It Could Happen Here Weekly 95

Episode Transcript
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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 gotta be nothing new here for you, but you
can make your own decisions. It could happen. Here is

(00:29):
the podcast that this is right now? Would you guys?
When do you guys? Solo intro this podcast? James Stout,
Mia Wong do y'all? Uh do y'all just like shout
atonally ever have you have y'all tried that yet?

Speaker 2 (00:41):
I haven't.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
I struggle with the intro. I just say hello everyone.
Yeah James, Nope, No.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
That's try that's your that's your East Coast Ivy League elitism.
Uh coming through.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
Yeah, that's that's correct. For ever since I was born
in Boston, I've had that, Yeah, growing up on a
different side of the tracks to yourself also from Boston,
New Coos.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
That's right, that's right, Yes, in Boston. I'm sure I'm
not allowed currently to do the accent because Sophie for
legal reasons. Yeah yeah, I uh yeah, yeah, she's got
some dirt on me. Anyway, we are a podcast about
things falling apart, and you know what would make things

(01:25):
fall apart worse than they already are is if Donald
Trump won a second term. So today, true, we're going
to talk partly about that, and we're going to talk
about the indictments against him. That's the big news, right
the most recent big political news. Unless he's been indicted
again by the time this episode drops, not impossible, send

(01:46):
another one ready to draw up. But for my last kind,
I think he's at like seventy eight charges felony charges
at the moment, so honestly.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
He might get to triple digits. He's not all that far.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
There's stuff like I didn't realize. Well, I guess I
knew intellectually that you could, that you could be charged
with conspiracy to do something and then also doing it,
but I don't think I know, Yeah, like, I don't
think I've ever seen a politician charged with both conspiracy
and the actual doing of the thing.

Speaker 4 (02:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
I hope at some point, assuming you know, we continue
to have something that resembles freedom of speech. We'll get
a good book about like how the whole process of
them had like figuring out how and when and weather
to actually like go after him. I mean, obviously we're
talking about both, like the FEDS and the dau in

(02:38):
New York, but I am interested in both of those
stories because there has to be there have to have
been some real interesting conversations. But yeah, we are right
now he we're looking at him. He's about to be
arraigned as we talk about this, for inciting an insurrection
at the capitol. So so that's pretty cool. Mia, you

(02:59):
wanted to to start us off here, I think.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah, yeah, And I think this is okay. So this
is an interesting indictment in that, like it somehow took
them about two years to like actually do the indictment.
That's like, hey, it's illegal to over try to overthrow
the government by installing yourself as president.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
And in fairness, they don't have a lot of experience
charging people with that one.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
Well, and we should actually mention they should Bush. Well,
here's the thing, Bush Bush. Actually we're gonna talk about
this more later, but like Bush actually got away with
this right, Like the last time a court ruled on
whether a president can use the courts to instalve themselves
as president. The Supreme Court was like, yeah, that's fine,
that's like no problem, Like, yeah, it's fine, you can.
You can have a mob show up and disrupt the
counting process and it's fine. But Trump like fucked up

(03:44):
and didn't do it the way you're supposed to. Yeah,
and you know, there's something sort of I don't know.
So there's something I was thinking about while I was
reading this, which is like the English languish, doesn't I
think part of the issue here is like we don't.

Speaker 4 (03:59):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
The English. English doesn't even like have a good word
for like the kind of coup that Trump was doing.
Like there's a Spanish word which is auto golpe, which
is like yeah, Spanish, He's got a great one in
English and translates to self coup. And we're just like
we're done. It's like no, no, that sucks. That time sucks.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
It's really I wish I had a better Trump voice
because then I could do on a golpe.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
What is that is that?

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Like a like a like at seven eleven, the big
sixty four rounds diet coach that you get yeah, but I.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Can't do it.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
I can't do a good Trump. So that wasn't as
funny as it should have. Anyway, whatever me, please continue.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
We had we had it, so you know, I I think,
you know, I think it's worth kind of thinking a
little bit and we're gonna sort of come back to
this as we go through this case. But I think
it's worth remembering that again, like everything Trump is doing
in this is based off of like is it is

(04:58):
based off of the sort of Bush thing into in
two thousand where he had a bunch of well, okay,
so a bunch of Bush's political operatives like stormed one
of the one of the places that was doing the
recount in Florida and stopped them from counting the votes
and then they just delayed and long enough that he
was able to get appointed.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
Now the Brooks Brothers riot Roger Stone was a major
part of that.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yeah, so we've we've done this. You know, we talked
about this on the show like the end of last year.
But but again, so the reason this worked though, right,
is that Bush made really really sure that there was
like a sound legal case sort of behind this entire thing.
He made he made really sure to like go through

(05:46):
all of the proper like checks and balances and.

Speaker 4 (05:48):
Like blah blah blah blah.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
But Trump just like didn't do this. And the result
of this is that Jack Smith, like finally two years later,
Jack Smith, who's this guy he was, he was appointed
by Merrick Garland to like take over these two Justice
Department cases about Trump. It has just indicted him with
this stuff he has. So he's been charged with with
three counts of criminal conspiracy and but I think his

(06:12):
accounted obstruction. So I'm going to go through what he's
actually been charged.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
I want to note something real quick, which is that
another reason why it worked for Bush and it didn't
for Trump is that with Bush, it was legitimately the
election came down to Florida, right.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
Yeah, like it was.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
It was extremely close. It was really just a couple
of counties in Florida. With Trump, he was not trying
to just sort of like jink jink part of a state.
It was like it was like Biden had a commanding lead. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:43):
Yeah, yeah. It was a big dub for Uncle Joe.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, and and you know, I so yeah, like obviously,
like Trump like just fails at this spectacularly and the
law is finally coming after him. They so that they're
charging him with conspiracy to defraud the United States, which
again is the thing I didn't know you could do.

Speaker 3 (07:01):
And loan soundstrong, got that? Didn't he did?

Speaker 4 (07:04):
He?

Speaker 3 (07:05):
Oh yeah, because USPS was his sponsor. So he was
defrauding the federal guns.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
Yeah, that's the don't yeah, don't, don't, don't you post.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
Trump's the first guy who's not rad to get charged
with that. Sorry James, Okay, I didn't, I didn't.

Speaker 3 (07:20):
Job Yeah, sorry everyone, I'm out.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
So this this one is this is specifically like impairing
the election, like impairing like the the the votes of
the presidential election. The first one is mostly we'll talk
about this more a bit like the illegitimate electors thing
that he did. The second one is just him being
charged for They they finally found a thing the charge
him for doing January sixth, which was they charged him

(07:46):
with like conspiracy to obstruct an official preceding, and then
they got him also with obstruction obstructing the official proceeding,
which again seems like a kind of likeas is, I
don't know, it's not quite getting out the pop for
tax evasion but like you'd think they'd have something like
more prow.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
Over through the government, attempting to make yourself a dictator bonaparteism.
Well it's not really bonapartism.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
But yeah, like seditions, right there sedition that's a choice.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah, Rightoice, they got him on obstruction. Okay, sure, I
don't know, like this is I feel like our I
don't know, our legal system seems to be sort of
woefully unprepared for this.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
Well, yeah, it's not. Again, in fairness, everyone has before
Trump was willing to play the game, right like we are, Like, obviously,
Jeorge W. Bush stole the fucking election, no argument there,
so did Nixon. But they did it with enough plausible deniability,
right that the elite were that there was not there
was not a fear among the quote unquote deep state

(08:57):
or you know, the people the elites in this country
that like this would obviously be someone overthrowing the government, right,
And Nixon's case, fucking LBJ like basically refused to go
after him for breaking the law and extended the Vietnam
War and committing treason because it would be bad in
his view for the country. Horrible mistake, obviously, and with

(09:18):
George w.

Speaker 3 (09:19):
Bush.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
You know, he had he had the court on his side,
and it like so there was there was enough plausible
deniability that you know, it was not like it is
with Trump where he was just like I'm gonna have
a mob like a capital.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
You know, it's due in a ya cat.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
You know, I was thinking about this, like the last
time someone actually did something like this, I think it
was the Corrupt Bargain in like eighteen seventy three. Were
just like like.

Speaker 3 (09:44):
They there was this argument or the Wilmington coup.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yeah well I mean I mean like yeah, but like
like on on on the presidential level of like literally
someone like like brother Ruby Hayes famously like they had
basically this incredible thing like both parties were like they
couldn't decide who was supposed to count the votes and
which whichever like part of the two parties counted the
votes was going to declare that they won the that

(10:09):
they won the election. And so they worked out this
like incredibly basically they worked out this compromise where like
the Republicans got Rutherford Behayes like in office, but they
also ended reconstruction. But that but and that that that
was a period that was long ago enough that like
you could do that ship without like involving the courts
or involving this sort of like massive state apparatus, and
you kind of like can't, I don't know, you can't

(10:30):
outside of like Illinois, you can't really be that corrupt anymore.
You have to sort of like.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
The reason Sandrea goes called en run by the sea Maya.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah, yeah, look, you have to you have to respect
you know, local culture with these kinds of things, and
and Illinois, it would actually be like an act of
genocide to try to make Illinois politics not incredibly Oh yeah,
I mean right, like that that's the destruction of a people.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
Yeah, Like, like one of the hated political figures in
like the entire history of Illinois was this like state
senator who went down for corruption but went down for
like one hundred dollars of corruption and despise like one
of the most hated political figures in Illinois because he
only went down for he only did one hundred dollars
of crimes, whereas like our current governor did like a

(11:19):
bunch of really funny fraud and everyone loves him because
it's hilarious where he like he like he like took
all of the bathrooms out of one of his houses
so it wouldn't be classified the house.

Speaker 3 (11:31):
That's that's kind of that's that's the guy you want
in charge your legatives.

Speaker 1 (11:37):
When he sees a loophole, that's the guy. If we
ever have a corruption Olympics, that's our only chance at
beating the Russians. Illinois is gonna be our dream team.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
Like Prince Kerry is the least corrupt governor I've had
in my lifetime. This is the least corrupt guy. He
is like like.

Speaker 3 (11:58):
He is corrupt, but like he never shit.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Yeah, it's I don't know, all aways sort of amazing.
We should probably get back to this stuff. And so
the last thing you got was they got him of
like conspiracy against rights, so like a conspiracy against the
right to vote and have your vote counted, which sure, yeah,
do you do.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
A bad thing to do? I think conspiracy?

Speaker 2 (12:16):
Yeah, I mean it's it's not good like all of
the things that he like they're accusing of, like he
pretty clearly did. Yeah. So I want to also talk
about the way this has been being talked about in
the media because one of the things is happening here
and this is This is sort of a trend with
all forms of like things that are in the written language,
is that everyone only reads the first like maybe one

(12:39):
chapter or like especially the first couple of pages of
something from any like written document. So this this is
why like all the like you know, the like abandon
all hope you you enter here from Dante's Inferno. That's
that's that's the reason. That's when everyone knows because it's
in like the first couple of chapters. And in this one,
with this case, the thing that everyone got to was
there's this very early part in the entire where the

(13:01):
guy's like, well, yeah, so like it is legal to
like lie about the election, like you have the free
speech right to do that. But then also Trump knowingly
lied about the election and use it to try to
like fraud do fraud. And everyone's getting really hung up
on this thing about like trying to like the court
having to prove that he knew he was lying, which
is kind of like an incidental thing to the actual

(13:22):
like like the actual stuff is getting charged for we'll
get into it, but like like it's not just that
he was lying that he was like actively trying to
get a bunch of state officials to like appoint him. Yeah,
but but you know, this has led to some just
like absolutely hilarious shit from Republicans who are like, none
of you can prove that Trump knew he was lying,
Like there's there's no way to know Trump is Trump

(13:42):
is so Trump that like you can't you can't, you
can't convict him lying because he maybe maybe you just
didn't know.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
It's like, yeah, guys, that may not be the defense
you think it is.

Speaker 3 (13:52):
No, this motherfucker is so dumb, you.

Speaker 1 (13:56):
Can't like this guy didn't even know if he's full
of shit.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
It's so good.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
It's it's like arguing that somebody who shoots two or
three people to death is not guilty because he had
his eyes closed, was pulling the trigger, he didn't know
where he was shooting. That's not a crime.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
The other one, the only one they've been pulling, is
the old like he didn't know it was illegal, which
I wish that that.

Speaker 1 (14:23):
Is absolutely not how the law works. But this is
you know, who.

Speaker 3 (14:27):
Made that not how the law works.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
By the way, this is all you can tell them, Like,
none of these people have ever like had to deal
with the legal system at all ever, except for baby,
Like I don't know, like what are two of these
guys like probably caught weird charges for like unregulated securities
selling or some shit, but like.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
Whom amongst us?

Speaker 4 (14:47):
You know?

Speaker 2 (14:48):
Yeah yeah, but yeah. So so the Republican side of
it's been very funny. Okay, So before we get into
what like specific things they're going after Trump for, I
want to like talk about what his actual what Trump's
actual plan was, because I think a lot of it's
kind of been forgotten. So the first plan, and this

(15:09):
is the part that is that is not actually in
this trial at all, right, like not really likes his
initial plan to steal the election was that. Okay, So
one of the things that happened in twenty sixteen was
that like absentee voters like over like not a woman,
but absentee voters like swung enormously Democrat, right, And that
was one of the things Trump had been using to

(15:29):
prove there was like voter fraud or whatever. And then
you know, COVID happened, and so Trump had this, like
you know, had a plan which was like on a
what he's like, okay, so on election night, it's going
to look like I won because they're only going to
have counted, like they're only going to have counted the
votes that were like done in person, and those are
overwhelmingly Trump. And I remember like that night, like having
to tell all my friends like no, no, no, these

(15:51):
are not the real results. This is this is this
is just the in person votes. The absentie votes are coming.

Speaker 4 (15:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
And his initial plan was to try to just like
declare victory that night, basically trying to declear victory immediately
and then get everyone to stop counting. And that didn't work,
Like even like even Fox News would have eventually like
stopped playing along with it. Like this got to make
a huge trouble with Trump because they like called Arizona.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
Yeah he's still pissed that.

Speaker 2 (16:14):
Yeah now and again like this this didn't work, so
they didn't like he's not being tried for that, even
though that was also very blatantly steal the election. What
what they are charging him for was so after after
so there was like that stuff, and there was all
these like stop to vote mobs that kept showing up
in places, Yes, stop the count, right, yeah, yeah, it's
it's not the count. But then also in some places

(16:34):
they were like we need to count more and somebody.
Yeah stop, Yeah, it was like it was a it
was a whole thing. But you know what, once that fails, right,
Trump and his coup plotters are like legal people are
just sort of like freestyling it. And that's the part
where you get to the actual conspiracies that he's being
charged with here. But before before we get to those conspiracies,
do you know what else is a conspiracy?

Speaker 3 (16:55):
The sence of products and services which you think will
improve your life.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
How cheap they are, that's the conspiracy. Yeah, they've lowered
the price so much it is illegal.

Speaker 3 (17:06):
Of all products and services.

Speaker 5 (17:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
Wow, that's defacial news. Incredible news. We're back, uh and
uh yeah, I've got some good news for you. We
are all sponsored this week by three shipping crates of
illegal contraband Marlboro cigarettes that are Buddy Jimmy over at
the Docks managed to get so six bucks of pack. Guys,

(17:32):
six bucks a pack, just you know, send them to
to Jimmy at ProtonMail dot com. He'll he'll mail you cigarettes.
You know, you've venmo him the cash, He'll send you
some cigarettes.

Speaker 3 (17:43):
There you go.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
This is probably less illegal than anything we're talking about, right, now.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
Yeah, almost certainly. Look, it's not against the law to
sell cigarettes that that you don't pay taxes on. I
think we can all agree that that's fine.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
Actually, no, man, I think you legally can do that
if you're selling it in an airport, if you're.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
Selling it in an airport. Yeah, if it's duty free, right.
And I, because I have such a childlike imagination, the
whole world is really my airport. Ergo, we can always
sell tax free cigarettes here at cool Zone Media.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
That's why we have the small plane that takes off
from Roma's house every day. It's like a remote control plane.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
But that's right, that's right. From all textle it technically counts.
And we are also allowed to run those those Joe
camel ads again, so you know, everybody who's nineties nostalgic,
there you go once you made it all right.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
So the first conspiracy thing that he's getting charged with
is the like fake electors thing. He also has like
six unnamed co conspirators, and we know we probably know
who like five of them are. So the first one,
obviously is Rudy Giuliotti, who is having the time of
his life. Question Mark he is he is like he

(19:02):
is melting so funny TV Like it's the second one
is probably John Eastman. And this is interesting because Eastman
is the guy who he's like the legal mind behind
in January sixth. He's the guy who like thinks that
he's found a loophole in the law that allows like

(19:24):
the vice president to refuse to certify the election. Yeah,
and so this is I don't want to make something
clear at the outset, like he does not have like
Pence does not have the power to do this.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
You're not allowed to do that.

Speaker 2 (19:36):
No, no, like they can't do this right like like
this is if Pence had gone along with this, that
would have been a coup, right like that, Yeah, they
call this a coup.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
Like there's not a clause in the constitution that says
unless this guy doesn't want to have an election, this.

Speaker 3 (19:52):
Is not right. It's seemed like admiralty flag ta legal conspiracy.
That's yeah, Yeah, guaranteed it came from Reddit before he found.

Speaker 2 (20:05):
It's it's some it's some real bullshit like this somehow Again,
this is the legal basis for what they were trying
to do in January sixth. I I don't know words.
Words fail me, like tragedy is farce of the Brooks
Brothers riot, I guess, but like this is like farst
number three. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
I think the first one. The first one was Nixon
extending the Vietnam War in order to uh win his election.
The farce was the Brooks Brothers riot. And now we're
at like lead poisoning brain damage.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
Yeah, like this is this is this is Marks failed
to consider that you could have a third or fourth.

Speaker 6 (20:42):
Farce, like he only got to one.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
So speaking speaking of farce, So the third the third
Koke s Buwer is probably Sidney Powell, who apparently the
last I heard about Sidney Powell, He's currently like owns
a bed and breakfast and spends all of his time
I'm talking with his guest about the Trump administration. So things
are going great for Sidney Powell, who is on.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
A Trump more or less what I would like him
to do.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean if you can just keep sticking
to doing that, yeah great.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yeah. So the fourth guy is Jeffrey Clark, who doesn't
really matter. The fifth guy I just want to like, Okay,
so I I partially there's only like only really Giuliani
Eastman in Powell matter. But the fifth guy is named
Kenneth Chelsea Bro.

Speaker 1 (21:30):
Which that's okay, now you're fucking with us. Now, that's
not a name. That's not a name I got nothing.

Speaker 2 (21:37):
I don't know, like a name they have like dug
up members of like the old Chelsea arisocracy that like
I I got, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (21:49):
I've never never been this angry in my life. That's
not a naked ship now, like that's that.

Speaker 3 (21:55):
Okay, it's not Cheese Bro, it's Chelsea Brow. I name
no idea, it's it's.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
C H E s E Bro chessa Bro.

Speaker 4 (22:07):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (22:07):
There's no version of how you outside of Boston.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
Yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
Know Bro?

Speaker 2 (22:19):
Is he Bro? Okay? So we should also she's really
that's so bad?

Speaker 3 (22:29):
Yeah no, I know a guy from Central California with
that name that.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
Is that is viscerally upsetting. Okay, So just speaking of
viscerally upsetting, So we should find everyone how we should
remind everyone how American elections work because it's it's really
one of the worst systems anyone's ever developed. So okay. So,
like as as most people probably know, you don't directly
elect the president.

Speaker 4 (22:50):
What you do.

Speaker 2 (22:51):
Instead is each each state, like you vote, well, okay,
so sorry, let's run this up. Each state selects ecs. Now,
there's nothing in the constitution that says you have to
select electors by like voting for them. It's just that
every state chose to do that. There's like a whole
crank theory of Republican like legal jurisprudences where they're trying

(23:13):
to use that to be able to just like not
basically not have normal elections. But you know so because
this is like dog shit, right, Like, it's bad for
a number of reasons. The first obvious one is that
like this means you the US does not have one person,
one vote at all. Like the entire American political system
is just a giant violation of the deference of one person,
one vote because people's votes are just worth more than

(23:36):
others because of the electors. The second thing that's really bad,
right is again, like those individual electors can technically vote
like however they want to, So you could you could
be an elector who's posted to vote for someone and
then vote for someone else. It's actually happened. Although I'm
not mattering, but like one of Gore's electors I think
defected to what's his name? The third guy who ran

(23:59):
I can't remember his name?

Speaker 3 (24:00):
Someone in twenty sixteen or sorry guy, yeah, someone did
in twenty sixteen as well. I think rogue electa. There's
a little bit of like, I don't know, this is
a good I was going to talk about different between
procedural and substantive democracy. I could talk about it now
or later, but I think it relates to what you're
talking about. Sure, yeah, no, do it now. But what

(24:23):
out Yeah there were there were ten in twenty sixteen. Wow,
face Spotted Eagle is the one I'm thinking of. Someone
voted for face Spotted Eagle. But yeah, okay, So one
thing I wanted to talk about, like with relation to
what you're saying here, is like the difference between procedural
and substantive democracy, because I think it's really important when
we're looking at like what's happening in the US. So

(24:43):
when we talk about like a lot of this language
comes from the like nineteen nineties obsession with transitioned to
democracy that happens a lot in political science, right, like
and history to an extent, where we were looking at
these like post Soviet countries and post colonial countries and
as they like move move towards this like what's considered
a democracy in the kind of neoliberal frame we talked

(25:06):
about procedural and substantive democracy. So procedural democracy are things
which have the institutions and procedures in place. You vote,
there are elections, the ballots are cast, and that results
in this case the elector is going to electoral college
and the e actual college deliver as a president. And
then substantive democracy is where people have a substantive say,

(25:26):
a means of deciding who is in charge, right who
runs a state, And the US is moving further and
further from substantive democracy, Like it's been interesting to see
people bringing that like because of course that nineteen nineties
discourse was centered heavily in the US right as like
the paragon of democratic virtue, and then it was used
to condescend to other countries and be like, oh, you're

(25:46):
not a fully consolidated democracy with them, Lindzen Stepan. If
people want to look up Linds and step Kind, if
they're reboard, they can. But they talk about like a
consolidated democracy being one where democracy is the only game
in town, and all of this stuff like was heavily
based on kind of aspiring to be the US, right
countries in Africa East when you're perspiring to be an

(26:07):
American democracy. And it's very funny now to see that
the US doesn't fit most definitions of a substantive democracy
or a consolidated one, Like it's not the only game
in town for millions of Americans anymore.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
Now.

Speaker 3 (26:20):
It's highly amusing.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
My other amusing is what I would call it, absolutely James.

Speaker 3 (26:26):
Yeah, it's funny. It's just funny. Nothing bad will happen,
it's fine.

Speaker 2 (26:30):
Yeah. My other favorite example of like those of like
how bullshit those like democracy theorists were was like every
single one of those people the moment that Zapetas the
uprising happened, just like immediately shut the fuck up and
never mentioned it ever, Like it just does not come
up like in the thing.

Speaker 3 (26:47):
Yeah, I mean a lot of the like, yeah, a
lot of them really had a lot of them also
were like too busy looking at things, and like in Spain,
right people looked at Spain's quote unquote transition as one
of the earlier models and then went on to model
things off Spain. Spain is at best an incomplete transition now, right,
people paying attention to the most recent elections will maybe

(27:08):
have noticed this, Like Spain is Spain is not a
country where democracy is the only game in town. Right,
They had an attempted to cop it in nineteen eighty one,
and so like then they're kind of looking backwards off
something because Spain was satisfactorly democratic for them, but it
certainly wasn't for a lot of Spanish people. So yeah,
not a big fani.

Speaker 1 (27:27):
Yeah, And I don't know about you guys, but I
think there's nothing wrong with the way we did. Side
things are democracies.

Speaker 3 (27:36):
God gave it on the tablets to some old white men.
You'll have slaves, and that that is good.

Speaker 4 (27:43):
Great.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
Yeah, It's been funny also watching those people trying to
like actually go back and look at like at what
point the US became like a democracy in any real sense,
And it's like, really like, if you're going to do
this seriously, you cannot argue that it was a democracy
until like after Jim Crow, so like really like like
the sixties and even then, so like, I don't know,

(28:04):
like there's been a lot of attempts to sort of
make this stuff work. But then also you have all
of this bullshit. Where again, like because because it's based
on this elector shit, you can like this is how
Trump was able to like to try to do all
this very weird stuff. And this is the sort of
you know, this is the part where we get into
like Trump's second plan, which his plan, and this is

(28:28):
the one he's actually getting charged for. So his thing
was he was trying to get states to just like
ignore the popular vote and decertified. So there's this process
where like there's a day on which like the electors
that do the electoral votes are like certified, and so
his he was he was trying to do a couple
of things before that. He was trying to like get

(28:48):
the actual electors like not certified and then have like
another set of electors and pointed that would vote for him,
and then that didn't work, and so he was trying
to get so like on that same day, there were
also a bunch of slates of electors that like like
did like a fake appointment thing, basically like trying to
claim they were the real electors in a bunch of states. Yeah,

(29:12):
I think, yeah, And this one was funny too because
like some of the people who were like who like
were on these slates, like didn't know that they weren't
the real electors, like they had just been told that
they were the real so they like unwittingly were like
part of this coup attempt. And so the the indictment,
so that that that that's the second part, and so

(29:33):
that also was kind of falling apart, and so then
we get to the sort of third thing, which is
this entire effort to get Mike Pence to not certify
the election or so that district versions one was that
he doesn't certify the election at all, and the second
version of the conspiracy was like, so there were these
states set up where Trump had put like a second
slate of electors, and the plan was to like have

(29:55):
those are like contested states, and so the plan was
to have Pence say that like none of those states
had actually voudly selected electors, so their votes don't matter,
and then just like say that Trump won the election.
And none of this makes any And the reason this
is like incomprehensible is like none of this makes any sense, right,
Like this is all just gibberish, that's bullshit. Yeah, but

(30:16):
but into this mess drops Danny Quail. Now I think everyone,
so you two know who Daddy Quail is. I I'm
realizing I was running into people when I when I've
been talking about this sort of story I'm about to tell.
Who don't know who Danny Quayle is. And I feel
I have a moral obligation to introduce this guy.

Speaker 3 (30:36):
Yeah, give the man his full name here, James Danforth Quail.
Oh god, I didn't know his name was dann fourth
Oh yeah, oh yeah. Determinism at its finest.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
Yeah, so Quail, I think it is probably most famous
for So she was Bush's vice president, right, and so okay,
So I want to tell the actual folls. So the
common version of the story that happens is that he
doesn't know he didn't know how to sell potato, and
that's true, but the actual story is so much funnier
than that. So okay, Quail is So okay, Quail is

(31:11):
is George W. Bush's vice president. Right. It's nineteen ninety two,
like the like they're on, they're like starting to go
into election season, and Quail goes to like this spelling
bee that's happening in this elementary school to like promote
some random harm. Yeah, and so so kid. He asked
this kid to spell potato, and the kid walks up

(31:33):
and the kid spells potato correctly. This kid is like
eight right, this is like it is like mighty so
and then I Quail looks at it. It looks at
the Apparently they had a card that was spelled wrong.
But Quail doesn't realize that the card is spelled wrong,
so he goes to the board. He looks at the

(31:55):
kid and goes but you need to ask someone to
the end. And this kid is just baffled because she's
spelled it, know correct?

Speaker 1 (32:00):
What you mean? Are you talking about the vice president
of the United That kid's an anarchist. Now, like there's there's.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
No way someone did a follow up with him. Apparently
he liked he's like a small business owner or something,
and he just tells the story all the time.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
Very funny, but okay, this was at a period of
American history like this, like is one of the reasons
that George H. W.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
Bush didn't win re election. Like this broke twelve unbroken
years of Republicans winning every single election based he.

Speaker 3 (32:31):
Does seem like a plant, Like I don't know if
you've got some of his other ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
Oh I'm this quote. Okay, so unless you think Quail
just had like one flub, Like, no, he's just like this.
I'm gonna read a couple of So there's like a
bunch of people who spent a bunch of time extensively
documenting Dan Quayle quotes because that's what you did on
the internet in the nineties. Yeah, okay, the Holocaust was
an obscene period in our nation's history, I mean this
century's history. But we all lived in this century. I

(32:57):
didn't live in this century.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
I feel like I want to diagram that one, like
whats there?

Speaker 3 (33:08):
Yeah, well, cocaine was really kicking in.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
You know. She has this kind of in the same
way that Trump has like this cant in which he
does all of his incorporateensiable things, Like Quail also has
a can't like he does this kind of thing where
he does the like he says a sentence and then
he says, I mean something else, I mean something else,
and it does nothing. The follows from the other one.
So she he does one of the other famous ones.
Why he has always been a pivotal, pivotal role in

(33:33):
the Pacific. It is in the Pacific. It is a
part of the United States. That is an island that
is right there.

Speaker 3 (33:39):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (33:40):
Fuck, that's very Famously, he went on to write large
portions of Wikipedia, so that that makes.

Speaker 3 (33:46):
A lot of sense.

Speaker 2 (33:47):
It's so good.

Speaker 3 (33:49):
Yeah, quails are in Wikipedia calls him an intellectual, lightweight
and incompetent individual. Well it's not untrue.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
Pretty hard to argue about that.

Speaker 2 (33:58):
Yeah, Mars is essentially in the same orbit. Mars is
somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important.
We have seen pictures where the canals we believe and water.
If there was water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen,
that means we can breathe.

Speaker 1 (34:14):
Oh god, Okay, Wow, there's a lot of science coming
out of that statement.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
This man was vice president of the United States. We
have a firm commitment to NATO. We are a part
of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We
are a part of Europe. Sure, yeah, he's so good.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
Well, you see, Maya, you just you you were not
you are not up on your your geographic history. Because
the mountain ranges in Scotland are the same mountain range
as the Appellachians, so technically we are in Europe.

Speaker 3 (34:48):
In many ways.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
Damn Okay, I've been styled on by Dan Quail.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
There you go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, now.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
Okay, other than the fact that it's really funny, like
why why am I talking about Danny Quail And the
answer is that, Okay. So remember Trump needs for his
like completely nonsense thing to like even kind of go
to the next step of failing. He needs to convince
Mike Pence and not certify the election. And Pence is
like legitimately going back and forward on this. He's like
he's having this like moral dilemma and like he like

(35:18):
wants to do it, but he's he's having problems making decisions,
and so he calls his old friend Danny Quayle. And
I think this is a really fascinating moment of sort
of you know, like this, I think it's really fascinating
indication of like how off the rails everything has gotten
since we released to twenty sixteen, but like twenty twenty

(35:39):
sort of just like accelerates the magnitude of this, which
is that like Quail is like the human symbol of
the decrepitness of American politics in the eighties and nineties, right,
Like this is a guy who makes like s Nile
Reguan look like a genius. And in twenty twenty and
twenty twenty one, like Pence is supposed to be one
of the like quote unquote adults in the room in
twenty twenty and Pence goes to Quail and is like,

(36:02):
what I need. I need to do this coup, Like
I don't have a choice. I'm under so much pressure.
And Danny Quail, the man who can't spell potato, instantly
is like, no, what are you talking about, Like you
can't do this coup, like obviously can't do this, and
and Pence Pence just like argues with him. He's like no, no,
Like he keeps arguing with him, like no, I have
to do what I have to do it, and Quails
like what are you talking about? Like of course you

(36:23):
can't like not certify the election, Like what what are
you doing? And this actually works and this convinces Pence
not to not to actually certify the election, And so
you know, we we have reached a point in history
where like you can make an argument, I don't think
it's correct, but you can make an argument that Danny

(36:44):
fucking Quail saved the American Republic.

Speaker 3 (36:48):
They say it's just from two Republican presidentst I just
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
I can't get over this. It's just like Danny Quail
is the voice of reason and modern ration and like,
oh god, I don't know this country.

Speaker 3 (37:05):
It's bizarre. The whole thing is is bizarre.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
Yeah, it's it's bleak. We should do an ad brick.
I don't have a pivot there.

Speaker 1 (37:14):
Speaking of auto golpe gulp down these products automatic maggs.

Speaker 2 (37:20):
Cool, and we are we are back to a bit
more fraud. So okay, the other thing is being yeah,
this is actually wait, this is actually fraud. No, I
guess this is the fraud one. It's still a technically
a fraud one.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
So that's part of it at least.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
Yeah. So so we we've reached the like third and
fourth indictments. It's actually really funny if you go read
the thing, all of the actual texts of the indictment
with the evidence and stuff is all under the first indictment,
and then the second, third, and fourth ones are like, yeah,
go refer to ex paragraphs as like the first one.
So there's the second, third, and fourth like charges are
like like one paragraph long. But basically this is about

(38:00):
the January sixth stuff. They spent much time listing like
all of the random stuff that Trump said about the
election that was not true. They also have a very
funny list of all of the people who told him
that like this stuff wasn't true, which includes Mike Pence,
the leadership of the Justice Department, the Director of National Intelligence,
the head of SISA, which is the Department of Homeland

(38:21):
Security Cybersecurity Agency, a bunch of White House attorneys, like
his own staff at all of his politicians was backing
He's like every single person was like this is not real,
and Trump was like, no, no, no, hold on, we
can still win the election, you know. Okay. So there's
like that stuff, and then there's the stuff that like
he like specifically did to like try to pressure these

(38:44):
state politicians into like certifying him as president. So like
they he had a bunch of calls, and like his
like staff people had a bunch of calls. We were
like they tried to get like that the Speaker of
the House in Arizona to do this by saying there
was voting fraud, and the Speaker of the House was like, okay,
there's no we haven't found any fraud. I'm gonna I'm

(39:09):
gonna read from the thing co conspirator to concluded that
he quote didn't know enough about the facts on the
ground in Arizona, but nonetheless told the Speaker of the
House to decertify and quote let the court sort it out,
sort it out. So again, this is this is this
is the Roger Stone strategy, but done like yes, so
unbelievably poorly.

Speaker 3 (39:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:29):
Yeah, So, And there's a bunch of sort of like lists.
There's like all this list of like this like Trump
does like identical stuff in like Michigan and Pennsylvania. There's
like that phone call in Georgia he gets in trouble
for some from Wisconsin. There's another thing he tried to
do which I actually hadn't heard about this one.

Speaker 4 (39:45):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
It's either I just forgot it or I just never
ran into it, where he was trying to like use
Justice Department letterhead and like the signature of the Acting
Attorney General to like send a fate like pretend to
send a letter from the Justice Department to a bunch
of states to tell them there was fraud and get
them to like amazing.

Speaker 3 (40:05):
Yeah, since I'm sick and I can't come to school.

Speaker 5 (40:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
And the funny thing is the problem is that they
so they try to there's a lot that's funny about that.
I'm not gonna I'm not gonna see it. Yes, we
gotta plaralize that fucker.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
It's so good. And the scheme falls apart because again
the guy Trump appoints it as the acting Attorney general
is like, no, like, you cannot just department and they
keep trying to argue with him and it keeps not working.
And this is where we get to another part of
this whole thing that I this has been getting a

(40:36):
lot of press attention and it's interesting, but I think
there's more to the story that people haven't been talking about,
which is so the guy who's probably Jeffrey Clark like
gets into an argument with the deputy White House Council
and the wut White House Council is you know, is telling?
Is telling Jeffrey Clark, who thinks one of Trumps lawyers
is telling him like like Trump can't stay in office.

(40:56):
Like there's no version of this where Trump stays in
office after January twentieth, and he says, quote, there would
be riots in every major American City. And then the
guy who's probably Clark says, quote, well, Deputy White House Counsel,
that's why there's an Insurrection Act. And this is where
we need to get to another a couple of interesting
parts of the story.

Speaker 1 (41:16):
One, you know, one clear, when you're saying that's why
we have an insurrection Act, you're saying, we can just
shoot those people, yeah, in the streets, Like that is
what that statement means. Yeah, and that is what the
stakes were. Everybody was out in the streets in twenty
twenty was aware of this.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
Yeah, and yeah, you know, this is the thing I
kind of want to talk about, which is that, like
part of the reason this coup fails is that so
Trump is talking about doing the Insurrection Act twice in
twenty twenty. Well, I guess once in twenty twenty. I
think this might have been the second time. I've been
twenty twenty one. But like in that last year, he
tries to use the Insurrection Act against the uprising in

(41:54):
twenty twenty, and his like his Chief of stat like
like a bunch of like a bunch of generals and
chief of staff like tell them the fuck off. And
that's like part of the reason why this didn't happen,
which which is interesting because like I don't know, like
there there have been, like there have been times where
the US Army like has been deployed against like riots

(42:16):
like this, right like this this happened in the nineties,
but in this situation, the army just like absolutely completely
refuse to play ball. And we've we've gotten some really
kind of interesting So the other thing that's happening here
is like just the complete hollowing out of journalism as
an institution where all of these people know all of

(42:36):
the all these journalists like know a bunch of incredibly
important stuff and they won't tell anyone because they they're
saving it for their books, yep, and you know, and
it's like among the things that we sort of learned
in this period is like there there's basically this like
I don't know what you call it, Like you could
either call it like a quad um for it basically,
or you could call it like a National Unity government

(42:57):
which is in power for two weeks basically where Pelosi Miley,
who's uh, he's uh, the chief of staff who's a general,
like Mike Pence, Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell basically are
like running the government for two weeks because they've successfully
put together this counter coup where the like the military

(43:17):
has refused to like go along with Trump like trying
to overthrow the government. And this is very deeply I
don't know. There's some very deeply interesting stuff here where
there's there's a there's a book called Iolone Can Fix It,
which a couple of journalists are coming out with and
there's some interesting quotes from it from specifically General Mike Miley,
who's like the chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff,

(43:37):
who was appointed by Trump. By the way, this this
is this is an important thing because like Trump, there's
like seven guys who are like absolute ghouls, like Mike Pompeo,
like Cia ghoul who are just like look at this
coup and are like no, and Miley stuff is wild.
Like Miley directly can like in meetings, is comparing Trump
to Hitler. He says, quote, yeah, this is a Reichstag moment.

(43:59):
Miley told aids the Gospel of the Fearer, like and.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
There's there's a I talked about this a little bit
ahead of earlier. There are some unconfirmed reports that Miley
and a number of other like US military high ranking
officers basically had like a book club, and one of
the books they went through in twenty twenty was a
book about the Nazis' rise to power in Germany. I
kind of suspect it might have been Death of a
Democracy because that was big at the time. But it

(44:24):
would make sense because he's talking in substantial detail about
like he's very you can tell he's very focused in
this period on Nazis taking over the government, Like he
talks about it a lot.

Speaker 2 (44:36):
Yeah, And I'm gonna read a couple other quotes from him.
He has this thing where I think, I think he's
talking about payoh here, where he's talking about like this
coup and he says they may tribe, but they're not
going to fucking succeed. He told them, you can't do
this without the military. You can't do this without the
CIA and the FBI. We're the guys with the guns.
And he's right about this. And this is a really
crucial thing that Trump fucks up about how to do
a fascist coup is that you can't actually like fascist

(44:59):
coup don't work without the at least passive acquiescence of
the state. Like, if the state tries, if the army
tries to stop you, your coup is not going to work, right, Like,
unless you're someone like Franco who like has control of
a huge portion of the army, if you try to
do one of these sort of weird paramilitary things and
the army just says no, like you're screwed. And this

(45:21):
I think was always part of trump sort of problem
was that, like, you know, if he'd sort of spent
his time consolidating the kind of like fascist institutions, the
neo cons set up, right, Like, if he'd spent his
time like you know, actually like actually developing loyalty in
the FBI and the CIA and like going through and
like turning Department Homeland Security like you know, into like

(45:42):
an even more fascist organization.

Speaker 4 (45:44):
He might have been able to do this.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
But like at the very end, like you have Miley
saying this is this is on h right, this is
on exercises right before the inauguration, he says, quote, here's
the deal, guys, these guys are the not are Nazis,
They're Bugalopo, They're proud voys. These are the same people
we fought in World War two. Miley told them everyone
in this room, whether you're a cop, whether you're a soldier,

(46:07):
we're going to stop these guys to make sure we
have a peaceful transfer of power. We're gonna put a
steel ring around this city, and the Nazis aren't getting in.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
Like you know what, credit, Where's That's a pretty cool
thing to get to have said, Yeah, so something like
basically him and Zook off.

Speaker 7 (46:28):
Yeah, it's like all of like suddenly like the American
like all of like the senior command of the American
Army suddenly turned into like nineteen forty two American generals.

Speaker 2 (46:39):
It's like, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
I guess again, I try to say this, I try
to bring this up a lot to like more radical
folks when you if you want to get a lot
of like the centrist lib types on your side, you
could do a lot worse than Hearkening back to that
whole World War two thing, there's a lot of propaganda
invested in getting guys like Millie to want to feel
like that.

Speaker 3 (46:59):
So and in this case it works out for.

Speaker 2 (47:01):
Yeah, apparently, I don't know, Live Live Antifa has poor
has pulled one out.

Speaker 1 (47:07):
I guess it's certainly better than if the head of
the military had been like, I guess I'm fine with this,
so yeah, what I don't know. Yeah, I have no
complaints are his performance in that specific moment, uh, other
than that they did actually get in so you know whatever,

(47:27):
Like that was it.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
When they were drilling for the inauguration.

Speaker 3 (47:33):
When they stuffed the capital with National God soldiers like
a sausage.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
Yeah, it was just I guess it worked. I don't know.
My other conclusion from this, though, is when when you
have reached the position of like you're you're trying to
figure like your top generals are trying to figure out
who has enough guns to figure out whether a coup
can happen, like things are things are not good. This
is a this is a a bad sign TM.

Speaker 1 (47:58):
For no, It's it's like, as nice as it is
to hear that Milly understood the stakes, which is good.
It's good that he understood the stakes given his position,
it's not good that like so much came down to
the fact that a couple dudes didn't suck in this
specific way, Like that's not a great sign for stability

(48:21):
of democracy. Yeah, because no one voted for Miley, Like right, Yeah,
that's unsettling.

Speaker 3 (48:27):
Yeah, the whole democratic system was more or less of
the edge of failing. And a dude who was good
at war step ten and was like, here, okay, we
can't I don't want to do this one of those things.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
Right, we know what this looks like. With Bush, We're like,
if you actually know how to press the buttons of
the system, right, you can't do this. But Trump just
like didn't have enough control of the state apparatus and
tried to sort of replicate it with true viles, and
that just didn't work. Trump's problems here are twofold. One
of them is that he is not capable of loyalty

(48:58):
to anyone or anything else, whereas.

Speaker 1 (49:01):
A guy like George W. Bush is, which means he's
capable of getting teams together who are willing to take
some of like who are willing to go out on
a limb for him to some extent. And Bush also
is system loyal. Now, that doesn't mean he's not willing
to fuck with the system for his own benefit, but
he has a vested interest in the system continuing more

(49:22):
or less the way that it has right as opposed
to breaking it, specifically forever for his own like power.
You know, he was not a guy who was interested
in staying in office. For I don't say this to
defend the man he killed hundreds of thousands of people minimum,
But because he was willing, he had a degree of
loyalty to the system as it was seen by most people.

(49:45):
There was not this kind of rebellion from sort of
within it, right like. In fact, that deep state was
largely sympathetic with him. They were willing to go with
like the fucking around with the election as long as,
you know, the broader structures that had given them a
place to exert power and influence remained intact. And Trump
was basically saying, if Millie had gone with this, if

(50:07):
everyone had gone with this, what you are accepting is
that nothing matters but this guy's opinion. Right There's not
actually any sort of power in the system that you
have risen to the top of. There's not any sort
of power in these unelected structures within the system that
you clearly think are important because they are how you
why like, where you have seen success, right like, And frankly,

(50:32):
you know people aren't willing to do that sort of thing.
And also you're fighting against a lot of people who
want to whatever fucked up things they are willing to do.
They have a lot emotionally invested in the idea that
they serve a democracy. Now is that a morally flawless idea?
Are they always? In fact? Like no, of course not

(50:55):
like everyone. They're hypocrites to certain extents, But you can't
pushed them that far like Bush pushed them about as
far as you can push people like that. Right, this
Trump didn't have any respect for making it, for dressing
it up right, and he didn't have any respect for
the thing that they were a part of, and so

(51:16):
of course a lot of them didn't go with him.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
Yeah, and I think this gets back to something I've
talked about a bit with with what what the neocons
were doing, which that the neocons are about like the
state of exception, right, they're about this, like you know,
we've had the war, we now have the war on terror.
We've had nine to eleven, and that means the countries
in this state were like, we have the power to
be like the people inside the system who are out
bound by it, you could do whatever you want and
like that is descriptively right, like this is you know,

(51:41):
both Carl Schmidt, the like Nazi jurists like that. That
was explicitly like his model of how you do fascism, right,
and it's as also like something you know. But but
the thing is again like that's a very different thing
than what Trump was doing, right, Like Trump wasn't doing
like Trump wasn't doing this thing where he like you know,
uses the as of the state he was, he was

(52:01):
doing a different, like different kind of.

Speaker 4 (52:04):
One of them.

Speaker 1 (52:05):
This is what a lot of people don't understand about
the Nazis is that whin Hitler took power and for
the first half to two thirds of his time in power, uh,
he was very much concerned about the military and constantly
making exceptions and altering and moderating aspects of his policy

(52:25):
in order to keep the military on his side. And
that continued, depending on kind of where you want to
put it, either up until the Anschlusser, up until the
invasion of Poland. Really to a significant.

Speaker 3 (52:36):
Extent he would whereas Trump did not.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
Again, there's no sort of he has no sort of
respect And I'm not saying like you should have respect
for the military, no, but I'm saying that because he
did not just like power. Yeah, the fact that he
did not, or the FBI for that matter, is one
of the reasons why this didn't work for him.

Speaker 2 (52:57):
Yeah, and this was this was always a kind of
a problem he has ideologically, which is like one of
the things that makes him popular is he was running
like against the deep state, right, and like yeah, like yeah,
like I know lots of people in you like I
don't like the intelligence agency. He's like, the intelligence's can
fuck off. The fact that like the fact that the
intelligence agency's finally found a coup they wouldn't support, like
it's not as something they're good, but the pretended Yeah.
But like the problem with this is like Trump is,

(53:18):
you know, he wins the primary, like very explicitly by
running against a lot of the like like by nay,
running against neo conservatives. You can argue the extent to
which he actually broke with it in terms of like
appointing like gena. You know, he puts a bunch of
neo kon gorougles like back in power, right, But like
like nominally he's running against that specific thing. And it
turns out that like if if you if your appeal

(53:38):
is you know, being like a nominally anti systemic force,
and then you have to try to use the system
to stay in power. It's like, well, you know this,
this happens like now you are getting charged by Jack
Smith and you have like seventy eight counts against you
instead of you are now the fearer.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
Yeah, a lot of it is. You know, first off,
people want to be able to believe nice things about themselves,
and Trump didn't really give them the option of doing that.
And second of all, people who are achieved this kind
of level within the system want you to treat the
system they've succeeded in as if it matters, Like it's

(54:18):
that simple.

Speaker 3 (54:19):
I think in a lot of yays when I feel
validated and valued, and he was just like, no, fuck
you all, I'm doing my gu and with genuinely shock
whe people like, well, we ain't coming with you.

Speaker 1 (54:27):
For I don't I really feel no desire or no
uh no impetus to move with you. Yeah, anyway, this
is a good idea.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
Yeah, So I don't know, we'll we'll, we'll see what
happens with these indictments. I don't know. I I genuine
this is the importance. Yeah, this is the one that
the indictments. This is the one that matters.

Speaker 4 (54:48):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (54:49):
We'll we'll see if this actually substantively plays a role
in the election. I mean, I I don't think there's
a possibility that I can cost Trump the primary, like but.

Speaker 1 (54:59):
No, no, no, no, yeah, nothing nothing but like a
heart attack could do that. But it is. I will
say I had some other stuff prepared that I think
we'll move to another episode just because of how this
has gone. But I do want to note I want
to talk a little bit at the end here about
is this going to matter like electorally for Trump?

Speaker 4 (55:18):
Right?

Speaker 1 (55:19):
Is this going to have an impact on his chances
of winning the general? I think we're all agreed it's
not really worth talking about the primary. He's going to
win the primary barring and act of God, and that's
where what Yeah, anyway, so there's some infol on this. Basically,
on March twenty ninth, he was averaging about forty five
percent in national primary polls, which I'm bringing up here

(55:42):
because they help show the impact of the indictment because
you don't have a lot of national polls from that
time a national general election polls. So forty five percent
in March, after his first set of indictments. In April,
he was up to fifty four percent, So that first
set of indictments did not harm him. They have helped
him consolidate power, may have activated a chunk of his base.

(56:05):
The second indictment did not work the same way though.
After June eighth, when it was reported that he was
being indicted for the classified document shit and obstructing justice
and getting.

Speaker 4 (56:14):
Them back.

Speaker 1 (56:17):
YEA, his average support in the primary fell not by
a massive amount, by a couple of percentage points, as
did his average net favorable rating. So you saw at
least a he hit a wall and bounced back a
little bit. Not massive, not a sea change, but enough
to show that it's not accurate to say voters don't care.

(56:38):
It's more accurate to say, based on what we've seen
so far, voters seem to care differently about different indictments.
And I want to read a quote from a five
point thirty eight article about his indictment poles here. Although
we can't prove that all these shifts happen because of
the indictments, the difference in reaction at least suggests that
Americans are drawing distinctions between Trump's various legal troubles and
other polling backs that up ing to do. A Yugov

(57:00):
Yahoo News poll from July thirteenth through seventeenth, fifty percent
of registered voters considered falsifying business records to conceal hush
money payments to a porn star to be a serious crime,
but sixty four percent of registered voters consider it a
serious crime to take highly classified documents from the White
House and obstruct efforts to retrieve them. Similarly, a June
twenty second to twenty sixth pole from the Associated Press

(57:21):
NRC Center for Public Affairs Research found that only thirty
five percent of US adults thought Trump did something illegal
when it came to the hush money payments, but fifty
three percent thought he did something illegal with regards to
classified documents founded his Marologu resort in Florida. By this logic,
this third indictment could be even more damaging to Trump
than the one involving classified documents. According to the same

(57:42):
Yugo of Yahoo News poll, sixty nine percent of registered
voters considered it a serious crime to attempt to obstruct
the certification of a presidential election, and seventy one percent
said the same about conspiring to overturn the results of
a presidential election.

Speaker 3 (57:55):
So going to take us troublingly low number, but yeah, yeah,
I wishing way it should be.

Speaker 1 (58:00):
Yeah, but that that does suggest that this could do
him some damage, and especially since all of this is
going to keep getting litigated, right like fucking people who
get who have a decent lawyer and get arrested for
like a d u y can drag a court case
out for a year. This will be going on during
the election. It may hurt him.

Speaker 6 (58:21):
You know.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
Again, I'm not willing to like say, oh, this is
going to fuck the election, make it impossible from beginning.
I don't think the data suggests that, but it it
there's a I think a pretty good chance that this
is a net negative for him in terms of, you know,
the election and broadly speaking, you know, we gave the
Dims a lot of shit for a couple of years

(58:43):
for not doing enough to actually seriously strike back at
the Republican authoritarian outreach, and so it would be unfair
of me to not say it's good that they're doing this,
like it's good that he's facing legal trouble for what
he's done. That's not enough to stop him. That's not
enough to stop the Republican Party, but it is good

(59:05):
that this has been done.

Speaker 3 (59:07):
Yeah, yeah, progress. Shame wasn't earlier, should have been earlier.
You know, h happening during the election is a major
l in terms of how he can spin this.

Speaker 1 (59:19):
Yeah, Like I think that was probably a strategic error,
but grand juries take forever.

Speaker 4 (59:24):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:25):
And the other thing that's happens is like there's been
all of this time for sort of Republican pr machine
to like spin all of the stuff that happened, and
we've you know, and I think like part of wasn't
happening the last three years is like everyone kind of
just like collectively forgetting what actually happened during twenty twenty
and how absolutely nuts it was, and everyone sort of
going back and pretending that like things are sort of
like normal now, and it's like, no, no, we're still

(59:48):
we're still living in the eternal twenty twenty and everything
is still absolutely nuts. But I don't know, it's like
there's been this incredible sort of like normalization effort, both
by Biden and also like buy the Republicans to make
it seem like this was like a normal thing that
happened as opposed to like the immediate wake if it,
where everyone was like what the fuck? So hopefully not

(01:00:13):
too little, too late, hopefully this does something, but.

Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
We'll see, yes, indeed, all right, well everybody, uh, you know,
I guess go back to paying rent and stuff. I'm
sure twenty twenty four will be fine.

Speaker 3 (01:00:35):
Yet it wouldn't be any problem.

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
There's fifteen more months of this.

Speaker 8 (01:00:38):
By the way, Hi, everyone, it's me James today and
I'm joined by Glen Pyle, who's a professor of malekhilra

(01:00:59):
Kadi and a member of the Impart Network at Dalhousie Medicine.

Speaker 3 (01:01:04):
Glenn, thank you so much for joining us. Can you
is there any I missed out? First of all in
your bio there that might be relevant for people.

Speaker 4 (01:01:10):
No, I think that's a short and sweet I don't
need all the details for.

Speaker 3 (01:01:13):
Sure, Thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:01:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:01:15):
So, what we're here to talk about today is these
sudden the phenomenal I suppose of sudden cardiac arrest, specifically
like in young people and young athletes. Because, as many
of you will have been aware, this has been increasingly
an area in which anti vaxxers and conspiracy theorists have

(01:01:35):
been trying to leverage what is an unfortunate but not
unprecedented cardiac arrest, like in this case, most recently Bronnie James,
but it has happened before in the number of sports,
and they've been trying to leverage us as of quote
unquote like prove for evidence that that vaccines are killing
otherwise healthy young people, which is nonsense. And I can
tell you it's nonsense. But someone who can tell you

(01:01:56):
from much more informed perspective is Glenn so Glinn. Could
we start up by maybe talking about how common this
sudden cardiac arrest in young athletes is and what we
might what hypothethies we might have to what caused it.

Speaker 4 (01:02:11):
Sure, well, I mean, first of all, we look more broadly,
it's very common. I'm from Canada and we have about
thirty five thousand of these every year within young athletes.
The data out of the US says that about two
thousand die every year from sudden cardiac arrest, and two

(01:02:32):
thirds of these young people do so during some sort
of exercise or sporting event. So, in the grand scheme
of things, when you have a country of several hundred
million people, a thousand or so death like that is,
but proportion relatively small. But we've known about this for
a long time and these numbers actually really haven't changed
very much in decades.

Speaker 3 (01:02:54):
Okay, so yeah, there's obviously been a particular increase due
to COVID vaccinations, because they're related. I wonder, actually it's evidence.
I think I've read some stuff that having COVID or
having had COVID multiple times might increase your risk for
cardiac arrest. Is that true?

Speaker 4 (01:03:13):
Yeah? So broadly so, they haven't looked specifically at cardiac
arrest because cardiac arrests typically is in a lot of
times the end result of a number of different conditions
of cardiac arrhythmias are known to be increased. Patone study
showed that what I guess the year and a half
ago by now, certainly early in the pandemic, one of

(01:03:36):
the first signs we were seeing people who were being
infected were having heart attacks, developing heart failure, these things,
and in cardiac arresk the most common cause or cardiac arrhythmius.
The Patone study showed. And every time I talk about this,
I have to go back and look, because the increase

(01:03:58):
was several hundredfold after COVID, and so I've never really
seen anything like that before. So arrhythmias are relatively common
in terms in the world of cardiovascular disease, and the
fact that COVID the infection, actually increases it, but the
vaccines do not means that the risk for some cardiac

(01:04:21):
death really would be highest amongst those who are infected,
not those who get vaccines.

Speaker 3 (01:04:26):
Okay, do you know offhand if like when we have
that maybe this was too early in the pandemic to
tell like that risk that comes with having COVID right
for having arrhythmia afterwards? Is that risk mitigated by if
you're vaccinated and then you get COVID.

Speaker 4 (01:04:44):
So yes, there's been some more recent studies beaks. Obviously,
early in the pandemic, when we didn't have the vaccines,
we couldn't answer that. And then early after vaccines were
looking at things like infections, and some of these cardiac
issues may not arise until even after the infection is clear.
So we see that in people with long COVID, for example,

(01:05:06):
kardiac issues are most common. And so we've seen in
some recent studies that people who are in even what
they described as partially vaccinated for one or two doses
had a reduced risk of what we call MACE, which
is a major adverse cardiovascular event. And so that's an

(01:05:27):
all encompassing term, which would be things like stroke, heart attack,
you know, things things like that, those major cardiac events.
That's data has come out earlier this year, within the
last year, a couple of studies.

Speaker 3 (01:05:41):
Okay, so circling back to those cardiac arrests, and I
guess broke more broadly like cardiac issues in young people
and specific in young athletes, something I'm familiar with that
with the background in cycling, like I've known people die
of cardiac arrests who are otherwise extremely fit. No, I
wouldn't necessarily say, like sometimes being fit and being healthy

(01:06:04):
are not the same thing, and certainly the very like
point to end of indurance sport. I think the fittest
people are not necessarily the healthiest, but very fit sometimes
very healthy people have friends of mine have had these issues.
Is in those cases and we might not know. I
don't know is being an athlete like increasing someone's chance

(01:06:27):
of having those cardiacorists or is it that they have
some kind of pre existing condition that's just that's just
been underlying for a while.

Speaker 4 (01:06:35):
Yeah, that's a good question. What we do know and
this this is all data from pre COVID, so it's
not something that's been impacted by the pandemic or vaccines.
We do know that the rate of sudden cardiac death
and the general population is about one in one hundred thousand,
and that in athletes, which is a very broad term

(01:06:55):
and we can get into that how to an athlete
and things like that, is anywhere from two to four
times the rate that that's groups of athletes. Subsections are
actually higher, So we know the radius higher in these athletes,
typically these high performance athletes. You know why that is,

(01:07:16):
It's an interesting question. It could be the training, for example,
puts a stressor on them. So they may have a
pre existing condition. They may have a cardiac orarithm of
like long Qt syndrome or even something called hypertrophic cardiomopathy.
Sometimes they know about it and sometimes they don't, and

(01:07:39):
then the training on top is enough of a trigger.
So one of the examples I use in my class
is Anthony Evenlous, a soccer player I believe it was
in the Netherlands. He was playing. He had a known
cardiovascular condition so he had what's called it ic D
or planet cardiodefibrillator while he was playing, and he suffered

(01:07:59):
some cardiac death on the field. There's actually video of it,
and that shocked him back into rhythm. So you know,
some of these people may not know and discover in
the course of training, and some may know and opt
to take that risk anyway, and then it's the training
that or the competition that brings it out.

Speaker 3 (01:08:18):
Yeah okay, yeah, yeah, I have a very good friend
with ICD and it there's certainly been at the end
of a very difficult process for him to have that,
and that involve lots of lifestyle changes. And so when
we let's what exactly is an athlete in these studies,
like is that somebody goes to gym twice a week?
Is it someone putting in twenty hours on the bike,

(01:08:40):
like what?

Speaker 4 (01:08:42):
So most of the studies that we're talking about, so
I assume we're not talking about the people who are
claiming that the vaccines are linked to athletes, because they
have a very different definition. I can talk about that
most of these studies that we're dealing with, where we
get these rates that are two to four times higher
than the general population or what they refer to as

(01:09:03):
competitive athletes. So for people in the US, these would
be your NCAA or college athletes. Some of them are
professional athletes, you know, soccer players and the you know,
the British League and things like that. So these are
people who play at a at a competitive level. Oftentimes
they're making a living. I mean, you can argue whether

(01:09:24):
college athletes are making a living out of this, but
there's there's some high level of competition in these athletes.
That's generally the people that were that these studies are
based on, not the guy who goes to the gym
twice a week or something like that.

Speaker 3 (01:09:36):
Okay, yeah, yeah, so fairly elite. And what is it
that you were saying that's different from the claims that
these anti vax people or vaccine skeptics or whatever, you know,
people who want to say that vaccines are giving people
which isn't true. What sort of the definition that they're
using or what's the claim that they're making.

Speaker 4 (01:09:54):
I guess well, they really don't have a definition, is
the problem. So they'll use the term athletes, and I
think most people, you know, maybe maybe you don't see
an athlete as necessarily being a college or professional level.
It could be like a high school athlete who's competing,
you know, once or twice a week or whatever, and

(01:10:14):
that's that's fair. But when you look at the lists
that they have, I mean, I've talked about this recently
and the Died Suddenly movie documentary, whatever you want to
call it. The list of people that they have on there.
For example, they have musicians, they have a Thai princess
on the princess from Thailand on there, and they also

(01:10:38):
have people who died of cancer, someone who got an
eye injury. So I'm not really sure, first of all,
what their definition of athlete is. I'm not sure what
their definition of sudden cardiac death is. When you have
people dying of cancer or suffering an eye injury like that,
those are are not related at all. There was an
earlier list. I think it's related to the Good Sciencing.

(01:11:02):
I wrote about this probably a year or so ago.
I went through the list of people that they had
on at the time. There was about one hundred, just
a little over one hundred people that they cleim died.
There were soccer referees on there, there were retired athletes,
there were people one guy was out for a hike.
He was listed there. Now, you could argue a soccer

(01:11:24):
referee is athletic, certainly, you know, running around the pitch
doing that. I could see that. But that person died
at home in their sleep, not in competition. The retired
soccer player had been retired for six or seven years.
So even in the cases where they have athletes, they're
really stretching what we would define as an athlete.

Speaker 3 (01:11:46):
Right, Yeah, And I wonder is it data to show that,
like overall mortality is lower in people who are vaccinated
than unvaccinated, Like that exists yet?

Speaker 4 (01:11:58):
Yeah, So that's what some these these studies that I
talked about that were done earlier this this year, there
was a it was a JACK study the General American
College of Cardiology showed that even people who are partially vaccinated,
there's a reduction in these cardivalcular complications. And the JAMA

(01:12:19):
study which was done earlier, specifically focused on am I.
So the heart attacks at cute mount cardinal functions, and
stroke also lower risk.

Speaker 3 (01:12:28):
You were saying earlier that there might be some sports
that had even higher rates than those those ones you
mentioned over all for athletes. What what sport to those.

Speaker 4 (01:12:38):
Yeah, so the one that Spitsman raised recently is basketball.
They were, at least in some of these studies done
in the US, much higher than other sports. Yeah. So,
I mean, you know, basketball is can be an aerobic
event and that you're running back and forth, you know,

(01:12:58):
up and down the court quite freely, but it's punctuated
by these bursts of of you know, sprints and things
like that, which somehow speculated that might kind of be
the issue, right that you don't settle into just a
simple rhythm I'll say simple rhythm like you know, like
riding a bike is. It's not it's obviously simple as

(01:13:19):
as you describe it, but at least potentially there there's
periods of time when you can sort of get into
a rhythm and stay there and hear it's it's rest
periods punctuated by these rapid bursts. And so there's the
possibility that that may be related there.

Speaker 3 (01:13:36):
Okay, and so that that might be why that there
are higher death rates to there.

Speaker 4 (01:13:39):
It's possible. Yeah, they're not sure why these things happen
to specific.

Speaker 3 (01:13:44):
Sports, Okay, are our friends in anti VAXX community show
in their own minds why these happened, Like, do they
have some kind of hypothesia they're advancing.

Speaker 4 (01:13:54):
Uh. No, so that's a good point. They'll say it's
the spike protein. I'm sure I've heard that race before.
But they don't really explain beyond uh that it's interesting
about the spike protein in the vaccines, as it's been
modified to not be active. And so you have the

(01:14:18):
spike protein in the virus which causes injury, and yet
they don't seem to, you know, acknowledge that that could
cause these these issues. And yet the spike protein in
the vaccine, which has been designed to limit that injury,
somehow overcomes that and actually causes the injury that's not
associated with the infection. Like like note that it makes sense, right,

(01:14:42):
you have to work live in these parallel worlds that
don't don't ever mix, right.

Speaker 3 (01:14:48):
Yeah, so they Yeah, they're suggesting that this protein, which
is a modified version of the one that's already in
the virus but it's non harmful with one of the
virus is harmful. It's because of the modification.

Speaker 4 (01:15:00):
Yeah. Certainly a good number of people who don't like
the vaccines also claim that covid itself is really not
much of a threat. And then so again, I don't
I don't see how they can reconcile these these points, right,
especially when you're arguing about the same protein, one of
which has been modified to be less active, and yet

(01:15:22):
you're saying the less active one is actually more dangerous
than it. Just doesn't make any.

Speaker 3 (01:15:27):
Sense, right, Yeah, And I think it's kind of not
people maybe come to it with a sort of predetermined
desire to conclude that the vaccine is dangerous, And I wonder, like,
I'm familiar with the exciting cardiac death from my time cycling,
and I remember in the early two thousands, so there
was this idea that people were dying because their blood

(01:15:48):
had turned like quote I'm quoting from like newspaper articles
at the time, too treacle and have become so thick
that their heart couldn't pump it anymore, and that this
was causing people to die, and the reason that they
died was because they were taking excessive amounts of blood
boosters like EBO or exog a CPO. And so, I

(01:16:11):
this wasn't true, at least to my knowledge. I don't
think any of these people had tested positive. None of
them had like autopsies that suggested that this is why
they had died. But it seems to me that there's
this natural desire to try and explain away these deaths
of what people who are at the peak of their

(01:16:31):
physical lives, right, people in their in their teens and twenties,
are extremely fit, who we can see doing amazing things,
and doesn't sort of line up for us when they die.
It doesn't line up with what we think a healthy
person is and what we think a cardiac patient is.
And so it seems to me that we create these explanations.
Is that something you've seen in other areas before the

(01:16:52):
COVID vaccine where there are other sort of conspiracies or
just ways to try and explain this away.

Speaker 4 (01:16:58):
I don't know about conspiracy. I mean I think people
understandably have a hard time reconciling what you just said. Right,
you have elite cyclists or whatever sport it is. I mean,
cycling is good because aerobically they have to be very fit,
and then they die potentially of a cardiac condition, right,
So that that makes no sense, you know, So the

(01:17:21):
easiest thing, like you said, is to pay well, they
must be doping, they must be taking steroids and you know,
something that's going to harm your body. And so that
has to be the explanation because it's it's it's easy,
that's that's a simple way to get to this. The
reality is that a good number of these people have
underlying cardiac conditions. Not again, I don't necessarily mean a

(01:17:44):
lot of cyclists have that. What I mean is the
people who have these sudden cardiac desks have undiagnosed cardiac
conditions long QT. There's a condition called CPVT, you know,
something like that, and so they're relatively i'll say benign.
TPVT isn't necessarily but it's triggered. These things are triggered

(01:18:05):
by stressful events like exercise and things like that. And
so they may live a good part of their life
and to be in our seemingly in good health, and
then the first sign for many of these people is death.
That's the real challenge in dealing with these cases that

(01:18:25):
lead to some cardiac death, because that's the first symptom.
People don't feel tired, they don't you know, have chest
pains like having a heart attack or anything like that.
It's simply something happens. The wiring goes off in the
heart and you put the exercise on top of it
and they die. You know, it's not just these athletes.
You'll have somebody who has a change in one of

(01:18:48):
their genes. They're perfectly fine. Do they live into their
sixties and then they suddenly die. Well, what allowed them
to live sixty years with you know, no symptoms? We
don't really know, but it's not uncommon that the first
symptom is death. And these people, so your friends there
who you know, it's it's easiest to accuse them of

(01:19:10):
doping because certainly we a lot of us talked about
it at the time, as I'm sure you know you
knew about it. There's no secret. So we connect those dots, right,
we can see that, we can see that, let's connect them.
We can't let's see long cut. So we don't know
what long QT syndrome is. For a lot of people,
it's hard to make that connection when you don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:19:30):
Yeah, and it's hard from the perspective of being someone's
friend or I can only imagine what it's like for
their families to have this, Like I guess them be
sort of libeled after they die, you know, or sort
of acute of something that they may in many cases,
I don't think did do. It must be very difficult
to deal with that on top of losing someone you love.

Speaker 4 (01:19:51):
Yeah, well, and we're seeing that again here with the
people who oppose the vaccines, which is either their assuming
things or they're speculating on things. And you know, unless
you're in the circle of care, you don't know what's
what's going on. So, you know, you talked about Lebron
James on here. You know, does he have an un

(01:20:13):
underlying condition? We don't know, and it you know, it's
it's really not helpful for me to sit here and say, well,
he could have long QT, he could have CPGBT like here,
you know, to speculate like like that. I can talk
about what are some things that lead to these these
conditions generally in people, But I don't know anything about
his health, and so it's not helpful for me to

(01:20:36):
sit here and speculate on that while his family and
then he himself is trying to you know, sort of
get through that. That's you know, that's I'm sure that's
upsetting for them. So I'm not sure why people feel
the need to do that, except to advance their own agenda.

Speaker 3 (01:20:49):
Right yes, yeah, I think that is the case. So
let's talk a little bit about how we can I guess,
mitigate these risks and that exist. I remember when and
you're getting a license in Spain and they make you
take a cardiac stress test there, like you get you
ride your bike on a treadmill and they just ramp
it up into your heart rates in the one nineties
or whatever. And I don't know what they were doing,

(01:21:12):
but they made us. I think that may only have
been for like elite athletes, but they made us all
do that. Is that something where if there was an
underlying one of these underlying risk factors that you mentioned,
would would it be spotted on a test like that?

Speaker 4 (01:21:27):
Yeah, that's a little bit of a controversial area. So
I noticed you said in Spain. In Europe, the consensus
is that athletes need to go through these what we
call pre screening ECGs. So you were probably you know,
probably had electrodes on your body. Yeah, yeah, And so
that's a simple, non evasive test. And so you're right

(01:21:50):
because some things you can pick up just rest, but
some of these things don't appear and tell you you
stress the individual, and so they'll look for rhythm problems.
The other test is what we call eco cardiography, which
is basically an ultrasound of the heart, and there you
can look at function, but you can also look at structure.
Because there's a condition called hypertrophic cardiomopathy, it's relatively common

(01:22:16):
in athletes. It's more common there, and that accounts for
about fifty percent of these sudden cardiac deaths. And so
you can pick that up on an ECG, but you
can also pick it up using ultrasounds. So if you
scan the heart you see that it's very large, that
would be a diagnosis. So first in Europe they do that.

(01:22:36):
In North America and Canada and the United States they
do not. The concern is there's a couple of concerns.
One is the price, so you can you're screening large
numbers of athletes to pick out a relative small number
who may be affected. It's crude, but that is an

(01:22:56):
argument that people make. So I guess the question comes
to how much is life worth to you and how
much do you want to spend. So there is that.
But there is another issue, which is what they call
false positives. So you know, had you been diagnosed as
having a condition, then you maybe pulled out of training
for a little while while they do more tests and
stuff like that that could be very stressful on you.

(01:23:19):
And so the view in North America's there's an unacceptably
high number of those false positives, and so they feel
that it's not worth worth doing the other issue. So
I'm not sure when when did you do this screening?
Was it like twenty years.

Speaker 3 (01:23:37):
Or no, ten years ago? Probably like twenty ten eleven.

Speaker 4 (01:23:41):
Yeah, So one of the issues that we have is
when you have these high performance athletes, their hearts change,
they get bigger, they get more efficient, their rhythms change,
and they have conditions that we would pick up on
ECGs and ECHO that would be considered pathological, right, But

(01:24:04):
because they're athletes, these are changes that do occur in
athletes as their hearts remodel, and they're not a sign
of disease. Right. If you took someone who wasn't highly
fit and had so for example, if you screen someone's
heart and you saw that it was very large and
they didn't exercise, you might be concerned. But if you're
you know, an elite cyclist where your heart gets very big,

(01:24:26):
it's going to be bigger. And so what we have
struggled with for a number of years, is what is
normal in the athlete that would be considered abnormal in
the general population. Italy has done a really good job
on this. So start going back into the nineteen eighties,
they started to collect data because that's what we need, right,
we need data from athletes, and they created a huge

(01:24:51):
database which actually used in my class now to teach
and say, you know, if you have an athlete and
you see these things, these are things we wouldn't be
concerned about. Or here's some markers where we might be concerned,
and so we have to look further. And then here's
some things where it doesn't matter whether you're an athlete
or you know, someone who sits on their couch all day,
that's a problem. But without that data, we didn't we

(01:25:14):
didn't have that ability. And so I think the last
time is twenty eighteen. The Europeans updated their their criteria.
Each time they update it, you know, we add new
things or modify things that are in there. So you
would have had abnormal things. You may have had abnormal
things on your ACG that the cardiologist would have looked
at it and said, well, according to our athlete standards,
that's okay, and we're going to ignore it. And we

(01:25:37):
didn't have that until relatively recently.

Speaker 3 (01:25:39):
Okay, yeah, I do remember think like having a resting
heart rate, which we'd be considered like pathologically or like
dangerously low with the thing.

Speaker 4 (01:25:49):
Get yeah, braid of cardio. So it's called braid of
cardia is obviously very common, right, And I give an
example of my class every year where you know you
have an athlete, their heart it can be forty beats
for a minute. And so I said, you know you
would ignore that. You go, well, they're ear elite cyclist.
I get that. And I give an example where it's

(01:26:09):
a woman, she's sixty three years old. They're resting heart
rates forty two beats a minute. She doesn't do any exercise,
and the physicians are like, oh, she must be very healthy.
I'm like, no, that's not normal. And so it turned
out so the reason they flagged her was because she
kept passing out because she was bred a kartick and
she eventually broke her nose and was sent to the hospital.

(01:26:30):
They did a genetic test and found that she had
a cardiac arrhythmia. Right, So my what I always teach
my students is don't just look at the monitor, look
at your patient, right, So when your heart rates forty
beats a minute and they're cycling away and you know,
he's like, yeah, that person's very fit. As like when
you look and they're eighty years old and they're passing out,

(01:26:52):
forty beats a minute is not normal, right, And so
we don't need real high standards for some of these things,
but some of them we did.

Speaker 3 (01:27:00):
And I wonder like people listening will probably be sufficiently
afraid now, but I'm not, hopefully not too afraid. But like,
lots of people these days are monitoring their heart rate
all the time, right, They have watches, they have wristbands
when they're exercising, they have chest bans, so you can
monitor your heart real kinds of basics the states you
can wear a ring. Would any of those devices be

(01:27:23):
useful in predicting or seeing families things?

Speaker 4 (01:27:28):
Not really, only because they're they're very limited. So it's
great people measure their heart rate because it is a
general sign of health, and so good lowering rest lower
resting heart rates is very good. And when you're exercising,
you want to bring your heart rate into certain zones
have effective worker. So that's all great, So I'm not
trying to discurage people from doing that. But if you

(01:27:51):
want to diagnose long QT syndrome, for example, in somebody,
that requires calculations. So for sure, you need to measure
things very accurate. Really, when I'm sure when you had
your your traits done, you would have had multiple electrodes
stuck on your your body. Yeah, we typically do what's

(01:28:11):
called the twelve lead ECG, and so there's there's multiple
electrodes and they have to be positioned in certain places
in order to measure how the heart basically the heart's
electricity is flowing in a certain directions because that actually
tells us something. So when you have I mean, I
have a device that I used to teach and to

(01:28:33):
illustrate people, and it's on the back of my cell phone,
and they could just you know, you put your fingers
on it and you can you can you can measure
things and you get an ECG off that and so
it looks really neat and it's great for teaching. But
I'm not going to diagnose somebody with Goddess syndrome or
long QT or any of those those things. Those are
much more in depth, uh to, It's required much more

(01:28:57):
in depth equipment to do something.

Speaker 3 (01:28:58):
Like that, right, Yeah, yeah, definitely. Like sometimes when you
ride under electricity pilots, you'll see a heart rate of
two hundred and forty and it will be concerning Oh yeah, okay,
it didn't work out what was connected to it. And
so if these things are occurring, and obviously they care.
It's sort of at a certain percentage of young athletes
and certain percentage anywhere else. Are there ways that these

(01:29:22):
certain kindiak risks we could reduce the number of them
that result in death?

Speaker 4 (01:29:27):
Yeah, no, for sure, so CPR. So the people who
die quite often die because there's there's nobody there to
administer CPR, and so you lose that very valuable time.
And so people are concerned about you know, stepping in

(01:29:48):
and doing something and potentially hurting someone. If someone is
dead like that, you're not going to hurt them, right,
So you know, please learn CPR. It's not difficulty. Can
certainly do that. You know. In Canada, abouteen years ago now,
the Heart instruct Foundation of Canada raised a tremendous amount

(01:30:11):
of money to put we call automatic extrung defibrillators or
AEDs in public places. I think they put fifteen thousand
of them, plus companies will buy them for o their
workplaces and things like that. And so if someone goes
down and their heart stops, you take these things out.
There's some patches. It comes with instructions, like it will

(01:30:34):
tell you actually what to do, and you take it out,
you put the patches on the individual, you step back
because it will deliver a shock and it will automatically
shock their heart trying to get it back into rhythm.
So knowing where those are, I'll say, knowing how to
do them, you don't necessarily need to practice because it
will walk you through it. But at least knowing where
they are and not being afraid to use them, I

(01:30:56):
think is very important. These quick reactions in administering care
before the paramedics or someone else gets there is super important.
If you let someone go five ten minutes without any
you know, CPR or anything like that, there's a tremendous
amount of damage that's that's done and it can't be overcome.

Speaker 3 (01:31:19):
Okay, Yeah, And I think in a lot of places
in the US, certainly, like you can access free CPI
AED training or your employee might pay for it or
and I didn't do you know any resources people could
use to find where they can find that free training.

Speaker 4 (01:31:36):
So in the States, that's the American Heart Association would
be a good place to go, the American Red Crop.
I'm sure they'll have resources in Canada's heartstruct Foundation of Canada,
Saint John's Ambulance. But like you said, a lot of
just you know, local community centers will put these things
on a couple of times a year, you know, just

(01:31:56):
so that people are familiar with with how to do it.
Work places will sometimes do it once or twice a
year have training a lot of people to just learn
how to how to do it. Yeah, I'm not sure
where people if you just go on the internet and
wherever you are and look for first day, a lot
of times it falls on the first day. But if
you just google your city and CPR, I'm sure something

(01:32:17):
will come up. And I bet there's something this month
you could go to NICs.

Speaker 3 (01:32:20):
Yeah. Yeah, we've spoken before about to Stop the Bleed
courses and how they're wills, free and easy to exist,
so people could do both of those to be really
set up to help people. Glenn, is there anything else
you think people ought to know about these seven seven
kadiak arrisk guy there sort of with the conspiracy theories
around them, or anything else they can do to protect
themselves through other people.

Speaker 4 (01:32:41):
Well, I think there's the perception that that by saying
that there's not an issue, that it means we don't
we don't care. In fact, we do care about these
these issues. Like I said, I've taught about this for
you know, over a decade. I have a background and
doing some sports medicine work a long time ago. I

(01:33:02):
certainly have a strong interest in helping these people. When
we say the risk is not going up, it doesn't
mean that we don't care. And so you know when
a soccer player, a football player, somebody goes down on
the court, that we just say, well, yeah, it happens.

(01:33:24):
That's not what we're saying. We're saying we know these
things happen, we do care about them. I would actually
flip this around the other way and say some of
these people, the people who I'm talking about, the people
who are profiting off that's not people who are like
I had no idea this was happening. That's okay. You know,
not everybody can know everything. But the people who are

(01:33:45):
saying this is increasing and they're making money off these
things by selling their movies and whatever. Did you not
care when someone you know died in twenty fifteen because
they were in twenty nineteen or die and kids were
doing it? And if you'd like to come to my class,
I can show you, you know, the pictures of these

(01:34:05):
people because you weren't around then. And I'm wondering, I'm
not really wondering why you're around now. I know why
they're they're around now. They're they're profiting off of this,
and so I would actually flip it the other way
and say, you know, have them ask ask them why
is this new to them when when we've when the
data show this has been happening all.

Speaker 3 (01:34:26):
Along, right, Yeah, And by encouraging people not to get vaccinated,
they're encouraging those people to place themselves at a higher
risk for the cardiac issues right for presumably a profit
motive in some cases, which is very sad. Glenn, Where
can people you do some excellent threads on Twitter so
people can learn a lot about heart stuff? There is

(01:34:47):
there anywhere else or where do you prefer people to
find you? I guess online.

Speaker 4 (01:34:54):
Yeah, No, we do a lot of social media stuff.
There's a lot of I know people complain about Twitter.
I complain about but there's a lot of really Twitter.
There a lot of really good people on there who
you know, present their information. You know, you can just
want to look for for those people there. What I

(01:35:15):
would say is like, how do you identify who are
the good people who you can trust? And stuff? Is
the people who are able to be transparent with where
they get their information. Right. So when I say, you know,
the vaccines reduced your risk of these major cardiovascular events,
I typically provide a study or something like that to

(01:35:37):
show where I got that information. The people who are
less trustworthy will say, you know, either go find it
yourself because they don't know, or well, I can see it,
I know it's happening. You know, a lot of these
things are measurable, so we should be able to to
find those. A lot of us write on things I've
written for the Conversation Shi It's two point zero things

(01:36:00):
will be there. But social media is a good place
to go because you can interact with people and you
can ask those those questions. So yeah, yeah, you can
reach out to me and see who I follow on
who I interact with if if, if you're interested in that,
you could take that as a good or a bad sign. However,
if you.

Speaker 3 (01:36:19):
Want to, what's your handle on Twitter?

Speaker 4 (01:36:23):
So my handle is glengey l E and pile p
y l E. I'm also on the sky. I just
joined that the other day, so nice.

Speaker 3 (01:36:31):
Congratulations. Yeah, that's great. I think the last point you
made is one that we should maybe pursue another episode
on because we the difference between anecdote and data and
like so there is an increasing number I think of
people doing things that look a lot like journal articles,
are a lot like studies that appear with you that are

(01:36:52):
not in trying to kind of leverage the credibility of
that without actually doing reviewed science because of the stuff
they're doing wouldn't line up with pay reviewed science. So
it would be interesting to decrite there.

Speaker 4 (01:37:07):
Right, Yes, yes, it was a whole episode too.

Speaker 2 (01:37:10):
Yeah, yeah, next time.

Speaker 3 (01:37:12):
Well, thank you so much for your.

Speaker 4 (01:37:14):
Time, Jan Thanks very much, Davis. I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (01:37:27):
Hi everyone, it's James here, and we have a wonderful
episode for you today on heat and heat illness and
how to protect yourself for your community and your animals
when it is hot, which it is right now. But
I just wanted to record this little pick up to
tell you that this isn't medical advice, right produced every
time we do these. I am not that kind of doctor,
and I am not your doctor, and I just wanted

(01:37:47):
to reinforce especially that yes, generally, of you're hot, it's
a good idea to drink fluids and get out of
the heat. Someone is losing consciousness or really really sick,
you need to get better medical attention. Then you can
learn how to give on a podcast. Right, So that's
when you call someone whose job is to look after people,
and I just wanted to reinforce it. Obviously, pouring water

(01:38:08):
down the throat of someone who's lost consciouness is a
very dumb idea, so please, if somebody is seriously unwell,
seek medical care. Enjoy the episode. All right, Hi, welcome
to It could happened here in a podcast where we
someone knows that God, which is what I was doing
just before the podcast began. Maybe we'll include that. And

(01:38:31):
today we're here to talk about how God is smiting
us with massive heat waves. And I'm joined today by
Margaret Kiljoy and Garrison Davis say hello everyone.

Speaker 6 (01:38:42):
Hello, everyone one so.

Speaker 9 (01:38:47):
Called.

Speaker 3 (01:38:51):
Yeah, my sheeple have joined me. That's what I get
for doing an episode about sheep. So as you will
be away if you are in just about anywhere in
the northern Hemisphere. It is very hot at the minute.
It's very hot in cities in Europe. It's very hot
in the United States. It's very hot in parts of

(01:39:13):
North Africa and Middle East as well. It's the hottest
June for how many years? Garrison July July that one.

Speaker 10 (01:39:21):
It is the hottest July, and it is one hundred
and twenty thousand years according to the most recent estimates
released like three days ago as a time of recording.

Speaker 3 (01:39:31):
So yeah, yeah, And we've had the hottest day in
history like four times in the last month or something.

Speaker 10 (01:39:39):
In the in the first half of July, we had
we had two days in a row where it was
the two hottest days on record, and then we had
two other days that were also the hottest days on record.
It's it's pretty concerning. It's nothing that people haven't been
warning about for many, many decades, but it's it's bad

(01:40:00):
and it's very warm, yep.

Speaker 3 (01:40:03):
And it will continue probably to get warmer. So I
think the way we want to approach this is, I'm
going to start off with talking about stuff related to
like exertional heat illness, because that's the thing that's most
acutely concerning for people, right, especially if they work outside,
if they recreate outside, if they're doing stuff outside where
they can't get out of the heat. So I think

(01:40:26):
to start off if I want to talk about things
that might make you predisposed, and then I'm going to
expend a little bit of how the body cools, and
then some of these different stages of heat illnesses and
how one might go about treating those or seeking further
care if you need to. Right, So to start out with,
there are some things that can make you predisposed to
heat illness. Right, the biggest predisposition I've come acrossrom my

(01:40:50):
reading is previously having heat illness. So I can certainly
speak to this. Yeah, Like I think I got heat
stroke for the first time. It was racing by in Spain,
I think, But I then remember getting it again racing
bikes in Vietnam, and just like being really bad, like

(01:41:10):
having to have ivy fluids, like vomiting sort of even
some like sort of not loss of consciouness, but definitely
like confusion and erratic behavior and stuff.

Speaker 6 (01:41:22):
And the line between that and dying is pretty narrow, right.

Speaker 3 (01:41:27):
You can have like multiple organ failure and stuff certainly
if yeah, if you don't respond to that or if
you misdiagnose that, and that's definitely like I'm someone with diabetes, right,
so people can sometimes if you're erratic or confused, people
can assume your hypoglycemic and you need some sugar, but
you don't in that situation, we need some fluids and
electrolytes and to be cooled quickly. So yeah, that is yeah,

(01:41:52):
you can die. People do die. Actually, the mortality is
quite high, Like I too prepare for this, so I
want to look at advanced Weldness Life support course I did,
and people can look it up. AWLS University of Utah
does one, and you can act as lots of the
stuff online for free. But they would think the mortality

(01:42:12):
is quite high from these like heat illnesses, and I
think that's probably especially true in wilderness medicine, because it
can be hard to cool someone down right if you
don't have means of like if you don't have access
to ice, you obviously not got air conditioning out there.
If the best thing you probably have is running water,
hopefully you have running water, right, And I think probably

(01:42:33):
it's something that people might not have been concerned with
unless they either lived in a very hot place or
a very active people, or who traveled a lot before.
So yeah, if you've had heat illness before, then you
do need to be careful and you will probably know
if you've had it before. But if we go through
all the symptoms, you've had them all and never I
guess got diagnosed, and lucky you, maybe you just found

(01:42:54):
out you had heat illness. Other things that can predispose
you can be a lack of acclimates. Again, like this
is one that I think kind of stands to reason
for most people. But like if you go from a
cold place to hot place, or the place you are
suddenly becomes hot having been cold, it's going to take
you a few days a week to become a climatized

(01:43:15):
to that heat, right, and your body will change. Things
about your body will change, So we don't need to
go into But it's also.

Speaker 2 (01:43:24):
I don't think so.

Speaker 3 (01:43:24):
I think so back when I was exercising more seriously,
I would we would do heat acclimation by going in
a sauna after a training ride, and the idea was like,
you gave yourself this big bout of heat stress and
then then you could go back and cool down. Right,
So I think if you were in acy for most

(01:43:45):
of the day, it was okay, I'm sort of guessing here,
But if getting that bout of heat stress and then
recovering and get just like any other training that you're doing,
seems so.

Speaker 6 (01:43:55):
But if you go outside into the heat and then
come back into the cool, you're still acclimating yourself.

Speaker 3 (01:44:02):
Yes, compared to just hanging out in you know, somewhere
where it's cold all the time, and you do want it.
You don't want to overdo it, right, You don't want
to be like, oh, yeah, I'm going to acclimate. Time
to go for a ten mile round, like, ease into it,
make sure you're hydrating, make sure you're taking breaks in
the heat. There's also a lack of conditioning, right, So
that's why you see a lot of heat illness. Maybe

(01:44:23):
that's the first time I got heat stroke. Was like
pre season workouts for like especially like collegiate athletes and
things or athletes who are more seasonal athletes, So people
who have been parked on their backside for a few
months or in class or whatever, and then they come
and to start doing a rigorous training regime that can
that can predispose you, right, so they can cause you

(01:44:44):
to be more likely to get a heat illness. And
then there are some medications, right, so you'd probably say
on your medications, but things like beta block is actually hisstormyines, diuretics,
you don't want to be drinking too much alcohol, and
some conditions to write, heart disease, skin disease, existing dehydration
fever obviously, right, your temperatures high to begin with, and

(01:45:06):
diarrhea and vomiting which can cause that dehydration. Right, So
looking if you have diarrhea and vomiting, it's not a
good idea to also be going out and exposing yourself
to a lot of heat. Right, So all of those
things can make you more predisposed. But you can have
none of those things and still get heat illness. I

(01:45:27):
think the way to understand it is like the way
we'll talk about the way our body cools, so it
does that through evaporation. People will be familiar with sweating.
Most people sweat and so if you the sweating allows
your body to cool, right, The evaporation of the sweat
allows your body to cool. So people who don't sweat,

(01:45:47):
or people who have injuries which means they don't sweat
some of their body again, are at a higher risk
for heat illness.

Speaker 5 (01:45:53):
Right.

Speaker 6 (01:45:54):
More less assurtizes in turn like wet bulb temperature and
the fact that if you're in a more humid place,
you have to consider the heat very differently, right, And
so yeah, yeah, the East coast versus the Southwest, for example,
of the United States, will have very different options available

(01:46:15):
to them, both inside and outside about how to cool down.
Based on knowing the humidity outside is going to be
as important for people as knowing the actual temperature.

Speaker 3 (01:46:27):
Yes, definitely, And most of the time now, if you're
using a phone app, whichink most people are doing, to
check the way that you can find that it will
give you the humidity and give you a wet bowl
or like a real feel temperature. But certainly, like I
was recently on a trip to the Marshall Islands and
I was running and like eighty five and I'll run
eighty five all the time, and I was dying because

(01:46:49):
the humidity was so high. So yeah, whether ho humidity
is high, you're not going to be able to cool
as much, right, so you need to be more careful
radiation that that's when your body is shedding heat through,
like I guess electromagnetic energy. That makes up most of
your cooling when the ambrrient temperatures are less than body temperature.

(01:47:10):
So once the ambient temperature is above your body temperature,
I think in fahrenheit's like ninety six point six, your
body's going to be relying on other methods, right, that
one's not going to work. Conduction. Conduction doesn't really make
up much of It's not really that useful way to cool.
It doesn't really make much difference. But like people will

(01:47:31):
be familiar with conduction if you've ever slept without a
sleeping pad, if you've been camping, you'll realize how much
colder you get on cold ground. And then the last
one is convection, right, So that's heat transfer between the
body and then moving gas or liquid. That's why wind
chills the thing, okay, because that airs whipping past you
rate cooling you down. And that's also the convection is

(01:47:53):
one that we can use to cool people down if
they overheat, right, like jump in the create so yes,
or if we don't have a creek, we can get
you wet and then fan you. Maybe we can if
we're outside and we have those big thermorest sleeping pads,
we can get some air moving that way and help
you cool down. If we know the ways the body cools,

(01:48:14):
then we can maybe use this right. And we we
have to understand, like you said, the relative humidity read.
So when our body gets hot, especially when it starts
to overheat, it will shd some blood to the skin
right vaseodilation. It will also increase cardiac output and increase
catecula means which activate a sweat glands.

Speaker 4 (01:48:35):
So the.

Speaker 3 (01:48:38):
Hypothalamus will also regulate heat production in the body.

Speaker 6 (01:48:41):
And there's been two so I don't understand two of
the words you've recently used. But okay, which way the
words which are the words about the the cacophony and
the hypert means. Okay, it's sufficient to say that the
body you start to sweat more, and your body begins
a regular our heart it makes itself. Okay, I got

(01:49:02):
that one kind of from contact. But what's this next one?

Speaker 3 (01:49:05):
I gues see hypothalamus is like your your body's kind
of internal regulator, and what it's doing is it's in
this case, it's regulating the heat production of your body. Dude,
it's trying to It's not making you holler from the inside.
I guess that's probably a terrible explanation. Okay, So let's

(01:49:29):
go through the different stages of heat illness. We can
start off with things so that people will be I
think we can probably skip like sunburn. Many of us
will be familiar with someburn and it will have been sunburned.
Many of us will understand hopefully we're wearing our suncream
when we go outside, right or just wearing our suncream
and covering ourselves up from the sun, not just like

(01:49:50):
running around with our skin exposed to the sun when
it's one hundred and ten or what have you. So
step up from there would be heat cramps, and cramps
can come from various things, right, Like, I think not
all cramps are caused by sodium depletion or potassium depletion.
People sometimes think that it's a potassium thing. Some of
them can just be caused wherever exertion. It can be

(01:50:14):
your body's way of being, like, hey, stop. So, like,
if you know it's fifty degrees out and you're trying
to run your fastest tank ca and you have cramps,
that's not a heat thing, that's just your body being like, okay,
you're not ready for this.

Speaker 6 (01:50:28):
Yeah, that's kind of my experience with running. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:50:32):
Yeah, your body's actively rejected it. Yeah, it's because it knows.

Speaker 6 (01:50:36):
I tried to join the track when I was in
ninth grade to impress the girl. Neither part of it worked.
I'm sorry to hear. That's fine, but it's for the best. Okay,
I'm glad that you can share that with the audience.
Oh that was just wait, oh no, someone's listening. Yeah anyway, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:50:51):
Unfortunately, So heat cramps, right, they're mostly going to be
in your calves, and people will be familiar with the
sensation of a cramp. I'm sure we're experiencing heat cramps.
We want to obviously cool off, stop doing the thing.
So if we're running, it's time to start running. If
we're cycling, time stuff. Cycling, it's unlikely you're getting the

(01:51:11):
where you get you get them swimming that's other kinds
of cramps. But you know, if we're exercising it's good
to stop, it's good to cool down, it's good to rehydrate.
So that's where you're going to start with your ooral
salt solution. And generally, from what I've seen, it's a
sodium thing, so that that's just like a quarter to
a half a teaspoon of table salt and a liter

(01:51:32):
of water.

Speaker 6 (01:51:33):
This is the electrolyte thing that people talk about. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:51:37):
And as we get further into like these heat illnesses,
one of the things that you want to be careful of.
You're trying to rehydrate some when it's overloading a carbohydrate,
so you want a less than six percent carbohydrate solution.
That can mean just not pounding gatorade, which I think
can be like the sort of standard response for some

(01:51:58):
people because it just it doesn't empty quite as quickly
at something which has a lower carbohydrate content.

Speaker 6 (01:52:06):
Right, Okay, but people who are drinking drinking straight water
doesn't rehydrate you as effectively as drinking electrolytes. Right, Like,
if it's really hot out, you pretty much need to
be hydrating with electrolytes. This is unless you're like eating
a salty snack or something. This is what I've heard
from people.

Speaker 3 (01:52:23):
Yeah, there's a thing called hypernatremia, which is when the
opposite that's like low sodium, right, then that's that can
happen sometimes from just drinking straight water without any sodium.
It happens rarely, but it definitely can happen. It can
happen in like backcountry travel where people don't think they're
exerting themselves, they're just kind of walking and drinking a

(01:52:45):
lot of water. It can happen in marathons, like it
happens sometimes in marathons people are just taking the water
from the age station to just drinking the water. Yeah,
it's never like it's you know, when it's hot, if
you're having you know, when I was bi racing, a
to do one drink of water and one drink of
electrolyte even in the heat, pretty much like one bottle.

(01:53:05):
There are two bottles on a bicycle thing. I think
that's a fine thing to do if you're in the
heat and in you're exercising. You don't need to be
smashing gatorade all the time because that's a lot of
sugar and it might that will also not empty from
your stomach. So, you know, a modern sports drink should
have the right solution. You know, there are lots of brands.
I'm not going to recommend one, but there are lots

(01:53:28):
of different brands which should have a decent sort of
four or five percent carbo hydrate solution, and I think
one that tastes nice to you. And then we move
from there into a couple of different things, heat exhaustion
and heat syncope. Heat syncope is when you'll see people
like fall over, and it happens often like the only

(01:53:49):
time I've seen it happen is people stopping after like
a long run, like specifically like when they push themselves
really hard, right, And it can actually be it can
be people who are not particularly dehydrated or hypothermic, but
a sort of a long run and heat you're not
acclimated to. It can blood can pull in the legs,

(01:54:11):
and it's it's often people who are elderly are not
very well acclimated, and it's normally when they're standing at
stationary and that's something that you can treat by elevating
the feet where's the personal lies down, and then just
getting them out of direct sunlight and helping them rehydrate, right,
So helping them cool rehydrate. You're going to see that

(01:54:34):
in nearly all of these cases, cooling someone off it's
the most important thing to do. So next time we
talk about heat exhaustion again, like you'll know something is
wrong in these situations, right, Like if someone's just just
like falling over, you will know something is wrong. If
someone's yeah, then in case he's like you'll know like
having had heat exhaustion heat stroke, like you yourself will

(01:54:56):
also know. There are certain like like ecstasy is a
big one, right when people people quite often get heat
illness when they're like at raves on ecstasy. And that's
just because obviously like altered state of mind plus dancing,
uh plus plus this drug, which is you know, your
body is not not making its usual responses, I guess,

(01:55:18):
and that can be so like, you know, if it's
one hundred and ten out, maybe that's not the time
to be doing M B M A and raving.

Speaker 10 (01:55:26):
Cop cop cop behavior. James, Yeah, yeah, I can't stand
by and here And just as you spread this M
D M A slander, people should People should absolutely be
knowledgeable about what causes their atonin syndrome and be careful
about mixing other substances but I cannot have you just
disparage the.

Speaker 2 (01:55:46):
Good name of MDMA like this.

Speaker 6 (01:55:49):
Oh I will, I will take it one step further
and tell you that, at least with my research, both
caffeine and alcohol make it far more likely for you
to suffer dehydration and related heat dehydration.

Speaker 10 (01:56:03):
Yes, this is this is just that, this is an
actual problem that people should mix like with m d
m A. This is something to look up because because
of the way it affects your serotonin levels, it can
cause you to overheat if you take too much or
come out with other things, or if you're in a hot, sweaty,
crowded room you're dancing too much without taking breaks. This
is a thing to consider.

Speaker 3 (01:56:26):
Yes, yeah, I had. There was a person it was
I think it was reference in the in the course
they did where they would talk about using a drone
rave to identify people who are hypothermic and like that,
like you what you want to step away from the
dance floor, like to identify beople who at risk, which

(01:56:46):
is an interesting idea. That's cool, I think. Yeah, So
just you know something to consider as you go forward
with yoursemble plants. So other signs, right, tiredness, weakness, uziness, headache, fainting,
knows you're vomiting, muscle cramps, nausea and vomiting. It's ralph.
I remember that the worst heat on this I've ever

(01:57:06):
had was in Vietnam doing a bike race. One of
the rules in a bike races that you can't take
supplies from your support car in the last fifty kilometers,
and it was just so hot, and I remember being like,
I'm baking inside my skull. I'm baking it inside my skull,
like and I'd been previously in like a little group

(01:57:26):
in front of the main group, so I also hadn't
been able to access water from my car then and
then drop, we got caught by the main group, is
what happened. And I remember being like, okay, good, Now
I can get my eye socks and put them down
my back and I can get my cold water. And
then I went back and the guy was like, no, no, no,
it's like forty nine kilometers and I was like, oh,

(01:57:46):
this is bad, this is really fucking bad. And it
was really bad.

Speaker 5 (01:57:50):
Did you.

Speaker 3 (01:57:53):
Be I'm sure? Yeah I did. I finished the race. Congrats, Yeah, No,
terrible decision at the picture somewhere. My teammates put me
in a shower with like my legs above my head
it which was just like waterboarding me with cold water,
and I was given ivy fluid and they were all like, oh,
this is bad. He's not in a good way. Yeah,

(01:58:16):
yeah that you know, sport is good for you. Keep
sporting out there, kids. Everyone was very concerned for me.

Speaker 6 (01:58:23):
My All the stuff I came up with was like
stay inside, don't exert yourself, like avoid caffeine and alcohol. Yeah,
if you want to push yourself past your limits.

Speaker 3 (01:58:36):
Yeah, yeah, don't know it's bad. But we did everything
wrong right, Like it was in December the race, because
the Asian Tour doesn't take a break at like the
December and a few time it takes a break from Ramadan.
So obviously coming from the United States, we were relatively
less fit than we would have been. We were not acclimated.
I had a fat beard, which did not help, and

(01:58:58):
like my hair was longer than it is now, My
body was not losing heat. Everything was I doing this
this race? Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, going out there like
full Look if there's nothing that what is more white
man on the left and you know, got white dude
with a beard. It's like all of them, right, crook
and bacuona marks, and you have to try it. Yeah,

(01:59:22):
don't do that. Don't do that to yourself. We talked
about heats and cope and the last one is heat stroke.
So what differentiates heat stroke from heat exhaustion is that
higher body temperature above forty degrees celsius, which is one
hundred and three hundred and four fahrenheit. If you're seeing
one hundred and three, it's time to pick up the
telephone and call nine on one if you can, if
you're in an area where you can do that. But

(01:59:43):
it doesn't matter. It's one hundred and three one hundred
and four. I guess it's that you're very hot. At
that point, you're going to have hot, red skin, a
fast strong pulse, headache, dizziness, naughty of confusion. People can
also lose consciousness. So this is very serious, right, And
the line between this and really serious lasting complications is

(02:00:06):
quite quite small, So you do need to be very
extremely concerned. I will say that, like when you're taking
someone's temperature, taking it at the extremities is not necessarily
going to give you the best idea of what their
core body temperature is, right, and so that's sort of

(02:00:27):
reason that like if if they're hot, if like, if
it's hot, they're hot on the outside, right, like an
ear or what have you. And then if you if
you've then tried to cool the person and you're seeing
like a lower body temperature in their hand or if
you're yeah, if their hands been in ice, you know,
in ice bath, then you might see a cooler temperature there.
And that's that there are like rectal probes are used
for this not something to be doing in a sort

(02:00:50):
of non consensual manner. They're not really something to be
doing unless you're like a medical professional. But if you're,
if so, just don't don't be relying again. So you know,
people have those little heat guns that they like to
use and stuff might not be the most reliable source
of information.

Speaker 6 (02:01:06):
Although it might be useful for the initial.

Speaker 3 (02:01:10):
Diagnosis, right, Yeah, even then, like if even if you
can just do an ooral thermometer as opposed to like
the temperature if your forehead is ox like, if it's
one hundred and ten, then the temperature of your forehead
is going to be hot, right.

Speaker 6 (02:01:24):
I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, totally okay.

Speaker 3 (02:01:26):
Versus you know you're trying to get as inside as possible.
I guess yeah. I remember people doing cooling experiments where
you have to take a pill when it measured your
internal temperature and well bluetoothed out or something. Yeah, so
it's fun times. I think that's cool.

Speaker 6 (02:01:46):
I want one rescuing it later sounds like not fun.

Speaker 3 (02:01:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does make an exit for the body.
So with this again, right, you want to cool the
person down, and the way we can do that it's
like ice packs right in the groin, neck and scalp.
So I used to do like just tights, like if
you're wearing tights, put ice in those and put those
down my back of my cycling jersey or no cycling.

(02:02:14):
You can put them in the groins obviously the person
has become like a heat casualty. You can put them
in the groin, armpits, the neck, and you can also
if you don't have access to AC obviously you've got
a c you can put the person in an air
conditioned environment to help them cool down. You can put
them in an ice bath. You'll see that like at

(02:02:34):
hot weather events. I'm trying to think there are a
lot of other conditions that you'll see a hot weather events.
We don't really have time to talk about. Things like
rabdough are very very concerning if someone's exercising in the heat.
But you'll often see at the end of hot events
in first day tents they're popping people in ice bas
to cool them down. They've got some of these symptoms,

(02:02:56):
like fifteen twenty minutes I think is how long you
want to put them in there for. But like if
you're starting to feel headache, dizziness, and nausea, I guess
my big take home here is get out of the sun,
stop exercising if you're exercising, and start hydrating. If you're
not hydrating with with that carbohydrate solution and you're looking
to drop that cool temperature, that core temperature below that

(02:03:18):
kind of danger zone, right, and I really get it
back to where what's to be, which which I think
in fahrenheit's around ninety six point six. You you probably
don't want to actively cool someone all the way down
because you can overshoot and they can get hypothermic and
so like they can they can get too cold if
you're like you know, dumping them in a freezer or

(02:03:40):
like you know, actively calling them to aggressively. So that's
something to be concerned with as well. And you don't
want the person to start shivering because the body's trying
to heat yourself back up at that point, so you
can't be uber aggressive. But I think having said all this,
like I said, the big take home is like if

(02:04:00):
you start to feel sick, dizzy underwell, when you're outside
in the heat, to get out the heat, get some water,
get into shade, if you can, get their conditioning if
you can. If you're at a job site, you know,
if there's like a trailer where you with the sad conditioned,
go in the trailer, like it's not worth your life,

(02:04:20):
even if it's your job.

Speaker 6 (02:04:21):
You want to know it's fun?

Speaker 3 (02:04:23):
Is that what's fun?

Speaker 6 (02:04:24):
In the United States, there's no federal law that says
you can't make people work in the hot weather without
hell yeah, some states, less than half. I don't have
the notes in front of me. I have the notes
for a different thing I recorded recently. Some states, like
sixteen of them or sometime maybe have laws against working

(02:04:45):
people outside in the heat, but most states don't. The
federal government is like considering one right now, but that
is like probably years away before it could be enacted.
But it's like basic worker protections, like don't have people
work outside without enough stuff to make sure they don't.

Speaker 3 (02:05:05):
Die of it. Consider forming a union. Yeah, google Blair
Mountain for more information on how to respond if you're
not allowed, if you're not allowed to take breaks for
the heat.

Speaker 6 (02:05:18):
Yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:05:21):
Talking of how capitalism is killing us all, Margaret, it's
time for us to break for some adverts so things
people can buy.

Speaker 10 (02:05:26):
Oh, we have we have some breaking news here, folks.
We have some breaking sheep news. So it turns out
during during during James's Last Sheep episode, he talked about
having texel sheep way when it's actually tessel sheep.

Speaker 3 (02:05:46):
So this is really no, they're they're definitely Texels.

Speaker 10 (02:05:50):
Who's pretty exciting here who the largest northwestern islands of
the of the Netherlands. It's one of those European places
where the pronuncidation, where the pronunciation does not match how
it's written. And it's tessel sheep, not textel sheep. So
this is pretty exciting for me. And usually James gets

(02:06:14):
to make fun of how I pronounce words and now.

Speaker 2 (02:06:19):
And now now now looks so here we go here?

Speaker 6 (02:06:23):
Well should we? I mean, should we move into like
machinations versus machinations or should we just move on?

Speaker 3 (02:06:28):
No, I think we can just move on here where
We'll just start a Buenos Aires and move from there. Yeah, Garrison,
the Speaker of Free, I have a hard life. They
did not teach me how to say words in Canada.

Speaker 2 (02:06:42):
It was all I know.

Speaker 10 (02:06:44):
It was all tongues in the school. We couldn't We
didn't actually learn much much English so much woods.

Speaker 3 (02:06:51):
Yeah, don't worry. Yeah, we're we're all learning as we go.
You see, there we go. Yeah, I've just I've just
learned that the place is called Tehsel and then that's
the sheep from there.

Speaker 6 (02:07:03):
Is there an X in it or something?

Speaker 3 (02:07:05):
No? Yes, when you're yeah, is there an X all
the time? T E XL Yeah, I always see, but
X sounds the X sounds like an S. Yeah speaking, Yeah, fascinating. Yeah, wow,
I like all my life I've been misnaming the very

(02:07:26):
sheep that many of you enjoyed hearing about.

Speaker 6 (02:07:30):
Sad that no wonder the sheep weren't coming when you called,
they felt no they come disrespected. Yeah, well never mind.

Speaker 3 (02:07:37):
Yeah, Well, to be fair, I just go out there
and say sheep, so you know I'm hedging my beds
with the pronunciation of that one.

Speaker 6 (02:07:45):
Well, you want to talk about animals and heat waves.

Speaker 3 (02:07:50):
I would love to, Yeah, tell me. It was like,
tell me what to do with your sheep.

Speaker 6 (02:07:52):
I talk about humans and heat and she and heat waves.
So actually, ironically, one of the things that I learned,
I don't know whether or not applies to sheep. I
was talking before this to one of my professional animal
friends who has worked in veterinary clinics and also as
a professional horse person. So there's some stuff to know, right,

(02:08:13):
for all of the people who aren't humans. Different animals
need different electrolyte feel formulas if you are going to
feed them electrolytes, and for example, dogs need more sugar
and less salt because they their bodies don't get rid
of salt as much. Right, they don't really sweat nearly
so much. Occasional pedialyte or some other like non gator

(02:08:36):
ady thing is fine every now and then, and probably
gatorades probably fine every now and then. But don't be
like you can go hiking and just drink electrolytes right,
not sugar water, but electrolytes. But don't do that with
your dog, even if it's super hot out. There is
dog specific stuff and there's formulas you can look up
for dog specific making your own. Don't shave your pets.

(02:08:59):
This is the one that I do know if applies
to sheep.

Speaker 10 (02:09:01):
My friend said, this does not apply to sheep. You
have to share their You want to have to share
your sheep or else they will overheat and die.

Speaker 6 (02:09:07):
Yeah, okay, yeah, you want to share your sheep. Yeah.
Some animals you want to shave. Some animals you don't.
If you have animals, you should look this up ahead
of time. Some people like run out and shave their
cats and dogs if in the heat wave. This is
a very bad thing. The hair is designed to protect
them from the sun. Also, especially like if you have
a dog with a double coat, it does a lot

(02:09:29):
of weird heat transfer stuff and it's really kind of
cool and magic. Brushing and grooming are very good. If
your dog is like slow to its summer coat, or
it's summer is suddenly here eleven months of the year,
or as I predict, there's going to be two seasons,
there's going to be summer, which will last for nine months,
and then there's going to be hell mouth, which will

(02:09:50):
replace what was previously summer. Don't take your dog out
in the hottest weather. It is better that your dog
pisses inside it gets heatstroke. It is harder identify heat
stroke and a dog, but if the dog is like
panting a particular amount, there's like other things about looking
to the gums and eyes.

Speaker 3 (02:10:07):
I got bitten by a dog that was having a
heat stroke on my God, forcedy lie, it was good.
I feel bad for both.

Speaker 6 (02:10:13):
The animals involved in that.

Speaker 3 (02:10:14):
Yeah, could feel fairly secure in saying that people who
were looking off to dog aren't listening. But like, yeah,
they made a series of very poor choices. Yeah, yeah,
and like it wasn't nice.

Speaker 6 (02:10:27):
Hiking is my main activity and it is like my
main bonding with me and my dog, and I am
not doing it during a lot of the heat wave,
and I'm finding other ways. I'm you know, because I'm
I have to drive a decent way to go hiking, right,
so I can't do it early in the morning unless
I wake up earlier than I want to. But if
you are going to do austseid activities with both yourself

(02:10:49):
or with an animal. Consider doing them at early in
the morning or late in the evening or mill the night.

Speaker 5 (02:10:56):
And I don't want it.

Speaker 6 (02:10:56):
Whatever if you have animals that can't come inside, because
overall was going to apply to your animals, is it
was going to apply to humans, like get them into
the ac Like what are you doing? But a lot
of animals you don't have a room for inside, right
unless you're a medieval Irish peasant, in which case I've
read way too much about how much those animals live inside.

Speaker 3 (02:11:16):
Yeah, cows under the house, so the warmth comes up.

Speaker 6 (02:11:21):
So you want a cross breeze in your barn or
coop or whatever. If it's a coop, you want to
make sure there's a place at the top for air
to come escape. And you don't want the box style
coop with only one entrance. If you're dealing with heat waves,
you want a lot of cool water that is easy
to drink. And so a lot of people who normally
feed their animals with like the nipple style feeders, different animals,

(02:11:44):
you have different ways of watering them. No, no nipple
style feeders. During a heat wave, the animal needs to
be able to get into the get the water easily.
For chickens, you might want to bring your nesting boxes
down to the ground floor where it's cooler. You also
might want to consider insult lading the coop, like with
hay bales, for example, you could stack them up next
to your coop. Horses have yet another electrolyte mix. My

(02:12:08):
horse professional friend uses one called Gallagher's Water, but points
out that it's like mostly bougie people use it when
they're when most people have horses are bougie, but not
all of them, right at least where I live. Other places. Okay,
so it's only necessary in extreme circumstances. It's only better
than water in extreme circumstances. Most animals do very well

(02:12:28):
with just drinking water. And also you can probably consider
if you live somewhere wester than I do, you can
consider misting systems if you have the money in the infrastructure.
And misting systems is basically just like it pumps water

(02:12:49):
out into a mist, and the mist cools everything down
and below about seventy percent humidity, they're fairly effective. Below
fifty percent of humidity, they're incredibly effective, and so they
and it's not that you get wet it's that they do.
It's like it's like the air is sweating, the air is.

Speaker 3 (02:13:08):
They're like you have in if you go to restaurants
in Phoenix outside they have them.

Speaker 4 (02:13:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:13:13):
I bought some really cheap off like Craigslist, like super cheap.
Like I think, I actually I just have to go
and get them.

Speaker 6 (02:13:20):
Yeah, but no, I'm like so jealous because it wouldn't
work where I live.

Speaker 3 (02:13:26):
You can't use them because of a high humidity.

Speaker 6 (02:13:27):
I mean they do a little bit here, but not
very effectively.

Speaker 3 (02:13:33):
Yeah, I know your chickens don't want to be living
in a too damp environment. It could be that that
a lungs, so don't be running one inside all the time. Yeah,
and the inside. But I think it's certainly like my
chickens will go around it when it's hot. It seems
to it.

Speaker 6 (02:13:48):
And one person I talked to and this is like
I did a bunch of research about this, but it's inconclusive.
One person I talked to during the wildfire smoke actually
set up a particulate set up a misting system because
mist picks up and drops particulate matter to the cloud.
There's a lot of research that says this particulate absorption happens.
There is no research to say this is how you

(02:14:11):
handle wildfire smoke with outside animals, but that is something
that at least one person I heard from is doing,
and science backs it up for human animals in terms
of preparedness. Just to run through all this stuff that
I've been keeping track of the way that you're going
to deal with all this if you're not outside, right,
if you're outside and you're dealing with the stuff, you're

(02:14:32):
going to use what James talked about and like keep
track of how you're feeling and get into the AC.
I mean, the main thing you want to do is
get into AC right. You don't want to do strenuous exercise.
You want to check alerts on your phone or your
weather radio. If you're a cool prepper and have like
a little weather radio, you probably want to use the
buddy system outside if it's getting really hot, if you can, right,

(02:14:52):
just like having someone who can keep track of what
you're doing. If you don't have another way to get
to AC, consider public libraries in other places. This is
a very good active time. Look after your neighbors, and
some of your neighbors are housed and might not have AC.
Some of your neighbors don't have houses and probably don't
have AC unless they live in their vehicles, in which

(02:15:13):
case they might have some AC, but not all vehicles do.
And so there's a very good time to look after people,
whether it's giving people rides to public cooling centers, or
whether it's setting up public cooling centers, or they're just
letting your neighbor who like come over because your AC
is working and theres isn't you want to I mean,

(02:15:33):
one thing that you want to do is to accept
that what we're dealing with isn't normal. And I'll get
to that in a moment. But so if you're a renter,
you have fewer options, right in terms of like structural preparedness,
there are some things that you can do. Running fans,
unless you're a podcaster, running fans is a very good idea.
If you have ceiling fans, you want to make sure
that during the summer they run counterclockwise and during the

(02:15:55):
winter they run clockwise. So it's just look and be
like I wanted to push air down, and you can
visualize the direction it'll turn to push air down, and
that's the summer one I want change the direction they spin. Yes,
there is a little switch on every ceiling fan. I
can see the one behind you.

Speaker 3 (02:16:14):
I can see it.

Speaker 6 (02:16:16):
Don't do it well if you look on screen.

Speaker 3 (02:16:19):
No, don't be a coward. Garrison, walk me through it.

Speaker 2 (02:16:25):
Okay, I think I see it now.

Speaker 10 (02:16:27):
Yeah, but closer off and want me to put my
arm up and then do it.

Speaker 3 (02:16:32):
It's less because you're going to stick your head in
there so you can get a good look at Oh ah, no,
Garrisons deceased.

Speaker 6 (02:16:41):
Oh well, good thing they left me their Gester costume.

Speaker 3 (02:16:45):
You'll never find out any more about cops.

Speaker 6 (02:16:48):
I'm city has to end because there's no other way
for us to find out about it.

Speaker 3 (02:16:55):
They finally stopped.

Speaker 6 (02:16:56):
All right, So other things that you can do. Evaporative
cooling is the coolest thing.

Speaker 4 (02:17:00):
In the world.

Speaker 6 (02:17:01):
Again, if you're not in a human area. This is
why humidity is absolutely terrible. And I picked the wrong
part of the country to be from wet bandanas, wet clothing.
There's actually like, it's kind of sad. I was saying
that there's no labor protections about heat. Some farm workers
like developed a like an immigrant farm worker developed a

(02:17:21):
cooling vest system that she's like working on that. There's
like articles about where it just uses a vaporative cooling
to cool people. And it's like one of those things
where I'm like that rules. And also it's absolutely awful
that that's like where we're at. Where we're at, you know,
is not like, oh, let's have better labor practices and stuff.
And if you have a house, if you have like

(02:17:43):
a place that you can really do preparedness for, there's
I mean, we'll just get an air conditioner. Don't run
your air conditioner as like low as it'll go. It
just doesn't actually make things any cooler. Air conditioners are
generally designed and only cool things. I want to say,
was it like thirty degrees below outside temperature or something? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (02:18:06):
And I think also depends on the size of the
relative space you're cooling in a BTUC.

Speaker 6 (02:18:12):
Well, so I'm saying that they're sized for that by
like regulation. If someone comes in it is like, oh,
what size AC should I put into this house, it's
going to be I want this size house to be
be cooled thirty degrees. I think it's thirty degrees. It
might be twenty four, okay, And so if you run
your fans. You actually can keep your thermostat up about
four degrees and if you don't have it, If you

(02:18:36):
don't have AC, there's a lot you can do with
like thermal mass right is your friend, Like if you
have a if you can choose which house you're going
to live in, living in brick houses is great or
adobe houses. It depends on where you live and what
your climate is. You want to keep your curtains closed
during the day and open at night if you're trying
to keep out the sun, but then let out the
heat into the cool night air, assuming that there's still
cool night air. Depends on where you live. As we

(02:18:58):
enter into this nightmare world, Reflective window insulation y things
like the thing that you put in your windshield can help.
There's like stuff you can do when you accept that
it's an emergency and you can okay. But then the
other thing is that running AC's puts a lot of
strain on the power grid, and we're already starting to

(02:19:19):
see more grid failure, usually in the brown out style
rather than the blackout style. But when everyone's running their AC,
the grid is not designed to handle it, and there
are problems, and so one you get these like city
wide text alerts that are like, hey, everyone, please turn

(02:19:39):
up your AC like turned down whatever, make your AC
less cold cold. And this is an example of something
that we should do and listen to. But it's really
fucking annoying because it's not our fucking fault that the
world is heating up, right, And they're not like turning
off Times Square. They're telling everyone, you know, they're not
turning off the ads. Yeah, speaking of ads, it's a

(02:20:00):
good time to pivot to some some more stuff. Even
it is waste, wasting power, and even in the emergency,
there's still the ads. Here you go and we're back.

Speaker 3 (02:20:12):
Hopefully. It was for gold, which is useless in the heat.
Death of the nurse. I just want to throw that
out there.

Speaker 6 (02:20:21):
Yeah, but it does keep its value compared to.

Speaker 4 (02:20:24):
Cash, just.

Speaker 3 (02:20:28):
Until neither of them have that.

Speaker 6 (02:20:30):
That's why whiskey Oh wait, no wait, mutual aid.

Speaker 10 (02:20:33):
Now, that's why I've been stacking on my on my
series of John's Version inspired n f T s that
I minted last year, and oh boy, have they only
grown in value?

Speaker 4 (02:20:44):
Am I?

Speaker 10 (02:20:45):
I'm telling you this is that this is what's going
to hold me through whenever, whenever, you know, the thing happens.

Speaker 3 (02:20:52):
Yep, I will be at your door with my wanting
to try ammunition for apes as I always am. Find
me in the group yet.

Speaker 6 (02:21:04):
But there's one other group of people that I want
to talk about really quickly about who we should check
in on, and that is prisoners. There is no way
from my point of view, I'm gonna have a lot
of bias here. There is no way for us to
justly face a climate emergency while we live in a
carcoral society in Texas. This is where most of the

(02:21:25):
news is right now. But that's not like it's better
other places. As far as I can tell, in Texas,
since mid June, between nine and twenty three prisoners have
died from heat, but no one knows because Texas refuses
to say that anyone has died from heat. They haven't
done that since I believe twenty twelve is the last
time they admitted someone died from heat. However, two thirds

(02:21:47):
of Texas prisons don't have air conditioning, and a bunch
of people are dying randomly of heart attacks in their
thirties because they're dying of heat.

Speaker 3 (02:21:56):
Jesus correct.

Speaker 10 (02:21:57):
I think earlier in the first few weeks of July
when it was getting very, very hot.

Speaker 3 (02:22:04):
I believe it.

Speaker 10 (02:22:05):
It was a pretty young woman died in the Fulton
County jail here in Atlanta. Yeah sure, and it's they're
doing an investigation to see why.

Speaker 3 (02:22:13):
So yeah, oh.

Speaker 6 (02:22:14):
Good, don't worry. The Texas State House passed money to
put AC into prisons, and then the Senate rejected it.

Speaker 3 (02:22:23):
Cool, big thing is for money, because not much money
in law enforcement, so I can see how they're struggling
to afford that.

Speaker 6 (02:22:30):
Otherwise, Yeah, there was a oh I didn't write down
the numbers in my script, but there was like a
many millions of dollar budget surplus that they didn't apply to. Oh,
I don't know. Not having people die for having been
accused of owning weed.

Speaker 5 (02:22:51):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (02:22:52):
Whatever.

Speaker 6 (02:22:52):
I get really fucking mad about this, and I think
that it is.

Speaker 5 (02:22:54):
Like it's fucking horrific.

Speaker 2 (02:22:57):
Okay.

Speaker 6 (02:22:57):
And then the last thing I really want to say
is that this was the hottest month, right that any
of us have ever experienced. It will be the coolest
month in our memory at some point, you know, or
rather whatever, it's not getting.

Speaker 2 (02:23:16):
Coolest July our in our memory at some point.

Speaker 6 (02:23:19):
Yeah, yeah, like next year might be a little bit
cooler because of natural cycles or whatever, right, but it's
not coming back. We're not going back to normal. And
for me, this month marks a sea change literally and
that the Arctic Antarctic ice did not come back this winter.
It's winter right now in Antarctica, and there's a five

(02:23:41):
or six standard deviation away from normal amount of ice
there right now. Five to six standard deviations is more
than if you flipped a coin one hundred times and
it came up heads every single time. It is like
more than a one in three point five million chance.

Speaker 3 (02:23:56):
Right.

Speaker 6 (02:23:56):
It is a very big number. It is a very
abnormal thing. Nothing like this has ever been seen before.
And I don't want to say this to make people afraid,
because I don't think we need to be. For whatever.
Fear is complicated. You can't be brave unless you're afraid.
That's what I will say. You cannot have courage. Courage
is the act of responding to fear, and we should

(02:24:19):
notice the fear and not let it control us. But
it really is time for people to very seriously look
at not what's going to happen by twenty fifty, but
what is happening now, what is happening now, what will
happen in the next three years, the next five years,
the next ten years, and start making decisions based on that.

(02:24:44):
That is what I want. I don't want to tell
people what those decisions are. I want people to get
together with the people that they care about and figure
out what those decisions are. One of the things that
I would recommend is building resilient communities is looking at
how to build communities right. And there's a lot of ways.
A lot of like scenes can become communities, a lot
of extended families can become communities. A lot of religious

(02:25:05):
organizations are communities. Okay, how and then how to make
them resilient? How to collectively look at how to handle
these things. Whether it's literally just having a plan for like, Okay,
if the power goes out, who has the whole house
generator where I live? Someone around being has god to

(02:25:26):
have a whole house generator. I don't have one. I
want one, but they're expensive. Whose ac is still going
to be running when the power goes out?

Speaker 4 (02:25:32):
Right?

Speaker 6 (02:25:34):
Or whether it's like, hey, how can we collectively help
each other's houses have rain water catchment systems?

Speaker 4 (02:25:44):
Right?

Speaker 6 (02:25:44):
How can we collectively be building up food sovereignty as
well as food storage. How can we have I want
to see personally, I want to see days of workshops
at community centers of all different ideals, compositions getting together
and being like, here's how you can food, here's how
you dry food, here is how you set up mesh networks.

Speaker 4 (02:26:09):
I just.

Speaker 6 (02:26:11):
I think it's time. I think that I'm tired of saying, hey,
bad stuff might be coming, because it's not might be coming.
Now it's here and it's really bad. And I think
people stick to the might be coming because they're afraid
of despair. And I will say that despair is not good, right,

(02:26:33):
but that is something that we can fight. How do
we fight despair is also part of this? And the
answer to that is agency, and when we can find
ways to act with agency, that is I mean, there's
like studies about like in disasters, people who express agency
have like less PTSD right when bad things happen, Yeah,
and even if the agency, like I mean, I remember

(02:26:54):
all at one point getting arrested, right and being like,
all right, well, I'm keeping track of like I know
that cops badge number, I know this, I know this,
I'm keeping track of stuff in case there's a lawsuit later.
I totally lost that lawsuit, but like that helped me
get through that situation.

Speaker 4 (02:27:10):
Right.

Speaker 6 (02:27:11):
Everyone else won the lawsuit, but because I was in
black block, I did not win the lawsuits. That's funny,
that's funny. Yeah, anyway, Actually it might have been because
I refused to give my name anyway, whatever, it was
a long time ago.

Speaker 2 (02:27:25):
And fill this.

Speaker 6 (02:27:27):
And just so yeah, act with agency. That is the solution.
The solution it is. It's like, like, it's not the
solution to the spar it's a way to deal with
it in the same way that we're not looking at
solutions to climate change anymore. We're looking at ways to
deal with it, right because it's already here.

Speaker 3 (02:27:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (02:27:43):
Yeah, some of the episodes that me and Robert research
to put together for the original, like could happen your
Season two.

Speaker 6 (02:27:50):
Stuff is yeah a lot.

Speaker 10 (02:27:51):
I was talking about like a mitigation versus adaptation, And
almost every day it looks like we're getting more and
more committed to just full a full adaption model because
these things are really not going to be like the
most common widespread effects is not going to be mitigated.
There's still a few like cataclysmic scenarios that that probably

(02:28:13):
could be averted, but things are going to get so much,
so much worse, and that will be to deal with that,
we will have to adopt a large variety of adaptions
and it's gonna suck, but it's it's what we're gonna
have to do. I don't know, I've there's there's a

(02:28:33):
variety of reactions to this. I mean, I think I
should just put together an episode on this sometime in
the future. But like there's as this as the intensity
of the situations more and more, like, as as it
becomes more and more clear, we're going to get a
variety of reactions from especially for people on the right
who used to be very much pure purely like ignoring

(02:28:57):
or denying this problem. Some some on the right have
like have skipped over the whole part where they've been
wrong for so many years and are going to start
up applying extremely authoritarian and like nationalist solutions to this.
Others are just doubling down on denial because facing the
facts of the horrible situation we're in is more and

(02:29:19):
more like frightening. It's it's it's harder to admit that
you're wrong and realize the terribleness of the situation of
the most recent example of this is I've been checking
on the replies to to CTV News, which is one
of the biggest Canadian like television news stations. They've they've
put out a few stories about how July is the

(02:29:41):
hottest month, and the in the replies to this story,
it's there's just a shock and honestly shocking amount of
of pure like flippant denial of what's going on. And
this has been an increasing problem in Canada. And it's
it's which is ironic because actually Canada's economy is probably

(02:30:02):
going to grow during climate change because they're going to
take over a whole bunch of agricultural production from the States.
They're actually going to become a much bigger economic player.
But the amount of just pure denial that that that
we're that we're seeing in Canada and we're seeing get
like increased is extremely worrying. Yeah, and it's one of

(02:30:23):
those things that's really hard to deal with. Like it
it's also something I talked about it in my hyper
object episode. But like it's like it's the same thing
if someone's like in QAnon, you can't like you can't
like out logic them from qan on. You have to
you have to, you have to tell a better story.

Speaker 3 (02:30:38):
So this is you need a solid place to stand,
like before you can push someone, if you see what
I mean.

Speaker 10 (02:30:43):
Yeah, but like I don't know's it's just been it's
been concerning because I've been seeing a whole bunch of
a whole bunch of these things about how this is the
hottest month in one hundred and twenty thousand years. And yeah,
that is an a that is a like a horrifying
thing to learn and you can like look at know
what what the sources for this are. But the fact
that so many of us are just just denying this

(02:31:07):
is that like as you like you can go outside
and feel it as well, like it's like it's and
that's not how climate works all the time. But like
I've certainly I think many of us have have felt
the effects of this. And also like the death numbers
can't lie either. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:31:26):
Yeah, And like I just got back from a trip
which will be a podcast soon to the Marshall Islands,
where it is extremely evident that sea levels are rising
and if they continue to rise they're rising, then these
places will be uninhabitable within the lifetime, so people who
are alive today, And it's it's very odd to or

(02:31:47):
very sort of discordant to see that. And then you
log on when you get home and see someone being like, oh,
it's natural variation, or you know, like oh, it's snowed
last winter, or you know some something which shows like
a name incomplete understanding, but still like just a knee
jerk rejection of of like all the evidence we have

(02:32:08):
that the climate is changing and it's it's not coming back.

Speaker 6 (02:32:13):
But I find myself the same that I have that
same feelings sometimes when I see people refuse to engage
with solutions, even with people who just are like, sure,
oh that's real. There's nothing we can do about it,
so we're not gonna try. Like feels very like and

(02:32:33):
I don't mean like, I don't even mean a specific
way of trying. I don't mean everyone has to go
get arrested gluing themselves to famous things, or everyone needs
to go set things on fire, everyone needs to only
focus on growing food or like. But just when I
see people like just being like, well, there's nothing, so

(02:32:53):
I'm just gonna not take it into account in my
decision making. I'm like, even if you're just vision making this,
like like I made the decision to move near my
family because a climate change. I didn't move to where
the climate is going to be magically stable. I move
to where I can spend more time with people I
love and be in a better position to take care

(02:33:14):
of them, you know, Like I just I feel so
like I don't know, it was whatever.

Speaker 3 (02:33:21):
Yeah, yeah, no it is. And it's very difficult to
see people just sort of fiddle as a Titanic scene,
I mean.

Speaker 10 (02:33:31):
Really shutting down is the is one of the easiest
reactions to stress and ignoring both both the both like
the like the like the v admitt like denial of this.
As things are obviously getting more and more intense, the
denial gets more and more intense. But so is like
the types of like the type of dumerism that leads
you just to like checking out of being like, oh

(02:33:51):
this is so bad, just there's nothing I can do,
so I'm just going to completely ignore this. And then
that's that's also another way of just like sectioning off
this party your brain so it doesn't actually impact you.

Speaker 6 (02:34:02):
It's it's functionally quite the same. And I can't blame
people for it. And that's what I think. People often
think that I am judging for them for that, and
I'm not. I just feel like i'm it's just it's
hard to engage with sometimes.

Speaker 3 (02:34:15):
Yeah, But I think a good point to end is like,
maybe the best prep you can do for climate change
is not like buying a bigger air conditioner or moving
to somewhere where you think there is a better chance
that you personally as an individual will be better, but
it's building a community that can be resilient and that

(02:34:35):
can like weather the storm. And like having seen a
country which is losing its very minimal amount of land
to climate change and how communities have come together to
protect each other during that, it's kind of reinforced to
me how important community is as opposed to stuff.

Speaker 4 (02:34:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (02:34:55):
Absolutely, Also with communities you can get more stuff.

Speaker 3 (02:35:02):
You can make your own stuf.

Speaker 6 (02:35:03):
That's true, seize the means of production. But not for
the pure Marxist point of view, but from the I
like joking, but I'm actually like, this is what people
should be preparing to do. Like, yeah, a climate revolution
that's less about like, oh, we're going to put in
someone smart in charge's going to fix everything and more
a climate revolution that's like we're going to create bottom

(02:35:24):
up solutions and not let people stop us from creating
bottom up solutions.

Speaker 3 (02:35:31):
Yes, that would be good. It would be a good revolution.
Consider implementing that.

Speaker 2 (02:35:52):
It's it could happen here the podcast where things happen
and sometimes things maybe don't happen. And once again the
thing maybe not happening is the strike at UPS. Yeah,
so stuff has happened since we lash recorded. And also
there was the thing that happened to the middle of
the recording, which was the announcement of the tentative agreement,

(02:36:15):
and so to talk more about what's been happening since
and what's sort of in this deal because we now
know more details about it is once again Rehee Smith
and Oliver Rose, who are too rank and file UPS
teamsters and once again they do not represent the union,
are speaking as individuals, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, but
welcome back.

Speaker 9 (02:36:35):
Yeah, I'm good to be back.

Speaker 5 (02:36:37):
Yeah, thanks for having us on again.

Speaker 2 (02:36:39):
Yeah, I'm glad, I'm happy to talk to you. So
all right, so last last time, we found out in
the middle of recording that there is a deal struck,
and I guess I wanted to start by talking a
bit about what's been happening since then and what the
sort of what sort of organizing has been happening, what
the sort of union bureaucracy has been doing.

Speaker 9 (02:36:59):
Yeah, it's uh, well, it's been kind of kind of crazy. Basically,
you know, we had that highlight reel that we all got,
and then it was a bit before we got the
actual contract, at least like a few days. And since then,
you know, you're in union bureaucracy has been promoting uh
these contract Q and A sessions and stuff like that,

(02:37:21):
and they had three of them last Sunday and one
of them this Monday, and voting has opened up. Uh yeah,
it's it's been a bit been a bit uh crazy feeling,
to be honest. Uh yeah, yeah, it's been wild.

Speaker 5 (02:37:41):
Yeah. Of course, you know, while we're recording, you know,
we get the tenet of agreement, uh drop, and you
know it's framed us you know, this big historic uh
you know, this game changer. So and you know, of
course for the first day, we just had what was
in the press release. Even some of that language was
a little little bit confusing. Wasn't until Team Series for

(02:38:02):
a Democratic Union also had their own like press release
clarified some language, and then you know we're kind of
just like, okay, we'll get you know, we're told we'll
be getting the kind of agreement language next week and
chance to you know, debrief with the local but really
like the the I think it was the following day
the actual language comes out, you know, and some of

(02:38:24):
the things where it's you know, there's like a promise
with the uh all the general wage increases going on
top of those market rate adjustments we're speaking about, which
are basically wages that are that ups can you know
add or even remove that's not actually tied to the
contract wages and you know, so one of the things was, yeah,

(02:38:47):
getting those raises on top, but there was no contract
language you know in there, which definitely caused I think
a lot of confusion concern among rank and file members.
And it actually took one of the locals, you know,
having a no endorsement before we even saw this memorandum

(02:39:07):
of understanding between the company and the IBT, you know,
guaranteeing this was going to happen, you know, that we
would be getting those raises on top. It was just
kind of one of those things where you know, there
was this kind of really vague language that was used
and I think definitely caused you know, people to not

(02:39:29):
really fully understand, you know, what was going on. Specially
I think it was about seventy five percent of part
timers are currently have a market rate adjustment. You know,
that's kind of a very big portion of the workforce.

Speaker 9 (02:39:46):
Yeah, it was a I'm gonna be honest, it was
a real it was kind of a real calm shit
show from from union leadership. Releasing the information in the
way they did it absolutely led to a lot of
misunderstandings about what was in the contract, which you know,
kind of spread like wildfire. And the union response to

(02:40:09):
what I think is a lot of just genuine misunderstanding
is to just label it all as misinformation from people
that have, you know, their their own agendas, right, and
you can't you can't like trust those people. You can
only trust what's what's coming from the union. And Yeah,

(02:40:32):
that definitely didn't inspire trust from the people that were
leaning no, because in between a lot of these like
and there is definitely was some misunderstanding about what was
initially into the in the contract but there is also
genuine critique about certain things that are in the contract, right,
and so instead of like substantly, substantively like looking at

(02:40:55):
these genuine critiques, we're all forced in the situation of
sorting out what is quote unquote misinformation or you know,
more accurately, people not understanding legalese and also a bad
role out of information versus okay, but what is in
the contract that really needs improvement? And instead of like

(02:41:17):
substantively getting into the ladder, it's just been a pure
focus on the former. And yeah, it's it's been it's
been kind of tense. Uh, it seems like, you know,
it seems like there's a real mix, it's real kind
of even even uh, how rank and vile members are
responding to this contract. You know, some have kind of

(02:41:38):
bought in full sale that this is a historic contract,
and others, you know, you know, such as myself, like,
you know, there's still things in this contract that to
me are unacceptable and it's going to be interesting to
see where it goes.

Speaker 5 (02:41:57):
Yeah, I mean, you know, I kind of feel like
it's hard to get a gauge of where everyone's at,
and of course I only have the you know, kind
of my local experience in my specific shift, you know, definitely, yeah,
I haven't I haven't come across you know, someone I
work with yet, you know who's totally just like, yeah,
this is superhistoric, this is you know, game changing.

Speaker 3 (02:42:17):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (02:42:17):
You know, as they were saying, or the Union was saying,
a lot of people, you know, especially long timers, like yeah,
this is a really good contract with you know, the
best I've seen, uh, you know, in my days here.
And then there's you know, there's been another few other
people who are like, yeah, I'm gonna vote yes, but
it really doesn't really seem like you know, it's matching,

(02:42:40):
you know, the framing of you know, this historic contract.
And then also know there's yeah, I mean other people
who are just kind of like, no, this seems I
mean I was kind of like too little, too late,
Like the games aren't quite there. Yeah, it's there's there's raises.
They're also kind of done in weird way where they're

(02:43:01):
more or less like kind of proNT loaded towards the
first and last year, and everything in the middle is
a lot lower to the point actually where and it
gets confusing because everyone's kind of at a different rate
with those market rate adjustments. You know, the more you're
making from you know, that supplemental pay, the worse this
is going to keep with inflation to the point where

(02:43:23):
it's kind of you're only actually going to be just
above inflation towards the end of the contract. Especially one
of the definitely one of the weaker things in the
contract is all new hires or current people without seniority
are going to be on a different tier. And this
is where the part timer inside warehouse positions, so you know,

(02:43:46):
the uh yeah, so if you have seniority, it's minimum
of twenty one an hour to start, and that goes
up to twenty five seventy five an hour versus those
new hires or no seniority employees are going to be
at one with the progression to twenty three the fifty
cent raises, and of course, uh you know, once you

(02:44:09):
know tack on the average you know a little bit
over three percent inflation, you know can kind of quickly see, uh,
it's those new members who are getting the worst part
of the deal.

Speaker 2 (02:44:19):
Yeah, And that comes to I think another thing that
is like I don't know so, but when this was
all first happening and I've seen this like a lot
from people talking about this is people talking about this
is like a contract that like ends the tier systems,
and that just like doesn't seem to be true at all.

Speaker 5 (02:44:38):
Yeah, and so one of the things, So there's the yeah,
I believe we spoke to this last time. The two
two four is what it's called, where it's a combo
driver and inside warehouse position and most of the time,
you know, they were just more or less practically full
time drivers, except for a few times where you know
they es'ch like earlier this year they tried to transition

(02:45:00):
them to mostly like inside full time. But so the
thing is, yeah, those will all get you know, converted
to the package car drivers with that, I believe, with
that raid or at least very similar.

Speaker 1 (02:45:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (02:45:15):
Yeah, so we did get rid of the twenty two fours,
and that was the big promise, you know, going into
this contract fight. But yeah, no, there are definitely still
remaining tiers within ups. You know, there's this new one
that's been created, which is the you know, the tier
between the what they call the unborn. That's how they

(02:45:37):
refer to people that have not yet been hired by
ups that have like stipulations in the contract, right, Yeah,
they call them the unborn. It's it's kind of funny.
And you know, their whole thing is that they just
have a completely different wage progression than the rest of
us do. But in addition to that tier which was introduced,

(02:45:57):
you know, there are tiers elsewhere. Sometimes it's a tier
between the hubs, like all of the hubs are making
different MRAs and stuff like that. But additionally, there are
some hubs that don't have a daily guarantee of hours
like regular hubs do, like for instance, air hubs. Right,

(02:46:18):
so like that's another basically another tier, because it's you know,
people doing the same work but not guaranteed the same things.
And yeah, yeah, so there's definitely tiers remaining in this
contract for sure, and it's really unfortunate to see that

(02:46:38):
the one existing didn't get addressed and that they just
created a whole new one, even though they are adamantly
insisting it is not a tier.

Speaker 5 (02:46:48):
Yeah, and that's you know, and this goes back to,
I believe the nineteen eighty two contract, which is when
the full time and part time pay was changed to
different different tiers, with part time getting like four dollars
less than full time, which was I think twelve twelve
an hour back in eighty two versus eight an hour

(02:47:11):
for the part timers, you know, so that that's continued,
you know, across all these decades. And so now with
the current contract, provided you're getting paid the contract minimums, Yeah,
you're looking at full time inside warehouse, their top rate
going to thirty six dollars an hour, I believe, and

(02:47:32):
then you're gonna have part timers who have seniority just
below twenty six an hour, and then you're gonna have
those people who weren't quite in the door yet at
twenty three. And of course, you know it's doing more
or less the you know, the same work the inside.
You know, you're doing your loading, unloading, sorting, the other

(02:47:54):
you know, various positions there. And of course, you know,
one of the things I've seen, you know, particularly online,
I haven't heard this on the shop floor. It's just like, oh, well,
you know they're working more, so of course they're going
to get paid more. But it's like, okay, well, yeah,
they have more hours, so they would get more paid,
but that doesn't mean that they should be at a
higher hourly rate. Yeah, there's going to be other things too,

(02:48:17):
like the pension of CRUL and you know, vacation time
where you're working more, you're going to get more of
that too. It's kind of has its own reward. There's
really no reason to have, you know, like a ten
dollars discrepancy for that type of works performed.

Speaker 1 (02:48:36):
Also, I was doing some quick math in the background,
and the.

Speaker 2 (02:48:41):
Nineteen eighty two I wagees like thirty six dollars an
hour and with inflation. Now, so that's FRAE. That's fine.

Speaker 9 (02:48:51):
Sorry, Yeah, I don't know. I think it's when I
think about, you know, this union being touted as historic,
I like actually think about, like what are the actual
historic wins of the labor movement, And you know, I'm
thinking about, like, you know, the right to a five
day work week. Meanwhile, this historic contract, you know it

(02:49:15):
ended six day punches, but that's that's not a new
historical thing. That was something we lost and then regained
with this contract. So it's you know, in my mind,
it's not really breaking any barriers or like you know,
blowing anyone's minds, you know, especially when we have Sean
Faine of the UAWD, who is talking about, you know,

(02:49:40):
one of their demands is a thirty two hour work week, right,
Like he's he's advocating that every worker needs a forty
percent increase in pay because the CEO got a forty
percent increase in pay. And yeah, it's just yeah, our
contract just you know, it isn't at that level by

(02:50:00):
any means.

Speaker 5 (02:50:01):
When you s that word historic, you know, like I
think there could be times where you can, you know,
call something historic before it stands the test of time.
But this is kind of like, Okay, this is kind
of I feel like the contract, you know, you would
expect a union to bargain. Maybe it's I mean partly
it's historic because there just really hasn't been really any

(02:50:24):
gains and so it's kind of like, Okay, you've got
us wage increases. Isn't that kind of just like what
you should be doing?

Speaker 2 (02:50:38):
Yeah, well, I mean, I mean this is this has
been there's been like this has been like the there's
been a bunch of unions in the last like maybe
like eight months who have like settled and been like
we've gotten historic races, and it's like, I don't know,
it's the thing that seems actually historic about it is
essentially averting like averting this massive strikewave.

Speaker 5 (02:50:58):
Yeah, one of the things I want to add was,
you know, especially with those combo positions, uh, you know,
ending that tier. That was something that was introduced in
the previous contract, which rank and file members voted down.
It was a no vote, but it was just because
of this uh you know, kind of obscure you know

(02:51:20):
rule in the constitution where it's just like fifty percent
of people don't vote, then it required the two thirds
you know, no vote. So you know, that was just
completely you know, over overruled by the union, like we're
going to do this anyways, So kind of you know,
it's good that we righted that wrong. You know, it's

(02:51:42):
good to reduce a tier. Of course, I'm not going
to knock that, but just kind of those things where
it's like, yeah, but membership already didn't want that, or
at least.

Speaker 2 (02:51:52):
Yeah, you guys, did you guys introduced this in the
first place, like come on, yeah.

Speaker 9 (02:51:58):
Yeah. It's also worth note that the twenty two to
four position, you know, it wasn't working for our members,
but it also wasn't working for the company either. They
were having significant trouble trying to fill all the shifts
that were needed and required by the position, and to
the point that workers ended up kind of being slotted

(02:52:19):
into one or the other with like really bad schedules,
and it wasn't It wasn't working for either, is the thing.
So it is it's great that we got rid of it,
but it seems like it was somewhat of an easy
thing to win. It made mutual sense, right, and yeah, yeah,

(02:52:39):
it's just there were you know, there were bigger there
could have been bigger fights over other things in this
contract that weren't pursued, right, So.

Speaker 2 (02:52:53):
Yeah, I mean that's that's the thing. From everything that
I've seen from it, it seems like it seems like
the goal of this contract is to get a contract
that's like exactly good enough to get like fifty one
percent of the vote in a contract to avoid UPS
having to like actually deal with a contract that a
strip would produce.

Speaker 9 (02:53:11):
Mm hm oh yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:53:14):
Yeah. It's kind of the I mean, whether I mean
probably intentional where it's just like you know, it's like
just good enough you know to maybe warrant like a
yes vote, and especially i mean in context of you know,
the last however many contracts, but it's kind of one
of those things where it's like, okay, by comparison, it's good.

(02:53:35):
But again, you know, I don't think it quite goes
far enough either on the wage side, you know, on
the on the wages or you know, especially one of
the issues I've been focused on a lot is the
heat protections.

Speaker 2 (02:53:50):
Yeah, can we can we talk about well specifically the
heat protections, but then also kind of talk a bit
about what's what is in the contract and what like
isn't in the contract that should be Oh yeah, you
can start with the heat production stuff.

Speaker 5 (02:54:05):
Yeah. So one of the things, so they'll be rolling
out air conditioners in the the uh All trucks package
cars purchase to believe after August of the next year,
and they'll be kind of distributing them by zones and
current ones will be retrofitted with my heat shields and events.

(02:54:30):
I'm not quite sure how effective that'll be. One of
the things for the inside people, you know it's there.
You know, they'll be installing you know, tens of thousands
of more fans, which you know, I'm not gonna lie
that that will feel really nice because those trailers just
get so hot and stuffy. There's no airflow, especially like

(02:54:52):
if it's been sitting for a while, you open the door,
it's just like a blast of heat. But the problem
with fans is they're only so effective, particularly once it
reaches ninety five degrees. They don't do anything. And so
you know, there's a lot of places where it'll probably
feel nice and it might help to some degree, but

(02:55:13):
you know, especially like right now in you know, like
the Southwest and the south where you've just had these
you know, one hundred and ten plus degree days, you know,
like over a month, like that's not going to do
really do much, especially if you're anywhere depending on if

(02:55:34):
you've got dry heat or you know, higher humidity. In
the latter, fans can and sometimes make it worse. I'm
also worried it's going to kind of be like this
kind of like a comparison to a like security theater,
but like more like safety theater, where it's this appearance
of doing something to say like, look, we're doing this thing.

(02:55:56):
It's going to keep you safe. But whether that's you know,
actually true or not, well, I mean, we'll kind of
find out. But definitely I'm pretty worried about, you know,
what's going to happen, especially in the next five years
we already have and I think it was the it
was it. It was the World Meteorological Organization, you know,

(02:56:20):
now has a their researchers have like a ninety eight
percent certainty that we're going to reach a high mark
for global warming before twenty twenty seven, so, you know,
and I'm pretty sure last July was already the the
hottest month on record globally, and it's something to read.

(02:56:41):
There's and I think in that report was like a
sixty six percent chance of passing that one point five
degrees celsius warming global warming between now and twenty twenty seven.
So it's kind of one of those things where you know,
I don't think we necessarily have five years to to

(02:57:01):
you know, address this contract language and add further protections.
Especially we've got other unions like the International Longshorn Warehouse Union.
They had an article that's talking about their heat protections,
which have things like stewards that are equipped with heat
monitoring equipment versus the current contract language for us would

(02:57:24):
be they can just use like the OSHA app or
you know, like weather service to check you know, like
a weather station versus like the actual specific conditions you're
working in.

Speaker 2 (02:57:34):
Yeah, Yeah, that seems like there'd be a huge it
seems like there's a huge discrepancy there because like the
indoor temperatures and temperatures in these trailers are way hotter
than like the reported conditions.

Speaker 5 (02:57:45):
Yeah, and it can be like five ten degrees hotter
at least. I bought a little thermometer and hydrometer, hygrometer
something like that whatever, measure to humidity, because that's kind
of how because there are states with heat protections, there's
like seven of them. A lot of times they're using
the heat index when you're factoring in the temperature and

(02:58:06):
humidity to get the fields like temperature and yeah, with
the il WU, you know, they're also getting rest breaks
as part of their contract language, which I believe two
or three states have those of the seven total that
actually have heat protections. And you know, the il WU

(02:58:28):
is kind of talking about even though they have heat
protections that kind of match or even kind of exceed
partly what some of the states have. You know, they're
kind of saying, this isn't enough for the current extreme
heat we're facing.

Speaker 2 (02:58:45):
Yeah, I mean, and you know, we've talked about this
on the show before, but like whatever heat protections get
negotiated in a contract, like the company is going to
basically the instant negotiations are over, is going to figure
out what the a what the cheapest possible way to
do this is with the shittiest equipment, and then be
like try to They're going to immediately try to figure

(02:59:05):
out like how you know, like how how to actually
subvert it. And you know, this is this is the
thing we've seen all over the world, even in places
that have sort of national heat protection laws, is that
you know, even even if you have a law, or
even if you have a thing in the contract, even
if you have something in your contract, it doesn't necessarily
mean it's going to be enforced. And that requires a
you know, it requires like a pretty significant degree of

(02:59:28):
organization to make sure it stays enforced. And that's you
know that that's true both of stuff that's in contract
and stuff that's like legally required, and so like if
if if if the thing that they're nominally required to
do is still insufficient, it's going to end up being
way worse than that on the ground.

Speaker 5 (02:59:48):
Yeah, we're seeing that with art I mean existing heat
protections at the state level where they're you know, falling
short and especially you know there's either you know, there's
kind of loopholes or even just kind of like murky
language that makes it really hard to enforce in some.

Speaker 2 (03:00:03):
Cases, do not have a good transition.

Speaker 1 (03:00:06):
But it's hot.

Speaker 2 (03:00:09):
Yeah, here here are some ads that are i don't know,
hopefully not making the climate worse. And we're back. So
outside of the sort of of the experience around heat,
what what else has been going?

Speaker 4 (03:00:24):
Like?

Speaker 2 (03:00:25):
What else is in the contract that there's been sort
of dispute over?

Speaker 9 (03:00:32):
So if you look online, and this is an instance
of not really quite understanding what's in the contract. But
if you go online, a lot of people think that
there are pension freezes in the contract and one once again,
I think we can contribute this misunderstanding to a calm

(03:00:54):
strategy failure as well as a lack of open bargaining
the the dot coms. The pension contribution rate has decreased,
but money is still going in to the pension fund,
not as much as it was. Is my understanding. The

(03:01:15):
way the union broke it down for me was like
there's a dollar and twenty five cents of that dollar
is going to healthcare. Twenty five cents of that dollar
is going to the pension and then fifty cents of
it is going to wages. And I'm gonna be honest
with you, I don't super understand all this money stuff either,
but we yeah, they showed us a thing where like

(03:01:37):
the contributions are going to keep happening. Other things that
have been in the kind of in the like what
we've all what people have been thinking about is the
full time jobs, which I know we talked a lot
about on the last one, and uh, yeah, that's it.
I think we we were using the seventy five hundred

(03:02:00):
for newly created jobs, but apparently the contract also specifically
requires them to actually fill the twenty two thousand some
full time jobs that exist that they just have not
been filling. But even with that additional twenty two thousand,
that's still roughly thirty thousand full time jobs, that is

(03:02:21):
for the full time workfor for the whole workforce of
three hundred and forty thousand people. And something I learned
is that full time drivers can bid into those positions
and get them because they will likely have the seniority
to do so. Because that's how we determine how to
fill jobs. It's by seniority. You know, how long have
you been there? And usually you know, I think that

(03:02:42):
makes sense, but you know that really just contributes to
the long long wait of part timers trying to get
full time work, right, And yeah, like the thing like
kind of related to that. You know, we have these
like if you have a market rate adjustment and you
get your two seventy five, for me, that's going to

(03:03:03):
be twenty six seventy five an hour, And that looks
great until you remember that we are part time. It
is like we are supposed to work half a work week.
I work less than because of the hub that I
am at, which is not great, but you know, we
need the hours and there's not the there isn't enough jobs,

(03:03:27):
and that's stimulated by this contract. I think that there
probably could be a lot more jobs.

Speaker 2 (03:03:32):
Yeah, I want to see something about that specifically too,
which is that like when when like you random listener
who's not working EPs whenever you see someone like talking
about a wage number, and it's for part timers, Like
if if you want to try to figure out can
this person's your vibe? You need to divide that number
by two at like at the very least divide up
by two, possibly divide it by more, because again, like you,

(03:03:53):
they don't. No one's like if you're a part timer,
like obviously, yeah you're not. You're not getting the hours
that you know, that that that you that you would
norbly you know if you can't just immediately convert that
to what would the salary be if you worked, if
you got like forty hours a week or whatever, Like,
you can't do that. I've seen a lot I've seen
this a lot, a lot, like on the internet. I've
seen pundits talking about it like this, and it's just

(03:04:17):
like a incomprehensible misunderstanding of the act of like how
how this stuff actually works for you to be going like, oh,
look at all this money that people are making, assuming
that like you know, and then and then using calculations
that are based on like someone working full time, which
is most of the workforce, like a significant significant majority
of the workforce is not is not working full time

(03:04:38):
and will not be even after this contract.

Speaker 9 (03:04:41):
Yes, yeah, it's yeah, it's estimated there are sixty percent
of the workforce is uh is part timers. So yeah, no,
that that is a that is a huge issue, you know,
a lot of people also, like when this is brought up,
a lot of people like to then say, well, you know,
get a second job, but our jobs aren't flexible. Like,
first of all, fuck fuck having a second job. I

(03:05:02):
am kind of staunchly opposed to the entire concept. But
even if I wasn't, this job is not flexible enough
to account for a second job, not unless you never
want to sleep in your second job. Is when you
should be like sleeping because you know, we have our
start times, those are given to us a week in advance,
but we don't know when our end times are because

(03:05:24):
the end times are when we run out of packages.
So you know, some days, you know, like in my hub,
it's always just going to be the two hours, but
like in other hubs, you could be there, you know,
you could be trying to get your three and a
half hour daily guarantee, like employing that when they're trying
to send you home, or you could be there six

(03:05:44):
seven hours, and you know, how, how how is another
employer supposed to operate with that? You know, you call
in like three times saying like, oh, I can't actually
leave my first job. You're not gonna have that second
job much longer. So yeah, in addition to the lack

(03:06:05):
of full time jobs, the way this job is makes
a second one impossible. So a lot of our part
timers really are relying on that on that part time
wage to get them through and picking up doubles when
they can, which means you kind of end up having
a ten hour day because there's like about a two
hour like space of time in between the shifts. So yeah, yeah,

(03:06:30):
it's uh, yeah, those are those are some some of
the big issues.

Speaker 5 (03:06:34):
So yeah, that's one of my worries. You know, if
I about you know, if I want to go full
time or not, is you know, can be at least
in the hub I work at, I would say usually
I'm getting like twenty four hours a week, you know
if I'm going full time, but double that because now
I'm marking two shifts. But also you know, got to
have that like hour or two of wait time between shifts.

(03:06:58):
So you know, it's just a lot of time to
be spending at work, especially on paid time at work.
That is that is the worst. You know, it's not
quite long enough stretch to like go home or at
least you know you have a decent commute to work.
And you know, another thing kind of came to my

(03:07:18):
mind a little earlier earlier was that and it sounds like,
at least talking with new hires, that this is still continuing,
which is kind of this really deceptive hiring practice where
the hours are posted. When I got the job, you know,
it was posted as part time for get, it was
something like I don't know, nine to four, but you know,

(03:07:39):
had that schedule for five days a week, seven hour shifts,
thirty five hours a week times. By the twenty six
starting pay, I was like, oh, perfect, I'll be making like,
you know, somewhere like mid forty thousand. That's that's livable
at least for for my specific you know circumstances. But
then of course get there and you know the yeah,

(03:08:00):
we get two days notice for a start time. It's
posted on our either you know, end of the week,
so don't know exactly when I'm working, you know, until
right before the next week, and you know, at least
there an orientation. So when I asked, oh, like, what's
actually the end time, I was just like, well, when
the last package is loaded. Of course, if you know

(03:08:21):
what when the next shift starts, you can kind of
get a better idea of when you'll actually be out
of there. But still it's just kind of it's, you know,
it's this claim flexibility, but it's very difficult you know,
to actually work a second job or even you know,
they offer tuition reimbursement, and there's a number of students
who have had you know, a hard time actually like

(03:08:43):
you know, getting the time off to attend their classes.
And I also say, in anywhere that's part time work
that offers tuition reimbursement, you know, I would say there's
an expected expectation that Okay, well you're going to school
and you're working part time. You would think the wages
then should at least you know, provide enough for rent, food, gas, textbooks,

(03:09:04):
all that.

Speaker 9 (03:09:05):
Yeah, to piggyback off of what Oliver just said regarding
you know, like this is a wage that is good
for you know, their situation when they were assuming it
was at the you know, thirty five hours a week.
You know, another thing to think about is a lot
of these part timers, you know, they have families, they
have significant others that they're caring for. Like, you know

(03:09:26):
a lot of people look at this wage and one
make the faulty assumption that you talked about earlier by
multiplying it by forty to get the forty and then
they assume that's for just that one person, And like
there are part timers of every age, right, and they
all have their own their own families and stuff like
that that they are expected to care for as well.
So like when you look at all of this and

(03:09:47):
the you know, the rate of inflation and the way
the economy is, and you take all of these things
into account, like the gains that are provided for in
this contract is not enough when you consider the whole
of everyone who works at UPS. You know, it's leaving
behind families, right, Like yeah, it's it's wild.

Speaker 4 (03:10:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:10:13):
And I think another thing that isn't talked about that
much in terms of this is like the actual physical
effect on your body of doing this kind of work,
because this is like.

Speaker 1 (03:10:30):
I don't know, this kind of work is.

Speaker 2 (03:10:32):
Intense enough that I mean, there's there's there's very rare
risk of injury, and there's also I mean just like
you know, over the course of time, doing this kind
of shit is going to like fuck up your body,
and you know, like part part of the sort of
bargain of like like part part of the bargain of

(03:10:53):
this work is that you're getting you know, it's it's
in some ways, like it's in some ways like you
could think about it, like if you're a midlevel football player,
like you're gonna get your fucking brain destroyed by just
repeated head trauma, right, and you know, so, so there's
only a limited amount of time your body can physically
handle this. And it's like, yeah, okay, it looks like
you're getting a lot of money in a very short

(03:11:14):
amount of time, but you have to, you know, you
have to live with the sort of physical consequences of
what happened of what happened to you on that job
getting the money. So that money also like not just
doesn't just have to get you to like now right,
like it also it has to also essentially be compensation
to the physical damage that you're doing to your body
by doing this shit. And you know, I think I

(03:11:36):
think it I think like these ways look even worse
when you look at like, you know, when you when
you think of it in terms of you know, in
in in like in like not even not just in
terms of immediate rent, but like in in the really
long term of having to you know, live with the
sort of physical damage that you take from doing this stuff.

Speaker 5 (03:11:54):
Yeah, and that's fine. I just had a coworker talking
about that today actually, And because that's I mean, there
are a lot of like college age kids, you know,
the early twenties. They've at least from you know, my
experience of notes kind of usually they're kind of like
the quick turnover. I feel like a lot of people
are staying more like their you know, thirties, forties. You know,

(03:12:17):
we have people older older than that too on my line,
and I think part of that's just like kind of
we understand the importance of i mean a gold tier
health insurance plan and a pension, but you know, of
course with you know, being older, uh, it's going to
you know, have even more of an effect on the body.

(03:12:41):
And yeah, I know, I know. I've heard people talking
about this where it's just like, oh, well it's just
part time or it's you know, entry level you know,
quote unquote, uh you don't need a degree for this,
so like why do you think you should be paid more?
And it's like, well, it's it's brutal. I mean, we
get a ten minute break, we're working up to six
hours that is it. Why don't have to do a
lunch break. I don't know. It seems like UPS just

(03:13:05):
always gets there their way, and uh that's you know,
like state, local, federal law that they don't care. Yeah, right,
even this last contract and there's so many violations. Of course,
you know we got to whether you know this is
yes or no, whatever the next contract is. You know,

(03:13:27):
that's going to be a big part of the fight
is just holding them accountable and to the terms.

Speaker 9 (03:13:34):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Like I you know, I've had coworkers
out on you know, uh workers comp for like you know,
doing physical therapy for the injuries that they got on
the job for like months at a time. Right, these
like you know, we're sitting around loading boxes all day

(03:13:54):
and some of them are very light, but some of
them are really fucking heavy. Some of them are really
awkward to hold. They're weirdly shaped. Like, there are some
boxes where, like they tell you about, UPS tells you
about methods the eight keys of lifting and lowering that
you know should make it safe, but like there are
some boxes where it's impossible to follow those. Those methods

(03:14:19):
the absolute bane of my existence, and I recognize them
every time I see them. I swear to God, these
things must be just filled with lead because you look
at them and it's a very small box. You know,
it's not more than like probably twelve inches long, you know,
like no, not even twelve inches, probably more like seven

(03:14:41):
inches long, you know, like six seven inches wide, and
then like two and a half inches you know deep,
And that should be a very easy box, but it's
like filled with lead. And for whatever reason, it can
weigh like thirty five to fifty pounds Jesus, And it's
like one that box is too small to like have
a team lift on because you can't have two people

(03:15:03):
around something like that. And like, you know, when you
pick up a box, you're supposed to keep the natural
curve of your back, but do not over extend the curve.
And you have to for those like packages like that, right,
Like there's not a way to position yourself to lift
them safely, and you kind of have to a little

(03:15:23):
bit jerk up, which they tell you not to do,
but that's the only way to get leverage on it.
And yeah, like and you know, I've been in trailers
where like a box like that was loaded precariously, like
just slightly above my head. And one time it came
crashing down and I like neoed out of the way,
like I was like in the fucking matrix, and I

(03:15:44):
was just like, oh, if I had just been a
little bit less responsive, that could have been a very
serious head injury for me. And so yeah, the risk
of like very severe injury. Like, you know, I busted
my face open on a grate outside of where the
what we call the cans, which are like the things

(03:16:06):
that have all the packages they bring them to the
bay doors. I was unloading and I had to go
between them, and I like there was motor oil spilled.
I tripped and I like smashed my open my face
open on a fucking grate and had to get stitches.
Like it's yeah, no, the safety involved with this job

(03:16:27):
is not extremely guaranteed, and yeah, the risk of injury
is high and we should be preemptively compensated for that.

Speaker 5 (03:16:38):
Yeah, it's like and even somehow if you managed to
go like your whole career without a single injury, you know,
there's well at least like more the kind of like
accidental injury because it's still it's a lot of repetitive
motion and you're gonna I mean eventually it's going to
take its tall.

Speaker 2 (03:16:58):
If we were doing we're doing, we're doing some more ads.
Yeah by things, all right, we are back. So I
guess I know. Another aspect of this that I wanted
to talk about has been the sort of broader strategy
of trying to avoid strikes. And this has been both

(03:17:19):
sort of to some extent run by union, to some
extent like imposed from the top down. One of the
things I wanted to sort of talk about. Yeah, I
think in a sort of kind of underdiscussed aspect of
what's been happening in the last sort of year or
so has been Biden's willingness to get involved in strikes. Earlier,

(03:17:41):
you know, Obama eventually got involved in a couple of
strikes during his tenure, but he tended to not get
involved until like a strike had been going on for
like nine months or whatever. And Biden's been taking like
a very very proactive approach to sort of I don't know,
strike mitigation. I guess is the sort of of like
sanitized term you take you to there, like keeping labor piece.

(03:18:04):
But he seems to have a sort of you know,
he's to be getting very very involved very quickly in
trying to make sure that strikes don't happen. And you
know the consequence of this is that we didn't get
the rail strike that we should have gotten, and there's
been a few other strikes that has sort of been
a verdant And I wanted to ask, I guess how
you're thinking about this strike, not just sort of in

(03:18:25):
terms of like the immediate benefits, but in terms of
what it would actually mean if like another major strike
sort of get shut down before we can get going
in a year that is, I mean, still even if
the strike doesn't happen, a pretty sort of full year
in labor terms.

Speaker 9 (03:18:47):
Yeah, yeah, well one, I guess I gotta say thank
you to the most pro labor president of our life.

Speaker 2 (03:18:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (03:18:56):
No, he yeah, you're absolutely right. He seem to be
getting involved early and mitigating them. If I was, if
I had to speculate, I you know, I he's very
concerned about this whole economy thing that we keep talking about, right,
and he doesn't want to see any big shocks to

(03:19:18):
the economy. And you know that's something where I guess
I disagree. I think, you know, I think a shock
to the economy that is brought about by workers going
on strike is a reminds them of what they have
and what they move and what they create, right, And

(03:19:39):
I think, yeah, the ruling class, you know, our politicians
and the capitalists who own our politicians, they they don't
want us to experience that. You know, Like I remember
even during the you know, the Trump administration, when you
know it was when during the government shutdown and Sarah

(03:20:00):
Nelson got all the flight attendants to do a sick
out and stuff like that, and kind of just like that,
the government shutdown had ended and they all went back
to do government things, whatever those government things are. And
you know, like people on Twitter, you know, they were
talking about like, yeah, this is like workers have power

(03:20:20):
to affect not only their own work conditions, but they
can have broad implications on society, on the political climate,
on what's going on. And yeah, there was absolutely, I
think a contingent of centrist liberals that were like really
frightened by that idea. You know. They they like a

(03:20:41):
society in which the right people with who went to
the right schools and all of that, like where they
are the ones that are in charge and they are
the ones that are shaping history with the pen strokes
on like, you know, whatever bills they're legislating, and yeah,
I think they have a vested interest in making sure

(03:21:01):
that workers don't get to experience that sense of autonomy
that they can experience by going on strike and by seeing,
you know, exactly what kind of power they have and
what it does, because they don't want it. They don't
want it to get beyond what's going on in the workplace.
They barely want it there, you know. Like so yeah, yeah,

(03:21:24):
I think there is a vested interest. And yeah, I
have not been able to see it confirmed, but I
have seen in articles where they will say that, you know,
Sean O'Brien had met with President Biden, but then there
isn't a link click through, so I can't figure out
what the initial thing is. But I'm not surprised. I'm

(03:21:44):
not surprised, Like, and it's it's a it's a damn shame.
It's you know, it's a shame that the president of
our local union, you know, should that have happened succumb
to it, right.

Speaker 2 (03:21:57):
Yeah, that's the thing. Whe's like, it's been really hard
to get reliable information on. It's also possible they were
sort of behind the scenes talks that we just don't
know about. But you know, the place we know this
happened is we know this happened between the rail strikes,
right there was a lot of pressure from rail unions
to like like on on their rank and file to
like get to just like sign on to some kind

(03:22:17):
of agreement. And I think I think this is something
that you know, in terms of sort of political repression,
Like it's something that's not understood in the same way,
but like that is also still like that, Like that
that like negotiating behind the scenes and putting pressure on
and then you know, eventually Biden does just actively like

(03:22:40):
mandate that the strike can't happen, right, Like that is
like that I I I will argue that that is
in fact a full of strike breaking.

Speaker 9 (03:22:48):
Mm hmm, I agree.

Speaker 2 (03:22:49):
And I think I think people are tend to be less.
But but you know, specifically, the ability to sort of
cut deals with unions like this is something that the
republic Bloks have a like aren't like really good at
Like it's not it's not an ability that they really have.
It's it's something that like is largely limited to the Democrats.
And but you know, but this this means that they

(03:23:11):
have sort of they have a unique capacity to repress
social movements that isn't as obvious as sort of like
you know, just like a bunch of strike breakers showing
up or the cop showing up, But is there all
the same and I think is in some ways more
dangerous because you know, like you get these arguments with

(03:23:31):
like with the rail strike, where like technically eventually Biden
was able to get some kind of deal through for
some sick time, right, but you know, and you have
you have this sort of like liberal conception of what
labor is where they're like, oh, well, everyone was wrong
to like be mad at Biden for this, like they
got the thing eventually. But you know, the problem here

(03:23:55):
isn't it isn't just you know, strikes aren't just about
the immediate thing that you're fighting for, right, Like they're
they're also about like moving the class as a whole.
They're about the experience of striking. They're about i mean,
you know, and they're also about the fact that you
will get a better deal if you win a strike.
Then you will if you get like you know, if
if you get one of these sort of like negotiated

(03:24:17):
deals like cut in the back room by Biden and
like seventeen unions in the Manufacturer's Association, and so I think,
I think, I think it's important to understand that, you know,
the like there is a fundamental sort of difference between
like liberalism sort of conception of you know, you you

(03:24:41):
achieve material gains and it doesn't really matter what the
process is, right or you know, the process is like
you go through the legislative domain. There's an actual difference
between that and the things that happens Drae to strike,
which is, you know, there's there's an actual process of
like the building of power of workers and you know,
building the economy of the class itself. And I don't know,

(03:25:03):
I think I think those are very different. And I
think I think a lot of what we've been seeing
here is an attempt both by unions themselves, by and
you know, by by business leaders and also buy like
the president and the Democratic Party to try to make
sure that this doesn't happen and that they can sort
of contain this really explosive labor moments and prevent it

(03:25:27):
from sort of turning into anything more.

Speaker 9 (03:25:30):
Yeah, I think that's very true. I think that you know,
the unions, you know, have long been divorced from their
original roots. As like, you know, this was a communist
social This sprung out of communism, socialism, anarchism. It was
about workers banding together to not only collectively bargain just

(03:25:50):
for the workplaces, but for society wide issues.

Speaker 3 (03:25:53):
Right.

Speaker 9 (03:25:54):
Unions used to be explicitly political, and I you know,
as we've like seen this rise in political conscience, you
know over like this last decade. The ruling class and
you know, the entrenched union bureaucrats that have long been
you know, divorced from those origins, I think have a

(03:26:15):
very vested interest and you know, not having labor go
back to those roots to and stuff like that, you know,
it threatens it obviously threatens the working or the ruling
class power, excuse me. And you know it threatens your
union bureaucrat jobs when workers start like demanding more from

(03:26:38):
like what the labor movement can provide for them.

Speaker 1 (03:26:41):
Right.

Speaker 9 (03:26:42):
So I think that's all, that's all very true, And
it's just that this is another avenue where collective change
is possible, and the state and capital will always clamp
down on any avenue where change can be achieved through
those means. So I think that's really really what we're
seeing here.

Speaker 2 (03:27:03):
Yeah, And I don't know, I mean, I think I
think another thing that's worth pointing out is that like
part of the reason that, like part of the reason
that you know, if you if you go back to
sort of like when when the error of the sort
of decline of unionism happened, right, like, part part of
the reason why the Reagan era repression worked was that

(03:27:25):
a lot of these unions had already sort of hollowed
out the radical core of like what had been their
union organizers. They had purged, you know, like the the CIO,
I mean even back as there's always like the forties,
like the CIO purged like all of its leftist members,
and you know, you got these successive like these these

(03:27:45):
successive sort of iterations of unionism that were less and
less militant, and you know, like you can you can
you can literally see what the result of that has been,
right like union density down to like six percent. And
so you know, if if, if if it keeps going
like this and we keep getting these sort of like
sustained efforts to make sure that it never redevelops again,

(03:28:06):
Like yeah, like it's we're gonna we're gonna be stuck there.

Speaker 5 (03:28:11):
Yeah, I mean it's just yeah, I mean specific to
those ups contracts. Can absolutely see that, you know, by
looking at the wage growth you know, through the last
forty years, or maybe the lack thereof more of the
stagnating wages just you know, between either you know, union
officials or you know, even in the you know, Biden
coming in. I think it's like, you know, more or

(03:28:33):
less like these people who aren't going you know, who
didn't enter the economy, uh, you know within the last
you know, decade or two. You know, I don't know
at all really what what our experiences are, you know,
what kind of challenges and struggles and burdens we're facing,

(03:28:55):
and I mean especially and not prepared at all for
you know, just world with a drastically changing climate.

Speaker 3 (03:29:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (03:29:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (03:29:04):
And then like you know, also to go back to
like you know, the decline of you know, how unions
have operated you know, over these last like for some decades.

Speaker 3 (03:29:15):
Right.

Speaker 9 (03:29:15):
I think this is something I talked about a lot,
and I talked about it, I think on the last podcast.
But you know, once the the organized left was kind
of purged out of all of these unions, you know,
unions kind of became about a service model, and you know,
that's when the union leadership you know, does you know,
like you on the floor are enforcing your contract. You're

(03:29:37):
bringing your grievances to the union, and the union is
getting something done about them, right. And I think you know,
that model in and of itself is indicative of a
decline of a collective action, right. That reduces the union
to Yeah, that's the entity you're going you go to
when there is an issue in the enforcement of your

(03:29:59):
contract and they negotiate a new contract for you, and
you know, that's that's the service model type, right, And
that's like what we're seeing a lot of. That's what like,
you know, a lot of the business unions do and
stuff like that. Some of them do it better than others,
you know. But then there's also the organizing model, where
you use the union as it means to make your

(03:30:21):
members militant, and they do contract enforcement on the floor,
and they like you know, organize protests at their work site,
and they like you know, they get involved in you know,
issues outside of the work site, right, And I think, yeah,
like watching the service model kind of prevail over these
last you know, some decades over. The organizing model is

(03:30:45):
just yeah, it's absolutely just another sign of collective action
being stamped down wherever it can be.

Speaker 2 (03:30:54):
You know, there's this an interesting thing with the there's
an interesting thing with the service model that I see
a lot where it's like, you know, when when when
when you're getting like sort of union inoculation, uh like stuff, right,
they'll be like, ah, I like the management is going
to tell you that like the union is an outside
force and it's not.

Speaker 1 (03:31:10):
The union is actually you.

Speaker 2 (03:31:11):
And it's like this is true. But also like, damn,
I wonder where the idea that the union is an
outside force it is not actually you came from, Like
it couldn't you know, It's it's like it could it
couldn't possibly have anything to do with the way you
run your union, Like okay.

Speaker 9 (03:31:28):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (03:31:32):
I think we were talking about that last time, like
the kind of like the lack of onboarding engagement by
the union. Yeah, I mean especially yeah, I mean yeah,
I mean I know this. I mean other union members too,
where like does kind of feel like they're like, oh,
I don't have all these benefits or higher pay or
or you know, we're thinking about striking, but we don't

(03:31:53):
even have a strike bund. You know, we don't know
how exactly well whether the storm. I mean that's something
I hear you know a lot on the shop floor.
It's like when talking about, you know, our union, you know,
it's it's always the union. I know I say that
a ton too, but I mean I kind of feel
like the language we just use like day to day

(03:32:16):
talking about it, you know, I kind of there's not
like inherent separation when it's like, oh, it's the union,
it's the some you know, it's this outside thing. It's
not oh, it's a collection of all you know, rank
and file members. It's us really yeah, and it doesn't.

Speaker 2 (03:32:33):
The thing is, yeah, it doesn't become that unless you
have a really high level of participation and then also
like a systemic effort to make sure that to make
sure everyone's involved and to make sure that you know,
the the union functions in such a way that even
that that like you know that that decisions, membership action matters.

(03:32:55):
And I don't know, I think I think I think
it's really I think it's really easy to you know,
in this moment where unions are incredibly like you know,
with the totally the actual amount of like unions in
the US is really small. And also simultaneously, like you know,

(03:33:16):
we're seeing a sort of resurgence of union organizing. I
think it's really really easy to sort of fall into
this trap and like be be completely uncritical of the
way that unions have functioned, because again, like if the
current model of unions that exists right now, like if
that stuff worked, like we wouldn't be in in in

(03:33:39):
the sort of conditions that we're in now. And that
calls for you know, like that that that calls for
collective action, and you know one of the things that
calls for is being willing to go on strike.

Speaker 5 (03:33:52):
Yeah, absolutely, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:33:54):
Do you have anything else that you wanted to add?

Speaker 9 (03:33:58):
Yeah, no, because like something that you know, when I
think about, like, you know, how do we get back
to like this sort of you know where a union is.
You know, we are the union. A union is a
like is a collective of workers advocating for their rights.
Right they are banding together, you know, they're negotiating together.

(03:34:20):
And when I think about you know, the teamsters, you know,
and how they operate right now, and you know, we
just had that big reform slate when where Seawn O'Brien
won and then you know, delivered us this contract. And
you know, Shaun O'Brien did do like they they did
in TDU, did do other good things. They got rid
of that constitutional rule that Oliver mentioned earlier. But I think,

(03:34:45):
you know, when we talk about like bringing down that
barrier between the union and the members, the next most
obvious step for me is that we need to get
to open bargaining in this union. And frankly, I think
open bargaining, or the fact that this bargaining was closed,
you know, is behind it's behind closed doors. You know,

(03:35:05):
there were NDAs signed, there were rank and file members there,
but they also couldn't tell us about it because of
those you know NDAs. Open bargaining is what's going to
solve this because this, like the whole fiasco about this
tentative agreement and now all the kind of resulting hostility

(03:35:27):
that is felt between members and leadership and members and
even other members. I think it's you know, like so
much of this is due to a failure of comms
and the fact that we did not know what was
being discussed in this in these negotiations at any time
except for the vague highlights that they could tell us about, right,

(03:35:51):
and then you know, they release a highlight reel that
has very confusing language. They eventually do release the contract,
but not all of the memorandum of understanding that would
help us understand what is actually in that contract. And
you know, they they're releasing all of this information in
a way that is going to result in people not

(03:36:13):
understanding what's in it. And I really do think open
bargaining is the next step that you know, reformers in
this union need to be advocating and organizing for because
this has just kind of been a real shit show,
to be honest, and I yeah, I think it's a

(03:36:35):
Comms failure to be perfectly honest.

Speaker 5 (03:36:38):
So yeah, yeah, and I would I would absolutely agree
with that, you know, and I know, like there was
there was a IBT webinar with Sean O'Brien, and you know,
he even spoke to misinformation, but didn't you know, elaborate
on what it was or you know, how or why

(03:36:58):
it's wrong, And it's just like, hey, you got our emails, addresses,
phone numbers, We're here on this webinar, Like you can
correct the record anytime, you know, it's uh, if you're
worried about something that's not true and may may or
may not influence people's votes, like you can do something
about that, Like you you have a lot of money,

(03:37:22):
you have you know, a comms team to use it.
It's you know, just talk to your members like they're
real people. Uh, you know we can we can understand shit. Uh,
you don't got to just you know, get get angry
or even kind of like I was saying earlier, where
it's just like it's almost just like feels like this

(03:37:44):
framing where anything you know that's a dissenting view or
a critique you know, so oh, it's just it's almost information.
Don't don't pay any attention to it.

Speaker 2 (03:37:55):
Yeah, which is you know, I don't know, like I
I've seen this in a couple of.

Speaker 1 (03:38:01):
I don't know, like.

Speaker 2 (03:38:03):
I've seen this in a couple of sort of union
things we've coverled on this show.

Speaker 5 (03:38:06):
Is like.

Speaker 2 (03:38:09):
I don't know, And and an incredible unwillingness of union
leadership to even like consider a position as not their
own and to just sort of like immediately, you know,
when confronted with another things just immediately attempt to completely
delegitimate them and that sucks. Yeah, it's just not a
not a great way to run a union.

Speaker 9 (03:38:31):
No, No, you definitely, you know, and I've been seeing
this this uh, this closing like sort of rank around
around leadership, right, and it's not something that inspires trust
in union leadership whatsoever. Right, Like, you know, you could
be a member that you know doesn't understand something, just

(03:38:54):
has a question and then you kind of getting and
you kind of just end up being stonewalled, and you know,
you're told, well, you know, go to this meeting where
we're going to explain things, and dah da da da
da da da da da. And it's like, yeah, but
you know, I have you on the phone, now, can
you explain it now? And you know, and it's as
it's like they're taking all of these concerns as a

(03:39:18):
personal blow to their ego, right, Like they're taking it
personally as if people having concerns about what this contract
does and does not stipulate is like an attack on
their moral character. And it's just really fucking frustrating. I
gotta be real with you. And you know it doesn't

(03:39:39):
say a lot for the overall democratic nature of the
union either, right, Like, you know, this is like, you know,
you're kind of being told, well, you know, keep your
opinions to yourself, accept our word for it. Like you
can vote however you want. You know, this is one member,
one vote. But you know you can't be going online
talking about it. You like can't be going talking to

(03:40:00):
your coworkers about it because you don't have all the information.
You're not understanding it correctly, and it's just like, well,
can you get better at explaining it? Can you not
react this way? Like can we have like a thing
where like we can just like fucking talk about what's

(03:40:22):
in it and what's not in it? And yeah, it's
it's just again been real fucking frustrating.

Speaker 4 (03:40:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (03:40:29):
It's another thing I mean too, is you know, any
contract language maybe it should either be more clear or concise,
or if it's going to be more on the legal
east side, you know, put out a little like contract
like explainer guide maybe especially around key language or language
that they know is maybe vague or going to cause
you know, issues of like understanding it. And even you know,

(03:40:59):
one one other thing about like you know, open bargaining,
was you know, looking at the IBT press release, you
know there's one paragraph and it starts rank and file
members served on the committee for the first time. It
continues on later saying, you know, our hard work has
finally paid or our hard work has paid off, and

(03:41:20):
I you know, and goes on to then say, you know,
this is the most historic contract we've ever had. So
it kind of seems like right there where it's like, well,
if limited member participation found by NDA has led to
this historic contract, maybe it's time to involve all of us.

Speaker 2 (03:41:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (03:41:40):
And also, you know, the rank and file that are
on these committees are appointed by leadership, so we don't
we don't get to choose who these people are. And
it's like leadership absolutely just has the ability to be like, well,
I'm gonna, you know, appoint the ones that I like
the most, that I have the best really relationship with

(03:42:00):
that I know thinks the sun kind of shines out
of my ass. And yeah, there's just this absolutely overall
lack of a democratic lack of a democratic internal culture.
You know, we elect you know, our officers, most of them,

(03:42:25):
but we don't elect stewards. We don't really we don't
elect our business agents or like anything like that. We
vote on our contracts and that's it, you know at
our union meetings. I've had one union meeting where we
did a vote that was introduced by leadership. Right, It's
just it's yeah, it's not the most democratic culture. And

(03:42:46):
that's another thing that needs to that needs to change
as well.

Speaker 2 (03:42:50):
Yeah, and I mean I think that goes back to
a sort of like, you know, a fundamental political conflict,
which is like, is democracy when you've for someone else
to make every decision? Or is democracy when people collectively
make decisions themselves? And the sort of slipperyess of those
two things causes you know, like causes you know, allows

(03:43:12):
people who essentially want to be the only ones who
ever get to make decisions to be able to claim
that they are in favor of democracy or whatever. But
you know mean like mean that they get to make
all decisions after they get elected, and not mean actual
people sort of make decisions for themselves.

Speaker 5 (03:43:32):
Yeah. Yeah, like we need a you know more so
only serves it's more of a delegate role than ah,
you know, representative.

Speaker 2 (03:43:41):
Okay, I guess I guess my my final thing is
I yeah, you two are both encouraging are going to
encourage people to vote no on this contract for the
the the the surely long list of both technical, procedural,
I material and like broadly social reasons.

Speaker 5 (03:44:08):
Yeah, it's correct, I'll be Yeah, I'll be voting no
and also advocating for that, and also I mean just
also advocating people to vote as well.

Speaker 9 (03:44:22):
Yes, big same on that low low union participation sends
a bad message to the company. So definitely definitely doing
both and continuing to have those conversations on the shop
floors with folks explaining my concerns and stuff like that.

(03:44:44):
But yeah, no, I'm I'm also going to be voting
no on this contract as well.

Speaker 2 (03:44:51):
Yeah, so that is Yeah, I guess I guess that
that that that is our coverage of this. There is
still time for there is still time for there to
actually be a striker, for this contract to fail and
for people to fight for a better one. And yeah,
I wish both of you too good luck in fighting
this and yeah, and thank you both for coming on.

Speaker 9 (03:45:16):
Yeah, yeah, thanks so much for having us. I was
excited to give you guys an update about all the
crazy shit we talked about in the first episode.

Speaker 2 (03:45:24):
Yeah, I'm glad, glad, glad I got to talk about it.

Speaker 5 (03:45:27):
That's a pleasure. Of being on and yeah, I appreciate
the time.

Speaker 2 (03:45:31):
Yeah, do you do you have anything to plug before?

Speaker 5 (03:45:35):
You know? Yes or no? Vote solidarity all all workers
and everyone on the shop floor. And you know we'll
got to keep on fighting for better conditions.

Speaker 2 (03:45:49):
Yeah, and you too, dear listener, can fight for better
conditions in your own workplace. And yeah, one day, one day,
fight for a world we don't have. Workplace is like
this at all?

Speaker 5 (03:46:01):
Amen, hallelujah.

Speaker 1 (03:46:19):
What foreign my policy? I don't know. I don't know, Guys,
I don't know. I got like trapped into this like
pattern of doing introductions a certain way and I don't
really I don't really feel good about it. But how
do you how does one break their patterns? Speaking of patterns,
let's talk about Syria beautiful.

Speaker 2 (03:46:43):
Yeah, I understand exactly what that meant.

Speaker 3 (03:46:47):
I feel like one of the basketball guys when someone
lays him up and then he just does a dunk.
That's what I feel like. I don't know about.

Speaker 1 (03:46:54):
Green Bay Packers swish mm hmmm.

Speaker 3 (03:46:58):
Yeah, go Tom Brady. Okay, uh okay, sports talk aside.
I'm wearing my Rwanda football shirt today. We we are
gathered here today to talk about Turkish drone strikes on
their sts.

Speaker 2 (03:47:14):
Yeah, not funny, not funny.

Speaker 1 (03:47:16):
Yeah, the sday funny. We're talking about like Turkish the
continued Turkish military operations across their border in northeast Syria,
the area commonly known as Rosjava, and also in southern
Turkey as well.

Speaker 4 (03:47:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:47:32):
Yeah, So just to give some some numbers around this
to start off, right, and you're twenty twenty two, which
there wasn't a territorial offensive, so like you're not seeing
like troops on the ground. Turkey carried out one hundred
and thirty drone strikes in the Autonomous Administration of Northany Syria. Yeah,
that's the place is more commonly known as Rojhova, and

(03:47:56):
they killed at least eight YPJ members. YPJ would be
the Women's Protection Forces, who are a unit within the
Syrian Democratic Forces, which is the armed forces of the
ans Autonomous Area of North Easyria. I will come at

(03:48:16):
you really hard with acronyms in this. I think if
people haven't listened to Roberts series Women's War, maybe the
Women's War, that would be a good place to start,
because like we only have half an hour of forty
five minutes or whatever, and we can't explain an extremely
complicated conflict which has been going on for twelve years
in that time. So I think some grounding in who

(03:48:39):
is who and what is what you can find it there,
I guess. But it's that a fair summary of who
those people are.

Speaker 1 (03:48:45):
Robert, Yeah, basically, so you had kind of the gist
of the story is that for a very long time,
starting in southern Turkey, there's been a Kurdish militant group
called the PKK. They were way back in the day,
originally Maoist. They had a bunch of internal power struggles
within their own organization and then wound up taking a

(03:49:07):
pretty uh wide turn away from Maoism towards a kind
of political theory heavily influenced by the work of an
American anarchist thinker named Murray Bukchin. This was largely due
to the fact that their leader, a guy named abdulah Ajalon,
got while he was in Turkish prison kind of pilled

(03:49:27):
on a lot of these this kind of like fringe
American libertarian ish sort of political philosophy. Yeah, with with this, basically,
the gist of it is this this kind of this
kind of synthetic this kind of synthesis of a lot
of Bukchen's ideas with some of the stuff that Agelog

(03:49:48):
had been had been thinking about for years, kind of
culminated in uh political philosophy called libertarian municipalism, which is
more less the governing philosophy that these different armed militant
organizations kind of clustered around the PKK in Northeast Syria,
because the PKK for years were just kind of like

(03:50:11):
cross the border in the northeast Syria when they were
fighting with the Turks and they had to get away,
and they had a bunch of inroads with local Kurdish
organizations in northeast Syria. And when the Asad regime pulled
out of the area in the early stages of the
Syrian Civil War, a lot of these groups that were
affiliated with the p PKK were kind of the best
organized organizations in the area, and so they took over

(03:50:35):
a lot of civil administration and basing a lot of
their plans and you know, functional activities around these ideas
that Ajalon had been you know, writing about for years
and years, and so you kind of have this mix
of all these armed organizations that are to some extent
descended from the PKK, but are now much broader than

(03:50:58):
just sort of a Kurdish liberatory organization. These are the
folks who fought and defeated ISIS in northeast Syria. Yeah,
that's I don't know, there's there's so much to get into,
but I guess that's kind of the the broad strokes
and all of these different because there's a bunch of
different militias. You know, There's there's militias that are kind
of more traditionalist Arab militias. There's there's Armenian militias in

(03:51:20):
the area. There's obviously these Kurdish militias, the YPG and
the YPG primarily Kurdish militias, but they all fight under
the banner of the SDF and to the Turks, they're
all the PKK.

Speaker 11 (03:51:33):
Yes, I'm glad you mentioned all the different militias and stuff,
because it gets really confusing. Like even I mean, I'm Syrian,
I'm just like I cannot keep up. I talked to
my parents about it too, and they're just like, that's
it's it's it's complicated. So I think you did a
good job breaking that down. I also want to mention
they were the only people fighting ISIS in Syria. Yeah,
so I think it's pretty notable to mention.

Speaker 9 (03:51:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:51:56):
Yeah, I got a list of the found in groups
of the SDA. So this happens in twenty fifteen, right,
sort of earlier in the fight against ISIS. And some
of these groups are descended. Latian said, not not from
the YPJ or the YPG, And Robert said this to
you that they come from the FSA, the Free Syrian Army,
Like there's specifically the FSA around the Kabani area contributing elements.

(03:52:18):
There's a Syriac Military Council, so that's a distinct ethnic group.
There is the jayash or al If. I said that right,
Uh no, but I can say it if you are
please do magical thank you.

Speaker 11 (03:52:37):
Jish means army or like yeah, army, yeah jeish. It's
annoying because the English is spelled jyish, but it's just
a Jewish.

Speaker 3 (03:52:47):
Yeah yeah, the revolutionary army, army of revolutionaries, I guess
more accurately, who are another mixed ethnicity group, they, like
Robert said, include Turkmen, Armenians, all kinds of different ethnic groups.
So I get this point that the entity that is
the SDF is a majority Arab entity. It's not like
an ethnic Kurdish thing, and and and the autonomous Administration

(03:53:12):
is not like a Kurdish f no state, which I
think is something that people can sometimes either confuse or conflate.
But like that that's not the case, right that, That's
not what this sort of democratic federalism is about, nor
is it what's represented in terms of the composition of
the people there people doing the fighting, right, So sometimes

(03:53:32):
these groups will be referred to on masses like quote
unquote the Kurds.

Speaker 1 (03:53:36):
You should by how kind of messy. My explanation was,
it is hard to walk people through this. Folks eyes
tend to glaze over, for one thing, when you mention
a certain number of acronyms. But this leads to a
situation whereby the US news is just like the Kurds
defeated isis in Northeast Syria.

Speaker 2 (03:53:51):
It was like no, there was.

Speaker 1 (03:53:53):
There were a whole lot of other people who did
a lot of dying when involved, and some cards who
were not involved.

Speaker 11 (03:54:02):
So it's also just so much infighting. I think that
it gets I don't know, it's it's a lot.

Speaker 3 (03:54:06):
It is.

Speaker 1 (03:54:07):
It is a lot like saying the Americans defeated the Nazis,
and it's like, well some other people.

Speaker 3 (03:54:12):
Who involved in that word yeah, yeah, well yeah, I've
seen some films from let me tell you, Yes, I
think I think Rubedy's right, Like it collapses two things, right,
like the heterogeneity of of Kettish people, right, Differentkaddish areas,
of different Kattish movement and the heterogeneity of the SDF.
So yeah, mainstream use sometimes yeah, because it shocking.

Speaker 1 (03:54:34):
It is also worth noting like Kurds are not certainly
not a like a monolithic group. For examining North the
Assyria is like flat lands lowlands, and there's a big
difference between the mountain Kurds and the Kurds who live
in these like lowlands, and traditionally even like a lot
of like bad blood and stuff between different groups, because

(03:54:54):
you know, that's just the way human beings are, Like yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:55:00):
Yeah, it's really easy, I think for when we're consuming news,
especially news about the part of the world that the
populace here hasn't been spectacularly well informed on, to break
things down into easy groups, right, Like you'll see a
lot as well, like Sunni and Shias, like the two
categories that can exist within like and then people get

(03:55:21):
very confused when there are categories within that when when
they're where there are Sunni groups fighting each other, and
the same with like Kurds, Turkmen or whatever. Like, none
of these groups are homogeneous. And sometimes yeah, if you do,
I get it. If you're doing a five minute piece
for TV, that's what you do. But here we are
not doing a five minute piece for TV. So this

(03:55:43):
is this has not been like Kurdish history one O. One,
please read some more books about that. I'll put some
in the sources. But what I want to talk about
today is some of these barakhtar attacks on specifically YPJ. Right,
so the YPJ would be the Women's Defense Forces, So
that's a women's militia within the SDF that, as Robert said,

(03:56:05):
it's based heavily, I guess on the outlook of Abdulah Oscelin,
who's sometimes called Appo, so we might use that for
brevity here. So in one attack in April twenty twenty two,
three YPGA fighters were killed. Di Lahaleb, who had participated
in the resistance of the Sheik Masoud district of Aleppo

(03:56:26):
in twenty twelve. She become a leading YPGA commander and
participated in the fight against isis playing a leading role
in the liberation of the city of Mimbic Rahani Kabane.
It's worth noting, I guess sorry I stop every fifteen
seconds to explain context that you'll hear sometimes place names
in people's names. That's because they're like norm de gear
rather than that this is not their legal name necessary,

(03:56:47):
but it's it's standard practice for these people to take
like a movement name or a nom de geer, much
like Robert and I explained in the episodes on Miamma.
A lot of people do this, a lot of places
that fair.

Speaker 1 (03:57:01):
Robert, Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of like oftentimes
people just like take a name based on their city
that they came from, like Kobani or whatever. But yeah,
it's it's pretty much the norm that most people, most
fighters will introduce themselves by some sort of nobdaghear.

Speaker 3 (03:57:18):
Yeah, even some of the I know people who are
like British or American who have been over there, who
are over there, and they also have these.

Speaker 1 (03:57:26):
Yeah, and there's a there's a lot in that. One
thing you have to keep in mind is that like
a lot of these people who are revolutionaries, who consider
themselves revolutionaries, have family in regime controlled parts of town
or or parts of Syria or in you know, in
id Lip, which is largely controlled by these like more
Turkish backed Islamist groups. And so part of why you

(03:57:48):
do this is like, I don't want my family like
getting caught up in this shit, like if they live
somewhere else, like I don't want to like bring that
down on them. It's just safer.

Speaker 3 (03:57:58):
Yeah, just like when we did episodes, right, we had
Miaowka and Andy and Sarah. Another woman, as I said,
Rohani Kabane joined the YPGA in twenty fourteen. She fought
against ISIS. She was wounded. She participated after recovering in
the liberation of Rakka, and she was the co chair
of the defense committee in Kabbani. And then there was

(03:58:20):
the youngest, the youngest woman she just joined. I guess
or her joined at a young age. And she was
called Kabani and she uh like she joined after the
fight against ISIS. She she was very young. There are
pictures I'll include the report. It's very sad to see
someone I think, so yeah.

Speaker 11 (03:58:37):
They look they look like there's a couple of them
that looked like babies. Like, it's really devastating because it's
I don't know, their lives are taken from them and
they joined to.

Speaker 9 (03:58:49):
It's it's empowering, and then.

Speaker 11 (03:58:52):
It's devastating because it's just like they fought so hard
and then they they were assassinated, literally they were murdered.

Speaker 3 (03:59:00):
Yeah, it's when especially when you consider that so many
of these, like the women who fought against ISIS, right, like,
and I think we could all probably understand where women
would would want to do that, like wanted to create
a place where young girls could grow up and be
who they wanted to be and do what they wanted
to do, and like not have to obviously, like cowtows

(03:59:23):
that it's extremely violent, misogynous organization like ISIS, but also
like not necessarily have to fight either, and you know,
could be self realized and whatever way they wanted to.
And so to see these people having achieved their goal
largely of I guess I still exists, right, and I
still continues to kill people. It killed ten people yesterday,
but that's the eighth of August because you won't hear

(03:59:46):
this today. But to see these people who have like
successfully at least liberated the territory, and then their young
women are still dying but not finding ISIS. But fink Turkey,
I can go on and give like there are dozens
of examples of this report another one I'll just give.
In July twenty twenty two, there was a YPG commander

(04:00:09):
called Raj Kabur and a fighter called Barin Botan, so
one of them had been and then another one called
another YPJ commander called Jian Tall Hidden Tall Hidden. So
these two women have been involved in the fight against
ISIS like from the beginning, having like liberated cities, liberated territory,

(04:00:34):
and then they were with this young woman who was
nineteen years old and had relatively recently joined the YPG
right and was killed by a dreat strike. It's like
it's particularly galling, I think for me at least two
so that the YPG Information Office is someone that I
communicate with, like for work stuff, and it's particularly galling

(04:00:55):
to like wake up Brent and see that on your phone,
like to get a message and look at a report
see pitch of a car like blown to pieces. At
the same time as like the directories to drowne the
Turkey hassaulta Ukraine in large numbers, right, which has been
hugely effective in destroying Russian armor and like it's.

Speaker 1 (04:01:13):
Curler on at least was it's it's it seems to
not really work. I mean a lot of stuff has
changed obviously, like new technology is extremely effective early on
before there's countermeasures anyway, whatever, we don't need to get
nerdy about this.

Speaker 3 (04:01:26):
Yeah, yeah, it's certainly like in the first months of
their war, like the war in Ukraine became like a meme.
You can buy a stuffed birector on etsyo eBay, like
like a soft toy, like a Teddy Bear. There are
songs about it.

Speaker 1 (04:01:44):
It's not it's not great, Yeah it was, and it
was one of those things where like obviously I was
happy to see effective tools being used by the Ukrainians
to like defend their home, yes, of course, but I'm
not ever going to get up and stand the the
Turkish defense industry or yeah, defense industry. And for the record,

(04:02:06):
I feel the same way about like the people standing
standing you know, different US defense contractors making stuff like
you know, long range missile systems, Like no, I'm not
I'm not really a fan of that, Like I get it.
Sometimes you know, when you're being invaded, you use the
tools available, But that doesn't mean we need to celebrate that.

Speaker 3 (04:02:26):
Yeah, exactly. I think the tools are largely kind of agnostic,
and anyone who's sort of is making things to kill
people purely for profit, it's not necessarily a good a
good thing to do with your life, I guess, uh.
And like, it's just troubling to me to see people
like cheering this on without like it highlights one, like

(04:02:47):
the way that people engage with conflict, especially online, especially
in the US, which and yeah, it's not a computer game,
it's someone's nineteen year old fucking daughter. It's someone's mum
or sitta or brother or uncle or dad or the
binary relative.

Speaker 11 (04:03:04):
The fact that you can buy like a stuffed fucking
weapon like little drone thing on Ebays. It's it's just
so disturbing. I really just don't like humans when I
think about that.

Speaker 1 (04:03:16):
Yeah, I understand why it happens this way, and I
understand why if your country is being invaded and you
can get more support from the international community by leaning
into this shit, you lean into this shit. But I
don't like the idea of like some I don't know,
fucking accountant in Iowa watching hundreds of videos of like
Russian soldiers being killed and then like getting a fucking

(04:03:38):
Lockheed Martin tattoo, like the like the like like turning
turning your support for people you know in a deadly
military conflict into like fandom, treating it the way you
treat like a Marvel movie or whatever. I find not great.

Speaker 3 (04:03:58):
Yeah, it's just not like I understand why. Like I
wouldn't blame anyone in Ukraine for being super excited about
having bairaktars because it stops people burning their homes and
killing their children. Yeah, like I would want that to no.

Speaker 1 (04:04:10):
Just like if you're if you're like I have a
friend who I went like we were in fucking of
Divka together, like sheltering with people from Russian shells and stuff,
who then went on to join the Ukrainian military and
has been fighting since the expanded invasion. If he wants
to share videos or watch videos of like, you know,
dead Russian soldiers from telegram, like that's war. It's unpleasant,

(04:04:33):
but I get it. Like again, if you're some dude
in fucking Wisconsin doing the same thing, I find that
pretty unsettling, like, yeah, because you don't need to.

Speaker 3 (04:04:45):
Yeah, no, you don't need to. You don't need to
dehumanize those people so you can kill them because you're
not killing them. Yeah, but you just seem to have
engaged in that same dehumanization which is necessary for people fighting,
because I don't know, maybe you think you're helping.

Speaker 1 (04:04:59):
It's hard to shoot people otherwise, Like, yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:05:03):
There's a reason it's hard to fucking bayonet people, right,
there's a reason that bayonet training is one of these
things that's particularly just kind of it has to be violent.
You have to be horrible, you know, like it's there's
no nice way to stab someone. But the yeah, it
doesn't mean that you need to tweet about it, especially
folks who maybe aren't perhaptice on the ground familiar as

(04:05:26):
what this looks like. So I wanted to maybe get
into a little bit. And there are, as I said,
dozens of these corone attacks. They really ramped up in
early twenty twenty three, along with like a kind of
a larger air offensive. Right, they continue to happen like
almost weekly. If people want to, I guess keep tabs.

(04:05:47):
YPJ info is the YPG's kind of public facing press website.
Rosier Information Center is a good English language resource. Both
of those you can find on X or if you
you can also search of them website. We just say X.

Speaker 1 (04:06:10):
Absolutely nudge, yeah, yeah, X is not in fact gonna
give it to.

Speaker 11 (04:06:16):
Us, only like you will understand that way that I
like that.

Speaker 3 (04:06:23):
Yeah, there's a narrow overlap there, buddy, Yeah, you shut
the get there. Yeah, you know what is going to
give it? And by it I mean the money that
pays our wages to us. What is it, James, It's
it's combination of products and services.

Speaker 1 (04:06:40):
Oh man, I love a good product, need to. I
don't love services. Actually very anti service. But you know,
we'll see, yeah, we'll see it.

Speaker 3 (04:06:48):
Might it might change your opinion, might be something amazing, unlikely,
probably gold. But let's hear from the advertisers. All right,
we're back and we hope you enjoyed those adverts as
much as we do. So I want to talk about
in the second half of the episode, why Turkey is

(04:07:09):
using these drones to bomb people who, like we said,
have fought and largely defeated the territorial Caliphate Ofvisis. I
did want to bring up one more drone instant actually,
which is particularly bad. So one of the things that
you're often to see the SDF and specifically the YPG
and the YPG kind of accused of is having child soldiers,

(04:07:30):
are having recruiting people who are under the aged to fight.
Part of a program they've implemented to stop this with
consultation with the United Nations is building education centers. Right,
I'm not going to comment morally on who should be
fighting at what age, because I think it's one of
judgment for us to make when like we GNATALIZI in

(04:07:51):
the fucking street. Yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (04:07:54):
Look, I think there's a degree to which people are
being unreasonable about this. I met a number of seventeen
year olds. It's generally when people talk about child soldiers,
they are talking about seventeen year olds. I have friends
who joined the US Army when they were seventeen years old.
Like I have friends who were learning how to drive
a tank for the US military at age seventeen. And
quite frankly, if you look at where like wars in

(04:08:18):
history sixteen to twenty years old, that's most of the
people who have fought most of the wars in most
of history. That's like the way that it is. It's
not pleasant. But like when we are talking like I
certainly I would be very supportive of laws put in
place in our country to raise the age at which
people can join the military so that they are not

(04:08:40):
young and not getting taken advantage of to as much
of a degree. But we are not fighting in any
conflicts for our survival.

Speaker 11 (04:08:46):
Yeah, I think people that point the finger and like
talk about child soldiers whatever the shit and they're in,
they are referencing like, yeah, basic teens. They have the
privilege of doing that. They don't have to even think
about protecting themselves or their family or whatever.

Speaker 9 (04:09:02):
I think when you are raised and.

Speaker 11 (04:09:06):
In like a situation of violence, like Palasine's a great
example of that. You see like boys like trying to
defend their country. It's like the same situation where there's
you don't have the privilege of waiting until you're fucking
twenty one or whatever. It's just like you have to
you have to like protect yourself.

Speaker 1 (04:09:23):
Yeah, it's not the it's not a situation you are
not being It's not like again, it's not like it
is often when we talk about child soldiers, like in
the Liberian Civil War, right, where you've got kids being
pulled in, you know, for the advantage of some warlord.
Nor is it like in the United States where you
have seventeen and eight year old eighteen year olds being
recruited in a predatory way off and by military recruiters

(04:09:47):
and sent overseas in conflicts that are not necessary. We
are talking about like isis is five blocks away, and
like God knows what they'll do to my mom and
my sister if they take over, Like I'm going to
pick up a fucking.

Speaker 3 (04:10:01):
Gun, you know what else? What else are you going
to do?

Speaker 1 (04:10:03):
That's the that's the world. Like they're living in a
different set of realities than we are.

Speaker 11 (04:10:09):
Yeah, and anyone that places judgment on that is just
ignorant and non understanding of the reality of the world.

Speaker 9 (04:10:15):
They're just like in their little bubble.

Speaker 5 (04:10:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:10:18):
So on August the eighteenth, twenty twenty two, Turkish drone
targeted one of these un affiliated education centers. Right, It
was two kilometers from the US coalition base, and targeted
group of teenage girls playing volleyball. It's very hard to
see these education centers as like anywhere in military target right,

(04:10:41):
They're literally designed to divert young people from becoming fighters
and to you know, they're set up with the consultation
United Nations, with the you know, like with as much
oversight as one can expect an area which is in
the middle of a civil war and to be drone
striking schools. It's pretty callous. It's also worth noting that,

(04:11:02):
like a phraser constantly gets thrown around a lot in
discussion about the Middle East. Right, it's the only democracy
in the Middle East, and it's let me tell you,
it's not normally referring to this part of the world.
It's referring to Israel, and a I don't think that's
true Israel, Yeah, it does it what fucking definitely, Well,

(04:11:28):
democracy is an extremely nebulous concept. So like, this is
this scenaria where people's votes have a substantive impact on
how their lives lives, certainly more so than people who
are Arabs in Israel.

Speaker 1 (04:11:43):
And Kurds in southern Turkey, Sirius in Syria.

Speaker 3 (04:11:47):
Like yeah, yep, yeah, yes exactly, people in parts of
Iran like Iraqi.

Speaker 1 (04:11:58):
People in northern or in in the Baghdad government controlled
junks of Iraq for that matter.

Speaker 3 (04:12:04):
Yes, yeah, like all over, right, like, so, this isn't
just an attack on like individual women. It's an attack
on a state which is genuinely at least attempting to
establish a new form of democracy, right, like a more participatory,
more horizontally organized democracy. It's an attack on a state

(04:12:24):
in the Middle East which is like anti patriarchal, which
is something that we don't have here in the United States. Right,
Like it's it's like we have still failed to have
a woman being president, Like it's it's an attack on
these things which most decent human beings should be able
to get behind. These attacks also don't just affect the

(04:12:47):
people who are killed, right. They continue to displace families,
They contribute to fuel shortages, they create power cuts, they
suspend schools, they stop aid organizations working in the area
because it's too high risk, or they perceive it to
be too high risk, and they stop the SDF continuing
their operations against ISIS. Right Like, ISIS, as I said,

(04:13:08):
continue to exist. They have sleeper cells. There was an
attempted prison break last year. Two of the women from
the YPG who had fought to stop those ISIS prisoners
breaking out of their prison were later killed in the
drone strike. It's very hard to see this as not
helping that like that ISIS insurgency that they're fighting and

(04:13:30):
hindering their operations. And I'm not just saying this based
on sources that are there Roger Information Center, are people
in their anes, but this is the policy of the
United States. Right before we started this, I looked up
some of the Inspector General's reports from Operation Inherent Resolve,
which is the United States operation to lead a coalition

(04:13:50):
which includes the SDF against ISIS, and they were talking
about how the sdf's operations are hindered because they keep
getting shot by durants, right, and that there's not much
that they can do about it. Right, Unlike like Ukraine,
we're not sending a ton of surface to air missiles
or like things that you could use to defend yourself

(04:14:11):
against drones, right, not that it's very easy to defend
yourself against the drone. So why is Turkey doing this?
I think thirsty because, as Robert said, it sees SDF
and the PKK is the same thing, right, And so
the PKK mostly operates, like Robert said, in the mountains
of southeastern Turkey, and it's been fighting this asymmetrical war

(04:14:33):
against the Turkish state since nineteen eighty four. So Urdigan
as Urdigan is the president of Turkey, right. He entered
off his in two thousand and three, and he's sort
of pivoted on Turkish issues and Kurdish issues. Sorry, he
continues to be Turkish. But he was initially in favor

(04:14:54):
of like a negotiated peace with the PKK. In his
early years included like propose for linguistic autonomy, the right
to a Kurdish press, and even like the return of
Kurdish place names, which is a big deal still yeah, right, Yeah,
you'll see like comishlo or al chemishli, like one being

(04:15:15):
Arab their latter being Arabic, that the form of being Kurdish.

Speaker 11 (04:15:18):
Right, Yeah, I mean it's just it's a huge deal
because you're not just killing like people, you're killing a
culture that's like in like it's not it's still like
a different word to say extinct, like it's in danger
of like not being there if it's not for the
people protecting it. Right, And I think it's like a
classic tactic to stop people from using their language or

(04:15:38):
customs or whatever, to just like try to erase them
and like make them Turk or whatever they want them
to be. And so the proposal of that, I think
is significant. But then obviously the follow through is a
different story.

Speaker 3 (04:15:52):
Yeah, the follow through is not there, right, So after
twenty fifteen, he's really pivoted and he's pursued like a
really violent antique Kurdish policy. And it's worth noting, as
you said, that for much of the twentieth century, the
Turkey state denied the existence of Kurdish people together. They
call them mountain Turks in even in March twenty twenty one,
the Turkish Military of Education released a book in the

(04:16:13):
Kurdish majority. It's a province called Diabakir. Diabakir, I guess
it's Turkish, which it doesn't mention Kurds. It's a Kurlish
majority province. It doesn't mention the Kurdish language. It claims
that it's a Turkish dialect that's spoken there. They changed
the name in August twenty twenty one of seventeenth century

(04:16:35):
Mosque from the words translating from the Turkish to the
Kurds Mosque, and they call it the Turks Mosque. In
twenty twenty three, Turkey dropped its objection. So subjection is
an effective vito right to Finland and Sweden joining NATO
when the latter pledged to devote more attention to the
PKK and effectively end its decades old tradition as giving

(04:16:57):
protection an asylum to Kurdish refugees. So if people aren't familiar,
Sweden has been a country that's offered asylum to a
lot of different groups of people, Like I have a
lot of friends from various stories I've done all over
the world who have ended up living in Sweden, and
Curtish people are among those people, right who have found
a home and a safe place in Sweden. So encouraging

(04:17:19):
Sweden to not do that gives people one less safe
place to go, right, Yeah, and this was kind of
Turkey's like cost of entry for those people into NATO. Now,
obviously there's a reason that Sweden and Finland want to
join NATO, right, and that's the Russia is like right
there and has been doing some invasion recently, and so

(04:17:42):
they want that as kind of mutual aid, that mutual defense,
and so they're being forced to give up this very
reasonable policy of offering people asylum. Hi, everyone, it's me
James and I am back after what I hope was
a fruitful and enjoyable advertising break for you. It is
just me, and the reason for that is that someone
outside is currently severing my telephone cable, judging by what

(04:18:07):
I can hear and the fact that I no longer
have the Internet. So the second part of this episode
will be me reading my script by myself without the
interesting and often entertaining input of my colleagues. So sorry
about that, but you will just have to make do.
Turkey's been involved in a Syrian civil war since the beginning. Initially,
it armed and equipped the Anti Assad FSA, but in

(04:18:29):
August twenty sixteen it began a direct occupation of parts
of northern Syria under Operation Euphrates Shield. In twenty seventeen,
it facilitated the establishment of the Syrian National Army in
the Syrian Entering Government, which it finances. Turkey has accused
of Syrian Democratic forces, to which the YPG and YPGA belong,
of quote seizing and ethnically cleansing territories which don't belong

(04:18:52):
to Kurds. There isn't really any credible evidence for this,
and the UN has refuted these claims. Some people have
have moved right, like as happens in many conflicts, but
the SMI saw was like twenty five families. Erligan has
openly expressed a sentiment that Kurdish people don't belong in
North and East Syria, saying these areas are not suitable

(04:19:12):
for the lifestyle of Kurds because these areas of virtually desert,
deportations of Syrians who have been who have sought refuge
in Turkey. Right, so people from Syria who have fled
the civil war. But three and just over three and
a half million people are living in Turkey. Right, Turkey
has to Cloud's intention to move one million of these

(04:19:33):
people back to Syria, and it has already begun moving
these people back to northwest Syria in the area as
it occupies.

Speaker 5 (04:19:41):
Right.

Speaker 3 (04:19:42):
The US State Department in a press conference on the
fourth of August deny that this constituted a demographic change.
But I think that that's very heavily disputed by people
on the ground. Certainly, the YPJA and the YPG would
dispute that right that the Kurdish people who have been
driven out of some of the Turkey occupies are being
replaced by these people that are being moved back in

(04:20:04):
by Turkey. Turkey was of course the entry point for
much of the weaponry and many of the people who
joined ISIS in Syria. Foreign Policy the Publication has estimated
that more than thirty thousand people across Turkey along the
so called Jihadi Highway. Later Turkey clamped down on this
a bit, but certainly in my coverage of the smuggling

(04:20:26):
of weapons and equipment to ISIS, they were going through Turkey.
Turkey was also directly engaged with the defeat of ISIS
right Turk Turkey's troops for ISIS in parts of northern Syria. Meanwhile,
Turkey is also enforced an economic blockade of the Autonomous
Area of Northeast Syria, and it's even restricted water flowing

(04:20:46):
into the region. Right, So, at some point weapons and
humans have flowed through Turkey to ISIS, and at this
point water is not flowing in sufficient quantities through Turkey
to the Autonomous Area of North and East Syria. And
twenty eighteen, Turkey started what's called Operation Olive Branch. It's
a military operation in which Turkish and Syrian National Army

(04:21:08):
forces took control as the city of Afrin. The assault
included the alleged use of chemical gas, shelling of civilian areas,
and shooting of fleeing refugees. Kurdish shrine flags, cultural and
historical sites were targeted destroyed by Turkish military forces. A
hospital was bombed. Reporters Without Borders noted that reporting on
the conflict had been handstrung by the Turkish government and

(04:21:30):
more than thirty thousand Kurdish people have been displaced and
their homes have been taken by those relocated refugees who
we spoke about. Olive arms in the area have been
seized and then leased to fund the operation of the
pro Turkish Syrian National Army. The Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights has documented these forces threatening to be head Kurds,
and The Independent, that's the newspaper, has noted that some

(04:21:53):
of the people fighting alongside the SNA are themselves former
cardrids of Isis. In its reporting, the Independent reported that
and I quote video posted online shows three uniformed Jahadis
singing a song in praise of their past battles, and
it says, quote how we were steadfast in Grossny, that's
in Chezhnir, Dakistan, and we took the Tora Bora. That's

(04:22:17):
Tora Bora's cave complex, formerly the headquarters of Osama bin Laden,
and now Afrien is calling to us. There's the song
they were singing, right, that's suggesting that they're sort of
a fight. There's casting this in in a long line
of these battles that have been fought by these various
I guess Islamist groups, just to be super clear on

(04:22:38):
Islamist versus Islamic, because I don't want people to confuse
the two things. One is a political outlook, right of
being an Islamist is a political outlook in it it
focuses on, It uses an interpretation of Islam, which is
certainly not the mainstream one. It's not my place to
say whether or not it's a correct one, but it's

(04:23:00):
certainly not the one that most Muslims in the world
agree with. And it's the interpretation of that faith that
you'll have seen with groups like ISIS and al Qaida. Right,
But that is not to say by any means that
all Muslim people agree with this, because they don't. There
are Muslim people, many thousand, hundred and thousand of them
who have been targeted killed by these people, right, And

(04:23:23):
just wanted to be super clear on that distinction. The
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has also noted members of
the Turkish fascist group the Gray Wolves, fighting alongside the
SNA SO standing in the United States, it is easy
to see this Turkish operation as a consequence of Trump's
choice to abandon the SDF and the people who defeated ISIS,

(04:23:44):
and to a large degree it is, but it also
represents a long term goal of verdigans Turkey, which is
tried without success to get support for its plans to
build a buffer zone thirty kilometers deep a long its
border with Syria, and to fill that buffer zone with
Syrian refugees who increasingly end up in Turkey. In particular,
Turkey has objected to plans by the United States train

(04:24:06):
and equip for thirty thousand person strong border force. This
went through several different naming iterations. It's don't really matter,
it's a border force. Right before the attack, Russian military
officials proposed handing over a freeing to a SAD as
a compromise. So we haven't talked about Russia much. Robert
talks about this in his series, But Russia is in

(04:24:26):
Syria as an ally of the Aside regime, and it
has sort of acted as a go between between the
SDF and the Side regime, and it has proposed in
this instance right that the SDF withdraw from a freeing,
which is the area that Turkey invaded an operation out

(04:24:49):
of Branch of twenty eighteen, and it said, if you
guys put out and you hand us over to a SAD,
the Turks won't invade, they won't directly take on a
SAD like that. The SDF refused. Right authorities are in
a very tense relationship with Damascus, which is where Asad's
government is based. Right, they've both received aid from them,

(04:25:09):
have been attacked by them. After they were abandoned by
the US and Russia, and they knew that Turkey Russia.
Russia was aware that Turkey had plans to invade right
and obviously didn't do anything to stop it. So they
these SDF felt that they were abandoned by US and Russia,
with very very good reason to feel that way. The
A and E s scrambled to find new ally to

(04:25:30):
protect them, and they found one in the Side government.
This wasn't like, I don't think a choice that they
wanted to make. I think the rest of the worldn't
leave with many options. So I'm quoting here from most
Luma Beidi, the SDFS commander in chief. He wrote an
OpEd and foreign policy. It'll be linked in our sources
at the end of the month. If we have to

(04:25:51):
choose compromise in genocide, we will choose our people, he said.
Numerous fighters who for ISIS and foreign volunteers have died
in a so in that initial operation right when the
SDF opposed Turkish invasion, numerous people died. One of them
was a Britain named Anna Campbell. As she went by

(04:26:13):
Helene Kera coox. I matter fuck that pronunciation of but
not my attempt to be disrespectful I have. She was
killed by Turkish Michelle and Afree and her father, Dirk Campbell,
has been campaigning ever since tav his daughter's remains returned.
His case remains with the courts and has been entirely
crowd funded. He submitted a claim to the European Court

(04:26:34):
of Human Rights after hearing nothing from the Turkish courts,
and when he did that, the Turkish courtse picked up
the case he'd submitted there. You can also find a
link to this in the sources, but it's crowdjustice dot com,
slash case slash help Hyphen bring hyphen Anna Hyphen home.
They've raised all the money they need her at the moment,
but doubtless they will need more in the future. So

(04:26:56):
where does all this leave the people of North and
East Syria?

Speaker 5 (04:26:59):
Right?

Speaker 3 (04:26:59):
These are people who have been impacted by the territorial
caliphate of the Islamic State and all the horrific things
that people will be aware happened that. They're people who
have successfully fought for and achieved their freedom only to
be attacked by another state. And they are people who
have suffered the same earthquake that Turkey suffered. In February

(04:27:23):
of this year twenty twenty three, four thousand people died
in a freed right, which is the city which is
now occupied by Turkish and SNA troops, and Turkey pushed
a little bit further east in Operation quote unquote Peace Spring,
a year after Olive Branch, and currently Turkey is cutting
water flow to pumping stations it controls that feed water

(04:27:45):
to the area. It combines with the impact of the
earthquake and the ongoing burden of controlling one of the
largest prisons in Earth, which is the Al Whole Prison
which holds the majority of the ISIS fighters and their
families who were not either killed or returned to the
states from which they came. And we'll have more on
that Alhole Prison next week. There's infighting between militias in

(04:28:08):
the Turkish areas, which obviously impact Turkish controlled areas. Obviously
that impacts civilians is arbitrary arrests. There's the increasing Turkification
of areas like a free right, including instruction in the
Turkish language. Like Shurin said earlier, it's one of the
things that's integral to maintaining national identity is education.

Speaker 5 (04:28:26):
Right.

Speaker 3 (04:28:27):
In my experience studying cattle and identity leetting education in
Catalan was vital to fermenting and continuing Catalan identity. Kadish
identity is not national in the same way the identity
in the A and S I guess is not national.
But this turkification, right, the flying of Turkish flags above
buildings which are not military buildings, right like above hospitals,

(04:28:49):
and that kind of thing again is a marginalization of
the people who already lived there and who have lived
there for a long time. SDF guerrilla units like Wrath
of Olives and a Free and Liberation Front are involved
and fighting with a Syrian National Army, and that fighting
kills civilians right and throughout a Free and there have
been things like car bombs. The a Free Liberation Front

(04:29:12):
goes by HRI from the Kurdish initials right, and they've
carried out some attacks on SNA militias in the last
few days. You can often see videos of those online
and it's the sort of thing you'd like to see.
There are still land mines that kill civilians in the area,
and there are still ISIS sleeper cells bombing and killing people.
Last week, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria

(04:29:34):
responded to Turkey's ongoing aggresion, bashing a statement claiming Turkey's
operations are forcing the SDF to divert personnel away from
countering ISIS and threatening the stability of the area. Obviously,
this is all after an earthquake which killed four thousand
people in a free people that have access to as
many hospitals there. For instance, Dots still have to travel

(04:29:54):
to Turkey to get cancer treatment, right and so IS.
This leaves that people of North and Eastyria in a
very precarious situation right in which there are. They're now
left largely without the solidarity that they experienced when they
were fighting. Isis right, and it's very difficult, Just like

(04:30:14):
in so many cases, I feel this way about Memar two.
To see the US and Europe expressing solidarity and solidarity
in the form of lethal aid. Right, solidarity in the
form of surface to webissiles and tanks and rifles and
bullet proof beests and medical aid and all the things
that you need to sustain a fight to Ukraine, and
they should they should do that. I'm not saying for

(04:30:35):
a moment that they shouldn't. Right. Ukraine has been invaded
by a much bigger and more powerful military and it
has every right to defend itself. And I'm glad that
we're helping, but I wish that we would help other
people too, especially people who we have sort of made
promises to that we've not kept, or people who we've
encouraged to believe, in the case of Memr right, that

(04:30:56):
they have a right to a better life, and then
when they decide to defend that, we don't stand behind them. So, yeah,
that's my episode. I'm sorry for a weird juxtaposition of
me doing the love part scripted, but somebody outside is
drilling through my phone cable. So yeah, thank you for
joining me.

Speaker 1 (04:31:18):
Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
from now until the heat death of the Universe.

Speaker 6 (04:31:24):
It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.

Speaker 4 (04:31:26):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

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