It Could Happen Here Weekly 135

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Al Zone Media. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I
wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode.
So every episode of the week that just happened is
here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package
for you to listen to in a long stretch if
you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every
day this week, there's going to be nothing new here

(00:22):
for you, but you can make your own decisions.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
It's riot time when it could happen here, this is
this is the podcast that you're listening to. It's about
this is this one's kind of about bad things. This
is this is about a bunch of riots in the past.
I'm your host to be along with Vus James and Garrison.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Hello Harmony.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
So one of the kind of I don't know, the
trends of twenty twenty four is everyone looking at this
year and going this is nineteen sixty eight. Again. There's
campus occupations that are anti war protests. There is a
Democratic National Convention that is expected to be extremely hot,
and so so one of one of the things that
we are doing in the run up to the Democratic

(01:04):
Convention is we are going to go do some episodes
about nineteen sixty eight, and we are eventually going to
do episodes about like the Columbia campus occupations and about
the DNC. But unfortunately, in order to do that, we
have to why I say, unfortunately, this is actually not unfortunately,
this this mostly rules. I don't know, some of it's bad.

(01:25):
But in order to talk about this, and this is
this is the part of this whole thing that has
been completely forgotten, right, you know, there's there's become this
kind of like I don't know, state cult isn't quite
the right word, but there's become this sort of like
professional institutional history of nineteen sixty eight, where like all
of these universities like proudly have banners from like nineteen

(01:47):
sixty eight protests. Everyone has been like, you know, incredibly
willing to embrace the legacy of the anti war movements
and the campus occupations, and you know, like insofar as
they tell people not to embrace things, it's this stuff
about like you know, you hear this concert screaming about
don't repeat the sixty eight convention. But there's one part
of this story that has is just gone, has been

(02:09):
excised from the historical record. It is extremely clear that
no one wants you to remember it whatsoever. And that
is the Holy Week Uprising? Do you two know? Have
you heard of the Holy Week Uprising?

Speaker 4 (02:20):
Not before you started talking about it in our work meetings.

Speaker 5 (02:25):
I'm familiar with it. I've covered in US history ghosts before,
not as that name. I think people might be more
familiar with it. Have you described the events?

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah? So the other name for is the MLK riots,
which is a week I mean, okay, so it's okay, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah,
so okay, so and I should be clear about this. Okay,
So there are there are really two things going on here.
There is one the actually it's usually thought of it
was about a week, but it's it's actually longer than that.

(02:55):
There's like a couple of months of rioting in various
places over the oascination of MLK. The other thing that's
going on here is a wave of urban rebellion. And
when I say urban here, I'm not just talking about
you know, like Watts or Detroit or Chicago, like these
like giant urban cities, which is which is how you know,

(03:15):
insofar as anyone ever talks about rioting in this period,
is about these large urban centers. No, they are rioting
in Milwaukee. The most intense fighting that we're going to
talk about in this episode happens in York, Pennsylvania. In
this period for about is about nineteen sixty three to
roughly by by nineteen seventy one seventy two, it's kind

(03:37):
of over. There are a staggering number of urban uprisings.
I'm gonna I'm gonna read a quote from a book
called The Great Uprising, which is about this sort of period.
Between nineteen sixty three and nineteen seventy two, America experienced
over seven hundred and fifty urban revolts. Upwards of five
hundred and twenty five cities were affected, including nearly every

(04:00):
one with a black population over fifty thousand. The two
largest wave of uprisings came during the summer of nineteen
sixty seven Entry and Holy Week in nineteen sixty eight,
following the assassination of Martin Luther King Junior. In these
two years alone, one hundred and twenty five people were killed,
nearly seven thousand were injured, approximately forty five thousand arrests
were made, and property damaged topped one hundred and twenty

(04:22):
seven million dollars or approximately nine hundred million and twenty
seventeen dollars.

Speaker 5 (04:27):
If you can even stretch this out to, like can
I just give you the spam and I put on
this in my history class and then and then we
can we continue? Yeah, okay, So the way I perceive
this is the process of decolonization begins like in the colonies,
and it comes back to the metropol right, and we
see like this physical declonization in places like Algeria, right,

(04:48):
and then the impact of witnessing that returns to the
metropol along with the theories that like if you want to
say they decononize the mind, I think that that's an
acceptable way. And like this sort of struggle and even
the esthetic, right, like the esthetic of the Battle of
Algias is present in some of these uprisings, like and

(05:08):
you can stretch it out to like, you know, I
like to talk about wynded Ny, but a second occupation
of Wyndedney in nineteen seventy three. I think you could
also see that as part of this decolonization struggle. At
least that's my uh, yeah, that's my angle on it.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Yeah, And I think there's definitely a lot of like,
I don't know, there's a lot of inspiration taken there.
I think the way it's usually seen in the US
is as this is the sort of I don't know,
it's kind of as it's seen. This is kind of
this is where everything went off the rails after the
Civil Rights movement, which isn't what happens. Yeah, And the
other way I think this is seen and this is

(05:43):
I don't know, a lens that is kind of useful
to talk about this, but kind of isn't is about
the sort of quote unquote long nineteen sixty eight. So
you know, we're gonna be covering a lot of nineteen
sixty eight stuff on this show, you know, So like
there's obviously this nineteen sixty eight in France. I think
I think if you want to look at the origin
point of the sort of like wave uprisings that are

(06:07):
specifically nineteen sixty eight and that aren't sort of like
the decolonization arc, I think it probably starts in China
with the January storm in nineteen sixty seven. But on
the other hand, sort of and then this is you know,
one of the things about this period is everything is
happening so much at the same time, right, Like we
have a lot of experience about this, but like you know,

(06:29):
as the January Storm, the January Storm is this part
of the culture revolution where Mao kind of loses control
and Mao kind of incites a bunch of these like
a bunch of workers in Shanghai to like take the city.
But then they actually take the city, and they run
the Party out, they run the PLA out, and for
a brief period of time, Shanghai like has just been

(06:52):
taken by its working class and is not being run
by the Party. And there's this whole like you know,
massive series of struggles, it kind of struggles. But the
the thing the think about the sort of the way
sixty is understood is, you know, even some people even
include that, but these riots, specifically the Holy Week riots
are almost never talked about as as part of this process,
which I think they obviously are, and I think you know,

(07:14):
part of the reason we're talking about them now is
that you can't understand the Columbia campus occupations. You can't
understand the kind of politics that's going to come after that.
You can't understand the and see you can't understand like
the rise of Black radicalism. Like, none of this is
comprehensible at all unless you understand these riots, because this
was the uprising that sort of kicked everything off. It's

(07:36):
also this is a very hard thing to write about
because like this, I've had the time of my life
trying to put this together because this thing should be
like thirty five hours, and I don't have thirty five hours.
I have thirty minutes. So that being said, let's get
into why these are happening. So obviously, there is the
civil rights movement happening. You know, nineteen sixty five, you

(07:57):
get get the Voting Rights Act. We've had some civil
rights Act. But comma, if you are like you are
a part of the black working class in nineteen cities
of America, a society is still unbelievably racist. Like they're like,
you know, on a very basic level, there's a bunch
of people walking around calling you the N words. You
are restricted to the shittiest jobs available, assuming you can

(08:20):
find work at all. One of the biggest ones. And
this is something that this is something that was a
very big focus of the kind of later civil rights
ument that kind of has been a race for historical memory.
Was the struggle over housing. I'm going to read another
thing from the Great Uprising. SNCC field worker John Beptize,
who took over for Robinson and Hanson, described many of

(08:41):
the homes in the second ward. This is in Cambridge,
which is one of the places where those really intense rioting.
Both we'll talk about this in a little bit, but
both in sixty three and in sixty seven describe many
of the homes in the second ward as nothing more
than converted horse barns, corn cribs, and company shacks which
lacked hot running water, flush toilets, and electricity. Separate and

(09:05):
independent investigations by federal officials confirmed at USA's claims. We
were shown block after block of tottering, single family frame structures,
often lined along dirt roads and generally with little or
no setback, which is like they're like directly on the
street right like you open your door and you're on
the street, crowded almost against each other, and on small lots,

(09:27):
sometimes of no more than fifty or sixty foot depth,
reported one US Department of Housing a urban development official.
These dwellings were obviously obsolete and in disrepair, with tumbling
porches and steps. Many were without inside toilets, and in
several instances, the outside privy served more than one family.
Hot Water is rarely available, and several are without inside water.

(09:48):
Overcrowding is a common pattern. So you know, this is
the kind of like, this is one of the centers
of these struggles. So these people are living in like
nineteen thirties bar and this, you know, there is there
is a sort of staggering amount of anger about this.
And the other the other aspect of this is that

(10:08):
you know, okay, so these people are living in like
places that are not fit human habitation. Also, they're on
average fifty six percent more of their income goes to
rent than white people than then white people paid a rent,
which means that you know, and and this this is
also one of the things that's happening in this period
is that there's a bunch of money for like white

(10:31):
people that the government is giving them, are giving people
sort of loans and subsidies and tax credits to go
buy houses. None of this is happening for black people.
So what you have is a situation where like, if
you are black, basically all of your money is being
absorbed into rents. There is no possibility of you like
saving or you know, like saving to buy a house,
like other than the sort of like ramshackle shit that

(10:52):
you're in, like the conventional civil rights movement, right, you're
sort of like non violent marches. This hasn't done shit
to deal with any of these problems. You're also dealing
with really really intense labor discrimination, you know, and I
mean these are things like like there's this kind of
like example in Baltimore where you know, you'll you'll you'll

(11:14):
have union locals that are literally all white locals, right,
and they will they will cut these deals with management
where they'll be like, well, management will hands like hiring
and firing power over to the unions, and the unions go,
oh great, okay, and this this is a negotiated thing
between the two. The unions are like, okay, only unions
can work at only union members can work at the shop,
which in theory is good, but in practice what this
means is because these are all white unions, right, they've

(11:37):
they've now created a system by which you can, by
which you can just not hire black people. Ever.

Speaker 5 (11:42):
Yeah, the the Brianna wu method. God, yeah, you know
it's a reference to a terrible tweet I hopefy people
haven't seen.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
Oh god, yeah. And you know the the other things
that are sort of happening here, right, is so in
theory desegregation is supposed to be happening. In practice, that
shit is not happening. People are making people are doing
these like you know, like white progressors are giving these
speeches about how like a segregation is like ending where

(12:10):
we're like integrating quickly, and it's not happening, and all
of this kind of you know, all of this sort
of fuel and also and obviously the sort of immediate
spark of a lot of a lot of these uprisings,
So particularly in sixty seven, is that as as happens today,
you know, you all statistically have lived I don't know

(12:31):
why I was saysistically, all of you have lived through this.
All of you probably have been to at least one
protest that is this is that the coptious murder people.
And all of this sets off a set of kindling
and is going to lead to a simply staggering wave
of uprisings. But first, do you know what, I won't

(12:52):
lead to a simply staggering set of uprisings if you
buy them.

Speaker 5 (12:56):
It's the production and consumption of created needs as described
by her.

Speaker 4 (13:00):
But Mark Husa, that's right, James, yes, or more on that.
Here's these ads.

Speaker 2 (13:18):
So we are back, all right, So let let's start
actually talking about some of these riots. Okay, So I've
mentioned before that these riots are happening in a lot
of places that are not like that are not typically considering.
We're actually not gonna talk sort of stunningly for thinking
about this. We're not going to talk about the wats riots,
which are probably the biggest and most famous of the

(13:39):
riots in this period. We're not going to talk about
Detroit either, even though that was another really big one,
because you know, you you can go out and you
can find a bunch of people kind of talking about these.
We are going to start in Omaha, where begin Yeah,
but again this is this is something that's very important,
is that this is not just a sort of uprising

(14:01):
of the urban ghettos, which is which is how it's
like very explicit. This is literally the language that is
used at this time to describe what's happening here. But like, no,
this is happening in a bund like again Cincinnati. Omaha
is interesting because it has one of the a very
very common. One of the other big sort of rallying
points in this era is price gouging. So you know,

(14:23):
if you're if you're in one of these like ninety
nine percent black communities, like the one like the one
white person who is there is the shop owner. And
the thing the shop owner is doing is the shop
owner is gouging you for food because you don't you know,
you don't have any other options to buy for you from,
so they're going to gouge you and they're going to
give you like the worst products you can ever you've
ever seen in your life. And so by May sixty six,

(14:44):
people are just fed up with this. There start there
start to be sort of protests, like specifically at these
white stores. Uh there's a bunch of people, you know,
throwing rocks at the cops. Yeah, and so you know, so,
I mean, okay. The other thing that's very important to
understand about these places is that these riots don't just
start out of nowhere, right. These are mostly places where
there have been existing civil rights movements and they kind

(15:06):
of just ran into a stone wall.

Speaker 5 (15:07):
You know.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
One of the big things in this period too, and
this is something that like like you know, this is
what MLKA and the Poor People's Campaign was sort of
working on at the same time, was you know, these
these these demands for job programs, and so people are
you know, marching around they doing like pickets Omaha, like
has has a Malcolm X come speak at one point

(15:28):
and he's talking about like, you know, like the youth
these protests and people like marching outside of Safeway saying
like we want jobs, and these protests start getting attacked
by the police and this is something that you know,
this is something that that has been happening to these
nonviolent sit ins. I'm going to read a passage from
the book. Then the burnings began from there. Omaha police
Wallace is quote unquote goon squad and spectators began to

(15:51):
beat the protesters out of the auditorium using batons and
metal folding chairs. Reeling from the attacks, African American youth
retaliated in the streets. So like like they'll be in
meetings with community with like like the mayor or whatever,
and these fucking mobs will start just beating people with chairs.

Speaker 4 (16:10):
The goons squad.

Speaker 5 (16:11):
You say, yeah, God reminds me of the within running
ads to free down at Peltier a week. But the
guardians of the Agglala Nation, but like they literally call
themselves the goons. I'm guessing they'll people, not the people
participating in this particular beating. Non many such cases in
this area.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah, and this gets to another aspect of these of
these riots is that a lot of them aren't started
by rioters. They're started by a bunch of like a
white mob showing up and attacking people. And so you
know in Omaha, and this is something that we're going
to see a lot. Uh that is something that kind
of doesn't happen as much now, is like they just

(16:51):
the cops just fucking kill people the streets from protests
are happening in Omaha. They like they just they murder
a kid with a riot gun. And this, you know,
this sets off like as sort of you know the
patterns that work shore visa seeing of like these sort
of escalating riots. And this is a very kind of
familiar riot, right, Like I think we've all we've all
had the like, Okay, so the police attacked a bunch

(17:13):
of people, so it caused a riot kind of thing.

Speaker 4 (17:15):
Yeah, so now a riot starts y.

Speaker 2 (17:16):
Yeah, And this is this is a relatively non violent riot,
which is to say that people are mostly throwing stones
and molotovs. That is absolutely not true of a huge
amount of the rest of these riots, and particularly as
we sort of get closer to Holy Week. Something something
that is very important about the sixty eight riots that
is not true about any riots that we've ever lived

(17:38):
through is that not only are people extremely well armed,
they are the state's monopoly on violence in nineteen sixty
eight is nowhere near as powerful as it is now.
People will just fucking shoot. And one of the constant
things you read about when when you're reading about these
riots is that is you know, every police account has
police like like screaming about and like I didn't believe this,

(18:01):
right because I was reading this, I was like, okay,
whatever other police, Right, they talk about snippers all the time.
You see this in radical accounts too, where people will
talk about like, well, yeah, like the the National Guard
and Watts will be talking about how they're taking sniper
fires so they'll start shooting machine guns and like the
rus of build at buildings, right, But no, like this
was real. People actually were like doing this, and you

(18:22):
know I was I was really sort of like like
on the on the fence about this, like this was
this actually happening? And then the next thing I read
was an interview with a guy who'd been a black
nationalist and starts talking about how they they they were
using all of their dynamite stores and how they didn't
have fuses for the dynamite so they had to like
they had to plant the dynamite and then retreat across
the sheet to shoot at the dynamite so the dynamite

(18:43):
would go off.

Speaker 5 (18:45):
It sounds like a fun exercise.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yeah, it was. It was nuts. It was like the
kinds of stuff these people were doing is sort of
just really it's it's really staggering.

Speaker 5 (18:57):
This, Like you say, the state just didn't have that
same monopoly on on violence like that there was. It
didn't have the overwhelmed cops, didn't have like the overwhelming
force that they do now, that they didn't possess tanks,
and like it was a lot harder to trace gun
purchases in nineteen sixties because not everyone used credit cards,
so it made it a whole lot easier for folks
to have and keep guns.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah. Well, the other thing is, like, you know, this
is something that that in some of the This is
something that played into some of the NAACP, like chapters
in the South that were the sort of like black
working class chapters. Is that, like so if you were
if you were an NRA chapter, you could just buy
at a really cheap bulk rate like surplus M one
gearns from the US Army and AMMO, and they would

(19:37):
just sell it to you.

Speaker 5 (19:38):
Yeah, you can still buy them at a pretty cheap
rate to the CMP.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
Yeah, yeah, but you could buy like like really large
quantities of them as long as you were sort of
like you know, there was this kind of like popular
like popular like gun marksmen culture that we don't like
we have and in like our gun culture is kind
of insane, and this was like a very different thing
from there.

Speaker 5 (19:58):
Yeah, definitely. And you had like Rob Williams was the
the are you failing with Rob Williams? Yeah, yeah, he
wrote a book called Negroes with Guns. He was the
he was the leader of the NRA chapter right in Monroe.
But then yeah, also a member of the NAACP, which,
like the NRA has has has pivoted a long way

(20:18):
from what it was.

Speaker 3 (20:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yeah, Well, and part of what's happening here is people
are just kind of like picking up whatever institution they
have and using it to like build a movement a tool.

Speaker 5 (20:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
Yeah, So all right, we're gonna we're gonna move on
from Omaha and Cincinnati, like you know, so we're we're
gonnatart talking about some of the I guess you'd call
like the uprising proper. So I guess before we fully
head into this, it should be noted that there's it's generally,
you know, I talked about this before. There's generally the

(20:49):
way these riots are understood is as a thing that
is discontinuous from the civil rights movement, and that's just
not true. A lot of the civil rights movement, like
things that people now think of like non violent campaigns,
weren't like a lot of the stuff in Oh My
fucking like a lot a lot of the fights in Louisiana,
like are just straight up riots. Yeah. And one of
the important sort of bridge figures here is Gloria Richardson,

(21:12):
who's I wish we could do like an entire episode
about her right now, but that'll have to wait till later.
She's a civil rights activist in Cambridge and her movements,
like you know, like she is in a lot of
ways that like kind of dedicated non violence, but she's
very explicit that we're going to do armed self defense,
and a lot of the stuff that she leaves. I mean,
this is you know, getting back to like nineteen sixty three.

(21:32):
Like the civil rights stuff that she's doing is extremely effective,
and a lot of it is just straight up riots,
to the point where like there's a very famous thing
for the civil rights there are called the Treaty of Cambridge,
where like she and her people agreed to like stop
rioting and the city agreed to completely integrate. But by
the time he gets to nineteen sixty seven, they haven't

(21:53):
done it, and so the riots started off in Cambridge again,
and you have this incredibly sort of like summer over
the course of ninety sixty seven is there's there's this
like enormous wave of riots and you know a Cambridge
a famous one, but like Detroit's another big one. And this,
I don't know, this should have given people warning that

(22:15):
there there would be you know, giant uprisings if anyone
did anything to MLK, but apparently it didn't. And I
you know, I you know what else I won't I
don't know, set off I've already used the you know
what else won't set off massive waves of uprisings pivot.
I really didn't prepare good enough pivots for this.

Speaker 5 (22:34):
What weren't assassinated civil rights leader.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
We can't promise that. We really cannot promise them.

Speaker 4 (22:42):
No, companies would never do anything like that that talking
about dames.

Speaker 5 (22:47):
Certainly not the mail kit delivery. Save is that we
got mentioned by name.

Speaker 2 (23:00):
All right, we are back, so all right, it is
now officially timed for Holy Week. So on April fourth,
nineteen sixty eight, MLK is giving is you know, like
he is preparing to support a bunch of striking sanitation
workers and they fucking kill him. Who the they is
is kind of unclear. Mlk's family later sued the US

(23:22):
government to make the government prove that they didn't have
they weren't involved in the assassination. The government paid them
one dollar instead, So you know, make of that what
you will. But what did happen is that, you know,
he was killed by white people. And this this detonates
a fucking nuclear weapon in the US. You know, reading

(23:44):
accounts to me, it reminds me of the first week
of the George Floyd up risings in twenty twenty. I
want people remember this. There's this picture of this guy
in Philly with an Elmo like wearing like an Elmo
like head, and he has his fist rays and he's
standing in front of a bunch of things of fire
like this. This is what this is what that looks like.
I'm going to read a quote from one of the

(24:05):
people who was people who was there. I mean I
was sad when I first heard the dues of King's death,
but not but not like the world around me. The
city was burning and I'm walking through the city and
the city is burning, and that's what we wanted. This
was our time. I mean fire all around my house.
I mean my house almost got caught on fire when
I was living because Seventh Street, the whole block was burning.

(24:25):
And it was just we thought we were in a
war again. Simple. Simple. One of the interesting parts about
this is at a lot of civil rights leaders, and
this is not just true of like obviously the moderate
civil rights leaders are trying to tell people not to riot,
but even like Stokesly Carmichael like comes out to the
crowd and tries to go like please don't like, don't
ryot don't do this, and the crowd basically tells him

(24:47):
to fuck off and does it anyways, And the fact
that they killed MLK, who was you know, m Oka
was I mean, like even at that time, like the
sort of living human symbol of nonviolence, right, but he
was also the symbol of sort of cooperation, of of
of this belief that you know, you could you could

(25:08):
do sort of peaceful that you do people, peaceful integration.
This is something that MLK is kind of like even
he's kind of getting cynical about by by sixty eight.
But the fact that they killed him, it, it is,
it is a kind of psychological blow that I don't
think we've ever experienced. Like maybe maybe if if you

(25:31):
took like if you took like Trump's election like on
at the same time as a twenty twenty uprising, that
like maybe maybe kind of captures what people are feeling
in this moment. And I want to read another account.
I want to read an account that's it's it's it's
it's sort of secondhand account by this priest. It's like

(25:53):
a Catholic priest in a largely black area. This this
is from the Great Uprising, Yet other observers saw the
uprising as a clear protest against the persistence of racial inequality.
Father Richard Lawrence, an activist priest whose Catholic parish served
many blacks, recalled encountering one of his parishioners on the
street after the revolt had begun. Father, you don't understand.

(26:17):
I know you've been with the demonstrations and all that
sort of thing, the parishioner explained to Lawrence, But you
were born white and you can't really totally understand. I mean,
I've done the civil rights thing too, you know it.
I've been there. I've been to the marches, I've been
to the rallies, you name it. Nobody's listening, His parishioner continued, murdering,
doctor King was just the last straw that nobody's listening.

(26:38):
We can go on demonstrating as long as we want.
No one will listen. I don't know what to try next,
but maybe blood flowing in the streets is what it takes.
Maybe some of his blood with some of my blood
flows in the streets, then maybe the man will listen.
Maybe not, but I've got nothing left to try. I
don't care if I got killed. I've got two kids
and I'm not going to have them come up in

(26:58):
the world I came up up in. I'm just not
going to have it. And this is this is I
think a really important part of these riots is that
these are people who had fought, who had fought for
a decade over it. I mean, it's this place about
a decade and a half of struggle. They've done everything.
They've done strikes, they've done boycotts, they've done sit ins,

(27:18):
they've voted, they got the right to vote, right, they marched,
they did civil disobedience, and you know the product of
this is that they're living in a dilapidated house with
a shitty job, and then they fucking killed MLK and
the country burns. The National Guard straight up is there
there are there are like there are just straight up

(27:40):
military occupations in an enormous number of cities. DC is
occupied by like the five hundred and third Military Police Battalion,
National Guard and famously the eighty second Airborne. So like
the regular US Army is being sent into to like
to like is being sent into these cities. The level
of sort of burning here too. And this is the
thing that's I think kind of the most famous part

(28:01):
of these riots. Is they burn staggering parts of cities.
There are I mean, just like unbelievable numbers of buildings
are burned, and people people sort of people, people go
out to fight people are people are shooting at the police,
the police are shooting back at them. I mean, there's
I wasn't able to find the footage. One of my

(28:22):
friends was telling me about, Like there's there's footage from
from news people in New York of like a guy
shooting outside of a window, and they have footage of
like a police like swat team. Basically I think it's
like still pre swap, like a police like team coming
in just killing him. And you know, I mean Richard M.
Daley famously has has a here's the mayor of Chicago

(28:45):
has a shoot to kill order. You know, his his
words are, quote shoot to kill any arsonists or anyone
with a Molotov cocktail, and quote shoot to cripple or
mame anyone looting any stores in our city. Jesus. It's
really fucking bad. And you know, this is something that's
that's about about these these riots, right Like, Okay, if
if you look at even the watch riot, or if

(29:06):
you look at twenty twenty. If you look at like
twenty fourteen, like the Baltimore Uprising in twenty fifteen, there
are like people having a good time. Like this is
always the thing in riots. There's always like someone who's
like having a great time. Fucking no one. I read
like dozens and dozens and dozens of interviews of people
from people from the Holy Week up Prising. Every single
person involved in this is having the absolute worst time

(29:28):
of their lives. That's like on every single side, right
that everyone is fucking miserable. And you know, but part
part of what's happening here too is these are these
these uprisings are also about Vietnam, because you know, a
lot of these people either have been sent to Vietnam
or like their families have been sent to Vietnam. Black
people are dying at an unbelievable rate in Vietnam, and

(29:51):
these people come back and they're like, well, we're gonna
fucking die anyway, So I'd rather die. I'd rather go
out fighting the cops than, you know, than than dying
in Vietnam. And also, you know what I've been talking
a lot about kind of like the stipers in the windows,
but one of the most common ways people get killed. Well, okay,
probably the most common ways they get trapped into a
burning building, which is terrible. But one of the other

(30:12):
really common ways is that these are these are gun fights.
You know, we kind of saw this in twenty twenty.
There's a bunch there are like white store owners are
like popping out of their businesses to take pot shots
at a protesters, and like they're they're you know, one
of the people that they interviewed was a guy who
had been like walking past a store and the guy
had pulled out a gun and shot him, and he

(30:35):
had he had managed shop, but the guy next to
him got shoped, so if he took out a molotov
and like burned the store down. And this is a
lot of the kind of dynamics of this, right are
like it's not just that people are furious. It's not
just the people sort of you know, like people want
this world to burn. It's that like they are very
directly responding to the fact that the like white people
also fucking lose their minds when this starts happening, and

(30:57):
you you get this degree of sort of urban conflict
that kind of you know, we don't really have this
now no here. Yeah, like like eve, even our riots
are like largely nonviolent, like people don't shoot it out
with the cops or each other in the same way

(31:19):
that like, you know, like like it happens sometimes like
this is happening fucking all over the country. Like this
is happening in like like like you know, like like
fucking small ass cities in the Midwest, there are people
getting in gunfights, right, you know, and so eventually, Okay,
So the other very important thing about this that is

(31:40):
that's really interesting and not marked upon very much is that. Okay,
So like obviously the police in Chicago go fucking feral, right,
The National Guard commanders come in and like the general
of the National Guard goes, okay, you motherfuckers, you're gonna
kill someone. None of you are allowed to have loaded weapons.

(32:00):
You're allowed to have loaded weapons. And I mean these guys,
I'll say, like they have bayonets on their rifles. This
used to be a thing, like they used bayonets as
a form of like like a less special weapon. They
just fucking stab you with a bee and you know,
they their bayatra order to be covered. And because of this,
the Guard doesn't actually kill anyonean this dream the sixty
eight riots, unlike the Sicky seven riots where they fucking

(32:21):
murdered a bunch of people. And this was a really
smart decision by the National Guard people because if they
had started actually shooting into these crowds like this wouldn't
have been one week of really intense rioting that ends
with the Civil Rights Sack, which we'll talk about, Well,
it doesn't end with the Civil Right Sack, but like,
you know, it could have sort of gets that this

(32:42):
would have been like apocalyptic on a scale that I
don't think anyone kind of like has the capacity to imagine.
But instead they kind of, you know, there's really intense riots,
they kind of they kind of wind down over the
course of a couple of months, and like they kind
of they wind down faster in a lot of ways

(33:03):
than twenty twenty did. But on the other hand, that
is not the end of these riots. And the thing
I want to close this episode on while we're going
to talk about I feel, okay, le let's talk about
Civil Rights Act first, because it is a very very
weird piece of legislation. So like five days in now seven,
a weekend to the riots, Congress passes the Civil Rights

(33:27):
Act of nineteen sixty eight. And this is a very,
very weird piece of legislation. I mean, it's obviously this
is something that's been like frantically like scrambled out because
like this, you know, the like there are just straight
up armed uprisings in a huge portion of the United States,
and Congress's responses, so they passed the Fair Housing Act.

(33:49):
That's like, that's probably the most famous part of this bill.
It is very I mean it it has done. It's
not like a perfect piece of legislation, but it has
done a staggering amount of good, right and it is
in some sense a direct answer to the protesters demands, right,
like it does improve discrimination of sort of housing. But

(34:09):
it's also okay, there's a bunch of stuff about the
Bill of Rights applying to indigenous people that is good,
but we'll cover that. I don't know, maybe if we
do an aim occupation episode, we'll talk about that more later.
That's kind of outside the scope of this one. But
the other part of it is this absolutely dranged like
conspiracy thing about like because like so the line you know,

(34:35):
the line here as it wasn't twenty twenty, So this
is all being caused by outside agitators. So part of
this thing is what's known as the Riot Act, which
is it bans like quote travel and interstate commerce with
the intent to incite, promote, engage to participate in or
carry out a riot. It's not used very much, but

(34:55):
this is like straight up a conspiracy theory. So it's
a conspiracy theory about what happened in the nineteen sixty
seven uprising in Cambridge. So like that that uprising, like
that's the thing that produced Spireau Agnew, who was like
Nixon's deranged VP, who Nixon picked to be so deranged
that no one wouldssassinate him because asassinating him would put

(35:17):
spuiau Agnu in charge. Like Agnew had been like a liberal,
like he'd been a liberal Republican. But then there were
these riots in Cambridge sixty eight in sixty seven, and
the narrative that comes out of it is what happened
was a Black power leader named H. H. Rat Brown
came in and gave a speech and then there was
like riots, right, and this is this is the standard
line for like seventy years. What actually happened was that

(35:40):
he gave you know, rap gives Rep. Brown age. Rep.
Brown gives a very militant speech, right, Like he does
give a speech telling people to burn a school down,
like he's saying, you need to like five people. But
then everyone just goes home, as h Rap Brown is is,
you know, they're like dispersing this young woman asked to
be escort at home just and get beat up by
the police, and so h Rap Brown and thirty people

(36:00):
like okay, and so they try to go home and
the police walk up to them and start shooting them
with shotguns. Ahrap Brown gets hit by a fucking chockgun
blast and that that is the book. It was after
that that the rioting started, right, So, yeah, so that's
what actually happened, But but the memory of it is
that it was like, oh, like these these like these
black nationalists came in and they started this riot, and
like this literally is now law in the US, and

(36:23):
this is this is very famously. At the end of
this episode, we're going to talk about who this was
used against. But before wanting to do that, I need
to make it clear these riots don't end in sixty eight, right,
And in fact, I think the one that is the
most intensive these is York in York, Pennsylvania, which I
promise you the beginning of this episode we were going
to do, and that is in nineteen sixty nine. Because again,

(36:46):
like the conditions that cause these erb and uprisings like
haven't changed. So you know, like the the immediate flames
of sort of like of the Holy Week uprising, like
of this rebellion by MLK sort of you know, eventually
trickle out, but there's just more of them. So this
is another one one of the things you come across
when you research this is that like every single the

(37:07):
conventional like accepted public narrative, but why these started, They're
all wrong this one. So it's generally attributed to this
black kid lying but being set on fire and like
that did happen, but this kid's like fourteen, right, But
what actually happened was that there were two black guys
talking to a black police officer and two members of
this like white power white supremacist street gang like walked

(37:30):
up and shot them both. And this kicks off a
series of shootings, brickings, and fistfights between black and white
people like all over the city. And this is a
kind of this is also the other kind of right
in this period like we don't really have this anymore
like there, but you know there are places where just
effectively straight up race wars start. Well, you know, one

(37:52):
of the things happens here. This happens in a lot
of cities. They'll just be like a bunch of white
people in a van driving around shooting at people out
their windows and we sort you know the like this
happened in Portland, right, but it was like they were
shooting paintballs. These guys are just shooting actual guns, like
out their windows any black people they see on the street. Right,
there's there's a crowd of like eventually like protest start

(38:15):
like this, this crowd of like pretty well armed black
people and this uh and and and like a line
of cops are facing each other, and you know this
is one of these There's two sides to the story.
The cops claim that the crowd just started shooting at them,
Like everyone in the crowd claims that the cops shot
at them first, and they started shooting back, And so
there's just this fucking shootout between the cops and this

(38:35):
this giant crowd. There are like there are reports of
cops like just set up on the rooftop of a factory,
just shooting everyone they can find, like white gangs or
firebombing black houses. One of the I don't like it.
It's said that like should be infamous, but like I've
never fucking seen talked about anywhere is uh a fucking
police armored truck. There's a bunch of people who have

(38:57):
come out to their lawn to figure out what the
fuck is going on, and the police are truck rolls
up and just starts shooting them, and so, you know,
people and people start shooting back, and there's a bunch
of like like people. People eventually get sort of tried
for this. And one of the you know, one of
the things people talk about it is like, yeah, there's
like twenty guys in their houses like having a shootout

(39:18):
with this armored car because the armored car is just
fucking starting murdering everyone. And you know, the sort of
remarkable thing about this, I mean, one of the markable
things about this is that literally the day before this happens,
all of these cops had been at a police training
seminar about the best way to respond to civil unrest. Amazing,
and the police seminar and they're like, correctly, because this

(39:40):
is actually, if you are the police, the best way
to handle one of these sort of uprisings, you know,
they're told, they're told, and no one certain terms. The
best way to do this is do not confront the crowd.
Do not shoot at the crowd like you know, okay,
like do like containment, but don't go don't like walk
up and fight them, because that will make people fight
them back. And then literally the next day they are

(40:01):
having running shootouts with like the entire black population of
this town. And you know, like York is a place
that has had civil rights stupment stuff before this, it's
also has you know again like it has just literal
white power, like street gangs who the police are in.
I mean the police literally just call them the boys
like that. That's how, that's how, that's how tight these
people are.

Speaker 3 (40:20):
Right.

Speaker 2 (40:21):
But and this is the thing, you know, one of
the notes I want to close on is that like
a lot of the focus and I get why people focus,
there's a lot of the focus from sort of radical
accounts of this period is about you know, because these riots,
these uprisings like these are this is the crucible in
which sort of black power is forged in and so
There's a lot of attention paid to sort of like
black power, like people who are going to become Black

(40:43):
power leaders and people influenced by these movements like doing
arm self defense, and that is true and that is important,
but also just regular ass people are also doing this, right,
Like the guys, the twenty guys who are having a
shootout with a police armored vehicle, they are just like

(41:05):
some of them are Vietnam vets, but like they're just
they're they're just regular people who saw the police fucking
roll up like into like roll up on a fucking
house and start shooting people. There is a sense in
you know, in this period that the thing that guns
are for are to protect you from the government, right,

(41:26):
and people actually believe this, like JFK. You know, one
there's a really good article in Strange Matters called the
Double Kind of Resergency that's about this, that talks about
how JFK literally gives a speech where he talks about
like again, who is a liberal gives a speech about
how like, yeah, we need guns to defend it yourself
against the tyurity of the government, and yeah, like if

(41:46):
you are a black person in York in nineteen sixty
nine and you are watching the police from an armored
vehicle shooting people on their front lawn. The response people
had was, Okay, we're gonna die here or we're gonna
die in Vietnam, and so I'm gonna I'm I am
choosing to die here fighting the cops. And that's I
think that's important. I think because a lot of you know,

(42:09):
a lot of what we're going to talk about next. Right,
are these student radicals. And everyone now looks at these
student radicals and goes, these people were insane. These people
were stupid. These people didn't understand what was happening. There
was no way a revolution was ever going to happen.
And they're wrong. Those people are fucking wrong. What these

(42:30):
people were watching, right, They were watching this. They were
watching hundreds of cities going into open revolt. They were
watching people having shootouts with the cops. They were watching
and people people tended not to shoot the national Guard
because people had enough military experience to realize that if
you try to shoot the national Guard, you're not gonna
win because they have machine guns and stuff. But people
did it still right there, there are still numbers of

(42:51):
this that they are watching. They're watching armed up risings
in basically every every major in mind not even major,
every like minor American city has one of these. And
these people assume that this is the revolution and that
you know, like that this is this is the opening
stage of the revolution, that it's coming, and they weren't
they weren't wrong to think that, like it didn't happen.

(43:16):
But it's not that these people, like, you know, it's
not that these people were sort of nive or foolish.
It was they they had the same rational reaction to
what they were seeing that the f behind the Nixton
administration did. And I think that's the place I'm going
to close. So I think the next one of these
episodes is going to be about the Columbia student occupations.

(43:37):
But the one after that, well, I m might be
basically staying there, but we are eventually going to get
to the DNC all part. And I promised you the
a thing about the people who were charged under the
Riot Act. Yeah, so the people who are going to
the most videos, people who are going to be charged
with this like interstate riot shit or the Chicago seven
seven people arrested at the Democratic National Convention. So, uh,

(44:00):
when we come back in however long it takes to
do the rest of the ninety six yea, so for
you do. Before we get to that, we will come
back to this Civil Rights Act fucking over a bunch
of people's lives.

Speaker 5 (44:13):
I'm going to look forward to that. Hi everyone, and
welcome to the podcast. It could happen here. It's a
podcast about the world falling apart and people putting it

(44:35):
back together. Today we've got a little bit of both.
I'm joined again by Mick and Rose. This time we'll
be discussing the treatment of migrants inside the European Union,
and specifically the treatment of migrants by the government of
the Netherlands in a place called ter Apple. Welcome to
the show, guys. Thanks thanks for joining us.

Speaker 3 (44:51):
Thanks good to be back, Thanks for having us.

Speaker 5 (44:54):
Yeah, thank you. It's good to have you. I wonder
if you could beg game. We were talking about this
before you record it, and I think it's very obviously
the migration laws in Europe are very different, but so
the situations with regard to shelter and just like facilities,
with the US being so big, we have them dotted
all over the place. So you were just explaining that

(45:16):
this is a place where anyone who wants to register
for asylum in the Netherlands has to go.

Speaker 3 (45:21):
Is that right? Yeah, so that's almost entirely right. So
everyone who arrives in the nets and wants to ask
for asylum has to go to this village all the
way on the northeastern border with Germany, and that's where
the only registration center is for most asylum seekers. I
believe only people who do family reunification can go somewhere else.

(45:42):
But yeah, we have like one registration center for the
entire country. And yeah, yeah, I mean we have a
tiny country, but it still became a huge bubblewreck because
it was the only one.

Speaker 5 (45:57):
So it didn't work out that well apparently, and that's
why we're talking about it, right, So just so people
understand where these people are in their asylum journey, Like
they've entered the EU, right, and then they've traveled to
the Netlands, which is a country where they want to
claim asylum.

Speaker 3 (46:14):
Is that right? Yeah, exactly, So basically they arrived at
their final destination. So most people that I met inter
Apple had already been traveling for weeks, months, sometimes years,
depending on how much money and luck they had. Usually
so Yeah, they would have either crossed the Mediterranean Sea

(46:34):
or gotten into Europe through Turkey or Belarus, and then
they would have crossed many many borders and many many
border guards and fences yep. And they would have gotten
stuck in places for weeks or months before they could
move on again. Yeah. And people who would actually go
to the registration center in the Netherlands, that means they

(46:55):
wanted to ask for asylum there and probably stay there.

Speaker 5 (46:59):
Right, that would be their country of residents going forward.
So can you explain I mean, I'm looking at pictures
of it right now. It's not hard if you if
you want to look at pictures, you can spell it
t er A p e L. But can you explain
the condition said, because looking at it, it's atrocious, like
from the pictures I can see.

Speaker 3 (47:20):
Yeah, I mean I saw many pictures before I went
there myself. It's basically just a tenth camp, So I
mean it's a it's a shelter, right, So it's like
it used to be an army base. It can hold
two thousand people. It has loads of like small housing
units where people live. It has like a lot of
offices for all the registration steps, and like the yeah,

(47:43):
the immigration service, the police, the shelter organization like blah blah, blah,
bah blah. But so like one and a half year ago,
there was a lack of shelter in the whole country,
but specifically also went there Apple and yeah, somehow the
authorities decided that the solution would be to just leave
people on the field that was inside of the registration

(48:05):
in front of the registration center, and so there was
just an informal camp, like people were sleeping outside for
weeks or months, not even intense, but they would have
like huge kind of banners or tarps that would kind
of provide some shade. So it was like midsummer. It
was a very dry summer, which for us was crazy lucky.

(48:28):
The climate activists were not happy, but we were happy. Yeah.
So yeah, people were just like laying on the ground
and that was Yeah, there were some that water that
were like dixies for toilets that were obviously gross, and
so yeah, what you would see if you google it,
you just see people lying on the field and just

(48:50):
being there for extended periods of time. But when I
personally went there the first time, it was kind of
worse than what I expected. It to be because I
think the level of neglect was not visible on photo
or on video. So people would come to us and
tell us that they had show us really big wounds
that were infected, or people would come and tell us like, hey,

(49:13):
I had a heart attack a few weeks ago, I
need this medication, or I have diabetes or whatever. So
there was just this dystopian situation of this enormous facility
that can hold thousands of people and then a big
fence around it, and then people with clearly like very
serious medical conditions just standing in front of the gate

(49:34):
and the security guards just being like now maybe like
a staff member will show up today, maybe not, but
like we don't care how dangerous situation is or something. Yeah,
just the fact that there was like no proper place
to wash, there were no toilets. The food was like, yeah,
I worked in camps across the borders, across European borders,

(49:57):
and I've seen a lot of like horrible food. But
like in their Apple, they just decided to rent a Yeah,
like if you have like a party or something, you
would just rent this place that will just sell fries.
So they were just giving fries to people like every
single day Jesus. Yeah, just I mean just just pre

(50:21):
packed food from the supermarket would be more healthy than
just fries every day for a month, right, Yeah, So
just a level of like, yeah, neglect, lack of care.
It was just even even more than what you can
see on the pictures.

Speaker 5 (50:37):
Yeah, and like a complete like lack of like failure
of the government to address their basic rights and needs.
And how long can people expect to spend in that situation? Then,
like they have to they have to go there, right,
like if they want the asylum, they have to go there.

Speaker 3 (50:53):
Yeah, so like the the irony wasn't the only way
to get shelter was to be there and then be
without shelter or you wouldn't know how long like right, Yeah,
I mean sometimes it was hours, especially for their women
and children. It was usually they would usually be let
in in the evening, but yeah, men definitely days sometimes
if they were not lucky, weeks, And it was just

(51:15):
also so like unclear, so people would just not get
any information. They would be there and then all of
a sudden hear someone shout and all start running towards
where the shout came from because maybe they would be
let in or yeah, I don't know, like guards would
just shout at them in Dutch and then be like
why don't you understand me? Or like it was all

(51:37):
just like consciously like it's so unnecessarily chaotic and therefore
also like people pushing around police getting like intimidating and
violent and yeah, just this very chaotic and disrespectful approach
to people.

Speaker 5 (51:55):
Yeah, it's worryingly similar to what we see in open
aired tension sites here, Like they'll do it. People are
outside there too, they have an exce no shelter there too.
We volunteers make the food, so it's better than that. Yeah,
they'll turn up in a bus, like I've seen them
turn up in a bus and just shout run and
like if you understand English, you run. If you don't

(52:18):
stand English, you see everyone else running, so you run.
And then they can only take thirty people, and you've
now had more than one hundred people come stampeding across,
like just if you've got to grab their bags and everything,
and it's yeah, completely unnecessarily chaotic and cruel. And then
once they let in, what can they expect from that?
They're saying it like a barracks or something. While there

(52:39):
while they're processed.

Speaker 3 (52:42):
Yeah, so it was very very chaotic. I think it
took them like almost a year to actually process everyone,
because they would just if a municipality would say like, oh,
I have space for a hundred people, they would just
randomly put one hundred people in the bus and drop
them there, and then a year later it would run
that they were never properly registered or something. But yeah,

(53:03):
I think like there was a night shelter not so
far away from their apple, so that was always like
late in the evening, there would still be a few
buses going to that night shelter. That was just a
big sports hall I think, full of beds, bunk beds
or yeah, like stretchers, and yeah, no privacy, just like
hundreds of people in one room. The lights would stay

(53:26):
on all night for safety reasons. But of course that's
also very cruel too.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:31):
Yeah, and then if people would get registered, they would
be usually sent to like a temporary emergency shelter because
there was such a huge shortage of regular shelters. So
some people were living in sports halls without much privacy
for like half year or a year or some people
are still there, to be honest.

Speaker 5 (53:51):
Wow, Yeah, that's crazy. It's atrocious, talking of atrocious. Unfortunately,
we have to break the ad.

Speaker 3 (53:58):
We'll do that.

Speaker 5 (54:10):
Okay, we're back. Hope you do this out of it,
and we're talking about ter Apple, this, I guess migrant
reception registration center in the Netherlands. One thing I saw
when I was sort of doing some reading about this
recently was that babies born TOEP mothers or people in
the te Apple asylum center are seven times more likely

(54:31):
to die in or around perfect That is shocking. Yeah,
so is there just no access to medical care of
people like delivering babies in this asylum center.

Speaker 3 (54:44):
Well, I think the excuse of the government is that
they didn't have proper care during the pregnancy because they
were still traveling. Of course that is often the case,
Like yeah, yeah, but still it's insanely high. Seven times
more people dying, and especially when this super chaotic situation occurred, Like, yeah,

(55:09):
we would have people in the field that we were
suspecting they were getting like hypothermia or you know, some
sort of yeah, strong physical reaction to the tough conditions
they were facing. But they could be dropped in the
night shelter, picked out again in the morning, being back
on the field, staying on the field for a few nights,

(55:29):
again going for one night to a night shelter, being
transferred to an emergency camp for two days, being transferred
to another emergency camp for three days. And during this
time there is no coherence medical care, right, And of
course it would usually be a little bit better for
women and especially pregnant women, so they would try to
put them in a more stable place and like not

(55:50):
move them around that much, but trying is yeah, they
would not always actually manage to do that, So they've
definitely also been comple planes of yeah, of people and
especially like pregnant pregnant women still being forced to move
to a different camp, like really close to the data
the baby was expected to come, and yeah, that definitely

(56:14):
doesn't help. So, I mean, the care on the field
was absolutely horrendous. I think women were usually not exposed
to it that much because we do. Yeah, there's also
this weird sexism in migration that men can always suffer more,
which is not always true, especially if you're not filtering
out the really thick men either, because I was definitely

(56:35):
a lot more healthy than a lot of the men
walking around there. But yeah, at least in the case
of like pregnant women, I think they would be moved
out pretty quickly. But yeah, it was chaotic. And then
also you have like, of course you have a lot
of people who speak Arabic or Farsi or digit Yeah,
but you also have people who speak on a link
language that is only spoken in a province of a country.

(56:58):
You know, Like it's very hard to get proper trends
for like all the possible languages of people that apply
for asylum. Yeah, but yeah, I mean I definitely think
the conditions, especially when when there were so many people
living in really bad emergency shelters or even on the streets,
did not help babies at all.

Speaker 5 (57:19):
Yeah, oh, anyone, I guess no. Can you explained then,
like this situation arose about a year ago, I think, right,
so you are part of a group of people that
were able to respond to help, like at least, I
guess make it a little bit less terrible. Can you
explain a little bit about the group, about what you're

(57:41):
able to do.

Speaker 3 (57:42):
Yeah, so, I mean we just so, I was already
a part of my grades, which is an organization that
like I personally worked on the borders, like providing food
and clothes and stuff like that to people on the move,
and Migrades is more like also more an activist organizations
or organizing protest or campaigns and stuff like that. So
we just like went to see what was going on,

(58:05):
and then we very quickly, yeah, realized that it was
worse than it looked, but also that there were so
many basic things that were not being done by the
government that we were actually able to do. So yeah,
we just asked around a lot for hours and hours,
like what do you need, what's going on? What is missing?
Like what is your primary issue at this moment, And
one of the main things people were saying was like

(58:26):
the food is fucking driving them and saying like yeah, yeah,
just the lack of flavor, but also just the lack
of health and yeah, people would just get like diarrhea
and stuff. And then it turned out, of course that
there were already some people around that wanted to do stuff,
so we just had a big call and then it
turned out that there was like this squads where they

(58:49):
had a big kitchen and they were like, yeah, of
course you can cook here. And then there was another
like former squads where they also had a big soup kitchen.
And then I was like, okay, this is like it
was a big like media store was a big thing
for the Netherlands, that this was happening because we have
this like, yeah, idea that we are perfectly organized and
blah blah blah, and that like all the bad things

(59:12):
happen on the border is still like at the like
with a very clear role of our politicians, but like somehow, yeah,
there's not much talk about that. So it was it
was like on the front page every single day for weeks.
So I thought, yeah, like because the people that were
already trying to do something, they were like how can
we get enough money for the groceries and how can
we get volunteers? And then yeah, I was like we'll manage.

(59:38):
If there's one thing I learned from the border, it's
like if you start doing something, people will will come
and join. Yeah, and we first said like, okay, let's
just cook two times a week, you know, one time
in the squad and another time in the other squad,
and then it's like super doable, blah blah blah. And
then basically we started and it's yeah, there was just
no way back. So yeah, we said like Okay, let's

(01:00:03):
hand out food twice, and then yeah, I just went
like day and nights being on the field, and quite
quickly we moved to food distribution every day because there
were so many people in the area that wanted to cook.
There was like an Islamic group that were churches that
were like, yeah, from all over the country. People were
coming into action, and yeah, so first we did food

(01:00:26):
kind of because people really wanted it, but also kind
of because we just knew how to do it because
we had some people who had a big kitchen and
some experience cooking in large quantities. And then quickly it
became like colder and rainy as well, so we started
to move towards leaving bags and ponchos and just yeah,
big distributions. And then we also started to hand out tents,

(01:00:48):
and then we got into a whole fight with the
municipality and the police because they were constantly like confiscating
the tents. Yeah, but yeah, we just started with what
we thought would be feasible to do, I guess, and
then it kind of escalated really quickly to yeah, us
being kind of responsible for a lot of basic needs

(01:01:08):
of everyone on the field, and also us monitoring, like
informing journalists because like the government would be like, oh, no,
there's nobody there on the field right now, and then
we would.

Speaker 4 (01:01:18):
Just like.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
Five minutes, I'd be like no one. Yeah. So we
also quite quickly like became a big part of the
whole political debate where like the government was saying one
thing and we were saying another, and like they were
all all the time trying to pretend that nothing was
wrong and everything was fine, and yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:01:41):
Yeah, I think it's it's such a common it's sadly
a common experience, right, It's being like a the government
is lying to you, Like you can see this with
your eyes that you're being lied to, and be like
they're just going to leave these people if we don't
do certain thing, no one will. Something that we've had here,
we see it, to say, every border in Europe more

(01:02:02):
or less, right, Like it's just a consequence of the
way that like neoliberal capitalism has decided to deal with migration,
which is to make to be as cruel as possible
and to make it as hard as possible for people.
I wonder, like you've been organizing there, at least in
this place for like a year. I think I want

(01:02:23):
this to be instructive for people, because, like, we've been
organizing here too, and we've learned a lot. Are there
things that you've learned that you think other people could
take from the organizing or or like and make you
you're also a part of organizing in your area. If
either of you have things that you've learned about specifically
organizing to help migrants, I'd love to hear them.

Speaker 3 (01:02:45):
Oh, so many things. I'm probably gonna forget some of
the things I've learned. Well. I think one thing that
I've learned and that I've learned over and over and
over again, is that if you start doing something, you
will find people who will join. And I think that's
one of the scary things when you see a gigantic
problem and even if you know a concrete thing that
you can do about it, it's still Yeah, there is

(01:03:07):
a lot of things that you cannot do as a
single human being. But I found this true in many
countries across the world, that if you just start and
you say that you're doing it, people will actually join.
And I found that especially like Painful in their Apple
that we were on this field and there had been

(01:03:27):
so much media attention and there was nobody there, Like
everyone was speaking about it and no one was doing anything,
and it was kind of depressing to witness that and
to feel that nobody it felt like nobody cared. Right,
But as soon as we just started with this small
thing like Okay, you can donate to groceries, you can

(01:03:48):
come help cook, you can come help do the dishes,
like concrete things that you can do, yeah, we were
like I think we got like a thousand people who
wanted to volunteer with us, which was like way too much.
We never got back to all of them because it
was just insane. We did not need thousand people to
cook food for two hundred people, so like, yeah, but

(01:04:09):
we just started, and I think, yeah, I think that
was really helpful, or I think that can be very
helpful if you're thinking about doing something like start small,
but don't be afraid that it will not kind of
grow because people will join and people will make it
into something bigger. Also a great lesson that I learned, Well,

(01:04:32):
it's very basic and understandable actually, but like try to
make Yeah, my experience is usually with like a mass distribution,
so you have hundreds of people, you have food or
blankets or whatever something that people really need. And it's
like so important to really plan the distribution well and
to really inform and discuss with people, because that's one

(01:04:54):
thing that also happened in their Apple that at some
point people were just dumping shit on the field. They
were actually causing fights and causing tensions between people because
you cannot you kind of show but five sleeping bags
when hundreds of people are in desperate need of a
sleeping back. You know, like that's kind of inhumane. And
I get that people have good intentions, and I get

(01:05:15):
that it could potentially mean that five people are less cold,
but like, yeah, some sort of shelter is a basic necessity,
so you cannot give that to a few and not
to others. So yeah, I think like, like the first
time we did the distribution into Apple, I was kind
of scared because people were spreading, like there was a
lot of rumor about like, oh, it's so violent and

(01:05:37):
these people are like blah blah blah, and and of
course I kind of didn't believe it because I worked
with migrants for a long time and I know that
they're human being, you know, and they're not so like
shockingly different than but I've also learned that you need
to be They did not learn at all to trust
anyone there because like people were lying to them. People

(01:06:00):
were telling them they would get shelter in the night,
but they would not. People would say that they would
see a doctor, and they would not get to see
a doctor. So like the I think it's really important
if you want to tell people that you take them
seriously and that you build up some trust. So for example,
we we went the first time, we cooked so much food.
We were like, it's we cannot make it run out,

(01:06:20):
you know, like we want everyone to get as much
as they want and more. Yea, even if we have
to trash, because like these people for once have to
get the feeling that it's like that we're there for everyone.
So like if you make if you do a mass distribution,
you usually make light lines and people have to like
wait for their turn. But we spent hours just telling

(01:06:40):
people like, hey, we're going to give out food. There's
so much food, you know, don't worry like it's to
and then also actually live up to that of course,
make sure that there is enough food. Yeah, and like
try to make it like fun. And this is like
it's kind of awkward because you like, I kind of
feel awkward of putting people in a line and telling

(01:07:01):
them to wait, and you know, like that because you're
kind of being bossing them around. But yeah, if it
goes well once and everyone just feels like, hey, here
I don't have to fight to get to the front,
and here I can just chill out and we can
make a chat with each other and we can just
you know, smile and like wish each other a good day,
then Yeah, I think it's also really important to try

(01:07:23):
to make distributions kind of fun or at least as
chill as possible, and to like try to not make
it another survival of the fittest moment, because that is
exactly what the state is pushing people into, and that
is what I don't want people to get into.

Speaker 5 (01:07:39):
Yeah, I think that's very true. Like we've definitely learned
a lot of those similar things. I can't like put
enough emphasis on planning before you just show up and
do a distribution, like we had so many fucking chaotic
it's not on. Yeah, people are fighting hungry and they've
had to fight to get fed for the duration of
the journey, be the days, months, of years and like

(01:08:02):
it's no, they're doing what like they understand to be
the necessary thing.

Speaker 3 (01:08:08):
Yeah, and there's it's absolutely not like humane to just
recreate that that mode, you know, like it's amazing to
be able to create a nice atmosphere where people can
relax and feel safe and feel finally treated like equally
and somehow like fairly again, even if it's just for
a very simple meal. But it's yeah, I mean you

(01:08:31):
can already get moody if someone jumps in front of
you at the supermarket, you know, like I can get
moody with that. But it's like that, but then like
way more extreme and for actual, yeah, things that you
need to survive all the time, Like it's it's yeah,
it's hard to imagine, I guess if you've never really
been in a survival situation. But yeah, it can be

(01:08:52):
so much fun. Also, maybe that's another good one, because
I remember people were feeling sorry for me when I
was working there, like, oh my god, this must be
so hard, and I mean it was fucking hard sometimes,
like I have literally been standing there like pushing away
tears and being like no, I'm fine, but I'm not

(01:09:12):
fine at all. But also it's fun, like you're just
joking around and you're making each other happy, and you
feel like you're part of something bigger and you feel
I think it's very empowering to be like the state
is fucking it up and we can actually do it better.

Speaker 5 (01:09:27):
Yeah, very much. So, Like I think it's very like affirming, right,
like to be like we don't need like anyone telling
us what to do, We don't need anyone trying to
control us, like we can we can take care of
these people ourselves without creating mechanisms of control. And like

(01:09:48):
I think for me, that was like one of the
reasons I really enjoy doing it is that that like
me and my friends can care for these people. And
it's like I don't know from my perspective, like I've
had conversations with hundreds of people from all around the world.
Like we would do things like play music while people
waited for food. If we had a friend who was
able to play music, you know, we had enough enough people.

(01:10:09):
We'd always recruit people from among the migrants to help
us with food distribution, which turned out to be great
because like they taught us different words in different languages
and like, you know, I can say hot source in
like twenty five languages now and like it was important

(01:10:29):
parts yeah yeah right there real to death. But yeah,
it was very and then like I remember one night
it was like in Septemme it was so cold, one
of the cold nights. It was in September and it
was just about freezing, and like there were very few
of us back then, and we my friend had some
guitars and like drums and we like parked the band

(01:10:50):
to block the wind and everyone sat around and played
the guitar and they played their different songs and like
we had all these really happy moments. Yeah it's not
like we said around growing all the time, like it said.

Speaker 3 (01:11:01):
No, not at all, very empowering, I think, No, I
think it's important what you just said that. Also, a
lot of work can be done by people themselves. So
I remember a volunteer being like I want to give
out the food, whereas these guys were giving out the
food every day and they had this whole routine and
they were much faster, and you know, like and also
it's not about you feeling good about.

Speaker 5 (01:11:23):
You know, like yeah, yeah, not that to help you.

Speaker 3 (01:11:26):
Yeah, you know, like listen to people like really spend
a lot of time understanding what people need and what
they want and because it's really often not what you expect,
and yeah, make sure that people can also do stuff themselves.
And also like, for example, if we would have tents
but not for everyone, or blankets but not for everyone,

(01:11:48):
instead of making like a very rigid decision of like
you get it and you don't, it's so useful to
just talk to people and to just be like, hey, sorry,
this is a situation or yeah. Like there were a
lot of fights because families were always allowed to go first,
but it was not really clearly communicated by the government's
like can facility and stuff. But when we were just

(01:12:11):
discussing with them, like hey, how can we make the
distribution more chill, they were like, well, can women and
children and elderly people just go first? And I was
like yeah, or you know, I mean, it's not really
any of my business, like yeah, And then if everyone
just understands it and it's kind of clear and understandable

(01:12:31):
and explained, it's like so much more chill. Whereas if
you're just shouting at people and assuming that they will
not understand or assume that they will be selfish, you
are also forcing people into that role. Yes, and I
think it's really beautiful if you can snap out of that,
and you could, yeah, you can just be somewhat equal,
even though like legally or in a completely different situations.

Speaker 5 (01:12:55):
Yeah, totally.

Speaker 6 (01:12:57):
So what you're telling me is that if you talk
to people and treat them as human beings, that has
positive results for bad situations.

Speaker 3 (01:13:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:13:11):
This is a hot take, a very hot take.

Speaker 3 (01:13:14):
Yeah, breaking news.

Speaker 6 (01:13:19):
I don't have nearly the amount of field experience that
Rose has. So but another thing that I think is
really important to highlight is that it's not just it's
not just the necessities I was part of. I did
first date at the No Border camp near to the
Apple last summer, and some of the activists there that

(01:13:44):
a really admirable job day. I think they did not
go to their apple because it was too politically hot
at the time, so they went to different centers where
migrants were living, and they handed out toys and they
hired a bouncy.

Speaker 2 (01:13:58):
Castle for the kids to play.

Speaker 6 (01:14:02):
It was really it was really basic in the sense
that it didn't need like massive fund massive funds or
incredible abouance of organization that you need bureaucracies to handle.
It was just people thinking of ways, like hey, how
can we make these people happier or more comfortable or

(01:14:23):
at least forget for like a few hours about like
this situation therein because our media likes to, you know,
dive onto every time there's a fight in a migrant center, right,
but it's rarely discussed that if you put a lot
of people in a stressful situation on top of each other,

(01:14:45):
people will there will be tensions and there will be fights.

Speaker 5 (01:14:49):
Which is I think we don't cover that enough, right, No, And.

Speaker 3 (01:14:54):
Also nobody really cares because I think it's it's one
of the most beautiful things for me as well. I said,
the solidarity that people show each other, and like, yeah,
you don't even see it half the time, but people
give each other like their waterproof jackets or I remember
one night it was a horrible night in Fair Apple
and we didn't expect people to be there, and all

(01:15:15):
of a sudden there were hundreds of people and they
hadn't had food since the morning. And then people in
the camp they all get microwave meals and they kind
of hate them, but like they all had kind of
a stash, so they all like started to eat up
microwave meals and bring them outside, and they were actually
way more able to provide food on such a short
notice than we were. And it was not the best food,

(01:15:39):
but like everyone had food and they were even sharing
it with us, and we were all just like so
glad to be eating after ten hours in the rain
and in the cold. And yeah, people, Yeah, I don't know,
carrying luggage for someone who has Like it's all the
time you see people standing up for each other, and
I think that is honestly an amazing thing, and maybe

(01:16:01):
more tough situations bring that out somehow more as well,
Like it's easy for most people in western societies to
be very individualists and live very isolated and yeah, non
fulfilling lives, but then if you are in this kind
of situation, in some ways, it can also bring out
the best in people.

Speaker 5 (01:16:20):
Yeah, I think so, Like we were just talking about
before we started, how like yesterday I was out helping
down by the border and around the two Mauritanian guys
who had carried a Chinese man with a leg injury
for two days and they couldn't even share the same language,
and like that walk is now that hike is no joke,
Like I do that with a big backpack full of water.

(01:16:41):
That's hard, and I do a lot of hiking, but
I wasn't carrying another human. You know, it can actually
really bring out some incredible acts of kindness. And I wondered, guys,

(01:17:03):
we're running close to the end of a signed time.
If people want to help, either they say they're in
the Netherlands and they want to come and help, or
if they want to help in a financial way, or
maybe they can do some remote so help. Maybe they
can respond to the thousand volunteers for email for you, Yeah,
how can they do that?

Speaker 3 (01:17:25):
Yeah, donations are always welcome. We're currently not working in
their apple, but it doesn't look good. So usually the
influx is highest in summer and early autumn. And we
have like a far right majority in parliament since a
few months, so we're wouldn't be surprised if we have

(01:17:47):
people out on the streets again. Also, I think there's
a very big chance that the shelters for undocumented people
might close, so we would have a lot of people
on the streets then, So we need a lot of
solidarity and a lot of things, like a lot Yeah,
so like, yeah, financial support is always welcome, but I
think it's also really important that people think about what

(01:18:08):
they can do in their lives and that it is
also something that they can manage inside of their lives.
So like not everyone can drop everything and yeah, move
to the other side of the country or whatever, but
if you can host one person, or if you can
support someone else who's hosting, like there are ways. I

(01:18:29):
think migrats it does not have like all the options
to volunteer, but like we really hope that there will
be a lot of networks of solidarity that yeah, we
just need them across the country, I think, and I
do think there's like a serious risk of like more
criminalization of aid workers. We were also criminalized for handing
out tents. I got a letter that said that I

(01:18:51):
risk like three months of imprisonment for handing out tents.
Oh wow, Yeah, but that's democracy.

Speaker 5 (01:19:01):
Yeah, we need that European social democracy model that everyone's
talking about.

Speaker 3 (01:19:06):
Yeah, we are just doing great. Yeah yeah, And so,
like tents were constantly confiscated and stuff, and it was
intense there because people had to be there to get sheltered,
which they legally were entitled to. But it is a
bigger trend, so regular homeless people will also see their
tents confiscated or smashed without them getting an offer to
get into a shelter. Right. So, I think the criminalization

(01:19:28):
in our case was a bit extreme because most of
the criminalization had to do with at least a very
vague relationship with like smuggling or people crossing borders, whereas
like handing out senses like the most humanitarian, basic thing
that you can possibly do, and somehow they still thought
it was a good idea to criminalize that. Yeah, I

(01:19:48):
think we need to like prepare for the fact that
our borders and our migration policies are going to get
more cruel and that the only thing that we can
do to help is like really strong works of solidarity
and resistance, and that we might sometimes risk prison time,
but that we still probably need to do it because

(01:20:08):
the alternative is that we're just letting people be destroyed
in the system.

Speaker 5 (01:20:14):
I think that's very very good, Mike, Do you have
anything adworking people for you find more ways to support,
ways to show solidarity.

Speaker 6 (01:20:23):
I think what I plugged last time, like that Polish
Front text campaign, find your local activist group.

Speaker 3 (01:20:30):
Or started because we exactly exactly. Even if you're just
one person, that's like.

Speaker 6 (01:20:39):
Yeah, like through social media, you can find a lot
of people. Find your local squad, they will be they
will want to help.

Speaker 2 (01:20:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:20:48):
Oh and maybe what you just said, like there's every
year no border camp somewhere in another one, so that's
also a good place to start.

Speaker 6 (01:20:55):
Yeah, yeah, yes, you can find them on Instagram. I
think I'm not on Instagram. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:21:06):
Yeah, it's there.

Speaker 6 (01:21:07):
That's that. That's definitely an option. Atmosphere is great. There,
I don't I'm not on the socials, so you can't
find me if you want to. I'm sorry. And well
I'm also like Rosa you said, I do some stuff
with like a first aid collective. So if you guys
are if you are doing something and you you're like, hey,

(01:21:30):
we could use some people with some degree of medical training,
reach out to me. You have my contacts, because that
is the kind of thing I will most definitely get
well excited is the wrong words.

Speaker 3 (01:21:46):
If she hits evanitser Apple, we could really use some
first aid as well, then yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:21:51):
Yeah, yeah, reach out. I will I will gladly come
over there and with all the medical supplies that are
scuttered around my room.

Speaker 5 (01:22:04):
Yeah, that's I think that's a good illustration though, right
to finish up, Like, everybody has a skill that we
can use, Like you might not think you do, but
you probably do. Like someone knitted hats for us, you know,
if you're a person who likes to knit. And we
had people who didn't think they had much to offer
and then came and just made sandwiches. And they created

(01:22:25):
a method for making sandwiches in bulk that like allowed
us to make more sandwiches more quickly. Everybody has even
if you want to be the person who washes the blankets,
and that's a massive task. It means somebody's warm at night.

Speaker 3 (01:22:39):
Yeah, that's an insane test. And also like maybe the
the more intimidating fast, Like I think it could be
intimidating to be like, oh, we're going to I don't know,
hundreds of men and everyone says they're scary, but indeed
there's also so much things happening in the background, like
collecting blankets, getting clothes, getting groceries, Like there's so so

(01:23:02):
many layers to it. And it can also be that
you collect end blankets, but like hundreds of people collect
end blankets, right. So it's also you're always part of
something bigger and there's always a there's always I think
that it's always very good to think that, Like, if
you're faced with a big problem, it's very hard to
get to the solution of it, but at the same time,

(01:23:23):
it's very easy to do a tiny thing about it.
And I think it's much more useful to do that
tiny thing than to be like, oh, I can never
get to the real solution of this problem, And in
the end you will kind of get to it by
doing that with more and more people and actually building
up collective power and resistance.

Speaker 6 (01:23:43):
Yeah, about the collecting thing, like, yeah, for example, I
know my parents still have like old toys from when
we and my brother were younger. If you're in an
area with a refugee center, you could always just give
those toys to the people there. If you have old
old children's books or something, people can use that to
get a grasp on the Gibberish that is the Dutch language.

(01:24:06):
These little things also matter a lot, and it's something
very impactful that you can do that doesn't take much
of your own effort.

Speaker 5 (01:24:16):
Yeah, it's very low threshold, right, and it makes a
huge difference. It makes someone feel cared for and welcome.
That can make all the difference in the world. And
what is Can you just spell out the migreat website
for us?

Speaker 3 (01:24:28):
Uh huh m I G R E A T dot.

Speaker 2 (01:24:32):
Org dot org.

Speaker 3 (01:24:33):
Perfect, It's like, migration is great, migrat migreat.

Speaker 5 (01:24:36):
Yeah, all right, thank you so much, both of you.

Speaker 3 (01:24:42):
Thanks, thank you for having us.

Speaker 4 (01:24:58):
Welcome to what could happen here? The show about things
falling apart, and often what's falling apart is kind of
our general agreed upon sense of what reality is, and
that's kind of what we're talking about here.

Speaker 2 (01:25:09):
Today.

Speaker 4 (01:25:09):
We're going to talk about the latest batch of new
transgender conspiracy theories. And to join me in this exciting
journey is Mia Wong.

Speaker 2 (01:25:20):
Hello, Miya. You know, why is it that whatever we're
covering transgender conspiracy, it's not like conspiracies that trans people
made up. It's always conspiracies about trans people. It's like, like,
can we never get one that like.

Speaker 4 (01:25:33):
Often I can't remember the last time I had like
a positive Pride Month episode, which I feel kind of
bad about, but I don't know. It's still an interesting
topic and I've not seen this discussed as much as
that should be. And you know, last week, I really
thought I was going to have, you know, a difficult
work week researching Trump pornography. I thought that'd be, like,

(01:25:54):
you know, the low part of my month. But it
turns out spending three days to sifting through mass Shooter
is actually much worse, much worse than looking through Trump board.

Speaker 2 (01:26:05):
So Jarisy, can I can?

Speaker 3 (01:26:06):
I can? I can?

Speaker 2 (01:26:06):
I recommend that you two spend your time listening to
a bunch of rioters talking about the absolute worst time
of their life. Much better, all right, So let's get
into it. We're gonna talk first about video games. I'm
gonna quote a tweet from a kind of failure of
a far right influencer, which is exciting because they're mostly

(01:26:27):
gonna be talking about successful ones. But is this guy
named ben ko uk flag in bio, so opinion immediately discarded.
But he has said a few days ago quote Activision's
Call of Duty has added transgender bullets to the game
in honor of Pride Month, so you can literally play

(01:26:47):
as a transgender mass shooter unquote. This tweet was almost
ripped word for word by Ian Miles Chung basically said
the exact same thing, except you said role play, not play.
Extremely funny and I did not realize the bullets themselves
identified as trans. But good for she her they them,

(01:27:08):
I guess. So we started to see this claim repeated
through the anti trans far right grifter media space right.
Limbs of TikTok said that quote call of Duty is
now enabling kids to rule play being a literal trans terrorist.
And for some reason, whenever Limbs of TikTok writes terrorists,
she asterix out the o's.

Speaker 4 (01:27:30):
I don't know why, but this this started to pick
up steam. There was an article in Glenn Beck's The
Blaze quote call of Duty Pride Bundle let's players simulate
murder using trans flag adorned guns and bullets.

Speaker 2 (01:27:44):
I'm so excited for these people to fi to find
out about counter strike. There are gonna be literally so many,
so many articles. They just have the video clip of
the thing in places at the n words says terrorists win.

Speaker 4 (01:27:57):
The Quartering wrote, call of Duty is so trans Pride
bullets whatevery mass shooter wants. So what's going on here?
Cause this, you know, if you're not as online as
some of us, some other people are you know, this
is maybe confusing. Why are they saying that trans people
are all mass shooters?

Speaker 2 (01:28:18):
Now?

Speaker 4 (01:28:18):
What's going on?

Speaker 5 (01:28:19):
And you know?

Speaker 4 (01:28:20):
And also if you're thinking it's kind of odd that
there would be a Call of Duty update where you
can literally play as a transgender mass shooter and shoot
transgender bullets, you would be right because that never happened.
It's false, no way, not this time.

Speaker 2 (01:28:35):
We created it.

Speaker 4 (01:28:36):
Not this time. No, not this time. So let's get
into what's really going on with this Call of Duty
Pride update, and then we'll discuss why so many of
these far right influences are pushing this kind of trans
terrorist story. So on June first, Activision did release an
update for the terrible new Call of Duty Modern Warfare three.
It contained anime mecha skins and seven free weapon skins

(01:28:58):
themed after various Pride flegs. Now, some would argue that
the mechasuits are essentially also Pride themed, but I digress.
For this Pride Weapon Camo pack, it will color your
gun with the flag of your choosing. One of the
said flags is the blue, pink and white trans flag. Yet,
if you apply the trans skin to any of the
regular guns in the game, the bullets will not be trans'd.

(01:29:19):
So what gives without the transgender bullets? How is anyone
supposed to literally role play a mass shooter like libs
of tech Talk and Ian Miles Chung say we can.
So it turns out these quote unquote transgender bullets were
in fact not intentionally added to the game in honor
of Pride Month, and are most likely a bug that
affects one single gun when one exclusive attachment is equipped.

(01:29:42):
I'm going to quote from Kotaku quote Modern Warfare three's
M four came with a special Soul Harvester weapon blueprint
which includes a skin and a specific attachment for the
M four and quote unquote trace a rounds, which are
colorful AMMO options that also leave traces of different visual
effects like paint splatters or rose petals.

Speaker 2 (01:29:59):
This is special.

Speaker 4 (01:30:00):
The blueprint was for people who spend one hundred dollars
to purchase the Vault edition of the game. Based on
Kataku's testing, it appears the quote unquote trans bullets only
appear when applying the transgender flag Camo skin on this
specific weapon blueprint. It's unclear this is a bug. At
one point during testing, the bullets in the cartridge were
only the pink colors in the flag or is just

(01:30:20):
an extremely indiosyncratic reflection of how Call of Duty's complex
shader system interacts across thousands of items and cosmetics. During testing,
any other Camo skin applied to the M four Soul
Harvester blueprint resulted in bullets in the cartridge changing the
color to match that skin.

Speaker 2 (01:30:35):
Unquote.

Speaker 4 (01:30:37):
Now, I do think it's a little bit silly that
there's so much uproar about these trans colored bullets, but
not as much about like just a trans colored gun,
Like why is the bullet the big thing?

Speaker 2 (01:30:51):
And we all know that you.

Speaker 4 (01:30:52):
Can't play as a mass shooter in Call of Duty.
You play as a war criminal and most transgender war
criminals are just drone pilots or work for Raytheon. If
you want to play a mass shooter game, you can
just play GTA five or hit Man, where you play
as CIS men.

Speaker 5 (01:31:08):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I.

Speaker 4 (01:31:09):
Know, but the Russian terrorist airport level don't at me.
I don't care anyway. There there was a great article
in former Tucker Carlson Project, The Daily Caller with the
headline Pride Month finally comes for one of the last
bastions of manhood and the opening tagline is gamers. They

(01:31:29):
targeted gamers.

Speaker 3 (01:31:31):
Oh no, So.

Speaker 4 (01:31:33):
Anyway, what's really at play here with this transmash shooter stuff.
This is just another beat in the rhetorical strategy that
conservative anti trans influencers have been building over the past
year and a half, using a mix of cherry picked data,
bad stats, and often outright lies to convince people that
there is an increasing epidemic of transgender mass killing attacks

(01:31:57):
sweeping the nation. When discussing this, Calling Duty, Pride Pack
Libs of TikTok said, quote, with the uptick in actual
trans violence we've been seeing, it's alarming that call of
duty would introduce this and a Blaze article read quote.
Critics have suggested activision Blizzard may want to reconsider given
the recent mass shootings executed by lgbt radicals. There have

(01:32:20):
been multiple mass shootings executed, attempted, or at the very
least planned by transvestites and LGBTQ radicals in recent years.
So this Blaze article begins by listing four alleged instances
of these trans mass shooters. Two of these simply never happened,
as the alleged transgender individuals, a trans guy and a

(01:32:42):
fifty six year old organ and nazi were arrested after
they made concerning posts online. And the other two which
which did happen. These were shootings, except these were never
actually done by trans people.

Speaker 3 (01:32:57):
It's a made up tick. It's a total fabrication. It
never happened.

Speaker 6 (01:33:01):
It never happened.

Speaker 2 (01:33:02):
This one was invented by a writer.

Speaker 4 (01:33:04):
So although this transgender mass shooter narrative might not be real,
do you know what is real?

Speaker 2 (01:33:10):
Mia? Is it capitalism?

Speaker 4 (01:33:12):
It is, and capitalism is fueled, at least currently by
the products and sponsors that support this podcast. Okay, we
are back now. Trying to frame every new mass shooter

(01:33:34):
as some like crazed leftist of some variety is an
old tactic popularized by the likes of Andy Know, Which
is you know ironic? Considering the fact that political extremist
related killings for the past ten years are overwhelmingly done
by individuals tied to right wing extremism, the ADL puts
it at seventy five percent, whereas leftist extremism, which is

(01:33:55):
categorized as including anarchists as well as black nationalist groups,
are responsible for just four percent. Most of the rest
they categorize as Islamic violent extremists, including the twenty sixteen
Pulse nightclub massacre targeted against c people in Orlando, although
one could argue that that is also right wing extremistum
like they are also right wiggers like It's like yes,

(01:34:17):
it turns out the ADL might have troubling some troubling
ways of collecting data breaking news anyway, regardless of the
actual facts. Lying about the political demographic of mass shooters
is an old tactic employed by far right content creators
to gain clicks and influence the talking points of more
popular media figures and politicians, And now the past few

(01:34:37):
years we've seen a new iteration of this tactic, where
in the confusion and chaos of the first few minutes
and hours after a shooting, anti trans influencers will do
everything they can to frame an alleged or suspected shooter
of being transgender, often using out of context social media posts,
doctored photographs, photos of other people, or just pictures of
like long or dyed hair to affirm that a MAI

(01:35:00):
shooter must actually be transgender now, even if this claim
is like widely debunked later on, most of the people
that follow these far right accounts won't be hearing about that,
So all they need to do is use this brief
window of chaos to seed the idea into people's minds.
And if you do this thing frequently enough after each
new mass shooting, then it's pretty easy to create a

(01:35:22):
false perception of this increasing trend. Now, this style of
propaganda has been largely spearheaded by chia y Trek using
her libs of TikTok account. Here's another quote from her quote.
The modern LGBTQ plus movement is radicalizing young activists into
becoming violent terrorist extremists. The uptick in trans violence is

(01:35:43):
going to get worse unquote. But this sort of rhetoric
has been spread by many other online figures in this orbit,
like disgraced buzzfeedwriter Benny Johnson and chronic poster ian Miles Chunk.
Their rhetoric has been spread by sitting politicians Donald Trump
Junior and Elon Musk. Now, to clarify, people have been
lying about the gender identity of mass shooters for like

(01:36:05):
a long time. It's one of the oldest jokes on
four Chan. But what's been going on the past two
years is something different, and it requires a little bit
more in depth examination of this propaganda trend. Now to
get into more specific examples here, I like to break
down a common meme format used to spread this type
of false propaganda. It's usually about five pictures of mass

(01:36:26):
shooters with text next to each picture that reads something
like the Nashville shooter identified as trans, the X shooter
identified as trans. So it will just list all of
these people that allegedly are mass shooters and allegedly identified
as trans. Now, police didn't identify the Nashville Covenant School
shooter as a trans man, that we have to take

(01:36:49):
their word for it. They've released no other info on that. Typically,
this is seen as like the first legitimate mass shooting
done by a transgender individual, and the past year we've
been waiting for more and more context to come out
about this mass shooting and it's possible motivations. So I'm
not even going to really discuss this one right now.
Well just to say, sure, this is a trans person

(01:37:10):
who happened to do a mass shooting and leave it
at that, even though it's you know, not totally clear.

Speaker 2 (01:37:14):
Yeah, I mean, I do. I want to add one
thing briefly, which is that like trying to find out
information from the police about a mass shooting is such
a crapshoot, Like they just you know, they'll they'll be
like an initial flurry of press releases or whatever, and
then they just will never talk about it again until
maybe the trial. And sometimes you get some from that well.

Speaker 4 (01:37:32):
And in often cases for mass shooters who often die,
there is.

Speaker 2 (01:37:37):
No true never get yeah yeah if they're dead.

Speaker 4 (01:37:39):
Like but even keeping this Nashville incident as a legitimate
mass shooting done by a person who happens to be
trans when talking about this meme, the thing is is
that with these five pictures that are on this meme.

Speaker 2 (01:37:53):
Most typically three out.

Speaker 4 (01:37:55):
Of the five people that have their pictures here aren't
even treads.

Speaker 3 (01:38:00):
Not this time.

Speaker 2 (01:38:01):
It never happened.

Speaker 3 (01:38:02):
It is false. It never happened. It's a fake.

Speaker 2 (01:38:05):
It's fiction.

Speaker 3 (01:38:06):
Now.

Speaker 4 (01:38:06):
Most famously, we have the Colorado Springs shooter Anderson Lee Aldrich,
who killed five people and injured twenty five others at
a queer club in twenty twenty two. Later on, his
lawyer claimed that the shooter was non binary, which I
believe is a disgusting and disingenuous attempt to get out
of the more than now fifty hate crime charges that
the shooter is facing. And this opinion is shared not

(01:38:27):
only by the DA but also all other legitimate extremists
and researchers. Prior to these claims in court, there was
no indication whatsoever that the shooter was non binary or
used they then pronouns. However, they did own rainbow flag.
Shooting Targets ran a neo Nazi website that posted gun
training videos and was known by online acquaintances to frequently

(01:38:50):
post racist and homophobic content. Now I should clarify when
I say shooting targets, I don't mean that it's pride
theme shooting targets. It's that the people that you are
shooting are painted like they are gay. So there you
go now. Pictured next in the meme is someone with
purple colored hair, labeled as the Denver shooter. This person
is not trans, has never claimed to be trans. He

(01:39:13):
just has dyed hair. He killed one person in a
school shooting that he planned with a sixteen year old
trans guy.

Speaker 2 (01:39:20):
In mass shooting? Correct? Correct?

Speaker 4 (01:39:23):
Will we will get in We will get into this
later because the definition of mass shooting is getting stretched
liberally here now. The third person pictured who is in
trans changes more frequently in different versions of the meme
that you can find online. One version includes someone referenced
as the Philadelphia shooter. This is referencing a shooting spree

(01:39:43):
that resulted in five people being killed. This shooter had
previously posted photos of himself cross dressing in women's clothes,
and this was used by figures like Marjorie Taylor Green
to claim that the cis Mail shooter was actually quote
another trans shooter. Family of this shooter referred to him
as a quote unquote biblical extremist, and he often posted

(01:40:04):
bizarre Christian spiritual conspiracy theories and was an outspoken fan
of Tucker Carlson. In another version of the meme posted
by Chaia Reichik, she identifies the Uvalde school shooter as
transo and includes a picture of a transwoman holding the
trans Pride flag. This was posted in January of this year.
Elon Musk replied to the tweet with two exclamation points.

Speaker 3 (01:40:27):
Now.

Speaker 4 (01:40:27):
In the hours after the Euvaldi School shooting, pictures of
two or three different transwomen were used to falsely label
the shooter as trans, with at least one of these transwomen,
being from New York, the other from Georgia. Both these
women received a great deal of harassment after the shooting,
Arizona Congressman Paul Gozar tweeted that the shooter was quote
a transsexual, leftist illegal alien unquote, which is frankly amazing

(01:40:50):
because every word in that sentence is wrong.

Speaker 3 (01:40:52):
We made this one up.

Speaker 1 (01:40:53):
It's a made up tap, it's a total fabrication.

Speaker 6 (01:40:56):
It never happened.

Speaker 3 (01:40:57):
It never happened.

Speaker 4 (01:40:58):
Now, the other person in this meme that is typically
accepted to be trans is the Aberdeen shooter. Now, I'm
going to just quote from the Washington Post here.

Speaker 2 (01:41:05):
Quote.

Speaker 4 (01:41:06):
In twenty eighteen, in Aberdeen, Maryland, a twenty six year
old shot and killed three people at a pharmaceuticals distribution
center before turning the weapon on themselves. The sheriff said
the shooter had been diagnosed as mentally ill. In twenty sixteen,
a close friend reported the shooter quote suffered from bipolar
disorder and struggled since early in high school with severe depression,
partly connected to their feelings of not being accepted when
they first came out as a gay teenage girl and

(01:41:29):
later as transgender unquote by most accounts this is the
transgender guy who began transitioning shortly before the shooting. Pronouns
and stuff are unclear. They also worked at this distribution
center a few weeks prior to them doing the shooting.
This incident's typically not categorized as a mass shooting because
only three people were killed, excluding the shooter.

Speaker 6 (01:41:49):
Now.

Speaker 4 (01:41:49):
One of the more recent attempts at this transgender terrorist
syop was in the aftermath of the shooting at Joel
Ostein's megachurch in Houston earlier this February. The shooter was
a thirty six year old woman carrying her seven year
old son, sadly, both of whom died along with one
other person just hours after the shooting. Of far right
accounts like lips of TikTok and end Wokeness claimed that

(01:42:13):
she was transgender, pointing to documents where she used the
name Jeffrey Now. Chaia Reichek called the shooting quote another
act of trans terrorism. We need to have a national
conversation about the LGBTQ movement turning youth into violent extremists.

Speaker 2 (01:42:28):
Unquote. Didn't she literally say that exact thing with the
last one? Yeah, they don't even cope with new tweets.

Speaker 4 (01:42:33):
Like they really just have the same five tweets in rotation.
Marjorie Taylor Green called her quote a trans from El
Salvador unquote. Missouri Representative Josh Holly, Marco Rubio, and Elon
musk All post about this quote unquote epidemic of trans violence.
These claims were boosted by Donald Trump Junior and Ted Cruz.

(01:42:54):
Fox News ran a whole story with a headline about
the shooter being transgender and guess what, She's not trans.
She is a cis woman who gave birth to a
child and has always identified as a woman. It just
appears that she was given a masculine name at birth
and later changed it to a more feminine name. The
far right content sphere created so much uproar that the

(01:43:17):
police had to do a whole press conference about how
the shooter was not trans, and after the Peace lawyers
clarified she was not trans, Fox News changed their claim,
now saying on air that the shooter quote identified as
both genders and was quote a biological woman who sometimes
identified as a man named Jeffrey unquote, which just isn't true.

Speaker 2 (01:43:39):
Jesus Christ.

Speaker 4 (01:43:40):
But the thing about this one is that it wasn't
just far right influencers in Fox News who ran with
this transgender narrative. MSNBC jumped on very early to say
that the shooter was quote a Hispanic transgender woman who
quote unquote identified as a woman unquote.

Speaker 3 (01:43:58):
Is totally made up, pure fiction. It's fiction. It's fiction.
We made it up.

Speaker 2 (01:44:03):
MSNBC war like MSNB.

Speaker 5 (01:44:05):
Shit, great great with me, great, great, doing great this morning.

Speaker 4 (01:44:15):
Do you know what's also doing great?

Speaker 2 (01:44:17):
Mia? Is it the products and services support this podcast.

Speaker 4 (01:44:20):
They're pretty consistent. Yeah, they are still around and here
you can listen to their important messages.

Speaker 2 (01:44:37):
All right, we are so back.

Speaker 4 (01:44:40):
So there's so many more cases like the ones that
I've talked about. Right. The reason I started working on
this episode in the first place was due to far
right accounts claiming that a man named Jared Rivierez, who
killed his seventy year old roommate and went on a
massive stabbing spree last month outside of an AMC theater
and a McDonald's Massachusetts, was claimed to be a quote
mentally ill trans terrorist by limbs.

Speaker 1 (01:45:01):
Of TikTok and.

Speaker 4 (01:45:04):
A transactivist quote unquote who's a man who thinks he's
a woman, which is a line libs of TikTok loves
using Now. Jared claimed to be an artist in a
model but was actually like this really weird like grifter entrepreneur.
He kind of reminds me of that weird Canadian cat
killer Luke Megnan YadA, who like created a whole bunch

(01:45:26):
of fake posts to like pretend to be famous and
like created like fake fans. It's very similar to this case.
And later this guy Luke in Canada also killed a
gay man. Very similar cases. Honestly, Jared here again, he's
like pretending to be like an international entrepreneur. He looks

(01:45:47):
like this weird like hippie surfer dude with long bleached hair.
Jared's father is a wealthy Christian therapist who looks very
similar and anti trans influencers have pointed to the word
she on Jared's Instagram file, but Jared's actual gender identity
is really unclear. He's never pictured wearing women's clothing. He
would frequently post shirtless buff selfies. Jared has never claimed

(01:46:10):
to be trans or a woman, and has never used
transgender language or iconography. Jared did file a name change
request last April, but it was to change his last name.
He goes by Jared. That same month, April, So two
months ago, Jared sexually harassed a model at a Beverly
Hills hotel, saying that he wanted to have kids with
her and proposed to her, saying, I'm going to be

(01:46:32):
a good husband. You're gonna be my wife. Unquote. This
person simply, we have no no reason to think they're trans.
They do this, They do like weird like art stuff,
and I don't know. They're like California, Beverly Hills, poison brained,
and it seems to they seem to have gone through

(01:46:53):
some kind of mental health breakdown which resulted in them
killing their roommate, two dogs, and stabbing like six or
seven people in Massachusetts. But another trans terrorist? Sure?

Speaker 5 (01:47:04):
Why not?

Speaker 4 (01:47:05):
In January of this year, in Iowa, teenager open fire
at a school, killing one person and then himself again.
The usual suspects were super quick to label him as
another trans terrorist, Elon Musk saying, this is happening a lot.
Something is deeply wrong. This kid largely seemed like a
regular gen Z liberal. He listed his pronouns as he they.

(01:47:27):
He posted things like nominally in support of trans people.
He used the hashtag gender fluid a single time in
a TikTok video filmed with what appears to be a
trans friend of his. He also posted on Reddit two
years ago that he didn't want to transition because he
didn't quote wants to look ugly. He never specifically identified
as trans. This is just kind of a tragic case.

(01:47:49):
I don't know what the deal with this kid was.
They seemed deeply confused and upset and killed someone and
then killed themselves. It sucks, but it's not a mass shooting,
and it doesn't it doesn't link to anything being a
pattern of transgender terrorism. That does not stop someone like

(01:48:09):
Donald Trump Junior is saying, quote, the modern LGBTQ plus
movement is radicalizing our youth into becoming violent extremists per capita.
Is there a more violent group of people anywhere in
the world than radicalized transactivists Given the tiny fraction of
the population they make up, it doesn't seem like anyone
else comes even close. We have a lot of claims
like this, which is why I need to start talking

(01:48:32):
about statistics my least favorite thing, because this sort of
messaging is repeated a lot. We have this post from
I think Benny Johnson or Donald Trump Junior. I can't
twelve which one because unfortunately it got deleted before I
was able to log who did it, so apologies for that.
But it's a very similar sort of thing, saying there's
been at least five massive tacks by transgender people since

(01:48:54):
twenty eighteen. Considering the group makes up less than point
five percent of the population, that's a massive overrepresentation. We'll
get into that in a sec. So boy often when
these people are talking about this trend of trans mass shooters,
they're focusing specifically on the period of time between twenty
eighteen and twenty twenty four because largely a lot of

(01:49:16):
conservatives think that trans people were kind of like invented
around twenty eighteen. That's when they first started to kind
of like notice that people were trans, which is something
we've talked about before in terms of like the arc
of homophobia and transphobia in relation to like gay marriage
and like a few other things. This is something we've
reported about consistently on the show. So they're very often
only looking at data from select years, and as we've

(01:49:39):
discussed here, they largely inflate the number of quote unquote
mass shooters, as well as the number of mass shooters
who they call transgender. They will often, you know, very
loosely define what a mass shooting is when it suits them,
and then very strictly define it when it doesn't. In
the Blaze article about that Call of Duty pride pack,
they say quote uote trans identifying suspects. A share of

(01:50:02):
public mass shootings nationwide over the twenty eighteen or twenty
twenty three period is reportedly well over seven times their
share of the population, which links to a very sketchy
right wing crime stats website that doesn't publish any of
their data. So sure, so, there is a few different
ways to categorize what a mass shooting is. There's no

(01:50:24):
universal definition for what makes a mass shooting versus a
mass killing, so different groups categorize things kind of differently.
The Mass Killing Database is a partnership between the ap
USA Today and Northwestern University, and it defines mass killings
quote as the intentional killing of four or more victims,
excluding the deaths of unborn children and the offenders by

(01:50:45):
any means, within a twenty four hour period. Their database
currently lists five hundred and ninety such killings since two
thousand and six. James Allen Fox, professor of criminology and
law at Northwestern University who manages the database, has said, quote,
you can count the number of transgender and non binary
shooters on one hand, they're actually underrepresented unquote, And again

(01:51:06):
it's possible that because of how successful the right has
been at this syop. When you're counting these number of
transgender non binary shooters on one hand, that's also super
overrepresented because they're most likely containing like the Colorado spring
shooter and a lot of these other people. Now, trans
people on average are reported to make up about one
percent of the US population, but that number is steadily growing.

(01:51:30):
We got to pump those numbers up. Those are rookie
numbers now. It's also just kind of unclear what that
number actually is. That's the current one from the US
Census Bureau, and kind of an average, doubt because a
lot of stats of like people older than twenty five
say the numbers at like round zero point five point
six percent versus people under twenty five reportedly it's like
one point five percent. So you know, I'm just going

(01:51:51):
to say around one percent now under most criterias for
mass killings. Only one incident, the one in Nashville, qualifies
for inclusion. Another data source called The Violence Project has
recorded data on mass shootings in the US since nineteen
sixty six. They more narrowly define a mass killing as
four more people killed in a public unconnected to other

(01:52:12):
criminal activity. Their current database has one hundred and ninety
three entries. A spokesperson for their organization told Reuters that
the twenty twenty three Nashville shooting quote is the first
case of a trans perpetrator in their database, per their methodology.
Another more broad data collection project is called the Gun
Violence Archive. I'm just going to quote from Reuter's heer quote.

(01:52:35):
The Gun Violence Archive, which began collecting data on gun
violence in the US in twenty thirteen, recorded more than
four thousand and four hundred mass shootings in the last decade.
Its definition of a mass shooting is four or more
people shot resulting in injury or death, excluding the perpetrator
of those quote. The number of known suspects in a
mass shooting which are trans is under ten for the

(01:52:55):
last decade, which translated to zero point one one percent
of the four four hundred shootings unquote, which is about
nine times lower than SIS people per capita if we
use the one percent trans population stat and even using
the more conservative mass killing data set, the rate of
this sort of violence by trans people is far lower

(01:53:17):
than what would match our population margin. I'm going to
add in a short quote from the Washington Post to
kind of add in some context here quote. The gun
violence Archive methodology would allow for inclusion of the Aberdeen
and Denver cases, with zero point six percent of the population,
one would expect at least sixteen mass shootings to be
conducted by people identifying as trans in the past five years. Instead,

(01:53:38):
there are just three possible cases cited by most conservatives unquote.
So after looking over all of this data, it would
actually appear that transgender people are less likely to commit
a mass shooting than CIS people, even by some of
the more conservative estimates. The other side of this is
that not only are trans people less likely to you know,

(01:53:58):
do this sort of violence, they are way more likely
to be on the receiving end than sispeople. For the
National Archive of Criminal Justice data, LGBTQ plus people are
more than twice as likely to be a victim of
gun violence than their cisgender and straight peers. According to
the Human Rights Campaign, twenty nine percent of transgender youth
have been threatened or injured with a weapon on school property,
compared to seven percent of cisgender youth. So even for

(01:54:20):
school shootings, you are so much, so much more likely
to face gun violence at school if you are trans, transgender,
non binary, gender question people have reportedly higher rates of
being impacted or knowing someone who's been impacted by a
mass shooting compared to their cisgender queer peers. This is,
you know, a data average, but it's usually around twenty
two percent to nineteen percent. And this whole topic gets

(01:54:43):
so much more like dark and grounded when you know
that three hundred and twenty trans people were killed last
year according to data from the annual Trans Murder Monitoring Report,
which is like, it's so dark that we even have
something called the Trans Murder Monitoring Report.

Speaker 2 (01:54:58):
Also, we need to mention this because I don't think
people this is really badly understood people who aren't trans.
But those numbers are always significant undercounts, because yes, those
projects are people scraping. Basically, news reports are trying to
find like the families of victims, and there are a
lot of people who get killed who the only people
who know are their friends. And those people fucking either
aren't talking to the press or the precious never like

(01:55:20):
covers it, or you know, the police give their dead
name and never talk about it, so they just are
dead and everyone thinks they're sis.

Speaker 3 (01:55:27):
Yep.

Speaker 4 (01:55:27):
And just in the United States last year, thirty three
trans people were murdered, and again this is a vast undercount.
Like Mia said, meanwhile, you have all these people on
the right who will talk about all of these, all
these alleged mass shootings by alleged trans people, And one
of their favorite lines when they try to like affirm
that a shooter is actually trans is quote watch how

(01:55:48):
quickly the story will now disappear unquote, which is just
ironic for a few reasons. One, because that's how news works,
is that we move on to a new thing. But
also it'll probably disappear as well well because they're not
actually trans, you know, when you're in the case of
the Uvaldi shooter, in the case of the megachurch shooter

(01:56:08):
from last year. Yeah, people move on. But also they're
not going to keep harping on your weird conspiracy theory
because it's a weird conspiracy theory. It's not true even
if this is, even if they were right, which they
are not. It also is just like imagine in like
nineteen twenty or like, we have a problematic rise in
left handed mass shooters. So we're like, well, yeah, because
there's more left handed people, there's going to be at

(01:56:29):
least some level of correlation statistically. Again, these people act
like trans people were only invented in twenty eighteen and
are just like slowly like recruiting in numbers, which, hey,
you know, at least we are kind of slowly recruiting,
And like the actual goal of this rhetoric, beyond just
you know, altering the fabric of reality, is to just
encourage violence against trans people. That is what they're doing.

(01:56:51):
It's to see trans people as a threat that you
feel justified in doing violence against them. Just a few
weeks ago, a very popular gun YouTuber made this joke
where they were talking about, you know, getting ready to
shoot a tea word and they stopped and they were like, oh, sorry,
I mean a school shooter. Wink wink. So like they're

(01:57:14):
trying to use school shooter to be a dog whistle
for trans people This is all just to justify violence.
That's all this is doing, and to some degree it's working.
Just last week, a trans kid was assaulted in the
men's bathroom at school and reportedly one of their teeth exploded.
This was a trans girl who was using the men's
bathroom like all of these freaks want them to, and

(01:57:36):
she still got assaulted. I think it's super important when
talking about this sort of unreality propaganda is that like
these people like Limbs of TikTok and Miles Schong, they're
not just like falling further into a delusional conspiracy theory.
Same thing with Elon Musk, Right, it's easy. I think
it's easy to be like, oh, they just actually like
legitimately are like falling into this like conspiratorial delusion.

Speaker 2 (01:57:59):
And it's not that.

Speaker 4 (01:58:01):
What it is is they are actually intentionally crafting reality.
It's not them like falling victim to this like unfortunate delusion.
They are choosing which a version of reality to believe
in because it's the one that they want, and that's
what they're doing, and they want it to be a
reality where more people feel comfortable assaulting and killing trans people.
That's that's the actual goal of its propaganda.

Speaker 2 (01:58:23):
We need to be very clear about this, about what's
sort of happening here, which is one of the fastest
ways to get a group of people to commit a
genocide is by convincing them that they are all about
to be killed.

Speaker 5 (01:58:35):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:58:36):
This is one of the things behind this or behind
the Bosnian genocide, This is one of the things behind Rwanda.

Speaker 5 (01:58:41):
Is if you can.

Speaker 2 (01:58:42):
Convince a lot of people that their neighbors are about
to fucking kill them, that's how you get them to
do the genocide. Because the thing that they believe is
that like, oh, this is self defense, Like these people
are about to kill us, and that is the kind
of reality tunnel being mobilized here is a is it
called genocide? And the other side of this that I
think is so grim is that there used to be
a time as a society where you know, we attempted

(01:59:04):
to explain why there are mass shootings.

Speaker 3 (01:59:07):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:59:07):
This is something that I remember living through. Like if
you go back to like twenty sixteen, two thousand, seventeen,
twenty fifteen, like we used to there used to be
people other than these just like genocidal fascists attempting to
explain why why these shootings were happening. The actual data
on transmass shooters and how few of them there are

(01:59:29):
is quietly devastating to a lot of the theories that
used to be sort of bandied about, right, the theories
that this was about sort of objection, the theory that
this was about this, you know, like sort of de
industrialization and like the consequences that this has had on
people that there were you know, it was this sort
of like downward social mobility that was causing this violence. Right,
If any of that were true, there would be a
fucking million mass shooters, because again, the transpoverty rate is

(01:59:52):
like it's it's it's a rits around thirty percent, right,
for the rest of the country it is like a
quarter as well, it's that quarter. It's like a third
of that much, which right, there should be if it
was just purely a product of like material conditions, there
would be a lot more transmitted shooters. But there aren't
because again, you know, the actual theory that fits this

(02:00:13):
data and fits also the behavior of all of these people,
like all of these sort of fascists trying to explain
mass shootings as being about trans people. The thing that
it fits is this is the theory that this is
basically the replacement of clan rallies. Right, we don't have
we don't have collective lynchings anymore. We have individual ones.
And all of these fucking people are trying to make

(02:00:33):
sure that there's just more lynchings and that these lynchings
are you know, is like it's there their sort of
like armed follower fanatics go and shoot a bunch more
trans people in a nclub, and then you know, once
that happens, they will disavow it by saying, oh, hey,
this this this nightclub shooting was this is actually done
by a fucking transperson. They'll keep doing this until they

(02:00:54):
have enough political power to openly come out and claim
that all of these people were their fucking revolutionary heroes
in their nude fucking pantheon of the fascist state.

Speaker 4 (02:01:03):
And there was that trans boy who was assaulted in
the bathroom a few months ago and died days later
in the hospital. There's this this It keeps happening. And
I didn't want this to be like a depressing episode.
I wanted this to break down a conspiracy theory I've
been seeing more frequently talk about you know what's fueling
it actually go over the instances that are included in

(02:01:23):
it to kind of you know, debunk for lack of
a better term, uh, this sort of rhetoric, and just
so you can be more aware of it when you
see it, because often you'll see this this you know,
this meme with five five pictures, you'll see a copy
pasta version of it. So just just being aware of
what this is, what the what this rhetoric is trying

(02:01:45):
to do, and the you know, unfortunate fact that trans
people are form are far far more likely to be
a victim of gun violence and mash and mass shootings
than they ever then then say people and are actually
less likely to participate in such violence statistically speaking. So yeah,

(02:02:07):
that is the episode today. Not meant to be depressing,
just meant to be informative. But you know, when it
comes to me, those things often overlap.

Speaker 2 (02:02:16):
Any such cases.

Speaker 4 (02:02:17):
I hope you have, I hope you have a good
Pride month, Stay safe and stay dangerous.

Speaker 7 (02:02:35):
Hello and welcome to it could happen here. This is
Sharene and today we are going to be talking about
the current quote unquote peace plan that was presented by
the US and what they say is their attempt to
end the genocide in Lesse. They call it a war,
and I call it what it is, which is a genocide.
Earlier this month, Joe Biden announced what he claimed was

(02:02:55):
an Israeli peace plan to bring about an eventual ceasefire
in Jse. But according to journalists and anyone with eyes,
the new plan is almost indistinguishable from previous plans proposed
by Hamas. We're going to get into the details of
the US plan in a little bit, but first I
want to address the immense loss of Palestinian life that
has led up to this plan, because if the plan

(02:03:18):
is successful, it would usher in a ceasefire to a
genocide that has killed more than thirty seven thousand Palestinians,
which is a very low estimate, and the majority of
these deaths are women and children. Not only have Palestinian
children been brutally slaughtered for months, but Razza now has
the largest population of child amputees in the world. In November,

(02:03:41):
children in Razza hosted a press conference in English to
beg the world for life. It's June now, and all
we've seen since then is massacre after massacre. And while
I think drawing attention to the children and the women
who have been slaughtered is immensely necessary and important. I
also want to emphasize that Palestinian men are not expendable,

(02:04:02):
and not mentioning the immense loss that we have suffered
across the board with men included, implies to the world
that Arab men are not worth mourning, not worth saving
nor protecting, that they are all terrorists or terrorists to
be who are simply killed as casualties in the quote
fog of war. I also think that the mention of
children is specifically used as a way to at least

(02:04:24):
try to make the world empathize and fucking feel something
about the lives that have been stolen. Parents literally hold
up the limp and decapitated bodies of their babies in
its broadcasts worldwide, and yet the dehumanization of Arabs runs
so deep that such graphic displays of horror and death

(02:04:45):
are considered normal. No one bats an eye. It is
insane that two hundred and seventy four Palestinians were slaughtered
for four prisoners of war who could have been released
in a prisoner exchange exchanges and deals that Israel has
repeatedly red. We will get into this more in this episode,
and people are celebrating this shameful military operation which US

(02:05:07):
troops were a part of, and ignoring the Palestinians that
were killed and murdered in the process, further emphasizing that
Palestinian life is not as important as Israeli life by
a huge margin. In in case you didn't hear the
details about this operation that I'm talking about, US and
Israeli troops infiltrated a refugee camp in trucks disguised as

(02:05:29):
humanitarian aid to trojan horse their way into further massacrering
and maiming people who were already being forcibly starved. Are
you hearing this one more time? They infiltrated a refugee
camp and trucks disguised as humanitarian aid. Israeli special forces

(02:05:49):
were also disguised as Palestinian refugees looking for a place
to live when they entered the buildings where they thought
the hostages were being held. Remember in January, and there
was also video evidence of the IOF pretending to be
medical staff in a hospital and then shooting and killing
unarmed doctors, nurses, and patients. Oh, and then there was
the discovery of at least three mass graves at Elsheffa hospital,

(02:06:13):
where bodies, including many wearing scrubs, were found zip tied
and buried in piles. Israel has been doing this for
months and years and decades, and they've been getting away
with it for months and years and decades. No one
is hiding how they feel anymore. They are out here
showing us with their actions. It's not ambiguous, it is

(02:06:34):
not confusing. They are making it very simple. They are
making it crystal clear. Palestinians do not matter, and Israel's
intention is to continue their ethnic cleansing of Palestine. What's
happening in Gliza is not about the hostages, and it
has never been about the hostages. If that isn't clear
to you by now, you have not been paying attention

(02:06:57):
a few things about the hostages. Hamas has repeatedly offered
since last year to release all hostages in exchange for
Israel releasing all Palestinian prisoners. As of November first, according
to Human Rights Watch, Israel held nearly seven thousand Palestinians
in its prisons, and many of those held captive by

(02:07:17):
Israel are not convicted of any crime. At least three
thousand and six hundred and sixty Palestinians being held in
Israel are under what is called administrative detention. An administrative
detainee is someone held in prison without charge nor trial,
without charge, no crime committed. I want to take a

(02:07:38):
moment to bring up a report that came out recently
that's not getting nearly enough attention. It's truly horrific, and
I don't know how people are just glossing over it.
But New York Times recently reported that Palestinians are being
tortured and abused in Israeli prisons. Two journalists from the
New York Times spent three months interviewing Israeli soldiers as

(02:07:58):
well as Palestinians were detained at one particular prison. I'm
not going to pretend I know how to pronounce it.
It's spelled sde space Tei m An said Teman. I'm
just going to go with that. But essentially, Israel is
carrying out a policy of systematic torture in this army base,
and this army base has been used as a detention

(02:08:19):
camp for Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. This was all
confirmed by a New York Times investigation. Reports of abuse
at this site had already emerged in both Israeli and
Arab media, and this was followed by outcries from local
and international rights groups about the horrific conditions there. Apparently,
it was mainly used as a quote makeshift interrogation center,

(02:08:40):
but now it has become a major focus for the
accusations that the Israeli military has mistreated its detainees, including
people who were later determined to have no ties to
Hamas or any other armed groups. The investigation revealed that
at least twelve hundred Palestinian civilians were detained at this
site in quote demeaning condition, without the ability to plead

(02:09:01):
their cases to adjudge for up to seventy five days,
and additionally denied access to lawyers for up to ninety days.
Eight former detainees, all of whom the military confirmed were
held at the site and spoke on the record, said
they had been punched, kicked, and beaten with batons, rifle butts,
and a handheld metal detector while they were in custody.

(02:09:22):
Others said that they had been forced to wear a
diaper while being interrogated, and that they had received electric
shocks during their interrogation. According to the new York Times.
Most of these testimonies were corroborated by interviews conducted by
officials from the unr WA, the UN Agency for Palistine Refugees.
The agency interviewed hundreds of returning detainees who reported widespread

(02:09:46):
abuse at this site, as well as other Israeli detention facilities,
including the beatings and the use of an electric probe.
An Israeli soldier who served at this site also disclosed
to The New York Times that his fellow soldiers often
bragged about beating detainees, and he observed many instances of
such treatment. He was speaking on condition of anonymity to

(02:10:07):
avoid prosecution, but he said a detainee had been taking
for treatment at the site's makeshift field hospital with a
bone that had been broken during his detention, while another
person was briefly taken out of sight and then returned
with bleeding around his rib cage. I strongly urge you
to read the New York Times piece in full. It
details the most horrific things I've read in recent memory.

Speaker 5 (02:10:31):
I would be.

Speaker 7 (02:10:31):
Remiss to not mention at least a few of them,
just to understand the severity. But this report essentially proves
that Palestinians are experiencing sexual violence and have experienced sexual
violence in Israeli prisons. This is one example. Mister el Hamloui,
a senior nurse, said a female officer had ordered two

(02:10:53):
soldiers to lift him up and press his rectum against
a metal stick that was fixed to the ground. He
said the stick penetrated his rectum for roughly five seconds,
causing it to bleed and leaving him in unbearable pain.
A leaked draft of the UNRWA report detailed at interview
that gave a similar account. It cited a forty one

(02:11:15):
year old detainee who said that interrogators made him sit
on something like a hot metal stick that felt like fire,
and he said that another detainee died after they put
the electric stick up his anus. Doctor Elhemlaui also recalled
being forced to sit in a chair wired with electricity.
He said he was shocked so often that after initially

(02:11:36):
urinating uncontrollably, he then stopped urnating for several days. He
said that he too had been forced to wear nothing
but a diaper to stop him from soiling the floor.
Ibrahim Shaheen, thirty eight, a truck driver, He said he
was shocked roughly half a dozen times while sitting in
a chair. Officers had accused him of concealing information about

(02:11:58):
the location of dead hostage, which ended up having no
connection to him at all. Another man, mister Beckett, said
that he was also forced to sit in a chair
wired with electricity, sending a current pulsing through his body
that made him pass out. Mister Beckett also said, along
with other detainees that corroborated this, he only received roughly

(02:12:18):
three meager snacks on most days, mostly bred with small
quantities of cheese or jam or tuna. The military said
the food provisions had been approved by an authorized nutritionist
in order to maintain their health, but according to several
of these detainees, that's not nearly enough, and they lost
more than forty pounds during their detention. Again, I urge

(02:12:41):
you to read the report in full. It needs more
attention than is getting. But it is horrific and this
is proof of the vile mistreatment of Palestinians. And it's
from the New York Times. If you need a source
that you quote unquote trust more than an El Jazeera
or something which makes most But for those who do

(02:13:02):
there it is Now, let's go back to the topic
at hand. We were talking about the hostages and how
Hamas had offered many times in the past to release
all the hostages in exchange for releasing Palestinian prisoners, and

(02:13:26):
despite Hamasa's offers, Israel has never agreed to any deal
which involves the release of all Israeli hostages. On October ninth,
two days after October seventh, Hamas offered to release all
the civilian hostages in exchange for the io F not
entering the Gaza Strip, but Israel rejected that offer, and

(02:13:47):
many hostages have died since then, which could have been
avoided if Israel cared. A few stats, one hundred and
five Israeli hostages were freed via a temporary ceasefire, and
no November of last year, four other hostages were released
by Hamas. Three hostages were killed by IOF quote friendly
fire because the IOF considered them a threat as they

(02:14:11):
were waving white flags. During four Israeli quote rescue missions,
one hostage was killed one soldier was saved in what
Israel called Operation Golden Hand. On February twelfth of this year,
two hostages were saved and at least ninety four Palestinians
were killed, and then on June eighth, what is now

(02:14:31):
being called Operation Are None, four Israeli hostages were rescued
and at least two hundred and seventy four Palestinians were killed.
In a statement released after the attack, Hamas said, in
exchange for them the four Israeli hostages, your own army
killed three of your own captives in the same attack,
one of them holding a US citizenship. And it must

(02:14:55):
be mentioned that the Israeli attacks on Leisa have also
killed an unknown number of hostages and have mass captivity,
as well as the at least thirty seven thousand Palestinians
killed since October seventh. Relentlessly bombing a tiny strip of
land or Israel knows its hostages are located, doesn't really
indicate that Israel gives a shit about the lives of

(02:15:16):
the hostages. The hostages are pawns being used in a
disgusting political game. And I have seen several unhinged and
deranged comments about this latest operation, which again killed two
hundred seventy four Palestinians, including children, in the process of
saving four hostages. The comments range and severity and psychopathy

(02:15:38):
but a lot of them are basically saying how else
were they supposed to get the hostages back? And Israel
must rescue its people by any means necessary, and that
this is what you get when you mess with Israel.
But after reading the previous numbers, it is an absolute
fact that the only mass release of hostages has come
through ceasefire and prisoner exchanges. More hostages have been killed

(02:16:00):
by the Israeli army then rescued by them. A ceasefire
deal means freed hostages without mass death. And so if
Israel really cared about the lives of these hostages, why
on earth wouldn't they agree to a deal that can
guarantee their safety. I want to take a quick tangent
only to mention that the number of Palestinians killed in

(02:16:20):
Raze is most likely far, far greater than the reported
number because the infrastructure that was used to document the
death toll has been decimated, along with nearly everything else
in Lessee. The number thirty seven thousand also does not
include the thousands and thousands of Palestinians buried underneath rubble
who are unable to be found nor retrieved. The Health

(02:16:43):
Ministry's director of International Cooperation in the West Bank. Doctor
Yassir Bozzia says he works closely with Ministry colleagues in Raze.
When he spoke with NPR in late January from his
office in Ramalala, he said and estimated ten thousand people
were missing and presumed dead under the rubble in Rasee,
but even that number was low. It's like a snowball,

(02:17:05):
he said. It's only an estimation. The actual number is
much much higher. Bozia and doctors Andrezze say the death
count published by the Health Ministry also largely excludes people
who have died from a lack of adequate treatment, disease,
and other impacts from the war, like hunger. The death
toll only includes people killed by the occupation bombardment, he said.

(02:17:29):
The Health Ministry describes its casualty figures as those resulting
from Israeli aggression. Bozzias is a colleague in Raze, told
him that the only way to really know how many
people have died is to count the number of people
still alive compared with the population of Raze before October seventh.
He said that because of the continued brutal genocide going

(02:17:50):
on in Rasee, it is impossible to have the real number.
It will only be revealed after the violence has stopped.
The death toll also does not make clear how many
militants are among the dead. Israel says its forces have
killed more than ten thousand fighters in Razze, but Israel
has also not provided any sort of evidence or detailed

(02:18:11):
information to back up its estimate. In every interview, every
Israeli correspondent or spokesperson has given they always given number
for the estimated fighters or terrorists killed in Razze, but
they're very unsure about how many civilians have been killed.
And now to go back to the US peace plan
that is basically identical to previous peace plans proposed by
and agree to buy Hamas. What does this US plan propose?

(02:18:36):
This plan has three stages. The first stage proposes to
involve a six week ceasefire, during which the Israeli army
will withdraw from the populated areas of Razze. Hostages, including
the elderly and women, would be exchanged for hundreds of
Palestinian prisoners. Civilians would also return to all of Braze
with six hundred trucks carrying humanitarian aid flooding the enclaved

(02:19:00):
daily Biden said. The second phase would see Hamas and
Israel negotiate terms for a permanent end to hostilities. Biden
said the cease fire will still continue as long as
negotiations continue. In the third phase, a permanent ceasefire would follow,
facilitating the reconstruction of the Resids Strip, including sixty percent

(02:19:22):
of clinics, schools, universities, and religious buildings damaged or destroyed
by Israeli forces. This plan is nearly identical to a
previous plan that Hamas had already agreed to on May sixth,
a deal which Israel ended up rejecting. We will talk
more about that deal later on, but for now, let's
focus on the US's pleasiarized version of this plan and

(02:19:44):
who supports it. But first let's take an ad break
and we'll be read back, Okay, And we are back.
So soon after the announcement of the US deal, Hamas

(02:20:05):
said that it views the proposals in this deal positively.
This week, US Secretary of State Anthony Blincoln o'tool arrived
in the Middle East on his latest trip to the region,
which he said will focus on Washington's Gaza truce proposal
and the future of the Palestinian territory. B Lincoln met
Egyptian President Elssi and Cairo on Monday, repeating US calls

(02:20:27):
for Hamas to accept the true deal. Speaking to reporters
before leaving Egypt, b Lincoln squarely blamed Hamas for prolonging
the quote unquote war, saying that Hamas is an outlier
in the region for not agreeing to the US deal.
He told reporters my message to governments throughout the region,
to people throughout the region, if you want to cease fire,

(02:20:50):
press Hamas to say yes. Blincoln arrived in Israel later
on that same day and met with Nan Yahoo. He
will further hold talks and thought in Jordan this week.
The State Department said. Blinkn reaffirmed the quote ironclad US
commitment to Israel's security during his meeting with Nanyahu. A

(02:21:10):
curious note is that while Blinkn portrayed the truce plan
as Biden's proposal, when Biden made the deal public initially,
he said it was an Israeli plan. This could be
just a little slip because Biden is very old, or
it could be a slip that just confirms what we've
all known to be the case all along, that the
US and Israel are one and the same, especially when

(02:21:32):
it comes to their political interests in military power, and
while US officials have insisted that Israel agreed to this proposal,
various Israeli officials, including the n YAHOO, have vowed to
continue fighting until the elimination of Hamas. Just days before
Biden announced his initiative, a top Israeli officials said the

(02:21:52):
military would fight in Jez until at least the end
of the year. On the other hand, Hamas has said
that it will only agree to a deal that would
lead to a lasting end to the war and the
full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Raze. Hamas reiterated its
position on Monday after its political chief Ismael Haniyeh, met
with officials from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller armed

(02:22:16):
group in Duha. Hamas said in a statement the two
delegations discussed the indirect negotiations and efforts to end the war,
stressing that any agreement must include a permanent ceasefire, complete
withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, reconstruction, ending the siege, and
a serious prisoner's exchange. Hamas previously called for a explicit

(02:22:40):
commitment from Israel to a lasting ceasefire, and despite the
lack of clarity in the Israeli position, Biden administration officials
have repeatedly said that Hamas is the only hurdle to
ending the war in Gaza. The US blaming Hamas for
prolonging what it calls a quote unquote war again not
a war a genocide is ridiculous. Hamas has accepted previous

(02:23:04):
peace deals. It has offered previous peace deals. Israel has
been the one to reject them, and then the US
comes along and just repackages one of these previously agreed
on deals that Hamas had endorsed, and has the audacity
to then blame Hamas for obstructing peace. Give me a break. Additionally,
the US truce plan does not outline plans for the

(02:23:27):
future of Gaza after the war, but the US government
has said that it would not accept Hamas rule in
the territory. The Biden administration says it wants a quote
reformed Palestinian Authority aka the PA to eventually govern Gaza,
but the Israeli government has ruled out allowing the occupied
West Bank based PA to govern Huzzi with Nan Yahoo

(02:23:49):
like in k Fata, the dominant faction in the PA
to Hamas. Other support for the plan has come from
some Israeli politicians, as well as the families of the
hostages and the international community. Benny Gantz, a centrist member
of Israel's three man war Cabinet and Prime Minister Benjamin
Yahu's principal rival, spoke positively of the proposal and asked

(02:24:13):
his two colleagues in the war cabinet, Nan Yahoo and
Defense Minister Yoev Galant, to convene to discuss the quote
next steps. Gance had previously threatened to leave the cabinet
by June eighth if no plan for Gaza beyond the
war had been agreed on, and on Sunday, June ninth,
he officially announced his resignation. Gans's resignation does not immediately

(02:24:35):
pose a threat to Natanyahu, who still controls a majority
coalition in Parliament, but it does mean that the Israeli
leader becomes more heavily reliant on his far right allies.
Gantz said that the Enyahu was making quote total victory
impossible and that the government needs to put a return
of the hostages seized on October seventh by Hamas above

(02:24:56):
political survival. Gans is a popular former military chief, and
he joined the n Yahoo's government shortly after the Hamas
attack in a show of unity. His presence also boosted
Israel's credibility with its international partners. Gance has good working
relations with US officials. Ganz canceled a planned news conference
the night of June eighth after the Forestraeli hostages were

(02:25:18):
rescued from Gaza earlier in the day, which again was
Israel's largest operations since October. Another reminder that two hundred
and seventy four palest Indians, including children, were killed in
the assault. Another Israeli politician who supported the US peace
plan was opposition leader Yard Lapid, who also promised to
support the plan, pledging support of his party yesh Atid,

(02:25:41):
which translates from Hebrew to there is a future if
those from ultranationalists and far right parties withdraw support. United
Nations Secretary General Antonia Gutierrez also endorsed the plan, as
have many of Israel's political allies, including the UK and Germany.
So who doesn't like the plan. Much of the opposition

(02:26:02):
to the peace plan has come from within the Israeli cabinet,
n Enyahu said any initiative that did not include a
quote elimination of Hamas's capacity to govern and make war
was a non starter. In his announcement on Friday May
thirty first, Biden seemed to indicate that he regarded Hamas's
presence within Gaza to have been so downgraded that a

(02:26:24):
repeat of October seventh was impossible. As expected, the ultranationalists
and extreme right members of the nyahu's right wing coalition,
which includes it Tamar Bengavie and Bezileel Simotric, threatened to
withdraw from the government and cause its collapse if the
proposals were accepted. So as far as Israel's politics are concerned,

(02:26:45):
it seems like the outcome may end up depending on
what El Jazeira describes as quote parliamentary arithmetic. The far
right in ultranationalist parties hold fourteen seats, while Ganza's block
only has eight seats. Meeting the far right has far
more influence on a prime minister who wants to stay
in power. As for Lapid, his seventeen seats are offered

(02:27:09):
as support only in what pertains to the peace proposals.
This leaves that n YAHOO reliant on the far right block.
As far as the deal being accepted, that is still
not clear. Despite what the US says. The families of
Israeli hostages are putting pressure on the government to accept
the deal, as are some parts of Israel's political class,

(02:27:32):
but pressures to reject the deal are just as strong,
and it will remain to be seen whether Natanyahu chooses
his own survival or the return of the hostages. But
if one thing is clear, it is that Netanyahu does
not really care about the hostages because the IOF under
his command, continues to bombard areas where the hostages can
be held. And may remind you that the IOWEF have

(02:27:54):
already killed Israeli hostages that they have mistakenly identified as threats.
Speaking of threats, I'm kidding. There is no ad break
and there is no threat. That's the end of part one,
and if you want to listen to part two, tune
in tomorrow. Talking about the history of Hamas and how
we got here. So yeah, see e then three Palestine, Hello,

(02:28:29):
and welcome back to it could happen here. This is
Sharen and today we are continuing our conversation from yesterday
where we talked about the US proposed peace deal for
Hamas and Israel that looks suspiciously like a deal Hamas
had already agreed to just a few weeks before that,
and Israel did not agree to. We had ended part

(02:28:49):
one talking about how the IOF literally killed their own
hostages when they mistakenly thought they were threats, and I
ended saying speaking of threats, and I'm going to continue
because that's what professionals do. So since October seventh, Israel
has described Hamas as an existential threat, saying that it
needs to destroy the group and won't stop the violence

(02:29:11):
in Gaza until it does so. But I would argue
that most people who are pro Israel or Western Zionists
in general don't actually know anything about Hamas other than
thinking they're this big, bad evil that has to be
eradicated by the quote only democracy in the Middle East,
which I hope by this point people realize is a
sick joke. Hamas is suddenly being talked about on every

(02:29:32):
news channel, and anything even remotely pro Palestine is now
labeled as pro Hamas, when most people in this country,
I would argue, most likely had never even heard of
Hamas before October seventh. Labeling something as pro Hamas truly
just means nothing as far as Israel's concerned, the UN
is Hamas. In May, Israel's ambassador to the UN, Galad Erdan,

(02:29:55):
said in an interview with Israel's Army Radio that the
UN has quote turned into a collaborator with Hamas, maybe
even more than that, a terror organization unto itself. Wow,
Israeli leadership has just continued to one up themselves when
it comes to saying the most insane fucking shit. And then,
according to Zionists, the college campus protests that were calling

(02:30:17):
for a literal end to genocide are also pro Hamas.
Earlier this month, a lawsuit was filed in Virginia by
a US law firm and an Israeli legal group who
have teamed up to suit two organizations involved in recent
college campus protests, the American Muslims for Palestine and National
Students for Justice in Palestine. They accused these groups of

(02:30:39):
collaborating with Hamas to serve as their quote propaganda division.
In the US. Arson of Trowski, the CEO of the
International Legal Forum, who was working with this US legal
team of Greenberg Taig and the National Jewish Advocacy Center,
he called the American Muslims for Palestine and the National
Students for Justice in Palestine, as well as all the

(02:31:01):
protesters supporting Palestine, most of whom are students as quote
the foot soldiers of Hamas. If I was going to
go through everything that Israel and Zionists have labeled US
pro Hamas, this episode would never end. But I hope
it's clear that this label and accusation isn't based on
any real sort of evidence or proof, and it is

(02:31:21):
only a way to scare people into blindly supporting Israel
in quote defending itself big quotes there against this growing
evil spreading across the globe and invading our campuses, when
in reality, there would be no Hamas without Israel. Although
Hamas eventually grew into being the most active armed resistance
group in Gaza, it definitely didn't start that way and

(02:31:44):
it wouldn't have even had the power to grow the
way it did if it weren't for intentional actions by
Israeli leadership that started decades ago. Before we get into
a timeline of the Resa Hamas peace deals that have
led to this very similar deal at the US proposed
all deals that again Israel has rejected I want to
make sure we at least have an understanding of what Hamas,

(02:32:04):
even is Hamas, which is an Arabic acronym for Islamic
resistance movement, would not exist today if it wasn't for Israel.
American and Israeli politicians are always saying the same thing,
how dangerous and evil Hamas is, without mentioning how Israel
itself helped create Hamas. The TLDR of it all is
that Israeli's helped turn a bunch of fringe Palestinian Islamists

(02:32:27):
in the late nineteen seventies into one of the world's
most notorious militant groups. Is in a conspiracy theory, It's
a confirmed fact. Former Israeli officials, such as Brigadier General A.
Sak Sagev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza
in the early nineteen eighties, have openly spoken about this.
After his tenure, Segev told a New York Times reporter

(02:32:48):
that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as
a quote counterweight to secularists and leftists of the Palestine
Liberation Organization aka the PLO, as well as the fut Party,
which was led by Yaser Arafat. Arafat too referred to
Hamas as quote a creature of Israel. Hamas was officially

(02:33:09):
founded in nineteen eighty seven, at the start of the
First Palestinian Intefada, or uprising against the Israeli occupation, but
its beginnings actually started much earlier. Hama's founder, Sheikh ahmadia Sin,
was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood had
been repressed by Egyptians in Gaza prior to nineteen sixty seven,
but once the Israelis invaded and occupied the Gaza Strip,

(02:33:31):
they chose to encourage this group of extremist Islamists. The
dominant Palestinian political force in Palestine at the time was
the PLO, and it was deemed a threat to Israel,
and so Israel sought to undermine its power. The PLO
is a nationalist coalition which was centered around the secular
FATA party led by Yasser Arafat. By empowering a scene

(02:33:54):
in the Muslim Brotherhood, Israel thought they could divide the
occupied Palestinian people and eventually rule over them by playing
them against each other secular nationalists versus religious Islamists. In
nineteen seventy eight, Yasine wanted to officially register his Islamic Association,
which was basically the precursor to present day Hamas. The

(02:34:16):
Israelis jumped on the opportunity to help make this happen.
Yasine built and grew a network of Islamists social institutions
across Gaza, funded largely by Israel. Avnar Cohen is a
former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for
more than two decades. In two thousand and nine, he
told the Wall Street Journal Hamas to my great regret,

(02:34:39):
is Israel's creation. Back in the mid nineteen eighties, Cohen
even wrote an official report to his superiors warning them
not to play divide and rule in the occupied territories
by backing Palestinian Islamists against the Palestinian Secularists. He wrote
in his report, I suggest focusing our efforts on finding

(02:35:00):
to break up this monster before reality jumps in our face. Clearly,
his superiors did not listen to him, and Hamas was
the result. To be clear, Israelis had helped build up
a militant strain of extremist political Islam in the form
of Hamas and its Muslim Brotherhood precursors and allowed it
free reign in order to quiet any chance of progress

(02:35:22):
in Palestine, and then when it became convenient for their
desionist narrative, the Israelis tried to bomb, besiege and blockade
it out of existence. David Hashem, a former Arabs affairs
expert in the Israeli military who was based in President
in the nineteen eighties, said the original sin was Israel's
support of Ya Seine in the nineteen seventies. He said,

(02:35:45):
when I look back at the chain of events, I
think we made a mistake. But at the time, nobody
thought about the possible results. Yeah, no shit. The only
American politician that I know of who has ever referenced
how Israel is responsible for Hamas's creation is Ron Paul.
In two thousand and one on the floor of the House,

(02:36:06):
Ron Paul said Hamas was encouraged and really started by
Israel because they wanted Hamas to counteract Yasser Arafat. Speaking
of Arafat, not only did he himself tell an Italian
newspaper that Hamas is a creature of Israel, he also
said that the former Israeli Prime Minister Yasakrabien admitted this

(02:36:26):
to him, calling it a quote fatal error. Yasine was
eventually assassinated by an Israeli air strike in Gaza on
March twenty second, two thousand and four. Sylvan Shalom, former
Israeli Vice Prime minister, said after Yasine's death that quote
sche Yassin and his organization Hamas are responsible for the
killings of more than four hundred Israelis, when actually no

(02:36:50):
Israel is clearly largely responsible. David Long, a former Middle
East expert in the US State Department under Ronald Reagan,
told journalist Robert dry I thought the Israelis were playing
with fire. This, of course, is not a unique development,
as there have been dozens of instances of unneeded and
malignant US intervention in other countries for its own gain,

(02:37:15):
and since then Hamas has killed far more Israelis than
any secular Palestinian militant group. Israel built up ye Scene
and Hamas as a rival to Arafat's Fatah, then they
killed Yasne, and then they doubled down in making Hamas
Israel's worst enemy, an enemy it would use to justify
to the entire world that it was not only okay,

(02:37:37):
but necessary to control and massacre millions of Palestinians. In
the process of destroying this threat, Israel spent more than
twenty years helping build up Hamas and then spent another
twenty years trying to destroy it. All of this is
to say that, aside from the purposeful assistance from Israel
and creating Hamas, that Hamas wouldn't even exist if it

(02:37:59):
was for the Israeli occupation. There would be no resistance
because without the ethnic cleansing and forced violent occupation, there
would be nothing to resist. In the process of bolstering

(02:38:21):
this militant group, Hamas also became the main armed force
behind the Palestinian resistance, and many view Hamas as the
only group even attempting to defend Palestinians in the face
of Israeli occupation. And the organization itself has changed over
the years, especially in the last decade, it seems like
Hamas was and is increasingly trying to establish a more

(02:38:45):
favorable status quo for the Palestinian people. Hamas's leaders were
shaped by the hard realities of a brutal occupation, which
was marked by mass arrests of Palestinians. The expropriation of
Palestinian lands and control of their resources. More than half
a million Palestinians were arrested and tried in Israel's military

(02:39:06):
run courts between nineteen sixty seven and nineteen eighty seven,
and over fifteen hundred Palestinian homes were demolished and thousands
of Palestinians were forcibly deported aka ethnically cleansed. After HAMAS
won the two thousand and six elections in Gaza, its
leader Hanija said the group accepted a state on the
nineteen sixty seven borders, as well as all the decisions

(02:39:28):
taken by the PA and the PLO, but there were
no takers. HAMAS leaders also backed the two thousand and
two era Peace Initiative that called for the following the
withdrawal of Israeli forces from territories occupied in nineteen sixty seven,
the right of Palestinian refugees to return to the homes
they had been forcibly displaced from since nineteen forty eight,

(02:39:50):
and the formation of a sovereign, independent Palestinian state in
return for air recognition of Israel. But Hamasa's offers heatedly
dismissed by Israel and ignored by Israel's Western allies, including
the US, despite Washington's claims of playing the role of
a quote honest broker in the conflict. Tarek Baconi, author

(02:40:13):
of Hamas contained the Rise and Pacification of Palestinian resistance,
told Al Jazeera Hamas has always said that they are
ready to offer a truce and to stop targeting civilians
if the Israeli occupation removes its settlers. At least seven
hundred and fifty thousand Israelis live in hundreds of fortified
illegal settlements and outposts across the occupied Palestinian territories of

(02:40:37):
the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the vast majority of
which are again built illegally, either entirely or partially on
private Palestinian land, and thus they violate international law. One
of the more infuriating and frankly incredibly stupid talking points
that Zionists have when it comes to talking about Hamas
is the two thousand and six election where Palestinians ala

(02:41:00):
elected Hamas as they're appointed leadership. I want to remind
every one of a few things. The Gaza strip has
a very young population. Most of the inhabitants in Gaza
are under fifteen years old. The largest population group in
Gaza are children between the ages of five and nine

(02:41:22):
years old. This population wasn't even born yet, let alone
old enough to vote in two thousand and six. And Furthermore,
leadership does not indicate your right to live a life,
your right to not be killed. If you're in America
and Trump is your elected president and you hate Trump
and maybe other foreign entities hate Trump, do you deserve

(02:41:45):
to die?

Speaker 2 (02:41:46):
No, you don't.

Speaker 7 (02:41:49):
The resistance fighters in Hamas are not the ones who
wrote the original charter. They're not the ones who establish
Hamas in the first place. They're young people that are
joining the most active armed resistance to defend Palestine. It's
their only option, and Palestinians have tried other non violent
forms of resistance against this occupation. In twenty eighteen to

(02:42:13):
twenty nineteen, there was something called the Great March of Return.
It started on March thirtieth, twenty eighteen, and ended December
twenty seventh of twenty nineteen. Every Friday for those years,
Palestinians in Gaza demonstrated and protested along the border fence
between Israel and Gaza for a right to return to
their homes. And to demand an end to the Israeli

(02:42:36):
blockade in Gaza. During this time, the Israeli army killed
a total of two hundred and twenty three people. Over
thirty six hundred and one thousand people, including nearly eight
thousand and eight hundred children, were injured. This is after
a peaceful attempt at demonstrating, after a peaceful attempt at

(02:42:57):
trying to resist occupation, their still shot and killed. They're
shot with the intention to kill. Expecting Palestinians to be
pacifists when it comes to resisting a brutal, violent occupation
that has been now almost a century long is very
small minded and entitled and frankly wrong. Palestinians have their

(02:43:19):
right to resist. Armed resistance is legal under international law.
When it comes to resisting and occupying power. What does
this mean? Maybe you've heard that train of thought before.
Let me explain it to you. Let's go back in
time a little bit. The General Assembly of the United
Nations the UNGA, which was once described as the collective

(02:43:40):
conscious of the world, noted the right of peoples to
self determination, independent and human rights as early as nineteen
seventy four Resolution three three one four of the UNNGA
prohibited states from any military occupation, however temporary hum curious
Israel has been doing that for now. In the relevant

(02:44:01):
part of the resolution, the resolution not only went on
to affirm the right to self determination, freedom, and and
dependence of peoples forcibly deprived of that right, and particularly
peoples under colonial and racist regimes or other forms of
alien domination, but it also noted the right of the
occupied to quote struggle and to seek and receive support

(02:44:24):
in that effort. The term armed struggle was implied without
precise definition in that resolution and many early other ones
that upheld the right of indigenous peoples to evict an
occupier again the right of an indigenous people to evict
their occupier, but the imprecise language was changed on December third,

(02:44:45):
nineteen eighty two. At that time, the WNNGA Resolution three
seven Slash four to three removed any doubt or debate
over the lawful entitlement of occupied people to resist occupying
forces by na any and all lawful means. The resolution
reaffirmed quote the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence,

(02:45:08):
territorial integrity, national unity, and liberation from colonial and foreign
domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.
And although Israel has tried time and time again to
recast this ambiguous intent of this precise resolution, trying to

(02:45:30):
place its now nearly century long, violent, brutal occupation in
the West Bank and Gaza beyond this resolution's application, the
declaration itself proceeds to be very explicit in its language
when it comes to Palestine. Section twenty one of the
resolution strongly condemned quote the expansionist activities of Israel in

(02:45:51):
the Middle East and the continual bombing of Palestinian civilians,
which constitute a serious obstacle to the realization of self
determination and independence of the Palestinian people. That's what I mean,
and that's what many people mean when they say that
Palestinians have the right to resist and armed resistance is
illegal under international law. I want to bring that up

(02:46:14):
because even if Hamas does not reflect the viewpoint of
some Palestinians, HAMAS is also the main armed resistance group
that has been fighting against the IOF in defending Palestine,
Gaza in particular against Israel, and they have a right
to do that clearly, as international law states. Regardless let's

(02:46:38):
go back to talk about the history of Hamas and
how they amended their charter.

Speaker 2 (02:46:44):
In twenty seventeen.

Speaker 7 (02:46:46):
In twenty seventeen, Hamas formerly amended its original nineteen eighty
eight charter. The new charter holds that armed resistance against
an occupying power is justified under international law. And while
the nineteen eighty eight Hamas Charter has been widely criticized
for us anti semitism, each two thousand and seven document
states that Hamas's fight is not with the Jewish people,

(02:47:08):
but with the Zionist project, and as you should realize
by now, anti Zionism is not anti Semitism. The new
charter also announced once again that it would accept a
Palestinian state on the nineteen sixty seven borders. This would recognize,
in effect, a two state solution and therefore the existence
of Israel as a legitimate entity. This was proposed even

(02:47:31):
as Israel continued to insist that it can no longer
allow Hamas to exist, and as Israeli politicians, led by Netanyahu,
repeatedly ruled out a two state solution. Hama's political leader
Haled Michal said at the time the Hamas, thinking from
the very start was clear we are not facing a
religious war. Hamas ever since its inception, realizes the nature

(02:47:56):
of the struggle against the Israeli occupier, that it is
not a struggle because they are Jews, but because they
are occupiers. Israeli officials dismissed the new policy paper as
lies in a video Ntenya, who symbolically and dramatically threw
the document into a trash ban, saying it was an
attempt to deceive the world. Through its actions which span

(02:48:18):
across decades, Israel has not shown any interest in a
political agreement, whether with Hamas or other Palestinian political parties
like FATA, which governs the occupied West Bank. Sary Arabi,
a Ramala based political analyst, told El Dazeira, the issue
is not about Gaza. It's also not about whether Israel
or Hamas started the war. There are daily killings and

(02:48:41):
assaults in the occupied West Bank. There are attacks on
the Uxa Mosque, there are prisoners and checkpoints. The people
in Gaza are refugees. They were isolated and separated from
the rest of the Palestinian people, and the vast majority
of Gaza's population are refugees who were forcibly expelled from
their homes and villages in the nineteen forty eight Nekba

(02:49:02):
by Zionist militias. Many political analysts also blame Israel for
the failure of the OSCO Accords, signed in nineteen ninety
three and nineteen ninety five between Israel and the PLO,
which was representative of the Palestinian people at the time.
The agreements led to the formation of the PA, an
interim five year governing body meant to lead to an

(02:49:24):
independent Palestinian state comprising of the occupied territory of East
Jerusalem and the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. However,
thirty years into its existence, the PA has failed to
create a state in the face of Israeli occupation, legal
land grabs and settlements, and then Hamas took control of
Gaza from the PA in two thousand and seven. While

(02:49:47):
there was initial support for the OSCO Accords among Palestinians,
the failure to reach a final peace agreement by nineteen
ninety nine and the growing settlement projects, particularly under nan Yahoo,
left many disappointed. In a leaked video in twenty ten, Nanyah,
who boasted about how he made sure the OSCO Accords
did not succeed. The hopes of the OSCO Accords turned

(02:50:11):
into despair as Israeli policies under successive governments continued to
undermine the PA and its aspirations. Today, the PA has
limited administrative rule over pockets of the occupied West Bank,
while Israeli settlements, which are again considered illegal under international law,
have grown rapidly. The settler population in the occupied West

(02:50:34):
Bank and East Jerusalem has grown from two hundred and
fifty thousand Israelis in nineteen ninety three to more than
seven hundred thousand this year. In his talk with El Jazeera,
author Tarik Barconi said the Israelis wanted OSLO because that's
how they maintained their colonization. By maintaining the facade of

(02:50:55):
a peace process. Hamas was showing a mirror to the
Israelis to say, if you're actually talking about the possibility
of ending the occupation, then end it. That was their offer,
instead of the nineteen ninety three awesome agreements that they
would stop armed resistance if Israel let Palestinians be in
the eastern side of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

(02:51:17):
When we look into the history of Hamas, we see
that its political leadership has over the years proposed numerous
long term truces or cease fires to Israel in exchange
for the realization of a sovereign, independent Palestinian state, but
Israel has rejected those offers, arguing that Hamas could not
be trusted to adhere to any long term ceasefire and

(02:51:39):
insisting that any proposal for a short term pause and
fighting were insincere and strategically aimed only at helping the
armed movement regroup from losses. I've said this before, but
it bears repeating. Every Zionist accusation is a confession. The
reality is that Israel is the one who cannot be
trusted to adhere to any long term ceasefire, as we

(02:52:02):
have seen time and time again. Here is a summarized
timeline of the most recent peace deal attempts that have
been proposed since October seventh, since the genocide in Gaza started.

(02:52:24):
In January twenty twenty four, the n YAHOO rejected a
Hamas proposal to end the war and release more than
one hundred captives held by the group in exchange for
a withdrawal of Israeli forces, the release of Palestinian prisoners
in Israeli jails and recognition of Hamas governance over Gaza.
And then on May sixth, Hamas said it accepted a

(02:52:45):
Gaza ceasefire proposal which was put forward by Egypt and Kuttar.
This deal would come in three stages that would see
an initial halt in the fighting, leading to lasting calm
and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Palaesainian territory.
It would also ensure the release of Israeli captives in Gaza,
as well as an unspecified number of Palestinians held in

(02:53:06):
Israeli jails. The framework of the agreement in brief is
the release of all Israeli captives in the Gaza Strip,
civilians or military, alive or otherwise from all periods, in
exchange for a number of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel
as agreed upon, and a return to a sustainable calm
that leads to a permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of

(02:53:29):
Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, as well as its
reconstruction in the lifting of the siege hm That seems
little familiar, doesn't it, But Israel unsurprisingly did not agree
to this proposal. Instead, it bombed Rupha, which made the
Israeli government's message clear there will be no permanent ceasefire.

(02:53:52):
Israel's bombing of Raupphah was justified by Israel as a
way to disband Hamspitalians and seize control of the Gaza
Egyptian cross which Israel accuses Hamas of using to smuggle
weapons into Gaza. But humanitarian groups were quick to point
out that a closure of such a crossing would only
lead to further disastrous consequences for the more than one

(02:54:13):
million Palestinians living in Dapah, the majority of them displaced
from other areas of Gaza who fled to Daphah after
being told by Israel that it was a quote unquote
safe zone. Israel said at the time that the terms
of the May Hamasisepire deal differed from previous proposals it
had seen, but analysts believe that the wider issue is

(02:54:34):
that Israel is not willing to agree to a permanency
spire even after Hamas releases all Israeli captives. Omar Dehman,
an expert on Israel Palestine with the Middle East Council
for Global Affairs, spoke about this in May saying the
last couple of days have proved that Israel was not
really negotiating in good faith. The moment that Hamas agreed

(02:54:57):
to a deal, Israel was willing to low that up
by commencing their assault on Rafah. The goal is to
destroy Gaza in its totality. And then, on May thirty first,
the US announced its own ceasefire proposal that Biden said
would lead to a quote lasting ceasefire in the Gaza strip.

(02:55:17):
He said the proposal involves three phases, the first of
which would last six weeks and would include a full
and complete ceasefire as well as the withdrawal of Israeli
forces from all populated areas of Gaza. Again, this peace
plan is almost indistinguishable from the one that Hamas agreed
to on May sixth. A quick reminder that only twenty

(02:55:38):
five days before this announcement, on May sixth, Hamas had
agreed to a cease fire proposal by Egypt and Katad
that is almost identical to the one Biden announced on
May thirty first, and Israeli leaders rejected that initiative. On
June seventh, Israel rejected the UN's resolution of its own
hostage deal. Offer, which was a permanent seat ease fire

(02:56:00):
in exchange for release of all hostages. A reminder that
the only mass release of hostages has come through ceasefire exchanges,
and that a ceasefire deal means freed hostages without mass death.
It boggles my mind that there are still people defending
Israel and saying all this Palestinian death is for the hostages,

(02:56:23):
because again, if Israel cared about their lives at all,
they would agree to a deal because that deal can
guarantee the safety of the hostages. But they do not
care about the hostages. Every time Israel rejects a deal,
they are telling you that, and yet their supporters are
too entrenched in the lies and propaganda of Zionism to

(02:56:46):
ever see clearly. So, just to summarize, the US proposed
a ceasefire deal which was almost indistinguishable from previous plans,
agreed to buy Hamas, and then, while seemingly waiting for
Israel to accept the deal, the US launched a military
operation and committed more war crimes to murder hundreds of Palestinians.

(02:57:10):
And they did this by hiding in humanitarian aid trucks
while deceiving the world and the Palestinians into thinking that
they were trying to formulate a ceasefire agreement. The US
helped Israel plan and carry out its massacres. This is
what peacemaking looks like to the United States. A ceasefire

(02:57:31):
deal is the absolute bare minimum, and it is nowhere
near enough. The removal of Nan Yahoo is nowhere near enough.
He's being set up as the fall guy and scapegoat
for Israel, skirting the responsibility of what the Israeli state
has done to Palestinian people since nineteen forty eight. The
Fight for Palestine is a liberation movement which demands nothing

(02:57:55):
less than the full dignity, freedom, and security of all
all who live under this violent military occupation. It's a
demand to end Israeli apartheid, and until that happens, Israel
will continue to get away with the nekapa that started
in nineteen forty eight and continues today. The Nekapa never ended.

(02:58:17):
Israel will continue to get away with the genocide and
ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people until Israel and it's
apartheid is dismantled. A ceasefire is the absolute bare minimum
to achieving that, and that my friends is our episode
for today. Please keep sharing and learning about what is
happening in Palestine and got stop talking about it. Free Palestine.

Speaker 1 (02:58:46):
Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
from now until the heat death of the Universe.

Speaker 7 (02:58:52):
It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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 coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

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