It Could Happen Here Weekly 41

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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 gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
can make your own decisions. Uh, welcome to it could

(00:28):
happen here a podcast about things falling apart and how
to deal with that and hopefully take care of yourself
and your people. UM. Today we have a returning guest,
Carl Casarda from Enranged TV. UM. Now, Carl, every time
you and I have chatted on a show together, it
has been about firearms, which is obviously your passion and specialty,

(00:50):
well one of your specialties. But today we're not talking
at all about guns. UM. I mean maybe here and there,
but today we're talking about the thing that is has
been your your career, uh for what most of your
working life. Fair to UM, you want to kind of
walk through your background, he because we're gonna be talking
about information security and like sort of the future of
threats that are going to be like coming uh throughout

(01:14):
like the next few years of our lives. Obviously this
year in particular, there's been a bunch of stories about
like Russian attacks on digital infrastructure and vice versa. And
that's always, like pretty much has been something that's in
everybody's backburn since we got the Internet, usually through like
questionable films with Sandra Bullock. Um, I think net that
was net right? Um? The Net? The Net? Yes, exactly, Yes,

(01:37):
where they somehow hacked a car and nineteen or something.
You gotta do that when you're flying through cyberspace with
your right yea. Um. But yeah, you want to walk
everyone through kind of what your actual background is in
this industry first. Yeah, totally. So if anyone watches in
Rangers watched it for a long time, you'll see this
reflected in some of my content because I do deal
with some of this intermittently on the channel. It's definitely

(02:00):
influenced how I approach my work there with the social
media and all that. But so way back when I
was like one of those kids that was in the
hacker space, and I grew up like trying to make
computers and technology do what it wasn't designed to do,
and learn to make it do things it shouldn't have
done for my own interests or others around me, Not
not in any really negative way, but like just a
deep curiosity and how does this stuff work? And being

(02:21):
part of the early online community. We're talking pre internet,
where you have like an acoustic coupling jack modem and
you would dial in like war games, yea, literally plug
your headset into the fat. I was on boards like
that way back when whatever should have gone past those days.
Doing things wirelessly was such a mistake, Like I'm so
piste off that when I like sit down to research,

(02:42):
I'm not like jacking into a gigantic box um like
it that makes me live it Like shadow Run promised
me that I was going to be like using one
hand to shoot at the approaching corporate security guards and
have another hand on my like keyboard that I wear
around my neck that I like plug into the wall
to hack buildings. Well, hey, maybe someday we'll have neurological

(03:05):
implants or wet wire implants brought to us by Monsanto
that'llually the RM and will just get shut off in
our own rooms right from the mouth to God's ears,
Carl absolutely, who doesn't want that? Who doesn't want my
neural tissue tied directly to a corporation? But that fuck yes?
But anyway, so I grew up in that space, and
it actually, back then it naturally turned into a career.

(03:26):
It wasn't like now nowadays you pretty much have to
go get a bunch of certificates and a college degree
to even start looking at an infract career. But back then,
if you kind of had like skills with a Z
at the end of you could get a job. And
I landed up doing like help desk at this one company.
Landed up they noticed that that's where my interests were,
and I ended up becoming their information security architect over

(03:46):
a couple of years, and that turned into a multiple
decade career pretty much culminating and working at a Tier
one Internet backbone provider doing sub seed fiber optic like routing,
networking and de DOS mitigation and bought neck control search
and destroy. So it really turned into a really wide career,
not only like when I started off backbone Internet, but

(04:07):
like encryption, firewalls, application layer controls across the board for
multiple corporations. So it was a weird and interesting space.
But I don't really do that much anymore except on
the side, but I've had a pretty exciting career with it.
So I think probably a good place to start is
just in general, because folks are always interested about this.
What what do you What is your recommendation for people

(04:28):
ask like, what should I be doing to kind of
protect myself as I forced my head under the constant
stream of sewer water that is social media these days? Well, yeah,
you know, the simplest thing and everything, an infosec is
always controversial, just like anything life or any any recommendation
makes someone's gonna be like but otherwise or anyways, or
there's a better solution, and there always is a better solution.

(04:51):
But the realistic thing is when you talk to the
average person, the average person isn't gonna sit there and
hack a Linux box to have a better social media experience.
That's just not realistic. So the best thing anyone can do,
the simplest, best thing, is to get one of the
trusted password managers. There's a number of them out there.
I'm not going to recommend an individual one right now,
because anyone I recommend someone's gonna go. But there's another one,

(05:13):
but there's a few of them out there. Having a
password manager and having a unique, difficult, complex password for
every account you log in onto on the internet is
the first number one thing you can do as an
individual to protect your interest. Because if you're logging in
with the same password monkey to Facebook, Twitter, and your
bank account, that is a disaster waiting to happen. So

(05:35):
the first thing you can do password manager passwords you
yourself can't remember. As a result, I allow the password
manager to generate like twenty four character long alpha numeric
crypto nonsense. You put a gun on my mouth to say,
what's your password to your bank and I don't know.
I can't give it you. I have no idea. And
so that right there is the first thing any basic
individual can do to protect themselves on the Internet that,

(05:58):
uh is totally sensible. Um, I don't I'm not great
at password managers, but I never know what my passwords
are and they're all different, and so my life is
this constant stream of like needing to figure out what
my password was, failing and resetting it. But it does
mean that I change passwords regularly, right, But what's so
great about password managers. You can have passwords that you
could never human remember, and you can have neak ones

(06:20):
per website, every website you log in, you could be unique.
And by having it in this database that's properly encrypted
with a key phrase or even dual factor, then at
that point means you literally just can cut and paste
your passwords into things you don't yourself know what they
are and if depending on your privacy levels, you can
do that locally with local solutions with files like on

(06:40):
your own machine. But frankly a couple of the cloud
based solutions, as much as the cloud freaks people out,
is the better one because it'll work on your phone,
it'll work on your black top, it'll work on everything everywhere.
That makes total sense. Um. I think Another good thing
to get into while we're on this subject. We just
started talking about passwords, and obviously it is important to
keep and secure though is um I think one thing

(07:02):
folks don't often think about, especially people who are activists
um who who may foresee or have engaged in things
that are legally questionable, don't think about enough is social
media networking um as, and by which I mean having
social media that like it is possible to find your
other social media by like knowing you know, like having

(07:23):
the same name and Twitter and on Instagram and stuff. Um,
having social media that like can be tracked across accounts. Um.
Most people would be surprised at how easy it is
to do that. A hug and melanct a huge amount
of tracking. Nazis tracking even like a ton of the
what the work I did not do, but my colleagues
did to like doc docs Russian like secret service agents

(07:45):
and stuff. Was like, oh, we found them in you
know somebody, uh, their their bosses wedding, Like they're tagged
in this thing in VK And from that we were
able to like find their their account on this other
site and like from that, like now we have this
like map of everywhere they've been for the last like
three weeks, and we can build this social map of
their entire life. Yeah. No, by list by just literally

(08:08):
existing in modern space, you're constantly leaking some form of metadata,
right you are. You are always leaking metadata, And the
more of you allow to exist in the world, the
more that's the case. So, like there's also you've got
to think about what the threat is and what the
risk is. Right, there's the risk of the individual having
a pair of social relationship with the Internet like I
do as a content creator is one thing. People, there's

(08:29):
always someone that wants to delve into your private life.
But that's a very different risk than a nation state actor. Right,
those are two different things. And when it comes to
a nation state actor, quite honestly, unless you're real good
and I've been doing it for a long time, the
individual bluntly is kind of fucked word. As a general rule,
your best security as an individual in that situation is

(08:51):
the anonymity of the crowd. But when we're also not
talking about most people who are threatened to kind of
by the state and that situation are not being threatened
by the federal government, but they may have they may
like be attending protests and not want the Louisville Police
to like put together that they're in an affinity group
with people and like something you can do for that
is make sure you're not like, if you have a

(09:13):
personal account that's under your name with your friends, that
account shouldn't be liking and sharing things from like a
political account that you have, or from the account of
like a group that you're a part of, or something
like that like, just try to think about and look
at your your digital footprint from the outside and think,
is it possible to connect me to people I don't
want to be publicly connected to through this And the

(09:34):
minute you've breached that connection once it's gone forever. Right,
this is the forever. Yes, this is the same thing
as like with phones, like someone will have like their
regular phone, which, by the way, all these smartphones are
just surveillance devices in our pocket. Right, Let's let's say
you go get a burner so that you don't want
to be connected to the device that you normally use
on on a level that's one step above the regular
individual level. If you ever have those two devices emanating

(09:56):
at the same time, they're now connected in a way
that like, let's say, the authorities can associate them together
because of triangulation and seeing a burner phone and your
phone coming from the same house, you've breached all the
privacy you would have had from your burner phone for example. Now, Karl,
do you have much to say on the subject of
because I know one thing I have seen people do
people who are you know, having conversations that they're concerned

(10:18):
about is put bags in Faraday cages. And I've heard
mixed things about how reliable Faraday bags and stuff are
for actually stopping signals. Do you have much to say
on that matter. My experience with that is not all,
not all bags that you can just buy off the
internet are made equally um So what you want to
do is tested, and you can only test it to
a certain degree. But the really simple tests are you
put it in the bag and you try to darn

(10:39):
dial the darn thing or use any WiFi connections to it.
And that's a simple test. Now is it as good
as like? Is it as good as not having the
thing on you? Of course not leaving or else is
always the best answer, but it properly In my opinion,
a properly built Faraday box or cage or bag that
you've put some testing into is a pretty reliable solution.

(11:00):
And it's you know, there are so a problem that
you might encounter is um or that I have. So
one thing I have heard people talk about it is like, well,
in order to have kind of a private conversation, we
like drove to a specific location and we left our
phones off in the car and then went on a walk.
And the problem with that is that Now you have
both just driven to a location with those phones, and
those phones are associated with each other, right right, Well,

(11:23):
so first of all, you got to think of a
world where all of this metadata is being collected at
all times. So these phones and their associations in physical
proximity to one another is stored somewhere at all times,
whether or not it's going to be resourced or accessible
to the powers that be when they wanted to be.
It's all there. My phone next to your phone, next
to that guy's phone. Those associations all exist. They're all

(11:43):
talking to the same cell phone towers in the same area,
giving them not only GPS coordinates but triangulation data, which,
by the way, if you go way back to the
hacker Kevin Mitnick, that stuff was going on back then
before they had triangulation data to get him, right, So
that stuff is all still happening, and those association does occur.
In regards to saying I turned my phone off, how

(12:04):
do you know that's off? Most of the moderate phones,
what does off mean? And yeah, okay, pull the battery maybe,
But even then, I would not trust any of these
devices in the regards to them quote being off, especially
things like phones that have unremovable or not removable batteries.
Off is more like sleep it is, right, Yeah, I mean,

(12:27):
I think one of the worst things that's happened for
personal security is the end of the phone where you
can remove the battery, Like being unable to actually cut
power to it without you know, disassembling it is a
real issue. One could argue that there was like that
that's a much much more insidious reason they did that,
or one could argue that it was just one of
design and comfort, And it's like hard to say. It

(12:50):
doesn't really matter if it was insidious or not. Reality
kind of a poor Knolos dose situation, right totally is
so when now that we're talking about phones, here's another
thing that's been near and dear, and I think you've
seen some posts from me out this um. Everybody really
likes the convenience of things like biometrics, thumb authentication, fingerprint
i D, facial identification. And here's the reality of that.
We know this already and there's legal this exists in

(13:12):
legal space already. But the reality is that you can
be coerced to provide biometric data against your will. So
if your phone is authenticated to you with a fingerprint
I D or your facial i D. They can pretty
much say you must give us your thumb to unlock
this phone, or for that matter, frankly, they could hold
the phone in front of your face in certain circumstract circumstances,
even against your will, and it will unlock the device,

(13:33):
and that is considered not a violation of your rights. So,
for example, if you had a long, strong password on
the phone, they cannot coerce you to give that up
because that would be a violation of your own rights
and Fifth Amendment, which is interesting um so. But at
the same time, one could also argue that at certain
circumstances where there's a lot of cameras that are not
necessarily watching everything you do. But you could also consider

(13:56):
that pass phrases could be dangerous, like saying an airport
because all those members could see you plugging in your
pass code. So it's a matter of if, when and
where right, So what's the right solution at the best time.
But I would say that if you were going to
be in a place that was contentious, um it is
almost always better to make sure you do not allow
for any biometric authentication on device. Yes, I never like

(14:17):
never turn on don't even like ever have had it
in the like ideally you have never turned on facial
recognition on your phone, like even if you like deactivated,
I don't know, I don't, I really that was That
was one of the first I used to be in
tech journalism. Right, obviously I'm not an expert on any
of this, but like the worst thing in terms of
like my personal comfort with devices was when they were like,

(14:40):
everything's gonna read faces and fingerprints. Now I don't. I
don't love that, um, but you know it's it's inevitable,
right because it is and I had in the past.
I did a fingerprint unlock earlier in my life, and
I do not have any devices that unlocked that way anymore.
But you do like that it is more convenient, right,
You miss it when you need to get to your

(15:00):
phone quickly and you can't do it. But like, I
don't even I don't even let my phone have just
like a four phrase like password anymore. Like it's eight
characters for me. It's a little bit of a pain
in the ass, but it comes with fewer risks and
one of the things that's challenging to every individuals, they
have to look at what their threat profile is. Right,
So like, for example, UM, soccer mom driving her kids

(15:22):
to school and stuff, she might be really good, well
off with a bottometric authentication on her phone, frankly, because
if she didn't use that, maybe she wouldn't even use
a proper four character pass phrase. And if she's not
concerned about being at a protest, for example, and having
some authoritarian take her phone away from her and authenticate
to it, maybe she doesn't need to worry about that.
But for a lot of us in the world's we
live in, that's a different risk profile, right. We got

(15:44):
to think about what our risks are as individuals and
what makes sense. So if your passphrase is going to
be one, two, three, four or use a thumb print
I D. For most people they'd be better with the
thumb print I D. But for someone like myself, no,
it's not a good idea. Yeah, and that's m Yeah.
I think that kind of brings us to uh, probably
the last part of this, which is UM, do you

(16:07):
have specific advice on like VPNs UM? Obviously I recommend
everybody you signal I I just firm messages in general,
But like a specially stuff that is secure. Don't if
you if you like number one first rule of any
kind of this sort of security, don't ever put anything
on your phone ever that's legally questionable if you can

(16:30):
avoid it, like conversationally, like right, do not don't send
it over a phone if it's something you would not
be able to survive having read d you in a courtroom. Yeah,
for the audience, a lot of the audience may not
know what signal even is. Right, So signal ism is
a is a text messaging alternative. So like for example,
on your phone, you've got regular text or if you've
got an iPhone, you've got I message. Signal is an

(16:53):
end end encrypted solution that you install as an app.
And because it's end end encryption, it means that it
passes the wire in theory not decryptible by the parties
that are passing the data packets in the middle. So
that's a man in the middle the decryption. Right. So
for example, I message is encrypted theoretically end to end,
but Apple ultimately has the cryptographic keys, so there is

(17:14):
while they might say one thing, there is nothing really
preventing them from being man in the middle and being
able to read the message in transit from a to
be But if the keys are stored on your device,
which are then protected with your passphrase or whatever your
authentication mechanism is, and those keys are not archived or
kept by some hierarchical man in the middle authority, if

(17:35):
it's done right, which Signal is done pretty well, it
means that your data in transit is probably not decryptable.
And that's why signals a good solution, and it's a
good one for the average person. Install the app. It
works just like testa text messaging, but you can have
a pretty good level of a knowledge that the data
you're passing is not being decrypted or caught in transmission

(17:57):
or in the path. So I would say get get Signal. Um,
it's it's your best bet, right Like and again we said,
I said, you know, you don't want to ever say
anything over a phone that is something that can get
you in trouble. But also like life is life, and
that's not always realistic for people in certain situations. So again,

(18:19):
signal is your best bet. Nothing is perfect. And again,
if you're putting it on your phone, there's a number
of things that could go wrong every single time you
do that. But um, that that's one of your better
things that you could do. And then of course we
talk about VPNs. Yeah, so so VPN to those like,
I'm just gonna go with the basic levels because I
don't necessarily know the level of knowledge that people are listening.

(18:41):
VPN is a virtual private network. So what that is.
You connect to this virtual private network and it passes
your data through an encrypted tunnel to an exit point
somewhere else on the Internet in theory masking the source
and origin of your requests. So like, for example, let's
say you were looking up something on the Internet that
you didn't necessarily want people to know you're looking up. Yeah, like,

(19:03):
let's say you're researching the truth about the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy by Bernard Montgomery Sanders. Um, and
you know that the n s A is looking for
truth seekers who are who are finding out the reality
of that situation. You know, you don't necessarily want them
to know that you have have become pilled. Right, So
if you were to do this from your computer at home,

(19:26):
But what happen is to people that don't know how
this all works, you would be coming from an I
P address that's associated with your account that you're connecting to,
whether it's Verizon or Comcast or whatever. And you go
and search up that truth and the n s A
finds you with a keyword search for JFK and the truth.
And therefore, because of that keyword search, they go to
Comcast or to Verison and say, hey, we are requesting

(19:49):
you tell us who did this search. They will get
them essentially a request that's a legal request for information,
and then Comcast or Verizon will provide the n s
A this is the IP address account of the person
that did that. What VPN does is you connect to
the vp and service first, the connection from your machine
to the VPN services then encrypted. Now does the VPN

(20:10):
service know your IP address? Yes, but when you actually
type in that information or go to the Internet to
request that data, it actually goes through the VPNs Private
Tunneling network and egresses from somewhere else on the Internet,
thus masking your actual I P address and in theory
your origin of source. Now that's not true, but what

(20:33):
that does is mean that if someone if say the
n s A I wanted to know who's doing this
truth search, they would then find an eat IP address
that actually came out of let's say Joe's VPN service,
and they would have to go to Joe's VPN service
and go we noticed this emanated from your network? Who
did this? At that point, you have to trust Joe's

(20:55):
VPN service to not disclose their account information about you.
So what you've done is you've changed it. We know
the telecoms will communicate with the government or whoever if
they need to, they always will have You don't necessarily
know if Joe's VPN service will. You've changed your trust
model from your telecom to your VPN service. So if

(21:16):
you're gonna pick a VPN, you have to do a
little bit of research to know that it's a trustworthy
resource that won't just give you up at the lightest
form of interrogation. Yeah, and none of them again, there's
nothing perfect and often like we did find out what
was it last year that one of popular vpn was
like run by the FEDS, Like it's yeah, that's not

(21:36):
an impossible thing. Um. I know a lot of folks,
particularly journalists, use proton Um, which is I think based
in Switzerland, and you will get given up if you
if the Swiss government is angry at you right, you
brought up a very good point. Uh, services that exists
outside of the KNUS, the continental US mean that they

(21:57):
are under different legal jurisdiction the ones that exist wholly
within the KONUS. So as a result, if something from
the United States government comes as a request to the
Swiss company, there's a much like like higher chance that
a Swiss company would be like, we don't really care
about your reports. That's worth considering. Also, think about this,
This actually works in reverse. And I don't want to

(22:18):
get too deep into this, but when you're working at
a tier one internet back one provider, you should know
that sometimes traffic strangely gets pushed offshore and then back
to the United States for analysis that would normally be
let's say, not necessarily constitutionally legal in the United States.
So there's a lot of shenanigans going on. Yeah, and again, like,

(22:40):
I think protons are generally a pretty good service. I've
had no problems with it um, But we should should
be clear here none of these are perfect solutions. There
is no perfect solution. The only perfect method of digital
security is not putting things on the Internet or like
through you know, the mobile networks and stuff like that is,
if it stays between you someone else, Um, that is

(23:02):
your best bet of it not being you know, intercepted
or something. A conversation that you have in the woods
without phones anywhere near you is the most secure kind
of conversation. Let me second on proton I agree, it's
a good service. There are others out there. We're not
trying to pick on one in particular or pick against
anyone in particularly. There's a bunch of at work. Yeah.
Another thing that you need to consider in this sort

(23:22):
of thing is also what you're dealing with. Like so
for example, on I put up a post a while
back because there was a bunch of stuff going on
in Ukraine with with people posting photos that got their
locations add things happen that I mean, that's and that
has been happening for a decade in that war, like
a well almost a decade as long as it's been
going on, And I posted something about it. And one
of the recommendations I made on there was a contentious one,

(23:44):
but I'm gonna back it up in a minute. As
I used I mentioned pour the onion relay. So the
tour is essentially it was originally created as a as
a way to deal with the dark web quote unquote,
and to also relay traffic in a way to mask
the origins, very much like a VPN service. Now there
are a bunch of these. So what it was is

(24:05):
there's these Onion relay nodes all over the Internet, and
when you connect to the to the Onion network, your
traffic bounces through three, four, or five, six, seven of
these nodes. You can sort of dictate what you want
depending on the client you have. And so let's say
you connect to an Onion router network node in Arizona
and then you egress somewhere in France and you've jumped
through six nodes in the process. Well, one of the

(24:27):
things that's a well known fact is that a number
of these Onion relay routing nodes are owned by nation
state actors, whether it's the United States or others. So
so one of the things I got taken to task
for and I want to explain this is people like, well,
that's not the compromise network. It doesn't mean that it's useful.
Actually it does, because depending on what you're trying to do,
may matter. If you're trying to mask the origin of

(24:50):
your data source or your upload or your search for
a short duration of time, this will still help you
jump through six nodes. They've got to relay back six
nodes to figure out the origin of the person connecting
to the relay network. And that's assuming that there was
a compromise node in the process. So that means if

(25:10):
you're passing data through a compromise node, does that mean
the data in transit is safe? No? But is the
Is the anonymity of the origin of the poster safer
for a longer duration of time? Yes, So these things
get really complex, real fast, and this is again one
of the best things you can do, because there's no
single perfect solution, but stacking, so not just going through

(25:33):
tour but also tour into VPN at the same time,
and you're I think one of the better ways to
think about security is kind of the way Sebastian Younger
describes how insurgent war works, which is it's all about
creating friction for anybody trying to spy on your ship.
There's no perfect answer, but the more things you can
make be a pain in the ass, the better your

(25:54):
odds that you will not have an issue. Right Like,
that's all you can do is make it potential really
more annoying and more difficult for for whoever might be
looking right like it. The more friction you can create,
broadly speaking, the more secure you're going to be. Absolutely
now another thing to think about, and we're getting kind
of deep in the weeds too. This is above and
beyond the average person, right, the average person, get a

(26:17):
password manager, don't use your same passive everywhere, and don't
use biometrics unless you're forced, like pretty much have to
and move on with your life. But once you're beyond
the average person, this is what we're talking about now.
So like if you're if you have a computer and
you use it as your normal day to day operating system,
talking to your friends, doing dot dot dot dot dot,
but then also need to do something else a little

(26:37):
more privacy inclined, you should not trust that device. So
at that point, your web browser may have all sorts
of cookies and metadata and storage in it that, even
if you're going through a VPN, still may be able
to reveal your identity a spell as mac addresses and
other stuff. So if you really want to get pretty
into the weeds with this, you have to do something
like use an ephemeral operating system install that it has

(27:01):
no legacy data on it. One example of that that's
a Linux based when it's called TAILS. You essentially use
it like a live USB drive. You boot off of
that only, or you use a machine dedicated for this,
and you burn the OS down every time you're done,
because there's no legacy information or data that can be
pulled out of your web browser or your cookies or

(27:22):
your Mac dress information that can associate it with you,
regardless of if you've done everything right to mask your
IP address of origin. God, that's the hot girl shit. Um,
when you're when you're when you're doing when you when
you're doing that kind of stuff. Um. And again I
think at this point, I think, up through most of this,
it's been kind of like people being like that's too much,
and people being like, Okay, yep, this is exactly what

(27:44):
I already am or need to be doing. Um, this
is probably very few people need to be concerned about
that sort of thing, but um, you know it it is.
I I've know I note Like again, I worked at
Belling cat Um. I had a number of colleagues who
were like personal enemies of the Rush in state who
had to do stuff like this, um, and it's you know, paranoia.

(28:06):
I mean, and here's the thing going above. So again,
like if you're a normal person, you probably don't need
to be you know, doing stacking a VPN, you know,
getting signal and all this stuff. But also why not, right, Like,
there's no harm in in the additional security. It is
a little bit frustrating. But here's one of the things
I think people don't often think about enough. You're not

(28:28):
engaging in that kind of security stuff purely because there's
a threat now, but in part because you don't know
what the future is going to bring. And one of
the things that I would point out for that is
a lot of people right now have been having for
years conversations about a thing that may soon legally be
murder on a federal level, you know, um, abortion, right,

(28:51):
And so it is possible that overnight an awful lot
of conversations a bunch of people have had legally will
suddenly be very illegal conversations. And then you may be
glad that you took greater care with your your personal
security prior to that point. Yeah, I mean, like, so
think of the I mean, I'm not a person that menstrates,
but on menstruation tracking app is very useful to a

(29:12):
lot of people who do and those tracking apps, now
that metadata in there at some point could be extremely
dangerous or incriminalized or incrim criminalizing, incriminating excuse me, to
someone who otherwise was doing nothing more than trying to
maintain their natural health. And so that is a really
dangerous concept. So at this point, I mean, within the

(29:32):
United States, I hate to say this, those apps are
probably dangerous to the individual because that data could be
easily used by a government resource to uh, to do
something bad to someone who's done nothing wrong. So I
think we should move. I mean, at this point, I
think we've covered the basis that you could kind of
responsibly the advice you can responsibly give someone in a podcast.
And and folks, should it be able to add let

(29:55):
me throw one thing out real quickly. So you mentioned like,
for example, we don't you don't necessarily have the risk
actor that requires using VPN or signal. Let me see
this way back when gosh, when I was doing crypto
work decades ago, I was what you mean cryptography and
not we should specify these days? Oh yeah, excuse me,
cryptogracryption work. Yeah, yeah, I I had the opportunity. We're

(30:16):
Phill Zimmerman of p GP, and actually p g P
pretty Good Privacy, which was one of the fundamental UH
security project or projects way back when, was actually written
for human rights violations. He wrote it because people were
doing research of like warlords were getting their laptops taken
away and then finding out who spoke to them and
getting people killed. So p GP was like this human
rights thing right from the beginning. And cryptography back when

(30:39):
I was young and naive, I always thought to myself,
this is what we need. This is the future when
everyone gets proper crypto will blind the government will blind
the corporations. We're gonna have this crypto anarchist future where
the government and corporations can't get us. And the reality
is most of that God who served. And the truth
is cryptography is too hard for most people to use,

(31:00):
and as a result we don't. But here's what I
will say. The more people that do something simple like
you signal or use a VPN just to browse the Internet,
not because they're doing anything various, just because their privacy
like conscious, because it makes it normalize and that means
that the person that's using it because they need to
for like, let's say, to protect human rights doesn't stick

(31:22):
out like a needle in the haystack, because everybody's already
doing something sane in the first place. Normalizing proper privacy
and cryptography is better for everyone. Yes, yes, absolutely agreed.
This is a nice segue because you were just talking
about the past and how beautiful and bright it seemed. Um,
let's talk about what you see as kind of the

(31:42):
future of info security threats. Well, I mean, so there's
so many levels to that. First of all, if we're
talking nation state level, I personally strongly believe that all
of the big players have already compromised everyone's network. Everybody
got everybody has got us. China's about us, We got China.
Anybody right now could go in and pretty much funk

(32:03):
up the grid on someone else like that, And there's yeah,
and that's not actually the least that's that's safer than
other possibilities, like because there is a level of of
mutually a shared destruction there where it's like, yeah, man,
Russia could take down the grid, but like that wouldn't
be good for them, and vice versa. You know, yeah, no, true.
So the reality is though everybody's and everybody's network, those

(32:24):
days are over. Um. When it comes to the individual
and I'm gonna have a the audience, there might be
people in the audience to feel differently, and it still
doesn't mean that we don't try. So one of the
things I want to say is you're gonna hear some
skepticism here because I've been doing this career for a
long time and I've seen things go wrong more than right,
and so in that regard, this is gonna sound kind

(32:44):
of cynical. But when it comes to the idea of
individual privacy, in my opinion, with the exception of when
you're taking a very active effort in something very specific
that you want to keep private because that's something you're
working on personally, the reality is individual to all privacy
is dead and gone, and we're just starting to smell
that corpse um. Whether it is credit card data transactions,

(33:09):
your cell phone history, your phone numbers, what you've done
on the internet, what you've done on social media or
not done on social media, whether you have an account
on Facebook or not, doesn't even matter. The metadata and
the trailer you're leaving behind you is all aggregated, all
of it behind big data corporations, all of it compromised,
all of it searchable. Even stuff the government has on

(33:30):
you has been sold to large corporations because I can
tell you that some of the data that they kept
for like let's say D m V or m v D,
they decided to sell it off to a corporation and
they themselves access it through a third party when doing
research on you. So all of that big data, there's
a law of physics. The more you aggregate, the more
it will get compromised. Um, geez, I'm sorry, that's the truth. No, no, no,

(33:56):
I mean yeah, you're you're you're like, it's this Uh,
there's this frustration because I can remember the days when
the privacy hounds. And I don't say that in a
negative term. We're like warning everybody about, Hey, you don't
want to be aggregating all of these different social media

(34:16):
things together. Hey you don't want to be using all
of these services. Hey there's actually some like real downsides
like all of what's happening. Like part of why things
are so cheap on Amazon is you know that that
your data there is is one of the assets that
they have, And um, those people were absolutely right, and
they lost harder than anyone has ever lost at anything like. So,

(34:37):
Like when I was back there at that company doing
all that cryptography work, we were trying to give crypto
like to the average general population of the Internet, I
had this, like I said, this naive view of like
the future that was gonna be this place where we're
gonna have the Internet where everyone was connected, and it
was gonna be not only would we have personal privacy
through cryptography, but we would be able to transfer information
to one another in a way that would make the

(34:58):
Shenanigans impossible. Well, to some degree that's been true what
we've seen some of that, But to another degree we
also have Snowden dropping the bomb on revelations about what
the government has done to the individual and how they've
broken the law with all of our privacy and data
and what came of that a man in exile in
Russia and pretty much fucking nothing, Yeah right, nothing, And um,

(35:22):
I was sitting at a Defcon presentation where General Alexander
was on the screen talking about what they weren't doing,
while Snowden was dropping revelations proving him to be lying,
and nothing comes of it, right, nothing really comes of it.
And one of the things that's so real. And so
whether it's the tribal level, your neighbors across the street

(35:44):
or the internet tribe, we as a people in the
aggregate are always willing to give up our rights to
something bigger for convenience. And we've done that and it's
called Facebook and Twitter and social media. And in the process,
what was going to be an amazing resource has become
the trap. Uh. It's such a it's because you know,

(36:08):
you know Garrison, I I my my friend who is
much younger than me, Um has grown up with the
Internet being being what it is now right like this
this kind of like nightmare trap. You know that that's
sucking us all in this like giant squid that has
us in its tentacles. Um. And it's I get I
sometimes like dissociate talking with them about certain Internet things

(36:30):
because in my heart it's still the Promised Land. Yeah,
I wish, I I guess my I wish I felt
that way. It doesn't feel like that way to me anymore,
to be honest, I mean, it's it's not right like
and what I mean that in like sort of I
have this I don't know. I've never entirely been able
to like let go of the vision of like, oh
it could have been There's so many things that could

(36:51):
have been. Well, it's like, you know, it's like all technology,
anything can be remponized, right right, Like an a R
fifteen can be used for good or for evil, a
knife to be used to make a beautiful meal or
to commit a murder. And the Internet is technology, and
it has been weaponized. It's been weaponized against us. But
at the same time, if we just turn a blind
eye to it and then not learn how to use

(37:11):
this technology to our advantage, we're allowing them to do
that unabated. And that's where like the kind of hacker
mindset comes from, which is like, how do I make
this thing do what I wanted to do for me
while not letting someone else do it for them. And
unless we take control of the technology for ourselves, like
I said earlier, normalizing using signal and even basic VPN
and cryptography, then we're just giving it up. We're not

(37:33):
even making it a challenge. We're just like here, you
go have it. And Uh, that's something that I think
that's more important as a community. Maybe as people grow
up on the Internet versus seeing it becoming something that
I saw become something maybe either a they'll just accept
which I hope isn't the case that the reality is
privacy is dead, or maybe they'll approach the Internet differently

(37:54):
than say someone at my age did. We're frankly, we
kind of messed up and we didn't realize the Primrose
path was actually trapped, and that's a like that was
a mistake and maybe we can kind of like evolve
beyond that. But like you're asking, where is info set
going now, I I don't have good notes for that.
Like when I first started working in the career, it

(38:15):
really felt like a great thing. We were doing important stuff.
We were doing the DOS mitigation. We were going into
hospitals and making sure that insulin pumps weren't compromised as
a DIDOS host believe it or not, hospitals are infosect nightmares.
And we were doing stuff that felt good. And then
later in the career I realized, wait a minute, I'm
not doing anything to secure anybody's personal information or make

(38:37):
the Internet safer. I was just protecting some corporate coffer
and the reality was that the private information that we
were supposedly protecting. The debate would turn into calls which
was what's more expensive losing the data or the lawsuit
for losing the data. Literally, those were the conversations and corporations,
and those are the conversations that corporations have now about

(38:58):
each and every one of ours personal information. Now when
you when you think about because so I obviously I'm
in a different was in a different field. But when
I was doing a lot of the research on terrorism
that I was doing, I had these things that were
like sort of the this kind of attack is going
to happen at something I feel that very much about,

(39:19):
Like drones. There's going to be like a mass killing
of civilians not in a war zone by a civilian
weaponized drone at some point in the not too distant
futures going to happen. It's going to be done. It's
absolutely inevitability. Um that kind of stuff. Do you what
are you when you think about kind of the the
digital equivalence of that, like, what are you looking towards? Well,

(39:42):
I agree with you about the drone, Like you can
see stuff. God, yes, you plot the you plot the
dots and you know what's going to occur, right, It's
it's not it's not possible to avoid. We unleashed that
out of the cage, and it's going to happen. Quite honestly,
I think we're seeing it already. We're seeing we're seeing
the level of privates see invasion that I don't think
people already know has happened. Like I know some of

(40:04):
us realize that, we talked about that, we rant about it,
but like, I don't think people realize the level of
the incursion that has occurred to the point where all
of this data aggregated to the point they know what
toilet paper you prefer to buy. Like I'm talking like
people like Facebook knowing that um or the size of
the corporate oligarchy that controls the Internet, whether it's the

(40:27):
small like Alphabet, Core, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft's becoming a smaller
player weirdly. But when you think about those big names,
they kind of like control everything and every piece of
data about you and everything you move, and say that,
I think, I think, what's the end of that. I
don't think we got to the end game of that,

(40:47):
But I don't know how we roll it back. And
that's the thing. So what's the prediction My prediction is
it's gonna get worse, and we're gonna get to the
point where there isn't room to move without that surveillance
tracking you. And like so, for example, you think of
things like Sci Fi Minority Report, you walk to the
mall and there's facial idea happening everywhere you go with

(41:09):
targeted advertising at the mall. Oh, that's coming. I guarantee
that's coming. And all of that's happening already, and that
facial recognition stuff that's going on is happening currently now
we're just not that aware of it happening. The cop
cars driving down the road and every license plate is
being measured with the cameras being o CR optical character recognition,

(41:33):
and that's coming back, and they're tracking every car they're
driving by on the highway even though there's not a
GPS unit on your car. The ability to not be
tracked will soon be impossible. How's that? Yeah, I mean allegedly,
when I was younger, they were like certain stupid petty

(41:55):
crimes I would commit just because like people will not
be able to do this in the future, and I
have a moral responsibility to steal the light bulbs from
in front of this bar and throw them in the thread.
It's like, what, one day that will be a thing
that people can't do without getting caught. And so like
I just I had to, you know, there are like
some bright spots because I I think you're absolutely right,
there's no on like a broader scale, there's no turning

(42:17):
back the clock for stuff like facial recognition and how
funked up it's going to get. There are states like
where I live in Oregon, where like they have passed
laws that are just like you, public facial recognition is
not a thing that is legal in this state. Um.
And I definitely support more attempts like that because again,
anything you can do to sty me them, to reduce
the spread of the grid, to reduce the profitability of

(42:40):
these things, even though it's again overall a doomed cause. Right. Um, yeah,
I don't know. I mean I obviously I think that
that's a good law, But I don't know that laws
stop corporations when the corporations have more power than law, yes,
of course. Um. And it's like, I mean, obviously you
can you can ban it for police to you and

(43:00):
stuff which does something to the extent that you know
they follow the law, but none of this is I
don't know, like I That's one of the things that
makes me most depressed about the future is the thought that, like,
the space for this is not like a major issue,
I guess, but like the space for kids just like
funk around and do dumb ship when they're nineteen is

(43:23):
going to get so much smaller. I mean, I would say,
I mean, I think the thing is like, as a
natural human being, whether you're doing anything wrong, even if
you're not doing anything wrong, the nature to feel like
you have a private space that's to you, your private
community space. I'm not even talking about wrong or right here,
We're just talking about just that feeling that at this moment,
this is my space where I'm not being watched. Is

(43:46):
a natural, healthy need of the human orgasm or organism.
Um and interesting, uh, but no, it's it's a it's
a human need. And I think we're gonna find those
spaces because the smaller and smaller, And I think when
you said, what's your prediction, I hate to say it,
but I think the prediction is it will become impossible

(44:07):
to not be tracked. Now, the bright side of that,
the bright side of that maybe maybe there's a bright side.
Maybe at some point when that's the reality, it could
somehow also affect the people that are powerful and the
people that are small. And we all realize that humans
are humans, and therefore the failings that sometimes we have

(44:28):
as all human beings, we just kind of acknowledge it
and be like, oh, yeah, of course that's just what
people do. Like maybe we just realize people are people.
But the idea that there's never going to be a
space to not get tracked, I don't know. To me,
I find darkly disturbing. It is disturbing. I do think
it kind of to pivot off of what you were saying.
The other aspect of that that is more positive is

(44:49):
that all of this stuff, all of this surveillance shiit
um or at least not all, but quite a bit
of it is you know, in a way, it's can
knife fight. There's no way that both parties don't get cut,
and you know, the ones wielding the knife might get
cut less, but they're still going to get cut. And
part of what that means in this situation is that

(45:11):
the prevalence of all of these different ways to surveil
and track also allows us to track in the same
way that like police law enforcement watches people through their phones,
but also a hell of a lot of cops are
getting filmed doing fucked up ship now right now. Again,
the balance of the cuts I don't think is going

(45:32):
to be work out in our favor, but it's not
going to be nothing on them either. And and and
you're right, I think there are there are some things
that we will learn in the future about the people
in power in the world that would it wouldn't have
been possible for us to learn in the past or
may not be possibly even right now. And that and
if we learned that about people in power, then they
can't weaponize it as much against the people that aren't

(45:54):
in power. Right yeah, Yeah, you know one thing that
I'm because I'm thinking a lot about the fact that
a bunch of folks the reproductive healthcare industry have pointed
out that right wingers have started using drones to follow
people home from like planted parrot hoods and follow them
to their cards to like build databases of the people
who are going to places to potentially like do that

(46:17):
kind of reproductive healthcare that these folks don't think should exist. Um,
the other side of it though, is that Um, it
is also possible to surveil them. Um. And it will
be possible to track the people doing that sort of thing,
and it will be possible to do that in terms
of like legal accountability. And it will be possible to
do that for the people who embrace h questionably legal

(46:41):
tactics for for frustrating those efforts, um or illegal tactics
for frustrating those efforts. They have access to the same technology. Um.
And again it's it's it is a knife that will
cut everybody, um. And I guess that's better than just
one person getting cut in this situation. That's that's the
concern I have, right, I agree with that. Like I said,

(47:02):
technology goes it's a weapon and as weaponized in all directions,
depending on how to use it for good or for bad.
And so this is the same place I come to
when it comes to the gun control argument. I mean,
we can do no, no, no, the same the same problem, right,
because if we allow only one side to have all
of the control and power and understanding of the technology,

(47:24):
then we at ourselves are at a huge deficit. We
cannot defend ourselves or fight back. So when it comes
to this kind of data and technology. Knowing the basic
fundamentals of what you can do to protect yourself, understand
the reality of what the surveillance state or corporation is,
and then doing your best to not make it easy
for them is at least one step forward. But if
we don't own this technology, if we don't own the tech,

(47:47):
someone else will, and they will use it against us.
It's as simple as that. And like they're super simple
stuff Like I was gonna bring us up with like
you can't see video because it's a podcast, but like
there's these cool glasses from doctor are called reflectacles, but
I'm showing you Robert, and it looked like regular sunglasses.
But when you put them on, they do they reflect
i R light and actually mess with cameras in a

(48:10):
way that your turns are diet face into a ball
of light. So you can wear these, you can wear
the cold reflectacles. You can wear them and just walk
around the mall and all the cameras get blown out
by your by your glasses. Like doing that just because
you can. It's kind of fun. That's the hot ship.
That's the ship I was promised that that at least
does exist. It's not everything I had hoped it would

(48:32):
be in terms of its ability, But it is like
that kind of stuff rules and I will be picking
up a pair of those. UM. Well, we should probably
close out. I did want to note because I mentioned this, UM,
I got something a little wrong when I was talking
about the facial recognition ban. Um. It is in an
ordinance in the City of Portland itself. Um. It's the
first city that has done this, and it prohibits the

(48:53):
use of public facial recognition technology by all private businesses
in the city. UM. So that is the scope of
the band that a band that exists in Portland. I
recommend looking it up. It is the kind of thing
that I would support everyone pushing forward in their city. UM.
Because again, the more holes you can make in this thing,
the better. Yeah. I don't want to put that down.

(49:14):
That's a good thing. But the challenge of this is,
just like I mentioned earlier, moving the data out of
the konas and back the minute photos from Like I
take my iPhone and scan the crowd and then put
that picture up on the internet. It's not under their
jurisdiction and all that happens on every face in that yep,
and that is again, well, we'll do another episode at

(49:34):
some point about things that you can do to just
get like there. That's a whole different bag of tricks. Um,
But this has been really useful and really valuable. Carl.
Do you want to plug anything before we roll out here?
Not much, just my normal thing. If you're interested in
this kind of content, but with a more firearms oriented thing,
you can find me an en range dot tv. But
you'll also find some information security stuff there as well.

(49:54):
I cover that intermittently when it applies to both topics.
So if you, if you even if you disagree, but
appreciate my approach to this, come check me out. I
appreciate it. Awesome, Check out Carl, check out in Range tv,
and continue to listen to podcasts because the only thing
that will save us is podcasts. When I didn't the

(50:16):
same Ryan, but good for business. Oh it could happen here,

(50:38):
Um is the podcast. We're talking about things falling apart.
And you know a place where things have fallen apart
a bit is large chunks of Ukraine due to a
Russian invasion. Um. And you know we've chatted about this
a bit on the show. We've had some interviews with
some folks who are living and fighting over there. And
today we're going to talk with Jake Hanrahan Uh friend

(51:00):
of the pod Um who has been over a couple
of times this year, including since the more expanded conflict began.
It has just released a new documentary on the popular
front YouTube called Ukraine's Anti Fascist Football Hooligans Fighting the
Russian Invasion. Jake, how you doing, Thanks for having me back,
Thanks for being on now, Jake. First off, I guess

(51:22):
we can get into YouTube censorship stuff, but um, I
want to chat about like how this story came about
and when you kind of got in contact with these people,
because kind of in brief, what you have, you know,
the clips notes that you hear from like folks who
have kind of an ax to grind is that like

(51:42):
you know, Ukraine is all neo Nazis and the government's
all run by neo Nazis. And the reality is that
Ukraine obviously has a substantial Nazi problem. And as with
any country where you have a substantial Nazi problem and
some degree of freedom in terms of you know, your
ability to organize for their political purposes, you also have
a shipload of people who are anti fascists and who

(52:03):
have been fighting those fascists in the street, um, often
with intense levels of violence. UM. And this is a
story about a group of those people, um, who have
now kind of retooled their organization and capacity towards fighting
the Russian invasion. Yeah, man, exactly that I mean, so
what I wanted to do with Popular Front. You know,
I've been reporting from Ukraine since sixty and I've been

(52:27):
there more than ten times on the ground in the
bombas like way before you know, people were focused on
the area and before the invasions, so I was very
aware of. Yeah, there is a significant fascist element to
the militias out there, but it's the same. Any country
in Europe that would have a war would have the
exact same thing. Trust me, if we had it in Britain,
we would have a similar issue. You know, Eastern Europe.

(52:49):
Obviously it's a little bit more hardcore, um, but that's
the way it is. That's Eastern Europe for you. And
I will mention just at the top as well, I
would argue that Russia has a much worse neon Nazi problem.
They Um, more than fifteen people were killed between by
an actual Neo Nazi serial killer gang in Moscow that
filmed these attacks. They have a massive neo Nazi party.

(53:12):
Um you know they they're they're exporting Nazis all across Europe,
and we know there is several, um, you know, well
trained neo Nazi battalions fighting for the pro Russian So
it's neither here nor there. Yes, there's Nazi problems in
the region, but I didn't want to constantly be on
this back foot like no, actually, yes there's a Nazi problem,
but not this, not that. I was like, how can
we do a documentary that's kind of a positive way
to be like, well, instead of saying no, not everyone

(53:35):
is this, or having to film with a unit and
then being like, actually, these guys are fascists. How can
I show, you know, like they're uncomfortable. Yeah right, like
oh a total cough again. Like it was like, how
how can I kind of put a doc out there
where it's like, oh, no, actually, like here's a different
side to it, and you know, this group obviously as

(53:57):
soon as the war started again. Ukraine is a country
of forty four million people and it's a very diverse,
a very smart, very open country in terms of people
will tell you what they think, and they will argue
with you and you won't be you know, you can
have like really serious discussions with people about politics there
and not fall out. You know. Um, so they're very

(54:19):
I think, like a very clever people, are really nice people.
I love Ukraine. I love Ukrainians, So so it's to me,
it was I knew about the players, Like, yeah, of course,
there's a massive anti fascist element in Ukraine. Okay, it's
definitely smaller than the fascist element, but already since the
war started with there's Eco Platform, there's Harky hardcore, there's
the Resistance Committee Let's hold towards Klan. There's Operations Solidarity, like,

(54:41):
there's a nest the Macno machine gun repair unit, Like,
there's so many different anti fascist left wing elements to
the to the conflict. They just get a lot less
attention because the fascists have got really good at propaganda
over the years, and and let's be honest, a lot
of the fascist groups are fighting in the East and
right now it's kind of can't back. Yeah, well, it

(55:03):
all hands on deck, right, It's like everyone's like, yeah, okay,
we don't really care, like we just want to not die.
Which is understandable. So my point is, Um, I looked
at this this group, the Resistance Committee, which is this
kind of anti authoritarian um, you know, coalition of various
different units. They have Red Deer under their wing, which

(55:25):
is an anarchist group in Ukraine that I made a
documentary with a few years ago. So I was looking
at maybe we'll do a doc n of Deer again
now that they're fighting on the front. But then I
see this other group with them put towards Klan and
it's like what who? Like? Firstly, the name is kind
of weird in the US. That brings up some unpleasant
connotation in the US. Yeah, I mean it didn't really
click to me, But what does what does like hoods?

(55:48):
Hoods mean? So basically, when they would go and do
you know, when they would go and beat up fascists,
they'll be like, right, hood's up because you're you're like
putting your hoodie up so you don't get like spotted,
right because act the goods up. Um. There's totage of
them beating up Nazis as well, chanting they had a
chance Dodds, like you know, to put the fucking fear

(56:08):
into them like a yeah, yeah, and then clan, I
mean the Ukrainian translation of Plan. It's with the K.
It's not about the you know, it's just also anglicization
can lead to some unfortunate things, right right, But also
you know, they're smart guys, and at first I thought
this wasn't true, but then I spoke to me it
was true. They were kind of aware. They're like, yeah,

(56:30):
h h K who towards clan. They're kind of trolling KKK,
Like it's like a second meaning because in Ukraine that
you know, they've got that culture. They're very cheeky. They
think it's very funny to be like ha ha, you know,
fuck you. Um, So for them, they were like, yeah,
we're basically trolling the fascists, like they hear who towards
clan and they're like surprised, Sorry, we're anti fascists, you
know what I mean, your head's broken. So it was

(56:52):
kind of that vibe, and you know, they didn't really
think about it. And when I asked Anton, you know,
he's like the kind of the fact old leader. He
was like he told me this and then he was
I just kind of wanted to piss people off as well. Um,
and you you gotta remember these guys started over ten
years ago, before you know, politics was as online as
it is, um, and they started off in the hardcore
punk scene. Now you know, I'm sure you know, Like

(57:13):
you know, hardcore punk, especially in Europe is like a
very very exciting, very fun, very happy and like Gnari
fucking scene. So for them, it was like yeah, with
a hood towards clan like you know what I mean.
But but unfortunately some people in America like why they
go to hood to clan. I don't believe that they're
empty fast. It's just like mate, there's over seventy videos
of them beating up Nazis successfully. But it's a whole

(57:36):
continent that doesn't have the same history as the United States,
right you can't. I mean yeah, I mean even if
you said in England like KKK, like now, people would
be like who oh yeah, like yeah, I've heard of that.
It's not like we didn't have it here like that.
You know. Yeah, it's one of those So, I mean
one of the things that um, that's interesting here that
you you hit on a new documentaries like these folks,

(57:58):
the that that these are not just like um, anti
authoritarian folks, they're they're very much committed to anti racism,
which is, um, you know, a place like Ukraine where
the history of their being, you know, folks who are
not white is not quite as extensive as it is
in a lot of places. It's really interesting to me
to have people who are kind of organizing specifically for

(58:19):
that purpose. Um, and I think, really cool. Yeah, yeah,
it is really cool. And it's for them. What I
found very fascinating is it's just natural. So, you know,
I said, you know, their political I geology. Some of
them are like, well, some of us are anarchists, some
of us are kind of anti fascists, but otherwise kind
of a political and you know, when it's very simple
for them, it's like why are you I asked, how

(58:40):
come you guys are anti fascists and they're like, well,
we just see life differently, like you know, it's like
obviously like there was no big political theory. It was
just like, no, it's just basically they were like, it's
just wrong, you know, like fascism is just wrong. And
we're tough guys, you know, and we joined we were
we wanted to be the ones that said no, we're
not the fascist of the anti fascists, and luckily for them,

(59:02):
they had a really good friendship group and a very
solid group who were all very good at combat sports,
and like in the dock, you know, Anton says, our
enemies is almost every other Ukrainian football firm in the
whole of the country. But you will ask even their enemies,
they will tell you like, yeah, unfortunately, those guys are tough.
You know, they can fight. You know, they have to be. Yeah, exactly,

(59:24):
they had to be. They were like we had to
be you know. So I mean, I I do my research.
I found um kind of a fascist football ultras for
Hum in Eastern Europe that banned any mention of Houdswood's Klan,
and it kind of boiled down to the fact they
were just so embarrassed that so many of the fascist
groups were getting beaten up like by by anti fascists

(59:45):
and often outnumbered. You know. It even got to a
point where Hudsward's Clan weren't allowed to they wouldn't even
talk to them to do like arranged fights anymore in
the field. So instead of quitting, Hudson's Clan said, Okay,
then when we see you, we'll just beat you up
in the subway, we'll beat you up in the street,
you know, And a lot of people might say, oh,
well this is violent. So for me, the football Luganism
side of it, I don't see an issue with it personally.

(01:00:07):
I mean, they're not attacking anyone innocent, they're not attacking
by standards. It was all very contained. It was all
very you know, it was that was their thing, you know,
so that that to me is whatever. And when you're
talking about neo Nazi groups that were i mean in Ukraine,
that they've stabbed up the Roma community, they're destroying LGBT events,
and you know, the clan were just like, no, we're

(01:00:27):
not about that, we don't we don't think you should
do that. And so they formed and for ten years
they were fighting. But now they have called a truce
because they're like, you know, Anton explains in the dock.
He says, look, there's a bigger problem now because Ukraine
is actually not a Nazi jump as the Kremlin says.
It's actually quite easy to kind of you know, it's
a very small subset in the in the relative size

(01:00:49):
of the actual military, so you know, it's actually for them.
They said, well, yeah, it makes sense. We put all
our other political differences aside, because this is way bigger.
You're talking about one of the most powerful militaries on
earth invading our country and killing our people. I mean,
we've seen the massacres in Boucher and up in Um.
You know, people killed civilians, hands behind their back, executed

(01:01:09):
in the street. M thirty of the people killed in
Butcher with children, like you know, this is just insane.
So for them they were like, yeah, we we can,
we can call the truth. You know, we don't like them,
but right now we're not going to beat each other
up on the front line. Um. But I think it
really kind of shows the testament of how serious too
towards Clara about the anti fascism that even whilst in

(01:01:31):
the truth, most of them actually still joined the resistance Committee,
the anti authoritarian groups, so they're not just directly next
to fascist battalions. But again, you know, a lot is
changing out there on the front now. I think, yeah,
I don't know. Anton said to me, he was like,
I'll be honest with you, Like we didn't put this
in a DoPT, he said, I'll be honest. I think
after this war, a lot of these far right guys

(01:01:51):
might change their minds because now we see what totalitarianism
brings death, you know what I mean, whether that whether
however that's which we're thinking or not, I'm sure, but
you know what I'm saying because obviously, like the I mean,
I I would obviously I would hope that that's that's
what happens, but I tend to do it. But yeah,
the thing that scares me, of course, is there's just
as at least as much a chance that you know,

(01:02:13):
they get more powerful. Um, which is again part of
why it's important for folks like Hudson's plan to be
organizing and getting weapons and being prepared because like, yes,
that if that conflict comes after the war, you know,
you don't want the fascist militias to be the best
armed and most organized. Yeah, and this is the issue,

(01:02:35):
you know. But I think for them it's like, okay,
we'll deal with that when it comes, you know. Like
I think they're very aware that this war is going nowhere,
you know, and you know they say, and our dog, oh,
we just want to go and kill Russian pigs. I mean,
you know what they mean is I mean some people
are like, ooh, that's really bad. I was like mate,
you're talking about that. They were It's a war, right,

(01:02:56):
they were. They were guarding the areas where the massacres happened. Know,
Hood towards Klan got shelled trying to get civilians out
of Boradanka when Russians were shelling. You're talking women and children. Yeah,
I'm surprised they said that mildly, you know, like yeah,
like you know, it's a woman, it is what it is.
And also their football hooligans they're wild people, you know, Yeah,

(01:03:17):
it's it's um. I mean that is kind of interesting though,
I'm curious, Um, do you have kind of, ah an
assessment of what kind of numbers they're looking at, like
how many folks they've actually got in the field on
a regular basis. Yeah, so the resistance Committee is I
don't know, like fifty hundred right now. Good towards Klan
they have like maybe twenty to thirty year there guys

(01:03:40):
in that group. But then they also have other people,
um that join different units in the East. So they
were like already military, so they didn't have to go
you know, former militia, they just joined the military. So
there's like quite a strong hood towards Clan Um mortar group. UM,
and I know that. So. So one of the footage
we included in our documentary where um, a Russian tank

(01:04:01):
gets blown up like very close core as he gets
hit with the javelin, he's like a hundred feet away.
That was a hood Toude clan attack. That was one
of their guys doing it, you know. So yeah, so
that there's they're all over the place. Um. Unfortunately, due
to various bureaucracy within the Territorial Defense, I do think
that the Resistance Committee might have to split up to
actually get to the front, you know what I mean,

(01:04:21):
Like they're they're probably gonna have to join other units
because there's some issues that the you know, various people
they're just not sending them out there. It's not because
they're anti fascist or anything. It's nothing to do that.
It's it's because you know, it's corruption, man. There, there's
there's some corruption emerging. Some some commanders just want to
sit sit around and not actually have to go to
the front. Um. Whereas you know, the fighters themselves are

(01:04:42):
desperate because they're like, you know, our people are dying.
We want to avenge them and we want to stop it.
So you know, right, nowhoods Planner essentially on their way.
They're doing a lot more training right now. They've been
given the go ahead. Yeah, they're going to the east.
Um and as far as I know, they're they're kind
of on route obviously stopping off doing training. I think
they have an upeat. They're going to be an APG unit,
so they'll be a very close cause, you know what

(01:05:02):
I'm saying. So it's going to be Narlie for them.
These guys, as you stayed at all, kind of started
out as a friend group, right, Like they weren't. This
isn't a political party, These aren't like these guys didn't
start as ideological comrads. They were like buddies who are
into the same team and into the same kind of
combat sports. And now they're you know, they're going to
be some of them are gonna be dying in front

(01:05:23):
of the others, which is like a difficulty I think. Um,
I'm interested in kind of how how are they actually
organizing sort of in the field or is it just
as I've heard of a number of like militia units
kind of along the lines of the Ukrainian military, or
have they have they kind of adopted different organizational styles
in their their hoods, hoods units as befits sort of

(01:05:44):
their unique kind of origins. Yeah, that's a good question. Well,
I mean it's kind of trickly because essentially there, you know,
I guess, I guess they phoned as a militia. You know,
as soon as they stir they got guns. But then
you know, Anton was like, we have everything from the
anti ashes networks, everything we need apart from the weapons.
So they had to sign up as a part of

(01:06:05):
the territorial defense the weapons. So they're under the territorial
defense as are you know, a hundreds of different people
that did the same thing. Um. So luckily forward towards clan,
I think because they're so close friends. I mean you
can see it in the Dock, you know. I even
the subtitle of our Dock is like, you know, this
is a film about friendship, m violence and resistance, because
that's essentially what it is, you know. So they're very

(01:06:27):
close friends. So commanders have recognized that that, Yeah, this
is a group that is disciplined as well. A lot
of them are straight edge, which is actually a discipline
in itself, you know what I mean. So they're very
well disciplined. They're very good. You know, the training is
very good. They know what they're doing. But they have
like a commander that is from the Territorial Defense if
you like. It's not he's not hood towards clan. He's

(01:06:48):
never been assigned a commander sort of thing. Um, So
they're being taught just the same kind of tactics as
anybody else. As they're an RPG unit. I think, you know,
there will be a lot of close quarters stuff, but
they're just doing a lot of a lot of arms training.
There's you know, Constantine and the dark. One of them
is like, I just want to get better faster. They're
just they're very they're very focused on being like not

(01:07:10):
an elite unit, but they want to get it perfect.
They're not just like, yeah, let's go and kill. They're like,
now we have to be good, you know what I mean.
We have to go in there and have the same
discipline and organization as we had in the streets when
we were fighting. There was a reason that they were
renowned as being a good street fight in football, looking
firm despite being completely outnumbered. It's because they had good discipline. Um,

(01:07:30):
they're tough, they trained and also because they're good friends.
They will have each other's back. It's it's not hobby
for them as a lifestyle, you know. Um, yeah, it's
just so much went into it, you know who plan
started off the back of um anti fascist punk punk
hardcore in Ukraine, and then that itself was a scene,
and then the football organism and then yeah, and now
it's it's crazy, really, it's it's honestly one of the

(01:07:52):
most fascinating stories I've covered. Now they're fucking frontline unit,
you know. It's it's sad and I hope to guard
nothing happens to any of them. Probably the nicest guys
are filmed with you know. Um and yeah, it's it's, it's,
it's it's a good question on it. It's very tricky
to know how it's going to happen for them once
they're on the front. I mean, Anton, the main guy,
he has served before, joined the militia to fight in

(01:08:15):
the dom Bus. So they do have some experience, you know,
and it does seem like um kind of their natural
the skills that they've been developing, because there's there's broadly
speaking from my understanding, kind of two main types of
combat going on in Ukraine. There's the what you're seeing
a lot in you know, the Don Boss, which is
this kind of like meat grinder like frontline ship, and

(01:08:38):
then there's sort of the seek and destroy kind of
stuff where you've got people sort of hunting convoys and
and doing ambushes. And it does strike me like these
guys talents would lend themselves more to the ambushes then.
I mean, there's not really any talent that helps you
in the in the sitting in a trench meat grinder
kind of ship. But obviously you don't have that choice
when you're when you're serving under you know, the national military. Yeah, yeah,

(01:09:02):
it's I think you're right, like they would be much
better um placed as like you know, I guess like
a kind of shooting scoot kind of unit exactly. Yeah,
And I think they will be because you know, the
train with RPG UM some of their fighters already have
javelins on the front um and and laws. So yeah,
I think that's where it would be if they just

(01:09:24):
put them in some kind of meat grind of position,
which very much could happen, you know. I mean, it's
bad for anybody, let's be realistic. It's getting very bad
in the don Bass right tonight. Yeah, yeah, yeah, um,
I mean, and that's one of the there's been posts
and stuff from people talking about like, um, you know,
the a lot of the funk ups that are happening
because you know, Ukraine started this war with everyone being

(01:09:46):
kind of overwhelmed by the competence of their military effort,
and now that things in in the Don Boss have
turned into this kind of ugly slug Um, there's been
some you know, oh the you know units getting hit
by their own our hillary fire, the kind of messy
stuff that happens when you have a fight like this,
right like it is it is unavoidable, um, when you

(01:10:07):
have like a situation like has developed in the Dan Boss.
But that doesn't make it any less unpleasant to endure
as an actual soldier. Like it's just it's one of
those I mean, there's only so much that like competence
and training can do if you wind up getting squeezed
into that kind of position. Yeah, And and there's this

(01:10:27):
is why a lot of people are even Ukrainian has
actually had a conversation with Ukrainian friend yesterday that was saying, like,
you know, the situation is so bad in the East.
We really need to be honest about this because you know,
if people think it's going better than it is, Okay,
it's good for morale, but it's not good for the
guys on the ground, like they're not going to get
what they need. And the reality is that it's getting

(01:10:48):
really bad and it's not anything to do with incompetence
from the fighters. It's just the war. The level is
being so hot, and you know, Russia has learned from
its mistakes unfortunately from the start where they can be
funked up. But now you know, things are getting a
little bit Harry, Um, Ukrainians are doing like an incredible effort.
But again it's like, yeah, you're talking about decades and

(01:11:10):
decades of armor and you know, um weapons that Russia
has and it's all very well, us being like, oh
it's their armor is blah blah. I doubt it, you know,
I very much doubt that. Um, it doesn't look like that,
certainly from when people I'm talking to in the East.
You know, so I think again, when when you know
Ukrainians are like, well we do need more weapons, it's

(01:11:32):
because they need more weapons, you know what I mean,
they really do. Well, this is like one of the
This is uh one of the things that's that's difficult
to I think get across to people, um, because there
is such a you know that we are dealing with
the legacy of decades of shipping weapons places, um, and
not having that helped the conflict in a lot of

(01:11:52):
in a lot of ways, um, in decades of stories
like you know, all the weapons that got sent to
the Iraqi government and then wound up in isis is
Marie and ship um, which creates kind of an easy
narrative for folks who are like, well, you know, you're
just trying to prolong the conflict in making it worse
by shipping and weapons. But the reality is one side
of this war has a substantial percentage of all of

(01:12:14):
the artillery that exists on the planet. Yeah, and the
other side does not. Yeah. And I do understand the
argument though, Like I totally get it, but it's it's
I lived through the early two thousand's as well, I
understand it. It's like war isn't a template. It's not
like does this happened there, this will happened there or whatever,
And it's like you have to weigh up no matter

(01:12:35):
what bad is going to come from this, Do you
want the bad to be Okay, there's a problem with
arms in Eastern Ukraine, which the Eastern Europe, which there
already is, and it gets worse. Or do you want
the bad problem to be Russia has taken over the
whole country, massacred everybody and is unlike undoubtly going to
try and move into other countries. Do you want aids

(01:12:57):
or do you want cancer? I don't know, you know
what I mean? Indeed, do you want the Do you
want the lesson from this to be that if you're
just willing to burn a couple of hundred thousand human
lives as a state like Russia or any other state,
you can easily gain access to, you know, a pile
of wealth right in the shape of a country. Um,

(01:13:18):
which isn't a positive. It's not like a good lesson
for anyone to take out of this. But like if
if that's the lesson, right, yeah, yeah, no, that's the reality.
Like it's all very nice having a fifty tweet Twitter
threat about why this that and referred should or shouldn't happen,
But that's just completely removed from real life. I mean,
a real life is it's going to be very bad,

(01:13:39):
very nasty, no matter what happens, and you just have
to weigh. Oh I don't like natso oh I don't
like this. Yeah, I mean either, but I care about
people that die for no reason, you know, Like I
think that's the real issue. Um. I think people need
to stand with the people, you know, and if that
means okay, use the tools that you have, Okay, Like,
oh I don't like nats. We yeah, but they're going

(01:13:59):
to give them. What do you think that Ukrainians like
having Russian firearms? Probably not. But they also don't give
a ship because they shoot. It's it's that simple, you know,
kind of coming back to the subject of your documentary. Um,
if weapons are going to be going over there, and
by god they are, um I I would hope that
as many of them as possible are going into the
hands of people like the Hoods Hood's client, right, yeah,

(01:14:24):
um yeah, I mean that is that is a yeah,
a lot. There's definitely this isn't from them telling me,
but it's just from research I've done. There's definitely a
discrepancy in terms of which groups get what weapons. And
it's not based on ideology, but it's definitely based on
some serious paroxy that needs to be sorted out. You know.

(01:14:44):
I have some some Western volunteers that I know that
are on the front right now, and they're saying, like,
for some reason, you know, one unit that is not
an RPG unit, for example, will have more rockets than
the RPG unit, you know, And it's like, what like,
And that's not because they've used the more. It's it's
it's supply lines are again. It's it's not even corruption.
Often it's just supply lines are wrecked or whatever. But

(01:15:06):
it has to be addressed as to be looked at.
I mean, I'm no tactician. I don't know anything about
that side of things. I'm just basing on what you know,
people are telling me, because you know, I like to
talk to them and hear what's happening. Yeah. Um, I
think we should move into you know, when I when
I pull up your documentary on YouTube, which is again
for folks at home, titled Ukraine's anti fascist football Hooligans

(01:15:26):
Fighting the Russian Invasion, the first thing that I see
is this video maybe inappropriate for some users. Um yeah's yeah, well,
and it's We've talked a lot on our various shows
on this network about all of the fascist propaganda that
you can find and not even find on YouTube that
will be like spoon fed. Do you if you wind
up like watching a video game review or something. Um, yeah,

(01:15:49):
this is something that you've been dealing with, unpopular front.
Somebody seems to have like an ax to grind with
you guys. I don't know. Maybe it's just the algorithm,
but I'll be honest, I I felt like it was
to the algorithm until this recent one. Right. So so yeah,
like you said, if people want to fight, I mean
the dogs called front Line who looking? But yeah, the
for s c O. Um, yeah, it's it's Ukraine's anti

(01:16:10):
fascists fighting Russian invasion. Um. But yeah, the second it
was uploaded it got age restricted. Now that to me
is very odd. I don't get why there's no gore
in it. Um. Okay, yeah, there's violence, but there's a
guideline where you can show violence in if it's relative
to report in, which obviously it is because it's an
anti fascist football looking firm fighting Russia. So of course

(01:16:31):
we're going to show what that looks like. But there's
there's no there's no gore. Um, there's no there's there's
just it's just lads hanging out talking about their lives
now they've been tipped upside down and how they really
dislike the far right. Now. To give you an idea
of how messed up this is, UM, there's a real,
a real parasite YouTuber. It's called Danny Mullen and he

(01:16:53):
has a video on YouTube where him and his his
friend both for them scoundrels go to the con border
and the whole video is trying to get with quote
like hot Ukrainian refugees. Now, it's the most disgusting thing
you've ever seen. They're praying on young girls, some of
them are very clearly underage. UM. And that is monetized.

(01:17:15):
That is monetized, and it is even on the algorithm.
I found it because I was watching Ukraine war stuff
and it was put onto my recommended. Now, these are
the biggest parasites you've ever seen in your life. UM.
And they have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of subscribers
and they're making money from content like that that is
not age restricted. There is no censorship thing, There is

(01:17:36):
no message saying this might be offensive. But a documentary
which is one journalistic covering anti fascists fighting one of
the worst invasions we've seen in Europe is suddenly deemed
inappropriate and his age restricted on YouTube. Tell me what's
going on there that doesn't seem right to me. So
basically you tube by doing that as saying we're actually
happy to make money off of people that exploit under

(01:18:00):
rage Ukrainian refugees, but we're not happy for people showing
the world a different side to the war. That to
me is madness, Like it doesn't make any sense to me,
you know, And it's nothing but soft censorship. Some people
are tell him it's not it's not censorship. Of course,
it is censorship. This is the way the world works now, Yeah,
because I mean a huge chunk of the success or
the visibility of anything that you're putting on YouTube is

(01:18:20):
whether or not the algorithm is going to like suggest
it to people, even people who have watched you or
other like that. Not even talking about like suggesting it
to somebody who's never heard of popular front, but like
people who have watched multiple things that you've done and
are just on YouTube. The thing that would make sense
is for when you put out a new thing them
to get like YouTube to be like, hey, we know
you've watched the ship check out this, but that's not

(01:18:41):
going to happen for a lot of folks because of
this kind of thing, which is yeah fucked up, Yeah
yeah right. And it's like it's not just me that
like I mean, it's other people it's happening as well.
And basically what it is is if we wanted somebody
the doc somehow be allowed to be monetized or not
even monitored. I don't even want the monetizes the whole
channel is demonetized. I just want it to not be restricted,

(01:19:04):
because that is an algorithm torpedo. And you know, it's
like I would have to rec the whole documentary essentially
sense of myself, my own journalism, make you excuse me,
make the integrity of the doc weaker, just to be
able people to see it like this is war, this
is real life. I just it's just really depressing, you know,
And this is something I mean, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook have

(01:19:25):
all been guilty of degrees of this, but there's this
of all other things that don't that that are allowed
to spread unchecked on those platforms, they have this consistent
maybe because it's it's easier to algorithmically go after But this,
this consistent pattern of going after war journalism, um, and
like your you know, what's happening to your documentary is

(01:19:46):
a piece of this, But like the much scarier pieces,
a tremendous amount of documentation of war crimes in places
like Syria have been deleted um kind of automatically over
the years, which means that like again, evidence of crimes
against humanity has been lost forever because of these kind
of like purges of of war content that um, I
don't think are actually protecting anybody from anything, but are

(01:20:08):
are perhaps even making things worse. Yeah, of course, and
it and it allows um, look Russian propaganda or whatever like,
people are going to seek that out and they're going
to digest it whatever way they can. So then surely
you should say, okay, take the brakes off. Let's you
know if you care, which I mean YouTube is a
media platform. You would think that they would say, okay, well,

(01:20:31):
this is kind of our duty to balance it out,
to allow all the free information. I'm not even saying,
oh yeah, through all Russian propaganda. I think people have
a choice to see whatever they want to see, even
if it is completely ridiculous but the fact that they're
they're censoring the stuff that you you would think is
okay to see because for for for I know, you

(01:20:51):
know our content that you won't find a lie in
that documentary. You know, we're very honest, very frank with
the situation. We're not white washing fascism in Ukraine. Um.
And we're certainly not putting out Russian propaganda. We're just
telling an interesting journalistic story. So you would think as
a media platform that would be like yeah, right up
there street, but it's not really a media platform is
a money making platform, and you know, they just they

(01:21:12):
just survived for adverts yep. Um. And I think that
is kind of where we're gonna We're gonna leave off
for the day unless you have Do you have anything
else you wanted to get into on your documentary, Jake, no, man,
I just I guess the last thing I would say
is I want people to kind of know that there
are many different factions out there. This isn't you know.
I saw some comment being like, oh, you found the

(01:21:33):
only fascists and anti fascists in Ukraine. It's like, no,
there's there's literally I've been documenting them. There's thousands there's
so many, you know, and not just like oh, anti fascists, yeah,
we this is what we believe, like people forming units.
There's a whole pipeline of um anti authoritarian activists there.
There's loads and generally like Ukrainians um happy. You know,

(01:21:55):
they'll they'll take that out they can get. It's not
like Ukrainians are like god damn those anti fascists. Not
they love them. They love them the same way they
love anybody that's defending the country. You know. It's it's
just normal and I think people should really, you know,
if they want to watch our doctor as well, like
if they can share it, that would be great because
it's just very it's a struggle to get people to
watch it now because of because if it's been torpedo

(01:22:16):
on the algorithm. So if they go to YouTube dot
com slash popular Front, they'll find it's the first dot there.
But yeah, people can share it. I'll be great, all right,
We'll check it out again. The title is Ukraine's anti
fascist football hooligans fighting the Russian Invasion on the Popular
Front YouTube channel. We're also going to have a link
in the bio. If you are someone who doesn't like

(01:22:36):
the type things. Yeah, thank you, Jake. All right, everybody,
that's the episode. Welcome to Tack. It happen here, a

(01:22:57):
show that is currently taking lace in the death abortion
rights in the US. And yeah, it's not good. Um
with me to talk about this is sharene Is Sophie,
is Garrison, and is Robert Evans And okay, So what

(01:23:19):
one of one of the things that's been happening in
the immediate wake of the Supreme Court decision that has
destroyed Review Wade is there's been a lot of discussion
about the abortion rights movement in Mexico. And by discussion,
I mean in sort of classical American fashion. People saw
exactly one meme and reposted it and that's now the
sum of like all American knowledge about the abortion struggle

(01:23:42):
in Mexico. So to try to get a deeper understanding
of what's been going on in Mexico and how the
struggle for abortion was one there, we're talking to Erica Yamada,
who's a feminist and human rights activist born and raised
in Mexico. Erica, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah,
thank you, and you so much. Chris sharing so figures

(01:24:02):
and and Robert I'm so honored and excited to be
here and very grateful to be considered to share about
the struggle for abortion rights in Mexico. So before starting
this discussion, I would like to share a little bit
about myself and the organization I work in to have
some background about the experiences and data I will be

(01:24:27):
communicating in this space. UM I have been involved in
many agendas for girls and women's rights for approximately eight
years now. I am currently part of the Woman Delivered
twenty twenty class and I also work in the non
governmental organization Gender Quality, Citizenship, Work and Family that has

(01:24:50):
over twenty five years of experience working for sexual and
productive rights in Mexico, particularly for the access to leave
goal and safe abortion. Our organization promotes and advocate for
the sexual and reproductive health and right of use through

(01:25:13):
that They Said. That They Said is the network for
sexual and reproductive rights in Mexico that has presence in
tolve states and we focus mainly on marginalized communities. We
support children, use women and advocate for change at local, regional,
and national level and their access is contributing to the

(01:25:38):
criminalize abortion, guarenting access to to health services and generate
a favorable public opinion about women's right to decide. We
are also part of the National Court Choice Alliance in
Mexico and effort of bi organizations General Equality, the Population

(01:26:01):
Council EPAS Central America, Catholics for the Right to Decide
and heat It, each with different expertise regarding abortion. Together
we have worked on comprehensive strategies that include the legal,
the social, religious, ethical and investigation aspects of abortion and well,

(01:26:29):
I would like to start up like sharing some of
the context and the legal situation of abortion in Mexico
if it's okay or or in our country, Voluntary abortion
UH during the twelve weeks of pregnancy is legalized only

(01:26:50):
in certain states. Mexico City, the capital, was the only
state in the whole country that they criminalized abortion into
two thousand seven. Twelve years later, in two thousand nineteen,
the state of of Wahaca became the second state twenty
sure access to this health service. Afterwards, two thousand twenty

(01:27:15):
one was historic. It was a very very historic year.
It was for states Evaluo Vera, Cruz Bacca, California and
Polyma also the criminalized abortion. Then this year two thousand
twenty two, three other states have been added to this

(01:27:38):
list Sinaloa, Guerrero and California. This means nine out of
thirty two states have the criminalized abortion. In the other
states of the Mexican Republic, abortion is only allowed under
certain grounds established by the law of each entity. For example,

(01:28:02):
if it was a companeous abortion, if the pregnancy was
due to non consensual insemination, if the woman's life is
in danger of death, if the product pas serious genetic alterations,
if the pregnancy causes health effects, among other reasons. It

(01:28:25):
depends on each Plano code of each state. And I
also must add that pregnancy due to right is the
only indication that permits legal abortion in all states. And
now coming back to what Chris said that there was
like a meme. I think, uh, you refer to the

(01:28:49):
name of the public protests. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the black
clad female protesters attacking is it? I couldn't tell. I
don't recall it's a city hall or a police station
or something. I I have also seen some of these
media reports that that they say that we achieve legal

(01:29:12):
abortion thanks to these radical public demonstrations, and well, it
is undeniable that among the most significant achievements is the
pro mobilization of feminists and women to eradicate violence and
learn justice Mexico. Mexico has demonstrated the world the revolutionary

(01:29:35):
progress with the mass feminist protests and this image is
from two thousand nineteen. It was a huge feminist protest
that are condemned violence against women, especially sexual and feminist
side violence, police brutality, and the intunity that permeates the
governmental system. We received a lot of internet national media

(01:30:00):
attention and it has been one of the like the
recent highlights of the feminist movement in our country. But
like the struggle for abortion entails so much more, and
yes it did have some influence. For example, in two

(01:30:21):
thousand twenty, feminists in two states, Quintana and Puebla took
their local congresses and demanded the discussion of abortion initiatives,
and they have put this agenda on the table. It
is worth mentioning that the struggle for abortion that it

(01:30:42):
goes back so many years. Feminists have been fighting for
reproductive rights, including the access to legal abortion for that
it's now the progress regarding this struggle has unfolded historically
during the recent years. For many other reasons, One thing

(01:31:04):
I want to go back to a little bit to
talk about is you were talking about the protests being
pro abortion protests but also talking about antifemicide and anti
violent stuff, and I was wondering if you could talk
about the anti femicide it campaigns too, because that's been
a really big part of this that gets basically no

(01:31:25):
coverage in the US. Well, in Mexico, eleven women are
murdered every day. We have a huge femicide problem that
has been silenced by the government, even by the president
who minimizes this horrible situation. So in two thousand nineteen

(01:31:50):
there was a UH emblematic case where police officers rape
and tortured a row and that's how this protest UH
started and since all the two thousand nineteen, like most

(01:32:11):
feminist protests, have been regarding the violence against women. But UH,
I would also like to add about the struggle for abortion.
I think that in the global cells the mare, the

(01:32:31):
green type it played like the most fundamental roles. UH.
This movement, which came from Argentina, is one of the
main successes that strengthened the struggle for abortion rights and
even the feminist movement in Mexico. It expanded in many

(01:32:53):
countries including Mexico. Here we have a national Green Type
and many local Green type in all of our space,
and these collectives have played a large role demanding social
and legal thecuminalization of abortion across the country. And there
is also an increase of networks that provides self managed

(01:33:20):
abortion information and accompaniment services, which have contributed to fighting
the stigma that still surrounds abortion. And the Green Tide
and the feminist movement, it's it has become like how
do you say it's been merged merg and like feminist

(01:33:41):
movements and the Green Tide fight for legal and safe abortion,
but also to radicate the violence against girls and women. Yeah,
that makes that makes sense. And about the Green Tide,
I have two questions about the Green Tide. One is
what kinds of tactics have Green Tide groups been doing?

(01:34:03):
And also how how linked have the international movement has been?
Like how how close how closely have these organization has
been communicating across and working together across the different countries? Okay, uh?
Since the Green Tide came from Argentina like the most,

(01:34:26):
how do you say the the communication comes from regional
countries in Latin America and Mexico has been learning from
these Latin American countries the experiences we have seen the
feminist movements, the protests also more in the South and

(01:34:47):
the the green handkerchief has this very very powerful symbol
of legal and safe abortion, and these have also contributed
to the social be communalization of abortion. And wearing the
green handkerchiefs and in the protest also means demanding this

(01:35:13):
health service. And one of our tactics is of course
pressuring the government. In Mexico. Political will, primarily from the
left leaning ruling party, has been fundamental for for the becommunalization.

(01:35:34):
With the new government that I wade in two thousand
eighteen headed by Andreo, we have more allies and progressive legislators.
So due to the majority uh that this political party
has in many local converses, the feminists of each state

(01:35:59):
have been able to pressure and work with these legislators
and keep pushing this agenda. That's awesome. I think something
that I'm still stuck on is that at the very
least all the states agree that abortion is okay if
it happened from from rape. Is that what you said earlier?

(01:36:20):
Like that's the one we we have a federal lot.
It's the zero forty six met official Mexican norm that
states that abortion is legal if the pregnancy is due
to rape, and all the states, all the public officials

(01:36:42):
have this obligation to to ensure that this that this happens.
But sometimes, um, like we we have so many prejudices
that sometimes even doctors don't respect the law. But by
not it should be legal. And it's not that they

(01:37:03):
all agree, it's the it's the one. Yeah, it's just so,
I mean, it's definitely has its flaws and people with
their own biases. But like here, usually the rapists will
have more rights and protection than the person that got raped.
Like there are the family is allowed to sue the
person that got an abortion, for example. It's it's insane,

(01:37:26):
but so for then here, a lot of it, a
lot of the biggotry comes from like Christianity and religion.
Is it the same, like is that the baseline for
the opposition there too? Yes, because Mexico is a predominantly
Catholic country and abortion and feels many controversies due to

(01:37:47):
the different positions that are come from this. Religious stances
is stances that ignore and deny the access to this
service and deny it's a human rights issue. And religious
anti rights groups or how how do you say anti
choice groups have a powerful presence and are actively hindering

(01:38:12):
law proposals regarding this topic. The prejudices and stigma are
present even amongst healthcare providers and sometimes uh the religious people.
They pressure these healthcare providers, the legislators. For example, every
time there is a line on local congress. There are

(01:38:36):
so many religious groups outside the Congress. They are how
do you say, like bothering the legislators. They even get
their personal numbers and they are harassing them. Yes, harassing
is the work. They're harassing them. So yes, they have

(01:39:00):
a lot of power, a lot of money, and these
effects even the states where abortion is legal, because as
I said before, sometimes doctors denied it even if it's
requested under the legal indications. So yes, it's a problem.

(01:39:25):
I'm curious what you see as kind of the value
of the street actions that were carried out as opposed
to um kind of the the actual organization on the
legislative side of things, Like what what degree do you
think both contributed to, you know, the successes that you
all have seen. I think both were very very important

(01:39:50):
to the recent successes. The public demonstrations help the feminist
movements strengthened. Like it is like yes, this recent protests
have been the what do you say? It has been

(01:40:11):
where the most women have gone out to the streets,
taken the streets, and it has helped because the government
has responded to some of our request. But also it
is extremely important too to talk about the organization. And also, Uh,

(01:40:34):
something I didn't mention and that I would like to
emphasize is that in two thousand twenty one, the Supreme
Court of Justice in Mexico ruled favorably in four abortion
related cases, and this provided us with with progressive jurisprudence

(01:40:54):
and legal interpretations in favor of recognizing an increasing abortion right.
So this has how do you say, this has served
our movement and all the argumentation to push the decriminalizations.

(01:41:14):
And well, about the four cases. In the first case,
the Supreme Court declared that limitations to access legal abortion
after it must be removed. In the second case, it
declared that the absolute criminalization of abortion with consent is unconstitutional. Uh.

(01:41:41):
And in the third case is it declared that the
protection of life from the moment of conception is unconstitutional.
And in the fourth case, the court ruled that legislative
reforms broadening the boundaries of conscientiens objection in that federal

(01:42:04):
health law are unconstitutional. And the Supreme Court is the
highest court of justice in Mexico and all judges should
respect what they established. And well, unfortunately it doesn't happen
in all states. And what it is like the most

(01:42:28):
important president we we have right now, and it is
fundamental for our argumentation in local congresses. I have has
the national government done anything at all to try to
force the states who are like not following the rulings too,
like except the rulings. No, because our president uh he

(01:42:56):
he is very neutral in this topic, and he has
spoken against feminist movements and he thinks that any protest
means like uh, conservators against his liberal government. So now
we we don't have this this support from the national government,

(01:43:23):
although assignmenttioned before. We have a lot of allies and
in many instances that have helped to pressure state state
public officials too to respect a law and to keep
pushing this agenda. Is the president. I'm just curious and

(01:43:49):
I'm ignorant that is the president? Like, well, how is
he received by the general public, Like what people's like,
is he neutral because he needs a coward because there
wasn't one of the rockety votes? But what all right,
what's the response for the public. He he still has
a lot of support from from the majority. He he

(01:44:12):
is one of the the first how do you stay
progressive presidents, Although we have been very disappointed by many
of his actions, for instance the increase of militarization and
the communalization of feminists, of human rights activists, of journalists. However,

(01:44:37):
it is the first time in so many years that
a president talks about poor indigenous people that uh sends
support to rural communities. So he still has a lot
of support. M UM. One thing that I don't know

(01:45:01):
how much. I don't know how much you want to
get into it, but UM we talked to some people,
Oh god, I don't remember how many months ago now,
but we talked to some people a while back who
were UM doing trans rights organizing in Mexico, and they
were talking a lot about how UM that they were

(01:45:22):
talking about how I guess like anti choice conservative groups
have been using UM have been using sort of organized
transphobic groups as a way to sort of different attention
away from the abortion struggle, in the femicide struggle into
stuff that doesn't like challenges that is quo And yeah,

(01:45:47):
and I was wondering, I just wanted to talk about
that a little bit. Yes, thank you so much for
talking about this transphobia and in the feminist movements is horrible.
Like the Transforbaic feminists have been getting to conservative public officials,

(01:46:10):
they have been approaching religious groups, and they have even
affected the abortion agenda because some of our laws include
people with the capacity to get pregnant. So these health
services include ah, trans meant and non binary people. But

(01:46:34):
this Transforbaic feminists have been how do you say, obstaculizing.
There's this struggle because of these prejudices, and it is
very very sad. And some of are some of the
main and most famous reference references and feminism have been

(01:47:00):
signing this transphobic side. And yes, they are approaching to
the ultra right, and they they have been hindering not
only trans people's rights, but now women's rights. In Gentlemary, Yeah,
I think was it. I'm trying to remember off top

(01:47:22):
of my head. I think that there was there was
a picture that was going around. That was some of
the organizers from one of the Lake trans phobic feminist collectives.
I like taking pictures with sleeping held around. Yeah, I
think I think it was sleeping held around. Yeah, but
I don't know. I haven't seen that. But there was

(01:47:46):
a forum some weeks ago. It was a forum in
the National Altonomous University of Mexico, and it was a
feminist on discussion and most of the familists who are
so so famous in all Latin America started to say
some transpulbic points. So, yes, this anti rights movement is

(01:48:15):
very present and in feminism. Yeah, I guess. The other
thing on that point that I was wondering is how
have like pro trans feminists been sort of fighting back
against these people. Has that been happening a lot? Uh, well,
we're trying, but it has been very, very difficult because

(01:48:38):
literally there are transpolic people everywhere everywhere, I mean government
and non governmental organizations and institutions, and the majority of
the people are not well these says um socially conscious

(01:48:58):
about about trans right, so transport with people who have
so much more power, but uh, sometimes we we denounce
it in social media. We reported to two international organizations

(01:49:20):
and like, we have all the human rights narrative and
argumentation in our favor, but it is difficult because there
are so many trans transports everywhere. Um. We have also
contacted international organizations to to publicly say that, for example,

(01:49:44):
if you want to access a certain grant, you have
to have an inclusive position. What other ways, uh, we
like the trans movement has strengthened so much since two
thousand nineteen because in Mexico City, um uh, the a

(01:50:09):
lot to recognize trans children and adolescents was pushed for
the for the first time, like via the ministative way.
So there has been how do you say, a commission

(01:50:30):
of of trans organizations collectives. So I think that is
the the most noteworthy thing progress. Yeah, I guess there's
been a lot of people like looking to the green
tide and looking to sort of the broader Latin American

(01:50:51):
feminist movement for sort of inspiration and also for sort
of tactical advice. And I was wondering, what, like, what
advice would you give people in the US who are
coming into this fight now, and where would you send
people to learn more stuff about it? Mm hmm. There
some some key points I consider relevant is firstly the

(01:51:15):
visibility of the pro choice agenda and the social ecommunalization
of abortion. When we talk about Lettle abortion, we we
have to emphasize a lot also on the social the communalization.
It is very important to work on strategies to to

(01:51:37):
reduce statema and demonstrate that abortion is a common reproductive
event that must be approached using gender perspective and the
human rights framework. We we encourage public dissemination of the legal,

(01:51:57):
medical and social information with with hard sustained data from
international organizations that position abortion as a as a human
right and an essential health service. And related to this
first point, the narrative and the argumentation, we have to

(01:52:21):
focus um the access to save from legal abortion as
a human rights issue, which means it's a governmental obligation
to ensure access to this service. On our case Mexico
as nationally and international commitments regarding girls and women's rights,

(01:52:42):
and I'm pretty share the United States also has this commitments,
so it's their obligation, it's the government's obligation to to
ensure and also regarding their narrative, we have to work
on naturalizing abortion and encourage people to stop using this

(01:53:05):
word as a crime. Abortion is a human right and
it is a reproductive event in the life of women
and people with a capacity to get pregnant. And it's
a reproductive event that has always existed and will always exist,
either naturally or induced. And some of the organizations that

(01:53:33):
I know of here that that can provide information are
the Poor Choice Alliance, organizations, Catholics for the Right to Decide.
They can give the religious and ethical arguments. UM my
organization Gender Quality, we have the social argumentations. We re

(01:53:57):
a company and work with with the girls and women.
We we are in twelve states and we are in
the mobilizations. We are in the state on the local congresses.
Also Heated Heated in Spanish is utiful informers. They have

(01:54:22):
all the legal expertise UH and they worked this reforms
and lost with the criminalized abortion. We have EPAS. EPAS
is an international organization and they are medical experts and
they provide all types of data and information regarding this

(01:54:47):
part and the Population Council. They are the experts on
monitoring and investigation and they have many research papers and well.
There are also like other pages that that can give

(01:55:09):
information for example about these they self induced abortion the
health organization has a protocol. It's a public protocol for
for self induced abortion, and it is completely safe to
do it at home. Well, I really appreciate all the information.

(01:55:36):
Uh yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you so much.
I think it's really helpful to hear um what other
countries have done in the same struggle. It's like so
similar but different, the say at the same time, because
we've dealt with the same similar things like turfs and
religious like opposition and everything. So it's really helpful, I think,

(01:55:57):
to see to realize that first of all, it is
a basic human right, like it's not even it's like
internationally an issue. And then just to see how other
people have organized it's really important, I think, yes, And
now I believe that we have like kind of a
similar situation whether well, it's a situation of legal discrimination

(01:56:24):
in which only women who live or have the resources
to travel to the states that have the criminalized abortion
can exercise the right who a voluntary legal interruption of
their pregnancy? Am I right? Because I like, I don't
know much about the situation and the United States, but

(01:56:47):
I know that it is legal in some states, right, yeah, yeah,
some states. And then like in contrast to that, it's
like legal even in case of rape, and like the
people that have been raped can be suited. It's like
a very like up and down kind of balance. Um.

(01:57:09):
But yeah, there's definitely both that exists, and I think
that's where it becomes really hard to extinguish the bad side.
It's part part of our struggle to be criminalized abortion
in the other states is because woman who who live
in poverty and marginalized conditions, who want to have an

(01:57:29):
abortion but reside in other states where it's illegal, kind
of do so under legal circumstances. So it's also a
class problem. Its yeah, definitely. And also in Mexico there
are some states that even criminalize us contaneous abortion. It

(01:57:53):
it wasn't even induced and instead of calling an ambuments,
some people called the cubs when when a woman is
dying because of christ containous abortion. So yes, and this
has caused also a public health problem affecting girls and

(01:58:18):
women in more vulnerable situations who live in the in
the most restrictive context rural and indigenous communities, also migrants,
girls and women victims of of sexual abuse, women with disabilities,
among others, and always, always, always the most vulnerable. Vulnerable

(01:58:46):
women are more susceptible to get an unsafe contesting abortions,
which can get to infections, camorrhaging, uh, injury to to
internal organs. And even there there are some places like

(01:59:07):
in communities work there is not even access to to
internet or or to basic health services. And m h,
you're awesome. Women are still buying betool once safe abortions. Yeah,
and they are like a hundred percent preventable this. Yeah, no, totally, yeah,

(01:59:32):
thank you, you're even amazing. Um, but it's interesting because
that's true. I think regardless of the country, the most
vulnerable are the most affected. Whether it's I mean it's
a class issue, it's a race issue, it's a disability issue,
it's like all these things that I mean, rich people
will get abortions either way, like privileged people will always

(01:59:52):
have a route to take care of themselves. Um. So
it's just I don't know, it's unfortunate for seeing how
like humans have functioned regardless of the country that they build. Yes,
sad and criminalizing abortion does not reduce its practice. I

(02:00:13):
think that prohibiting it will like and its practice, and
it only increases the probabilities of decent, safe procedures, and
it increases the stigma and prejudices, and it even strengthens
this empty rights and choice groups. But when abortion is

(02:00:37):
performed in a in a safe and important matter, it
is even less risky that childbirth among other interventions. And
us for example, it is much safer for for our
goal to have an abortion than to what you said,

(02:00:57):
than to continue with with when when the pregnancy is
like threatening her life. Ye yes, um, well, that's why
we have to keep fighting for people. I was really
getting down there. Yes, and here in Mexico, like bills

(02:01:18):
continue to be promoted in different states, we keep forming
and strengthening alliances, and we have to strengthen these alliances
with all types of sectors. And that's why the the
alliance work, for example, because we are the religious sectors

(02:01:39):
that we work also with legislators, with doctors, health care providers,
even in schools, and with the public general. So uh,
it is a collective effort and the collective commitments mm hmm, yeah,

(02:02:03):
very true. I have nothing to add. That's a good
better than that. Um. So, thank you so much for
joining us, and I'm going to step away now. Thank
you asually, of course, yeah, and I guess uh. The
last thing, well, do you do you have anything else
you want to say? And then b I where can

(02:02:24):
people find you on the internet like if they want to?
And do you have other organizations and stuff do you
want to promote? H? I'm like Erica Yamava. You know
my social media and the organization I work in, it's
I Giva the Middle Silvavania, Bravai from herere but the

(02:02:48):
the National Network for Reproductive Rights where we are intolves states.
It's called they said, but it's B B E, S
E R. And you can find those uh in most
of these states. And we can provide information regarding abortion

(02:03:11):
if you write to us. And also something I would
like to say is that even after it's even nice,
one must continue to to ensure that these abortion services
are are when they say, our implement that, and that
they can reach to all girls and women. That it

(02:03:33):
must be guaranteed in paper and in practice. And yes,
the emphasis in reaching the most underserved and vulnerable populations.
M hmm all right, well, uh, I think that's probably
going to do it for us today. Erica, thank you

(02:03:55):
so much for talking about It's a wealth of information.
It's really valuable. Thank you, Yeah, and thank you all
for listening. That's your episode for the day. Welcome to

(02:04:23):
it could happen here. I'm Garrison with me today is Chris,
and today we'll be talking about something that I was
wanting to do for Pride Month but time kind of
got away from me. But we'll be talking with Noah Adams,
who does research into the kind of crossover between autism
and being trans I know we've we've briefly mentioned some

(02:04:46):
like rhetoric around this on our War on trans People
series episodes, and Noah was kind enough to reach out
to me to be willing to discuss this more in depth.
Of greetings, Hello, thank you. It's it's always Pride Months
somewhere in the summer. So that's true. That's true. Um So,
I guess let's I first want to kind of hear

(02:05:08):
how you how you personally kind of got into this
field of research, and then maybe kind of clarify what
what exactly your your field of research is? Sure, Um, well,
I guess where do you start? I mean, I'm I'm
a trans person and I'm also autistic, so it's sort
of a natural yeah crossover for me. Um, I got

(02:05:29):
started in trans research uh or transactivism doing suicidality work.
Um in such a long time ago now, but in um,
I think two thousand and six, myself and my best
friend cycled across Canada to bring awareness for trans suicidality

(02:05:50):
um and in memorandum of a person, a friend who
who committed suicide. UM. So you know, we went to
a lot of different communities in Canon, including Saskatoon, did
talks about you know, did talks with local trans communities
about suicide, audy prevention and stuff. Uh and met a
lot of great people. Um. And then I came back

(02:06:13):
and I did my Master of Social work also on
trans suicidality research, kind of looking at how there's a
lot of different research out there and who knows, you know,
there's a lot of different rates that are given all
high and and where are we supposed to you know,
fall on that? Um. And then I finished that and
I was kind of tired of doing suicidality work. Yeah,

(02:06:36):
speaking it's a little bit a little bit exhausting. UM.
And kind I have a I have a much darker
sense of humor than I used to. Yeah, um so
a friend I was kind of drifting into autism work,
and a friend who, uh Jake Pine, who who's a
professor now at your university, UM, suggested I kind of

(02:07:01):
move into that area. And and here I am so
with the kind of crossover between being trans and have
and and uh, I guess I'm not the best I
don't I don't know, I consciously don't kind of know
all the what the most appropriate languages would you say
that you would you prefer to say that you like
have autism or you are artistic? Um? I mean I

(02:07:24):
think it's pretty universal in the autism community to uh
talk about identity first language. So yeah, exactly, logism kind
of leads and and that's yeah. I mean I guess
i'd say I'm autistic. Most people don't say person with autism. Yeah. Yeah.
So with that, how have you kind of what what

(02:07:46):
initially got you to? You know, because we see a
lot of propaganda and stuff trying to almost like take
away people's agency around both being trans and and and
um with and how and being autistic? Right, there's a
lot of a lot of propaganda, especially from the Turfs
in the UK really started this out and really accelerated

(02:08:09):
on this point. Um. And I mean we're not. There's
a whole bunch of basically autism exterminationist groups out there,
um and a whole a whole bunch of other kind
of problems around this. How when when these kind of
crossovers start happening, where did you kind of what what
kind of prompted you to see this and be like, Hey,

(02:08:30):
here's this thing that needs to be researched, and here's
how I'm going to go about it. Because you see
a lot of people talk about this thing, but it's
always generally to like attack trans people, um or attack
autistic people. I mean, you know there's a lot there.
I mean I would say, you know, my sort of
seedling of interest is is I just really don't like injustice.

(02:08:52):
I really, I mean that's such a broad thing to
say that I really, you know, injustice against people for
the sake of who they are really just kind of
pisses me off. Um. And you know, I mean, when
you pick a research topic, you've kind of pick something
that you're willing to spend hours and hours and hours
in a library or you know, um a virtual library.

(02:09:12):
What have you just kind of plowing away at it?
And and it seemed like I was piste off enough
at the injustice of the way autistic people, in the
way trans people are treated, and especially the way I
think I think we're ignored by both the theaters, by
both you know, for for turfs and trans exclusionary folks. Um.
I really feel like we're an easy target where you know,

(02:09:34):
autistic people or or for that matter, people with the
volment of disabilities or people with with any kind of
um and I'm using having finger pots on as any
kind of impairment based disability feel like a soft target
for people that just want to attack trans folks, right like,
because they're they're a group that are so it's incomprehensible

(02:09:56):
to them that we would be able to speak for ourselves.
So so they're you know, I mean, I don't even
think that they I don't think they care about autistic people.
But I don't think they even even occurs to them
that autodic people might have and trans autistic folks might
have something to say for themselves. So, what's kind of

(02:10:18):
the scope of your research been the for however however
long you've been working on this for it's it's for
a PhD program, correct, Yeah, Well, I started doing I
wrote a book on trans authentic folks. That's sort of
a series that interviews with folks um and you know,

(02:10:39):
I mean I just asked them like about their lives
and what it was like to be trans and what
it was like to be autistic, and what it's like
to you know, try to transition as an autistic person,
and a lot of stuff came out of that around
you know, how difficult it can be for folks that
are their boat to access trans healthcare and to sort
of navigate their way in the world. Um. And this
is for my PhD work. It's sort of an outgrowth

(02:11:01):
of that. So I'm looking specifically at how trans autistic
community groups sort of grassroots group formations are are forming
and and what their goals are. How do you, like,
how do you go about like ethical research into this topic,
because definitely the like, you know, there's a certain way

(02:11:22):
to like, there's a certain way to be like, I'm
researching autism and trans people to be like, huh, that's
a little bit of a side I right, because because
of how some of because of how like the turf
groups talk about it. Obviously you're treads and autistic and
that's two completely different. But like, definitely Yeah, I was
definitely wondering, like, is there, like how what what types
of like ways does ethical research go about so that

(02:11:45):
you actually understand people when you're when you're talking to them.
It's not it's not about like here, we need to
we need to like solve these problems, because they're not
problems to be solved, But it's it's research into living
people who are like having lives. Yeah, mean, that's that's
a great question. Um. I'm sort of starting through that
myself right now because I'm just you know, working through

(02:12:06):
my ethical research proposal. Um, but I think you just
have to be really honest and open and and really
write all this stuff out, like how are you going
to contact people and what are you going to talk
to them about? And showing other people what you're doing
and being very open to that process, if that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah,

(02:12:26):
In what types of ways do you see the crossover
kind of between ableism and transphobia and like what how
how have you seen that crossover be used to kind
of hurt both trans people and people who are artistic
and people who are both you know, I mean I
think the most explicit way has been I you know,

(02:12:46):
I see a lot of articles by the Guardian or
the Daily Mail, you know, bring up the specter of
autistic people and being overrepresented, overrepresented again in finger quotes, Uh,
I'm the trans population going to gender clinics and and
there isn't ever any explanation after you say that that
the scaremongering is just saying there's artistic people supposedly overrepresented

(02:13:12):
among trans folks. Oh no, but as if it doesn't
need saying. It's it's assumed that that's that's appalling, you know,
but I like a little bit more explanation. There's there's
there's a lot said by how they how there's how
they frame it and how they and like what they
don't say, um really fright, Like the it's all framed

(02:13:32):
as if this is, you know, something that everyone recognizes
as like a problem. Um, and countering that is really
challenging because it is. Yeah, because like again you're you're
doing research into this in this into this specific crossover,
and what kinds of stuff have you kind of learned
throughout your research about about this. I mean it's interesting,

(02:13:54):
like it's that attitude is also represented in the academic literature,
like over the last I bet I'd say over the
last five years, the literature on the crossover of of
autism and trans folks has like skyrocketed, Like in I
always say, in to twenty alone, something like a hundred
and fifty articles were published, whereas two years before that

(02:14:16):
maybe twenty UM and and the vast majority of them
are mentioning the um the co occurrence uh in passing.
So they're saying, oh, well, we read these other things
where autism and trans identity co occurs, So thus you
should be very careful prior to providing trans healthcare because

(02:14:37):
they might be autistic. Yeah, That's the only thing I
wanted to talk about was like people medical gatekeeping aspect,
and like you especially you see this like turfs. You know,
there's a lot of like infantilization with the turf Frederick
around this, and then that kind of leads to this
type of medical gatekeeping. Yeah, I just think, you know,
I see I see this. I saw this in a

(02:14:58):
book with the interview as I did, and I see
it in so many other places, and especially conversation with folks.
Is that, you know, the problem seems to be if
you tell an unexpected narrative to the person in charge
of gate keeping you for transgender healthcare, you're going to
make them nervous. And if you make them nervous, they're
they're not necessarily gonna say no, but they're gonna say

(02:15:21):
to themselves at least, oh, let's wait and see. And
for for autistic folks, waiting and seeing might mean forever, right,
Like I talked to folks in the book, uh that,
you know, without without mentioning actual cities, because of the
you know, the particular situation of this person. But let's
let's you know, let's say he lived in New Orleans, uh,

(02:15:42):
and he wasn't able to access trans healthcare and New
Orleans because it just wasn't available to folks who were autistic,
And so he ended up moving to Chicago, which which shows,
you know, he moved to Chicago specifically to get trans healthcare,
which shows a level of capacity that there implying in
the context of trans health care in New Orleans that

(02:16:03):
he's not capable of. But you know, he can upbroot
his whole life, move across the country, find a doctor.
And then he talked to the doctor in an informed
health clinic in Chicago and and they were like, oh, yeah,
we knew that you were from this city, and we
do that you were autistic before you told us, because
there's this whole pipeline of autistic trans folks making the
migration to Chicago from this particular city because they can't

(02:16:27):
get healthcare. I mean, like, you know, I'm also thinking
about you know, like kids trying to come out as trans,
um who have autism or have any other kind of
you know, quote unquote developmental disability UM, and like just
all of the ways that that can be used to

(02:16:47):
gaslight kids about their gender identity. UM. I know in
your book you mentioned stuff around like self discovery and
coming out and issues with family. UM, what kind of
what kind of things have you heard heard about that
in terms of how how kids that that the kids
are figuring figuring out gender stuff while also having this

(02:17:10):
whole other thing that people use to kind of, you know,
add on to their experience. I mean, I think, you know,
one of the things I noticed, especially in you know,
sort of trans autistic autobiographies, is that you know, gender
doesn't really make an inherent sort of sense do a
lot of autistic folks. I mean, it doesn't make sense
to do. But I mean I have I have something

(02:17:31):
going on in my brain. I don't know what it is.
I don't think it's autism, but yeah, genders never made
sense to me either, And I think like where you
for autistic people, especially where you come across things that
don't make an inherent sort of sense, it's difficult to
accept them. Like so much in the world doesn't make
inherent sense. But that can be a real sticking point

(02:17:51):
for autistic folks. So, you know, what I see, what
I seem to see a lot of is that by
the time folks come out, well, first of all, it's
see was like, although you know, I don't want to
quote any particular kind of research on it because I
think the jury is still out, but it seems like
autistic people are more likely to identify as non binary
um or to just not identify with gender at all. Um.

(02:18:15):
And it does seem like by the time folks come
out as trans, whatever you know, permutation of that there
is for them, um, They've they've tried just about every
other identity they can, you know, they can try out
like especially you know, I mean, we're aware that there
are social stigmas and and and social expectations around gender.

(02:18:38):
So I think for for a lot of autistic folks,
they're going to try to fit that, even though it
doesn't make sense to them, They're going to try to
fit within that because they know it exists, and that
by the time they come out as as trans, like
or main or female or what have you, like, we
pretty well know. Is there any any kind of sense? Yeah? No,

(02:19:01):
I mean I think that there's a lot of misconceptions
people have about about i mean, both being trans and
big autistic. Let let a load being both of Is
there any like, yeah, like, what's the common misconceptions about this?
Only kind of on like a broader level. Would you
like to dispel? Um? Sure, Yeah, I mean I think

(02:19:23):
a lot of people get told, you know, you can't
you can't be autistic because you're too you're too articulate,
or you know, you have too much of an opinion.
Autistic people can't have an opinion of themselves, of their
own life. And yeah, that's gross. I'm paraphrasing, but I
think that's what it is. Yeah, absolutely, Um, And then

(02:19:43):
you know, trans folks get told It's not uncommon to
get told, oh, well, you can't be autistic because you're trans,
so you're sort of in this this no, no person's land.
That's such a it's such like an ontological attack on
someone's being. It's so really like that's you know, like

(02:20:04):
you know already like again just being solely trans or autistic,
you get some of that, and then together it's like
it's just attacking every kind of part of you that
you're trying to figure out. Um well, I mean, I
mean in terms of attacking people rhetorically, it's sort of
the perfect weapon because you can make autistic trans people
into whatever you want to be convenient to you. What

(02:20:27):
kinds of stuff do you think people should know about
this to help kind of either you know, to help
either like counter some of like the rhetoric around this,
or just to gain better like personal understanding, right if
they have if they have you know, people in their
lives who are like this, or maybe they suspect that
they're that they're trans and they're autistic. Like how what
what kinds of what kinds of stuff would you like

(02:20:48):
people to be more aware of about this intersection? Well?
I guess I remember a story someone from the book
told me about how you know he was He had
his best friend is is trans and autistic as well
and has a number of physical disabilities, and he was
kind of he's sort of the caretaker for him. Um,
and he was kind of talking to him about how, oh, well,

(02:21:11):
I don't know if I'm trans, and I don't know
if I should you know, if I should use that
label or like, you know, maybe it's not the right
thing to do or it's bad or something. And his
friend was like, well, you know you're not You're not
a hormone of vampire. Like you're not gonna like suck
the hormones out of somebody else and and hurt them
by taking away their testosterone. Like, oh I wish is

(02:21:31):
I wish it worked like that? Um, you know I would.
I would be a trans empire. Um, this is about
you and what makes you comfortable. It's not about like
you're not hurting anybody else being yourself. And I think
you know, autistic folks like anybody else you know, worry

(02:21:53):
about I mean, we're we're just as susceptible to the
attacks on trans folks. Yeah, is anybody else right? Like
and you worry that, like, well, maybe this isn't the
right thing to do, but like what are you hurting
by by exploring it? That doesn't mean you have to
be trans or you have to transition, or or you
can't change your mind like, but it doesn't. It doesn't

(02:22:15):
hurt anybody, even though you to just be open to it,
even just like temporarily trying out different names or pronouns. Right,
it can can be like such a big deal, um,
and it can be very incidental. Like it doesn't. It
doesn't need to be so cataclysmic. Right, that's something that
you can experiment with and it's fine. Right, you never yeah,

(02:22:38):
you don't lock yourself into anything. Um, but of course
you know what it's about, your personal sense of identity.
Of course it feels much bigger. Well, I think I
think people worry about what other folks I mean, obviously
people worry about what other folks will think and mean
for them. Um, I don't know what I mean. It
seems like a strange comparison to make. But I don't know.

(02:22:59):
If you've seen Crimes of the Future, I've not yet. Oh,
it's it's really good. It's it's the most recent David
Cronenberg movie. And there's this great I'm going to give
away the end of the movie, so spoiler boilers. I
know we're giving this into a movie podcast what I've
always wanted. There's this great scene at the end though,
where Vigo Mortison is like in this he has this

(02:23:22):
special like very David Cronaberti bone chair that he has
to like be in to move him around what he's eating,
and he finally is convinced by his partner to like
try the plastic chocolate bar that's you know, supposed to
be like it's a whole digestive thing. I will get
into it. But you know, there's this moment of realization
and like he's been avoiding this for the whole the
whole movie, and he like tries it and he's eating

(02:23:44):
it and and suddenly there's this this realization moment in
his face where he's like, oh, this didn't have to
be so difficult, Like, I society doesn't want me to
do this, and it's it's seen as a crime, and
it's see is as terrible. But actually, when you cross
that rubicon, it wasn't as bad as you thought. Yeah,

(02:24:08):
I mean, especially if you if you're even even if
you're not like coming out to everybody you know at
the same time, right, you can start you start off
with a smell group of people that you know are
gonna be with you, and you try it out with
them and if you like it, then great, that's that's
a really good sign if you if you start it
and you're like, and this doesn't feel right, then you
don't need to commit. Like it's not a thing. Right.

(02:24:29):
That rubicon can feel so big sometimes, yeah, and it
feels like you're you're jumping across a giant like the
Grand Canyon. But really all it is is you're stepping across,
you know, a small stream and you can step right
back across there if you didn't like it. Yeah, So
what kind of things we like to see happen around
like the medical gatekeeping so that it's less fucked up?

(02:24:54):
I mean, I know a lot of I'm actually act
a conference in Belgium right now for trans health sort
of medical trans health stuff. Um, and you know, I mean,
I think one of the things I keep coming back
to is you don't need to treat autistic people in
the realm of trans healthcare any differently than you do

(02:25:14):
anywhere else, like anyone else, Like, especially in the gate
keeper model, we have like either you have the capacity
to consent or you don't like that that test is,
and I have lots of thoughts about that if that's
for another day. But you know, whether you meet those
tests or not, it should not be any different just

(02:25:34):
because you're autistic. UM would like to, I guess talk
briefly about your book. Um, you know, what's it like? What?
What what the scope of it is? Where people can
find it? Um, trans and Autistic Stories from Our Stories
from Life at the Intersection by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. UM.
It was out in I think people can find it

(02:25:57):
on Amazon or wherever you buy books. I'm sure Paul's
book store over there in Portland has it. Um. Yeah,
it's it's a series of interviews with folks who are
trans and artistic. I sat down with folks and and
asked them about their life and and what's going on
and what that looks like. And then I sort of, uh,
you know, try to transcribe that into into a text,

(02:26:19):
into a narrative form and put that in a book.
And here we are. That sounds wonderful. Um. I see
the I see that, I see the listing on Amazon
dot c A for our for our Canadian Canadian folks
as well. UM. Yeah, thank you so much for talking
about this. Um, is there any other kind of random
thoughts that you would like to you would like to
mention that we haven't that we haven't brought up yet. Sure. Um.

(02:26:45):
You know, I always like to plug groups Walsh's work,
which looks at you know, they do a lot of
work in trans autistic stuff too, and they kind of
look at why more people may be trans and autistic, uh,
And one of the things they've they found is that
it may be that uh, autistic people are both less

(02:27:06):
capable of hiding the fact that they're trans and less
less capable of caring um or caring about hiding it,
so it may be more obvious that there is a concurrence.
They're not an actual overage of a concurrence, let's say, yeah,
of course. Yeah, that means that was definitely in the

(02:27:27):
back of my mind. Yeah, huh. Well again, no, thank
you so much for coming to talk with us. Yeah,
can I can I plug a couple of things? Is
that plug? Plug away? This is still still your time, okay. Um.
So I'm leading a refugee sponsorship group for a group

(02:27:50):
of five for a trans guy from the Middle East,
and we're raising funds through the Metropolitan Community Church in Toronto.
We got to raise a certain amount before we can
put the application in and I can give you that link,
but it's at Canada helps dot org. And the Navy
is trans Proud, trans Proud, trans and proud you are ill,

(02:28:13):
but it's kind of long. I will I will put
if you send me that link, I will put it
in the description for people to click on. Awesome and
you can find me at no atoms on Twitter because
I got in early enough to get my name. Yeah. Wow,
March two thousand nine, just right right on the cusp
right well again, thank you so much for reaching out

(02:28:36):
to talk about this intersection. Hopefully if anyone was interested
what we were talking about, UM, please check out Noah's book,
UM to just read a whole bunch of stories from
from from people about this. Yeah. Awesome, thank you, Yeah,
all right, everyone that does it for us today it's
the on the other side. Oh yeah, Sophie, that's how

(02:29:14):
we opened the episode. I didn't think anything could be
more appalling than that other thing that you said that
I want. What I was talking about, Brett Kavanaugh and
Clarence Thomas wrapped together so tightly that they can't tell
who's where one person's skin begins in the other. I
walked you right into it, just like Neil Gorsch walked

(02:29:37):
right into that and then decided, you know what, in
for appendy, in for a pound of um? This is
it could happen here the podcast about serious problems, where
we talk about them seriously, and sometimes about the Supreme
Court having a threesome like that, like that, like that
cruise ship where there was a threesome and then a

(02:29:58):
giant six fight. How's everybody doing today? I think the
opening will work better if we just believe out and yeah, yes,
always bleep outcome um except for right there. So I
I feel like today we should chat about one of
the many things that's that's a problem, which is a
specific piece of disinformation that is spreading and not quite

(02:30:20):
like wildfire. It's more spreading like in the background, like
monkey pops on the internet. This is not like the
number one piece of of of of like conspiratorial nonsense
that's getting around, but it's getting around deeply, and I'm
seeing it on the left and the right. You have
if you spend any time at all on social media,
which statistically you do, you've probably seen a bunch of

(02:30:44):
stories and like freaked out posts about fires and arson
at agricultural facilities and factories of food factories is often
how it's phrased. I think the post I saw about
it that was sort of most emblematic with someone being like, hey,
you know, uh, you're probably not aware that some huge

(02:31:05):
number of chickens died in this fire recently and a
bunch of cows died in this field. But if you were,
it's the only thing you'd be talking about. And the
idea kind of that people are pushing when they when
they uh, catastrophize this is that there's this massive rash
of attacks on American food infrastructure, UM at a year

(02:31:29):
when we're already due for a food crisis because of
the Ukraine, and um, it's going to be this this big,
like looming disaster and some like shady group is trying
to starve everybody. UM. And we brought in a friend
to talk about this because it's it is not at
all what what people who are kind of catastrophizing or

(02:31:50):
saying UM. And I wanted to introduce Carl to the show. Carl,
how are you doing, buddy? You know, living living life
in a one party state. Yeah yeah, Um, I don't know, man,
there's a lot of parties these days, like the one
on that cruise ship. Uh so, or is the Forward
Party our our favorite? This is a big Yang Gang podcast. Um. Now, Carl,

(02:32:16):
you and I had buddies on the old Twitter for
a while. You were the origin of one of the
terms that that that we use a lot on this show. Um,
and uh yeah, I wanted to I wanted to talk
to you because this is this is a pretty potent
piece of weaponized on reality. Um. You have been tracking
this for a while on kind of your Own. Yeah, well,

(02:32:40):
this is one of those ones that's it sits in
between a lot of the other conspiracies, right so, like
you said, it's it's kind of the background operating thing
right now. Um. And you know, so when we think
of the big conspiracies right now, they kind of revolve
around what they always did, depopulation, weird n W. We

(02:33:02):
like secret Society stuff, the Q, the Q brand of that. However,
we want to look at this is a little bit
different because this is more overtly political, right So, this
is this is looking to not just dig the hole
of well, everyone's out to get us Bill Gates is

(02:33:22):
buying all the farmland, you know, the crazy stuff we
normally I mean, you know that's right in this, but
it's not the center part um. And yeah, I've been
looking at this for a few months now since I
first saw it, and I first saw kind of traces
of this right after the invasion of Ukraine started, so

(02:33:44):
early March. Things started to kind of shift and nothing,
you know, post here and there that are now missing,
stuff like that, the kind of classic Well, let's test
the waters. Let's see how people accept the idea that
maybe something out you know, in the in the conspiratorial
way is going on just asking questions type yeah, exactly exactly.

(02:34:07):
It's the just asking questions It said, just well maybe
think about it kind of thing. And those those pique
my interest because those tend to be test balloons, and
for this kind of thing, I had a weird you know,
they're weird feelings you kind of get when you watch
some of this as much as we do. Yes, yeah,

(02:34:31):
and you think kind of sense when the thing has
enough ingredients to catch on exactly, and especially when they're
super kind of inflammatory ingredients, right, you know, the Bill
Gates um buying all the farmland is a good example,
not quite as inflammatory, but catches on because people, you know,
it's it's the social paradelia thing. There's always like, there's

(02:34:53):
always this, I mean, and this is something again that's
a broader thing with conspiracies. There's always a germ of truth.
The germ of truth with that is that Bill Gates
is on a lot of farmland. Now, if you compare
it to the total quantity of farmland he has bought,
very it's like, yeah, it's a fraction point oh three
or something. I mean, it's an absolutely tiny amount of
the total, right, Yeah, Because this this country is I
don't know, if you've looked at him, appresently pretty sizeable country,

(02:35:16):
the United States of America kind of a big place
when you actually look. Yeah, and so the kernel of
truth is there there. There are fires right there, industrial accidents,
there are weird stuff happens in big industrial situations. We
have a large industrial farming situation in this country. So
you see it. And I think part of what makes

(02:35:39):
the kind of the idea that oh, this is suddenly
happening and it's suddenly like a massive problem easier to
sell to people is that most Americans know next to
nothing about the food supply and how it works. Like
if you have because I grew up in and around farms,
I've been a lot of my life in agricultural areas.
Farms and things related to farms catch on fire fucking constantly.

(02:36:02):
You may not be Yeah, they're they're like I think
they said there are five thousand annually annually, about fifteen
a day. I mean, it's it's giant fields of dried grain.
It's deeds of dried grain, and it's shipped like silos
full of like flour and stuff, which is like there's
nothing like, yeah, silos explode like like the like a

(02:36:25):
a silo full of grain is slightly less explosive than
like a military like missile or some ship. Like they're
like they detonate if you catch them at the right
way exactly. And like I know here in Minnesota a
few years ago and there's video of a floating around.
You know, there was a you know, a corn, a
corn silo split and the dust goes out and something

(02:36:47):
you know, a car or engine because it's hot, sparks
it off and it's a fireball. You know, So these
things happen, and I can remember there was one of
the last things I saw and I went and covered
in Texas before I moved, was there's this little town
called West which is not in West Texas, it's in
North Texas. It's in between, um, Dallas and Waco, which

(02:37:09):
is in between Dallas and Austin, because no, Waco is
not a destination. And they had this big god it
was some sort of what was the I'm gonna google
what the facility was, uh, but it was it was
this like, um yeah, it was a fertilizer factory and
it caught on fire. There's a terrifying video of this

(02:37:30):
guy with his daughter watching it and it goes off
like like a fucking fuel air bomb, the massive exploit.
It killed the entire town's fire department, like all of
them dead in a second. It was basically fucking anfo
And because it happens this is like two, I think, um,

(02:37:50):
it never it's just this big tragedy. If it had
happened a couple of years later, there would have been
like a conspiracy attached to it. It was just yeah,
it was just slightly to r a but like this
ship happened. I mean, the point of making is that
and that we're making here is that like this ship
happens all the time, and to the numbers we were
quoting earlier, there's no evidence whatsoever that there are a

(02:38:13):
higher number of of these events this year than there
ever are. Um. Basically, one of the things that we've
seen is as of like the spring of this year,
a list has been compiled, um, mainly in places like Gateway,
Pundit and zero Hedge, where they've got like a hundred
different events too, and and it it looks very compelling

(02:38:34):
when you just see this list of and there's this fire,
and this many chickens died here, and this many cows died,
and there was this explosion. But again, if you actually
look at the number of events that are expected in
a year, there's nothing abnormal about this, and in fact,
it's pretty middle of the road for any year. And
like the bird, the bird calls right, like that's a
great example of this being just absolutely out of the

(02:38:57):
park conspiracy land. I mean, there's a massive eight and
flu epidemic going on right now that's killed more birds,
you know, than the last ten years. And so when
you start talking about you know, three hundred you know,
three hundred million birds worldwide being called whatever the massive
numbers that funny how avian flu does that, and that's

(02:39:19):
a response. But when you get into the zero hedge,
who is really pushing this right now world that's one
of the top ones on the list. And it also
makes you know they have their little maps up right
now with all the drop tabs that show right they
love doing and there's a you see this in other conspiracies.
I think one of the big ones that that kind
of was a little I don't know, on the edge

(02:39:42):
of of of getting mainstream recently was like the conspiracy
about people disappearing at national parks where it's like mapped, yeah,
exactly like it, yeah, and it's like, yeah, man, um people,
there's three million p in the United States, Like and
also people go missing while hiking and one of the

(02:40:04):
like a bunch of stuff isn't on that list, like
the number of those people who were found again and
what exactly a lot of people just like slip and
fall and never a seat again because they falled out
a cliff. Yes, national parks are kind of dangerous, funny
enough once you're off, Yeah, that's why they're fun Yeah exactly.
There was there was a whole four wh one documentary
made a few years ago about this person who went missing,

(02:40:25):
you like were they were They dropped into a secret
underground government bunker where they abducted and they like a
year later they found his body at the bottom of
a cliff. Yeah, and like it it doesn't you know,
that doesn't talk about the horrible stuff done with like
especially in Canada with all of the missing indigenous women.
Is actually it is actually a big problem. But I

(02:40:48):
mean to back to back to the fact, back to
the farming thing. I think what all of these you
know stories show is just the innate holder of industrial farming.
It's actually the scar Yeah, yeah, it is absolutely scary, um,
but it's also like normal scary. Like the thing that's
scary is that the system of industrial farming is incredibly dangerous.

(02:41:11):
And like, if you actually want to be properly horrified
about something relating to food production, look at how many
people die because they get sucked into bogs of pigshit
or drowning grain stile or drowning grain sile. I mean people, legit,
whole families. One person will fall in the grain silo
and they'll try to get him out the whole families.

(02:41:33):
I know, I know people who have who have died
that way because I grew up in the very agricultural area. Yeah,
a lot of this is just like people don't know
the country, but sharine, yes, um so industrial. I mean
like yeah for me, for me someone that hasn't growed
up in any agricultural area at all, and this is yeah.

(02:41:54):
Grain is like so it's like quicksand it sucks you in.
It takes you to that bottom. If you don't spread
out immediately, you're going down and there's really no way
to save somebody. It's stay pretty, stay the funk away
from grain silos. Yeah, do not play around grain silos,
around with the grain silo. It is it is. It
is killed entire families because people will try to save

(02:42:15):
each other then they get sucked down and it's it's pretty. Yeah,
it's bad when you have livestock livestock poop, and sometimes
that poop is super useful. Chicken ship's one of the
best fertilizers ever. You can make. Chicken ship very very useful.
Pigshit is like nasty, it's toxic. It is very hard
to do anything. It's it's in the ground long enough

(02:42:36):
it's a bio Well theoretically, if you were to like
really care about it, you could you could make a
use of it given enough time. But there's so many
pigs because our hunger for bacon is insatiable that you
wind up with this this massive tox of massive toxic sludge.
So there's the chunk of the country in which most
of the pigs come from. There are these huge pigshit
bogs that are like there are countries smaller than bogs

(02:42:59):
of pig ship that we have in the United States,
and people die in them all the time. They get
sucked down into the big ship or you suffocate because
you get one of them bursts. I mean, there's so
many weird things because it's a meth their methane and
hydrogen sulfide scences. So it's just like bad things around
farms all the time, and that's just that's just farming
and what we're ultimately what we are seeing here. If

(02:43:22):
you want to like actually analyze the thing that is
happening um with all of these conspiracies, it's it's what's
called the frequency illusion, which is the idea that like
if you've ever I don't know, if somebody when somebody
like teaches, like you learn a new word, right, or
you like you hear about a historic event, and then
you keep seeing everywhere. This is something that's an author

(02:43:45):
that Garrison and I quite like Robert Anton Wilson played
with a lot um. It's why, like twenty three is
one thing you'll notice in like Hollywood movies and TV
shows if you look out for twenty they're fucking everywhere
because a whole bunch of people who got into Hollywood
are fans of the same guy. And there's this conspiracy
with the number of twenty three people sticking. It's all
over the fucking wire. It's in a bunch of ship um,

(02:44:06):
and it's it's yeah, at the base of things like right,
humans are paradelium, right, So we're looking for patterns and
static that's what we do. It's part like in my mind,
it's part of our like ancestral uh, you know, deep
in the past protection, right, how we cont me? Yeah,
exactly what's that? And it's how you look for monsters
in the woods, you know. It's like when we're looking

(02:44:28):
for eyes in the dark. That's part of it. And
so you know, we tend to find meaning in points
and then try and connect them because that's how we work.
And so this is a great example of this because
it hasn't gone full Q level yet where it's just
absurd to be absurd. The shield itself, like you can

(02:44:50):
see where people are trying to pick together points that
normally are just industrial accidents. And you know, some of
the stuff I saw early on, for like the cow
death posts and the stuff related to climate change, what
you really were seeing was people trying to make order
out of what is just chaotic accidents and now and

(02:45:13):
now yeah, yeah, no, it's it's it's something you rarely
actually see in the cascade of you know, conspiracy theory
like this so overtly and it's been really interesting for
me watching that because you know, as someone who's far
too into watching people melt their brains. UM. This this

(02:45:36):
kind of lays out some of the ways that this
works for all of us, UM, and I think it
also offers a roadmap in certain ways to like see
past it and be able to correct it for yourself
so you don't get into the same Oh there are
a thousand points a light here, let's fall all of them. Yeah,
it's UM. One of the things that's interesting. So, like

(02:45:58):
we just called it the the recency bias or the
frequency illusions, is also the recency illusion, which is like
the belief that things that you have like noticed only
recently are a recent phenomena rather than things that go
back a long time. There these are kind of inter related.
But this, this sort of phenomena that we're seeing is
often called the bottom mine off phenomena. And that's so

(02:46:22):
so the bottom I'm pretty yeah bottom the bottom mine
Off group was a it's also called the German Red Army. UM.
It was a yeah, it was a West German terrorist
organization from like seventy years ago. Like this is not
a recent thing, but there was an article about them
in like a Minnesota St. Paul newspaper in nineteen four

(02:46:45):
that happened to be one of the first newspapers with
an online comment page. Oh no, well yeah, so this
is like you'll always here referred to as the bottom
mine off phenomena. It has nothing to do with this
terrorist group other than the fact that one commenter on
saw an article about them, um within a couple of
hours of someone else in their life telling them about

(02:47:06):
the group, and so they named it in the common
section the bottom mine off phenomena because yeah, like it's
it's which is an example of the phenomena. Um, but
like that's it is. It is. It's a thing that
people do for again good reason. Like like you said,
like if you're a fucking hunter gatherer and you notice that, like, oh,

(02:47:26):
after a rainstorm is when the big cats come out
and hunt. And like if somebody, if one of your
friends gets eaten by like a tiger, it's probably after
a rainstorm. You associate after the rainstorm with danger, which
is like good, right, Like I live inside urban environments,
the usually usually less. This becomes useful as relating to

(02:47:47):
more of our like instinctual practices. Learning to recognize this
like first step of delusion is really important. Um, I
don't think decisions in the future, right, But I think
it's much more similar than we realized to like how
people think of religion, because even religions people are Yeah,

(02:48:09):
like what you're saying is like there's so much chaos.
People can't make sense of the world. And just like religion,
you're trying to make order out of disorder and look
for signs, to look for patterns. It's like an element
of magical thinking where yes, you look for reasons that
this has meaning, so I understand where they're coming from.
And so the problem, again, the problem is not with

(02:48:31):
your brain, because this is not like a bad thing
your brain is doing. It's just a thing your brain
is doing. The problem is that this is one of
the easiest ways that bad faith actors can take advantage
of you and other people, and so in terms of
protecting yourself and others from it. And again, one of
the problems with this and one of the things that
makes it so so much more difficult twenty years ago

(02:48:55):
the batter mind how obviously the bottom line how phenomenon
was as much of a thing as that dude in
the fucking Commons page that Minnesota paper proves, But there
was less ship coming at you, so you kind of
had even if you might get caught for a little
bit and they're like, oh, is there something weird going
on with this this German terrorist group. Um, you kind
of had the space in your head and the space

(02:49:16):
in your media diet to like actually parse that out
and calm down. But today it all comes with you
with a flood. There's like three new fucked up Supreme
Court decisions. Oh, and now all of the food factories
are on fire and all of the chickens are dead,
and this war in Ukraine is actually elevating the food prices,
and it all compounds on itself. If you when you
start seeing something new like this come into your media

(02:49:40):
diet that seems scary, one of the first things you
should do is just try to get a handle on
the raw numbers this Well, this is a complexity Yeah,
you know, you know, this is a complexity issue. That's
how I like to look at it. And that's exactly
one of the great ways to to kind of get
disrupt the complex nature of this and the amount of

(02:50:02):
it you're taking in is just to start breaking it down.
Numbers are great, right, Like if you can look and
see their eighteen thou instances of industrial accidents leading to X,
y or z and five thousand fires, you start to
really get yourself into a better position to understand what's
being thrown at you. Yeah, but I don't think most
people can actually understand what those numbers mean. Like there's

(02:50:26):
like they're large numbers, but I don't think people understand
like that means a lot of that stuff is happening
versus just like one or two things you hear about
and you don't realize that probability wise, that it's like
insignificant because I don't think those numbers makes sense. I
mean even to me sometimes I can't. I can't picture
so many things, So I think it's I don't know,
maybe it's just like a deficit and how our brains

(02:50:48):
would you be able to understand why the numbers exist.
But you can try to compare them two previous years, right,
you can't exactly, you can't expand what you're relating to,
right if you're if you're looking from is everything from
March to June two, you're like, whoa, this is a
lot of stuff just in these few months that if
you compare that to every preceding year for the past

(02:51:08):
few years, like, oh, this actually isn't a regular this
is this is this is still fucked up, but it's
actually kind of normalized. Um, and it's not. It's not
an abnormal phenomenon right now. And so even if you
can't like understand what the numbers are, you can still
compare them to previous things. But but yeah, I mean
that does require more work than just like looking at

(02:51:29):
a meme, right, And the reason why this stuff works
is because people know how to exploit this part of
our brains really well. Not not not not not in
this part of this brain is useless, right, It has uses, um,
you can play with it, but it's also is exploitable.
And and that's the thing that you want to be
aware of, is trying to be cognizant of if the

(02:51:50):
information you're taking in is exploiting this pathway and then
choosing how how you want to be be circumvent some
of those mental effects act like well, and we have
such I mean, as humans, we have a real issue
with this kind of brain hacking, and it's something we're
just all kind of getting up to right now and understanding.
And we still don't fully understand some of this. But

(02:52:12):
you know, I UM a lot of the stuff I
I kind of initially worked off of for the concept
of weaponized unreality kind of talks about social engineering in
the way that like freaking was done and hacking back
in the day was done, and this is so similar
to that in certain ways that it's kind of shocking, right,
Like it's a conspiracy, but it's also a management tool

(02:52:34):
and it's a it's a memory management and and you know,
ultimately a reality management tool and giving it numbers looking
at context like that does take time, but some of
these are like gonna gonna be hard and fast rules
probably going forward to like interact with the digital world,
because this is gonna be how it is for a

(02:52:54):
long while. There's a book that was kind of considered
to be like the foundational text of or at least
strategic document of the Islamic State, called The Management of
Savagery Um. And the title gives away what what you're doing, right,
you're carrying out You're you're engaging in acts of savagery,
terrorist attacks that that that kill innocent people, that are

(02:53:15):
that exists to disrupt um the state that you're in
in order to and you're attempting to like you're attempting
to build kind of a melieu of savagery, which then
provides you the opportunity to take an exert power. And
what we're seeing here is like the management of cognitive biases,
right exactly, the management of like these weird little evolutionary

(02:53:37):
holdovers in your brain, um that that don't quite work
in the modern world. But if you understand what what's happening,
you can take advantage of them, and you can you
can trick people into thinking things are happening that aren't.
It's the same. You know, you can see this. The
right does this very effectively in a lot of the
anti trans stuff they've been doing, obviously with gay you know,

(02:54:01):
if you look at the population trans and of gay people,
some number of people in that community are going to
do things that are bad, right, because it's a population
of human beings, um, and because the country is large enough.
If you get people hyper focused on here's a story,
here's another story, here's two, here's three stories. Now, is
that does that mean that there's any kind of actual

(02:54:21):
systemic problem. No. Um, that community is no more likely
to do things that are bad than any other community.
But if you get people focused on each of those
stories in their head, they feel like there's they feel
like there's an epidemic, and like, well, we have to
get a handle. It's the same thing that that gets
done with like Islamic terrorism, right where it's like, yes,
since nine eleven, actually not that many acts of Islamic

(02:54:43):
terrorism in the United States extremely fucking uncommon, much less
common than right wing terrorism like homegrown terrorism, but the
media doesn't really cover one of those kinds of terrorism
and loves to cover the other. So you get people
periodically tricked into thinking that they're under direct threat from
the Islamic State or whatever. The right well, and I
think it's you know, I think going to that point right,

(02:55:03):
like it's almost u I mean, it's a reality filter, right, so,
like it's a way to selectively filter out things that
would counter the narrative that you're trying to overall push.
And I think that that's something that's what's interesting me
about this in a lot of ways is that we're
seeing a filter being set up that only allows people
into one lane of this thought. And we've seen what

(02:55:26):
the end result of that is with radicalization and things
that come along with these kind of conspiracies. But it's
really it's been very wild to watch since the you know,
the nineteen April till now where we're seeing it. You know,
Serovich is doing it, every any one of the guys
you can think of doing it, Yeah, exactly. Tucker ran

(02:55:48):
a couple of things on this and kind of interspersed
it with his you know, white male virility ship. It's
the we're we're we're in a weird place where these
are starting to be able to be played with and
on each other, and that kind of filtering, you know,
starts to get people onboarded from a conspiracy into you know,
what we're seeing now is kind of the white nationalist

(02:56:11):
Christian nationalist movement. That's that's become that that thing. And
you know, for me, that's where my interest stems from
because of this idea of weaponizing on reality, seeing what
happened in Russia when that happened, and seeing this kind
of thing which is so similar to that filtering and
that narrative shift and building that goes on in that world.

(02:56:32):
It's it's been you know, staring into a void feels bad.
Sometimes this is just one where it's like, oh this
is terrible, and it's just the beginning of it. Every
once in a while, the void stares back and you're like,
oh boy, oh yeah no, and that's exactly I mean,
that's uh, that's the problem is sometimes it just stares
you right in the eyes and tells you, yeah, I'm here,

(02:56:54):
and that's a bad feeling. Yeah. Well, I think that's
more or less we needed to talk. That would be like,
you know, like one of the one of the ways
to combat this, if you can, is honestly, creating your
own memetic graphs is really useful because these things spread
so fast when they're in images. Images of of dates

(02:57:15):
and instances spread like wildfire. Um So, if you can
make your own which compares it to previous years, say hey,
this actually isn't a new pattern, that's something that's been
this is this is just what happens in industrial farming.
I think spreading it via memetic images is one of
the if there is a way to combat it, that's
probably one of the core ways to go about it,

(02:57:37):
just to get how fast those things spread. And again
you can see I've seen some useful people have been
trying to push back against you know, this idea that
there's been this like massive crime surge in San Francisco
and stuff, and they it's uses the same tactics, right, yeah. Absolutely.
You have like a couple of videos of people shoplifting
or something, and then you make and and is there

(02:57:57):
is that kind of crime actually up? Well no, it
really isn't. But like it doesn't matter because um or
is it any higher there than it is in someplace
like Duluth where no videos are coming out like no,
it's not, but um, it's uh. If you have to
be aware, the first thing you have to be aware
of is the phenomena is like the way in which
they're taking advantage of you. And then you have to

(02:58:20):
you have to kind of deter and you have to
use the tactics they're using against them. And one of
the things that is effective is these these graphs with
kind of like numbers and dates and ship on them.
People love to feel like they're looking at research. But yeah,
at the same time though not to not to be like,
I don't know negative about this at all, but in

(02:58:43):
my mind, this is like a modern day version of
someone starting your religion and make people like making the
sheep of this like following and then having them turn
into like whatever it is, whether it's Christian nationalism or whatever.
But just like in religion, if people are presented with science,
they don't care, you know what I mean, You'll present
them with like, I don't know's there's some people that

(02:59:03):
it's it's it's not science. It's about everyone wants to
have access to special, secretive, secret knowledge. Everyone wants to
have esoteric knowledge that no one else has so these
graphs are still compelling in the first place because you're like, oh,
no one else knows all of these things. No one
else has laid it out in this manner. So if
you could present your information in that same style, say hey,

(02:59:23):
no one knows that this is actually part of this
overall thing that's been going on for years and it's
about industrial farming, then you hope that that will spread.
That Then that spreads because because it infects the same
point in someone's brain. Right, want to we want to
feel smart, we want to feel unique, we want to
have like esoteric knowledge. So if you can, if you
can frame it to to fit that same mold, then

(02:59:45):
it's not science. It's just playing with the same tactics
that got them convinced of this in the first place. Exactly.
People that's different. Yeah, I think I think it's true that, like,
if somebody is a committed believer in in whatever, like
like Mike Sernovitch or something, you're not convincing them. The

(03:00:06):
danger The thing that they're doing that's dangerous is there.
They're quote unquote pilling a lot of like random people
into the problem that scares those people. And when those
people get scared, they're willing to accept ship they wouldn't
otherwise scare. And I think those people you can push
get to step down from the ledge because one thing
we do want this is also a problem. But like

(03:00:28):
you think about like climate change, right, and how much
of the denial of climate change is not based around
getting people to reject the idea entirely, but getting like
when people bring up a specific problem being like, well,
but look at this weird new piece of technology that
some kid developed, and like, this is going to fix it,
and then you get to not worry about it. Right,
So if somebody suddenly starts freaking out about agricultural fires

(03:00:51):
for the first time and you're like, actually, they're lower
than they are in normal years, this isn't a problem,
then maybe their brain, maybe you can get their brain
to go like, Okay, that I won't worry about that
because I don't want more things to worry about. I
just have been given them. Um, that's targeting the ledge people.
We're talking. Yeah, you're not getting to true believers. You're
not getting to true believers at this point of any

(03:01:13):
of this stuff. For the most part, you know that
takes a wholly different level of work. I mean, that's
that's in the ballpark in my mind of the radicalization, right,
like you're you're in a wholly different ballpark. And if
you can target the people who are thinking about jumping
into the pool too, they tend to if you do
change their mind, they become some of the biggest proponents

(03:01:34):
of trying to get other people off the ledge that
they might know. And that's something well, it's something, yeah,
it's it's it's it's very similar, and it's something I've
seen even in my friends circles, you know, talking to
people who five years ago, we're fully you know, in
the all let's do Donald Trump for the lulls thing.

(03:01:55):
You know. Now those are the same people who are
telling their friends, oh shit, we have a Christian nationalist
movement that's trying to overthrow democracy. And that's a huge
you know, like that's a huge help, um to everyone. Right.
You want more people saying the truth to people who
might not hear it from someone like us um and

(03:02:15):
can internalize it and infiltrate. There's you know, the truth
takes a lot more work than fiction, unfortunately, but once
it starts to work, it's a compounding thing. And the
truth tends to really set people free. As corny as
that is. If people find out they've been lied to,

(03:02:36):
they get they want to know why it worked, and
that works in our favor and the truth's favor, and
reality is the thing we you know, we gotta protect
this at all costs because we're getting tidle weight by
unreality and that's a problem for all of us for
different reasons. That's the more uplifting note I think than

(03:02:58):
a couple of minutes ago. Yeah, all right, well there
there we go. Um go, I don't know, fix it. Yeah,
go fix things. Yeah, go fix things. Don't go swimming
in grain silos, and uh, avoid grain silos. Always avoid

(03:03:19):
grain silos. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes
every week from now until the heat death of the Universe.
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zone media dot com, or check us out on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could

(03:03:41):
Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com
slash sources. Thanks for listening,