's exchanged with the Green MP kind of taking
a lot of the votes from the left because of
Labor's right word shift in the past few years. I
mean the labor has always been arguably writing project anyway,
but in the past few years, especially on the Stormer
has been in the past couple of years, as today
is when he officially resigned, so it's also like momentus day.

Speaker 3 (25:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
Brighton has had this kind of long history of anti fascism.
A lot of it has been cultural and then it
came out of its music.

Speaker 3 (26:04):
Scene and all of that.

Speaker 1 (26:05):
Yeah, and it has like as someone who's like I
am a MIC and I'm also a person of color
and I live in the UK, it was pretty nice
to see mostly because Brighton is mostly white, yeah, like
mostly white city really come out in force against these
people who a lot of them I should say were
not even from Brighton, because that's not unusual these days

(26:26):
that they were busting quite literally.

Speaker 3 (26:27):
In some places. Yeah, but they want to come to
where they feel like the migrants are the liberals, yes.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and people like there were different groups
that marched. The Green Party was among them, but largely
it was just like a bunch of unions and one
of like student groups, local anti anti fascist collectives, even
some religious groups like Multi Faith Alliance stuff. In all
of these things, which Brighton is pretty good at, I

(26:54):
would say overall. Yeah, And there were these different marches
that ended up ended up kind of joining as is
you know, typical, and in these types of march they
had like the Palestine one and the feminist one, you know,
the LGBTQ one and so on, they were kind of
joined in the next to the station, the Brighton station,
where the fascists were were meeting up. Essentially, as I said,

(27:14):
there were more cops then, I'm fairly certain of this.
There were more cops and then like fascists that were
there in Belfast, it was different because it was the
most direct reaction to what happened just a few days fior,
and this was like largely organic in the sense that
the Brighton one was like we were planning for this
for some time, because the fascist had announced it long
before even the Badfast program. It just happened to occur

(27:38):
after the Bladfast program, but it was already announced before.
All that really happened was that they made the announcement,
people were already organizing, and then a bunch of fascists
did the program in Belfast and that motivated even more
people in Brighton.

Speaker 3 (27:49):
To come out in Brighton, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
Yeah, And we saw similar dynamics in Glasgow and similar
dynas and I believe, as I said, Sheffield, in Liverpool
and other places like in spawner numbers. It's important to
say that, like with the exception of when they did
the whole Unite the Kingdom reality like last year, which
was the biggest of its kind, and it was the
biggest of its kind for like different reasons. There was
even like a very mediatized attack like a few days prior.

(28:14):
There was of course a Charlie Kirk murdered just like
a few days prior. So it's kind of like it
was a perfect storm that brought them all out at
the same time.

Speaker 3 (28:20):
Yeah, that's very very uncommon.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
The average protest that they managed to pull is in
the lower hundreds usually at mostes, like in the lower thousands,
whereas like you know, on a every other month or whatnot,
you have a massive pro Palestine protest in London that
has like two hundred, three hundred, one hundred thousand people.
And that's putting aside pride and the spilling, aside all
of those other things that happened. So they never managed

(28:44):
to have enough people on the seats at least not yet.
The danger in some sense is that the response to
those far right marches and in some cases the programs
shows how right towards what you might think of like
centrist politics has gotten in the UK, like the default
is very right twing.

Speaker 3 (29:04):
Yeah, I like the overturn window has moved way to
the right of the.

Speaker 1 (29:08):
UK exactly, even though it doesn't necessarily makes sense in
the sense that like when you pull people, you have
a difference between when you ask them what are like,
what are the top five problems whatever of like what

(29:31):
the UK is going through, and then immigration is usually
in the top five, but then like, what are the
top five things the top ten things that you are
personally struggling with? And immigation is usually never you know,
never in those top ten. Yeah, And so there is
a disconnect there. That's why I emphasize so much on
the media framing and the centrality of the types of
framing that we're seeing has have been seen for some time,

(29:51):
like and they're gone up to the to the Rexit vote,
and since Brexit, like which you know is going.

Speaker 3 (29:55):
To be ten years now.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
Fuck yeah, literally I think in a few days it's
going to be ten years since exit.

Speaker 6 (30:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
The tabloidization, I don't know how you call it off.
The media and the UK, where basically everything is tabloid,
has not helped to put it mightily. I started one
of my the artcre I wrote recently, which just I
just randomly took a newspaper on the bus, the Mirror,
which is not even particularly right tween compared to the

(30:21):
Daily Mail for example or whatever.

Speaker 3 (30:23):
Yeah, but there was a.

Speaker 1 (30:24):
Short story, a very small short story, and it was
about like a drunken asylum seeker vandalizes memorial or something
like that. And the headline was asylum seeker vandalizes memorial
whatever it is, and then the first sentence was a
drunk or caps or capital letters son and the story
was just a drunk guy who damaged some property. Yeah,

(30:45):
his his legal status and origins was is literally irrelevant
to the story. It's a guy who's drunk who did
something which is not then not common in the UK unfortunately.

Speaker 3 (30:54):
Yeah. Yeah, that's one of our national past.

Speaker 1 (30:56):
Exactly if any I joke like, if anything, it just
shows that the guy was as well into it into
Finnish culture.

Speaker 3 (31:01):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah, he's become British.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
But the editor of that paper on that specific they
decided that adding asylum seeker made this a more sexy
story for readers and so on, And that's a very
common thing. Oh yeah, as soon as you add asylum
seeker or migrant or refugee or whatever to these headlines,
that can drive engagement up on social media. It can
attract the eyeballs more because it's ragebating and it's become

(31:25):
such a big problem.

Speaker 3 (31:27):
Yeah, it's like a largely a media problem, and I
think like that's a really important place to talk about.
There's this idea again that like this came from Elon Musk, right,
and that like undoubtedly Elon Musk has amplified the very
far right in the UK. Sure, undoubtedly the fact that
so many journalists spend so much time on his website

(31:49):
changes their perspective of where the debate is at, especially
when like you know, not know to be too to
what you dick about it. But like a lot of
lot of journalists don't go aside and talk to normal
people very much. My folks are both in agriculture, right,
Like when I'm home talking to people who work in
that world too, and like it's just not a Sometimes

(32:10):
people say I saw X on the TV or so
why on the TV? But like you're just not running
into many people who are seeking asylum causing problems, nor
is it a major issue in their life. And when
there are migrants in their lives, they're people who they cherish, right,
they're members of their community. That doesn't get reflected in
the media debate. But like this is a longer issue
than Elon Musk buying Twitter in the UK. Yeah, it's

(32:33):
a big fucking problem and it's one I think we
can't fix. Like trying to diversify people's media diet is
a challenge, like, as you say, in the UK, Like
just the way we consume media is different, right, Like
you think about like when my dad's driving and he's
listening to Radio two all the time, right, Like though
they will they will have these debates there, Like it's

(32:54):
a different media consumption media diet than people in the US.
And I wonder like even if they were just like
if very good outlets see you prefer to read, Like,
especially for people who are not from the UK to
understand the debate, it just more rational anchored in reality terms,
like it doesn't even have to be like a left source, like,
it's just if they're not distorting most people's lived experience.

(33:16):
That's relatively unusual in the UK.

Speaker 7 (33:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:19):
Yeah, there's a fascinating program on the BBC that, weirdly enough,
given that I do media studies, I actually did not
know about the relatibility recently.

Speaker 3 (33:27):
But it's called The News News Watch.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
I sent to you the clip, yeah, a few days ago,
and it's just it is what it is.

Speaker 3 (33:33):
It's it is.

Speaker 1 (33:34):
It's kind of this program within the BBC but clearly
editorially independent of the BBC that does credical media coverage.
And they pointed out, yeah, that after the Belfast program,
a lot of they got a lot of comments from
people who were concerned about how the BBC was covering
the the Belfast fired slash program whatever.

Speaker 6 (33:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
Uh, and including the fact that again again initially people
thought that they were saying that a Somali person when
it wasn't even the but immediately racializing these terms and
so on.

Speaker 3 (34:03):
And one of the people that came on said.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
That, like, you know, there was an attack in Bolton
the day which is after matches such as the day
after the Belfast program. Against any mom's house, Like a
guy just fire bombed his house. His kids were inside.
Luckily they were unharmed, but they could have easily died. Yeah,
then made the news, but it's not. And even there
was even an attack in peace Haven, which is not
far from I live, in October twenty twenty five against

(34:25):
a mask There there were two worshippers inside that could
have also died. Luckily they were okay. And again it's
not that it doesn't make the news. It gets reported on,
but like that's it. It doesn't then get debated at nauseum.
It doesn't yet, it doesn't become this huge sensational thing
that like politicians are asked to opine about or whatever.
It's just a thing happened, that's sad, let's move on.

(34:47):
Whereas if it's a one in you only need is
a single story of a non white person attacking a
white person, and it's like it particularly good times in
terms of like I don't know whatever happening on Twitter
or whatever. But again not just that it's only that,
but it's become this huge amplifier. Then you're more likely
to see what you know, what we've been seeing. Really,

(35:09):
that's why I insist on the media frame. It's not
the only thing. I mean, you cannot talk about even
if the media was bad. But if everyone was comfortable
and didn't struggle with these income inequalities and precurity and whatnot,
then the media wouldn't be as big of a the
salience wouldn't be as relevant. But it's those two things
at the same time that there's kind of this perfect
storm right now.

Speaker 3 (35:29):
Yeah, like people like it's hard times for people exactly,
and like it's the hard times to a breeding ground
for hate, yes, and I think like, yeah, that's something
we all have to work against, especially in the British context,
but also like that's coming here. It's hard times here too.
The hatred is always kind of find like fertile terrain
in those difficult times, even that framing, right, Like I

(35:50):
was thinking about this the other day, like talking to
a colleague in the UK, Like all the time, the
quote unquote migrant crisis is used as a framing in
European politics, and that's something the US right learned from
and they created a crisis here. Right, It's not a
fucking crisis. There is plenty of space in the UK
for more people and like these people are like members

(36:13):
of our communities and the benefit to all of us.
The UK should be talking about the bigotry crisis. So
racism crisis, we have a program Belfast, we have someone
attacking it in Moum's house. We have constant, constant macro
and microaggressions for people like including on our state funded
media and like that. That is the framing I'd like

(36:35):
to see. It's not a framing you're going to see
from the people who are perpetuating it because it's a
profitable strategy to whip up hate like this.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
Yeah, I mentioned this if I had the post some
discussion days ago of like, this country also has an
aging population crisis, has a job crisis a lot of
those jobs because it's structured. The economy is structured in
a way that certain jobs are very difficult for locals
to do, like nurses, nursing homes and stuff like that,
largely because pay is so bad. And you have at

(37:05):
the same time, the media kind of and lots of
politicians focusing on this very made up migration like migame crisis,
as you said, whereas this country is actually struggling with
an aging population. In addition to that the incase in
migration since there's two thousand and four, there's been in
case in Migames. I mean, I'm one of them, has
not actually brought more crime to the UK. The data's

(37:27):
pretty clear on that. It's like the climes has actually
been steadily declining in the past couple of decades in
this country, including in London, the most diversity in the
UK by four.

Speaker 3 (37:37):
There's just no there's no core.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
And I know I'm saying this, and you know, obviously
for the like listeners of this, I'm kind of like
preaching to the choir here. It's just basic repeating that
like this is generally entirely made up, Like there is
actually no correlation between these two between like just an
in case of people from a certain skin color or whatever,
and then the prevalence of crime, and so there's no
correlation between those two. And when we talk about one

(38:01):
of the big things of the far right here, as
in the US and as in a good chunk of
the world, it's all about, you know, save our women
and girls essentially, is how they frame it.

Speaker 3 (38:09):
Costly, pretty huge.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
Percentage of the far right people have for example, two
years ago you also had riots in Belfast, something like
a ridiculously high amount of those who are arrested were
and were later released were since re arrested due to
like domestic abuse allegations and sexual agressments.

Speaker 3 (38:26):
And stuff like that, you know, yeah, any such cases.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
They're not framed as like a civilizational crisis for women
and girls because they are the default. They are the
white guys, they are you know, they don't get spoken
off in the same way as the rest of the
population in this country. So it's in that sense, maybe
it's a more familiar problem for American listeners, and that
sounds we have these similarity there.

Speaker 3 (38:47):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good this is good
in thealogy to draw. I wonder then as we wrap up,
like you wrote an excellent article on this, which we
will link in the show notes, do you have anything
else you want to share with people or resources. You'd
suggest like it's a little less easy to feel so
isolated in the UK, right, which is like a smaller quality,

(39:08):
Like it's it's you can normally find people, but just
people who are if people are willing to support, if
people are looking to find like minded folks.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
Yeah, in the UK, I would say, I mean, I
guess this is a bit of a bit everywhere the
same thing, but as then it depend on where you live. Yes,
like you know, I have other people listening if they
happen to be in Greton a fifty to reach out
to me. I like meeting people, but like you have
these different collectors that are like usually very locally based.
I mentioned the Anaka Collective, the Women's Collective in Belfast
for example. If folks want to support them, they can

(39:39):
still do so, maybe I could. I could put it
this way. I mean, I moved here ten years ago,
and then I left for to do my PhD in
spits Evan, and then me and my partner and kid
we moved back here a couple of years ago. There
are lots of reasons not to be here. I had
lots of good reasons not to want to be in
and want to be elsewhere. Yeah, but there are also
pretty good reasons to be here for me personally, which

(40:00):
is that there are lots of different networks communities that
are have been kind of built for decades now in
some cases that one can can join, one can help. Again,
it's gonna be very much like depending on where you live.
London is not going to be the same as Manchester
as well, fast as Glasgow and so on and so forth.

Speaker 3 (40:19):
Yeah, but like that's one of the good things about it.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
The other thing you mentioned in terms of reading and
a rite for this the one that you're going to
link shadow mac without the W in the end and
at the end of every article they have recommendations usually
of like what people can do, and usually it has
to do with either like you read further, but it
could also be like support to this collective or like
you know, follow this person or whatever, like just very
very small things like yeah, by no means are we

(40:42):
always claiming to fix everything through that, but like there's
just more things that people can actually, Yeah, I feel
more connected maybe if they if they actually live here
and that they don't feel connected to different communities, or
if they're a god and they want to support this
could also be.

Speaker 3 (40:54):
Like easy way to do. So Yeah, I think that's
a great piece of advice. Like it's very local, which
is good. Like the response to austerity has been people
taking care of their community, and like that is how
we get through this. Yeah, same as though, Yeah, the
poverty the government is deciding that everyone has to live
in like it's the same shit, it's the same response. Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly. Well,
thank you very much for your time today. That was

(41:16):
really good. I think it's sightful. I have to help people.
Where can people find you if they'd like to follow
you and your work in Brighton obviously, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
If you're grated with your child, I do post on
on Blue Sky from time to time. It's just that
you really find me there. And other than that, I
have the podcast Define the Times. It's been inactive for
the past month, but I'm gonna start against one and
I haven't used that. They're called honthologies that I try
and keep active as well, in which I talked about
some of the stuff we talked about to you. Yeah,
with sometimes more Lobanon stuff and patters Thine stuf where

(41:43):
I'm from, but also a lot of Western like UK
and US stuff and so on.

Speaker 3 (41:47):
Yeah. Yeah, and I think it's great to have those
conversations connected, like it's the struggle st is just think
because people think, yeah, yeah, thanks, well, thank you so much.
That was great, Thank you, thank you, Harmy.

Speaker 4 (42:09):
Welcome to it could happen to hear a podcast coming
to you from what they are calling the fakest economy
of all time. I am your host, Via Wong, and
with me to discuss really truly a stock market that
is like a microcosm of all of the unhinged things
they are going on in the economy. Is a friend
of the show, Vicky Ostrowil, who has done many, many,

(42:33):
many many things. The writer as an organizer, recent author,
current author.

Speaker 6 (42:39):
I'm just an author now. I think I have two books?

Speaker 4 (42:41):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (42:42):
Author?

Speaker 4 (42:42):
Yeah, two two books makes you an author?

Speaker 6 (42:44):
That's right?

Speaker 4 (42:45):
Hi?

Speaker 6 (42:45):
How's it going? How's it going?

Speaker 7 (42:46):
Man?

Speaker 6 (42:47):
How are you doing today? This is beautiful June day.

Speaker 4 (42:48):
Awful, absolutely terrible. The whole world is on fire, both
metaphorically and literally.

Speaker 6 (42:55):
You're trying to learn about the economy again, didn't you?
This is what happens. You should never look. Don't turn
over that rock.

Speaker 4 (43:02):
Huge mistake. I am learning about financial instruments that are
so deranged they make like they make the stuff the
two thousand and eight financial collapses based on look normal
and stable. We're doing great here, having promised a story
about the economy is fake. I want to do first
when I am calling a bonus horror?

Speaker 6 (43:21):
Oh so I love a bonus.

Speaker 4 (43:23):
This bonus horror now, I think you are one of
the people who are suppost uniquely qualified to address this
bonus horror as someone who has recently written a book
called The Extended Universe, How Disney Killed the Movies and
took Over the World, that is about the evils of
intellectual property, and also has written about riots, and also
has written about the transgender I want to hear your

(43:45):
thoughts on Oh Boy, Oh Boy, a DMC eight takedown
notice filed by the Stonewall in LLLC against a T
shirt shop that was being run by the Canadian trans
comics writer Sophie Label for shirts that said stone Wall

(44:05):
was a riot. So, Ky, what do you think about
the phenomenon of trademarking a riot happy pride?

Speaker 6 (44:12):
First of all, I think I think it's really important
that we celebrate June this year in all the right ways. Yeah,
I mean, you know, trademarking a riot that seems good,
like you trade in a historical event, copywriting a historical era,
you know, patenting human genome. These are all good things. Frankly,

(44:34):
I think it's outrageous that anything should be the common
property of a community, history and humanity. So I just
think it's great when people draw fences around the word
stone wall for example, which you know, sure it functions,
you know as a you know, as a stand in
for an entire historical era, for a crucial moment, and

(44:57):
indeed for a riot. But what about the people own
the stonewall in Yeah, did you ever think about them
and their interests? I don't think you did.

Speaker 4 (45:05):
It's like one of those like things where it's like, well,
you couldn't have had Stonewall without the police. It's like I'm.

Speaker 6 (45:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's that's the conscious pay.
That is the good guy in the Jesus story theory, right, yeah,
you know, like well, if it worn't for the Roman centurions,
you know, who would have who would have sacrificed Jesus? Yeah, no,
it's it's bad. I mean I would love to have
a hot take, but I feel like or even a
lukewarm one, but that one's really just that's just just

(45:33):
a happy, happy bride. Love a business gay, you know,
I just love a business gay.

Speaker 4 (45:37):
The feeling I saw seeing that, The only feeling I've
had like that recently was discovering that the NC Nancy
double A was like selling the biometrics data of their
athletes to to sports gambling companies, so the sports gambling
companies could set lines, it seems right, Which is like
I can I emphasize this enough. This is the thing
that like scouts for professional teams have a hard time

(45:58):
getting access to like the actual like heights and weights
and stuff. I don't know. This is this is maybe
the worst maybe the worst economy well that they've that
we've had.

Speaker 6 (46:09):
If you're talking about like sort of some sort of
high tech surveillance apparatus that's largely used to prop up
a casino, I mean you might be talking about the
NC double A, but you might also be talking about
the stock market.

Speaker 4 (46:22):
Yeah, and oh boy, today today we are going on
what I am I am colloquially referring to as the
coast b roller coaster.

Speaker 6 (46:29):
Yay, let's go.

Speaker 4 (46:31):
Oh boy. So so CODSBY for people who don't know,
is like the main Korean stock index in the way
that like I mean we kind of have multiple I don't.

Speaker 6 (46:39):
Know, NASDAC or that some five hundred.

Speaker 4 (46:42):
Yeah, it's it's like it's like that basically it's an index.

Speaker 6 (46:45):
It's the main major index of major Korean stocks.

Speaker 4 (46:48):
Yeah, and and people longtime listeners of the show may
remember that we have talked a bit about what's called
the Magnificent Seven, which are these seven American tech stocks
that make up an absolutely unhinged like percentage of these
like stock listings.

Speaker 3 (47:02):
Right.

Speaker 4 (47:03):
So, the reason I want to talk about kast B,
the South Korean one is because in a lot of ways,
it's like the entire economy and microcosm, because you know,
where whereas the US has like seven Tex stocks that
are like a huge percentage of the market, coast B
over half of the fucking index is two companies, Yeah,

(47:24):
Samsung and s k Hyeks, which.

Speaker 6 (47:26):
Are that's not good, that's not good economy.

Speaker 7 (47:28):
Yeah, And that's how you know your economy is good
and normal when it's two fucking companies, both of which
is like valuations have been spiking massively, specifically because of
chip production, and specifically because of chip production.

Speaker 4 (47:41):
For I guess I have to say the words AI
instead of just doing a long and elaborate bit where
I simply just call it matrix multiplication over and over again.

Speaker 6 (47:50):
Yeah, graphics cards they're doing it. It's it's because graphics
cards are so valuable. That's what that's what this is
all about.

Speaker 4 (47:56):
Yeah, this is now like half of the main in
decks of like one of the most advanced industrial economies
in human history, right, is fucking making graphics cards for chatbots?

Speaker 6 (48:09):
South Grade is what. That's the thirteenth the twelfth or
thirteenth largest in the entire world inast two companies, right, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (48:15):
Yeah, it's good, and it's good. You know, there was
a while back to executive disorder where I was like
spending a decent amount of time tracking post By going
up and down because it has lost ten percent of
its value multiple times this year. That's unhidge. That does
not happen, right, like outside of like the Great Recession, Right,

(48:37):
it's like that kind of shit, that's a really rare
thing to happen.

Speaker 6 (48:41):
This used to happen in the nineteenth century all the time, right,
So like what we're looking at in Korea and indeed
in the US is like stock markets that like what
used to be before the Great Depression, before Black Friday
and the mundeon of the sec to make sure that
this wouldn't happen every day, and I think like one
of the things that I mean, maybe you're gonna get this.
I don't want to jump on on top of your thing.
But I think the thing that is really wild about

(49:03):
what's going on with the COSP is also I think
again to connected to sort of the gambling thing, is
that in the last month, two months, I don't remember
exactly when this happened, Korean stocks got added to like
Robin Hood, right, it got added to like US retail trading. Now,
like retail trading like used to technically be possible before
these like apps and before we read it, you know,

(49:24):
our our Wall Street bets or whatever. But it was hard.
You had to have you had to have an agent,
you had to like do a thing. And then day
trading in the nineties made it a little easier for
like middle class people to do. But now like you
can do it instantly anywhere. And you know, if you remember,
I mean, I know you remember me, but if the
folks at home remember like the game stock stuff like

(49:45):
that cult during the NFT era, you know, the meme stock,
the meme it was called meme stocks, and how like
sort of you know this one reddit subreddit could like
make a stock, you know, quadruple its price overnight or
go ten times overnight.

Speaker 3 (49:57):
Right.

Speaker 6 (49:57):
The thing is, what's happening is that the career in
retail market has also exploded. So not only are you
getting US investors right, like day traders just like going
on really weird tips and like pouring millions and millions
of US dollars right because, like, you know, if it
used to be hard to trade on the US Stock Exchange,
trading in a foreign stock was basically impossible.

Speaker 4 (50:20):
Yeah, you just couldn't do it.

Speaker 6 (50:21):
Again, you technically could, but you had to have a
lot of money in a lot of connections.

Speaker 4 (50:24):
Yeah, you had to actually be someone who worked in finance. Yes,
Like you know, like you had to be effectively a
professional exactly. Or it's like, you know, to like return
to the gambling analogy, which is increasingly less and less
of an analogy, it's like the equivalence of like it
was technically possible to be one of those guys who
like played online poker, right, right, it was equivalent to

(50:47):
that where it's like, Okay, you can dedicate your entire
life to this one incredibly niche.

Speaker 6 (50:51):
Thing, exactly. But so the opening up and the deregulation
of this trade has this is sort of maybe it
can be a little hard to grasp, but like so
the Korean economy is massive, but compared to the US economy,
it's nothing. Right, So when all of the money from
when a ton of retail money from the US in

(51:11):
coordinated fashion, you know, coordinate online on Reddit or whatever
in discord servers can flood into the Korean markets, it
can make a huge change. Imagine an even smaller imagine
a smaller market, right, Like, imagine something that's not worth
very much and you get, yeah, the exchange rate in there,
and you're not getting hit on exchange rate fees, you
can really swing the market. Foreigners could swing the market
really easily, right by speculating, which again used to be

(51:34):
a thing that finance operatives did, but it was really
risky and it was like a really dodgy thing to do.
But these retail investors don't really care because it's gambling.
It's just a gambling app, right, they're gambling on stocks.
But now there's it has become a huge thing in
Korea as well. There was just a documentary I think
it was released like yesterday on like Bloomberg about how

(51:55):
intense retail buying so everyone in Korea has like sort
of stock menia. Like in the documentary there's like you know,
like a woman at a grocery checkout, like she's working
and she's like checking her stock prices and she's like
scanning stuff, you know, and like it's not about lower
class people shouldn't have access. It's about this means that
all the money is being funneled. The reason Korea is important,

(52:17):
as most of you have probably know, is because it's
where all the chips are made. It is where processors
have to be made. It's the only place on earth
where they can really they're in Taiwan where they can
be made. And because of the huge AI boom, right,
the huge amount of money circulating between three different companies
right back and forth forever, that every piece AI supply chain, right,

(52:41):
so like the you know, each mineral that goes into it.
The people who make a particular like plastic clip that's
really hard to make that like fits into the data center.
Like all of these companies get identified by you know,
deranged gamblers, you know, and they say, like this company.
And in the Korean stock market, so in the US
stock market, there's like tickers, you know, three letters. In
the Korean sumware is just like a number, right, So

(53:03):
in the kosp So they're like, guys, four to two
oh one is this company. I'm telling you it makes
you know, the it makes the sort of fiber cables
that go in a data center, right, and if that
takes off on finance, Twitter or in you know, Wall
Street bets or whatever, they can just swing these companies.
And of course, so you've got these US and European

(53:23):
investors throwing all their money in. So then Korean people
are like, we got to get in on this because
it's all booming and all of these are just are
just really random companies that make really obscure. They're basically
what would have been penny stocks back in the day. Yeah, right,
and they're getting traded at wild volumes, and it's uh,
it's good. It's good because it's real money that really

(53:44):
reflects the value of the Korean economy and it's not
just a bunch of people losing their shirts in a
series of complex scams.

Speaker 4 (53:53):
Yeah, there's obviously the sort of like ground swawmania of
this sort of like it's just a gambling boom, right,
But on the institutional level, yea, they are also doing
things that are I was saying guest to VICKI before
before I sorry this so, like these might be the
most deranged financial instruments I have ever seen, and like

(54:14):
I have spent a significant amount of my life studying
the two thousand and eight financial collapse, and these make
those instruments look normal.

Speaker 6 (54:22):
Yeah, you're described one to me, and I literally was
stunned in silence because I didn't believe that the thing
you had just described was real.

Speaker 4 (54:29):
It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of my entire life.
When we come back from these apps, okay, we are back,
I have been promising you the worst financial idea I

(54:50):
have ever seen. Right, So, like what we've been talking
about thus far has been you know, like, are the
entire economy now is someone who thinks they got they
got a tip on the horses and is putting their
lives in on like fucking I don't know what's a
horse name, like secretary, I don't know, Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. So,

(55:15):
but like here's the thing, right that is comparatively not
that risky in the sense that when you put the
money on the horses, right, there's kind of a limit
to how much you can lose. Yeah, totally, you're putting
the money in you can only lose that much money.

(55:35):
Now if the stuff of the regular people doing are
again like putting it all on red or just like
fucking I gotta tip on the horses. What the institutional
people are doing. I could only describe this ship as
like and some of this is also designed to be
bob by retail investors, which is just unbelievably insane. Like
I can only describe this as the equivalent of it's

(55:55):
the market equivalent of Russian roulette. Okay, So on June
twenty second, Kosby did a thing that it does semi normally,
which was again lose ten percent and trigger the circuit breakers.
They triggered the circuit breakers like to again like today
we were recording this on June twenty sixth, a thing
that again is not supposed to happen in normal markets,
like that's panic shit, But on Monday it triggered because

(56:20):
Korea's like national like financial watchdog, like the guy you ran.
It was like, Okay, maybe maybe it was a mistake
for regulators to have approved this thing called leverage ETFs
on a single stock. Okay, so so to understand how
bonkers this is, like that that that's all gibberish, right,

(56:42):
and for once, this isn't even a case where the
financial people are packaging something simple with a gibberish name.
This is ridiculous. So ETFs are exchange traded funds, and
it's supposed to be a mechanism where like, okay, there's
just one thing you can buy, but that one like security.
This is like the physical thing you're buying has like

(57:03):
a bunch of stocks in it.

Speaker 6 (57:04):
Right, So you could say, like I want to buy
all the peanut farmers in America, right, Okay, there's five
publiclist of peanut companies. They make an ETF. It's the
peanut ETF. You buy it, you know, and then you
just buy that and you ride the whole all five
of them together, instead of just one.

Speaker 4 (57:17):
Yeah. The place you might have heard of this is
there were a bunch of like supposed to be like
green ETFs that were supposed to be like this, These
are the things you can invest in to save the environments.
And obviously a lot of that with scams, but also
it's one of those things that was bad while it
was happening, and I and you miss it when it's
gone because it was replaced by what I can only
describe as what if we did an ETF on destroying

(57:40):
the economy. But again, so the purpose of these things, right,
is that they're supposed to allow you to have one
instrument the whole positions on multiple companies. Right, it's a
basket of companies, yes, Now, now it lasts about seven years, right,
This is a relatively recent phenomenon. I'm sure people maybe
had like done something like this before that, but this

(58:01):
is a real, relatively reason phenomenon. Somebody had the absolutely
horrible idea of what if you had an ETF that
was just one stock?

Speaker 6 (58:12):
Well, but me, that doesn't make any sense. They're all
the same thing.

Speaker 4 (58:15):
Yeah, right, And I looked at this and I was like,
what the fuck are you talking about that?

Speaker 7 (58:18):
Like what what?

Speaker 4 (58:19):
What? What the fuck is it? What the fuck is
a single stock ETF? Like that's that's like, that's it's
literally it's nonsensical, right, yeah, right, you buy the stock
or you buy a future like on the stock. Right
if if you're betting the stocks and you go up
and down, you buy like futures.

Speaker 3 (58:34):
Right.

Speaker 4 (58:35):
This the only way I don't know, I think Vicky
kind of came up with the best way to describe
this that I've heard, which is like it's it's like
getting a parlay on a stock. Yeah. So what One
of the very formative moments of me a childhood, right
was reading this book by Cory doctor a friend of
the show, called for the Win, which is about a

(58:56):
bunch of gold miners in a video game unionizing. There's
like a plot, right, but then in between the plot,
there will just be a chapter that is Corey doctor
O explaining to you how the two thousand and eight
financial collapse happens. And one of the things that he
knows that has stuck with me my entire life, and
I think is genuinely a really important lesson, is that
if someone comes up to you and the thing that

(59:17):
they say is, hey, you can buy this thing, right,
you know, or you can you can place a bet,
you can buy a financial instrument. And the way that
it works is if multiple things happen, you know, like
like several things that are different happen. Right. So for example,
it's like if Lebron scores thirty two and Wemby has

(59:38):
three blocks and.

Speaker 6 (59:40):
I beat the point spread by five, right.

Speaker 4 (59:42):
Yeah, right, then you get paid out one hundred million
dollars or whatever. Right, that's and that's sort of a
streame example.

Speaker 6 (59:46):
But that's a parlay. That's a sports part.

Speaker 4 (59:48):
Yeah, that's a sport's parlay. Every single time someone is
doing that, it is a scam. One hundred percent is
a scam. If you put your money into this, you
are lighting it the fuck on fire. Yeah. Now, now
this is effectively what's going on with these with these
leverage ETFs, right, They're they're taking like a shit ton
of positions at the same time. It's the thing that

(01:00:10):
allows you to like have a bunch of different positions
at one time on the same stock. This is an
asset so dangerous that like if if you look up
any definition of these things, literally the all of the
sites will tell you do not hold this thing for
longer than one day. Yeah, because if you hold this
asset for longer than one day, you will lose all

(01:00:30):
of your money. Like Investipedia for example. Well, just like
it just explains this right where they're like, hey, uh,
this fucking asset you can be betting on a stock
to go up, right, because of the way it happened,
you can lose money, yep, on the stock you are
betting to go up, going up, because it's this like
fucking unhint set of parlays.

Speaker 6 (01:00:50):
It's not all these conditionals on it, so like, yeah,
it has to go up within a certain time window,
or it has to bounce, right, it has to go
down then up or something like that, right, So a
bunch of weird conditions. Yeah, and you can lose more
money on this than you put in How's that?

Speaker 4 (01:01:02):
Which is insane because because you have to pay out
all of the options that you right of course, so
you can lose more by even you put in doct
They found a form of gambling that is actually worse
than putting all of your life savings on red, because
at least if you put all your life savings on red,
you can only lose all of your life savings. You

(01:01:22):
could lose your family's life savings on this ship like
they can like.

Speaker 6 (01:01:27):
Famously, it's always good to go into debt to your bookie.
This is famously, it's famously good to get credit from
your from your sports gampler. That's a famous, a famous
narrative thing that's good to do.

Speaker 4 (01:01:38):
Yeah, and again, to get a sense of how unhinged
this market is. Right now, the regulator saying we probably
shouldn't have a crude people making these for a bunch
of the biggest Korean tech stocks, pause the market to
tank by ten percent.

Speaker 6 (01:01:51):
Yeah, just saying like exactly, there's a lot of different
angles on this that we could we could go into. Sorry,
so I'm is it okay? I switched to like some
US stuffs well for a second, amazing. So folks were
pretty it became pretty clear that Trump was playing the
price of oil. Right Mondays, you'd be like, we're retaliating
against Iran. Fridays, you'd be like, pieces here, right, there's

(01:02:13):
just a really open trade that he was just making.
And it worked because it worked, right. It was a
classic like like, well the investors do it, so it works.
The price goes up and down, you can play it.
That was how war policy has been dictated for most
of twenty twenty six, which is great and awesome and
really good. But so the thing about the AI stuff
is that, like financial people insist that AI is relatively

(01:02:36):
safe because there's actual capital spending, right, money is being
spent they say on data centers. And you know ed Zetron,
who I know is part of the network, is in
a lot of reporting on the money's not actually being spent.
It doesn't actually so, yes, exactly, So it's all bullshit.
These are these bullshit companies that a I but like

(01:02:56):
one of the things that we're starting to see happen
and that Trump really innovated, but that everyone's favorite Nazi,
the trillionaire Elon Musk, although he's not a trillionaire anymore
unless he moved out of his space expositions.

Speaker 4 (01:03:06):
I think he mayage to do a pump and dump
with his own company.

Speaker 6 (01:03:11):
Elon Musk did a crypto rug pull at the scale
of the world economy, okay, which like you know, in
a way like you know, yeah, I'm not gonna hand
it to you don't have to hand it to him.
But it's truly one of the craziest scams that like
in plane set, that's ever happened. And part of the
way this worked. I want to talk about this because
it's not just about him being a creepy scammer. It's

(01:03:34):
about the way that this is all being supported by
the finance industry, Like, which is what you're talking about
with these instruments. Yeah, so you've got these like really
nasty instruments that they're developing to rinse Korean grossers of
their you know, their of their money whatever. But you've
also got like what what happened with the SpaceX ipo
is that when something gets listed on the NAZAC and

(01:03:55):
the SMP, when it gets added to these indexes, everyone
holding an index fund has to buy those stocks. So
it means that like really safe stuff, like you know
a four oh one K, and you're just like, I
just put the four oh one K in the S
and P five hundred, right, it's just the stock market.
I'm buying the whole stock market. YEP, line goes up,
no problem. So when the SpaceX ipo happened, I was

(01:04:18):
listened at one hundred and sixty so oft that one
hundred and sixty was it one hundred and sixty nine
point sixty nine the exact number? I think there was
it that didn't have a meme price. I don't even
remember whatever when it listed. That was ten days ago,
fifteen days ago that the IPO happened. When that, when
that went public, all of the institutional funds had to
buy a proportional amount of SpaceX, right, so they had

(01:04:40):
to buy it because that's just how it works. And
that's that's reasonable. That is actually like regulated, it's a
reasonable thing. So what happened was this the price retailers
drove it way up. Right, Elon still has you know,
with it using Twitter, managed to get a bunch of
retail investors, this is going to go straight to the
moon whatever whatever. So for five days it goes up
to like one ninety two undred I think crosses two

(01:05:00):
hundred at one point right, and now it is down
to one fifty. So it is ten percent down from
where it was ten days ago. Why is it ten
percent down because SpaceX the same valueless company Compared to
what they're valuating it at. SpaceX is fifteen government contracts
in a trench code. Yeah, like, it's just not it's
not a company that has any path of profitability. It

(01:05:21):
also doesn't have path to Mars. But what that means
is that institutional investors created and regulators created a situation
where Elon and his buddy is pump and dumped. As
you said, they got the price way up, they moved
out of their position, and now those funds lost their
ten percent invest stake in SpaceX, and there's no reason
to anticipate that stock going back up.

Speaker 4 (01:05:42):
Yep.

Speaker 6 (01:05:42):
It's just like there's there's no reason for it. It's
overvalued as it is. Right, So this is how like
people who aren't doing retail investing, people who are not
you know, people who are like I don't trust the
stock market.

Speaker 4 (01:05:53):
Yeah, so this this is the California Pension.

Speaker 6 (01:05:55):
Fund exactly exactly. So yeah, and like obviously like Trump
did that with a trump coin. Like we're like basically
like what the lesson learned from the crypto and the
NFT explosion. And by the way, bitcoin is down almost
one hundred percent on the year. It's been under sixty
thousand for months. Bitcoin is coapsing as a safe the
safe haven asset. If you were heavily invested in bitcoin,

(01:06:17):
you're ruined right now if you if you held for
a year. Anyway, they learned from cryptos and NFTs is Oh,
we can just do that in the stock market too, right, Yeah,
we can just do it. We can just we can
just play the entire stock market like this, you know,
and we can blame it on you know. I started
by talking about the retail investors, and that's real. That
is driving the volatility. And that's if you're a professional

(01:06:38):
or you're in an industry for us, you can just
skim the cash off now. The reason that they need
to skim the cash as fast as possible right now
is because two years ago, I think I came on
here to talk about the commercial Did we talk about
commercial real estate like the exmercial real estate bubble on
the show?

Speaker 4 (01:06:53):
Oh? I don't remember.

Speaker 6 (01:06:54):
I don't remember if we actually talked about on the
show or just just you know, we just texted about
it whatever, cackled about it privately. So basically, the private
banking sector or sorry, the shadow banking which is now
called private capital private financing, like that sector was facing
a collapse two years ago in twenty twenty three as
all of their office buildings came to Basically there's this

(01:07:14):
massive expansion commercial real estate and the pandemic combined with
the cooling economy, like they was in trouble. All of
that money has now gone into the AI boom. So
they staved off this collapse that was supposed to happen
in twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four. There was even
a word for it, which was like the maturity wall, right,
like all these things were going to hit this maturity wall,
Like everyone was ready for it. So now those companies

(01:07:38):
are starting to go down right, the private equity. And
the thing about private equity is that it's what if
a bank had no regulation. So private equity has burned
all of their money into the AI boom. But it's
not just them. If we look at like the huge
layoffs and video game companies that are going on right now,
right like all tech investors are taking all of their
money out of everything and putting it in AI. Right,

(01:08:00):
they're going all in on AI. That's why they're so
insistent on doing it. Movies can't get made. Like I
talked to you know for my book that I wrote,
I've talked to a bunch of movie producers. I have
relationships with them. They just can't get funding. These are
people with huge movies, right, big small producers. There's nothing
is getting greenlit. There is just no capital for anything

(01:08:21):
except AI. The entire economy has put all of its
resources into lms. Nothing else is getting made. The data
centers aren't being built, and then they developed elaborate ways
to ruin Korea by gambling on it. Yeah, incredible economy.

Speaker 4 (01:08:40):
It's astounding. It's like it's like the entire it's like
every rich person on Earth has collectively taken all of
humanity's chips and put it on tulip bulbs.

Speaker 6 (01:08:51):
Yeah, you know, I compared this in the nineteenth century
because this is before the SEC. What used to happen.
Joint stock companies used to Guys just used to go
around a town, right, you know, during the era of
the telegram. This is the railroads were the most famous
example of this. For the eighteen sixties and the eighteen
seventies post Civil War, there were like five or six

(01:09:12):
railroad stock crashes. People would just sell you listen, we're
gonna make this rail line. It's gonna be awesome. Okay,
rails are the future. It's so high tech, you know,
get it on the ground floor. And then there would
be massive economic collapses. And you know that wild insecurity
was driven by a lot of what we would call
now retail investment, right, a lot of what the twentieth

(01:09:34):
century did, what the SEC did was try to make
sure that didn't happen. Because when everyone puts all of
their money into a sort of speculative asset like say
AI data centers, because shrimp Jesus, when everyone was like
wait a second, these aren't very valuable. The money just
is gone.

Speaker 4 (01:10:01):
Part of the reason why everything feels so weird is that, like,
in order for the entire economic system to function, there's
two giant collective delusions that everyone has to maintain at
the same time or everything collapses. One is that the
is that the AI boom is inevitable and it's going
to make money. And the second one, and this is
also directly tied to South Korea, is that the war

(01:10:22):
in Iran is going to end and it's going to
end soon. Yep. Because if both of these things are
not true, and they're not true, like there's no fucking no,
they're both completely lies, that everything falls aboard immediately. And
South Korea, you know, the other reason why South Korea
was was having these like just ten percent of the
market gets annihilated in a few minutes is that this

(01:10:44):
would happen every time it became clear that no, the
war isn't ending, like every time Trump's fake like peace
deal fell, like latest fake peace deal fell apart, that
the market would collapse. But the problem is, in order
for all these people to keep making money, everyone has
to continue to collective believe that no, it's going to end. Yeah,
and so you're just in this perpetual cycle, right where

(01:11:05):
like South Korea is one of the countries in the
world that is the most exposed to the effects of
this war. That's not like actively being bombed. Like this
is like like in terms of massive industrial economies, right
like obviously like East Asia. Yeah, like like the rest
of like eastern South Asia particularly is got by all
of this, as we've talked about elsewhere on this show.
But South Korea is the core industrial center. Yeah, that's

(01:11:28):
the most fucked by this specifically because they because they
rely so much on natural gas and just regular like
regular fossil fuels that come to come to the Trai
or Hermeus, which is not open, has never been opened,
will not be reopened.

Speaker 6 (01:11:42):
Yeah, I heard there was a great deal. I heard that.
Actually it's gonna be open. Don't worry, it's gonna be fine. Listen,
Netanyaho's a reasonable man. You know, Trump is our reasonable
These are reasonable people. It's gonna go fine. It's all
gonna reopen soon.

Speaker 4 (01:11:54):
Yeah. Ben Gavier only only holds a minor post in
the Israeli government. Hold on, I am googling this live.

Speaker 6 (01:12:03):
God damn it, God damn it.

Speaker 4 (01:12:05):
Oh wow, check's notes. He is the Minister of National Security.

Speaker 6 (01:12:08):
Oh no, oh no, So of course, you know, we
talked about the economy, and obviously the horror in Lebanon
and Palestine is the real is the most horrible, and
Iran is the most horrible thing going on right now.
But these cascading effects are also horrible. If we've learned
one thing in the last ten years, it's it's that

(01:12:29):
it can always get worse for everyone. Oh yeah, So
we have this moment where like everyone is gambling on
South Korean chip manufacturers, right yep, and sub manufacturers on
the basis that they will be totally necessary to the
production of chips that are being sold to companies that
can't use them, that are a depreciating asset, that get

(01:12:52):
become valueless. These extremely expensive chips lose all their value
within five years. They are going to install those chips
into buildings that don't exist yet, and they're going to
put billions of dollars worth of these chips. Again, the
chips have been made, the chips do exist largely, although
there's still a lot of speculations. The chips exist. They're
sitting in a warehouse at some point someone is going

(01:13:15):
to put them into a warehouse that itself is being
speculated on buy. The same companies who are buying Future
compute on it as a different financial instrument, and they're
going to build it. And then when they do build it,
there's going to be so much demand for AI because
people love to use it, and it's really made the

(01:13:36):
economy so efficient.

Speaker 4 (01:13:38):
It is, like truly and also and also one final
point about this, right yeah, and also that the people
who use it and who become power users of it
aren't going to request more tokens no than actually make
the money because more people using it is actually bad
for them because if those people use tokens, they're selling
the tokens below cost.

Speaker 6 (01:13:58):
Right, Yeah, it's good. So basically this is a really
strong thing for the economy. And it's obviously it's obscene
and it's funny and it's truly terrifying. But I think
the thing that I think I really want to like
underline and me, I know, you know, you know you
would say the same, is that this is our money.

(01:14:18):
This is money that we produced by working our whole lives.
We have worked so hard for so long, and we
produced so much surplus value. And we know that's the
nature of the situation, and that money is being lit
on fire, sometimes quite literally right like in coal fire
plants and gas plants. It is destroying the planet. It

(01:14:41):
is doing so in the name of keeping this bubble
alive long enough for all of the big people who
are being rinsed, who got rinsed by investing in office buildings,
to get out with their cash and leave with the bag,
so that as we face the total political and economic
collapse as well as logical disaster, there are people with

(01:15:02):
enough money that they stole. This is one it's like
one last job at the level of like global delusion,
and it's all built on this like myth making about AI,
but it's also built on all of these structures, and
it's also built on like the collapse of the global
economic system through war and stuff. In short, it's good,

(01:15:25):
but this is our money. This is our money. We
made this money. They're lighting it on fire so that
they can get a bad investment they made ten years
ago back all the bad investments they've made since two
thousand and nine. They're trying to cash out on that
as fast as possible right now and as long as
they can keep pumping the stock market, they can keep

(01:15:45):
taking that money out and they have a chance to
make it, and some of them will be ruined. But
this isn't going to be like the thirties. I don't
think we're going to see a lot of them jumping
out of the skyscrapers tragically like because I think I think, honestly,
most of them are gonna get out and we're going
to be the ones holding the bag. And we're the
ones who produce that money that they're laying on fire.
And this is what they want to do with us

(01:16:05):
and with the world and the world that we live in.
And I'm so glad that we have no way to
stop them. I think that's good personally.

Speaker 4 (01:16:13):
Yeah, you know the optimistic view on this. And again
I've been saying this already. Trust approval rating is thirty
percent and the bomb hasn't even gone off yet, right
like the econvey has have blown.

Speaker 6 (01:16:22):
Up and Loki. The demands destruction for natural gas and
oil is so intense that the economy, the global energy
market is greening faster. It's greening finally for the first
time since we started doing this is greening at a
pace fast enough to potentially stop some of the worst

(01:16:42):
effects of climate change.

Speaker 4 (01:16:43):
So so unfortunately the problem is at the same time,
we're also all of our new economic growth is entirely
like fucking gas.

Speaker 6 (01:16:53):
They're never gonna run. It's like it's you know, it's fine,
those are never going to run.

Speaker 4 (01:16:57):
Well, they play have definitely poison into ton of people.

Speaker 6 (01:17:00):
All right, oh yes, absolutely, no, no, no, yeah, no doubt.

Speaker 4 (01:17:05):
Yeah. But but I also think that like you know,
like just to some extent, like part of the strategy here, right,
if you look at sort of like what venture capital
is doing this, their plan is like, okay, yeah, we
can we can navigate the complete destruction of the global
economy and the subsequent political calamities and the subject political
fall out in the collapse of like nation states by

(01:17:26):
you know, creating our own sort of fascist corporate detocracies. Totally.
But they don't have to be right about that, Like
they just don't.

Speaker 6 (01:17:34):
They're not right now. You seen how bad these guys are.
Elon Musk can't even make a friend. You think this
guy can run a corporate state city state, Like, come on,
when that money stops having its value, They're not ready
for the whirl within their reaping. I said, there's nothing
we can do about that. There's nothing that we can
do about it with the levers of power that exist
right now formally, But there's actually a lot we can

(01:17:55):
do about it. And they're going to learn a lot
of reasons why previous capitalists built the sec, built the
welfare state. Yeah, why they did things, And that's gonna
be one of the last things they learned in Shillah.

Speaker 4 (01:18:08):
Yeah, last time they did something like this that was
frankly less stupid, because I cannot believe I'm saying this.
At least there were houses. I can't believe I'm saying
this right. But like the last time they did this,
they set off a wave of world revolutions they barely

(01:18:29):
survived and like revived the international left in a way
that he had been basically moribunned YEP for extremely long
period of time outside of like very small regions. And
now this, you know, the sort of like the sort
of sleeping giant that they unleashed has been awake for
like a decade and a half, and they're like, what

(01:18:50):
if we did this shit again? But worse?

Speaker 6 (01:18:55):
I mean, I don't see what could go wrong? For them.
I think I'm gonna say it again, Happy Pride. Let's
make this one the last birthday America ever has. Two
fifty is more than enough.

Speaker 4 (01:19:07):
Do you think they had their time? Our time is
coming soon.

Speaker 6 (01:19:11):
It could happen here.

Speaker 5 (01:19:26):
Imagine over one hundred thousand strikers shutting down the city
of London for an entire month, the makings of not
only a general strike, but also a social revolution. Such
was the case in eighteen eighty nine, when the dock
workers in the Port of London made their voices heard

(01:19:46):
and shook the city to its core. Hello and welcomed.
It could happen here. I'm antre sage andrewism on YouTube,
and I'm joined once again by James.

Speaker 3 (01:19:56):
I have to be back with you, Andrew.

Speaker 5 (01:19:58):
Likewise wise and have you heard of the Great London
dock Strike of eighteen nine?

Speaker 3 (01:20:04):
Have I went to school in a time when they
still taught a little bit of labor history?

Speaker 1 (01:20:09):
Ah?

Speaker 5 (01:20:11):
Okay, so I guess you'll be able to have a
bit of an exchange about it.

Speaker 3 (01:20:14):
Then, Yeah, but I'm interested to know more.

Speaker 4 (01:20:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:20:17):
I first learned about it through Erical male Ancester. He
wrote briefly about it in one of his pamphlets, one
of his many pamphlets. Yeah, but I found further information
and cross verification through a bunch of different articles that
are linked in the show notes and reference throughout. Now,
before we get to the strike itself, we have to

(01:20:39):
look to the conditions that brought it about. The Port
of London, like ports around the world in that time,
had terrible working conditions and terrible p alongside it. But
despite being the full crumb of London economy, the so
called unskilled workforce that made it run was left destitute,
in part due to the inconsistent nature of the work itself.

(01:21:03):
According to Lipcom's article, a lot of trade was seasonal.
You had sugar coming in from the Caribbean, timber from
the north, and tea and spices from the east. This
was in a time when you know, the sun never
set on the British Empire. Yeah, and back then trade
was also a lot more vulnerable to weather conditions. So

(01:21:25):
the flow of commerce was the most predictable. And since
ports were not very recognized either, it took a lot
of labor to load and unload ships, but there wasn't
a consistent demand for that labor week to week you know,
some weeks you would have hundreds of ships to load
and unload, and other weeks you would have mayre dozens.
So dock companies could get away with having a casual

(01:21:47):
call on and contract system. Basically they'd have a large
pool of men hanging around wheaton for label. Most of
them would only get taken on for a day or
just a few hours, and whether it even got that
day or not was based on luck and feeble. You know,
you could spend all day outside the dark waiting to
get called on and end up being sent home with

(01:22:09):
no pay. So it created a very desperate competitive environment
as men would basically have to push and shove each
other to get a chance at being picked for work
for the day. These are conditions where the workers are
clearly poised against each other, as is often the case
and the capitalism. But around that time, about a year

(01:22:30):
before the strike was talking about, according to an article
by Beverly Cook for London Museum, the so called unskilled
and impoverished young women working at a match factory in
the Bow Quarter of London went on strike and one
better working conditions and pay, which may have even inspired
dock workers' boldness However, what really kicked off the Great

(01:22:53):
Strike was a dispute over the bonuses workers would normally
get for working faster and more. One of the big
dock companies, the East and West India Dock Company, decided
to cut their bonus, and, led by a man named Bentlett,
on the fourteenth of August eighteen eighty nine, the Dark
workers began walking out and convincing their fellow workers to

(01:23:15):
do the same.

Speaker 3 (01:23:16):
This era of labor history is always super fascinating to me,
Like there's so much at stake right for labor in
this time period, people's lives were genuinely miserable, right, they're
working class existence in this time period, like you can
read I think Angles was writing about slightly earlier than this,
but like Engles has about the conditions for working class

(01:23:38):
people in Manchester. But also like your bosses and the
cops can just kill you uron strike, you know, like
there's the stakes are so high, Like not that the
cops can't and don't kill people now, I guess, but
the desire to unionize was so natural, right, Like it
wasn't coming from people like knowing of generations like we

(01:24:00):
do now, right, like we when we form our unions now,
even if we know we unionize, let's say Starbucks is
the place that's uniting that we can think of the
generations of union workers who have come before us and
the struggles and the gains that they've had. But these folks,
I mean, they had to an extent that people's charter
in these other things, right, Like, I know we've spoken
about blood outs before and the idea of understanding laddism

(01:24:22):
as collective bargaining throughriot. But like still, these people who
really like built the modern labor movement in the nineteenth century,
they paved the way with their blood for all of
us to an extent, right, And I think that's always
like really impressive to me that people were prepared to
like step into that fight.

Speaker 5 (01:24:40):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean we take it for granted that
we have a legacy to drop on today. But you know,
somebody had to be the first, some group of workers
had to be the first to you know, come together
and stand up in those industrial conditions and those urban conditions.
I'm sure there's a history of workers is standing up

(01:25:02):
prior to the Industrial Revolution. You know, you would have
collective bargain and even back in antiquity, but the miserableness
of the conditions really pushed them to take a stand.
And even though the work itself was made so competitive,
they still recognize their common cause. I'm sure that before

(01:25:24):
that strike they might have had some petty rivalries, some
petty grudges amongst each other, like all that guy keeps
taking my job, like it's like three days straight now
I haven't gotten any work because he keeps on shoving
me aside. But they put all that aside for the strike.
Their union was unofficial at the time, but that union
would go on to form a strike committee to put

(01:25:46):
forward their demands, which were an increase in wages, an
overtime wage, work time minimums, an end to the contract
system and a limit on the core ons which would
be fixed to specific times of day, and the recognition
of their union. Their strike would soon be joined by
the Amalgamated Stevedores union, which were basically a higher status

(01:26:08):
kind of dock worker and even more critical to the
function of the docks, so their support blended legitimacy to
the strike. The stevedores would issue a request to other
workers in London, particularly connected to shipwork, to stand in
solidarity to dock workers and their demands, and to donate
contributions to support the strikers, which is of course critical

(01:26:29):
to any long term strike action. So across workshops and factories,
other workers joined in the courts, ropemakers, car men, lighter
men among them by the twenty seventh of August and
estimated one hundred and thirty thousand men one strike. To
quote one newspaper article from the time, doc men, lightermen, bargemen,

(01:26:51):
cement workers, carmen, iron workers and even factory girls are
coming out. If it goes on a few days longer,
all London would be on holiday. The great machine by
which five millions of people are fed and closed will
come to a dead stop. And what is to be
the end of it all the proverbial small spark a
kindled a great fire which threatens to enveloped the whole metropolis.

(01:27:15):
And according to Beverly Cook, after two weeks of the
dockers striking, ten thousand tailors in East London also went
on strike. Now these were mostly Jewish immigrants who working
in the clothing industry's sweatshop conditions. Scattered across around five
hundred cramped workshops of mostly ten workers or less a

(01:27:36):
piece across Whitechapel. The tailors demanded fixed twelve hour working days,
a mandatory one hour break outside of the workshop, increased wages,
and a ban on force and workers to take home
their work. They mostly spread the word of their strike
through informational boasters. They were necessarily two connected to the

(01:27:58):
dock workers strike. At first, they had their own demands,
and it seems to have been a coincidence of fate
that they both threw us up around the same time,
perhaps one encouraged by the other. Now, during the strikers

(01:28:20):
Manchester put it quote, they strove to feed a population
women and children included of upwards of half a million people.
To raise subscriptions collections across the city, to keep up
with fast correspondence by letter and telegram, to organize meetings,
demonstrations and talks, to keep an eye out, to put
pen to people and stay a little less. The bosses

(01:28:41):
successfully trick English or foreign poor into black legging. To
monitor all the docs entrances to see if there were
people going to work and how many. All of this
stunningly well done by unsolicited volunteers. There was one noteworthy incident,
A shipload of ice arrived and a rumor was right,
ice was meant for the hospitals the strikers raised in

(01:29:03):
such numbers to help unload it without a care for
whether they would be paid for the job or not.
The sick and especially the patients and the hospitals were
not to suffer on account of the strike and coot.

Speaker 3 (01:29:16):
I hadn't heard them before that It's quite touching. Like
this is especially part of the discourse in the UK
at the moment, right, Like when medical workers go on strike,
like this always gets trotted out, like by the right
wing press that like, oh, well, they've just chosen to
make their patients suffer or whatever, when in fact, like
the procedures and planning that medical workers go through before

(01:29:37):
they go on strike to ensure that people don't die
because they went on strike are many and complex, right,
But like, it's interesting to see that even back then
people were like, as they were working out the best
ways to take collective action, they were trying to also
not harm other working people.

Speaker 5 (01:29:58):
Yeah, I mean, also the extent of the strike and
the extent of the suffering is really determined by the
extent to which the bosses are holding out.

Speaker 3 (01:30:07):
Right, Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 5 (01:30:09):
So if you want to blame anybody, you have to
blame the bosses, not the workers. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:30:13):
Absolutely, it's within the power of employers to not have
their employees have to go on strike in order to
be treated with dignity and respect. However they consistently choose
not to, Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 5 (01:30:26):
And I think what the workers demonstrate and strikes like that,
and strikes in this in this time period as well,
it's just their capacity to analyze the situation, to organize themselves,
to respond effectively to problems that arise. You know, MOUs
has to describe mass meetings and pickets, daily processions to

(01:30:48):
rarely support. They even works on persuading scabs to join them,
or according to some news reports, they were intimidating those scabs. Yeah,
but there was another code from that the become article
I wanted to read, he said, sir. During this week,
I have witnessed the most open intimidation practiced by the

(01:31:09):
men on strike, howling crowds going from dock to dock
and warehouse to warehouse, stopping businesses and threatening vengeance and
all who do not comply with their demands. Until now,
there are thousands who are out who had no desire
to strike, but were compelled to do so. Those who
dare to work for their wages are being brutally maltreated
and threatened with worse if they dare attempt to work

(01:31:31):
and defiance the strikers wishes. I saw several men severely
injured today on Tower Hill, the blood being made to
fly in all directions by gangs of strikers. What are
the authorities for if not to protect peaceable citizens and
earning an honest living signed a lover of freedom. This
was sentence the Times on the twenty fourth of August

(01:31:52):
eighteen eighty nine. And to me it kind of sounds
like a doc boss right and then yeah right, trying
to sound like oh in the sun bystander.

Speaker 3 (01:32:02):
Yeah, violence is not a thing that is absent in
the labor movement. But again, like to your point earlier,
often the discourse does not talk about the violence which
is done by forcing people to live in poverty and
labor in humane conditions.

Speaker 5 (01:32:14):
Exactly exactly, that's where the real violence lies. To be fair,
there were a couple instances of charges of assault and intimidation,
but the strikes were mostly peaceful. You know, they exercised
a lot of courage and discipline and restraint. They really
showed that these working class people were not impossible to

(01:32:36):
organize or absolutely dangerous. They had a capacity for order
and collective organization that could just as easily prefigure a
free society as it merely is directed towards negotiation with
the powers that be. Another aspect of their resistance that

(01:32:56):
I took note of was the fact that our rench
strike also a place. You know, you often hear nowadays
when you try and talk to people about, you know,
organizing a strike, organizing a general strike, whatever, or just
like a strike in the industry from people I've spoken to,
you often hear that, oh, I have bills to pay,
I have rent to make. You know this and that too,

(01:33:18):
in these violent and poor conditions, at the risk of
their lives, the families of strikers just chose not to
pay rent for the duration of the strike. That's right, Yeah,
all of them collectively, Yeah, a rent strike. And they're
also sort of been gathering donations and such in all

(01:33:39):
of this time as the strike is going on to
sustain you know, their their keep in other ways, the
other basic needs. But unfortunately the donations do not look
like there would be enough to stay of wealth starvation.
You know, despite food tickets being distributed to cover food needs.
After the direct food distribution could keep up, they're still

(01:34:00):
wasn't enough to cover for the swelling mass of strikers
and their families. And yet the strikers still held on
and rationed what they had, even as the bosses waited
and waited for them to give up. You know, the
bosses were literally counting on the starvation of the workers
to break the strike so they wouldn't have to give

(01:34:20):
into the demands. And it really got to a point
in the beginning of September where it looked like the
strike might not be able to go on. And then
a miracle of international solidarity came through. The Brisbane War
Laborers Union in Australia sent money from citizens of all
classes across Australia to support the strikers. The strikers got

(01:34:43):
a first installment of one hundred and fifty pounds, which
I found out is worth seventeen thousand pounds today. Jeez
and the Dark workers received over thirty thousand pounds in
total or over three point four million pounds today, just
to stay in their strike long term and secure their victory. Obviously,

(01:35:04):
with a wind for like that, they'll be able to
sustain the efforts. And even though the tailor's strike was
mostly separate from what the dog strikers were doing, the
dog strikers made sure that the tailers got funds to
support themselves. A mountains about one hundred pounds or eleven
thousand pounds today. Nice, I mean, can you imagine that

(01:35:25):
kind of solidarity today where that swell of resources can
be poured in to support fellow workers in their efforts.

Speaker 3 (01:35:34):
Yeah, fellow workers who had so much less communication with
than we do today, right, Like, it's not that they
can there's not They logged onto Twitter and we're like, oh, yeah,
well these people are on strike and I've talked to them,
and okay, we should support them. Like yeah, at a
time when people had less communication, they still managed to

(01:35:54):
have more solidarity. I mean, we see like people have
raised millions of dollars for Semit to feed people in Palestine,
right Like, yeah, the solidarity still exists for sure, but
specifically in their labor movement, it is hard to come
by often and.

Speaker 5 (01:36:11):
Even when you do see solidarity and lab movement, it
tends to be restricted to the borders of the Nichia.
You might see the occasional solidarity strike within the country,
but how often do you see strikes across and those
those borders.

Speaker 3 (01:36:28):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, Like if dock.

Speaker 5 (01:36:30):
Workers in London were to strike today, oh you know,
one of the chances that dock workers in Australia or
dock workers in the US would support them.

Speaker 3 (01:36:41):
Yeah. Like even living as I do, like at an
international border, Like issues of international solidarity will come up
in union discussions, Like there might be times when we
might take a collection or something for unions to the
south of what it's the border now in between US
and Mexico, right, But the idea that you could raise
that much money and that your solidarity could be so

(01:37:04):
profound that like that is a thing that let these
people get through. I think that's very hard to imagine
that happening now, which is a shame. It's just so
fascinating to me. How like we have this period of
the industrial revolution right where labor becomes even more exploitative,
more surplus value accrue to the people who own the

(01:37:26):
means to production. To be crudely Marxist about it, I guess,
and the working class, which is the people creating the
value but not receiving the benefits from it, has to
decide how to respond to that. And around the world
they're like fuck this, Like we're not having that. And
like the whole genesis of labor organizing, international solidarity, it

(01:37:52):
existed before, as you said, of course it did, but
like the sort of formal structures that we have today
arrives pretty quickly alongside that increased level of labor exploitation.
There's a moment from then till maybe the nineteen teens,
I mean maybe to the Great Depression where it really
seems like that the class between capital and labor is

(01:38:13):
like a really an equal of fierce fight, you know. Now,
like it almost seems like by comparison with sort of
labor organizing tends to ask more nicely and be a
bit less like a bit less radical and a bit
less international compared to how it was back then. Yeah,
I guess not all of it. There is still very
radical labor organizing, of course, I don't want to like
overlook that, but it's just this is a particularly remarkable time.

Speaker 5 (01:38:37):
Yeah, it's it's not as prominent. Yeah, well, perhaps it's
it's less just less apparent, less recognizable, or less amplified.
If it does exist, it could stand to be amplified more.

Speaker 3 (01:38:49):
Right, this was a time when bosses were really worried,
like it's as influenced by the lover of freedom writing
it's the newspaper. They were very concerned with this, right,
Like they weren't sure how long I guess they could
pull this shit off, like how long they can make
it last where they could exploit people this much.

Speaker 5 (01:39:08):
Exactly, And you kind of see them by in their
time today, right, because these battles were fought, but the
war wasn't one, you know, the class war as he
had to be one. Right, Well, I suppose, if you
want to be particularly cynical about it, you could say
that it has been one and the capitalists other wood inside.

(01:39:32):
But you'll notice that where we have one concessions, where
workers have one concessions in the past, the capitalists merely
buy their time and wait for an opportunity to roll
back those concessions.

Speaker 3 (01:39:43):
Yeah, without a doubt.

Speaker 5 (01:39:44):
And so we could continue to exist in this kind
of cycle of fighting and stopping short of total victory
by accepting concessions just for the fight after we start
again he has down the line. Oh we could you know,
reach the finish line as it were.

Speaker 3 (01:40:04):
Yeah, the kindly gentler capitalism that we were supposed to
build through collective action hasn't really delivered, and all it's
done has resulted in capitalism moving to places where it
can more readily exploit labor. I was having this discussion
with a colleague, right, like in an older colleague, they
have been industrial union person like their whole lives, and
they were saying that like in this era of neoliberal globalization,

(01:40:27):
the greatest failure of United States unions was to fail
to internationalize, like when Boarders dropped a capital but not people.
Right in the late twentieth century, and money and jobs
started moving from the United States to a lot of
cases to Mexico, right, and unions could have responded by saying,
we will go to Mexico and we will organize our

(01:40:48):
siblings in the working class in Mexico. Not the Mexican
people can't organize themselves and don't have a very long
and proud tradition of a work plus organizing. They do,
but like those unions that had the resources from years
of struggle in the US, by and large didn't go
to South and Central America and say we're here with you, like,
we are not going to allow them to exploit you

(01:41:08):
in the way that they once exploited us. And they
didn't do that, right, they kind of doubled down on protectionism.
You see it now with unions under Trump a lot
as well, you know, talking about tariffs and things if
they will protect jobs, Like they're sort of choosing the
nation to date over the working class when they do that,
and that's bitten them in the ass before, but they
still continue to keep doing it.

Speaker 5 (01:41:30):
Yeah, the nation state is one of the greatest psyops.

Speaker 3 (01:41:35):
Yeah, yeah, of all time.

Speaker 1 (01:41:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:41:48):
So just getting back to eighteen eighty nine for a moment.

Speaker 3 (01:41:54):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:41:55):
The workers, after receiving that that wind fall, managed to
hold on well just a bit longer and entered negotiations
with their bosses through a committee initiated by the Lord
Mayor of London, whose city was obviously quite paralyzed over
the past month. The strikers also received the support of
the Irish Catholic Archbishop Cardinal Manning, who shared that Irish

(01:42:20):
Catholic background with a lot of the workers, a lot
of the dark workers, and what I found I guess
interesting reading that was it. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia's
entry on Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, his involvement in the
Dark Workers negotiations kind of foreshadowed an encyclical that was

(01:42:40):
issued by the Pope at the time two years later,
which directly addressed the conditions of the workers and set
out a Church policy that supported the right of labor
to form unions, while of course rejecting socialism and affirm
in private property rights. So one step forward too, steps
by act. Yeah, and I found it interesting that that

(01:43:03):
encyclical was issued around the time that, you know, as
many were heard, the Pope of today has issued a
new encyclical on the subject of AI, in part in
relation to labor.

Speaker 3 (01:43:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:43:19):
So, by the end of the committee negotiations, the dark
Workers had all their demands met and the strike was
agreed to be over on the sixteenth September eighteen eighty nine.
The tailors also secured the victory, and after the strike,
the Dark Workers formed an official new General Laborers Union,
and the strike inspired thousands of unskilled workers to also

(01:43:41):
organize themselves. According to Lipcom, union membership overall grew from
seven hundred and fifty thousand in eighteen eighty eight to
one point five million in eighteen ninety two to over
two million in eighteen ninety nine, and this growth would
be a twelve numbers for the existing unions as well
the establishment of new unions. Now, if we look at

(01:44:03):
the strike through Malchester's eyes, I think he provides a
very useful analysis in About a Strike, written in eighteen
eighty nine, likely right after the strike itself, when Malchester
was in London. While he recognized that doc workers had
won the battle, he like I is questioning why they
didn't go ahead and win the war. You know, he

(01:44:24):
questioned why a movement powerful enough to bring one of
the world's largest ports to a standstill didn't go any further.
The docks had been running because workers by the thousands
collectively made them run, and one of those workers withdrew
their labor. An entire section of the economy grown to
holt So from Manchester. The first lesson of a strike
and their value for revolution was that they reveal where

(01:44:47):
the power actually comes from everyday life under capitalism, and
the state tends to hide that fact. You know, they
make it seem like society is organized by governments, investors, managers, owners.
What a strike makes it very clear that the people
who do the work are the people who make society function.
People who may have felt isolated would begin acting together,

(01:45:08):
holding meetings, organizing relief, feeding hundreds of thousands, managing communications
in the process, gaining practical experience and self organization, demonstrating
the potential to organize the city itself by themselves for themselves.
In other words, they developed in new powers which would
shape their new drives and establish a new consciousness. So

(01:45:30):
strikes are schools of struggle, but as Malesester points out,
they limited. They review workers' power, but they don't use
that power to transform society. The dock strike one higher
wages and better conditions, but the basic structure of society
was untouched. The dock bosses were still bosses, and the
workers were still workers, and the state was still the state,

(01:45:51):
protecting property and maintaining the existing order. And this was
Maltester's critique of the labor movement. They got stuck on
wooin concessions, in taking up the system. And we see
through history that employers regroup in economic conditions change, and
the previous skames would come under pressure. So one battle
will be in one does not mean the class war

(01:46:12):
has been one literally. A few decades later, another strike
took place in the port of London by dock workers
in nineteen twenty six, as recounted in Kalam Kant and
Mcinle's article on the Making of London So strike, the
Yakban dock workers, transport workers and other laborers joined coal
miners in nationwide strike after mine owners sought wage cuts

(01:46:36):
and longer hours. In that strike, dock workers once again
effectively shut down key parts of the city's economy. But
during this strike, state repression was especially severe. The government
deployed police, volunteers and emergency powers to keep services running
and break picket lines. Violent clashes occurred around the docks
where workers tried to prevent strike breakers and the movement

(01:46:59):
of goods. Also, the leadership of the trade union's congress
that you see was quite conservative in response to this
worker action, but rank and file workers demonstrated strong solidarity
and willingness to continue the struggle. Union leaders ultimately called
off the strike after nine days without secure in major
guarantees for the strikers. It was a major betrayal of

(01:47:22):
the movement and has demonstrated the weakness of traditional unionism
structurally and ideologically. You see the signs of unions basically
in part of the system in the end as we
see today, and you see the potential of workers as
always to act autonomously. So strikes like these leave me
with questions. You know, can a strike develop beyond a

(01:47:44):
negotiation over wages and conditions into a broader challenge to
hold control society? Can the solidarity build during the strike
survive after the immediate dispute ends. Can workers begin to
see themselves not just as employees with the but as
people capable of managing social life themselves. Can we assail

(01:48:05):
the legal order and the property protection that stand in
the way of our survival? And in all of these questions,
what I'm getting that is how would you turn a
general strike into a social revolution? There are still gaps
to be bridged between labor struggles and the grander ambitions
of such a revolution, and labor conditions have certainly change

(01:48:25):
for many. You know, I don't want to put forward
the position that we just need to recreate the rugged
industrial unionism.

Speaker 3 (01:48:32):
Of the past.

Speaker 5 (01:48:33):
Yeah, but we still have power in our refusal to
work that hasn't changed. And if we leverage that alongside
organization within and outside of the workplace, to support our
struggles to build and fight, to propose and oppose and
push for the vision of a world beyond workers and bosses,
not merely pushing demands two bosses, maybe we can accomplish

(01:48:54):
the social revolution the mantesters sought more than a century.
Bigger strikes, stronger.

Speaker 3 (01:49:00):
Unions are not the answer.

Speaker 5 (01:49:03):
There may be steps toward workers use in solidarity, confidence,
and organizational capacity to take direct control of all aspects
of social life. As always, all power to all the people.

Speaker 3 (01:49:17):
Peace.

Speaker 4 (01:49:31):
This is it could happen here.

Speaker 8 (01:49:33):
Executive Disorder our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the
White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you.
I'm Garrison Davis today I'm joined by James Stout and
Robert Evans. This is the Supreme Court addition.

Speaker 2 (01:49:45):
That's right.

Speaker 8 (01:49:46):
This episode, we're covering Supreme Court rulings from June twenty
fourth to July first, and a few other news items
that happened in that duration. And let's start with some
of those smaller, miscellaneous news items before getting to the
long series of Supreme Court rulings, which this episode will
focus on.

Speaker 3 (01:50:05):
Yeah, so starting with court stuff, I guess it appears
to Department of Defense is planning to involuntarily activate reserve
lawyers to serve as immigration judges. According to Artican Bloomberg
Law for some context to voluntary activation, you can still
opt for that it's to do with the nature of
their contracts as reservists, like how those how that time

(01:50:26):
adds up to their military retirement stuff. But in this case,
it seems that it is also planning on activating people
who have not indicated that they are interested in doing this. Secondly,
a horrific pair of shallow earthquakes, rated at seven point
two and ten point five on the rich Astrail struck
Venezuela last week, destroying whole high rise buildings. Aguaira and
Caracas were particularly hard hit. I actually saw a video

(01:50:49):
the street where I used to live with people who
are very clearly dead lying in the road, which sucks.
Days later, people are still trapped under the rubble. The
death toll is already in thousands, with over five thousand missing.
It will be very hard for us to get like
an accurate death toll out of the Venezuelan government. Among
the missing are more than one hundred recently deported Venezuelans

(01:51:11):
who were sent by the USA back to Venezuela. They
were staying in a hotel and that hotel collapsed this week.
The Iraqi military also raided politicians inside the Green Zone,
seized a bunch of cash and cited an ongoing anti
corruption effort, and the Department of Justice Anti Trust Division,
together with seventeen state attorney generals, has filed a civil

(01:51:32):
suit against a number of egg producers for their alleged
don lawful manipulation of egg prices.

Speaker 4 (01:51:37):
This was really interesting.

Speaker 8 (01:51:39):
I read through some of the court docs here and
this is definitely worth a worth a closer look at
some point.

Speaker 3 (01:51:46):
This is something I'd like to cover in the future. Actually,
Like people are like, you know, the cost of eggs
has become a meme or whatever, Like this is this
is this is just straight up like oligopoly behavior. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
they are alluding to increase the price of something, and
like this became a political issue.

Speaker 4 (01:52:05):
This was one of Trump's main campaign items.

Speaker 3 (01:52:08):
Yeah, yeah, they knew that. As they continue to collude
to do this, right, I think it does bad discussing
within the context of the way that we obtain our
food in this country and the people who have control
over the things A lot of people feel like they
need to get through every day, right, Like, I think
this isn't the sort of silly throwaway thing that some

(01:52:30):
people think it is.

Speaker 2 (01:52:31):
Definitely.

Speaker 8 (01:52:32):
According to an ethics disclosure released last Tuesday, President Trump
has made more than one point four billion dollars from
his crypto businesses last year, making over six hundred million
from Trump branded meme coins and five hundred million in
income from his crypto platform, World Liberty Financial, which also

(01:52:56):
partnered with the UFC Freedom to fifty event to pay
the fighters in crypto on the World Liberty Financial platform.
The peanut farm comes comes to mind, considering, Yeah, one
point for billion dollars in Trump branded a meme coins.

Speaker 3 (01:53:15):
It's kind of hard to write these corruption stories. I
was looking into one recently about some federal contracting, and like,
something that would have destroyed a presidency ten years ago
is like a twelve hour news story now.

Speaker 2 (01:53:27):
Not even Sometimes this.

Speaker 4 (01:53:29):
Is something that like jd Vance was just like talking
about just like openly, Like last.

Speaker 3 (01:53:34):
Story, Advance joked about this.

Speaker 4 (01:53:36):
Yeah, it was that quote.

Speaker 8 (01:53:37):
I think Nixon's historical legacy is enjoying a bit of
a renaissance, and deservedly so. I joked that if Watergate
happens tomorrow, it would be like a twelve hour news story.

Speaker 3 (01:53:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:53:49):
The idea that it took down a presidency is crazy unquote.
Yeah yeah, what a uh just laying it, laying it all. Yeah,
what a thing to say on the record.

Speaker 3 (01:54:00):
Yeah, Jesus.

Speaker 8 (01:54:01):
The Colorado Supreme Court has blocked three redistricting ballot measures
that would help Democrats pick up House seats in the state.
Also in Colorado, the DSA has continued its winning streak
with twenty nine year old Democratic Socialist Malot Kiros, who
won the primary in the first Congressional district, beating the

(01:54:21):
thirty year long incumbent by ten points. This incumbent has
been serving as the House rep longer than this Democratic
Socialist challenger has been alive.

Speaker 3 (01:54:33):
The first district in Colorado as well. Like they will
go Democrat, oh yeah, barring like the centrist Dems running
a spoiler, which is always the thing they can do.

Speaker 8 (01:54:43):
This person will go to Congress, joining the now growing
kind of informal Democratic Socialist caucus.

Speaker 4 (01:54:49):
There.

Speaker 3 (01:54:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:54:51):
Mayor's Ara Momdani has announced more details about the fifteen
million dollars allocated to help transuth access gender firming care.
The city is launching a tech Slash call line to
help connect people with care and services, and a direct
care access fund for providers of youth gender firming care
to quote help ensure New Yorkers can continue to access

(01:55:12):
medically necessary care unquote. That's from the Mayor's office. Currently,
New York City clinics like Colin Lord, Planned Parenthood and
the h and H City Municipal Hospital System all provide
character trans youth, but the fight continues to restore youth
care services at Nyu Langoon and Mount CYINAI. Also, speaking
of Mom Donnie, the Mayor's newly appointed Rent Guidelines Board

(01:55:37):
approved a first ever two year rent freeze for rent
stabilized units in this city. Let's now get to the
Supreme Court starting with two shorter summaries, and not short
because they're less important, just because we have a lot
to cover and we'll probably cover these stories more in
depth in the future. In a six to three ruling,
the Conservative Supreme Court justices struck down a law limiting

(01:56:00):
how much money political parties can spend on campaigns in
coordination with candidates, citing the First Amendment. This order overruled
the Court's five to four decision back in two thousand
and one, which upheld campaign finance limits. Essentially, this will
allow political parties to spend vastly more money while utilizing candidates'

(01:56:20):
low advertising rates that are not awarded to super PACs.
This will also make it harder to do campaign finance
reform or super pac reform based on this interpretation of
the First Amendment, meaning that court reform might be what
is necessary to change something like this in the future.

(01:56:41):
In another six' to three, ruling The Supreme court upheld
state bans on trans girls participating in girls' school. Sports
kavanaugh wrote the majority, opinion finding that The constitution And
title nine allows for school sports to be separated by,
sex and that the quote unquote sex In title nine
uote cannot possibly be interpreted to refer to anything other

(01:57:03):
than biological sex, unquote because that was the quote unquote
ordinary meaning of the word When title nine passed in the,
seventies and quote unquote biological sex is related to sex
assigned at. Birth in this, ruling do they actually say
that they do taigh biological sex to sex a sign at.

Speaker 3 (01:57:22):
Birth, yeah so they're not proposing like a chromotonality. Definition
not in my reading of the ruling THAT i see,
chromosomes because they also cited THE ioc, definition, right which
is a distinct thing from sex aside at. Birth THE
ic definition considers chromosonality and then also androgen. Sensitivity so
like WHERE i guess approaching a situation where someone could

(01:57:44):
be eligible for The olympics but not eligible for high school.
SPORTS i haven't read the entirety of this. DECISION i need,
to But i've read three other ones.

Speaker 8 (01:57:52):
Yesterday in the second, paragraph it states that biological sex
is quote sex assigned at.

Speaker 3 (01:57:58):
Birth, okay so, yeah we are approaching like a disparate
situation WITH ioc understandings of, sex which is NOT i
guess a particularly new thing like we Had Mario Jose
Martinez pagno was disqualified from she would have Been olympic
athiya in the in the in the eighties based on
like a misunderstanding of how crimsonality. WORKS i guess you'd

(01:58:21):
have to have the person who would split that difference
right for like a national organizing body to then decide
how they would deal with that person. Competing, nonetheless this
fucking sucks for, yeah for lots of young.

Speaker 8 (01:58:31):
People, YEAH i, mean and biological sex even as a
category is itself like, constructed this has actually no concrete
basis in. Biology, yeah just as sort. Of keagan And
jackson agreed that the state bands don't Violate title, nine
though on a narrower basis than the conservative, majority but
the three liberal judges dissented under the Fourteenth element's equal protection.

(01:58:54):
Clause now like, importantly the ruling itself does not mandate a, ban,
Right The court's not saying that schools must ban, transathletes
but rather That title nine claims cannot be used to
oppose bans on trans athletes from participating in school. Sports
this is a, narrow limited. Ruling it's kind of like

(01:59:14):
the least bad out of all of the potential bad.
Outcomes The court declined to rule on whether states that
have trans inclusive rules for school sports are themselves in
violation Of title, nine and declined to rule on the
degree to which trans people in general have protections under
the equal protection. Clause Clarence thomas's concurrence very very ugly

(01:59:37):
just like flatly like, transphobic way more so Than tavanaugh's majority.
OPINION i could read, it but it's just like it's
just ugly, stuff like he's just a, bigot and it
doesn't add anything to like the legal. Opinion it just
like took the chance to show he was a. Biggot,
Yeah LIKE i, said we will definitely cover this in
more detail in the near, future but that requires some

(01:59:59):
like careful focus and.

Speaker 3 (02:00:00):
Reporting. Yeah SO i want to, START i guess With
Temporary Protected STATUS. Tps, Right, so the case in front
of The Supreme court concerned for administration to attempt to
remove THE tps Of syrian And haitian. NATIONALS i think
we need to begin by addressing a lot of the
misinformation and misunderstanding. HERE tps is a, renewable non permanent

(02:00:22):
status with no pathway to. Permanency it can last between
six and eighteen, months and it's renewed currently by THE
Dhs secretary right that power passed them WHEN dhs began overseeing.
Immigration it was created in nineteen ninety and at its,
core it's supposed to be a way of protecting people
who are in The United states when disaster befalls their

(02:00:43):
country of. Citizenship if you were in THE us when
they declare A, tps you could apply get granted a work.
Permit the longest that will last is eighteen, months and
two months before it runs, OUT dhs has to determine
if they will reauthorize it or. Not some, folks for
instance from L, salbador have been in THE us for
decades ON tps that they have no, Permanency they have

(02:01:06):
no sense of. Stability it is very hard for them
to make progress in many areas that would be easy
for citizens or even permanent residents or visa. Holders right
because of that lack of the ability to plan to become,
citizens they wanted to pass to permanency like there are
a couple of ways to do that that they might
have to risk a leaving and coming back on another,

(02:01:28):
status which many of them are not willing to. DO
i wrote about The VENEZUELAN tps in My First day
And gap. Series so people want to hear an immigration,
lawyer as an immigration lawyer from one of the cases
where we're going to talk about, next explaining that that
it can THE tps as ruled By sanchez Versus mayorcus
is not the same as lawful admission to the country.

(02:01:50):
Right people have frequently been Claiming i've seen that The
HAITIAN tps pertained to the twenty ten. Earthquake this is not.
Correct this was in the courts in the First trump,
administration would be the simplest way of saying. It the
CURRENT tbs pertains for twenty twenty one killing of Juvenile
moissey and the subsequent violence thereafter Rate so it came
about under The byden. Administration if people want more, context

(02:02:13):
at the, TIME i was writing op eds FOR, nbc
AND i will include one THAT i wrote in the show.
Notes at the time of the announcement in twenty twenty,
one they were exceptionally clear that they did not want
moition people coming to THE. Us look genuinely some of
the most repugnant Language i've seen from the executive branch
outside of this. Administration in one, Instance mayorcus said those

(02:02:35):
who attempt to travel to The United states after this
announcement will not be eligible FOR tps and may be.
Repatriated there were some more explicit and in my, mind ugliest. Statements,
Again i've cataloged those in previous writing so you can read.
It this case pertained to whether an administration could terminate
A tps without going through interagency, review something court record

(02:02:56):
show they didn't do in case of The HAITIAN. Tps
the court heard that are and effectively said that the
courts could not challenge the failure OF dhs to do.
That they didn't say That nome followed the law or
followed the procedures that she should have followed to cancel THIS.
Gps they said that whether she did or did not

(02:03:17):
do that cannot be challenged in. Court one of the
other challenges here was that The haiti decision was motivated by.
Race the court addressed, this And i'm just going to
quote from the opinion. Here political discourse by prominent public
figures is increasingly count in terms that would have scandalights
the public just a short time, ago and a statement
cited by THE miout, respondents especially those Concerning haiti And

(02:03:39):
haitian immigrants to this, country exemplify this. Development but whatever
one may think of the cited, statements they are insufficient
to show that the termination Of HAITI'S tps designation was
based on the race of The haitian. People, ironically BOTH
dough AND miout respondents identify a strong race neutral explanation
of these official statements the present administration general stance and,

(02:04:00):
immigration and it's obvious antipathy towards past ADMINISTRATION'S tps. Policies
so what they're saying there is that this wasn't based on.
Race that hey all, immigrants, right, oh hey everyone ON.
Tps and do you want to point out that it
was not so very long ago that The president spoke
About haitian people eating dogs and. Cats here Is Mark
Gwen mullin answering a question about, This.

Speaker 9 (02:04:22):
Well the temporaries protective status is. Over they have to
go home. Now they don't have to go to the
country that they came. From if they're not feeling, safe
they can go someplace, else but they cannot stay. Here
YOUR tps to temporary protective status is. Over so we
will help assist you in leaving if you would, Like
we'll buy you an airline. Ticket we'll give you twenty
six hundred dollars to re establish yourself someplace else if

(02:04:42):
you don't want to go back to the country he came.
From but you have to, leave and we're going to
assist you in doing. So and if you choose not
to then we'll pick you up and force you to.

Speaker 3 (02:04:51):
Leave that was yesterday his him answering a question ABOUT tps,
Today so Today's wednesday for those listening, later going to
be going.

Speaker 4 (02:04:59):
Out After haitians living in the, Country syrians living in the.

Speaker 2 (02:05:02):
Country what's the path?

Speaker 9 (02:05:03):
Forward, WELL i hate you when it's phrased going after.
Individuals the fact IS tps for certain individuals UN's the
court ruling they no longer have. STATUS tps was, temporary
is never meant to be a permanent. Status you had
an opportunity why you were here to possibly try to
change your. Status now that the court worlding has went,

(02:05:24):
out you no longer had that. Option you have to
go back to a country that either take you or
back to the country you came. From and if you deport,
yourself which we will give you twenty six hundred dollars
plus a plane ticket to go. Home you had the
opportunity at that point to fill out it legally for
a visa or another way to come back in this.

Speaker 3 (02:05:42):
Country but you have to.

Speaker 9 (02:05:44):
Enter you have to come in through our immigration systems
and follow their, laws not. Illegally but if we have
to arrest you and to port you that option of
coming back in this country is off the. Table so
we would encourage everybody that fell or ANY tps that
is no longer temporary protective status for.

Speaker 4 (02:06:02):
You your time has.

Speaker 3 (02:06:03):
Expired so previously this self deportation had barred people from coming.
BACK i need to check exactly what program he's talking.
About maybe it's something THAT i haven't come across, Right
but what he's suggesting there is that people could leave
to a third. Country they would have to find a
third country it would accept. Them that is less and

(02:06:24):
less likely to happen in this global. Climate this is very,
bad especially the, people like we know in The, syria
there has been intercommunal violence ever since the end of
The Civil war right and the installation of The Syrian Transitional.
Government it is still not a safe. Place haiti remains
a place where, people especially people who are going back

(02:06:45):
with a bunch of cash from The United, states are
likely to be. Targeted this is really. BAD tps is
an important. Program it did not give people. Permanency it
could have been much, better but not having it is much.
WORSE doc things that are much more. WORSE i want
to move on To mullen Versus. Alotrolado people will be

(02:07:06):
familiar WITH aol if they've listened to my previous work
interviewed a lot of people FROM aol over the. Years
this case pertains to asylum And United states a law regarding.
Asylum the law says anyone who is in or arrives
in THE usa may apply for. Asylum of, COURSE cbp
can inspect people seeking admission to THE. Usa in, practice

(02:07:28):
what this means is that asylum seaters have. Meted this
process of physically preventing people entering THE usa so that
they cannot then arrive in THE usa and apply for
asylum is called, metering. Right there have been various types
of metering over the. Years The Ninth circuit had previously

(02:07:49):
held that when someone ENCOUNTERS us border, officials they may
apply for. Asylum in, practice the difference here is between
entering a port of entry versus having to have passed
through a port of entry or around a port of.
Entry port of entry is the thing with the Like
i'm thinking of The Sanate seder one by the big

(02:08:10):
revolving doors right where THEY cbp people. Stand whether the
blood the BLUE cbp blue SHIRTS cbp. STAND cbp has
previously said that they did this for capacity, reasons but
though that could those capacity claims have been contradicted by
sports of their own, obviously The Inspector, general, effectively The
Supreme court has blessed the practice of metering asylum applications

(02:08:32):
by saying that people have to have arrived in THE
usa versus arriving at the, border and this is been
portrayed as a very very straightforward. Decision let me read
from the opinion, here an alien standing In mexico does
not arrive in The United states by attempting and failing
to set for the. Country an alien quote arrives in
The United states only when he crosses the. Border the
I nas The Immigration Naturalization act thus neither entitles an

(02:08:55):
alien standing In mexico to apply for asylum nor requires
an immigration officer to inspect. Him they later said metering
does not permanently buy any alien from arriving and applying for,
asylum despite the fact that many migrants have died and
will die or suffer tremendous harm due to the. Practice
they go on to, say last respondent to argument that

(02:09:15):
the government might someday prevent all potential arriving asylum applicants
from reaching the point where they could find an. Application
addresses a hypothetical future, policy not the rescinded metering policy at,
issue which merely delayed entry to improve conditions at certain
points of. Entry let's listen now to this clip Of Stephen.

Speaker 4 (02:09:35):
Miller So america's doors are closed fully to a sylum of.

Speaker 3 (02:09:39):
Stickers that's not a hypothetical future policy That Stephen miller
is saying, it, Right, yeah that's. Absurd that's very clearly
what was going to. Happen you're being deliberately. Naive it's
obscene to say that that's a. Hypothetical it's not like.

Speaker 8 (02:09:54):
You're just like flatly laying out the mechanism in which
all asylum seekers can be denied the chance to even
ask for asylum by just magically saying, no you're actually
not talking to us when you're talking to us at the.

Speaker 3 (02:10:06):
Border, Yeah and LIKE i want to address, this like
standing In mexico claim, right because they're standing at the
port of. Entry so this building quote unquote In mexico
is paid for by The United, States it contains Armed
United states. Personnel, right are we therefore Invading? Mexico, like
have we therefore Seized mexican. Territory, like just because you

(02:10:29):
have not definitionly crossed the, border it is misleading to
say that you're standing In mexico. Right the port of
entry is clearly a liminal. Space it. Is it. Is
it's not like you're you're in Fucking chiappa shouting on a,
Megaphone hey CAN i have? Asylum, like, yeah this framing is.
Oversimplifying to put it, mildly what this means is that

(02:10:50):
we have created a de facto incentive to enter The
United states between ports of. Entry people who do so
will have arrived in The United. States this is what
happened under The biden administration WITH cbp, one where they
effectively USE cbp one as a metering. Tool the metering
tool because they and The trump administration have both Defended

(02:11:10):
title forty two was completely insufficient to keep up with
the backlog of asylum, applications and so people entered between
ports of, entry, right thousands of. THEM i reported on
this very great deal at the. Time there have been
many other forms of. Metering The obama administration did. Metering
that's when this case. BEGAN cbp, one The Migrant Protection,

(02:11:31):
protocols many Others in every single incidence where there has been,
metering we have seen that people enter between ports. Entry
we have seen escalations in border. Deaths with war construction,
continuing many of the places where people previously entered are now,
closed we will see more people entering along more risky,

(02:11:54):
routes and that will lead to more. Deaths there is
no doubt in my mind that this decision will kill. People,
also the people who do remain In mexico will in
many cases not be safe. There the amount of MIGRANTS
i know, personally like people WHO i talk to once a,
week once a, month who came through The Darien gap
WHEN i was, there who we traveled together and then

(02:12:16):
they attempted to apply FOR cbp one and were robbed
and were sexually, assaulted, kidnapped killed while they were In
mexico is more THAN i can count off the top
of my. Head this will have disastrous human rights. Consequences all,

(02:12:45):
right we're, back and we are back to talk about
birthright Citizenship trump Versus. Barbara in this, decision that court
held the quote children born in The United states to
parents unlawfully or temporarily present are quote subject to the
jurisdiction of The United States, states and our citizens at
birth under the Fourteen amendment citizenship. Clause the court was
a bit split on how they got, here with a

(02:13:06):
six to three majority holding That trump's attempt to remove
citizenship by executive order was, illegal and a five to
four majority agreeing that was. Unconstitutional, ACTUALLY i spoke about
this just before we get onto this With robert And
sophie In november of twenty twenty, four talking about like
things such an administration might. Do here we are here
is the relevant part of the Fourteenth. Amendment people aren't. Familiar,

(02:13:29):
quote all persons born or naturalized in The United states
and subject to the jurisdiction thereof our citizens of The
United states and of the state were in their. Resilde
the majority opinion somewhat based in juice. SOLI i, think
AS i, SAID i haven't dantial. SOLA i Did latin.

Speaker 2 (02:13:46):
Me the good news was the plat and there's nobody
really knows that it.

Speaker 4 (02:13:48):
Was. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:13:49):
Sure the bad use is that people still have strongly held.
Opinions well it's ecclesiastical and then why. Not but like
when if you take classical land and there's not a,
pronunciation that's. Sure, yeah just solely is. Fine WHEN i
did MY gcs, EXAMS i didn't do A latin oral
LIKE i did For. French the idea here is anyone
born here is citizen unless they are not subject to

(02:14:11):
the jurisdiction of THE. Usa that qualifier has generally applied
to diplomats and their, children that is the main. Group
because someone is here in an undocumented, fashion they are
still subject to jurisdiction of THE, usa as can be
fairly obviously understood from like a plain text understanding of that.
PHRASE i think let's Hear Mike. JOHNSON i Guess Mike
johnson was in oppressor when this decision came down and

(02:14:33):
someone got to tell, him here we.

Speaker 4 (02:14:36):
Go children born in The United states parents unlawfully or
temporarily present are subject to the jurisdiction of The United
states and our citizens e under the fourteenth element citizenship.

Speaker 3 (02:14:45):
Class what's your.

Speaker 1 (02:14:47):
Reaction to, That, well this is real, TIME i need
to read the.

Speaker 10 (02:14:53):
Opinion, okay but obviously THAT'S i, mean you could say
that's a texturalist originalist. View, HOWEVER i do think that
this has been grossly abused in recent.

Speaker 4 (02:15:06):
Years he's so bess is so passed his growl.

Speaker 2 (02:15:12):
Is so, mad and the joy in that reporter's voice
as he realizes he's Been number, ONE i get to
be the person to read the opinion out to Fucking Mike.
Johnson and number, TWO i get to ask My johnson
for a, responsesee which is. Beautiful i'm so happy for.

Speaker 3 (02:15:29):
Them. Yeah and as he, said, right like a plain
text understanding of this is all you really. NEED a
textuals understanding for, sure very.

Speaker 4 (02:15:37):
Clear.

Speaker 3 (02:15:37):
Yeah like, so there was discussion of the one Kim ark,
case which ruled that quoting, here a child born in
The United states of parents Of chinese, descent who at
the time of his birth are subjects of The emperor Of,
china but have a permanent domicile and residents in The United,
states and are they're carrying on business and are not
employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under The emperor

(02:15:58):
Of china becomes a time of his, birth a citizen
of The United states with virtue of the first clause
at a Fourteenth amendment of The. Constitution it's the first
cause at the Fourteenth amendment they read, earlier, Right it
is important to understand the context of this, case this
one art case happened in the context of an assault
on birthright citizenship and especially An asian migrants. Right this

(02:16:22):
is the era of The Chinese Exclusion, act for. Example
the decision in the one case was that the Fourteenth
amendment was declaratory of the common law understanding of. Citizenship
decision holds that quote aliens who traveled to The United
states for quote business or pleasure received no quote exemption
from the jurisdiction of the. Country the case has some
very narrow exceptions for quote children of foreign sovereigns or their,

(02:16:45):
ministers or born on foreign public, ships or of enemies
within and during a hostile occupation of part of our,
territory and children members Of indian. Tribes it's not in
nineteen twenty four that we get The Indian Citizenship, act.
RIGHT i thought they might have gone harder on that
than they, did but they did. Not much of the
descent focused on their use of the word domicile and

(02:17:05):
whether that was in THE, usa but as a majority
argued citing precedent And english common, law which is the
basis for the law we have now in The United.
States right, quote there is scant evidence for. This dramatically
reficienti ist. View sources from seventeen sixty six to eighteen
sixty eight defined quote allegiance by, birth just as The
british did as the tie or duty owed by one
who is born within the dominions and under the protection

(02:17:27):
of a particular sovereign and quote sources after the ratification
of the Fourteenth amendment do not put in doubt the
understanding of the citizenship clause at the time of and
after its. Ratification, certainly THE us has not used this
domicile test for other, things, right like it doesn't use
a domicile, test for, instance when it taxes its citizens secure.
Territorially it is not the, basis by the, way for

(02:17:48):
children of citizens becoming a citizen that is based on
a law passed By congress that does not based in
this constitutional. Amendment right it is worth noting that the
Way trump's Executive, order which was what was struck down,
here was, written it would have included people who are
domiciled here based on any understanding of the term domicile
THAT i think is, genuine was written not even in

(02:18:11):
this sort of more focused, way focusing on what they
perceived to be a weakness in That wong, decision so
who was a floater from the six three to five to.
Four the floater Was. Cavanaugh he oppined that Quote congress,
could consistent with a Fourteenth, amendment amend the, law or,
Otherwise i'm saying the law Here he gives a citation
for the law right otherwise in act new legislation establishing

(02:18:33):
exceptions to birth retizenship for children born to foreign citizens
unlawfully or temporarily in the. Country The congress has not
yet done. So the law in question as The Nationality
act of nineteen. Forty it, says quote the following shelby
nationals and citizens of The United states at birth a
person born in The United states and subjected the jurisdiction,
thereof and then another clause further, down a person unknown

(02:18:54):
of unknown parentage founder of The United, states were under
the age of five years until shown prior to his
attaining the age of twenty one years not to have
been born in The United. States he argues That congress
clearly did not want to make more exceptions than existed
in the one Ki mark, case and that they would
have done if they. Did but he says it is

(02:19:15):
possible to reexamine The constitution in modern context and look
at the jurisdiction part again and have additional exemptions that
would pass constitutional muster If congress chose to change the.

Speaker 8 (02:19:25):
Law it seems like what he's doing here is, like
by disagreeing with the sort of constitutional, interpretation he is
like giving The trump administration a sort of framework to
pursue this in the future if they want.

Speaker 3 (02:19:38):
To he's signposting.

Speaker 8 (02:19:40):
It, yeah, yeah and like whether or not that will
succeed as another. Question, yeah he's kind of showing them
a sort of, Path yes he. Is, yeah he's, saying
if you want to do, this you could do it like.

Speaker 3 (02:19:48):
This in my, Opinion, yeah they are currently having some
issues with getting all their representatives in The house on
the same page on shit and it terms coming. UP
a lot of the opposite to this was focus on
this speeches that pertain to the authors of the Fourteenth
amendment and the process surpassing the Fourth. Amendment it's quite,
remarkable how like what a fundamental lack of understanding about

(02:20:10):
how The constitution. Works this shows, rightly when The constitution is,
amended we do not incorporate all of the vibes of
the guy who wrote the. Text we incorporate the. Words
it is those words that are ratified by The, states
not the person who wrote. Them we do not endorse
that this person's opinions are now. Constitutional The United states
has a codified. Constitution it is the words that are

(02:20:32):
codified in that document that. Matter that's the end of
change explaining, constitutions Gors. Such, however to your, Point garrison
about Like kavanaugh pointing in a, direction Gor such seems
to be of the other. Opinion, here he says that
undocumented people living in The United states are incontrovertibly citizens
or the children born to undocumented people living in The United. States.

(02:20:54):
Quote what matters isn't whether a child's parents are. Citizens
what matters whether they and by law or their child
at birth have made this place their home and has
a domiciled within The United. States, thus he's saying that
non residents children could in his, mind be, excluded but
that anyone who is residing in The United states cannot be.
Excluded so he's kind of kind of halfway in between

(02:21:16):
on that that it seems like his his take would
not align With kavanaghs kind of signposted way.

Speaker 4 (02:21:23):
THERE i, mean, yeah it's on one, hand not. Great,
well it's you, know good but not.

Speaker 8 (02:21:28):
Great that in some interpretations this is like a five
to four, ruling even though The constitution is you, know
in a plain text reading very. Clear this is also
a very weird ruling because it's five to, four but
also in some ways six' three and Also, with gorsic
it's kind of like seven.

Speaker 3 (02:21:44):
One one seven and. A, half, yeah yeah, LIKE real
i think once they get to a point where they're
writing a descent or a concurrence and they know where.
THAT act i think that's how, it, works right they
write the descent after THEY'VE so. I did i'm. Pretty,
sure Yeah then gorsuch can fucking like have a go

(02:22:04):
on a sick have. Us, fun, yeah exactly like he
can nerd out on. This, ship well that's why he's
My Favorite supreme. Court justice not in terms OF don't
i don't agree with him. THE most i don't think
he's the. BEST person i don't think he's right the,
most often but he's always the, Most entertaining like.

Speaker 2 (02:22:19):
He's always the most interesting guy, To, see like how
did you?

Speaker 4 (02:22:22):
Arrive?

Speaker 3 (02:22:23):
There neil how is?

Speaker 11 (02:22:24):
The ship stands? Of things it's, every time it's it's fun. As,
hell yeah he is like a box. Of chocolates you
never know what you're gonna Get With. Neil gorsuch, but
yeah That is that is where. WE'RE at i guess
with three major cases pertaining to citizenship.

Speaker 3 (02:22:41):
And, immigration yeah.

Speaker 8 (02:22:43):
MIXED bag i guess this ruling is certainly a blow
To the. Trump administration another blow to the term of
administration is the ruling on mail, in Voting Where supreme
court ruled five to four in favor of counting valid
mail in votes that arrive after.

Speaker 2 (02:23:02):
Election day so we get a five to four in
favor of counting people's votes on the.

Speaker 1 (02:23:07):
Election day glad that that's at least still a five.

Speaker 4 (02:23:10):
To four.

Speaker 8 (02:23:12):
This case focused On a mississippi law that allows mail
and ballots to be counted as long as they are
postmarked honor before election day and arrive within a five
days after. ELECTION day a district court previously ruled in
favor of, the law But The fifth circuit reverse, the
ruling finding that votes must be received by. Election day

(02:23:32):
but For The, Supreme Court Justice Amy coney barrett wrote the,
majority opinion finding that quote the election day statutes require
the electorate's choice to be made on election day that
occurs so long as election day is the deadline for individuals,
to vote as it Is. In mississippi but the election
day statutes do not set a deadline for, ballid receipt

(02:23:54):
so they do Not prevent mississippi from counting ballots postmarked
before election day yet received. Afterward, Unquote, alido Thomas and,
gorsich Dissented with kavanaugh joining. Their descent, in part much
of this case rested on what quote unquote election day
means in. Federal Law The, republican party who is the

(02:24:15):
plaintiffs in, this case among a few other like The The,
mississippi Republicans The, republican Party the nationally and also in
Part The, libertarian party but Mostly The, republican party tried
to argue that because federal statutes use the term quote
unquote election to mean that ballots are both cast, and
received and by setting a day for, an election then

(02:24:37):
that also sets a deadline for votes to. Be received
but as, already stated the majority found that quote nothing
in the Federal Election day statutes requires ballots to be
received by election. Day Unquote Amy coney barrett notes, that
quote although The election day statutes refer to a particular
day for. The election plaintiffs do not contend that everything

(02:25:00):
must occur on. That day, for instance they do not
object to early voting or dispute that officials may count
votes and certify a winner after election. Day, unquote now in,
this Case the republicans aren't even directly challenging absentee voting
as a. General practice but their argument to restrict the
counting of some absentee ballots quote unquote relies heavily on, historical,

(02:25:26):
practice precedent and policy from the mid, eighteen hundreds because
that's around when the first two federal election statutes. Were
enacted basically During The. Civil war states that authorized absentee
voting did impose strict election day deadlines for, ballot receipt the, opinion,

(02:25:49):
notes quote but plaintiffs admit they cannot precisely tie this
historical practice to the text of the election day. Statutes,
unquote so To, quote Barrett the republicans' theory here, is
quote because we are governed by nineteenth century election, day
laws we are also governed by nineteenth century. Voting practices

(02:26:13):
carried to its, logical conclusion this theory would call into
question the way modern elections. Work unquote she goes on
to note how this would jeopardize everything from, voter qualification
to early voting to how we. Count votes Despite the republicans'
focus on this like nineteenth century election, day practices because
that's around when the first two election statutes were enacted

(02:26:36):
on a.

Speaker 4 (02:26:36):
Federal Level the republicans also.

Speaker 8 (02:26:39):
Ignore that right after the third federal statute was passed in,
nineteen fourteen mailan voting rose in popularity because Of The First,
world war and some states started counting absentee ballots that
were received after, election day so their argument both doesn't
actually refer to real federal statutes but also is. Not,

(02:27:02):
Consistent ultimately barrett writes that the quote unquote defining element
of a quote unquote election is the electorates act of choosing,
a candidate and that an election day just sets the
deadline for making.

Speaker 4 (02:27:15):
That.

Speaker 8 (02:27:15):
Choice quote the electorate's choice is made when voting, is
complete not when ballots.

Speaker 4 (02:27:21):
Are.

Speaker 8 (02:27:21):
Received quote per, federal statute the deadline to vote is,
election day but the deadline for when ballots must be
received is up to. State law like what this case
focuses on Is the mississippi state law on when ballots can.

Speaker 1 (02:27:35):
Be received that's a.

Speaker 8 (02:27:36):
State, issue Finally the republican plaintiffs tried to argue that
requiring ballots be received on election day or by election
day helps protect election integrity and increases voter confidence in. Election,
Results however barrett notes quote policy arguments are properly directed,
to legislatures. Not courts the question today is not whether

(02:27:58):
requiring ballots to be received by election day is a
good or. Bad idea the question is whether the idea
has made its way INTO The. Us code so regardless
Of whether republicans think this is a good idea, or
Not as, barrett says that would be a question for
the legislature and not one that can be decided on
in federal court because it has no basis in. Federal

(02:28:20):
law so the birthright citizenship and the mail in voting
ruling are the two that hamper the executive's power or
go against the agenda Of the. Trump administration but there
was a few other rulings that also relate to, executive
Power Which mia wong will cover in this.

Speaker 3 (02:28:40):
Special segment.

Speaker 4 (02:28:44):
So let's talk the, executive branch, federal agencies and. Presidential,
power now in addition to the other rulings that we're talking.
About here we also got an absolutely wild pairing of
Rulings In Trump versus Slaughter and Trump, versus cook which
were both Written By Chief Justice john Roberts and wish
establish together the rather astounding legal principle that the president

(02:29:08):
has complete power over the jobs of the heads of
independent executive, brands agencies except the Ones That Chief Justice
john roberts. Likes, PERSONALLY now i understand that that is a,
provocative Statement and i'm going to ask you to withhold
judgment until we get to the end of the, second,
ruling because, oh boy it's, a DOOZY and i am

(02:29:29):
fairly confident you will agree with this opinion by. The
end so Let's talk Trump. Versus Slaughter so Trump versus
slaughter is a case in Which The supreme court slaughtered
a ninety one year Old president that was set in
a Case Called humphrey's executor Of The united states in
order To Allow president trump to fire the heads of

(02:29:50):
a broad swath of independent agencies Irrespective of congress's specific
instructions regarding how those heads could. Be Fired So Trump
bury's the slaughter Began after Trump Fired Federal trade COMMISSIONER,
The Fdc Rebecca, kelly slaughter. Without cause i'm going to
QUOTE from, npr here as they, point. Out quote since

(02:30:14):
its creation Of The Federal TRADE commission ftc in, Nineteen
fourteen congress has held that commissioners can only be fired for,
quote inefficiency negligent, of duty or malfeasance in office. End
quote slaughter was presented with no such reason for, her
removal only told her quote continued service ON the ftc

(02:30:34):
was inconsistent With the trump. Administration's, priorities now there is
an obvious legal, President here PRESIDENT that i had, described
earlier because if you are tried to do literally this exact.
Same thing in the, nineteen thirties he tried to FIRE
an ftc commissioner for, political reasons and the Nineteen Thirty

(02:30:55):
supreme court Ruled In huffy's executor Versus The united states
that it and again this exact, same scenario the president
trying to FIRE an ftc commissioner for, political reasons that
this was in fact illegal BECAUSE the fdc is an
independent agency whose functions are, you know outside of the
executive and thus the president does not have the power
to simply remove their heads. At, will now this nineteen, thirties,

(02:31:18):
decision right is a decision from the notoriously Right Wing
hues court facing a central. Left president so in the
nineteen thirties it was important that the state be able
to operate INDEPENDENTLY of fdr TO prevent fdr from giving
too many concessions. To, workers now in twenty, twenty six
the also fanatically Right Wing roberts court saw a fascist
in power and. Decided, no ACTUALLY the ftc is an

(02:31:42):
agency that does executive functions and thus is under the
control of the presidents because of the unitary, executive theory,
which is, you know a theory that the president should
have complete control over everything in the, executive branch even
agencies that were explicitly Designed by congress to, be independent
and that this theory is good now because the writing
president is. Using it this Ruling allows trump to wield

(02:32:04):
unprecedented power Over The. American state many of. These bodies, you,
know specifically we should talk ABOUT the, fdc, Here RIGHT
the fdc has a cap of the number of members
Of the commission that can be from. One party trump
can now simply ignore this congressional mandate by just firing
All the democrats and Leaving. Only REPUBLICANS as, mpr Reported

(02:32:26):
Here's justice sonia Said of mayora and, her, dissent quote
the court gives the president a power unknown even To The,
english crown against which the, founders revolted elevating him above
his once coequal branches by transforming a duty to take
care that the labby faithfully executed into a license to
act in defiance of those. Very, laws, now notably the

(02:32:50):
court also ruled that this unitary executive, doctrine right this
doctrine of the president has the right to fire the
heads of independent executive agencies and a. Federal agencies that
this power does not apply To The, federal reserve And
thus trump can Not Fire Federal. Reserve, board remember leaves
the cook because of some extremely nebulous logic About The

(02:33:10):
federal reserve being the successor to the first And Second
national bank OF, the us which ESTABLISHES and i quote
our nation's tradition of central banking protected from. Political interference
now in what way quote our nation's tradition of central
banking protected from political interference differs even conceivably from our

(02:33:32):
long standing tradition of PROTECTING the ftc from. Political interference other,
than that, You Know john roberts, likes banks And the
First And Second national bank are older THAN. The ftc
and by, the way never mind Here that roberts himself
Admits That andrew jackson literally Vetoed The Second national bank out,
of existence which reads making his arguments about the history

(02:33:52):
of protecting central banking from political interference or read like a.
BAD joke i genuinely cannot understand HOW the fbc has
to be different as a federal latency In The. Federal
reserve it's also worth noting That the First And Second,
national bank we're not modern. Central banks they don't do

(02:34:14):
the modern central. Bank stuff, oh god here is from
a source that would know What The federal, reserve does
because It's The. Federal reserve it's part of the thing
that they wrote in their one Hundred Anniversary history. Project
quote AND again i kind of emphasize. This enough this
Is The federal reserve itself from their one Hundred Year

(02:34:35):
Anniversary history. Project quote unlike, modern Banks the Bank of
america did not set monetary policy as we know. It
today it did not regulate or act as a lender
of flash resort for other, financial institutions and it did
not hold. Their reserves what the fuck are we? Doing
here it is also incredibly jarring To read roberts go

(02:34:56):
from talking about how the president has total authority that
chooses to co Ordinates in Trump versus slaughter to, him,
going well we Can't let trump have at will employment
of like the heads of the people who work, for
him technically Of The. Federal reserve it's absolute legal gibberish
that only makes sense if you take into account what

(02:35:17):
is actually going. On here Trump versus cook was a
five to, four Decision with Roberts and kavanaugh joining the liberals,
In going Jesus Fucking, christ almighty we cannot give control
of the single most important financial Institution on earth Directly To. Donald, Trump,
now mia why are you saying this as if it's
fact and? Not speculation and to, be clear this is.

(02:35:38):
Technically Speculation but i'm going to read This from kavanaugh's
concurrence that serves his explanation of why He joined roberts
and the liberals in agreeing that the president does not
have the power to Remove A federal reserve board member
without cause when he and this, is notable also did
also Agree with Roberts when roberts in the, other case

(02:36:00):
that he can REMOVE an ftc board member. Without cause
Now here's. KAVANAUGH quote i agree With the court moreover
that we should not leave open the question Whether The
federal reserve can remain an independent agency in the wake.
Of slaughter, after slaughter there was a. Clear choice Either
The federal reserve may remain independent with the governors removable

(02:36:22):
for cause not, at will or it. May not leaving
that question open would create significant uncertainty about Whether the
court might soon Eliminate The federal reserves independence and thereby
Expose The federal reserve to political influence and jeopardize the
EFFICIENCY of us. Monetary policy even temporary uncertainty about the

(02:36:42):
status Of The federal reserve could spark, political unheaval including
confusion about whether the president could immediately remove multiple governors,
at once as well as turmoil IN the us and.
WORLD economies i would not go down. THAT road i
would not risk DESTABILIZING the us economy just so that
we can further and bowl over an, issue that in,
various permutations we have been thinking about for. Many years

(02:37:05):
as the course, opinion explains the government Degrees The federal
reserve occupies a unique role IN the us government and
maintains critical responsibility for the stability and success OF the
us and. World economies so there you, have. It folks
as long as the president does not fuck with, the
Money this court holds that the president can wield executive

(02:37:26):
power to fire the heads of independent federal. Regulatory agencies
we will be right back to cover a few more rulings.

Speaker 3 (02:37:33):
After this sad ray.

Speaker 8 (02:37:45):
And.

Speaker 2 (02:37:46):
We're back so it's TIME for i guess the less
certainly the least like upsetting portion Of The supreme court
rulings this, go around which is two different rulings that
involve gun rights, In particular at least in, ONE case
i think a very common. Sense ruling one is a lot,
more CONTROVERSIAL although i do think, broadly speaking it's still

(02:38:08):
a better ruling.

Speaker 1 (02:38:09):
Than.

Speaker 2 (02:38:09):
Not So on june, twenty Fifth The supreme court struck
Down a hawaii law that required people carrying firearms legally
to get permission before bringing their gun into any private
property open to. The public this law had passed in
twenty twenty three in the wake Of The supreme court's
twenty twenty two to six' to. Three, bruin decision now if,
You don't remember brewin ruled that firearm regulations must be

(02:38:32):
consistent with the historic tradition of gun regulation in order
to have any kind. Of Constitutional standing because bruins sliced
the heart out of a lot of prior gun control legislation,
around the country particularly, state level legislation and particularly like
bans on, concealed carry right one of The big things
bruin did is that it was basically impossible to get
a concealed carry license in a number of States, prior

(02:38:55):
to Bruin, and after bruins states could no longer kind
of arbitrarily make it basically impossible to get a, concealed
carry license which is why you saw a, bunch Of,
states including hawaii rush to pass a bunch. Of new
laws and these are generally referred to, as vampire rules
because if you, remember your low vampires aren't allowed to
like enter your domicile unless you. Give them permission so

(02:39:18):
basically you're treating like legally carried concealed firearms. As a
vampire that's kind of like why it. Got The term
as hawaii's legislatures said when they passed this twenty, twenty
three law the legislature enacted this default rule in light
of ample evidence that Property owners in hawaii do not
want people to carry guns under their property. Without express
consent now, IN Their coverage usa today noted that the

(02:39:40):
legislature argued their law was Rooted an older hawaiian legal
president quote in, eighteen eighty, Three for example hawaii's king
prohibited anyone from, having a knife swordkner at. Their dangerous
weapon hawaii's attorney general, Told, the court unfortunately the Lawyers
defending this hawaiian Law To the supreme court also cited
less pleasant precedent Bring Up the black codes and other

(02:40:01):
laws meant to stop black citizens from carrying guns to
ARGUE that the us has an established tradition of. Restrictive
firearm laws neil gore such in particular, Exception to this
this law and similar Laws, Passed In, California, new York
Maryland and new jersey have all presumably been declared unconstitutional
as a result.

Speaker 4 (02:40:18):
Of this ruling they were.

Speaker 3 (02:40:20):
Already Stayed, here In california so i'm. Guessing, they disworn
yes they stayed, AT pending, this i think so. It, will, die.

Speaker 2 (02:40:27):
No yeah exactly gun rights Advocates Like The fire policy coalition,
cheered The result the court explained that these laws did
not merely regulate where licensed. People, could carry instead they
severely burdened the ordinary exercise of the right to bear
arms by forcing peaceful people to see permission before, entering,
the stores, restaurants, gas stations pharmacies and other businesses they.
Visit every, day That burden, the court held is Incompatible

(02:40:48):
With the second amendments protection of the right to carry
firearms for Self defense as americans go about. Their, daily,
lives so yeah you could feel about that one. HOWEVER
you want i think that's kind of, like, broadly reasonable honestly.
In my opinion arguably a much bigger Deal Was the
supreme Court ruling last thursday to change the way the
federal government regulates casual drug use. And firearms ownership for a,

(02:41:10):
very long time it's been illegal to buy and own
guns while, doing illegal narcotics even marijuana with. A medical
prescription this came Out Of The gun control act of,
nineteen sixty eight which itself Was Passed After Martin luther
King Junior And robert kennedy. Junior were assassinated it banned
any person who is quote an unlawful user of or
addicted to any controlled substance from. Owning a gun so

(02:41:33):
when you buy a firearm the normal way up until,
right about now you would fill out a form called
a four, four seven three and on it you have
to state that you're not a marijuana user or the
user of any, other illegal drug and that you acknowledge
even if marijuana is legal in your state and you,
have a prescription you're still not allowed to buy or
own a gun if. You use, it right that like

(02:41:54):
you have to acknowledge, ON the form i know that
my state's laws. Don't matter here and, it's always, been
you know even out of this very unclear just how far. This, Prescription,
goes right like if you are a gun owner who doesn't,
do drugs regularly but one night someone offers you a
hit from a joint while you're already drunk or, like
a bump and, you take it have you then? Broken

(02:42:14):
the law if you go to buy a gun the
next month or, the next year is? That still illegal
and this has always been a gray area more, often
than not because the whole law restricting gun owners from
using drugs has always, been unconstitutional BULLSHIT and the atf
preferred not to talk about it in. Too much detail
now that era seems to be coming. To an end

(02:42:34):
in a, rare Unanimous ruling the court Cited with, A Texas,
man ali hamani who had his home RAIDED by The
feds in august of twenty twenty two due. TO iron
paranoid i think a lot of people know this is
how this, case gets started but they like just because
His Name, is ali hamani thought he, and His fan
their muslim buddy and his family were like Involved with
the iranian government or spies, for some sort and so

(02:42:56):
they searched His Home For The. New york times when agents,
searched The home mister hamani told them that he had
a handgun locked in a safe. Inside the house he
also told them that he used marijuana about, every other
day wanting them to about sixty grams of marijuana. In the,
house in addition agents also found cocaine in his parents' closet.
Quite a house, six Months later mister hammani was charged
with one count of possession of a firearm by an

(02:43:17):
unlawful user of a controlled substance based on. His, marijuana
use now all of this made for A Decidedly weird,
Supreme court case hamiani's lawyers pointed out that there had
never been any evidence that his family Was connected to,
iran or terrorism but that the prosecution brought up the
word terrorism repeatedly When talking about hammoni.

Speaker 3 (02:43:34):
And his, Family oh yeah i'm sure yoking.

Speaker 2 (02:43:38):
To Hear that when hamani appealed and the case wound
Up At, the Supreme court the trump administration actually had
its lawyers defend the law because law enforcement relies heavily
on this to be able to attack on extra charges
to People They, Dislike.

Speaker 3 (02:43:50):
Hunter Biden.

Speaker 2 (02:43:51):
Yeah, hunter BIDEN meanwhile the ACLU and the nra wound
up submitting briefs on the other side. Of the issue
the ruling was narrow if the court declared that the
government's use of the law was overbroat and that recreational
drug users should not be assumed to be addicts who
pose a danger. To the public so the law, wasn't
declared unconstitutional but, its application was and the precedent that

(02:44:13):
this sets would seem to necessitate changes to four four
seventy three and to the way. LAW enforcement works i
do want to quote before, you end here the last
bit of the ruling From the al gore such quote
because he possessed a gun, despite this prohibition the government
insists it may imprison him for up to fifteen years
to disarm. Him for life according, to the government none
of this turns On how much Marijuan or mister harmony

(02:44:35):
uses or what effect it. Has on him it makes
no difference either if he keeps a firearm only in
his home, for self defense never misuses a, gun while
intoxicated never poses a danger to himself or others as
a result of. His marijuana use the only thing the,
government must, show it says is that an INDIVIDUAL like
mister harmioni regularly uses any amount of. A controlled substance
to square that expansive Theory With, the second amendment the

(02:44:55):
government invites us to draw an analogy between its present
regulation and historical laws. Address habitual, drunkards those laws the
government contends demonstrated tradition of firearm regulation consistent with its
effort to disarm any regular user of any controlled substance without.
Any Further showing the government's analogy fails under every measure
it asks. Us to consider the historical laws on which
it relies targeted different kinds of people did so for

(02:45:18):
different reasons and operated, in different ways and faced with
all these shortcomings in, the government's submission we cannot say
it has carried its conceited burden of showing its PROSECUTION
of mister harmani Complies With. The, second amendment yeah. Pretty,
good ruling.

Speaker 3 (02:45:30):
Yeah, like you say like this is one of those
things that is like exists in large part to allow
cops to, fuck, with people yeah and prosecutors to put
people in prison for longer when when they've been convicted
or charged, with, something else right or to put a
massive potential sentence on them so, They, plead guilty.

Speaker 2 (02:45:48):
Like it doesn't. Make YOU safer and i, have always,
argued you know whatever you, think About It the second
amendment is. A civil right and if the government could
take away your access to a civil right and imprison
you if you ever the wrong thing, in your body
then you just don't. Have, civil, rights, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:46:03):
Yeah yeah and the. SAME is true i think if
this vampire rule, to an extent like if a government
can speak on your behalf and say that's not, okay
about guns can they do it about? Other? Things? Too
RIGHT exactly like i know There Was a First, amendment Challenge.
BRIEFLY in CALIFORNIA i guess. I didn't succeed that's not
what they went With In. The supreme court they Went
With the. Second AMENDMENT challenge but i thought.

Speaker 8 (02:46:22):
That, was interesting yeah let's close with, one more Case
One more streame court ruling that could have some really
really big impacts on digital privacy and. Surveillance going forward
in a six,' To three ruling spreme court found that
police gaining access to location data through what's called a
geofence does constitute a quote Unquote Search. UNDER the fourth

(02:46:47):
amendment a geofence is when investigators ask a tech company
for location data on all cell phones or cell phone
users in, a certain geographical range usually. During a certain
timeframe the goals to identify what, phones and by extension
who was present when a crime Was Committed, to quote

(02:47:07):
justice kagan, writing, for the majority quote an individual has
a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about, his cell
phone location and police intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when,
they demand the information even though for only a limited
time and from a third. Party tech company unquote the

(02:47:29):
fact that this qualifies as a search is important because
that means that it's subject to certain restrictions as Laid.
Out in, the constitution, this case in Particular The one
that supreme, court was ruling on revolves around a bank
robbery in twenty nineteen where the suspect was seen on his.
Phone before The robbery police asked google to hand over

(02:47:51):
location data for all cell phones or other devices in
a one hundred and fifty meter radius around the bank
within an. Hour of the robbery data would show users'.
Coordinates every two minutes nineteen anonymous. Users were first identified
police then narrowed that down to nine users whose movements
in and out of the geofense were tracked within a
Longer two hour Period it was before police then requested

(02:48:15):
personally identifying, information on three users which they then used.
To arrest the suspect the suspect asked that the evidence
obtained to be Thrown Out on, a fourth amendment violation
arguing that the warrant authorizing the location. Data search was
invalid he eventually pled guilty to the, whole bank Robbery
Thing but the fourth amendment claim made its way through
the district court appeals courts In Up. To the supreme

(02:48:38):
court the district court did agree that This Search, violated
the fourth amendment but it didn't block the location data
from being permitted as evidence because they found the officers
acted in. Quote Unquote good Faith the Fourth circud court
of appeals initially ruled to one that the geofence did not,
qualify as a search so a. Warrant wasn't even needed one,
judge dissented from this arguing that the or an issued

(02:49:00):
was quote so lacking in particularity and probable cause that
it was invalid and this. Could be important Later But
the full fourth circuit panel reheard the case again and
came out evenly. Divided seven to seven half ruling of
the Geofense Warrant, violated the fourth amendment but most justices
still found that the exclusionary rules good faith exemption, applied

(02:49:24):
in this case which Leads Us. To the supreme court
monday's Ruling Only covers the fourth amendment, aspect of the
case not, the good Faith Exemption and the fourth amendment
question itself is. Split into two issues did the police
conduct A Search under the fourth amendment by Acquiring? Location data,
from google and second did the multi step geofence warrant

(02:49:50):
that was? Issued in that case did that? Make The
Search reasonable the supreme court found that it was a
search quote because an individual has a LEGITIMATE expectation of
private i see in his cell. Phone location Data unquote
but the court did not answer that second question, whether
this was reasonable whether this search was reasonable. Because Of the, warrant,

(02:50:11):
justice kagan wrote quote we Leave it To the court
of appeals, the further question whether, given the warrant issued the,
search here was reasonable meaning that each of its steps
was properly described with particularity and found to be supported.
By probable, cause Unquote For reference the fourth amendment protects
against the quote unquote unreasonable search, and, seizures, of persons,

(02:50:35):
houses papers and effects and requires that warrants may only
be issued upon probable cause and must particularly describe quote
the place to be searched and the persons or.

Speaker 3 (02:50:46):
Things.

Speaker 8 (02:50:46):
To be seized quote so to, issue a search warrant
a judgmentst determined there's a. Quote unquote, fair probability this
Is According, to the supreme court that evidence of the,
crime would be found and that the search is.

Speaker 4 (02:51:00):
Of an.

Speaker 8 (02:51:00):
Appropriate scope to, quote the opinion quote that it is
carefully tailored to its justifications and will not take on
the character of the. Wide ranging exploratory searches the framers
intended to prohibit that wide ranging aspect is the exact.
Issue with geofence warrants they cast a dragnet on everyone

(02:51:23):
in a certain area. At, a certain time so while
in the bank robbery case a judge did, issue a
geofence warrant it was an uncommon multi step warrant that
Was co developed with google that gave officers a large
degree of discretion on how to narrow down suspects from
a wide pool while obtaining additional and increasingly personal information

(02:51:48):
throughout the. Execution of that warrant this New Ruling by
the supreme court is largely based on This twenty eighteen
Case Carpenter, of the united states which found that accessing
cell phone location history based on cell site Towers Qualifies
as a fourth amendment search quote unquote given individuals. Reasonable

(02:52:09):
expectations of privacy kagan wrote that this case is Very similar,
to the carpenter case except that the location Data as
collected by google is actually far more detailed and more
fine tuned than what you can get from. Cell phone
location records but the government tried to argue that geofencing

(02:52:29):
does not count as a search because of the short
time window the location data Is pulled from the, court
struck this Down Ruling that the fourth amendment doesn't kick
in only once an intrusion quote unquote goes too far
and applies regardless of the quote unquote quality or quantity
of the. Information the government obtains the other argument the

(02:52:51):
government put up was that because the suspect quote unquote
voluntarily gave This, location data to google he quote lost
the legitimate. Expectation of privacy unquote you see stuff like this. Argued,
Very very often right this is something that, comes up
a lot is that we're giving these tech companies all,

(02:53:11):
of this data anyway so how can we reasonably expect?

Speaker 4 (02:53:15):
It to be private this is, the.

Speaker 8 (02:53:17):
Third party doctrine which was originally for bank records. And
cell phone numbers but the third party doctrine Was not.

Speaker 4 (02:53:25):
Applied To.

Speaker 8 (02:53:26):
Carpenter V United states so justice kagan wrote that for,
the very same reasons it should not be applied here
to location history. Collected By tech companies and i'm going
to read a kind of long quote, to CLOSE us
out Because i think what kagan writes here could have
some really big impacts on how we understand. Digital, privacy

(02:53:47):
going forward quote cell phone location information is not truly
quote unquote shared as one, normally understands the term because
cell phones and the services they provide are such pervasive
and insistent, part of daily life indispensable to, participation in
modern society that a person can hardly help but generate a.
Trail of location data. In no meaningful sense does that

(02:54:10):
mean a person voluntarily exposes to any third party a comprehensive.
Dossier of his movements the, government's app by app feature
by feature method of granting fourth amount of protections misapprehends
the very nature of. Modern Cell phone use pretty much
everything a person does on a smartphone requires some. Kind

(02:54:31):
of opt in the point of carrying smartphones is to use,
what Is on, them as carpenter said to use the apps.
And services they provide that is what has become, a
pervasive and insistent even quote unquote indispensable. Part of daily
life and So that is what carpenter insulated from. The
third party doctrine kagan ads police officers invade a cell

(02:54:54):
phone user's reasonable expectation of privacy when they, access location
history unquote And this paragraph by kagan also Frequently quotes,
from the carpenter ruling combining her own analysis with the,
analysis in that case. Just to be clear so the
actual question of both reasonableness and if there's a good
faith exemption for this specific warrant in the bank robbery

(02:55:18):
case will Be Determined by the. Appeals court going forward
that is something that we will absolutely, keep An eye
on and i'll be talking TO someone from the eff
about this case next Week for A Regular it could happen.
HERE episode as well i believe that. Is all for
us Yep For our special Supreme Court.

Speaker 4 (02:55:38):
Edition of. Executive disorder that's.

Speaker 3 (02:55:41):
Right You Can email Cool zone tips at proton dot
me if you have any. Story tips for us.

Speaker 4 (02:55:49):
We reported the news go.

Speaker 2 (02:55:51):
Away now we're done.

Speaker 3 (02:55:53):
We, Reported the news.

Speaker 2 (02:56:00):
Hey we'll be back monday with more episodes every week
from now until the Heat.

Speaker 3 (02:56:05):
Death Of The Universe it could happen here is A Production.

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