It Could Happen Here Weekly 183

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

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

Speaker 3 (00:27):
Hello, and welcome to itapen here. This may be my
final episode on Latin American onechism. That is, we've called Peru, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay,
the many countries of Central America, the former countries of
Grand Colombia, and the Spaanifoon Islands the Caribbean. Now we'll

(00:48):
finally get into the big one, Mexico. And I say
we because I'm here with Garrison Davis.

Speaker 4 (00:54):
Hello, is this has been it's got to be like
a year long series now right.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
At this point, and yeah, it's going to go around
for some time with breaks in between and everything.

Speaker 4 (01:04):
I'm very very excited.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Yeah, to introduce myself real quick, I'm Andrew Sage. You
can find me on YouTube, but androism and we should
have check out the show notes for all the references,
including a health capalities anarchism in Latin America, which was
an indispensable resource for the entirety of this project. Without
further Ado faminos, we have a lot to cover. Mexico

(01:28):
is a massive and storied country, so I can only
really give you a gist of its pre colonial and
colonial history. For the necessary context, we have to start
thousands of years before the name Mexico or Mexico even existed.
Of course, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the land we
now call Mexico is home to some of the world's
most unique ancient civilizations whose came the Olmechs, often called

(01:52):
the mother culture of meso America, known for their colossal
stoneheads and influence on later cultures there with their dazzlin cities,
mathematics and calendars, and eventually the Aztecs, who built the
Grand Empire, settled onto nor Stitland, which is now Mexico City. Unfortunately,
we can't spend much time on this rich history. We

(02:13):
must progress to the time of European contact. In fifteen nineteen,
everything changed. Spanish Conquistra and nan Cortez arrived, and within
just two years the mighty Aztec Empire fell disease. Alliances
with native enemies of the Aztecs, technological advantages and brutal
warfare aided the Spaniards overthrowing a civilization of millions. What

(02:37):
followed was three centuries of colonial rule under New Spain,
marked by extraction, Catholic conversion, and the mixing, often violently,
of indigenous European and African peoples. By the early eighteen hundreds,
the winds of independence were finally blowing. A Catholic priest
named Miguel Hidalgo sparked the fight with a cry for

(02:57):
freedom in eighteen ten. Specifically, he sought the end of
rule by Spanish peninsulars, which are the people who came
from Spain and ruled over Mexico. He called for the
equality of races, and he called for the redistribution of land.
As a hill capbility put it in anarchism in Latin miracle,
hid Illgo proposed to abolish, even if by gentle and

(03:21):
gradual means, what he called, in almost Prudonian terms, the
horrible right of territorial property, perpetual hereditary and exclusive. This
whole land topic is going to come up a lot
in the history. By the way, you may be familiar
with the phrase land and freedom, the aira liberdad that
comes from Mexico. Anyway. It took more than a decade

(03:43):
of war, but by eighteen twenty one Mexico had finally
broken free from Spain. Freedom, though didn't mean stability. The
nineteenth century saw emperors come and go, because there was
actually a time when Mexico as a monarchy, Foreign invasions
by the United States via the Manifest Destiny and Napoleon's
France via monarchical Latin League, and internal power struggles. The

(04:06):
Zapatec president Benito Juarez, who from eighteen sixty four to
eighteen sixty seven had resisted foreign occupation by Napoleon's emperor
Maximilian and fought for constitutional reform, sought to stabilize, secularize,
and modernize the country. In the mid eighteen hundreds, figures
like Quarez led a sweeping movement against the old powers

(04:28):
of Mexico, the Catholic Church and the military, which had
long dominated both land and politics. To the layers de reformer.
They seized church property, secularized education and promised a new
era of rights and equality. But there was a catch,
because to weaken the Church, the liberals sold off its land,

(04:49):
not to the peasants or indigenous communities who had worked
on it for generations, but to wealthy buyers, the heroes.
The communal lands of indigenous peoples were privatized under this
liberal banner freedom and progress. They created a new class
of landlords and pushed rural people deeper into poverty. Benito

(05:10):
Juarez died, but his legacy lived on with those reforms
to cement the separation of church and state, freedom of religion,
the prohibition of forced labor, and so on. But following
him came the Portfyriato, a thirty year long dictatorship under
the mixed tech president Porfyrio Dias, who continued the modernization
of the country but also deepened its long standing inequalities.

(05:32):
Portforio Dias surrounded himself with intellectuals known as the scientificos
They were positivists, as in adherents of the positivist school
of philosophy, which advocated for rational planning and economic development
as a path of social progress. His slogan was ban Opalo,
the bread or the stick, and reflected the policy of

(05:53):
rewarding compliance with prosperity while punishing dissent with severe consequences.
The liberty order and progress equation sacrificed liberty as the
Mexican people were expected to trade freedom for the benefits
of these policies. Workers ended up facings low wages, long hours,
and of course lacked rights, while estate laborers were landless

(06:16):
and under the arbitrary rule of Mayo demos, education was
largely restricted to elites. In major cities, groups like the
Yaqi Indians were forcibly relocated as cheap labor to plantations. Governors,
those supposedly elected, were effectively presidential appointees, monitored by Hipe's
politicals who intervened the local affairs. The roulatis and elite

(06:39):
constabulary maintained order but often disregarded due process, which fostered
a whole reign of terror in the rural areas. Diaz's
popularity eventually waned as prosperity was monopolized by a small,
often foreign elite. This elite emulated European customs, which created
a stark divide with the growing protis and middle classes.

(07:02):
By the second half of the nineteenth century, Mexico was
caught in a contradiction a state that promised emancipation through
property rights, while this possessing the very people it claimed
to free. The liberal project had failed them, and in

(07:25):
its failure space opened for deeper critiques of property power
and the state itself. A younger generation began questioning the system,
and with this rise in criticism came rising repression, which
set the stage for the Mexican Revolution of nineteen ten.

Speaker 4 (07:43):
This whole era of like the turn of the millennia
and the start of the twentieth century has like so
much of this same stuff happening all over the world.
Like that's kind of one of the biggest trends that
we've been able to see throughout your Latin American anarchism
series is like how how much they all mirror each other,
and like how much of like a global movements used

(08:04):
to exist, like not like an organized fashion, but like
there's like some like other force that is that is
like a driving these like global trends of like revoltant revolution. Yeah,
and like we see this a lot in like the yeah,
like the nineteen ten to nineteen twenty time period. I
mean even just in Latin America.

Speaker 3 (08:24):
Absolutely. I also think, of course, it's really easy to
notice these trends and notice these tides of history and retrospect.
You know, when you submerged in it, it's just like,
you know, all these conversations and stuff happening, for sure,
all these events and stuff happening around you. But when
you by looking in the past, you could say, oh wow,
this is like a global pattern, you know. So I'm

(08:45):
always curious to see like when we look back, I mean,
the twenty ten is already over. The narratives around it
are still formulated, right, We're still in the midst of
the nineteen twenty in the nineteen twenties, the twenty twenties, say,
you know, the nowseron it will still be development all now.
But we're already halfway through, and I'm sure people have
already seen suitent trends that are going to make for

(09:07):
some excellent retrospective commentary.

Speaker 4 (09:10):
Definitely. Yeah, Like the past ten years we've seen this
like global far right power grab and this like rebirth
of right wing populism sweeping a whole bunch of neoliberal democracies,
like like post nineties, post War on Terror, post end
of history stuff where you see like the full extent
of like the Clinton, Reagan Thatcher economics completely completely crumble

(09:32):
with far right populism like taking taking over the reins
of most popular consciousness. Yeah, to the point where even
like the more like liberal parties are being quote unquote
forced to adopt like similar rhetoric looking at like like
like the Labor Party in the UK and hearing the States,
how how much like the Democratic Party last year like

(09:53):
completely caved on like far right populist talking points on
immigration and stuff.

Speaker 3 (09:58):
Exactly. I think part of it as well is a
failure to advance a positive, totally direction and a positive program.

Speaker 5 (10:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
You know, when we allow the tunes of discourse, the
arena of discussion, to be dictated by the right, when
we simply react to what they are saying, when we
simply respond to their policies and their efforts, you know,
we may slow down the progress of their goals, but ultimately,
as long as we are engaged in dialogue with their goals,

(10:28):
they are storely inching their goals closer and closer to reality.

Speaker 5 (10:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (10:32):
Yeah, that is certainly the trend that that I've been
seeing the past ten years and I'm sure sure many
people have.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
Yeah, I mean, the overturn windows pretty much entirely dictated
by what they decide, you know. I think I've mentioned
this before. The right to decided they wanted to talk
about critical race theory, and then critical race theory became
the center of conversation. The right decided they wanted it
to target.

Speaker 4 (10:54):
DEI gender ideology.

Speaker 3 (10:57):
Right, Yeah, and then that becomes the whole thing, is
that the center discussion. They are not putting forward the
policies that are going to hoot pretty much everybody as
the center of their policy. That's more like an a
side when they give themselves, you know, salary raises and
they cut taxes on the ridge. That's not the center
of their political message. Center the polical messages, you know,

(11:18):
various culture related issues that they can use s rority
their base, but it's nothing that's actually benefiting people, you know.
And instead of circumventing that, that effort to dictate the
course of conversation, dictate our own conversations instead of what
it's kind of following along the tail. But that's a

(11:40):
bit outside the scope of of this a bit of
a digression here. But before we get to the point
of the Mexican Revolution, though, we should really take a
look at the slow and steady development of radical ideas
in Mexico during the nineteenth century. You see indigenous resistance
persisted throughout Mexico's history through often quiet, revolved acts of

(12:02):
non cooperation that would steadily ensure that Spain could never
fully establish his dominion. Even after independence, the culdnal structure
lived on in the hasciendas, the church, and the state,
so the indigenous communities would continue to resist, sometimes in
profoundly anti authoritarian ways by the nineteenth century. And this
history is courtesy and hill capialtes anarchism in Latin America.

(12:24):
As I mentioned in eighteen sixty one, a man arrived
in Mexico with a very distinct name. He was Platino
Constantino Rorocanati. He was a Greek immigrant radicalized by the
revolutions in Europe and steeped in the works of Furia,
who was a utopian socialist, and Prudon, who was an
anarchist fust anarchist. He had fled the counter revolutionary tide

(12:48):
crashing over the continent with a mission. Roccanati believed Mexico,
with its long standing indigenous traditions of communal landholding and
mutual aid was the perfect police to plant the seeds
of a new utopian society. And in a lot of
ways he was right, you know. He saw in the
a Hero system, the indigenous Kuna Lantennire a living echo

(13:09):
of the kind of society Utopians in Europe could only
dream of. Where the liberally saw backwardness, Rota Kanati saw potential.
His aim wasn't to civilize these communities, but to learn
from them and help them protect their autoroity from the
encroaging state through political philosophy and practice. He seemed to
be a very interesting fellow by the way. I mean,

(13:30):
he apparently spoke seven languages. He practiced medicine by day
and philosophy by night. He was a Christian, but not
anything like the Christians that dominated Mexico at the time, because,
as anhil Capelt he puts it for him, the essence
of Christianity is charity, that is love for all, as
it is taught in the Gospels, and that essence is

(13:51):
the moral foundation of socialism and revolution as well. Pure Christianity,
he wrote, is the religion that will regenerate the world
when people finally come to understand the power of its
basic principles liberty, equality and fraternity. But it is Christianity
without dogma like Saint Simon's, and without priesthood, liturgy or
hierarchical organization, the model for which he finds in the

(14:12):
life of Jesus and his earliest followers. Primitive Christianity is
authentic Christianity, but has been entirely degraded by the Catholic
and Protestant churches, and has nothing to do with so
many sexs that call themselves Christian end quote. A few
months after his arrival in eighteen sixty one, he published
a socialist primary in Mexico that marked him as the
first anarchist to put forward distinctly anarchist theory in the country.

(14:36):
In the mid eighteen sixties, he formed a group called
Lass Social the goal of spreading the ideas of mutualism,
free association, anti capitalist cooperation through books, pamphlets, and education.
Barukannati and his collaborators launched workers schools aimed the promoting literacy,
political consciousness, and autonomy. Once at school was the Esquila
de Rao idel Socialismo, the School of Lightning and socialism hell.

(15:02):
Yet it combined moral instruction with a deep critique of
the exploitative labor system. This was, you know, education as
a rebellion, not just to read, but to recognize the
exploitation and to imagine alternatives. Rudicnati thought of his socialism
as the fullest expression of the French revolutionary motto of liberty,
equality and fraternity, which no half measure like liberalism could

(15:26):
ever reach. He recognized that the immediate objective must be quote,
the extinction of poverty, the distribution and increase to the commonwealth,
the abolition of prostitution, and the conservation of all our faculties,
including the intellectual, physical, and moral ones, for the transformation
of humanity through science, beauty and virtue end quote. One

(15:47):
of those things was not like the others. I'm surely noticed.
There was a standout inclusion there, but it makes sense
considering his background. He also saw himself as a cosmopolitan,
perhaps owing in part his unique circumstances as a man
with a Greek father, Austrian mother, a French education, and
Mexican who he said, quote, we are Cosmopolitans by nature,

(16:10):
citizens of all nations, and contemporaries to all the Asias,
the greatest and most heroic human actions belong equally to
all end quote. In other words, our country is the
entire world, and all men are brothers. He also wrote
that the abolition of all governments in the nations, which
frightens you and you consider impossible and absurd they have

(16:33):
ever tried it, will usher in a totally new world
of institutions, in which the peoples of the world will
live in happiness end quote. Brouclati was a pacifist and
his approached anarchism, which owed his original introduction of socialism

(16:57):
being via Charles Furia, but eventually he came to the
stand the need for a class struggle, as he said, quote,
a social revolution in which many heroic victims will be
sacrificed in the sacred altar to restore the justice denied
it to the people end quote. His work attracted young radicals,
many of whom would later play key roles in the
development of Mexico's labor movement. Before he started Laso Ciel,

(17:21):
he'd initiated the first Grupo Destudiante Socialistas, from which came
figures such as Santiago Villanueva, who tried to organize the
worker's movement Permeneghuillo, Filla, Vicinzio, and Francisco's Alacosta, a leader
of rural masses. It's the core of this group that
would help him to create Lasocil, which would educate and agitate,
but also assist workers beyond mutual aid to an active

(17:43):
class struggle posture in defense of the interests against bosses.
So basically, he took these mutual aid societies and made
sure that they didn't stay mutual aid societies, that they
were radicalized into resistance societies. Because those sort of mutual
aid associations were very common in Latin America at the time.
You know, workers would create these little groups where they

(18:04):
would try and support each other. But it's very easy
to fall back on that and to assume, you know,
that's all you have to do. Making sure that they
have a radical posture, a revolutionary posture. It's important to
ensure that they're not just rest in your laurels and
expecting change to come to you, and indeed, they did
not expect the change to come to them. In June

(18:25):
eighteen sixty five, these resistant societies supported the first industrial
strike in Mexico. Unfortunately, it was crushed by the leader
of the country at the time, Emperor Maximilian, but it
was his occupation and the economic harshness of it all
that fermented the spread of anarchist ideas. Another stud on
Talt of Rocannati school came Julio Chavez, a precursor to

(18:47):
the more famous Emiliano Zapata and a fervent anarchist communist.
He agitated for a peasant rebellion and engage in land expropriations,
which grew in popularity wherever he was active, from the
Cholco texokore John where he began to all the states
of Quibbler and Morella as Coupleleetti recounts quote. The federal
army finally moved against him and defeated and imprisoned. He

(19:09):
was executed in eighteen sixty nine by order of President
Benito Juarez. Before he died, Chavez cried out, long Live
Socialism end quote. His manifesto, which was written a few
months before he died, would help introduce more masses in
the Mexican movement to the idea of class drugl and
like a light bulb over one's head, it immediately it

(19:30):
clear who was responsible for their suffering. Santiago vil and
Weaver and a fellow student to Rocanati named Villa Vicenzio
worked arduously to organize the artisans and workers in Mexico City,
and they definitely had the cards stacked against them, but
they helped to organize an industrial strike in a textile
mill in eighteen sixty eight, and in eighteen sixty nine

(19:50):
they established a Circulo Peraltario, and in eighteen seventy the
Grand Seculio de Obreros de Mexico and in eighteen seventy
one the newspaper Al Socialista. This is when the red
and black so famously associated with anarchism came into the
Mexican workers' movement. The eighteen seventies saw struggles between radical
and moderate factions among workers, proletarian presses making a name

(20:12):
for themselves, and the first convention of the General Workers
Congress of the Mexican Republic in eighteen seventy six with
a manifesto that indicated the crown influence of libertarian ideology
in Mexico. Of course, there was a tension in that
Congress between the socialists and the anarchists, but water is wet. Sadly,
Mexico wasn't ready for revolution, or rather the ruling class wasn't.

(20:36):
While Roadcinnati and others sold seeds among students and workers,
the country was swinging toward reaction. As I mentioned earlier,
with the rise of Porfilio Diaz in eighteen seventy six,
any space for radical thought began to close. Diaz, the
stronglan of Oneization, was obsessed with order and progress. He
welcomed foreign capital, built railroads across the nation, and gutted

(21:00):
the countryside to make room for exports, and he crushed dissent.
While Roccarati avoided outright persecution thanks in partists foreign status
and paspest leanings, the educational projects he inspired were dismantled
or sidelined. The more confrontational elements of the ole anarchists
current went underground. Those who spoke of abolishing property or

(21:21):
questioned the Porphylian vision of modernity were met with jail, exile,
or worse. Rocnati's allies, Alacosta, through his newspaper Like International,
promoted a twelve point socialist agenda. Advocated on universal social republic,
municipal autonomy, workers' rights, workers associations, wage abolition, and property equality.

(21:42):
Despite Diaz's rise in eighteen seventy seven, he led a
present uprising in Sierra Gorda and Planet the Lla Baranca,
battling federal forces until eighteen eighty. Despite his defeat and
imprisonment in eighteen eighty one, the rebellion persisted. Telacosta's ally,
Colonel Albert to Santa Fe, introduced the Lays del Pueblo.

(22:02):
Influenced by mcunan's ideas. Though not a purely anarchist manifesto,
this document emphasized land distribution, national industry promotion, army suppression,
and free education. Stafe argued that true Mexican independence depended
on reclaimant stolen lands, a movement which, of course gained
traction among the peasants. General Negrete supported Santa Fe's revolutionary efforts,

(22:27):
just as he had backed Chavez, Lopez and Sarlacosta earlier.
Satafe's resistance against Diaz's dictatorship was more radical than mayor
electoral opposition. It aimed at transference sovereignty to local municipalities
and land to peasant collectors. However, by the eighteen nineties,
Diaz effectively suppressed most worker movements through bribery and repression.

(22:49):
While industrial workers and miners fared slightly better than the peasants,
wages steadily declined after eighteen ninety eight. Rodocanati left Mexico
in eighteen eighty six after giving for two decades of
his life to the cause. But it's two decades of
so and seeds would eventually flourish in the Mexican Revolution.
What will be covering in the next episode. Thanks for

(23:10):
tuning in, am Andra Sage. You can follow me on
YouTube at Andrewism and patron dot com slash Saint Drew.
Thanks again. This is it could happen here. All power
to all the people. Please hello and welcome to it

(23:46):
could happen here. I'm back with Yeason Davis.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
Hello, and I'm.

Speaker 3 (23:50):
Andress Sage or Andrewism on YouTube now. Previously we explored
a lesser known chapter in Mexico's radical history before my
Gone Before for the Revolution, when a Greek emigre named
Plotino Rocanati arrived in the eighteen sixties, convinced that Mexico's
indigenous communal traditions could form the basis for a new

(24:11):
anarchist society. Through schools, pamphlets, and mutual aid societies. He
helped sow the first seeds of anarchist thought on Mexican soil.
Some of his students pushed even further and flirted with
many bush and streams of anarchism. Even as Portfilio Diazis
regime clamped down and anything that challenges dry for order
and progress, Rocanati faded from view and many of his

(24:34):
students that associates had to go underground for a time,
but the ideas would live on like quiet sparks or
waiting for the next revolt, and an actual volt would
come in nineteen ten, when the Mexican Revolution erupted. By
keeping in mind the contexts here, when we talk about revolutions,
the focus tends to be on the flashpoints, the gunfire,

(24:55):
the slogans, the major figures, and I will do a
lot of focus on so of them figures throughout this history.
We have to keep in mind the revolutions have roots
that run deep, run deep below the surface. The revolutions
are often shaped by decades or centuries of injustice, and
Mexico's revolution was no exception because for over three decades

(25:17):
for Fibio Diaz ruled Mexico with what was basically a
velvet glove over an iron fist. He brought railroads in electrification,
but also crave crave costs for the rural poor, the
indigenous communities, and the working classes. By nineteen ten, thanks
to his efforts, almost all the land in Mexico was
in private hands. The rural port and our found themselves

(25:40):
as peons and haciendas abot those that fled to the
city for themselves, proletarianized, made to work at various industries
for long hours, low pay, and little protection. Despite appearance
stable and efficient and orderly, the system in Mexico was
profoundly unjust, and yet many saw it as a model

(26:01):
for progress in a region full of instability, a description
that seems eerily familiar to the situation that's currently taking
place in El Salvador. Beneath the Polish Venaier, tensions were
breren workers were organizing journalists who were risking their lives.
Teachers and lawyers, and even wealthy landowners began to murmur

(26:24):
about the need for reform, and the countryside, those old
communal memories refused to die. Even after the land was taken.
The land was remembered by the term twentieth century, Giaz
approached his eighties with no successor in sight, and the
people were getting fedter, which brings us into the first
phase of the Mexican Revolution. According to A. Hill Cappaletti,

(26:47):
the author of Anarchism in Latin America and the main
source of this episode, Francisco I. Madero wasn't quite a
revolutionary in all honesty. He just wanted to tweet the
status ko to keep a free market, but banned reelection
of presidents came from money. He was an upper class intellectual,
a believer in parliamentary democracy and in free markets. He

(27:09):
read the Review spirit the religiously. It was a spiritualist journalism,
and he believes in a kind of metaphysical liberalism where
good governance and good intentions could stare history in the
right direction. Madero's party, the Partido Democrata, was formed with
a single claire goal, and in Porthio diazis decades long

(27:30):
grip on power. But to more radical forces like Coricardo
Flores Margonne and the Partido Liberal Mexicano or PLM, Madero's
vision was nowhere near enough to get fooled by the name.
By the way, the PM had some revolutionary credentials. It
started off as a simple anti clerical, anti editatorial party,

(27:52):
but perhaps with the influence of North American and Spanish
immigrant anarchosynicalists, it eventually took on a libertarian character, guided
also in part for the ideological evolution of Malgone himself.
It was neither liberal nor truly a party in the end,
but rather a truly revolutionary libertarian organization. We'll get back
to Macgone's story in Osaka, but the point is where

(28:15):
mcgone was calling for social revolution, landry distribution, and worker's
control of production. Madero merely wanted electoral reform. He had
no real program for agreerian justice and was quote generally
indifferent to the problems of the Mexican masses, as Capeletti
put it. Still, Madero's nineteen ten campaign electrified all of

(28:36):
those who were unit for change, revolutionaries and reformists alike.
His challenge Todas helped ignite a broader uprising that managed
to bring Madero into power in nineteen eleven. Before we
get into what happened during the Madero presidency, let's go
back in time to follow Ricardo Flora's Macgone story. Macgon
was Born in eighteen seventy three in the village of

(28:58):
San Antonio, Iloxo Chi, then in Osaka, his roots straddled
both indigenous and Mestizo heritage. As a law students in
Mexico City, he found himself swept into the tide of
anti government agitation. Before he even toned twenty, he was
jailed for the first time. He joined the radical press
in eighteen ninety three with El Democrat and anti Diaz people.

(29:21):
The regime quickly snuffed out, but he wasn't deterred. In
nineteen hundred he co founded Regeneracion, the publication that would
become the voice of the Mexican left in the twentieth century.
It was while behind bars, where he often found himself,
that Macgone encountered the ideas that would shape his life's work.
Thanks to the library of liberal landowner Camillo Ariaga, he

(29:44):
read the writings of Kropotkin and Malichester, and through those
texts crystallized his anarchist vision. Now, even though Magone's ideology
incubated quietly in his early political life, it didn't stay
buried for law as his conflicts of the diazre intensified. So
truly the radicalism of his actions. He edited L Ejo

(30:05):
del Aquisote, a satirical rag that earned him yet another
stint in prison, and after his release of nineteen oh four,
Magroun fled to Texas where he re launched Geracion with
renewed purpose. By nineteen oh five, the paper helped spark
the creation of the Patido Liberal and the Hicano or PLM, which,
as I said, wasn't much of a political party as

(30:25):
it was a radical organ though it did have some
reformist demands mixed it. They were trying to soften their
language at times to appeal to conservative sympathizers of reform.
Away from the ADS, the PMS sought the abolition of
the military tribunals, free secular education, workers rights at the
eight hour workday minimum wage, and the expropriation of idle lands.

(30:48):
In short, it went further than nineteen seventeen constitution that
would come a decade later. I could be seen as
the crystallization of many of the Mexican Revolution's most popular aims.
Margon and the PLM established alliances across borders, particularly among
the industrial workers of the world, but that put a
target on Magone's back. For both Mexican and US authorities.

(31:10):
You already know they can't be having solid darity like that.
The Pinkertons rolled up, backed in part by Diaz himself,
and they were on Magon's tail constantly, even ended up
as far north as Canada just trying to escape their
constant harassment. But despite the repression, the momentum could not

(31:31):
be killed. Between nineteen or six and ninety oh eight,
the PLM helped organize a string of strikes and uprisings.
The most infamous was the canear Nea copper strike. Mexican
miners were paid stop vation wages while their American counterparts
earned double for the same work. When the miners struck
for fair pay and better conditions, they were met with

(31:52):
deadly force. The rebellion that followed so American rangers in
Mexican troops massacre more than two hundred people thousands were jailed.
Another uprising ignited in Rio Blanco, where textile workers already
paid a pittance, organized with the leadership of Jose Nierra,
a student of Magon. When negotiations failed and repression ramped up,

(32:14):
the workers responded, not with another petition, both insurrection on
January seventh, nineteen oh seven, they stormed the mill, freed prisoners,
cut wires, and declared open rebellion. The state responded with
a bloodbath. Entire families were dragged from their homes and executed.
Another one of the uprisings was a peasant revolter, began

(32:35):
in nineteen oh six in Akayukan and spread through Tuxtlas,
Mine Titlan and Tavasco. It was crushed, of course, in
nineteen oh eight and Viscas, though their plans had been
leaked to the authorities, revolutionaries had a firefight with police
and freed a town jail. Just two days later, in
Las Vegas, other students of Magon were fighting for justice.

(32:57):
Another set of gorillas of rose in Palomas, but they failed.
Yet another insurrection happened in Via the lead Yucatan, and
they suffered summary executions. And all those events, all those
small revolutionary bands challenging the states, they failed, but they
emboldened the dream of a different world with their will
to act. Magone was jailed again in nineteen oh seven,

(33:30):
but it wasn't over for him yet. And I really
don't like to romanticize, you know, this idea of this uprisings,
that they feel, but you know, they're still inspiring. We
don't want to go too fun to that where you know,
your self sacrifice for self sacrifice sake. But I think
it's important to point out that there were multiple failed
attempts before the successful uprising that ushered in the Mexican Revolution.

(33:54):
It wasn't you know, a first time successful attempt, and
by the time Malgon was at least from prison in
nineteen ten, the revolution had already begun to burn across Mexico,
and that is in part in thanks to the efforts
of those uprisings. Even though those individual uprisings failed, the
Catalan immigrant Amadeo Ferres pumped up this energy in nineteen

(34:15):
eleven with El Tipograph for Mexicano, yet another newspaper with
a fierce anarcho cynicalist spirit, meant to mobilize urban workers.
At the same time, old anarchist typographers were not only
printing their message, they were forming unions like the Union
de Canteras Mexicanos. In mid nineteen twelve, Juan Francisco Moncaliano

(34:37):
arrived from Qure and quickly rallied a diverse group of
workers into Grupo LuSE set on establishing a progressive education platform,
al Francisco Ferrer. By September nineteen twelve, these unions and
Grupo Loos united to form La Cassa Delbrero, forging a
distinctly anarcho synicalist identity. The organized lectures built libraries of

(35:00):
classic anarchist works and launched a new bi weekly called Lucha,
all while energizing a massive May Day rally in nineteen thirteen,
where twenty eight thousand workers rallied. Like Margon, these radicals
saw through the hollow promises of Madero's democracy. Voting for
a new president wouldn't free the peasantry. The legislative seats
wouldn't redistribute land. No congress, no matter how liberal, would

(35:23):
ever voluntarily dismantle the system that fed it. For them,
revolution was no less than put in land and production
in the hands of the people. No bosses, no landlords,
no masters, just workers organizing life on their own terms.
Madero's revolution, if we could even be called that, had
mobilized peasants, workers, and radicals. But that moderate phase was

(35:47):
about to end because once seated as president, Madero leaned
heavily on old elites. He really siphoned energy away from
genuine social change. With that reformance to push that he
was doing a move that sounds all through familiar, but
there was refusals in oct meaningful change lost in his
allies very quickly. Figures like Pasqual, Orosco and even Emiliano Zapata,

(36:10):
who had initially supported the rebellion against Diaz, became dissillusion
sowil Madero governed, the PLM continued its fight now against
the emergent new regime in northern Mexico. PLM aligned forces
initially rose alongside Madero's, but they did not make common
cause with him. When strategic positions and hiwawa were lost

(36:31):
with the middle class and Orosco sided with Madero, the
Mogonists turned their attention elsewhere. The next target was Baja California.
In early nineteen eleven. They began seasoned towns Mexicali, Los Alcodonis, Tecate,
and finally Tijouanna, seeking to establish a libertarian society, a

(36:53):
model for what they called a free America. But the
backlash was swift. American, British and French businesses owned pretty
much all of Baja California, landowners and newspaper mogules in California, USA,
which were often the same people panicked and ended up
smearing the mcgonists as secessionists trying to handle from Mexican

(37:16):
land to the US. In truth, as mcgonn wrote in Regeneracion,
does Baja California belong to Mexico. It does not, is
under the control of foreign capital. Mexicans owned nothing of it.
The PLM's campaign was not about taking Mexico apart. It
was about reclaiming it from the hands of foreign elites.

(37:37):
Nothing less than land and liberty, as Capelletti puts it. Quote.
On the contrary, mcgone's goal was nothing other than a
classless and stateless libertarian society that will provide the archetype
and pointed departure for the Mexican and World revolutionia end quote.
The downfall of the Baja California campaign came in the
hands of bourgeois Champion Madero, backed to where the US

(37:59):
government and capitalists. By mid nineteen eleven, the mcgonists uprising
in Maja California had effectively been extinguished, yet the saga
didn't end there. On the fourteenth of June and nineteen eleven,
magone and three of US associates were arrested, tried in
Los Angeles, and mcgone himself was sentenced to McNeil Island
Prison in Washington, State of Faith. He endured until nineteen fourteen,

(38:23):
which meant that macgone wouldn't be present in Mexico for
the death of one of his biggest ops. Since Madero
failed to gain the support of radicals or secure the
loyalty of reactionaries, the conservative military overthrew and assassinated him
in stolen Victoriano Huerta into power in nineteen twoty, and
just like that, the so called moderate phase the Mexican

(38:43):
Revolution ended in blood. Quiet's dictator ship tried to imact
the clock to the Porphyrian Eraqueta ruled with military force
and repressure, the usual stuff, persecuting labor organizers, shutting down
radical spaces, deporting for an activists, jail and dissenters, murdering people.
Crackdowns eventually hit La Cassa de Lobrero's publications and destroyed

(39:07):
the anarchist library. But out of this repression emerged a
new tactic. They basically said, you know, you could burn
our books. That's fine, don't you have to do. We're
not going to stop us from spreading our message. They
established grassroots orators, the Tribuna Roha, who took the revolutionary
message directly to the working classes, given speeches where they

(39:30):
were at and sharing the message even without access to literature.
By May nineteen fourteen, a new people in Antipascion Obrera
was launched. Do it too felt praise the regime's brutality. Thankfully,
the regime wouldn't last long because Ptor's power didn't go unchallenged.
From the north, Venustiano Carranza and the Constitutionalists rose to

(39:53):
oppose him, claiming to defend the Madero's legacy. From the south,
Emiliano Zapata refused to EXI accept any government that ignore
the demands of landless peasants, and throughout the country armed
struggle reignited, which brings us to Emiliano Zapata himself. He
was doing his own thing politically, but he was inspired

(40:14):
in part for the anarchist supporters and Margon. His ideology
was rooted in Nikalpui, the collective land systems of his
condigous ancestors. He eventually adopted the slogan Tierra Ileritad and
rallied behind the Plan de Ayala, demanding land redistribution and
local self governance. He had little tolerance for political maneuverent

(40:34):
He saw the false promises of figures like Cuerta and Kranza.
For Zapata, revolutionist thought about elections or modernization. It was
what given land back. That's really all he cared about.
In contrast, as the wariotis Mario, there was Pancho Villa.
He was a charismatic northern general and a populist who

(40:54):
worked with and against Kranza. As Magon described him, Zapata
delivered riches to their true owners, the poor via executes
the proletarian who takes a piece of bread end coot.
That both were opposed to Carranza. Their goals, strategies, and
ethics were far apart. Like I said, mariotas warrior. Queta

(41:17):
didn't last long. As I mentioned, he was ousted by
nineteen fourteen, so just about a year of being in
power and being a violent dictator. And after predator fell,
Perustiano Caranza rose to fill the vacuue. Like I said,
he claimed to be continuing Madero's legacy, and his vision
of Mexico was just as top down. He wasn't exactly

(41:39):
fond of anarchists or the radical left in general, but
faced with pressure from these appatistas in the south and
VI's forces in the north, he courted his lab organizations
like Cassa de la Brero Mundial offer gestures of support,
a few favorable labor reforms, and even physical space like
giving them the Jesuit College Santa Brigida as headquarters. In return,

(42:01):
Kranza hoped to build a loyal base of organized workers,
integrate them into his constitutional army, and neutralize the more
radical strains of revolution. And I'm sorry to say that
it partially worked. He was able to buy off some
of these workers. While this alliance gave La Casa de
Lobrero's space to organize workers throughout the country and ramp

(42:23):
up educational and prostatizing efforts, much like what would take
place in Spain years later, the anarchists began to lose
their anarchist roots from the collaboration. Instead of back in
the battle. In February nineteen fifteen, Lacassa signed a pact
with the Constitutionalist forces and created quote unquote Red battalions

(42:43):
within Kranza's army. But although Lacassa expanded its influence and
managed amount strikes among miners, teachers, drivers, bakers, oil workers,
textile workers, carpenters, button makers, and barbers in nineteen fifteen,
in response to the economic pressures of inflation and unemployment.
By early nineteen sixteen, their government allies were cracking down

(43:03):
on them. Not long after hiring the Red Battalions. They
fired the Red Battalion, so they shut down La CASA's offices.
They sent key figures to jail. In response, the worker's
movement held a national congress in Veracruz, and out of
this emerged a new labor federation built on anarchist syniclust principles,
committed not to capturing power but to dismantle it, the

(43:26):
Confederacion del Trabajo de Larion and Hicana. In May nineteen sixteen,
a general strike erupted in protest of the imprisonment of
La Caassa's leadership and to demand urgent economic relief. While
the strike was an immediate success, its ease led many
young militans to believe that change could come through a
benevolent state, notably Luis Morones, who would later lead to

(43:50):
Confederacion Nano Prera Mexicana was CROM signed agreements with Caranza's government.
Matters intensified ten months later when a second strike broker
due to lowpe. In response, Caranza ordered mounted police to
break up assemblies and declared martial law. The strike was crushed,

(44:10):
its committee suspended all activities, and one prominent leader was
nearly executed before his sentence was finally commuted. La Cassa
shut down and the strike failed, but the anarchists endured.

(44:33):
By mid nineteen seventeen, new groups like Loose and several
local cassas had reappeared throughout the country. However, internal debates
culminated in the October nineteen seventeen National Workers Congress, where
reformist forces led by Luis Moronees properly marginalized the anarchists,
set in the stage for the rise of the CROM

(44:54):
and a more moderate pro management approach aligned with of
All People the American Federation of Labor the AFL. Caranza's
crowning achievement came in that same year with the signing
of the Constitution of nineteen seventeen on People. It was
progressive land reform, limited churish power, labor protections. But to

(45:15):
many revolutionaries, including Magon, this wasn't the revolution fulfilled. Far
from it. It was a revolution managed their wireless dreams
trimmed down to a policy. Even its better reforms were
hardly enforced. But with the Constitution of nineteen seventeen, Cranzer
could still claim legitimacy, he could claim progress, and he
could claim that the revolution was over. But what happened

(45:39):
to the revolutionaries. Zapata was still fighting for land in
the South, but Caranza would assassinate him in By nineteen nineteen,
Magone was in prison in the USA, denouncing the betrayal
from behind bars. Workers were still struggling for real power
in their work places, and the vast majority of rural
Mexicans remained poor, dispossessed, and dissillusion In case you're wondering

(46:02):
what happened to Macgone in nineteen sixteen, he was jail
in the US until a group of exiled anarchists led
by Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman paid his bond. That
that feels like a cameo or crossover episode of some kind, right,
And then in nineteen seventeen, the year of the new Constitution,
he was back in jail again for speaking out against
the First World War and calling for a social revolutionary

(46:25):
war instead. He was sentenced to twenty years and his
health deteriorated steadily. He wasn't a fan of care anzer
at Tall. He called him a strike breaker, an assassin,
and a wolf in sheep's clothing. When a Karanza's government
offered him a pension, he said, quote all money obtained
by the stage represents the sweat, the anguish, and sacrifice

(46:45):
of workers. If this money came directly from workers, I
would gladly and even proudly accept it because they are
my brothers. But when it comes to the invention of
the state, after being compelled from the people the money,
you would only burn my hands and fill my heart
with remorse. End quote. So long story short, he didn't

(47:06):
accept the money. When the US said they might let
him go if he said sorry and petitioned for a pardon,
he said, in many words, hell no. Among his more
beautiful words, he said, quote repentance. I have not exploited
the sweat, anguish, fatigue, and labor of others. I have

(47:27):
not oppressed a single soul. I have nothing to repent
for my life has been lived without my having acquired
any wealth, power or glory, when I could have gotten
these three things very easily, But I do not regret it.
Wealth power and GLORI are only one by trampling others' rights.
My conscience is at peace, for it knows that under

(47:47):
my convict's garb beats an honest heart. So he died
in his jail cell in nineteen twenty two, possibly assassinated. Zapata,
like I said, was assassinated by Cranzer in nineteen nineteen,
and Kranz himself was assassinated in nineteen twenty in case
who were keeping truck, both of Magone's major ops. He

(48:08):
ended up outliving right. He outlived Madero and then he
outlived Caranzer, but he still died in jail, which is,
you know, kind of tragic. But Kranza's successor, Alvaro Obregon,
was both friendly with reformists in the crom and not
as hostile to the anarchists as Caranza, which gave the
anarchists an opportunity to regroup. Strikes built up across the

(48:31):
country miners, oil workers, textile workers, dock workers, and more.
Some sixty five thousand workers in July nineteen twenty alone.
Out of this momentum came the Ferracion Communista del Proletariado
Mexicano or FCPR. It was an ideologically mixed group but
leaned in an arctic direction and starkly contrasted itself with

(48:53):
the reformist ways the CROM and the international ally the AFL.
The FCPM went on testa wish the Confederacieneral de Tabajadores
or CGT in nineteen twenty one as a direct challenge
to CROM. They were fully declaring their independence from state
and party. Their focus was on class struggle. The Mexican

(49:14):
government flew to his socialist language from time to time,
but the anarchists saw through the charade. They called out
that so called socialist light government's deportation of anarchists and socialists.
They even called Maroney the guy who started ZROM, Mexico's Mussolini.
It's an interesting insult. The CGT is still against the
Moscow backed Third International and instead allied with councilists like

(49:38):
Rosa Luxembourg and Anton Panacoec. They also formed a specifically
anarchist section within the group, meant to play the same
role played by the FAI for the Spanish CGT. The
Mexican CGT backed strikes, including in nineteen twenty one when
they backed a real workers' strike against US companies, and
in nineteen twenty two they expelled the CGT leaders who

(50:00):
had fluted with electoral politics, reiterating their anti party stance.
They would not allow themselves to be retaken and capitulated
to reformist aims. That same year, media protests turned into
confrontations when right wing thugs kill the demonstrator's child in
front of the US consolate, and they didn't stop there.

(50:21):
Anarchists in the CGT helped organize tenant strikes in Mexico
City and Vera Cruz. They led general strikes and textile
mills and rallied against steed violence. They protested in solidarity
with international struggles from Spain to Boston, from the murder
of Salvador Sigwi to the gelin of Saco and Vencetti.
They also to deal with efforts to defame them through misinformation,

(50:43):
such as the accusation that they were embeztling workers' funds.
Throughout the early nineteen twenties you had some new libertarian
publications jumping out. You had Verberrojo, you had Lahu, my dad, Sachiitario,
Tierra Libre, Alba, Anakika, and so on. And by nineteen
twenty four, under President Kayas, who followed the assassinated Obrigon,

(51:05):
the tides began to shift. Cays was more hostile to
the anarchists than Abrigon and openly favored CRON. He gave
Moronees a cabinet post past lawst undermined CGT organizing and
escalated repression. The CGT held its ground, organizing general strikes,
occupying textile mills, confronting the police, expanded into the countryside

(51:27):
all their usual stuff. They fought for short term relief
and long term revolution. By nineteen twenty six, CGT had
grown into a federation of one hundred and fifty seven
affiliated groups, unions, syndicates, occurring communities all included. And yet
by the late nineteen twenties things started to free. The
CROM was declining due to the attachments to a government

(51:49):
that was no longer conciliatory to their political ambitions, and
the CGT couldn't capitalize on that decline of the CROM.
The government sought to marginalize them entirely. Thousands of former
CROM members joined the CGT, while the CGT itself began
to make some slides toward concession and reformer zone. And
so it reached a point where they were calling themselves anarchists.

(52:12):
But the anarchism was nowhere never and yet anarchism didn't die.
It morphed, it migrated, and it regrouped. After the fall
of Spain in nineteen thirty nine, exiled members the CNT
and FAI arrived in Mexico, reinvigorating the scene for a time.
They published Tierai Libertad, built new organizations, and kept the

(52:34):
memory and the fight alive. A few anarchists and impulses managed
to english within the Mexican Communist Party into the early
nineteen thirties as well. At least according to Kirkschaffer, President
Cais ended up founding what became the Institutional Revolutionary Party,
a contradiction if I ever heard it, And they basically
ran the show in Mexico for seventy one years straight,

(52:56):
from nineteen twenty nine to two thousand. They administered co
created the conditions. They were both the NEOs apatisms. In
nineteen ninety four, they are anarchists, as they have been
very clear to state, but maybe they'll get a two
part in the future going into their history in more depth.
The history of anarchism in Mexico has been quite the story,

(53:18):
I must say, and with that we've reached the end
of that classical history. Its modern history is still being written,
still being told. But this is the end of our
exploration for now, not as of Mexico's anarchist history, but
of this entire series of anarchism in Latin America. I
joked about baking an episode about Quebec's anarchism scene, but

(53:40):
that may remain a joke for now. We've justur neyed
a very long way together, from the Andes to Buenos Aires,
to Montevideo to South Battlo all over. We've seen how
long before the name anarchism arrived in Latin America's shows
people who resisting hierarchy through indigenous forms of autonomy, African

(54:00):
maroon communities, and peasant traditions of land sharing and reciprocity.
We saw how these anarchic and anarchist instincts met new
ideas genuinely and intentionally anarchist ideas coming from prudin Bacunin
and Kropotkin brought over in pamphlets and in the minds
of exiles and immigrants in Mexico, those forces took on

(54:23):
a revolutionary scale. Roda Kanati planted the seed, Macgone amplified
its voice. The workers, the peasants, the students, they all
gave it their all, their fire, And even when that
fire was smothered by reformists, by nationalists, by reactionaries, by capitalists,
by the bullets and the bribe, it never truly went out.

(54:45):
Across the Americas, these movements rarely one in the traditional sense.
They were often betrayed, suppressed, and erased from history. But
although anarchy was not achieved, anarchists and the anarchist idea
will survive. Anarchist thought is radically resilient, and it never
really disappears, and usually just goes underground or into the margins,

(55:08):
or into new forms, from student collectives to feminist organizations
to squads to ecological struggles, inspiring movements that aren't necessarily anarchists,
but lean in a direction that questions some of the
familiar patterns of authority. Thank you for walking this journey
with me. I've been Andrew Saige You can find me

(55:29):
on YouTube at Andrewism. Support the work over our patreon
dot com slash change threw. All sources, citations and further
reading can be found in the show notes. This has
been It could happen here. All power to all the people. Peace.

Speaker 6 (56:05):
Welcome to the war update and update about war. I'm
your host Miya Wong with the is is James and Robert.

Speaker 5 (56:12):
War never changes, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (56:15):
Yeah, except for Yeah, I mean all the time changes.

Speaker 4 (56:21):
Yeah, except for all the changes.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (56:23):
I think it's a line from the film.

Speaker 2 (56:25):
Yeah. I mean the most important part doesn't change, which
is most things in proper place at right time, right.
That's that's that's what determines war winning. But the things
that matter are what change.

Speaker 5 (56:37):
Yeah. Yeah. Also what doesn't change not great fun for
the most part, and non enjoyable way to spend your time.

Speaker 2 (56:44):
Not enjoyable except for for the chunk of people who
tend to make most of the calls.

Speaker 5 (56:48):
Yeah. Yeah, enjoyable a lot. Yeah, enjoyable. You're an old
guy in a big house.

Speaker 7 (56:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (56:55):
So we're gonna be talking about three wars. Yeah, I
think we're going to. We're gonna lead off with the
India Pakistan war, and then we're gonna do the other
two wars in some order you want to do you
want to announce the other two wars.

Speaker 5 (57:09):
Yeah, we're gonna talk about the end of the of
the armed conflict between the PKK and the Turkey State
maybe mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
Yeah, we'll be talking about Yemen a little bit.

Speaker 8 (57:21):
Yeah, man, Yeah, let's let's Oh god, let's do this. Okay,
So good news missed that. Look, we do have good news,
which is that we have not all died in the
nuclear fires. I know there are some of you for
whom you were very disappointed, but we're all still here
for better or for worse, I mean for better. Like
I'm very glad we didn't all die in nuclear fire. Yeah,

(57:41):
so let's let's let's talk about the recent war between
India and Pakistan. Lasted about four days, so all right. Well,
we talked about this a little bit before. The very
basic sort of elements of this conflict. We talked about
partition on the show before when India sort of gained
independence from the British ere it split into Indian Pakistan.

(58:03):
Millions died, horrific sort of conflict, people killing each other
like mass migrations across the borders.

Speaker 6 (58:11):
Very very very unstable set of borders get set up
that change a bunch of times. And one of the
aspects of this sort of whole thing is that Kashmir
was supposed to be this independent state and then through
an extremely convluted process that I am again once again
pushing off to another episode with like actual good experts

(58:35):
on this, because this is a very very convoluted thing.
But the short version of it basically is that this
series is sort of escalating conflicts, end ends basically in
a short war and then kasher being split into between
India and Pakistan, where like about a third roughly of
Kashmir ends up under Pakistani control and then about two

(58:57):
thirds ends up under Indian control. Now there's an agreement
signed by sort of Kashmir's ruler at the time to
let India like annex like two thirds of Kashmir or
so the actual dividing line basically ends up being like
where the armies stopped. You know, it changes over the years.

(59:18):
But the important thing here, right is that Kashmir is
supposed to have had an independence referendum, right that was like, yeah,
the deal now in a move that is, like Genny Winey,
even more stunning than the ship that, like Indonesia pulled
in West Papua so ins Papua. Right, like Indonesia pulls
a like fake independence referendum here, they've never even done that, Like,

(59:42):
they never pretended to have the referendum, and.

Speaker 4 (59:45):
They're supposed to have.

Speaker 5 (59:46):
It's like a sub assad level attempt at democracy, you know.

Speaker 6 (59:50):
Yeah, Yeah, they're just like nope, each ship like you're
you're you're basically a colony now now as part of
this deal, right, Kashmir God a pretty substantial amount of autonomy.
I'm gonna read there. There's actually there's a very good
Jacobin one of the rare good Jacobin articles, which usually
tend to be the ones written like not by the

(01:00:10):
American Jocobin writers.

Speaker 5 (01:00:12):
Yeah, I'm freelancer who made fifty US dollars for writings. Yeah,
and that's their right to goun up.

Speaker 6 (01:00:18):
Yeah, this is written by Irish k And I'm going
to quote here from this article. Quote central to the
instrument of a session. It's the document that the ruler
of Kashmir signed is sort of Likedhan Kashmir ver to India.
Quote which the constitutional provision of Article three seventy, which
assured the Kashmiri people autonomy over all matters besides those

(01:00:39):
pretending to defense, external affairs, and communications. The article was
supposed to be temporary and provisional because there was a
promise of a referendum by which the people of Kashmir
would decide their own political fate to remain part of India,
to join up with Pakistan, or become an independent state.
But as you've already mentioned, this has never happened. I mean,
they didn't even do a sham one. It just literally

(01:01:00):
didn't ever happen. And India has just been imposing its
rule in Kashmir ever since. And I mean it's also
worth pointing out that Pakistan has also been imposing its
rule on like it's part of Kashmir. But the Indian
occupation has become increasingly brutal basically since its starting, it's
just continued to get worse and worse, and it is
sort of a full blown military occupation, right there's just

(01:01:23):
like a bunch of fucking Indian troops in the street.
And as it becomes clear that India is like never
going to let Kashmir be free or just even let
the Kashmi people decide what they want. Milton struggles en
sews and as Kate points out, it's originally spearheaded by
the secular Jamu Kashmir Liberation Front, and this group has
just sort of wiped out because it wanted an independent Kashmir.

(01:01:46):
And this was convenient to neither the Indian or the
Pakistani government because Pakistan and Pakistan talks about this a
lot internactually, like one of their sort of international political
things is like, yeah, we want free Kashmir. But it's like, no,
you don't. You want Kashmir to be part of Pakistan.
And that is not the same thing is it being free?

Speaker 4 (01:02:02):
Like very clear.

Speaker 6 (01:02:04):
About this, yeah, and so and so Pakistan's engagement towards
Kashmir has always been about this, right, It's always been
about making sure that there wouldn't be any kind of
sort of independent Kashmir. And so both India and Pakistan
crush this sort of secular Kashmiri independence group that have
been spearheading a lot of this, and over time Pakistan is.

Speaker 4 (01:02:26):
Sort of through it.

Speaker 6 (01:02:28):
There are a complicated series of things has sorted a
lot of control over a lot of these groups or
has intelligence relations with them. Is SI kind of notoriously
works with militant groups like the I. S I is
the group in Afghanistan that like really full on did
the thing that everyone thinks that the US and the

(01:02:50):
Saudi sort of did in in terms of like funding
the worst parts of Lujahadeen, like that was really mostly
Pakistani intelligence. Yeah, So, like they have a lot of
relations with a bunch of people who absolutely fucking suck,
and they've you know, sort of used a lot of
these a lot of these groups as like a way
to sort of poke a stick in India and also

(01:03:10):
you know, like attempt to obtain their sort of like
domestic political goals of like weakening India for the real
sort of internal stability, which we'll come back to later, well,
the interior's ability of like military of the power of
the military in Pakistan, and also like taking the rest
of Kashmir. Yeah, and so this has caused a really

(01:03:31):
horrific conflict in which the people of Kashmir have suffered
a bunch of horrible shit. In twenty nineteen, that autonomy,
you know again that the autonomy that was the carrot
in order to like join in order in exchange for
cashmer joining India, right, and I supposedly getting this referendum,
like the like the carrot was supposed to be that

(01:03:51):
they're supposed to have an unbelievable amount of internal autonomy.
And in twenty nineteen, it had been being eroted for
a long time, but in twenty nineteen, India is just
like each hit fuck you, it's gone, now have fun.
And this causes a bunch of protests, It causes Milton
Group attacks, it causes a genuinely astonishing crackdown. I mean,

(01:04:12):
like they they turned off the phones in the internet
in Cashmir. The Indian government just like did this and
it became unbelievably difficult to get any information out. They
arrested unbelievable numbers of people. There are I mean just
absolutely horrifying accounts of the ship that Indian security forces
were doing to people. You know what I mean, Like

(01:04:34):
this is this is this is a colonial occupation, right,
The things that happened in the colonial occupation. They fucking
torture people, they kill people, they like they rape people.
It's it's really fucked And during this as as more
sort of like militant attacks rupt like in India, does
the first version of its well not the first version,

(01:04:56):
but it does. It does like it launches a series
of attacks on southern Pakistan and this is kind of
you know, there were escalations of it a couple of
years ago, but you know, the sort of big deal
this time was insurgents and it's we have a group
that claimed responsibility for it. It's still I don't know,

(01:05:17):
it's still unclear the extent to which packs INNY government
was actually involved. There's the whole thing with this. But
a bunch a bunch of sort of insurgents killed like
twenty five Hindu tourists in a KASHMIRII tourist town and
it's really fucking horrifying. This immediately causes this just unhinged
wave of Indi nationalism, like you do for sort of

(01:05:39):
nationalism in India. We talked last time about all of
these Indian government officials like literally talking about quote in
Israel style final solution to Kashmir. So a bunch of
very very horrific shit is happening. Yeah, and then India
decides that it's going to start launching attacks across the border.
There's like the immediate small arms fire, there's missile strikes,
there's drone attack, and then as this sort of escalates,

(01:06:03):
India launches attacks on three Pakistani air bases and again
like they hit an air base that is in the
city where Pakistan's Army General headquarters is, which is a
kind of provocation that has not happened since like the
last time these two countries were just straight up at war.
And you know, like that could have killed us all.

(01:06:25):
It didn't, but it absolutely could have, and it was
also just horrifying for it. And it's worth pointing this
out right. The people who are getting killed on both
sides of the border here, like ur Kashmiri's right, because
like their home has been occupied by these two powers.
When when India and Pakistan go to war, the people

(01:06:46):
who die on both sides are ar kashmiris right, who
are being killed by two states who decided, fuck you,
we get to control your fate, We get to be
the people who fucking occupy your land and then claim
to be the people who represent you. And you know,
the civilian toll of this is fucking horrifying. There's a
bunch of a bunch of civilians are killed. People spend

(01:07:08):
a huge amount of time cowering in these like horrifying
overcrowded bunkers. There's a good sort of BBC report on
this of like there's so many people packed into bunkers
that like you can't even like walk. Everyone's just like
pressed against each other. And three days later you come
out of your bunker and your fucking house is gone.
And those are the people who survived, right. It's it's

(01:07:29):
just horrifying, and eventually there's a ceasefire. Everyone is now
saying different things about the ceasefire. The Indian government is
trying to downplay the US's role in the ceasefire. The
Pakistani government has been talking about how a whole bunch
of places were involved, including like Iran and Turkey to
some extent, or Turkey more than I Ran. It seems

(01:07:50):
like the US, the UK, and Saudi Arabia all played
a role in sort of mediating it that we can
sort of confirm. The US seems to have played the
law just roll, which I guess I don't know. Like
Marco Rubio was like, we should probably not have a
war between to nuclear powers, which okay, I'm glad that

(01:08:13):
like he's finally found a thing a level that he
won't stoop to which is we all die in nuclear war.

Speaker 5 (01:08:21):
I mean, like I would rather Maka Rubio was not
the Secretary of State. But like of the people who
could be under Trump administration, he's not as bad as
some of the other folks.

Speaker 6 (01:08:32):
Yeah, I mean it's like he we are fully in
Like which of Hitler's generals would you prefer to be
in charge of this territory?

Speaker 4 (01:08:42):
All these people.

Speaker 2 (01:08:43):
Yeah, we don't need it. We don't need a debate
raml right now. What we do need to do is
throw to ads the Irwin Rommel of the podcast industry.

Speaker 6 (01:09:01):
Okay, so there are a few things about this conflict
that are very, very bad. One is that India has
demonstrated the capacity to launch attacks against Pakistan that don't
involve them mobilizing their ground troops, which takes forever. It
is hard. That's really fucking bad. It's also bad that
again they fucking hit like the air base next to
Pakistan General Army General Headquarters, which means if they try

(01:09:25):
to do another attack, they're gonna have to hit a
bigger target. And they apparently it seems like the Indian
government has sort of concluded that they can do this
now it's also very bad that like most of the
like domestic Indian left supported this, including CPIM, the comediest
party of India Marxists, which is like the sort of
social democratic technically Maoist party that is supposed to be
like the left in India, like back the attacks, and

(01:09:47):
they've always had a fucking terrible line on Kashmir. So
it's also we're mentioning a little bit. There's been a
lot of reporting about India. You know, Modia isn't making
a bunch of noise about trying to just straight up
cut off Pakistan's access to water, which is very scary. Yeah,
it's worth noting. Kay talks about this in that Jocobin piece.

(01:10:08):
Case argument basically is that like they don't actually have
the infrastructure to do this, which is good because I
mean that would be a genocide. Like if they just
knocked out all back Then's access to water for agricultural
purposes and for drinking purposes, it'd be really bad. But
here's what I'm going to read this quote. Under the
treaty regulations, India is required to share hydrological data that
is essential for planning to deal with floods and or
drought dream monsoon seasons. Denying Pakistan access to this data

(01:10:31):
would have a damaging impact. Moreover, because of the limited
storage capacity, India can change the timing of water flow,
which is crucial for many crops during sewing seasons. So
there is still a lot of damage they can do.
They can't straight up do like a genocide, but they
can do a lot of damage. And while both sides
have backed off of like direct military conflict, India still

(01:10:54):
is committed to every single thing they can do to
fuck with Pakistan, which affects just like the people Pakistan.
This has also been plit very good for Modi because
alternationalism has been bolstering the sort of like Pakistani military
government because there are alternationalists feed off of this, and
it's once again really fucking bad for the people of Kashmir,
who are the ones getting killed on both sides of
the border. Yep, war is bad. Free Kashmir hate this.

Speaker 2 (01:11:17):
Yeah. Well, speaking of war being bad, let's talk about
what's going on in Yemen. So if you remember from
the last quarter or so of the Biden administration, after
Israel launched their were prisal attacks to October seventh on Gaza,
the Huthis, which is a depending on your stance, either

(01:11:41):
the legitimate government of Yemen or a rebel group in Yemen.
You know, the International community stance is a rebel group.
The Houthis stance is different. Started launching a series of
missile attacks, both aimed at Israel and aimed at shipping
in the Gulf of Aden, right in order to disrupt
because the significant amount of the world's trade goes through there.
And this took a number of forms. They have ballistic missiles,

(01:12:03):
some of them are indigenous, by which I mean made
by the who. These oftentimes using stocks that were captured
from the military and government of Yemen previously. You know
that they supplanted in a lot of areas and other
times using missiles that were given to them by Iran. Yeah, right,
So it's a mix of tactics. They have also used

(01:12:25):
drones and they have also landed troops in order to
capture bulk freighters, including one called the Galaxy Leader and
I think twenty twenty three that was full of cars
and their claim was that it was a British vessel,
and obviously the Brits had been helping to arm and
support Israel. The vessel was actually registered in Lebanon. However,

(01:12:48):
whenever we get to discussions about like whose vessel is,
who's none of that. None of what is registered matters.
Vessels are registered all over the place for a variety
of nothing. It's always nonsense. That means nothing. I'm masha,
and nothing in the entire world matters less to the
reality of a situation than where the vessel is registered.
I'm not saying that justifies or does it with the

(01:13:09):
houthis that, I'm just saying it does not matter where
the vessel is registered. Yeah, yeah, the ship was owned
by a Lebanon based company, But also given the nature
of capitals, it doesn't all matter all that much. Now.
What also doesn't matter is that in January of this year,
the Hoothi's freed the captain of that ship and they
made an announcement that they would limit further attacks to

(01:13:29):
vessels flagged deed as Israeli or owned by Israeli individuals
or entities. Right now, that also doesn't mean a lot,
right because the nature of international trade means that there
are a lot of you know, you could basically argue,
if you're the houthis, well, this is owned by a
multinational corporation who owns companies in Israel or who has

(01:13:51):
heavy investments in companies in Israel. Therefore, right, as a result,
you know, the Hoothi's continued doing the hoothy stuff, and
Trump saw them as kind of a convenient target, a
convenient place to flex's military muscles. And there were some
people within the United States defense establishment that considered that
extremely convenient too, right, And this is largely due to

(01:14:12):
the fact that Biden prescribed a very limited campaign against
the Huthies. Now this does not mean inexpensive or insignificant.
We kept at least one aircraft carrier carrying out strikes
in Yemen for like a year or so, which is
kind of the first combat duty that an aircraft carrier
has had in quite some time. That was really like
active taking incoming fire, not incoming fire that ever really

(01:14:35):
threatened the carrier itself. But that's sort of beside the point.
And there were people within the US military establishment who
were consistently frustrated with the Biden administration that they were
not letting them operate at a high enough tempo, right,
And kind of the number one guy advocating for this
side of events was General Michael E. Carilla, who is
the head of Central Command or syentcom right, and his

(01:14:57):
attitude had been we need a much more aggressive, high
tempo campaign he pitched the Trump administration when they came in.
I think it's like an eight to ten month long
campaign where initially they would degrade who their anti air asset.
So first we go in there and we use our
air power to establish air what's called air supremacy.

Speaker 3 (01:15:15):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:15:16):
Air superiority means that you have better quality air support,
but also your shit can get knocked down. Air supremacy
means you have complete control of the skies. Right. The
US military is fairly used to having air supremacy if
you look at, like, for example, our combat in Iraq
and Afghanistan, when it came to like height, like fighter

(01:15:38):
aircraft helicopters would get shot down from time to time
obviously and have accidents. We weren't losing F eighteens in Afghanistan, right,
like they weren't getting knocked out of the fucking sky
by the Taliban. We had air supremacy in Ukraine. Depending
on what part of the battlespace you're talking about, either
things have been more or less at a standstill, or
Russia has had air superiority but not supremacy, right because

(01:16:01):
Ukraine has very solid modern anti aircraft defenses and it
has been able to exact a toll. We will talk
to a greater extent about what's been happening with India
and Pakistan. It is exceedingly unclear at the moment who
got the better of the engagement. Did any of those
Chinese anti aircraft missiles actually knock out aircraft? Did any
India lose any aircraft? Did Pakistan down an aircraft? We

(01:16:25):
actually like everyone's making different claims right now, and I
don't have objective evidence right other than that we can
we know that things that there's at least evidence of,
at least one case what looks like refkage of a
rough fall, and in at least one case there's what
looks like a knocked down Chinese anti aircraft missile. I'm
spacing on the exact name right now, but again, that
doesn't mean anything about how they actually affair in the battlespace,

(01:16:47):
right So anyway, Yeah, this motherfucker he had a syncom.
Michael Lee Corilla was like, I've got this plan. We
need a much more force we're going to knock out
their anti air defenses, and then we're going to basically
carry out a modified version of what is real carried
out against Hamas and has belat right, where we start
targeting and killing the leadership Cadro once we've knocked out
their defenses, and he estimated that would take about a

(01:17:10):
little under a year, right, but the better part of
a year. And the Trump administration said, you can have
your higher tempo war, but you've got to show results
in about a month. Right, In about a month, the
US military carrid out about eleven hundred strikes they killed.
They say hundreds of hoo thy fighters, destroyed quite a
bit of weapons and equipment. Very unclear how many fighters
they killed, certainly hundreds of people. Were those all hoothy fighters?

(01:17:34):
How many weapons and equipment were destroyed? I don't have
access to that sort of data, and I'm not entirely
confident that anyone in the US military has a much
better idea. Certainly a little bit more data, but also
they get that shit wrong all the fucking time.

Speaker 4 (01:17:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:17:49):
It's also like it's worth noting, right when they're talking
about like casualty numbers, the Huthis are not a small
rebel group like now they control the capital of Yemen, right,
Like this is like the government, right yeah, they have not.

Speaker 2 (01:18:03):
A peer state in terms of the US and that
they do not have the manufacturing base and capacity, but
they are equivalent to a small state actor, right yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:18:14):
And so and so what you're bombing them, right like
you're you're just you're blowing smoking creators and apartment buildings.

Speaker 2 (01:18:21):
And the Hoothies are so experienced with getting bombed. They've
been bombed by a lot of people before. None of
this is new to them, right, yeah. So in the
first thirty days, while they you know, the US has
made a lot, has made a lot of claims about
how many people they killed and the level of degradation
of Hoothy capacity, the Houthis have done some damage to

(01:18:42):
US capacity. They have shot down sevens at this point,
at least seven m Q nine Reaper drones, which are
thirty million dollars each. And in addition, now four f
eighteen jets have been lost not probably yeah, probably just
to fuck ups that are a result of the tempo
of activity. Right. These all tend to be craft that
are landing and don't get caught by the catapult system

(01:19:06):
that they've got on these aircraft carriers or otherwise wind
up in the Red Sea. Right, there is some suspicion
and debate is to like, is there any sort of
like internal treason going on here? Is somebody on the
aircraft carrier making these fuck ups happen. This is being investigated,
I believe, although there's no confirmation about like what exactly

(01:19:28):
has gone down. It's weird to lose this many FA
eighteen super hornets and a very short period of time.

Speaker 6 (01:19:35):
Yeah, I will say my understanding of it. Also, is
it the everything that's going on here is that this
aircraft carrier has been out past the point it should
have been refitted. Yes, like so extraordinarily.

Speaker 2 (01:19:45):
And it's also not weird that people fuck up when
they are carrying out operations at a tempo they never
have before, Right, And there's a very good chance that
it's nothing more than that the more you fly, the
more accidents are going to happen.

Speaker 5 (01:19:57):
Right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:19:58):
Period.

Speaker 6 (01:19:58):
Also I want to say, I want to say, imagined
you were like the deck office.

Speaker 2 (01:20:02):
Oh man, that poor motherfucker, that motherfucker's getting fucked Like yeah,
like the.

Speaker 6 (01:20:09):
First one goes over, right, and then the second one
huh goes yeah, And now it's happening right now you've
probably been you're out of the job.

Speaker 2 (01:20:18):
And that first guy's kind of lucky because when the
next two fall off, at least maybe that's less pressure
on you.

Speaker 6 (01:20:24):
Yeah, Like imagine like you're the deck officer of the
fourth Yeah. Yeah, Jesus.

Speaker 2 (01:20:37):
God, that's gotta suck. So in about thirty days, the
US military had burned more than a billion dollars on
this operation, right at which point Trump and people around
him were like, oh fuck, we can't keep this ship up.
We can't maintain this tempo of operations. There were warnings
given forin the Defense Department that we have used so

(01:20:57):
many of our most advanced munitions that if China makes
a move on Taiwan, we're not sure we have the
reserves necessary right these munitions. When we talk a lot
about the capacity of US firepower, people talk about shit
like in twenty eighteen, how we like a There was
this Arqaita guy who had been responsible for the attack
on the US coal twenty something years ago.

Speaker 5 (01:21:18):
Yeah, a long gas time ago.

Speaker 2 (01:21:20):
Who used a cell phone he shouldn't have used briefly
and then turned it off, and we were able to
get visual confirmation of where he was from the cell
phone signal and knock his ass out with a drone. Right,
And we do have incredible capacity potentially to make unbelievably
precise strikes. However, that capacity is reliant both upon a

(01:21:41):
functional network of human intelligence, a functional network of operators
of aircraft and drones who are not completely burnt out
by the tempo of operations, and access to incredibly advanced munitions,
which we do not have an inexhaustible capacity, and are
reliant upon an international supply chain to continue to manufacture, right,

(01:22:03):
and all of that has been endangered by the tempo
of this campaign. And ultimately there's a great New York
Times report on this that's just absolutely damning to the
military that came out as called why Trump suddenly declared
victory over the Hoothy militia, that declared that after all
of this, the best we can say is perhaps a
modest degradation of Hoothy capacities that they can easily recover

(01:22:27):
from given enough time, which they're going to get because
Trump both declared victory and stated that the Hoothies had
yet again agreed to stop striking shipping in the Red Sea,
and he was like, this is a win. We made
a deal with him, big deal maker, Donald Trump made
a deal. Now, if you look at what the Houthi said,
all they said is we're going to stop striking Israeli shipping, which,
if you'll recall, is what they had said in January.

(01:22:51):
So did we win Now? Did the Hoothies win? Not yet,
but they're you know, they didn't lose. And again, if
you understand your insurgent warfare, you win by just not
losing for long enough.

Speaker 5 (01:23:06):
Right. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:23:07):
Well, and it's also worth it's worth mentioning too when
you're talking about the global supply chain part of this. Right,
on the one hand, like the US has done an
extraordinary amount to try to make sure that as much
as the supply chain as they can is in the US.
On the other hand, it still requires a bunch chef
mother places, including a bunch of rare earth metals that
the US gets from China. Now you may be noting
we are currently fighting a trade war with China. A

(01:23:29):
bunch of the our li strategic planning is about stopping
a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. So and we've just expended
a shit ton of our stack pilot shots that we
can only replace by using shit we get from China.
So absolute, just gedious brain shit that that that's happening
here right now at the highest levels of the highest

(01:23:49):
levels of the regime.

Speaker 5 (01:23:51):
Memma has a lot of rare earth metals, but we
have China is currently a lot closer to securing those
than the United States.

Speaker 8 (01:23:58):
Is.

Speaker 5 (01:23:58):
Yeah, it's not great.

Speaker 2 (01:24:00):
Well that's all I got. That's the who is. Let's
have another ad break real quick here.

Speaker 5 (01:24:05):
Yeah, let's do that.

Speaker 2 (01:24:06):
Let's do that.

Speaker 5 (01:24:06):
Let's have an ad break. Lovely, what a nice advertising
break we are. Now that I know many of you
have been asking me about what is happening in Kurdistan,

(01:24:27):
So I'm going to try my best to very briefly
explain that in the last segment of this show. So,
the PKK right, the PKK being the branch of the
Kurdish Freedom Movement that has operated in Turkey as Turkey
or Northern Kurdistan, and mostly since the mid twenty teens,

(01:24:49):
has been based in a Rack or Southern Kurdistan. Right,
it convened its twelfth Congress in the second week of May,
and it decided to disband itself late down its arms.
And I think the phrasing it used was to cease
armed activities under the PKK name, which is a way
of saying things more broadly. It did genuinely seem to

(01:25:16):
indicate a commitment to like this sort of ballot not
the bullet approach. And I'm going to quote kind of
extensively here from the statement that the PKK released, and
then from other statements from like people Genial Bick, the
leader one of the co chairs of the KCK, the KSEK,
if you're not familiar, it's a Curdistan Communities Union that

(01:25:38):
is a group that allows the different areas of the
Kurdish Freedom movement, all of which are inspired by the
political thought of ab Aujerlan, to sort of come together
and discuss their paradigm, their goals, their methodologies. I guess.
So I want to read from the PKK statement to

(01:26:00):
begin with quote the process initiated by Leader Abdullah or
Janan statement of February twenty seventh, and further shaped by
his extensive work and multi dimensional perspectives, culminated in the
successful convening of our Twelfth Party Congress between May fifth
and May the seventh. Despite ongoing clashes, aerial and ground attacks,
continued siege of our regions and the KDP embargo, our

(01:26:24):
Congress was held securely under challenging conditions due to security concerns.
It was conducted simultaneously in two different locations, with a
participation of two hundred and thirty two delegates in total.
The PKK twelfth Congress discussed leadership, martyrs, veterans, the organizational
structure of the PKK and armed struggle, and democratic society building,
culminating in the historic decisions marking the beginning of a

(01:26:46):
new era for a freedom movement. It's a very long statement,
as tends to be the style of statements from the
Curdish Freedom movement. It talks a lot about Abdullah ja
Lene as tends to be the style of statement from
the Kurdish freedom movement. I've have linked itin the shown
as if you'd like to read all of it, you know,
and encourage you too, you're interested in this sort of thing.

(01:27:07):
They talk a lot about the democratic nation concept and
the idea that occurs in Turks of coxisted in Turkey
for a long time, I thought this part was of interest,
and going to quote again here, the decision of our
Congress to dissolve the PKK and end the method of
armed struggle offers a strong basis for a lasting piece
and a democratic solution. Implementing these decisions requires that leader

(01:27:28):
Appo Appo. It's the evocative form of the Kurdish word
for paternal uncle, but in this in this instance, it's
referring to abdulah Jaalan, right, that's his nickname. Leader Appo,
Lead and guide the process that has right to democratic
politics be recognized and that solid, comprehensive legal guarantees be established.
At this stage, it is essential that the Grand National

(01:27:51):
Assembly of Turkey plays its role with historical responsibility. So
a couple of things that are of note there. One
is that they're talking about this this transition towards democracy
or a brotherhood of nations. So talk about somewhere else, right,
brotherhood of people's it's occurring under the leadership and direction
of Abdulla Ujerlan. If you are not familiar with Abdullah Ousjerlan,

(01:28:12):
you can listen to Roberts theories. So the women's wards
are the great job of explaining a lot of the
stuff that we won't have time to get into today.
Very briefly, Appo has been in Imrali and various other
Turkish prisons since nineteen ninety nine. For long periods of
that time, no one was able to see him. He
was held completely in communicado. At times there were hundreds

(01:28:35):
of troops guiding only him on this Turkish prison island.
That is no longer the case. Right. He made this
statement on the twenty seventh of February, and since then
the Kurdish Freedom Movement has had access to Ouscherlan. Right.
He actually made another statement on the eighteenth of May
where he said, I quote, a new contract is needed

(01:28:57):
based on the law of brotherhood. What we are doing
represents a major paradigm shift. The nature of the Turkish
Kurdish relationship is fundamentally different. What has been broken in
the bond of brotherhood. It seems like through the DEM
Party right, which is a left leaning party in Turkey,
which has supported the Kurdish cause and for a long
time has served as like the interlocutor between Turkey and

(01:29:21):
the Kurdish Freedom movement. Through the DEM Party, they have
access to Ouserland and they're able relatively frequently. It seems
like these dem party officials to go to him rally
and talk to him, and so they're talking about his
leadership continuing through this democratic transition. Right. For the Curdish

(01:29:43):
Freedom Movement, Jimil Bikes Jimil Bike again is the co
chair of the ksey K and institutions within the Kurdish
Freedom Movement. There's a co chair system, right, which means
so that a man and a woman share the chairmanship
of an institution such that they triarchal structures aren't replicated
in the movement. That's the goal of the co chair system.

(01:30:06):
He has a two part interview in A and F
which I've linked again in the notes. He talked about
how like the first role of the PKK, of the movement,
even before it was called the PKK, was to quote
unquote reveal the Kurdish quote unquote Kurdish question, right, That's
how they refer to it. Other times I talk about
her Kurdish people were on their knees and like under

(01:30:26):
the leadership of Augiland they stood up. They talk about
also how matt Arrarat Turkey has a plaque apparently where
it says like here is buried the imaginary Kurdish nation,
and like the Kurdish nation is certainly not buried anymore.
Right like it, it's very active. Kurds are very politically
empowered in two of the four countries where Kurds live,
right Like in Turkey they are to a lesser extent,

(01:30:48):
but they're still present. No one could deny their presence.
In Iran, it's still, i guess more difficult the time
for the Kurdish freedom movement, Biack said. Within our initial
paradigm and our first manifesto, the Kurdish identity, the Kurdish
people and Kurdish society were formed. A society in love
with freedom was formed. People emerged that would fight for

(01:31:09):
freedom under any circumstances. On this basis, we are now
developing a new paradigm, a second manifesto. This paradigm, this
manifesto aimed to resolve not only the Kurdish question, but
also the issues of the peoples of the Middle East
and humanity as a whole. Rabert Apple, rayber Smith's leader,
Rabert Apple is no longer leading only the Kurdish people.
He's leading all peoples in humanity. Yeah it's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

(01:31:41):
it's yeah. This is the sort of rhetoric we can
expect from the case k right, Like they're very dedicated
to Julan as a leader. Yes, yes, and you know,
Robert and I have both been trus Java.

Speaker 2 (01:31:55):
I've heard a lot of no life without our leader's
speeches and seeing a lot of a lot of those
posters as well.

Speaker 5 (01:32:00):
Yeah. Yeah, Like you can't really go into a space
you'll see other Like it's not just Oserlan, right, you're
going to see a wind I can, and you're going
to see it's not like just a guy with a mustache.
You're going to see women idolized in the movement too.
But auscher Land to the greatest extent is like their
dear leader figure. You can see his face all over Rashava,

(01:32:20):
and they're very dedicated to Oucherlen's leadership. And like this
change in structure does not change that, or this change
in approach has not changed that. In fact, it underlines that, right,
Like from the letter that Ocherlean wrote and he wrote
letters to different parts of the Kurdish Freedom movement came
this change, right, So it's still at the instruction of Ochelin,

(01:32:43):
albeit with the consent of these delegates who went to
this PKK Congress right and voted. I've reached out to
the k CK to ask for a comment on like
exactly what this means in terms of like most of
the KCK, as I said, are in the mountains of
southern Kurdistan now, and they have fought Turkey there for years. Right,

(01:33:06):
We've covered that on this podcast North in Iraq, Southern Kerdistan,
however you wish to call it, like Turkey has been bombing.
They were bombing it last time I was there. I'm
sure they were bombing it last time Robert was there.
They've been bombing it ever since. And the villages that
have really suffered as a result. Right, people have lost
their theildren, they've lost their lands, they've often had their

(01:33:27):
crops burned right by these bombs. So I'm interested to
know that will the idea of the Kurdish Freedom Movement
leaving the mountains there is I mean, it would be
a hell of a site they've been in, they've been
in those mountains for a long time. But I don't
know what this means for the Kurdish Freedom Movement in

(01:33:48):
Southern Kurdistan. But I've asked. I don't know if this
means that they will attempt like a straight up electoral strategy, right,
or when Ogerland's asking for new contract, right, like a
new social contract. That's how in Rajaba they literally have
a social contract.

Speaker 9 (01:34:06):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:34:06):
The social contract is generally like a theoretical construct in
most like neoliberal democracies, the idea that you and the
state enter into an agreement whereby you give up some
freedom and you lose some danger and the state gives
you some safety and it takes some of your freedom.
In raja but the social contract is a real thing, right,
Like it's a thing that is formed in consultation with society.

(01:34:28):
So when when we see Appo asking a bandon new contract,
does that mean that they will engage like on the
basis of a new Turkish constitution. I don't know. I
don't think any of us have answers to these questions,
and I imagine that they don't either, write like they
have decided to pursue this strategy of peace. They've decided

(01:34:48):
that through their armed conflict they were able to prove
that they exist. And that's a phrase that specifically people
have said to me in the Kurdish Freedom movement, like
we had to pick up arms to prove that we exist.
And now that there's no denying their existence, they can
use different methods, right like they put down their weapons
and talk and established with Turkey how to coexist, having

(01:35:12):
established that they exist through the armed struggle. So for them,
this is like they're celebrating it, right. They'll draw the
analogy very often to like Shinfein in Ireland. That's one
that you're here pretty often, and that this is their
Good Friday. Now. In the Good Friday Agreement, Britainer released
people from prison. Number of very highly cherished, very highly

(01:35:34):
respected members of the Kurdish Freedom movement are still in prison.
Of course, Oderlan being the most sort of widely loved
and respected member of the Kurdish Freedom movement. I don't
think we're seeing Osderlan come out of prison. I don't
think there's a world in which Turkey would let that happen.
But maybe we will see some other people released. Maybe
we will see those people. I don't enter into electoral politics.

(01:35:57):
Some of them have been in the struggle for fifty
plus years, right, like fifty years living in the mountains
and constantly being worried about being bombed. So it'll be
fascinating to see how this This has been a long
and bloody conflict. It has been going for longer, but
any of us have been alive. If the friends are happy,
then I'm.

Speaker 4 (01:36:16):
Happy for them, right, And if peace is.

Speaker 5 (01:36:19):
What they want and they can get away to continue,
like General Bick says, like the people in love with freedom,
Like if they can keep their freedom and they can
do it without war, then I'm happy for them because,
like I've talked to a lot of Kurdish parents who
have buried their children.

Speaker 2 (01:36:36):
God Almighty been to too many of the graveyards and
northern Syria.

Speaker 5 (01:36:39):
Yeah, yeah, there's little white graveyards with little children's faces.
Like that will stay with me forever.

Speaker 2 (01:36:45):
Whatever stops that, you know.

Speaker 5 (01:36:48):
Yeah, Like if one of the things that kind of
struck me when I was in Rajaba last time is
that like death just falls from the night sky sometimes, yeah,
and maybe maybe it's your baby, maybe it's you, maybe
it's your grandma, And it's a pretty horrible way to live.
And going through that for your freedom is something very brave.
And they have endured some of the worst conflict on

(01:37:12):
the planet in the last few decades, right, They've fought
some of the worst fucking people on the planet on
one and if there is a way that the people
of Kurdistan can enjoy peace, I want that for them
because they've been at war for a very long time. Yep,
Hi everyone, it's James, and which is adding this pick
up to the episode. I was able to get some

(01:37:32):
questions answered on behalf of the Kurdish Freedim movement, and
I would just like to share those answers with you.
So I asked Ifvojulan was able to address the Congress.
I'd prieviously been told he was. This is a response.
Throughout the more than twenty six years that Kurdish People's
Leader Abdula Ogelan has been held hostage in the prison
island of him Rally, he has always found ways to

(01:37:53):
convey his messages and perspectives to the Congress of the
PKK that has taken place. So it was again regarding
the twelfth Congress of the pKa, which convened from May
the fifth to May the seventh in the Free Mountains
of Kurdistan. He was able to forward his ideas and
analysis via the various delegations that have visited him throughout
the last few months, I asked about Ojulan's call for
a new social contract and they told me Turkish People's

(01:38:14):
Leader ab Dela Ojulan's calls and the historic initiative that
he has taken do not imply that the Turkish State
has adopted the same attitude or that the state has
changed its approach. Kurdish People's Leader ab de la Aujulin
is not simply hoping for a change of mentality in
the state, but it's moving forward developing his project and
thereby pulling the state along with him. What he is
currently primarily concerned with is a redefining and reconstruction of

(01:38:37):
the historical alliance of the Kurdish and Turkish people, which
has been derailed during the past century. A long term
democratic solution to the Kurdish question necessitates a recognition of
the role of the Kurds in the establishment and development
of the republic. Relations between the peoples must be brought
back to the historical routes, so division cannot be realized Unilatterally,
it lays in the nature of the way the struggle

(01:38:57):
at the Kurdish People's Leader ab Del Ajulan and the
p that when they want to achieve a solution to
a specific issue, they initially create through struggle the necessary
conditions and contexts for it. What Abdul Ojiland does is
to set the context and to encourage all related circles
in Turkey to take upon their responsibility for our lasting peace.
And then I wanted to ask about the people who

(01:39:18):
are incarcerated and like the steps that they needed from
the Turkish state in order for this peace process to continue.
And this is what they said. A historic initiative was
taken by Curdish People's Leader Abdula Aujilan and the PKK.
First of all, there was the publication of the quote
call for Peace and democratic Society and quote on February
twenty sevenths. Then there was a declaration of the unilateral

(01:39:40):
ceasefire on March first, and now there was the twelve
PKK Congress May fifth to seventh was a decision to
dissolve the PKK. All of those steps were unilateral steps
that were not the result of negotiations with the state.
So far, no official negotiations to take a place, and
the original verbal agreements have been reached. The steps taken
were only assign goodwill and expression of seriousness about peace.

(01:40:03):
Now it is upon the Turkish state to answer to
this initiative and take the first practical legal steps. So far,
all we have seen is empty rhetoric. For the process
to actually unfold, Kurdish People's leader Abdullah Oujelan must first
of all, regain his physical freedom, and the conditions for
him to work freely, healthily and securely must be guaranteed
so that he can fulfill his role as a chief

(01:40:23):
negotiator of the Kurdish people. Also, the constitutional reforms that
grant the basic rights of the Kurds and recognize him
as one of the primary constituents of a republic must
take place now. These are the first necessary steps. From
there a peace process can unfold. If you're wondering about Rajava,
just to finish up, Muslumabdi made a statement a Slumubdi,

(01:40:44):
leader of the Syrian Democratic Forces Right, sometimes called General
muslium Hova Muslum depends who depends what side of things
you're on, I guess. Muslum Abdi made a statement congratulating
the PKKA, saying he hoped to all parties supported the
peace process. The SDF is still in clashes with remnants
of the so called Islamic State and increasingly with Sunnis

(01:41:07):
within the Syrian Revolution who are growing disheartened with what
they see as al Shara's moderate turn right, the Damascus
government being to lib for some of these Sunni groups,
and so isis the Islamic State, whatever you want to
call it. Dash is using that as a chance to
recruit people, and that is why we are seeing ongoing fighting.

(01:41:31):
I literally I saw that they were they were burying
one of their SDF fighters in Kamishlow today.

Speaker 4 (01:41:38):
Ye.

Speaker 5 (01:41:38):
So unfortunately for the people who a fra Java, the
killing and dying continues, which, yes, it's sad, yes, yeah,
I want peace for my friends there and in Burma.
Like yeah, despite the fact that Robert and I get
paid to go to wars sometimes, it doesn't mean we
don't want a friends to live in peace. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:41:56):
I would like there to not be any more to
go to.

Speaker 5 (01:41:58):
Yeah, that would be great.

Speaker 2 (01:41:59):
I'll find something else to do. Yeah, fuck it, I'll
go run with the bulls again. I went White Rotter
rafting yesterday. It was nice. I could just do more
of that.

Speaker 5 (01:42:06):
Yeah yeah, no o, well climb yeah, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:42:08):
All right, everybody We're done for the day. Go hopefully
not live in a war zone. But if you do,
hopefully that stops so peace.

Speaker 4 (01:42:30):
Welcome to it could happen here show about things falling apart,
and today the thing falling apart is the Galactic Empire.
This is episode four of our four part series talking
about the politics of and Or Season two. And Or
has sadly come to a close. This will be our
final discussion episode talking about and season two episodes ten, eleven,

(01:42:56):
and twelve. I'm Garrison Davis. I'm joined by Robert and
Mio Wong. What a what a exhilarating For four weeks
this has been.

Speaker 2 (01:43:06):
Yeah, I'm gonna miss it.

Speaker 6 (01:43:08):
Yeah, we're we're getting relief from the horrors to live
the horrors in another universe.

Speaker 1 (01:43:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:43:14):
No, it's sucks now that that we have to just
do all this stuff, except like the eight years in
the past version, because the level in which they've advanced
here is far beyond certainly the US's revolutionary potential.

Speaker 2 (01:43:27):
Alas Yes, tragic.

Speaker 6 (01:43:30):
Hey, if anyone wants to be our mom mofbud taken applications,
you you you could, you can be the good liberal.

Speaker 4 (01:43:36):
You can be it.

Speaker 2 (01:43:37):
Oh Man I'll take a fucking Kraeger at this point.

Speaker 4 (01:43:45):
So I think we're gonna do these episodes a little
bit differently. I'm not going to do a whole synopsis
for each of these episodes, since for these last three
the show has mostly a shwed plot for emotional and
character beats, So instead, I want to quickly go over
each of those character points and then we can discuss
those in detail, and most of our discussion will probably

(01:44:06):
be around episode ten. Make it stop, yep. Let's start
at the beginning Lonnie's last meeting.

Speaker 10 (01:44:14):
Ah.

Speaker 4 (01:44:14):
Yeah, So the ICP double agent Lonnie Young calls Luthen
to an emergency meeting to give him one final batch
of intel after burning his cover. It's really shocking and
worrying when we see Luthen and Lonnie meeting in public.
That that that already lets you know like, oh, this
is like this is the end. This is stuff is

(01:44:36):
like the most jover it's ever been for Lonnie.

Speaker 2 (01:44:39):
There's a great line they got one of the strongest
reactions with the folks I was watching it with when
Luthan's about to head out and he's talking with Claya
and she's like, don't do this.

Speaker 1 (01:44:49):
Meeting.

Speaker 4 (01:44:49):
If it doesn't look perfect, we don't engage.

Speaker 2 (01:44:52):
Yeah, and Luthen responds, I think we've used up all
the perfect.

Speaker 4 (01:44:56):
If you're stuff all the perfect.

Speaker 2 (01:44:58):
It's this, it's this really good. There's some very impressive
like face acting from Scar's guard here where you you
see he's There's so much he wants to say to
this person, who, as we'll discuss, is essentially his daughter.
But ultimately all that happens is she says, Tucky Shirtan.

Speaker 4 (01:45:15):
It's insane.

Speaker 2 (01:45:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:45:17):
So he meets with Lonnie. Lonnie needs like assurances for
like him and his family's safety. Luthen tells them that
they'll be able to flee to Yavin together. Sure, sure, buddy. Yeah. So,
by accessing Deadro's computer files, Lonnie learns that the Emperor's
new energy project, the Calcite mining on Gorman the kyber
On Jetta are actually part of a massive super weapon.

(01:45:41):
Luthn is warned that Dedra and the ISB are preparing
for a raid on corus On and he may be
the target. Luthen ends up killing Lonnie to tie up
loose ends and passes off the information to Claya to
relay it to the Rebel Alliance while he goes to
thermite their computer hard drive, saying yeah, he quotes, I'll
do the burn again. It's it's it's jover like our

(01:46:03):
our shop, our little home, our little base of operations
in Coruscant. Yeah, is getting destroyed. This is this is
truly the end of an era.

Speaker 5 (01:46:11):
Here.

Speaker 4 (01:46:13):
Luthin either knows or has like decided that he has
run out of time, and the only way to be
sure that the information safely reaches the Alliance is to
give the ISB a distraction, and that distraction is himself.

Speaker 2 (01:46:26):
Yeah, and again it's very consistent. He's clearly trying to
buy time for Claya to escape, right like, that's that's
part part of his purpose here. Yeah, and I think
he's also just done, you know, totally, he's done. He's
tired and he doesn't have it in him to run anymore.

Speaker 4 (01:46:43):
And that's kind of what he discusses in this next section,
which is such an efficient piece of screenwriting. When Dedra
arrives at Luthern's gallery, Yeah, you can you can only
hide in play insight for so long, and that time
has come. As as dead Roel arrives, Lusen says, here
you are at last, uh huh. Every line in their exchange,

(01:47:09):
like but before before she lets him know, like hey,
I know you are, Like but like every line leading
up to that is a double entendre, like like every
single exchange they have is actually communicating something else and
it's wild. Forgery is the sad curse of antiquities. At
the moment, only two pieces of questionable providence in the gallery.

(01:47:29):
Yea insane stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:47:31):
It's great, it's insane writing, and it's it's perfect that
like she keeps trying to like get some sort of
acknowledgment that she's one. That's all she wants out of
this is for him to basically she's actually kind of
desperate for him to say you did good, kid, you
cos it's crazy and all he does is through shade at.

Speaker 4 (01:47:49):
Her, like shit, sucker, villions.

Speaker 2 (01:47:53):
Arelready gone, you dip shit fascist, like you fucking failed
to fl like referring to him elf.

Speaker 4 (01:48:00):
And in some ways her as like as an antiquity,
like like like you said, like he is tired, he
is done. He is he's kind of a relic for
the current era of the rebellions.

Speaker 2 (01:48:09):
And you don't know it yet, but so are you.

Speaker 4 (01:48:12):
Yes, and so is so is her. Only two pieces
of questionable providence are in the gallery. Amazing. So Luthen
hands Dedra a ceremonial dagger. She asks if it's real.
He smiles and remarks, we still don't know. And it's like,
it's amazing. I get every single line. It's it's it's

(01:48:34):
it's like this screenwriter's play with us just amazing. I
think Tom Bisseol and Tony Gilroy uh for these episodes.
Just phenomenal. Dedra. Now I'm nervous, Luthed, you've come all
this way. And then she unveils this, this artifact that
she is brought to Luthen for evaluation. She says, it's
a little damaged perhaps, but I'd say it's held its value,

(01:48:56):
as she looks Luthen up and down again, same thing again,
singing very efficient. Luthen is a little damage, but he
has held his value. And Dedra reveals the vintage Imperial
StarPath unit that first brought Luthen's operation under Dedra's eye.
And now that like both of them have their cards
like displayed on the table, they get to exchange a

(01:49:19):
little bit more clearly without having to use these like
coded coded phrases like they were before, and they had
this fascinating back and forth. She talks about how Luthan's
been hiding in the shelter of imperial peace and quiet
and just wants to burn the galaxy down, and Luthan
gets gets to poke at her for how he's been
aware of her this entire time and she's only learned

(01:49:42):
who he is. Quote, I've known you all along. Hardly
seems fair. She says, you disgusted me everything you stand for,
and he says, do you know why freedom scares you?
This is what Dedra's last arc is like really about,
and it eventually, you know, paradoxically leads to leads to
her fate.

Speaker 7 (01:50:02):
Now.

Speaker 4 (01:50:02):
I think probably the best line in this little exchange
is Luthan telling Deadrea, quote, you're too late. The rebellion
isn't here anymore. It's flown away. It's everywhere. Now there's
a whole galaxy out there waiting to disgust you.

Speaker 2 (01:50:15):
Great light. Yeah again, it's' he's this whole time, he's
been like increasingly cooking her like.

Speaker 4 (01:50:25):
And also cooking his hard drive by time that's his
heart drive burns up.

Speaker 2 (01:50:29):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's just it's just some great
some great stuff and the Dedro we get some great
face acting. Oh yeah from what is it? Denise is
her name? Right?

Speaker 4 (01:50:38):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:50:39):
Gow I think where you just see in a second,
she sees the smoke and then Luthan collapses because he
has stabbed himself in the heart, which is also like
it serves as another kind of rappost to every argument
that she's been making, like it's his ultimate counter to
her claims that like you're fundamentally selfish, You're just doing
this for yourself and your own you know, desire chaos.

(01:51:02):
He's like, no, bitch, I'm gonna stab myself in the heart,
Like you don't know what commitment is.

Speaker 5 (01:51:09):
It's great.

Speaker 4 (01:51:09):
Yeah, he uses this, uses this ceremonial dagger that he
that he earlier hands to Dedra and stabs himself so
that the Empire will be able to torture and try
to extract information from him about the rebellion.

Speaker 6 (01:51:21):
But you gotta have some explosives, like you can't be
relying on staggering yourself with me dagger.

Speaker 4 (01:51:27):
This is this is like a screenwriting thing, like det
has to get out of this. They have to they
have to access the computer later. Come on, I think
I think this is this is very like poetically written. Yeah, yeah,
you know, it's it's beautiful. I like like the romance
of it. Yeah, but man, Dedra fucked up so bad here.

Speaker 2 (01:51:47):
Yeah, fundamentally ruins absolutely her entire life.

Speaker 4 (01:51:51):
The emotion's really got the better of her. She really
wanted to like like win one over on on access
to like validate herself and her obsession. This we like
Cyril does, and it fucking bites her in the ass.

Speaker 6 (01:52:03):
It destroys the empires, the entire empire.

Speaker 2 (01:52:07):
Yeah. Yeah, I like that they they had her simultaneously.
She's both right and that if she had been listened to,
she could have stopped the rebel victory. But also she
fundamentally like destroys the Death Star as a result of
her insistence on being right.

Speaker 6 (01:52:30):
It fits into that old Marxist category of objectively revolutionary.

Speaker 2 (01:52:34):
Yeah, just by like.

Speaker 4 (01:52:35):
How she fucked this up specifically, and.

Speaker 6 (01:52:39):
Yeah, get to well, you know, I think we've talked
about how how like the Death Star plans got stolen
like from her fucking art, right, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:52:47):
Or like the the the learning of the Death Star
existence through the hard.

Speaker 8 (01:52:52):
Oh yeah, sorry, said yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they
don't have the plans yet.

Speaker 4 (01:52:55):
Yeah, So Lutheran's transferred to the hospital, and then we
get a flashback with Luthin as an early Imperial Army
sergeant involved in a massacre on Claya's home planet. We
see him like like huddled over in his ship with
a flask, repeating the words make.

Speaker 2 (01:53:15):
It, make it stop, make it stop.

Speaker 4 (01:53:17):
As like sounds of like carnage and destruction go on
in the background.

Speaker 2 (01:53:22):
What's what's interesting to me is, yeah, they have You're
basically just hearing what's happening outside. He's in an Imperial
Army uniform, and you're hearing like radio chatter, and it's
radio chatter that could have come from like any war
of the last twenty years. Like it's very much modern
radio call. It's it sounds like a lot of the
shit you heard and like the Collateral Murder video, like

(01:53:43):
some of the stuff that got leaked by Chelsea Manning
where people are like, yeah, hit every everything on that
hill dies, you know, anything past this this point in
this like line of buildings, anyone you see on the
heat scope, kill them, Like it's that kind of stuff, right, Yeah,
And it's it's it's very much like it's very non
st Our Wars chatter.

Speaker 4 (01:54:01):
You know, he's he's like horrified at like what he's doing.
He's trying to findst to cope with it.

Speaker 2 (01:54:05):
He's drinking out of a flask and yeah, just like
repeatedly repeating to himself, make it stop.

Speaker 4 (01:54:13):
Just this like very short scene like recontextualizes a whole
bunch of things about Luthern's character, Yes, including his behavior
on Ferrex during during the riot, where he like doesn't
get involved and instead looks on from a distance with
like a very like a very blank expression. And like
when I first saw that episode, to me, it felt

(01:54:34):
like Luthen was like first confronted with like the fatality
that he's dealing with, like like confronted with like the
consequences for actually engaging in revolution because he's always been
kind of in the shadows. He's been more of this
like orchestrator. He doesn't see like that like the tactile
death that accompanies his actions. It's like that's how I

(01:54:56):
first saw that scene, and now this has been fully
recontextualized as like Eric's is like a PTSD moment for him,
Like this is that's that's not the first time he's
seeing combat.

Speaker 2 (01:55:05):
Yes, this is.

Speaker 4 (01:55:06):
This is it changes the way you can now look
back at that scene, which is very very cool.

Speaker 2 (01:55:11):
Yeah, and it's also interesting to think that he's putting
himself in the perspective as much as anything of the
imperials doing the massacre. Yes, yeah, as opposed to the
civilian victims of the massacre. I read an interview with
Tony where apparently because they did not have Lutheran's backstory
set up in season one, like they didn't fully know

(01:55:32):
where he was going to go and.

Speaker 4 (01:55:33):
Have a single one nail Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:55:35):
Yeah, And it was apparently Scarsguard who was like, don't
have him be another person who's pissed, like who just
hates the Empire because it took everything from him, like like.

Speaker 4 (01:55:44):
A normal revenge story where like the Empire like tells
his family so that he becomes an insurgent.

Speaker 2 (01:55:49):
Yeah yeah, yeah, and I really I think it's beautiful that, like, yeah,
his backstory is that, no, he was made complicit. Like however,
whatever got him into the army in the first place,
maybe just conscription. He may not have even had a
choice to join, but the Empire forces him to do,
like puts him in a position and he's it's as
much discussed with himself that he goes along with it

(01:56:10):
as far as he does. And you get in those
lines that he's just repeating him to himself over and
over again as he like make it Like that's his
whole motivation, right, Like that's the next twenty years of
his life. Are him trying to make it stop?

Speaker 4 (01:56:23):
Yeah, that's the title of the episode. Yeah, well we'll
talk more about that and his motivation at the end
when we discuss kind of Claya, speaking of which, in
this flashback, it is shot from the perspective of Claya
hiding in like a cubby on on this ship. Yeah,
and Luthen named I think Layer Lar which is Lair.

Speaker 2 (01:56:44):
He is Sergeant Lair is original name. Well, we don't
know what his first was, but he just reverses it.

Speaker 9 (01:56:51):
Yeah, which no, no, but like this is this is
this is also like poetic, right, this is this is
this is this is Star Wars poeoetry, right, it's like
poetry at rhymes popseek wise.

Speaker 4 (01:57:03):
Don't do that.

Speaker 2 (01:57:05):
I just I just got to put this in there.
Don't do that.

Speaker 4 (01:57:08):
Do better. But Sergeant Layer finds Claya as like a
six year old hiding hiding on this ship. We then
go back to the present as Claya infiltrates a space
hospital to get to Luthen. Intercut with flashbacks showing how
Luthen used his military experience to train Claya in insurgent warfare.

(01:57:29):
So here we see like Luthen being kept alive in
this Corroiscant hospital for later interrogation, and then suddenly Dedra
is arrested in the hospital by an ISB. Marshall for
at first unclear reasons which we will get into later.
The ICP has found Lonnie's body, so there's a dead
yes B agent in Cororriscant. They've heard of how Dedra

(01:57:52):
did this raid without authorization without notifying the agent now
in charge of the Axis investigation, and then she's taken
into custody. In these flashbacks, we see Luthen and Clia
going town to town pawning historical artifacts while he teaches
young Claya insurgent warfare. One of the most devastating exchanges
is when Luthen describes Claia as his daughter to a

(01:58:15):
shopkeeper to help like negotiate a price, and afterwards Claya asks,
am I your daughter now? He replies when it's useful.

Speaker 2 (01:58:25):
Yeah, she's and then he and then he says, I'm Luthen,
you're Clia. Like that's all we need to know right now,
that that's.

Speaker 4 (01:58:34):
Who we are now.

Speaker 2 (01:58:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:58:36):
Claia says, like, I'll have to think about that, and
Luthen says, sometimes it's not up to us.

Speaker 2 (01:58:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:58:42):
Another exchange happens after Claio watches this like Imperial firing
line kill a batch of kids who are allegedly suspected
of shooting a stormtrooper. I think it probably could have
actually been Luthen, It's unclear, and it essentially just demonstrates
like collective punishment, right, And Claiya gets very upset at

(01:59:04):
watching this massacre and runs off to Luthen and also,
like interestingly, like when Luthen knows that this is going
to happen, he like chooses to like not watch. He's like,
we don't need to be here, we can we can,
we can just leave, but but Claia chooses to stay
and watch and then runs back to him, and he
he tells her we fight to win. That means we

(01:59:25):
lose and lose and lose and lose until we're ready.
All you know now is how much you hate you
bank that you hide, that you keep it alive until
you know what to do with it.

Speaker 2 (01:59:37):
Yeah, and I love both that. He's he's attempting to
give her as much like agency as he can within
this situation where he's also like crafting her into a person.
And so like, if she decides she wants to go
see this massacre, He'll let her do it. Like he's
not going to he's not going to try to make her.
But if that's what she wants, he's not going to

(01:59:57):
stop her. And then when she's seeing what she needs
to see, he's going to give her the best advice
that he can give her. There's another line coming where's
she asks if he's scared, and he's like, only about
what I'm doing to you, right that like you, But
he is still deeply he feels deeply compromised by this
position he's put himself in with this only other person

(02:00:18):
that he really can trust.

Speaker 5 (02:00:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:00:20):
They do their first like large scale direct action together. Yeah,
on the Emperor's home planet of Naboo. He teaches her
how to blend into the surroundings as they remote debt
night and explosive planted on a bridge, while in the present,
Clia disguises herself as a nurse to disappear into the
hospital where Luthern's being held, and blows up the hospital
parking lot as a distraction to get to Lutheran. These

(02:00:41):
two things mirror each other. It's like poetry at rhymes.
Clia says to Luthin, you're afraid, He says, I'm only
afraid of what I'm doing to you, as he hands
this child a detonator. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:00:55):
Man, she's not willing to she can't make herself use
it yet.

Speaker 4 (02:00:59):
I mean, I feel like she was almost willing to
psych herself up. Luth and actually took it away and
had himself do it.

Speaker 2 (02:01:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:01:08):
But that scene by itself where he's like telling her
not to like look at it, to make sure you're
like looking at me, only turn after everyone else has turned.
Very fun stuff happening in Star Wars.

Speaker 2 (02:01:19):
Yeah, it's it's it's great, Like the whole the decision
he made he makes here is like, like you see
a lot about their relationship and again this like how
deeply compromised he feels by it. Of both, like I
have to get this person ready for what's necessary. And
also I have to protect her from like the worst

(02:01:40):
things that we're going to have to do together. Like,
he does want to remain primarily the one complicit, so
I think in part because he does believe, I mean fundamentally,
that's the core of his character. He does believe she
has a future outside.

Speaker 4 (02:01:54):
Totally is That's the entire point of what he's doing. Yeah,
do you know what else is necessary, Robert.

Speaker 2 (02:02:00):
For us to throw to ads because otherwise we can't
keep this moveable feast on the road.

Speaker 4 (02:02:15):
Okay, we are back back in the present day on Corussant.
Claia finally reaches Luthen in his hospital room, and I guess,
like leading up to this, to this moment, it's unclear
if she's going to try to like rescue him, like
like extract him, and no, there's no time for that.

(02:02:36):
She takes him off life support and lets him die.
There is no escape for his character. Yeah, Like Luthen
never gets to see that sunrise, but he did everything
he could to give the rebellion the best chance, and
Claia gets to finish and like live out what he started.
He wants to give Claia that sunrise and like this

(02:02:56):
this relates to his core motivation as a character. He's
not getting revenge against the Empire for killing his family
or something like that kind of cliched stories is not
what they're doing here. Instead, this is all all about Clia. Yeah,
it's about how he's like found Claya and both of
them are broken by what he has done. So then

(02:03:18):
he spends the rest of his life building the rebellion
for Claia so that she can live on and she
can beat the Empire. And that's the entire point of him.
Like that, that is what's driving him. He is like
the most selfless character. Tony in an interview said, quote,
there are only a certain number of reasons that you
can change your life, and one of them is just

(02:03:40):
absolute self discussed. So we found a way for him
to have a belly full of it at the right moment.

Speaker 2 (02:03:47):
Yeah, and I love that that, Like, that's his whole
motivation ultimately is like undoing the only part of what
he was involved in that he can undo, which is
saving this person. And like saving this person involved destroying
the thing that took her life away from her.

Speaker 4 (02:04:04):
Yeah, the entire apparatus of the Empire yeah, yeah, I
think we're kind of wrapped up with this episode here,
but like the Clay hospital like infiltration sequence is superb,
so good, like one one person doing all of this
stuff to the absolute befuddlement of like the Imperial Troopers.

(02:04:26):
She's really embodying the line from Rogue one, make ten
men feel like a hundred Yeah, and yeah, she's able
to infiltrate this hospital, like she's working with a team
of like ten people and it's and it's just her
shout out to the Granny alien in the elevator, very
very great little comment.

Speaker 2 (02:04:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:04:45):
Yeah, but unlessly either have anything else to say about
episode ten.

Speaker 2 (02:04:49):
I mean, yeah, I like this. This is obviously like
my favorite episode of this particular batch.

Speaker 4 (02:04:57):
Maybe the best in the whole series. Like this is
absolutely yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:05:00):
I love the Luthen and Claya moments. I love seeing
like how at the same time this like hint when
you're seeing them kind of haggle over the price of
this antiquity that they've got that like, Okay, So Clay
always had this degree of like cunning and this ability
to kind of like recognize what's going on, which probably
hows you survived in the first place. Right, she's she

(02:05:23):
was always someone who saw more than other people, which.

Speaker 4 (02:05:27):
She's the girl's Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:05:30):
And at the same time, you get this piece of
Luthan like there must have been like whatever he was
before he joined the military, it was somebody who had
this kind of deep knowledge of antiquities and probably this
desire to make something of his life other than what
became of it and all that he's got left of
it is like utilizing that real piece of himself to

(02:05:51):
make a fake person, right, Like that's which is such
an interesting character beat for him, that like this, this
thing that is probably closest to the real Luthan, the
one that existed before his military service, before the Empire
ruined him, is completely remade in the service of making
himself into something he's not.

Speaker 6 (02:06:10):
So when I first saw this, I was really worried
because I think one of those interesting parts about Clay
as a character is that she is the only person
that Luthen trusts absolutely right, She's the only person that
he She's fully as an equal. She's the only one
who has all the information that he has. And you know,
I was like kind of worried that it was Okay, Well,
now she's effectively his daughter, and it's like, no, it's

(02:06:31):
actually like she is still the only person like even
though Luthen has been sort of raising her is like
he's been trying to raise her as an equal as
much as much as he possibly can. I think that's
a really really yeah, sort of fascinating like way for
this thing to have gone.

Speaker 4 (02:06:47):
Like the actress of Claiya has said, like, like from
Claya's perspective, like she doesn't really fully see Luthen like
as her father figure because like inherently like he was
like involved in the actual killing of like of her family,
like she she is she has found a way to
kind of love him through that. But it's it's not

(02:07:08):
like it's not like that that like immediate familial love
like it's it's it's it's a different rationalization that she
can still like give him like a final kiss on
his deathbed and like does like does care for him,
but like it's so much more like complicated and murky
and like like roped in with politics and roped in
with Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:07:28):
But here's here's the thing what I'll say about that,
And and this is kind of my favorite part of
that is I can see how she would be like
this feeling I have towards him, like isn't like what
someone would feel towards a father. But also she doesn't
really know how people feel about their parents because she
didn't get to have them very long.

Speaker 4 (02:07:46):
Keep people can't feel like that can feel about their father.

Speaker 2 (02:07:50):
Feeling both this deep sense of love and disgust towards
your parents isn't normal experience, and she just doesn't writ
I think maybe there's a degree in which she doesn't
even really realize how how.

Speaker 5 (02:08:01):
Common that is because of.

Speaker 4 (02:08:04):
No, that's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah,
all right. Episode eleven, who else knows? Krenick and Dedra
queen out together? Hell yeah, look at look at them?
Go so tetris in this interrogation chamber and Credit grills
her about how this piece of information good, so good,

(02:08:26):
how this piece of information has escaped containment and Dedra's
Dedra's face strote this whole scene, Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (02:08:35):
She comes into it. You can tell she thinks I'm
gonna get out of this. I'm gonna talk my way
out of this. Yeah, surely I will sort this all out.

Speaker 5 (02:08:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:08:44):
No, Once she realized this that this is actually about
like the leakage of like the death Star plans and
not just a simple raid on a rebel like weapons dealer.
She realizes the kind of gravity of her situation. She
she complains about how like he's been forced like scavenge
for information because there's not like an efficient, efficient intel

(02:09:06):
sharing operation across different imperial branches. H and Credit says
to her, if you're not a rebel spy, you missed
your calling, which is the biggest insult you could say.
Oh my god, this destroys her. Yeah, like this is
the this is the same mistake that like Cyril makes. Right,
they're trying to like to like do this like try

(02:09:27):
hard stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:09:27):
You think initiative is rewarded here exactly. Yeah, yeah, you know,
you follow orders. You do not take your own initiative.
You are not your own person. You follow what you're
told to do. You don't take things into your own hands.
This is how the whole system crumbles. Yeah, it's phenomenal.

Speaker 4 (02:09:45):
How like she is so much like you know, like
it's especially in Cyril's eyes, right, she is like everything
that he wanted to be but like couldn't and yet
she has all the same flaws as him. They're both
children trying to like grab and sees their spot like
in the in the imperial world, and they can never
escape the logic of children. Yeah, it's phenomenal. So so yeah,

(02:10:08):
basically because because she was sent memos accidentally, she was
accidentally added to HOO THEPC small group. Uh, she had
she had information on the desk that she shouldn't have
that she sorted that she stored on her computer that
then Lonnie was able to access with like a stolen
code cylinder, and this is why she's detained.

Speaker 2 (02:10:27):
And I love to that. Lonnie makes a statement that
like he didn't tell Luthen he had this because he's like, well,
you would have made me use it? Well, yeah, I did,
super cool, And there's this yeah, like Lonnie has gotten
very good at this, like he was right to not
tell his boss.

Speaker 4 (02:10:42):
Sometimes you share and sometimes you don't. And yeah, yeah, no,
like the idea of him holding onto this code cylinder
this this whole year, knowing that you can only use
this once before you're kind of found out, and then
like waiting until he's heard chatter that like Luthin's gonna
get raided, uses the cylinder, then discovers all these other files.
It it shows how like important Luthin's operation is. Like

(02:11:02):
this is I think what these last episodes are really
about is kind of like, yeah, the redemption of Luthen
in the eyes of the other rebel agents. So so yes,
Dedra is completely fucked and it's hilarious and Ben Mendel
is trancing around the scene.

Speaker 2 (02:11:20):
He's having such a good time.

Speaker 4 (02:11:22):
It's so good.

Speaker 6 (02:11:23):
This is like it's like this and and the thing
where he's going cow kite.

Speaker 4 (02:11:28):
Episode, he's so good.

Speaker 6 (02:11:30):
It's only his two best Like yeah, it's also just
really like god, they didn't let him cook a and
or like oh it's him written like.

Speaker 4 (02:11:39):
You know, oh yeah, but.

Speaker 6 (02:11:41):
It's like it's like like these it's like you mean
about this series is you've been getting to watch yeah, sorry, yeah,
Rogue one. Yeah, it's like you've been getting to watch
these people who have just been playing like kind of
generic Star Wars characters and you get to watch.

Speaker 4 (02:11:53):
Them cook and it is a thing of beauty. The
real freak gets to be let out because they're all freaks.

Speaker 2 (02:12:02):
There's that glorious moment when she realizes how fucked she
is when he puts his finger on.

Speaker 4 (02:12:07):
Her hand.

Speaker 2 (02:12:10):
Like she's just an odd she's there for him to
act off. She's right, she's a button.

Speaker 4 (02:12:15):
We can push you when, we can push you when
we desire to. But you know, you don't go off
by yourself. It's phenomena.

Speaker 2 (02:12:23):
And he's turning her off.

Speaker 6 (02:12:25):
Yeah, he has this line where he's like, you think
I would come here for the death of an ISB clerk,
Say say.

Speaker 4 (02:12:31):
The word it's phenomenal. Yees, say the word death star. Yeah, amazing.

Speaker 2 (02:12:37):
And then yeah, he turns her off and is like, yeah,
we'll get it. We'll get by without you somehow.

Speaker 4 (02:12:42):
Yeah, hopefully, hopefully we'll be able to get by without you.

Speaker 2 (02:12:46):
Yeah. And it's so funny because like he is just
he is nuking her. There's nothing left after this. And
also they can't say actually, actually he's dead in like two.

Speaker 4 (02:12:58):
Days, Target literate his ass with.

Speaker 2 (02:13:03):
The bargain's about to be sick dust and everyone else. Yes,
everyone's a button.

Speaker 4 (02:13:10):
And it's crazy how much of like the is B
gets totally wiped out, like the week of the Death
Stars destruction like this shows like the real decline of
the Empires. It's like this, like administrative, bureaucratic state that's
been running the real day to day operations gets completely
wiped out. And now these two like scith lunatics have
to personally run everything themselves and they can't do it.

(02:13:31):
They just can't. They were they were relying on all
of like the republic holdovers that actually knew how to
like run like run a state.

Speaker 2 (02:13:37):
Yeah, these guys like Laren and whatnot who were like
harm job yes yeah yeah, oh part of gas and
they all get iced out.

Speaker 6 (02:13:48):
Yeah yeah, I mean, and this is this is a
dynamic that I think, like because like everyone you were
trained from birth in the US to know the like
the revolution of ours a children.

Speaker 4 (02:13:58):
Thing, and the Empire ever talks about this.

Speaker 6 (02:14:02):
Just like no, the liquida should rate for these.

Speaker 4 (02:14:05):
People is astonishing.

Speaker 6 (02:14:06):
They also all like turn through these people, and it's
like you can you can watch like Vader doing this
to people. We're like Vader, Like Vader just keeps fucking
killing his officers.

Speaker 4 (02:14:15):
Yeah, yeah, on his Superstar Destroyer all the time.

Speaker 2 (02:14:18):
Well, and and what we what we see throughout and
Or is rebels fuck up all the time. They fail
all the time. We see moments of failure from Luthen,
we see them from Cassi in we see them from
Draven and they guys at Indoor bail Mon Mathma. They
all fuck up, and then they get the chance to
learn from their mistakes and get better, which is ultimately

(02:14:40):
why they win.

Speaker 4 (02:14:41):
And that privilege is never an extended no to the Empire.

Speaker 2 (02:14:44):
Even if you're really good, you're going to make some
mistakes and the first time you do, Darth Vader chokes
you to death, and so the Empire never gets better.

Speaker 6 (02:14:54):
It's just because this was a point in the old
Canyon where like one of the one of the arguments
of like why the rebels won the war was like
X wings have shields, yeah, and tie fighters don't, and
you could so you can make a mistake in an
X wing, but if you make say a tie fighter,
just doe. So the rebel pilots end up being better
than the imperial ones because they survive. And there's there's
this other like there are lots of these interesting parallels too,

(02:15:14):
where like the death of the Administrative State was also
sort of an old canon thing where it's like, so
the way it plays out in the old canon's like
at endor and this like is the thing that you
canon too, I guess but like all of the best
officers are trying to get promoted up the ladder, and
so they're all on the Emperor the Emperor Superstar Destroyer. Yeah,
and when that thing goes down, it's like yeah, it

(02:15:34):
like and this is this is partially just a thing
that also about like how imperial administration works is how
centralized it is, is that they have single points of failure.

Speaker 4 (02:15:41):
And this is for example, Haberdijia fell.

Speaker 2 (02:15:43):
It's like, yeah, they put.

Speaker 4 (02:15:46):
Up and it's like we don't have a state.

Speaker 6 (02:15:47):
Anymore because everything's so centralized and it being so centralized
and everyone being so essential, and also you killing all
these people because your organization doesn't tolerate a failure. It
just it creates these discscading failure points where you knock
out a couple of people on it and suddenly it's
like everything's destroyed.

Speaker 4 (02:16:02):
I do want to return to the point of kind
of how fastiss in like eth the zone at the end,
because Tony has some quotes on that. I'm just gonna
speed run through these next few kind of points here.
The ice be tracks Klay's movements via hospital security cameras,
even though she tries to avoid an evade detection. She
is basically stuck on Corussant and starts hiding out in

(02:16:22):
the old safe house, broadcasting an emergency pulse code to
her comrades on Yavin. Meanwhile, a divorced Cassian and Melchie
get drunk and start bullying their autistic robot friend while
playing poker.

Speaker 6 (02:16:35):
So good, it's so funny cases, Hey, I know, oh,
I know, I'm well aware. I am the sober autistic
girl in every one of these things.

Speaker 2 (02:16:44):
Well, and they understand the most important thing about television
sci fi, which is a robot awkwardly playing poker with
a human friend.

Speaker 5 (02:16:53):
I know.

Speaker 4 (02:16:57):
Data K TWOSO holding hid me and.

Speaker 2 (02:17:01):
I love the K two s O is also constantly
being like, you guys are drinking a lot, like.

Speaker 4 (02:17:07):
Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 2 (02:17:07):
When they're about to go on this last mission, Cassian
isnically drunk driving. Yeah, he is one and a half
shot away from blacking out. It's time to pilot a spacecraft.

Speaker 7 (02:17:20):
Most most realistic insertions like no one will be this
drunk again until like no, like many many years later
in this galaxy, until like there's until like civil war generals, Yeah,
are finding each other's next time, and we'll be this drunk.

Speaker 2 (02:17:37):
Ulyssie Simpson Grant is the last person to be as
drunk as Cassian and or was in this scene.

Speaker 4 (02:17:44):
Woman's old like Luthen radio goes off with an as
West message. She takes it to Cassian, who then yeah,
drunk drives there, you way off Yavin.

Speaker 2 (02:17:54):
And let's let's have a shout out to our man
Draven here. Who is he? He's kind of he's kind
of he's kind of based like I love. I love
that they managed to both make him be. He has
to be the foil to Cassian because Cassian does not
want this chain of command bullshit. He's so sympathetic, but
he's not wrong, and he's not a dick. He's like, look, man,

(02:18:15):
I've got like four hundred other freighters. I'm worried about
right now, those shipments of rifles that I that I
have to keep. I have to keep all of this
in my head. I can't write any of it down.
I haven't slept in days. I ate nothing, but Tom's like,
I can't even drink hot coffee because otherwise my fucking
ulcers light on fire. I don't even remember when I
hate solid food. My ibs has ibs. Can you please

(02:18:38):
stop taking off in the middle of the night.

Speaker 4 (02:18:43):
It's so funny that the thing Cassian does at the
end of Rogue one, it's just like a regular currents
on the face he's doing this, but no, like like
consistently Draven, even even if he gets pissed off, the
Cassian consistently has his backstill, which is I think, really
really yes.

Speaker 3 (02:19:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:19:02):
Krenik realizes how fucked they are and tries to get
the entire ice B immobilized to locate Claia as she
is probably in possession of the death Star intel quote.
There will be no horizon to the scope of your inquiry.
And this is where we have some of the most
interesting stuff from Partigas and how he views like rebellions

(02:19:22):
and revolutions as a disease. And this relates to some
of his lines from season one where he describes the
ISP as quote unquote healthcare providers. We treat sickness, We
identify symptoms, We locate germs, whether they arise from within
or have come from the outside. The longer we wait
to identify a disorder, the harder it is to treat

(02:19:43):
the disease unquote. And then when the ice P decides
on what grounds they are looking to apprehend Clia Partogras
proclaims that quote she's diseased. She escaped the hospital with
infectious condition that threatens everyone with whom she may come
into contact.

Speaker 6 (02:20:01):
I'm so glad they did this because this is such
a core part of the ideology of fascism, right of
seeing seeing that the body is a nation and there
being these sort of like parasitic infections that are inside
the nation that are like undermining it. That's that's like
just the core of fascism. And you're just getting You're
just getting to watch like the people in the middle
of the Empire just literally trying to do the thing

(02:20:24):
and in the most literal way possible, right Like they're
just they're just coming out and saying what the ideology
is and how it works.

Speaker 4 (02:20:31):
And I it may it may.

Speaker 6 (02:20:34):
Still be a level of metaphor that is slightly too
high for the average Star Wars viewer, but they are
just telling you the politics.

Speaker 4 (02:20:39):
Yeah, and I really appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (02:20:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:20:43):
Now, while stuck in an ic be holding cell with
with with an unbuttoned collar, the detra is crashing out
and you can tell because the caller is unbuttoned, but
somehow she is still able to give the ISB a
lead to track Claya through her use of obscure radio signals. Yeah,
one of the cool parts here is an Imperial radio
technician is impressed at Lusen's radio setup and can and

(02:21:07):
can't help but be excited when like learning how it works.
But they say that Luthan targeted the storage files and
the radio signal library when he burned the console, but
still they were able to track Claya's pulsecode to a
nearby apartment on Coruscant, and in preparation for the raid
on the safe house, the ice Peed jams calms around
the area right as Cassian, Melchi and K two arrive

(02:21:30):
to extract Claia. As Cassie gets into the apartment and
finds not Luthan but Claia and then tries to plead
with her to come to Yavin. He also like kind
of lambass Luthen for not coming to Yavin sooner because
he couldn't swallow his pride, and Claia says, quote, thank
the Galaxy, he didn't. He stayed for this that people

(02:21:52):
in Yavin have to know what they're up against. Think,
thank the Galaxy. He did it so good. All right,
let's go on break and then we'll return to discuss
the final episode. Okay, we are back. Episode twelve. Jetta

(02:22:17):
kiber urso so Cass is trying to convince Clia to leave,
like right now, right this very second, please dear clot
come with me, and Claya is still like kind of
pissed up with the whole situation, like Gavin after all
these years, what a bitter ending. Cass tries to argue
that if she comes, she's helping to keep Luthan alive,

(02:22:37):
which she calls big words the Imperial Swat Team importantly
not stormtroopers. Instead, these goofy s swat guys surround the
apartment trying to locate Claya. As the ISB locates Cass, Claya,
and Melchi, they throw a stun grenade, which, this is
very interesting to me, does not really affect Cass and

(02:22:59):
Melchie as much like Claya gets knocked out, but the
Narkina five prison shocks conditioned Melchi and Cass against the
sun grenade. Yeah, which is again phenomenal.

Speaker 2 (02:23:10):
It's so good and I think just generally like Claya
has again Luthen has protected her from a lot of
like the direct she doesn't have CTE. Right, if Cassie
and had lived another thirty years, like his fucking brain
would have been melting because he's been around too many
goddamn explosions and he's been electrocute and the same things
to a melchie, right, they just barely feel it.

Speaker 4 (02:23:33):
But to be fair, it's not like she hasn't blown
up a bunch of things.

Speaker 6 (02:23:36):
She's had a distance from a distance, we just watch
her liquidate an entire Imperial Security compliment to go kill Luthen.

Speaker 4 (02:23:44):
Like, it's not like she hasn't done this.

Speaker 2 (02:23:46):
No, no, no, But she's raised by an old soldier who
does the responsible thing that you do if you have
the experience, which is you tell the younger people, no, no, no,
use your ear pro for no, give further back. I
know you don't think you need to be, but get
further back, like my ears ring all the time. Don't

(02:24:07):
fucking take risks. I also kind of what I wonder
if maybe there's a level of protection from the stand
grad age you get again when you are still right
on the edge of a blackout.

Speaker 4 (02:24:17):
Yeah, that's that's compelling. So as K two just completely
demolishes this Imperial team. Uh, the the i SB calls
for backup, but everyone is spread too thin because they're
searching for the emergency disease warrant from partagraphs.

Speaker 6 (02:24:39):
So good.

Speaker 4 (02:24:39):
Yeah, Claya does get to Yavin, and here we see
a lot more of like the tricky aspects of Yavin politics.
Saw is kind of getting impossible to deal with. He
is haffing way too much fuel.

Speaker 2 (02:24:52):
He's huffing an amount of fuel. I don't know if I'm
gonna say it's too much, but I do. His insistence
where they're dude, we know you're we know you're on
Jetta's we know no idea, you.

Speaker 4 (02:25:05):
Don't know where I am?

Speaker 6 (02:25:07):
You know.

Speaker 4 (02:25:07):
Yeah's trying to argue with him about about how they're
trying to get to the bottom of like the Imperial
kiper minding on Jetta and they're like, we know you're
on Jetta, and he tries to deny it. You don't
know where I am? Yes, we do.

Speaker 6 (02:25:21):
There's also this great thing at the end of that
where Moths like, we're just trying to help you. And
then and Saw just cuss the line and I think
it's Draven. Whatever the the Rebel intelligence. Ghoul in the
room cuts the line and Moss was kind of just
going like uh, and he goes, oh, no, we've absolutely.

Speaker 4 (02:25:38):
Been sending spies into his group, and.

Speaker 2 (02:25:41):
She's been We've been bugging him. He's He's absolutely right.

Speaker 6 (02:25:46):
It's something I think it's interesting about because, like it
in Rogue one, Saw is like seems like such an
unbelievably paranoid asshole.

Speaker 4 (02:25:53):
It's like, no, like the.

Speaker 6 (02:25:54):
Rebels really have been like trying to the rebels and
the Empire really have been trying to infiltrate his group
for like so fucking long that he's completely lost his
mind from just like the paranoia.

Speaker 2 (02:26:05):
Also, he is canonically again a forty six.

Speaker 4 (02:26:11):
Puffing all that fuel really does rapid age you.

Speaker 2 (02:26:13):
Yeah, yeah, it's not great for you.

Speaker 4 (02:26:16):
So then we have, I guess the most frustrating part
of the episode, Like good but frustrating to watch with
this this this Rebel spokes Council meeting about Luthen and
the Death Star intel. Oh my god, are these people annoying?
Uh yeah, what pieces of shit? These people, These people
who have like done basically nothing. Yeah, they're senators, Who's like,
who who have who have defected to Yavin, and they

(02:26:39):
don't know the cost of things that that they're actually
dealing in. Bail says that that Luthen stayed on Corussants
too long and again no, no Luthen state for this
piece of information.

Speaker 5 (02:26:51):
M hm.

Speaker 4 (02:26:52):
And and Mon's getting kind of increasingly frustrated as everyone's
kind of like bad talking Luthen. Again. We we We've
been very clear on the show about Lusen as a
complicated character with some people more pro Luthin than others.
But and And a man like Mon herself, has a
lot of reservations about Luthen, but yeah, she also knows
is like her directly and everyone else are only here

(02:27:13):
in part because of what he's done. And that's not
saying he was right about every single thing, but he
he but that still is true, right like he this
is he is still very important to this. And everyone's
being quite dismissive of Cassian and and and the intel
from Luthen and Cassian kind of gets you know, put
into put into confinement, and and gets dismissed and requests

(02:27:34):
to visit Claya in the hospital. And this is where
Mon finally speaks up and immediately grants him permission because
like she's she she knows all these people, like like
the she's and she's the only one on on this
little council that like knows all of these people and
knows like how much they have sacrificed. Yeah, but still
like mon Mon is still like a good operator here.
And she asked her cousin Vell to like talk with

(02:27:57):
cassiean and like suss out how real this death Star
intel is. When Belle does this, she doesn't try to
do it like covertly. She likes talks to Cassie ad
very like flatly, being like hey, like mom, set me
here to try to figure out if if this is legit?
Is is this legit? And they discuss the intel. Meanwhile,
Claia gets up from like her like medical medical bay

(02:28:19):
and starts walking around Yavin in the rain and like,
oh my god, somebody please hug her, like someone like
do something like she should not be left alone, like
she's had one of the one of the most traumatic
days of her life. Someone like take care of her.
And Bell runs into Claia and like Vell and Clay
have had like kind of a kind of like a
dicey relationship, but like in this moment we see like

(02:28:42):
just the importance of like sheer solidarity and Vell like
cares for her, gets her to like cover, gives her
like a place to sleep, and it's a really touching scene.

Speaker 6 (02:28:51):
And I want to talk about this moment a little
bit because I think it's an interesting character thing with
Claia here, where Claya, who had this entire show, is
the only character who has to put together the entire time. Yeah,
Like even partigast At like the very end starts to
sort of crack, right, Claia is the one character who,
like when everyone is falling apart around her, when Andre
is falling apart, when when like even when Luthen is
falling apart, Clay, Clay is always on it, fuck you

(02:29:14):
pulling myself together. You have to hold this together. Yeah,
And it's like her and you have this bot like
her task. This is when she's finally is able to break. Yeah,
she's been holding in so much. Yeah yeah, yeah, Like
one her task is finally over and so she can
like let herself fall apart. And two it's like a
thing that could finally actually drive her to fall apart

(02:29:34):
is the fact that she just had to fucking to
kill Luthan kill the person who raised her. Yeah, she
had to fucking kill Lutheran and then get out. And
you can see this thing where that I think is
like very familiar to a lot of people were like
she's been. And she also has to hold all this
information in her head because if she forgets any of
the information that she's been told by Lutheran, the rebellion
is doomed. And and and when Ander like first meets
her on Corrusons, she's just like spilling it out, springing

(02:29:56):
it out. She's out jumble of words. Yeah, and it's
like and it's and it's a thing where like she's
she's finally reached the point where it's like she has
one last thing to do and she can fall apart,
and then she can finally, instead of having to be
the one who's caring for literally everyone and holding literally
everyone else together, she can finally like.

Speaker 2 (02:30:15):
Rest.

Speaker 6 (02:30:15):
And she doesn't know how to do that because she's
always had to be the one who's holding everything together
this entire time.

Speaker 4 (02:30:22):
I do love the moment when Lutherin first gives her
the information and he like forces her to like repeat
it back to him, like make make sure you can
you can express it to me. And then she does
the same thing to Cassian, and Cassian like doesn't like
Cassian doesn't repeat it back to her. And but yeah,
like like that small like you know, like like you
have to have like a ritual, you have to have
like you have you have have like a protocol to
make sure you actually like to make sure that I

(02:30:43):
know you actually have this information, you need to like
express it back to me. Yeah, it's it's just a
nice little short moment. In the next morning, we see
Cassian taking care of Bix's plants. Good for him. Yeah,
And then this is when cass and Vell talk and
they say that they're gonna drink to luthen Justice once,
which again Cassiean's drinking right in the morning, good time.

Speaker 2 (02:31:05):
As soon as you like he does every day.

Speaker 4 (02:31:10):
Yes, But but they say, like we can't toast them
all like Lieutenant Gornmic Santa Feryx, Marva Gorman, the El Donnis.
And one one short little tidbit here Vell talks about
how there's people falsely claiming that they were part of
the El Donnie crew, which is the most accurate thing

(02:31:31):
I have ever seen, where.

Speaker 2 (02:31:34):
They're like everybody keeps taking credit for this, and she's like, man,
if someone did that in front of me there and.

Speaker 4 (02:31:40):
I killed him. Yeah, I was like, they're the only
two people from the old Donnie Raids still still live,
and like, yeah, like the idea that we're getting like
rebel stolen valors, but very realistic, you know. I actually
I actually punched Richard Spencer as like as like a
fourteen year old.

Speaker 2 (02:31:56):
Yeah, it's very weird, pretty cool. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:32:02):
We then start hearing Nemeck's manifesto playing, and it's unclear
that if there's playing it like for the show, but
then we yeah, but then we realized that it's partographs
listening in the Imperial Security Bureaus briefing room, and it's
it's a really wonderful thing to return to. Yeah, and
one of protographs is like you know, Underlings walks up

(02:32:24):
to him and says like it just keeps spreading, doesn't it,
And he says it's been hard to contain again, using
this like a disease like rhetoric. He then asks for
a moment to collect himself and then shoots himself in
the head. This is one of the most fascinating parts
of the show, like like knowing like the kind of

(02:32:46):
the tear that he's going to face for like for failing,
while also being confronted with like how much of his
work for the Empire has been worth it? Like it's
it's not his emotions here are not clearly laid out
to you, because it's more interesting for you to think
about them yourself.

Speaker 2 (02:33:02):
Yeah, and I've seen everything from like, oh, he realizes
he was wrong to he realizes like the Empire is
the disease or just he realizes the disease got out
of control, like more than they had realized.

Speaker 4 (02:33:15):
But either the punishment he could be facing from the
Empires not worth it like he is he is he's
a career man. And why would he be sent to
Narkina five? Like he is not going to El Salvador. Finally,
Cassian is sent to meet a source on Kafring. That's
that's one of the guys infiltrating saws operation to learn

(02:33:36):
the location of Gala Urso, the designer at the Death Star.
And we have this final montage across all of our characters.
We have Man and Vell having breakfast with the grunts.
You have divorced Parrin flying flying around on Coruscant. You
have Dedra in a Narkina prison, and Claya gets to
see the life of the rebellion, Saws at Jedda, Kredit

(02:33:59):
is at the death Star be too, Emo has a
new friend, and Bix is holding a baby watching the sunrise.

Speaker 2 (02:34:07):
Uh huh.

Speaker 4 (02:34:08):
So I want to talk mostly about Bix here, but
first I think mon eating with the rebel troops is
like very cool to have her just like with the
regular people. She's not like with like bail and like
not like like often like a special like counselor's room.
She's like like just with everyone. We'll also talk a
little bit about Claya here as well, but I think

(02:34:28):
I think I want to just do Bix to start,
if that's okay, sure, sure, yeah, yeah yeah. So Tony
has talked a lot about this ending scene and about
how he wanted to end with a sense of hope
and like the hope for like life beyond you know,
the empire, like like life beyond imperial oppression, and and
Bix with the babies was to like symbolize this, and

(02:34:48):
Bix is literally like looking at the sunrise right like
the and this this metaphor of the sunrise has been
something for Luthin, how he's never gonna get you actually
get to see like life beyond the Empire, and he
knows that he sacrificed that. It also calls into calls
into view a Cassian dying at like the false sunrise
of the Death Star. And I've seen I guess some
people upset about Bicks just you know, being like off

(02:35:13):
planet with a baby and feeling this is a kind
of like relegating her character. And I think that there's
a lot of things going on here. This show goes
so so like way way beyond like simple politics of
like representation and like voc casting right, which can often
end up feeling like shallow boxes to check, because this
show actually like depicts things like carceral injustice, manufactured consent

(02:35:36):
for genocide, how structural patriarchy drives imperial oppression. Like the
depth of the political mechanisms the show is tackling, I
think is so much more worthwhile, and it's it's not
immune to criticism for those reasons. But I think that
aspect can be overlooked oddly. I think it'd we kind
of like take for granted, like how good the show
is at so many aspects, so many aspects of politics,

(02:35:58):
and like this show specifically has women and in so
many different roles beyond like the you know pop feminist
girl boss Badass, which has been linked to Star Wars
through Lea Ahsoka and to a lesser extent like Ray
and Jim, and this trobe is itself kind of low
key misogynistic. But in and Or, we have mon Mathma,
we have Vel, we have Sinto, we have Claya, we
have Dedro, we have Marvel, we have Bix, And I

(02:36:20):
think motherhood is something that characters should be allowed to embrace.
And like motherhoods always had a very tricky relationship with
Star Wars because of Padme, But like, being a mom
is not the issue with Bix's character. No, you can
still critique how she was relegated to becoming like the
punching bag for the show, but being a mother is
like not bad. There's a quote from the Palestinian militant

(02:36:44):
Leila Khalid like revolution must mean life, also every aspect
of life, and she specifically referenced motherhood. And like Bix
is a fighter, she is a survivor. She fights her
way out of depression and PTSD, and she does spend
years in age and revolutionary action, and yes, it may
it may have been nice to see more of that

(02:37:05):
revolutionary action on screen. We do see some it might
have been nice, but this is also write a limited
series show with a ton of characters, like four hundred
speaking roles, and yeah, that is not been afforded to everybody,
and that can be unfortunate. But I think I understand
what's going on with this character, and I do not

(02:37:25):
think the problem is the baby itself. I think that's
actually fine, and her deciding after years of fighting to
take like a few years off to have a baby
should be viewed as a choice that like she's like
allowed to make. I guess.

Speaker 2 (02:37:40):
I also think there's there's something like there's a lot
of agency in the choice to like I'm done, but
I'm not gonna make that decision for this other person
for Cassian. Yeah yeah, but I don't know like it
scanned to me. I do like thinking that in this
last scene is where like watching these last bits of
all our characters, you know, not only people have pointed

(02:38:00):
out is Cassie and going to be dead in like
two days, along with Ben Mendelssohn and shortly thereafter grandmav Tarkin,
but like all the other stuff that's canonically going down,
like right right as fucking Clea sees that first sunrise,
Like you have to imagine Han Solo somewhere is doing
a line off of like a space prostitute in some

(02:38:21):
sleazy bar. It's like four am in the morning where
he is. He hasn't slept in days. You know, Luke
Skywalker is looking at his on uncle being like, well,
they're never going to be lit on fire, obviously. Just
beautiful to.

Speaker 4 (02:38:33):
Kind of reiterate on the point about how like fascism
that also eats its own is something that Tony has
discussed before, specifically in relation to like Cyril and Dedra
and protographs.

Speaker 10 (02:38:42):
Right.

Speaker 4 (02:38:42):
Tony says, like quote, fascism doesn't just take down the oppressed,
It doesn't just come for the people trying to control.
It inevitably destroys the people who have worked the hardest
to build it. And that's been true all through history
as well. In a different interview, he says, the empire
is just shattering, fragment and grabbing, destroyed and taking, and
then the people that are doing it on the imperial

(02:39:03):
side are all isolated. They think they're part of something,
but really they're not. Look at what happens to Dedra,
Look at what happens to Potographs, Look what happens to
Cyril Karn he tries to believe in the dream. It's
the carelessness and the cruelty and the lack of empathy.
That's what I'm pitching. Even in this little final montage,
we have this brief shot of Parin, which is interesting.
That's man Mathma's a strange husband, I guess. And Tony

(02:39:27):
has discussed paren as well, and during like the wedding scene,
we learned that that as a kid, like while he
was in school, he was kind of a a quote
unquote political fire brand, and he has sacrificed that a
little bit. Tony says, quote there are a lot of
sacrifices in this show, all variety of sacrifices. He's made
his sacrifice for hedonism. He doesn't look happy in that

(02:39:49):
car unquote. Now I do like the little wrap up
we have we have on parents' character there.

Speaker 2 (02:39:55):
Although I also love if you'll notice he's with the
wife of the Golden daughter off too. It's that you
have to assume has gotten purged at this point because
they realized that he had been funneling funds to the rebellion.
But I I do like we even get that this
is this is the only little private rebellion that he
can manage right now as he's he's fucking this guy's wife.

Speaker 4 (02:40:17):
Everyone has, Everyone has their own rebellion.

Speaker 2 (02:40:19):
Yeah, oh man.

Speaker 4 (02:40:21):
I guess I finally, I at least for me, I
guess part of me wanted to see more of like
the development of Yaffin as like how like revolutionary celles
come together. And Tony has addressed this as well, quote
Yavin makes me nervous if you want to know the truth.
There's things about Yevin that make me nervous, and the
logic about Yavin that makes me nervous. Even within the
Star Wars cannon, the security there and how some people

(02:40:44):
know about it but the ice Bea doesn't know about it.
And there's some places where you don't want to poke
to aggressively because you don't really want to get into
the undercarriage. That was a place where I didn't really
want to get into the undercarriage very much. That's that
is that is understandable. And then finally on Clay and
Luthen and specifically like Clia's last look there, like in

(02:41:06):
the morning after her walk in the rain, after all
of this, you know, frustration between like Luthen and Yavin.
Tony says, quote Cleia and Luthen are over amplifying the
distrust and hate in the same way that some of
the people on the Alliance are over ramping the disagreement.
I think one of my favorite moments in that montage
at the end is when clay A wakes up the

(02:41:26):
next morning after her night in the rain, and she
looks out and sees that there's people running and people
caring supplies, and she's seen how big Yavin is. And
there's this mona Lisa's smile that she has that's almost
beginning to take pleasure in some sense of ownership of
what she's helped create. She realizes how much of a contributor,
how much of an investor, she and Luthen are in Yavin.
She's watching the people there and just a little moment

(02:41:49):
of pride comes on her face that she warms up
just a little bit and begins to take ownership of
the rebellion. That's everything to me, unquote.

Speaker 6 (02:41:57):
There's something I love about Yavin. Well, you get to
see sort of the beauty of it and the beauty
of what's going to destroy the empire where it's like
you keep just seeing like people who survived all of
this shit and make it to yav And like Meshi
is like the other survivor of the Narkina FIV like
prison break, right, and he's like one of the people

(02:42:18):
going on with the indoor the what's the what's the
what's the other rebellion twinks name the kid throw the
kitty through the brit Yeah, Willman, Willman's French resistance girlfriend makes.

Speaker 4 (02:42:28):
It there, and like all of these like and you.

Speaker 6 (02:42:31):
Get this this little microcosmos, like all of these people
who are like the survivors of all of these imperial
sort of like horrors like have gathered in this place
and it's like these are the people who are going
to destroy the empire. And I think something really beautiful
about that. And then I also think there's a really
interesting thing in in the Yavun politics we do see,
which is that like you know, so like I get
I am notoriously the shows like luth and hater. I'm

(02:42:53):
not really a hater of Luthen. I just I just
don't want the most annoying people in the world to
try to replicate him in real life. But also like
the central rebel command is a shit show. It's complete disasterate.
They're like top down hierarchical command from that council. Those
people at every every single instance of this attempt to
lose the boar, Right, they're too pissed off at Luthan

(02:43:14):
to like listen to the information that he literally fucking
died to give them, right, Like this entire operation a
bit about giving them the information to destroy the super
weapon that will destroy the empire, and they don't want
to listen to it. They like in Rogue one, like
that council tries to surrender, like they literally vote to
be like yeah, sorry, we can't fight the Empire.

Speaker 4 (02:43:29):
They're too strong.

Speaker 6 (02:43:30):
And then like the rebel military defects and this is
not the fact, like they say disrection, they go right,
they rebel Yeah, they go rogue and they and they're
the ones you do this. And I think it's this
interesting thing here. As much as Gilray doesn't want to
like touch Yavin that much, there's this there's an interesting
political dynamic of like yeah, okay, so like we finally
developed this sort of like centralized political force capable of

(02:43:51):
bring all these things together, and they're useless. They are
worse than useless. They they they nearly destroy the rebellion
that they had been sort of like trying to together
on multiple occasions. And they're only stopped by doing that
by these sort of like unhinged gorilla like people who
are completely out of control and like these like rogue
operator people who.

Speaker 2 (02:44:11):
Are fundamentally like the the inheritors to Luthan's legacy, right,
like which is Cassie in Yeah.

Speaker 6 (02:44:17):
By the actual rebels, not the fucking senators. And I
think that's like a because I've been I've been seeing
there's been I've been seeing some small attempts to like
recuperate mon Mathma from this.

Speaker 4 (02:44:28):
It's like, no, Matha's the only senator who backs the.

Speaker 6 (02:44:31):
Like go for it, like we're we're carrying out this
ray to see the desk star plants, like she's the
only one, right, And I think there's this is this
is like the fund the actual fundamental break here is
between these people. Is it's like when when when the
chips are down, are you willing to fight? And most
of the sort of like like liberal sort of like

(02:44:53):
defecting noble leadership isn't except for Mathma, and she should.
And so it's like I want to go down fighting,
and that's.

Speaker 2 (02:45:03):
The fundament I'm gonna go down swinging. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 (02:45:06):
And that's the fundamental difference between like someone who politically
I don't like, like the Marquis Lafayet, like that motherfucker
went down swinging like he. That man, at every single
point of his life was always funding an insurrection, was
always like I will take let's.

Speaker 2 (02:45:21):
They're a punch. Let's they're a punch. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (02:45:23):
And then and it's like you can compare that to
like the German liberals or like like the liberals who
when Pinochet like takes power, were like, yeah, when when
Pinochet called them all to like report to like have
meetings with the government, they all went, yeah, we're gonna
go report to like talk to the secret police, and
they all got like killed, right, And that's the different
between those those two things, and that I think is
a really really is a crucial political distinction to draw

(02:45:45):
out is like it's not even necessarily like your class background,
it's not even necessarily like what your politics are because
a lot of these people believe the same things. It's
like when when the chips come down, will you fight
or will you try to surrender?

Speaker 2 (02:45:56):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (02:45:57):
And that's the thing I think, I don't know like that,
that's to me, the best part of and Or is
like that. And I think that's the part of it
that's like being set up in this episode that I love.

Speaker 4 (02:46:06):
The very last thing I'll say, because this has gone
on wait for quite a while, I'm sorry, is like
I was talking with a friend after we watch these episodes,
and we were talking about how this show really, in
the end is a call for internationalism. Planets are stand
ins for different countries and different cities, right, and like
they aren't doing the full revolution on Correscant, like the

(02:46:29):
Center for Imperial Power right the Imperial Core. There is
some organization happening there, right, Like there is people based
out of there. There's networking, right, like Luten's intel shop
is there. But most of like the physical arm struggle
is on other planets. The first base for the Alliance
is built on the aff and four, but the rebellion
isn't initially like overthrowing the Empire on Correscant, though through

(02:46:50):
their interplanetary efforts, the whole galaxy gets liberated and the
seat of power can be seized. And that's sort of
like galaxy wide cooperation mirroring like a worldwide cooperation that
we have like really like lost in the past past
few decades. Yeah, I think is one of I think
one of the points that that should be taken away
from from and or here.

Speaker 2 (02:47:12):
Yep, all right, well I think that's our episode.

Speaker 10 (02:47:15):
Yep, bye everybody.

Speaker 4 (02:47:42):
This is it could happen here Executive Disorder, our weekly
newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world,
and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today
I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Sophie Lichterman.
This episode, we are covering the week of May fifteen
to May twenty. First, Joe Biden has prostate cancer. There's

(02:48:03):
anti natalist terrorism, and the DHS is maybe gonna do
a reality TV show. Probably not, but it's a bad plan.
How are we doing this week?

Speaker 1 (02:48:11):
That was a trifector from hell?

Speaker 2 (02:48:13):
Yeah, so bad.

Speaker 4 (02:48:15):
This one's so bad.

Speaker 6 (02:48:17):
It's really I have to do the laughing like right here,
because good lord, like, oh many many of these weeks
are bad.

Speaker 4 (02:48:26):
This one's particularly bad.

Speaker 1 (02:48:28):
I don't know DHS reality show.

Speaker 4 (02:48:32):
We'll get to that at the at the ending segment. Sure, Hey,
this is Gear from the Future cutting in. We recorded
this a few hours before some pretty major news the
shooting of two Israeli embassy staff in DC. We will
be talking about this in next week's Executive Disorder, as
well as the new budget bill, which targets trans healthcare.

(02:48:54):
Now back to the episode. I think let's start with,
you know, a brief acknowledgment of Joe Biden's prostate cancer.
What was Jill doing to him? Oh?

Speaker 5 (02:49:05):
By god, Garrison, you could have said that start at
the bottom, man, you didn't.

Speaker 4 (02:49:09):
I'm allowed to say that because I'm the most gay
guy coded person on the podcast, which is saying something
so so yes then and now, because we live in
a truly sick world. Scott Adams couldn't even let.

Speaker 1 (02:49:26):
He could, He couldn't let him have his moment.

Speaker 4 (02:49:28):
He couldn't even let Joe Biden have his moment. This
anti Biden hatred has transcended so far that Scott Adams
couldn't even let Biden have his moment, and announced the
same day that Scott Adams has the exact same type
of prostate cancer. So to two down, Biden down, Dilbert down,
Big week for prostate cancer and bloy.

Speaker 1 (02:49:48):
How do you have people been weird about it on
the internet.

Speaker 4 (02:49:52):
Yeah, I'm not going to get into how long he
maybe has known he's had it. He's he's had skin
cancer moved before. I think that ship has mostly sailed.
I think our opinions on Biden are pretty are pretty well,
pretty well documented. Yeah, so I don't think we can
dedicate much more, much more time to this.

Speaker 5 (02:50:11):
Okay.

Speaker 6 (02:50:11):
The one important note that I will say is if
you have a prostate get check for prostate cancer. Yeah, like, yeah,
get the screening.

Speaker 4 (02:50:17):
It's good, it'll help.

Speaker 5 (02:50:19):
You unless you are over seventy five, in which case
I think most people don't get screened for it right
because it's slow gross.

Speaker 4 (02:50:26):
I'm pretty sure Biden's over seventy five.

Speaker 5 (02:50:28):
Yeah, that's why somewhat I thought it was somewhat remarkable
part of the issue there.

Speaker 1 (02:50:32):
I mean, all I can say is about once a
month I think about how at the DNC those thank
you Joe Chance lasted four seconds.

Speaker 4 (02:50:41):
I have actually been thinking about the thank you Joe
Chance for a lot of this time yes week. Frankly,
you had to be there. Yeah, it's one of the
most it's one of the most horrifying, horrifying things. Hm
as they let this like very clearly dying old man
out to pasture, because like you know, kinds are diagnosis
very clear, he was in some degree of decline. We

(02:51:03):
don't need to retread this. This is this is pretty
well known. But no, I have been thinking about how
that whole auditorium broke out and chanting thank you Joe
for like nearly five.

Speaker 1 (02:51:13):
Minutes, and then the following the rest of the week
not a single mention it.

Speaker 4 (02:51:18):
Was done that day. It was wild anyways, So yeah,
ri Ip Dilbert, I guess let's move on to anti
natalist terrorism. So I've learned this week that people don't
know what anti natalism is, which, as someone who grew
up in Portland, is kind of surprising to me because

(02:51:39):
there was some very very prominent, like anti needalist protesters
who had set up downtown outside of Powell's books pretty frequently,
and we kind of all grew accustomed to them, and honestly,
I'm a little bit sympathetic to their arguments. I understand
where they're coming from. Anti natalism is to belief that
procreation is unethical. This could be based on the idea
that there's been like this rapid increase in human population,

(02:52:00):
which is done extensive damage to the planet, or that's
simply being born is inherently a non consensual act, especially
being born into a world with high levels of suffering.
So these people opt to do not have children. As
this ethical standpoint, everyone's entitled to their own choice. You
don't need to agree with it, but whatever. Now, Interestingly,

(02:52:21):
this past weekend there was a quote unquote active terrorism
that has been linked to anti natalist philosophy. I'm just
talking about this as it is an instance of kind
of the brain ratification of this entire society and the
reditification of terrorism, combined with this growing sense of like

(02:52:43):
nihilism driving violent extremist actions. No one was killed except
for the perpetrator alleged for perpetrator in this incident, but
I still think this is worth talking about as it
can be seen as in a sequence of weird terrorism.
This is something that Roberts can be working on on
for a piece later later down the line. Right, this

(02:53:03):
is not the first car bomb this year. We had
the Tesla Tesla cyber truck explosion earlier, which was similarly
kind of a weird, a weird incident. Yeah, that one was.

Speaker 6 (02:53:13):
I think that one, I think was the official inauguration
of the years of lead paint which were perpetually living
in now.

Speaker 4 (02:53:19):
Yes, yes, I mean the gas leak heear if you will, Yeah,
so yes. On Saturday May seventeenth, the car bomb went
off outside a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California, killing
the suspect, twenty five year old man named Guy Edwards Barkas.
The FBI is calling this a quote unquote intentional act
of terrorism. The clinic was closed when the explosion happened.

(02:53:40):
The building was severely damaged, but no embryos were harmed.
Investigators believe that the suspect attempted to live stream the bombing,
with a website being found online that appeared to be
in connection to the incident, where the suspect describes himself
as a quot unquote pro mortalist.

Speaker 5 (02:53:57):
Slightly slightly different from man.

Speaker 10 (02:54:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:54:01):
Correct.

Speaker 4 (02:54:01):
It is more of an affirmative version of anti natalism,
where you want to actually take concrete steps to like
decrease the population of the planet, not necessarily in a
way that's like promoting like the mass killing of individuals.
He says, quote understand, your death is already guarantee, and
you can thank your parents for that one. All a

(02:54:24):
pro mortalist is saying is let's make it happen sooner
rather than later to prevent your future suffering and more importantly,
the suffering your existence will cause to all other sentient beings.
That's his definition of a promortalist. It can be linked
to other philosophies that encourage like self harm and ending
your own life as a conscious choice. On this website,
he discussed his goal of quote sterilizing this planet of

(02:54:47):
the disease of life unquote great and declared the need
for a quote unquote war against pro lifers. His website
also highlights other philosophies such as negative utilitarianism, ethlism, abolitionist veganism. Quote. Basically,
philosophies that have realized religion is are worded that there

(02:55:08):
is objective value in the universe and it lies in
the harm being experienced by sentient beings. So although it
may seem quote unquote dark, it's the polar opposite of
nonsense like nihilism unquote. Negative utilitarianism is something that comes
up a few times on his site as well. This

(02:55:29):
is the viewpoint that instead of positive utilitarianism where we
try to maximize, you know, human pleasure, this is trying
to minimize suffering, human suffering and like the suffering tied
to existence and the like aggurate suffering as well as
if you if there's more people and there's going to
be more suffering, so you should both make choices in
your own life that that may that may limit your suffering,

(02:55:51):
but also make sure that you don't reproduce, because then
even more suffering will happen because of your actions through
your children.

Speaker 6 (02:55:58):
This is the most bare is shit I've ever heard
of my entire goddamn very West Coast.

Speaker 5 (02:56:03):
This is yeah, like twenty nine Palms is not It's
not the West Coast.

Speaker 4 (02:56:08):
Like a lot of this is in conversation with like
the rationalist subculture rationalist it's like it offers different solutions.

Speaker 6 (02:56:15):
These these people shouldn't be allowed to use computers for
like fifty years, Like just a band on California using computers.

Speaker 4 (02:56:22):
This is all like deeply online stuff like these are
these are popular websites, subreddits like YouTube channels. These are
people who are dealing with like, you know, pretty intense
existentialism depression, who then channel it into this like semi
niche like online community and online philosophy. Now, Guy's best friend,

(02:56:43):
a self described quote vegan rad femme, anti datist, recently
arranged her own suicide by having her boyfriend to shoot
her while she.

Speaker 1 (02:56:53):
Was what what what?

Speaker 5 (02:56:55):
Correct?

Speaker 4 (02:56:57):
Yes, this was This was the themer's best friend who
died very recently, like last month. And Guy claims that
they were both quote unquote anti sex missandrists with borderline
personality disorder, and he admits that her death quote unquote
put him over the edge.

Speaker 6 (02:57:19):
This is the most. This is the most online like
like like best best friend anti natalist has her boyfriend
shoot her is the most.

Speaker 4 (02:57:35):
Even though her her anti natalist tumblr page has like
women loving women, anti gender ideology, miss andry stuff and
yet still has a sister gender boyfriend. In many such cases,
so yeah, you can see how this type of a
community gets like fostered, and people make online friends and
then encourage their own self destruction. Yeah, you have to
destroy the Internet. A quote that he has on his

(02:57:56):
website is quote I've known for years now that I
wasn't going to allow myself to make it past my
twenties unquote, And like this is a sentiment I hear
even a lot of like young people saying, is it's
like this like belief that they're not going to survive
their twenties, Like like their belief that like the world
is so bent on destruction that I'm probably not going
to make it out of my twenties right now, and

(02:58:17):
that that that changes the kind of choices that young
people are making. And this is this is getting increasingly common.

Speaker 5 (02:58:22):
Yeah, for sure. I think it's a very different world
to be growing up in than like the late teenage,
early twenties of you know, like millennial people.

Speaker 4 (02:58:31):
The millennial world. It's very it's very different. Yeah, And
you even had manifestations of this in that millennial era, right,
I think it got kind of pushed into this like
like nihilistic school shooter culture, which you still see remnants
of now in the true krime of community. There is
some crossover between an act like this and and some
of like the school shooter fandom, the Columbiner stuff, especially

(02:58:52):
considering the resurgence of Columbiner culture that we're currently seeing
right now in the United States. But yeah, the general
sense of like widespread dread and the interconnectedness of this
is more unique.

Speaker 10 (02:59:04):
Okay.

Speaker 6 (02:59:04):
I keep thinking about that Hunter S. Thompson quote about
like those poor bastard troop bonever nine to eleven don't
know the party's over.

Speaker 4 (02:59:10):
The party is over, and yeah, welcome to help. So
the suspect's dad said to reporters that guy had a
childhood obsession with pyrotechnics. He set the family home on
fire and burned it down he was nine. He made rockets,
stink bombs, smoke bombs as a child. Videos on YouTube,
likely posted by Guy show m eighties exploding in the desert,

(02:59:31):
a hydrogen balloon being set a blaze, and a bucket
of radioactive uranium.

Speaker 5 (02:59:35):
Or is that what did he obtain that like out
there in Wonda Valley.

Speaker 4 (02:59:38):
This is still being investigated. His voice in these videos
matches the thirty minute audio manifesto explaining his motivation for
the attack, saying quote, Basically, it just comes down to
I'm angry that I exist and that you know, nobody
got my consent to bring me here. Basically, I'm anti
life and IVF is kind of like the epitome of

(03:00:01):
pro life ideology.

Speaker 1 (03:00:03):
This is out there, is.

Speaker 5 (03:00:06):
There any information on the I'm just because a lot
of explosives and other munitions have gone missing. Twenty nine
Palms people, that familiar is a town near ish to
Palm Springs, nearer to Joshua Tree. There's a pretty big
military base. Yeah. Yeah, it's the big marine Corde, like
desert warfare training.

Speaker 4 (03:00:24):
Explosives have gone missing there before. The basic claims that
they've been recovered. It is unclear what explosives he used
at this point. It was a pretty large explosion. Investigators
are low key impressed at this explosion, like.

Speaker 5 (03:00:37):
It was it was what they what they said in
that official statement.

Speaker 4 (03:00:41):
If you read between the lines, they're like surprised at
how effective this car bomb was. Again, this was a
guy who spent a lot of time online, a lot
of time on Reddit. It seems like he got obsessed
with this. He had a fascination with explosives at a
young age. So that obsession combined with this anti natalist
obsession and this urge for self destruction manifested in this action.

Speaker 5 (03:01:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:01:00):
This this week, Reddit banned anti natalist anti life subreddit
allegedly frequented by bomber. Dude.

Speaker 5 (03:01:08):
Just want to say that this is I think the
only IVS clinic in the Kachiello Valley, So like for
people who are accessing those services, that's a serious disruption,
right M Yeah, that sucks.

Speaker 4 (03:01:20):
So I, me and Robert are going to talk more
about kind of this trend that we're seeing in in
extremism or in extremist acts. I still don't like the
nihilist buy an extremism term, but we are seeing elements
of that getting more and more common, especially combined with
the true crime community, which essentially tries to encourage young
girls to commit school shootings.

Speaker 5 (03:01:39):
M h yeah, I guess. To finish up, I just
want to say that, like, I know, it's a really
hard time right now. A lot of people are trying
to find wayte of cope or feeling like they can't cope,
or feel that they're not enough.

Speaker 4 (03:01:51):
I guess hopelessness. This sort of like existential nihilism.

Speaker 5 (03:01:55):
Yeah, And I'll combine that with a lot of people
who work for the government fundly finding themselves out of work,
and you know the economic pressure that puts on people,
and I understand that people are pretty in a tough
spot right now who want to save very briefly obviously,
like the world is more beautiful with you in it.
And if you're experiencing suicidal ideation or mental health struggles.

(03:02:15):
A couple of resources I want to suggest the Fireweed
Collective and the Jane Adams Collective. Adams spelled with two d's.
There a double Dams. We will have links to both
of them in the Showdoues. You can also put them
into Dug dut go. And they were the first responses
that came up for me. If you need those resources,
reach out to those people.

Speaker 6 (03:02:35):
Yeah, it's good to see the sunrise, and it's better
to see the sunrise with everyone you love in it.
And yeah, that's that's a thing that you can make
sure you do every day.

Speaker 4 (03:02:46):
All Right, thank you, James thanking me. We're gonna go
and break and then come back to discuss immigration. All right,
we're back, James. I see the amount of text you have.

Speaker 1 (03:03:09):
This is a very long section jail of text.

Speaker 4 (03:03:13):
I assume this is all good news, so let's hear it.

Speaker 5 (03:03:17):
All right, Garrison, I'm so glad that you have seen
my wall of text. Because I have been looking at
court documents for days. So much fun on pacer.

Speaker 4 (03:03:26):
You have been pacer posting in the group chats.

Speaker 5 (03:03:29):
Oh yeah, yeah, I have been big the court listener
as well. Okay, so this is one of the more
insane things I've seen on pacer. In a minute, I'm
talking about the case here of mister NM, who was
identified at some point, and we'll get an m NM.

Speaker 3 (03:03:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (03:03:44):
It's not uncommon for migrancy in these kind of high
profile cases to be anonymised where they can right, just
for their safety. So NM received a final removal order
in Nebraska in twenty twenty three, and on the seventh
of May, DHS attempted to report to Libya. You'll remember
that we colored that week's ed right. They did not

(03:04:05):
manage to do that. And in this court case, we've
seen from another detainee that one of these detainees was
given a document to sign and told that he would
quote be a free man in Libya after signing. Obviously
unclear how one can be a free man when one
is just dumped into a country, when one does speak
the language, has no contact, there is a war.

Speaker 1 (03:04:25):
Doesn't make sense in any way.

Speaker 4 (03:04:27):
This man is not from Libya, that is correct.

Speaker 5 (03:04:30):
None of these people are Libyan.

Speaker 6 (03:04:31):
And again, whenever seven someone says the word Libya, you
have to figure out which Libyan government you are talking about,
because there are multiple of them, because there is a
fucking civil war going on there right now.

Speaker 5 (03:04:41):
So yeah, and whenever someone talks about people being free
in Libya, we should bear in mind that migrants are
literally sold into slavery in Libya by both governments. Yes,
M's English is limited. His main language is Karenne, which
of course is a language that people speak in Cartule,
the karen Home Lang, which part of Myanmar. On the
nineteenth of this month, that's two days ago, I sent

(03:05:04):
a notification to his lawyer saying that they'd read him
a notice of removal in English that they were removing
him to South Africa. Ten minutes later, they attempted to
recall this message, and then later that same day they
notified his lawyer that they'd once again read notice of
removal to him in English that he was being removed
to South Sudan. South Sudan the world's youngest country, if

(03:05:25):
we're not familiar, a country that is in which conflict
is escalating as we speak, government carrying out a barrel
bombing campaign this very week. His council set up a
video meeting at nine am on the twentieth, but just
before that meeting, his council found out that he had
already been removed. Mister m had refused to sign the
order of removal to South Sudan. And we're seeing right

(03:05:49):
now in a court case it's a class action. Mister
NM is one of the members of the class right
that there was a preliminary injunction against these people being
removed because they are the same people who the Trump
administration previously tried to remove to Libya, and at this
point they tried to remove them to South Sudan. Before
they are sent to these places, they're supposed to have

(03:06:09):
a reasonable fear screening right. That is where someone can
articulate if they have a reasonable fear of being removed
to that country, right like if they will be persecuted there,
they're likely to face torture or violence, or or be
picked on because of who they are. Right then they're
supposed to have a fifteen day opportunity to submit a

(03:06:30):
motion to reopen. If the Department of Home out Security
finds that they don't have reasonable fear. Right, So they're
supposed to be this process where they can say I
have a reasonable fear of going there, if I go
there or be persecuted, and if the AHPs says nobody
don't believe you, then they have fifteen days to submit
more evidence.

Speaker 1 (03:06:46):
Right, are they being allowed to do that or no?

Speaker 5 (03:06:49):
No, got it? That is what this case hinges on. Right.
So they were informed possibly hours before they were moved
to South Sudan that they were being moved to South Sudan.
Then they were taken to a secure facility where they
couldn't contact their lawyers. And in at least the case
of mister NM, he had scheduled an appointment with his
lawyer and was deported before he could do so.

Speaker 4 (03:07:10):
Right, And this saven a few times before as well. Yeah,
that's correct in the past few months.

Speaker 5 (03:07:16):
That's right. Yeah, And specifically, there was a priminary injunction
against this right. So, quoting from Judge Murphy, who is
judging the Massachusetts District Court where this is being held,
the government's actions are unquestionably violative of this court order.
The government said they have complied with my order because
they didn't hear anyone yelling at their jailers that they

(03:07:36):
are afraid to go to South Sudan. This is clearly insufficient. Yeah,
so what he's articulating here is like this chance to
articulate reasonable fear right. I do want to point out
that in Biden's asylum ban that he passed in twenty
twenty four, they move from a question of are you
afraid to go back to your home country to what's

(03:07:58):
called a shout test where the migrant has to articulate
that reasonable fear unprompted right to have a chance at
asylum in the United States. So it's again, like all
these immigration things, I'm not saying things what the same
under Biden, by I'm saying that there is a pathway
to how we got here, and it goes through Biden's
executive boarder.

Speaker 4 (03:08:15):
And like Miller is very willing to use anything in
his toolbox.

Speaker 5 (03:08:18):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, and anything that look for decades,
castal liberalism has built a series of tools which now
lie in the hands of a very illiberal government right,
and they are being used against people for whom those
who supported castor liberalism may have some sympathy. That is

(03:08:38):
how we got here.

Speaker 4 (03:08:39):
That's a good way of putting in.

Speaker 5 (03:08:41):
So the situation we are at right now is that
these people were flown seemingly in a Gulf Stream jet.
Gillian Brockhell, who's a formula Washington Post reporter who are
going to have on the show next week, was able
to identify this jet based on where it took off
and its call sign. It's stopped in Shannon in Ireland. Notably,
Shannon is an Irish civilian airport, right, It's not a

(03:09:04):
US air Force base. This does raise some questions within Ireland,
within Irish politics about Irish neutrality here. Right. The jet
then flew onto Djibouti, which it is believed is where
the migrants are right now, in court the discussion probably
half an hour before we recorded this, DHS is claiming

(03:09:25):
that they can do their credible fear interviews there on
the tarmac in this plane, which people are saying is
in Jibouti. Right, there's some suspicion that's in Djibouti. DHS
is claiming that the location of the plane is classified,
but this widespread belief that this plane is currently in Djibouti,
including as I say, Julian was first and y T
published something that didn't credit her, should have credited her.

(03:09:48):
So to do the credible fear into you, right, they
have to have a chance to research what will happen
to them in South Sudan. They have to have access
to a lawyer. Most of these people like mister NM
will also have to have a translator. Right. Then will
also have to have privacy, right, their credible fear may
be something they don't want to share with everyone else
on that plane.

Speaker 4 (03:10:05):
Because that could also put them in danger.

Speaker 1 (03:10:07):
Yes, also just like that's a baffling place to suggest
somebody have that intimate or private of our conversation. It's
just such a violation of their human rights.

Speaker 5 (03:10:20):
Yeah, many human rights being violated here. So yeah, I
mean the US has a big base in Djibouti, right,
so I imagine that's why they're there. Remember that they
have that fifteen day period, So if DHS finds that
they don't have credible fear, then they will have fifteen
days right to bring another to reopen that. Where will

(03:10:40):
they be housed somewhere in fucking Jibouti presumably if that's
where they are, right, There are many many unanswered questions
at this point. Now, last night we learned that one
of the Burmese people, it appears that there are two
Burmese people. We know this because the Department of Homeland
Security today started tweeting shots of these people Jesus yeah

(03:11:02):
and uh wow yeah, claiming that they were convicted of
various crimes. Among them were Tubamese men and m appears
to be Neio Miant and the other appears to be
Cure Mea. Both of these men have been accused of
various a big convicted, I believe of sex crimes. That's
where they got their removal orders. Other people among the
dozen or so people on the plane have been convicted

(03:11:24):
of some of them like one of them is South
Sudanese and he was convicted of removing the serial number
from a firearm and of armed robbery, others, murder, and
various other fairly serious crimes. Right, none of that means
that you should just get dumped in seulth Sudan. Right,
that's not a punishment in US, Lord, it is not

(03:11:44):
a morally or legally acceptable thing to do.

Speaker 1 (03:11:47):
It's just truly baffling, honestly, Like, that's that's what they're doing,
that's the move.

Speaker 5 (03:11:53):
Yeah, the move is to send Themselve Sudan, where it's
worth noting that South Sudan's government have said it will
probably send these people back to their home countries. Evidently
the reason they are not being sent there is because
they have articulated a fear of going there or they
have protection it's called withholding of removal right, so they
can't be removed to that country. And basically that is

(03:12:14):
where we're at. Evdans they manage to remove apparently somebody
to Burma today or late last night. I'm still waiting
on my sources in mean Martin confirm that the Burmese
hunter is as leaky as a sieve. Right, If those
people are land that we will know about it pretty soon.
We have pretty good sources in Burma, so if that happens,

(03:12:36):
we will know. They also discussed another party, right, someone
who goes by OCG a gay Guatemalon man who assertain
credible fear of being returned while in immigration court. He
was deported to Mexico, where he also asserted in credible fear.
Mexico gave him a choice of remaining Mexico going to Guatemala.
He went to Guatemala, where he is now in hiding.

(03:12:57):
The DHS claimed he said he didn't have credible fear
and then later reverse it, and so they didn't ask.
So the judge is now asking how on earth they
got this conclusion he didn't have credible fear and deported him.
He's saying he might potentially put DHS officers on the
stand to explain how this happened. In other immigration use

(03:13:17):
ice just today, this is Wednesday has apparently been dismissing
court cases against people who turn up before hearing an
immigration court and then immediately arresting them. What the fuck?
Right there is this fucking cross. Yeah, Like it's a
little unclear what the move is here, but clearly they're
trying to remove them in a more expeditious way. Right,
they have a court case, try to remove this person,

(03:13:40):
they're saying.

Speaker 4 (03:13:40):
Because the court case has, like you know, a certain
amount of time needs to process. If they dismissed the
court case, then they.

Speaker 5 (03:13:45):
Might have a right to appeal.

Speaker 4 (03:13:46):
And yeah, but if it's dismissed, then they can expedite
other like non judicial removal.

Speaker 5 (03:13:52):
Yeah, well they can do what they're doing here. Yeah,
they can try and get and run people out before
they have a chance to get to their lawyer right like.
That seems to be the underlying team of all of
these things, which is that your due process and your
rights under the law are too time consuming, so we're
going to try and make and run around your rights
by sending you to somewhere fucking horrific. That is the

(03:14:13):
underlying theme here. Unfortunately, this removal will likely now affect
a lot more people because a Trump administration has removed
the twenty twenty three Temporary Protected Status for Nezuelan people.
We talked about TPSS in my Darian series. The TPS
provides protection from deportation to people who are already present

(03:14:33):
in the USA when it passes. Generally, it's if a
country has experienced war or other like instability that makes
it dangerous. You have to apply to the TPS. They
don't provide a pathway to permanence or citizenship, but they
do give people work authorization, and they often have to
be frequently renewed by the Executive Branch. You have to
be in the US the date it's issued, so you

(03:14:54):
can't enter after. Despite what you might have seen on
Twitter or whatever, that's not the case. It also doesn't
count as a legal entry, so you can't use the
bridge to a green card. Trump stripped this protection from
about three hundred and fifty thousand Venezuelans under the twenty
twenty three TPS. This does not impact there are two
different tpss for Venezuelan people. They're in a bit of

(03:15:16):
a unique situation. The quarter of a million people covered
by the twenty twenty one TPS are still for now
covered by that, but it doesn't exactly bode well for them.

Speaker 4 (03:15:26):
Right.

Speaker 5 (03:15:27):
This appears to be the largest blanket removal of legal
status from a group of people in the United States history,
and it's a little unclear what this means for the
three hundred and fifty thousand Venezuelan people currently residing in
the US under TPS. Right, but it's another case of like,
by their compliance, isolatory probably knows where they live, so

(03:15:48):
these people, it's possible that we will see deportations of
these people back to Venezuela again. The situation in Venezuela
is dire.

Speaker 1 (03:15:56):
It's a place where just so many people too.

Speaker 5 (03:16:00):
And like I think again, if people haven't listened to
my Darien series, I would like that because I got
a lot of myself into it, But I have a
great affection for Venezuelan migrants. I've spent a lot of
time in Caracas when I was younger, and I've spent
a lot of time with them in the Darien Gap,
and then when they arrive in the United States, and yeah,
it's really fucking heartbreaking to hear. Like when you think

(03:16:21):
of three hundred and fifty thousand people, understand that a
good number of those people will be little children, Yeah, right,
people who never had any agency, People whose parents risked
their lives to give their kids a chance at a
better future, and that's been ripped away from them right
now with the consent of the Supreme Court.

Speaker 6 (03:16:38):
Like, if you're removing three hundred, like three hundred thousand
people from from our country, that's just straight up and
ethnic cleansing, Like that's what that is.

Speaker 5 (03:16:46):
It's about a third of the Venezuelans living in the
United States right now, right, Like, it's it's way more
than decimating. Yeah, obviously we will see what legal recourses
people have, will see how this goes down, But obviously
very concerning for these people whose country is falling apart

(03:17:06):
and being writturned. There will be terrible for them, right,
Not only will they likely have none of their savings,
all of the resources they poured into getting here, but
they're also likely to face political persecution. So yeah, that's
all the exciting and uplifting news I have from the
immigration side of things. Hey everyone, it's James with a

(03:17:26):
pickup Today me and Mar now is reporting that the
United States has deported twenty people since April. To Me
and mar most of those people, seven of them have
been released. The remainder of those people are being held
by Burmese military intelligence in a prison that is notorious

(03:17:50):
for torture, sexual violence, and the general inhumane treatment of
incarcerated people that we've become very familiar with in our
writing about Meanma. We don't know who these people are yet. Obviously,
this is a story that I'm looking into and I
will continue to get back to you on. But it
seems like somehow we have not been aware of this

(03:18:11):
until now, but dozens of people have been deported. They're
saying that twenty seven people in total are expected to
be deported, and twenty already have. So obviously this is
very disturbing news and something we'll keep reporting on.

Speaker 6 (03:18:23):
Well.

Speaker 4 (03:18:23):
Thankskeeping us updated on that. James, Yeah, we're gonna go
on break and return to talk about the FBI, Palestine
and some exciting new reality TV and turfs. I'm sad, okay,

(03:18:49):
we are back. First, I want to do some quick
updates about the FBI. A Cash Battel has announced that
he's shutting down the FBI's DC headquarters in dj Edgar
Hoover Building. Around fifteen hundred agents will be transferred around
the country. In this same interview, Cash Brittel and Dan
Bongino went on TV to say that Jeffrey Epstein died

(03:19:12):
by suicide and of course Mega, yes, very normal to this.
What do they have on this.

Speaker 1 (03:19:19):
To them?

Speaker 11 (03:19:21):
You said, Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide.

Speaker 4 (03:19:25):
People don't believe it.

Speaker 11 (03:19:26):
Well, I mean, listen, they have a right to their opinion.
But as someone who has worked as a public defender,
as a prosecutor, who's been in that prison system, who's
been in the Metropolitan Detention Center, who's been in segregated housing,
you know a suicide when you see one, and that's
what that was. They killed himself again, you want me
to get I've seen the whole file.

Speaker 5 (03:19:48):
He killed himself.

Speaker 1 (03:19:49):
I'm upset because I forgot that Dan Bongina was a
person like me too.

Speaker 4 (03:19:54):
Oh, I have not forgotten. This is my beat. I
forgot it. So yes, of course, uh, Mega is acting
very normal about about uh the affirmation that Epstein killed himself. Quote. Okay,
now I'm losing confidence in them both. This is not
good at all.

Speaker 1 (03:20:14):
Cool. Let me read one, Let me read one. Let's
do this. This is fun. Sad to see Cash and
Bengino have been compromised.

Speaker 6 (03:20:24):
Yeah, your turn, Dahn blink twice if they threatened you
or your family.

Speaker 5 (03:20:30):
Now I got to do one right, Yeah, yeah, deep
state traitor d Ei.

Speaker 4 (03:20:35):
Higher Oh classic class.

Speaker 5 (03:20:37):
There it is, there, it is. I knew it was coming,
as much as he likes to wear his CU hunting gear.

Speaker 4 (03:20:43):
But no, there's there's thousands, thousands of comments from these
like like mega Q, people who feel feel the trade
that people like Patel and Bungino have spent years doing
content creation talking about this grand Epstein conspiracy that now
now they claim isn't real or they are in fact
covering up the real conspiracy that Donald Donald Trump's friends

(03:21:07):
with Jeffrey Epstein's. So yeah. There's also an interview clip
where where Trump. I was asked if he was going
to release the whole file, and at first he said yes,
and then he caught himself and was like, well, actually no,
we'll probably be We'll probably be careful about releasing the
whole file because it could compromise people, Like what kind
of people you're talking about? Their don Anyway, we have.

Speaker 6 (03:21:29):
A chance of swinging the Epstein demographic, that is her
time division to our enemies.

Speaker 1 (03:21:37):
The next thing of the doc is I found interesting Gerson.

Speaker 4 (03:21:40):
Oh, this is just one piece of uplifting news. Yeah,
this is I'm just gonna read the headline from the
NBA because I simply can't improve on it. No, it's perfect.

Speaker 2 (03:21:51):
Quote.

Speaker 4 (03:21:51):
Suspected serial killer shouts out Trump in last words before
he's put to death. Keep making America great. Glenn Rogers
once told police he had killed about seventy people. He
was executed by lethal injection Thursday in Florida.

Speaker 1 (03:22:05):
That's the way that I knew it would be Florida.

Speaker 4 (03:22:07):
Literally seconds before he got the lethal injection, he said,
President Trump, keep making America great. I'm ready to go.
Last words. Wow. So that kind of shows you the current,
like wellspring of Trump's support right now. That's really hitting
his prime demographic of suspected serial killers.

Speaker 1 (03:22:24):
I just have to say that had big Florida energy.

Speaker 5 (03:22:29):
For real.

Speaker 4 (03:22:29):
Yeah, I think it's time to hear the lucid lullaby
of tariff talk.

Speaker 3 (03:22:38):
Rocking jazz Bob, Rocky jazz Bot, Sorry, locking rocking jazz bomb.

Speaker 6 (03:22:47):
Rocking jazz Bob, you know, all right, before everything gets
so so like, I do the most depressing segment I've
maybe ever done on.

Speaker 4 (03:22:55):
Here terriffs that can't be true.

Speaker 6 (03:22:58):
No, not the teriff, but the next I genuinely think
is the most impressing thing I've ever done on here,
but the tariffs. So our negotiations with China that we're
supposed to like solve all of the tariff problems are
already breaking down. Both sides are like sniping at each other.
This is not going to work. It structurally cannot work.
That the US's demands on the negotiating table, which is again
the political we're economic rationale behind this, is that the

(03:23:19):
US should not have a trade deficit with China that
can't be solved, and it's already breaking down. The talks
are going almost certainly going to fail, and we're going
to be right back to where we were. It's also
worth talking about a bunch of companies have been doing
price raises, and I think it's worth going back a
little bit to some of some of the economic work

(03:23:40):
we've done in this show with the people at Strange
Matters and talking about in our previous episodes about inflation,
about how price works, because this is really really badly
understood by just about everyone, which is that the way
that people think about tend to think about price is
as like, okay, it's supply and demand.

Speaker 4 (03:23:56):
There's two axes they meet on a graph.

Speaker 6 (03:23:58):
That's not how price is set. Price is set by
like specific people in supply chains, right, Like they're constrained
by certain factors. And one of the biggest things, and
one of the things, the biggest things they're constrained about,
is that if you raise prices, people get pissed at you.
But the way that they actually do pricing strategies is
cost plus markup.

Speaker 2 (03:24:14):
Right.

Speaker 6 (03:24:14):
There's a cost of of of the physical good and
then they do a markup and the markup is a
profit margin. And the thing about tariffs, right, is that
the way the tariffs affect supply chains is that each
part of the supply chain now, that's movings, that's importing stuff. Right,
each part of those things now has an additional cost
that they have to have to put into their costless
markup ratio.

Speaker 4 (03:24:34):
Now, Trump wants all.

Speaker 6 (03:24:35):
These companies to just fucking eat shit and eat eat
the price of the tariffs. He's been tweeting about this
or posting a bit and I think on truth social
and possibly also on.

Speaker 4 (03:24:43):
T again, all of his truths have been re reposted
on exos.

Speaker 6 (03:24:48):
Now, yeah, retruthed, but the thing is right and in theory,
right like Walmart could just like take this right in theory,
like like you know, like they're really some of the
really really big company could in theory do this. They won't,
like they a lot of any other. Thing is like
these companies have an incentive not to raise prices because
it pisses consumers off. And also because Trump is just

(03:25:09):
direct like directly threatening sanctions on companies that raise prices. Mattel,
for the people who make Barbie, said that they were
gonna raise prices on toys, and Trump is now threatening
them with one hundred percent sanctions or one hundred percent tariffs.

Speaker 4 (03:25:21):
Only three dollars yeah, so that's the government limited.

Speaker 6 (03:25:27):
Dolls, completely handed situation. We've gotten here. We're gonna have
doll quotas. But you know, again again it's it's worth
mentioning right that, like in theory, for a little bit
of time, some of these companies can sort of eat
this or they can fuck with their supply chains. So
they companies have been publicly talking about this. The problem
is the suppliers, because the the the distributors tend to
have pretty high margins, right, like your Walgreens, like Amazon

(03:25:51):
a sub except like their margins are okay, and like
Amazon makes most of us money from government computing contracts anyways,
so it's not as catastrophic. But the supply years operate
on very low margins. The shipping companies, everything else along
the supply chain operates on really really low margins, right,
And those people have to raise their price because otherwise
they are just going to die. And when they raise

(03:26:11):
their price right in, that's an increase to the next
company's costless markup, which increases the next company's costless market,
which increases the next companies. And we're starting to see
this ripple to the supply chain. Things are disappearing from
grocery stores. They're going to continue disappearing from grocery stores.
And as as this goes on, and as presumably the
teriffs from China come back into effect, when these negotiations
break down and the next round of tariffs goes into

(03:26:32):
effect and deliberation day tariffs come off their ninety day
pause and go to effect, this is all gonna get worse.
This has been tariff talk lovely U. This unfortunately was
the fun part of the episode.

Speaker 1 (03:26:46):
Yeah, it's gonna get worse free two one.

Speaker 6 (03:26:51):
Okay, So when I said this might be the bleak
at segment I've ever done on this show, we need
to do an update on Palestine because things have gotten
ye Like, when I was kind of opening this episode,
I thought it was going to mostly be about Trump's
plan to deport the entire popula to its like deport
most of the polation of Palestine to Libya. That's not
even the immediate crisis. The immediate crisis is that and

(03:27:13):
that that's not even sure what I'm saying the immediate crisis.
Last week, I thought the crisis was going to be
the eleven week blucket of Gaza and the fact that
everyone is about to starve. Yeah, and so the actual
specific thing that we're getting to right now is Israel
it is attempting to evacuate. That's their wording. What they're
actually doing is ethnically cleansing basically the entire population of

(03:27:33):
Conunis by just forcing everyone out of the city. Right
The United Nations has said that nearly one hundred thousand
Palestinians have been displaced in Gaza in the last four
days as Israel has been expanding its its ground invasion
to the Gaza strip. This has been combined with the
eleven week long blockade of Gaza. I think by the
end of this week, on the week twelve, this has

(03:27:54):
set off an enormous risk of famine. I'm just going
to read this from Al Jazeira. Quote some sef days
after the Israeli military halted the entry of food, water, medicine,
and all other life saving supplies into Gaza, the report said.
This is a report from a UN a UN back
set of food security group of analysts. The report said,
quote goods indispensable for people's survivals survival are either depleted

(03:28:17):
or expected to run out in the coming weeks.

Speaker 4 (03:28:20):
Quote.

Speaker 6 (03:28:20):
The entire population is facing high levels of acute food insecurity,
with half a million people one in five facing starvation.

Speaker 3 (03:28:29):
It said.

Speaker 6 (03:28:30):
Approximately ninety three percent of Gaza's population is experiencing acute
food shortages. It added. The report also said that like
one in five people could starve between now and November.
People have already started starving to death. Israel has been
blocking AID from getting through. They symbolically allowed a small
number of trucks in, but AID groups on the ground

(03:28:53):
and I want to emphasize that this reporting is coming
directly from the Times of Israel. If you want to
understand how bad the situation is, the Times of Isael
is reporting that a groups from the ground say that
none of the ilia's gotten through and none of it
has been attributed. This is I don't know how to
convey how bad it is. Indescribable. Numbers of people are

(03:29:14):
on the verge of starv and go death in the
Israelis are simply not letting any food arrive. They keep
talking about how they're going to let food arrive because
this is actually, this is the first thing I've seen
them do that's actually seriously gotten. I mean not even seriously,
but it's like gotten A lot of their Western allies
pissed at them because they're just very obviously trying to
exterminate entire population by starving them the death. And this

(03:29:37):
has caused the UK, Canada, and France to issue a
joint statement coming out against the Israeli policy and telling
them to fucking stop and let food through so these
people don't starve. The UK is talking about suspending free
trade agreements with Israel, they're talking about like sanctions at
West Bank settlers. The whole group has threatened that they're
going to take more actions unless the Israelis let food in. Now,

(03:30:01):
the Israelis, because of the Israelis shot at a bunch
of diplomats who were visiting a refugee camp in Janine.

Speaker 4 (03:30:07):
This was like a few days ago.

Speaker 6 (03:30:09):
Yeah, it's like a few days ago. Yeah, yeah, And
so that's that's not been like making anyone less angry
at them. It's genuinely remarkable to we've reached a place
where like the UK, Canada in France, who are all
major weapons suppliers to Israel, are like talking about sanctions,
like even targeted actions, like yeah, you know, and like
the like the UN's like Human Rights Commission was like well,

(03:30:30):
This is bullshit. You can't juste targeted sanctions.

Speaker 4 (03:30:32):
It is the entire government doing this.

Speaker 6 (03:30:33):
But like you know, the fact that they're doing something
is an indicator of just how apocalyptically bad the situation
is right now.

Speaker 4 (03:30:42):
Yeah, I want to.

Speaker 6 (03:30:43):
Read this quote from the Guardian from just Perennial, most
fascist guy in the Israeli government.

Speaker 5 (03:30:50):
That's he's saying something.

Speaker 6 (03:30:52):
Yeah, who's their fucking finance minister who said quote, Now,
we conquer, cleanse and stay until Hamas is stroy he
told him news conference. Along the way, what remains of
the strip is also being wiped.

Speaker 4 (03:31:04):
Out, plants conquered, the normal things.

Speaker 6 (03:31:08):
To say, the extent to which they are simply doing
a genocide here has reached a point where even a
bunch of Israel's closest allies are going, what the fuck?

Speaker 4 (03:31:18):
I don't know.

Speaker 6 (03:31:18):
I really hope that people are able to force their
governments to actually fucking do something about this, because if
they don't, it's going to continue to get really bad. Yeah,
And I mean I guess right now, that's mostly like
if if you're if you're in like the UK, Canada
or France, and you think you can apply more pressure
on your government, like go for.

Speaker 4 (03:31:39):
It, do do it? Do that.

Speaker 6 (03:31:41):
Like, I don't know, I don't know to what extent
pressure can even be mounted on the Trump administration.

Speaker 4 (03:31:45):
But it's yeah, I think that's pretty much a dead end,
right Yeah, Like but seeing these countries align outside of
any US influence to I potentially recognize the Palestinian state,
according to Lemonde, right, like is significant.

Speaker 5 (03:32:00):
And yeah, people in those countries should absolutely like stay
in the streets.

Speaker 6 (03:32:05):
Yeah, because like like and this is this is the
thing here, right, Like these countries the stuff that there's
stuff are threatened you is not enough to really make
a difference here, but like if they're willing to do this,
they can be pushed further.

Speaker 3 (03:32:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:32:15):
So yeah, you have to get your foot in the door.

Speaker 3 (03:32:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:32:18):
And Carney has also seemed susceptible to this, Yeah, as
there has been a block on armsteels to Israel for
the past few months in Canada.

Speaker 6 (03:32:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:32:27):
Yeah, we're going to close with another story of like
anti humanity, but just a slightly different flavor. And I
know this this does the show does often just end
up feeling like a bad news round up, and that
is because there's a lot of bad news.

Speaker 5 (03:32:42):
I have good news for the end.

Speaker 4 (03:32:43):
Actually, that's a good thing. We'll have some good news, yeah,
as a treat. And part of the good news here
is that this probably will not end up happening, but
it's still useful insight into the minds of these ghouls.
And I've long advocated that reality TV is basically inherently Satanic.
I think it's a spiritual darkness. This is offensive to Satanists.

Speaker 6 (03:33:03):
It is a.

Speaker 4 (03:33:04):
Spiritual darkness that has played the United States for far
too long. I think it's ushered in a degree of
evil that is nearly unfathomable. And the current administration is
essentially a reality TV administration on a very clear and
obvious level.

Speaker 1 (03:33:21):
Yes, but did I enjoy watching the Secret Lives of
Mormon Wives?

Speaker 5 (03:33:25):
Yes?

Speaker 4 (03:33:26):
I did. I think watching it stuff is actually a
personal moral failure. I think you're channeling darkness into your soul.

Speaker 1 (03:33:32):
And love it it.

Speaker 4 (03:33:33):
Last week, multiple outlets reported that the Department of Homeland
Security was considering participating in a reality TV show where
immigrants compete against each other to gain US citizenship. The
proposed series would be called The American This nightmare has
been dreamed up by Duck Dynasty producer Rob Warsof, and

(03:33:55):
apparently he's been trying to make this since Obama's second term,
but only now has made progress on getting the necessary
backing from the DHS. After sending Trump's DHS a thirty
five page pitch, Warsof wants it to be quote unquote
the biggest loser for immigration, which again, reality TV is

(03:34:15):
inherently evil. That's fucking insane. It should not be tolerated
on any aspect of human society. No, the Wall Street
Journal header reads, quote, this isn't the Hunger Games for immigrants,
says the producer behind the pitch. If you have to
say this isn't the Hunger Games for immigrants, that means

(03:34:38):
this is the Hunger Games for immigrants. Getting a lot
of questions about my this isn't the Hunger Games for
Immigrants shirt already answered by the shirt to quote the
Wall Street Journal quote. DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said that
she had spoken to the producer of the proposed television
reality show and that consideration of the idea was ongoing.

(03:35:00):
It is quote in the very beginning stages of that
vetting process, she said, adding that quote each proposal undergoes
a thorough vetting process prior to denial or approval unquote.
McLoughlin was also quoted in The Daily Mail as saying
she thought the television show was quote unquote a good idea.

Speaker 5 (03:35:19):
Jesus, Jesus.

Speaker 4 (03:35:21):
The pitch details that the immigrant contestants would board a
train called the American and ride across the country to
meet quote unquote interesting Americans and learn about the local
history and culture while competing in region specific quote unquote
heritage challenges to prove they are the most American. Such
cultural contests include balancing on logs in Wisconsin, building a

(03:35:44):
rocket at the Florida NASA headquarters, assembling a model t
Ford in Detroit, and collecting gold in a San Francisco
mind shaft. Prizes would be quote unquote iconically American, like
one million American Airlines points, a ten thousand dollars Starbucks
give card, or a lifetime supply of seventy six gas.

(03:36:04):
Immigrants would be split into teams that compete head to
head across one hour episodes, ending with an elimination challenge,
followed by a town hall and a final vote to
quote the producer quote along the way, we will be
reminded what it means to be American through the eyes
of people who wanted most.

Speaker 5 (03:36:25):
I feel like even this will it will humanize migration
to the United States too much for them, and like
if that they will be afraid of that, like of
these people articulating their desire to be here and what
it means to them, And I feel like that that
doesn't end well for the administration, that they this might.

Speaker 4 (03:36:44):
Be too liberal for the Trump administration.

Speaker 5 (03:36:46):
Yeah, it could be too I'm not even joking.

Speaker 6 (03:36:49):
This is a concept just should be the death knell
for the idea of America. Like, oh, yeah, if America
has an experiment, we tried it.

Speaker 4 (03:36:57):
It failed. This is the most America thing I've ever heard, Like.

Speaker 6 (03:36:59):
It's yeah, as an experiment, the American Project was a
fucking disaster, and we need to it needs to stop
because this is what it's done. No more, No more
American Project. The Hitch has pre vetted contestants. First arriving
at Ellis Island a board a boat called the Citizenship,
They are greeted by the show's host quote a famous

(03:37:23):
naturalized American who was also born in another country unquote.
The pitt recommends Sophia Vrighera or Ryan Reynolds. Upon arriving,
the host would give each of them a personalized baseball
glove America's past time.

Speaker 1 (03:37:39):
There's no way Sophia Brigata or Ryan Reynolds would ever
fucking do a show like this. That's batshit.

Speaker 4 (03:37:46):
Yeah, I fucking hope so to quote the producer's pitch.
Quote will join in the laughter, tears, frustration, and joy
hearing their backstories as we are reminded how amazing it
is to be American through the eyes of twelve wonderful
people who want nothing more than to have what we have.

Speaker 7 (03:38:06):
Quote.

Speaker 4 (03:38:07):
This is one of the most evil things I've ever
I've ever heard of. Yeah, the live finale would have
the winner getting sworn in on the steps of the
US Capital by a quote top American politician or judge
with F sixteen's flying overhead. Quote. There won't be a

(03:38:27):
fuck me sorry, there won't be a dry eye in
the house unquote.

Speaker 5 (03:38:34):
There have actually been like high spectacle single individual awards
of citizenship before I'm thinking For example, Hermann Bodger was
a He's often known as like the one man army
of BOONA John Butcher. He was I believe, living as
an undocumented person in the United States when he joined

(03:38:55):
the Abraham Lincoln Brigade volunteered to fight in the Spanish
Civil War, where he was an officer. He then joined
the United States military and fort again in World War II.
During the Battle of Bune, he personally led a charge
against several Japanese pillboxes, which he eliminated with grenades. He
then had his ear drum perforated, and I believe he

(03:39:19):
was shot in the arm. He was awarded, I think
he wasn't ordered the Medal of Honor. He was recognized
for his bravery. Congress pass and act to make him
a citizen, and he declined to attend the ceremony because
he wanted to get back to the front lines. That rules, Yeah,
a bit of a legend.

Speaker 4 (03:39:35):
Yeah, a little bit cooler than the live grand finale
of the American The pitch clarified that the losers would
not be immediately deported and that the contestants would have
a leg up in applying for citizenship the more traditional
way based on being pre vetted for this show. So

(03:39:55):
it's good that it's good that he had to clarify
that they would not be immediately deported upon on getting eliminated.
That's that's a good sign.

Speaker 5 (03:40:03):
Yeah, yeah, another thing that you should always have to
craifind a TV page.

Speaker 4 (03:40:07):
At a Tuesday congressional hearing, Christineome denied having knowledge of
the reality TV show despite reporting to the contrary, while
also defining hebeas corpus in this hearing as a quote
constitutional right that the president has to be able to
remove people from this country unquote. So there you go. Yeah,

(03:40:27):
that's not what that means, Christineome is a disaster that
is kind of the opposite of what Abe's corpus is.
And there is there is substantial reporting showing that DHS
staff are looking at this pitch. It might not go
through now based on all this backlash, but they were
looking through the pitch, including possibly Corey Lewandowski. But yeah,

(03:40:50):
that is that is the Reality TV news. James, Do
you have anything anything to end on here.

Speaker 1 (03:40:56):
Please, James, please?

Speaker 5 (03:40:59):
Yeah, I know something a little bit nice. So for
those of you who like me, enjoy a strawberry ice.
Agents arrived at the West Coast Berry Farms facility in Oxnard, California,
earlier this month, where they were met by a gatekeeper
who demanded a warrant and refused to let them enter
the facility without one and eventually managed to turn them away.

(03:41:22):
So this is a rare dub I guess. Clearly, as
we enter the time of year when things need to
be picked in the fields, this will be a place
where ICE sees the opportunity to conduct its enforcement operations.
And like it is genuinely positive to see that this company,

(03:41:43):
I guess, critical support to this company that obviously underpays
and takes advantage of migrant labor that they have provided them,
according to an anonymous source in sf Gate with know
your rights training, and in this case, the gatekeeper was
able to not let the ICE agents enter and eventually
they left.

Speaker 4 (03:42:01):
Like ICE isn't impervious. Like all week, ICE has been
releasing statements complaining about being compared to to the to.

Speaker 5 (03:42:09):
The well once again, right, like another thing that you
shouldn't have to be releasing statements about I am.

Speaker 4 (03:42:15):
Not the Gestapo shirt has people asking a lot of questions. Yeah,
and they're also publishing false stats about ICE officers being
assaulted in the line of duty, So like obviously they are.
They're facing some kind of like fear even among their
own agents. That's why they're all like covered up wherever
they go. They're trying to prosecute people for posting information
on ICE agents in your area.

Speaker 5 (03:42:35):
Yeah yeah, but like I say, they're not impervious. There
is a difference between a judicial warrant and a warrant
that ICE has essentially made itself right, the latter not
being signed by a judge. And it appears that the
gatekeeper was aware of that. We still have courts, you still,
in theory have rights, and you know, well it depends
but yeah, yeah, yeah, theoretically that was a pivotal word.

(03:42:58):
But yeah, shout out to the gatekeepers at the Oxnad
strawberry plant.

Speaker 6 (03:43:04):
And they could be stopped by a door keeper, Like,
they can be resisted, they can be stopped from doing things.

Speaker 5 (03:43:10):
Yeah, and like, it is genuinely important that this person
unders the difference between a judicial warrant and these documents
that ICE might produce. And it does illustrate the value
of being educated and educating people in your communities about
these things if they might be at risk for this.

Speaker 4 (03:43:26):
All right, we reported the news.

Speaker 1 (03:43:28):
Boy, howdy did we We reported the news.

Speaker 2 (03:43:38):
Hey, we'll be back Monday. With more episodes every week
from now until the heat death of the universe.

Speaker 1 (03:43:43):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you.

Speaker 4 (03:43:55):
Listen to podcasts.

Speaker 1 (03:43:56):
You can now find sources for It could Happen Here.

Speaker 4 (03:43:58):
Listened directly an episode just Ruptions.

Speaker 1 (03:44:00):
Thanks for listening.

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