It Could Happen Here Weekly 188

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Media.

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

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Sometimes there is a topic that is too big for
just one podcaster. Sometimes a simple medical podcaster, a simple
wartime journalist can't handle a topic on their own. They
need to combine forces. A special team up has to happen.

(00:48):
And that, my friends, is what's happening today on this
special crossover edition of the House of Pod And it
could happen here in hop Ich Hoppitch special myself, doctor
cave Hote Hope I'm saying there correctly, and James Stout
are going to be talking to you, along with two

(01:09):
very special guests about what's happening out there in the protest,
What risks the protesters are facing, what health concerns we
have for them, how they can best prepare and more.

Speaker 4 (01:21):
James, Hey, buddy. Hey, it's nice. Nice to be podcasting
with you again.

Speaker 5 (01:25):
You really enjoy our team ups here, our special Marvel
team ups that we do.

Speaker 4 (01:29):
It's a fait, it's a fun one. You're my favorite collaborator.

Speaker 5 (01:31):
Covey. Hey, I'm going to.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
Take that as total sincerity, even though I'm not entirely sure.
So I thank you for that. Yeah, because I think
that sounded sincere enough. I like these I like the
me too.

Speaker 5 (01:43):
I do too.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
Let's introduce our guests. We have some very special guests.
I will actually ask you guys to introduce yourselves. Let's
start with you, Miriam. Can you tell us a little
bit about who you are and what your background in
this field is.

Speaker 6 (01:58):
Sure, Hi, I'm Miriam, she or they pronouns. My background
in the field of podcasting is that I'm with the
collective Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, which puts out the
podcast Live Like the World Is Dying, as well as
the podcast Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness and the spectacle.
And my experience in the field of what I think

(02:18):
we're here to talk about today is that I've been
a street metic for over a decade, which means I've
treated a lot of injuries on people who've been messed
up by interactions with police.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
I mean, we're going to talk about this more, but
my first question is, is it pretty much ninety percent
or more violence from the police that you encounter. Do
you ever encounter anything else, like violence amongst protesters themselves
or something else that happens along the way, or is
it solely what you're experiencing is treating violence from the
side of the police.

Speaker 6 (02:50):
So that's a good question. It is mostly violence from police.
Sometimes it is violence from non state affiliated or or
at least not on duty fascists so you know, you're
proud boys, you know, other people like that, or just
generally sort of hostile right wing actors. Sometimes it is also,

(03:13):
you know, sort of underlying medical stuff more so, like
somebody has been out at the march all day and
they didn't bring their medication with them and so they're
having a seizure, and you know, then there's also environmental stuff.
You hate, stroke, your hypothermia, you're I was running to
catch up with the march and I stepped off the curb,
weird ow, you know, stuff like that. But in terms

(03:34):
of violence, yeah, it's it's mostly coming from the cops.
I've I've certainly never seen a friendly fire incident of
violence amongst amongst protesters. I'm sure it could happen, but
but I have not seen it. I've seen people that
I'm in the streets with or wherever with attacked by
by people who wish them harm, who are people from

(03:56):
the state or you know, like I said, not currently
on duty as cops, but you know, basically cops.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
No, I'm digressing too far, and I need to introduce
her other guests. But I have another follow up question
and I need to ask. I'm so curious, Please, have
you ever had to take care of, say, someone on
the other side who's been injured.

Speaker 6 (04:16):
So as anybody who works in any kind of emergency,
you know, medical response will tell you. Anybody who's an
a MT or even anybody who's like a lifeguard, the
first thing you do before you approach a patient is
established scene safety. So if a Nazi has been hurt,
it is not safe for me to approach that patient

(04:37):
because there's a Nazi over there.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
I see, Okay, I think I'm picking up what you're
putting down on that one.

Speaker 5 (04:43):
So it has not happened.

Speaker 6 (04:45):
Yeah, anybody who is acting as a street medic is
acting under what called good Samaritan laws, you know, which
protect you from any kind of bad outcome. If you
start taking care of somebody, you know, start helping somebody
out in the streets based on whatever train you have,
you know. Same thing like if if somebody collapses at
a bus stop and you start doing CPR based on

(05:06):
the Red Cross class you took, that's good Samaritan stuff.
Same way, it does not obligate you to intervene, especially
in approaching somebody who is actively seeking to do you harm.
So I would not consider that within my within my lane.

Speaker 5 (05:23):
Understood.

Speaker 3 (05:24):
Well, let's introduce our second guest. We have doctor Richard Pharaoh,
who is a doctor in the Los Angeles area and
is a family practice physician.

Speaker 5 (05:35):
May I call you Richard? Uh? Yeah, you may? Okay,
very good, Richard, welcome to the show. Thank you very much.

Speaker 7 (05:40):
Gotty, it's a pleasure to be on. You know, you
kind of mentioned it already. I'm Kelly Medicine. I've also
experienced in street medicine in the LA area. Also, you know,
this is obviously something that's really important to me right now,
given everything that's been going on. In the city and
also important for me just giving the fact that I'm
a Latino, I'm a proud Coaster, Rikan Cuban, and just

(06:02):
that's part of the huge reason why I'm in medicine.
So I'm really happy to have an opportunity to talk about,
you know, the ice protests and the stuff that's been
going on to protect our community.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
That's great to hear. Can you tell us a little
bit about what you've been involved with recently down in
Los Angeles?

Speaker 7 (06:17):
So I as far as what I've been involved in
in Los Angeles, you know, I've been coordinating with some
of my colleagues who I knew from residency and just
other colleagues just who are all involved in social justice,
as well as the CIR, the Physicians Union, you know,
who are engaged in trying to like provide medical support

(06:38):
to the protests in the area. So I've had experience
working on some of the protests that have occurred both
in LA and OC.

Speaker 5 (06:46):
Yeah, that's really good to hear.

Speaker 4 (06:47):
I think people will have been spending a lot of
time like watching footage the protests right in the last
I know what we weekend now, fuck knows, it seems
like a long time. I haven't been sleeping very much.
Give or take eight to twelve years.

Speaker 6 (07:04):
Time has meant nothing. Yeah, March of twenty.

Speaker 4 (07:07):
Twenty, yes exactly, yea, it is sixteenth or twenty twenty,
and here we are. I people would have seen a
lot of people get hurt, right, And I like, as
a journalist, like I was in La last week, you
kind of tend to get towards the more violent end
of things because that is our job. Most people who
go to protest don't get hurt, right, And I don't

(07:30):
want people to like hear anything we're saying today and think,
oh God, I'm going to get fucked up, because most
people don't get fucked up. And like my stunts, You
don't fight fascist because you think you're going to win
or you think you might not get hurt. You fight
fascist because they are fascists. And sometimes people do get hurt.
So let's talk about the ways that people get hurt.

(07:51):
Either of you is welcome to answer this, but like,
what are some of the common mechanisms of injury that
you see when you are out there street mega King,
when when the cops are out there hurting people.

Speaker 7 (08:05):
I would say that like in terms of the things
that we would typically see. I just want to start
off by saying, like, absolutely, we're not out there just
because we know that we're going to be successful in
any type of advocacy. If that was the case, then
we wouldn't have that many people, you know on that front.
You know a lot of people know that it's you

(08:26):
might be losing ground, but you're not there because you're
trying to when you're doing it because you know that
you want to be on the right side of history.
You want to do the thing that you believe to
be morally right. As far as like the type of
injuries that you would typically see, I think in order
to answer this question, I would kind of break it off.

Speaker 5 (08:41):
Into two sections.

Speaker 7 (08:43):
Like you have mainly protests that have not evolved into
violent confrontations with law enforcement, and you have protests where
things like you know, for instance, right control agents have
been deployed in like the like the non you know,
dangerous side of things, Like you might have the kind
of stuff that you would encounter in any sort of

(09:05):
major events. You know, you're gonna deal with dehydration, You're
going to deal with people who are like in in
overcrowded areas that might you know, accidentally fall hit and
trip over one another. In those kind of circumstances, you know,
when we enter into the space where you know, riot
control agents are being involved, the quote unquote less lethals
non lethals, which I'm going to kind of go into later,

(09:27):
is a bit of a non uh a misnomer. In
those circumstances, we look at like chemical exposure to things
like to your gas. You know, there's a lot of
different ways that that manifests that type of exposure, and
we can kind of get into that a little bit
as well. And then also we have you know, projectile
weapons like rubber bullets, you know, flash bangs, those type

(09:48):
of things that you might encounter, you know, like sort
of blunt trauma to people's bodies.

Speaker 5 (09:54):
Yeah, and you'd like to add Miriam.

Speaker 6 (09:56):
I mean, first of all, like you're doing great out there.
Good for you for out there. It's a hell of
a time. There's regional variation, I think to some of
the stuff that we see. So I am based in
New York City. You know, not all of this the
work I've done has been in New York City, but
most of it has and in New York city. We

(10:16):
don't have tear gas. They just don't do it here
because the police found out after deploying tear gas extensively
during the RNC that the thing about tear gas is
it gets sucked into vents, and when it gets sucked
into vents, it gets on all kinds of people in
the subway and in buildings, and that causes lawsuits. And

(10:38):
the NYPD does not enjoy that, so they use pepper
spray instead, because pepper spray is more directed, it doesn't
linger in the air the same way. You hit the
people that you are trying to hit, you know, and
anybody else who's walking by, and also your buddies who
are standing next to you because you fired into the wind,
which is always a good time.

Speaker 5 (10:58):
Any such cases, Yeah.

Speaker 6 (11:00):
So many, There's a there's a whole series of what
we are calling locally peppa pigs, which are it's what
you think it is. So yeah, we see a lot
of a lot of pepper sprite. We also, because one
of the primary weapons of the NYPD are just sheer,
overwhelming numbers, we see a lot of just direct hands

(11:23):
on violence, just cops hitting people, punching people, throwing people
to the ground, we see a lot of very rough takedowns.
Now if you're you know, acting as a street medic
and in that situation, you don't get to treat those
people because if they are taking down by a cop,
they are then swarmed by many other cops and they

(11:44):
get taken away. Then that's something that we might see
when we meet that person later at jail support. But
the other weapon that we used to see quite a
bit but haven't in more recent years is the l RAT,
which is a sound cannon. They do still use it,
but they use it to like make announcements and annoy people.
They use it to like make obnoxiously loud announcements, but

(12:07):
not to blast out people's ear drums, which was sort
of its weaponized form. We haven't seen that recently though
police will willie you know, they all carry tasers. You
don't tend to see a lot of that at protests,
but it's certainly something that we're constantly aware that they
have the ability to do. But yeah, it is here.

(12:28):
It's mostly pepper spray, nightsticks, fists, knees, you know that
kind of thing.

Speaker 3 (12:37):
I would assume that a lot of what they'd do,
like for example, tear gas was, to my understanding, first
developed in World War One really to cause confusion amongst
the enemy. And what I assume a lot of these
things that they're using, the sound canons, is to create
panic and confusion and hopefully get people to run and

(12:59):
move and in mass, unorganized ways. And I wonder if
you're seeing crush injuries, if you're seeing injuries related to
just the people moving and being scattered around and running
in different directions, is that something that you that you
have seen in this process, either of you.

Speaker 6 (13:16):
Yeah, well, just real quick, like to the first thing
you said, the absolute like the purpose of every police
weapon is to cause fear. One of the reasons that
I think they so often use things like to your
gas and pepper spray when they could simply choose to
not is like one, because they have it because their
budgets are outrageous and they have, you know, all the
weapons they could ever dream of, and why not you know,

(13:40):
well we have it. But I think that the other
reason they use it is because it does freak people out.
It scares people, and so you know a lot of
people have had like a big dude shove them before.
You know, that's like not a super unfamiliar situation. It's
not a great situation. People don't like it, but they
kind of they're familiar with it. They're familiar with the

(14:01):
concept getting sprayed by a mysterious chemical that makes you
feel a thing you've never really felt before. That's a
lot scarier. And you don't know what's in it. You
don't know what's on your body, you don't know why
it hurts the way it hurts like. You just know, like, oh, yeah,
I mean, I guess, I guess this is what tear
gas feels like. I guess this is what pepper spray
feels like. Yeah, it's frightening, and yeah, people absolutely get

(14:23):
hurt running away it makes it difficult to see. Like
squeezing your eyes shut is like a very immediate reaction.
So people run, They lose whoever they were at the
action with, they get separated from their group, they get disoriented,
they may be having trouble breathing. They may be panicking
because they're having trouble breathing. Then they're having trouble breathing

(14:45):
because they're panicking, you know. So yeah, you do absolutely
see all of that.

Speaker 7 (14:49):
Yeah, I mean, I really want to second what Miriam
has been saying here. You know, as far as like
the most common agent that you see in tear gas
in the United States at this time, it's believed to
be agents CS and this this is something like you mentioned,
it was developed right around the time of World War Two,
and they started like be coming into effect in the
in the in the late fifties. A point of thought

(15:09):
for this is it was actually made legal for use
in warfare in the nineties by the Geneva Convention. So
you don't see the US or other armies like using
this on soldiers, but we're using it in protests.

Speaker 5 (15:25):
Well you don't.

Speaker 6 (15:26):
You don't necessarily see the US military following the Geneva Convention.

Speaker 5 (15:31):
Okay, well we can. That's a fair point. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (15:34):
Of the wars of law, the TAA gas is one
that it is walls of law. Those of wool people
do be using TA gas sometimes, but yeah, they shouldn't be.

Speaker 5 (15:43):
Yeah, and you're right.

Speaker 3 (15:44):
Is first in the Geneva Conventions in nineteen twenty five,
but then nineteen ninety seven specifically it was prohibited. The
thought behind that is they did it because they didn't
want someone to get one gas and not know exactly
what it was. And then use the really nasty stuff
like sirin gas, et cetera. And the reason our police

(16:04):
are able to do it on our protesters is because
they're pretty confident that our protesters don't have it would
use siren gas, so they feel they feel free to
use it at our Yeah. But speaking of sound canons
and disturbing noises being shot into your ear holes commercials,
we'll be right back.

Speaker 5 (16:33):
All right, we're back. We should talk about noxious gases.

Speaker 4 (16:36):
There has been this persistent rumor, I don't just mean
in the last link ten days, there's been a persistent
rumor every time that people have been taar gused that
this time the cops are using super tear gas, special
tea gas, cancer ta gas. To be clear, like the
effects of tear gas on people, especially to my understanding,

(16:57):
like people who menstrate, are fucking long term and nasty.
So let's just address like what are the reagents in
tag gas and what are some of the outcomes we
can expect short term and long term? And then do
we suspect that the cups are using super tags this time?

Speaker 7 (17:13):
Well, I guess in terms of like the agent, like
we kind of mentioned it a little bit ago, agencs
the more complicated long name, oh chlora benze laden melanitril.

Speaker 5 (17:24):
So this is actually.

Speaker 7 (17:25):
It's so that's absolutely the kind of thing you talk
about in dinner conversations. But the compound itself, it's actually
not in a gas form. It's actually a solid. It's
a crystalline substance that's released that's aerosolized after any type
of like explosion from you know, a grenade or canister,
and it's as far as you know the types of

(17:48):
things that you will experience. It takes effect in the
first twenty sixty seconds of contact with the body. It's
a nucleophilic substance, so that means it will adhere to tears,
it will adhere to moisture on your skin, like sweat,
any type of like saliva or mucus, and like the
first things you'll typically notice are the tearing, the redness, burning,

(18:09):
blurred vision in your eyes. Specifically on your skin, you
could develop burns or rash. A contact dermatitis has also
been associated with a development of this on your skin,
burning irritation in your mouth. You can also develop running nose.
The more kind of more serious, long term effects that
can be more systemic you can actually develop shortness of breath, wheezing,

(18:29):
or chest tightness. You can also develop nausea or vomiting
if you ingest much of it while you're in the
protest and you kind of already brought it up as well. Unfortunately,
we don't have a lot of systemic research that has
been done on the impacts of agents like CS that
are in tear gas on people, but we have a

(18:51):
couple of things that have come up about pregnancy outcomes.
We do see increased rates of uter and cramping, menstrual bleeding,
breast tenderness, and delayed menstrual ramping as well in pregnancy.
We also don't know how well it crosses into breast milk,
so you know, it's this kind of challenging question and
the CDC is official like stance on it is this

(19:12):
idea that like they don't believe that it crosses. But again,
we don't have that research, so we can't know for sure.

Speaker 4 (19:18):
Great cool, good thing to be fogging Live city blogs with.

Speaker 6 (19:21):
Yeah, well, we don't know everything it does, so probably
some of it is fine.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
You know, James, when you're mentioning how it keeps coming
up and there's these concerns of there being.

Speaker 5 (19:32):
Like a cause and cancer.

Speaker 3 (19:34):
We have no proof of that right now, but I
mean we really don't know, so it is a little
concerning long term, especially journalists like yourself who are exposed
to it a lot, so that that is something I
would love to see.

Speaker 5 (19:48):
But I mean, how you're going to study it? Who
going to find that? Yeah, I mean I don't know.
Rfka Junior might who knows.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
It might be like we're not funding real research anymore
like vaccine.

Speaker 4 (19:59):
So we get on the right pubcosts, we can probably
make that happen.

Speaker 3 (20:03):
So before we move off of the gas, let's just
talk about, yeah, treatment of it and what you what
you will do out there in the field someone comes
to you, and let's try to address some of the
most common misconceptions about what you should be treating or
how you should be treating.

Speaker 8 (20:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (20:20):
Oh yeah, I'm so ready to go. Yeah yeah.

Speaker 6 (20:25):
Since forever, there have been like rumors that there are
these I think because of sort of the way that
it is mysterious, like the cops have these, like you know,
containers of this awful poisonous, magical potion that they spray
on you, and then we have to find the antidote.
So things that I have heard as being good for

(20:49):
tear gas and pepper spray include raw onion, lemon juice,
apple cider, vinegar, Coca cola, avocado.

Speaker 5 (20:59):
Delicious, it sounds sounds.

Speaker 6 (21:02):
A nice great actually, and then the classic milk as
well as maylocks. My personal favorite is when somebody like
jumps into correct somebody on milk and it's like no, no, no,
actually it's milk of magnesia, not regular milk.

Speaker 5 (21:21):
So oh you got to get it from which.

Speaker 6 (21:25):
Is what you actually do is flush out the eyes
with water. I mean, that's it. That's the only thing.
It's water. The number of things that should go into
a human eye are basically water and any any medicine
that is designed for the human eye. And saline solution,

(21:46):
I guess you know. And definitely you could do an
eye flush with saline. It's just that if you have
saline in your bag, it weighs just as much as water,
and you can't drink it when you get tired.

Speaker 5 (21:59):
You can, and way you can, but it's.

Speaker 6 (22:01):
Not recommended and you can't refill it from a tap.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
You can drink anything, James, if you're not a cow,
but if you have.

Speaker 6 (22:11):
A bottle of water, you can do a bunch of
eye flushes, and then when it starts to run low,
you can refill it from a tap because that has
water in it too. It's very readily available water in
most places. And all of the other things that are
out there that people will tell you should use, you
should not use. I have never seen any good evidence

(22:34):
that any of them are better than water at getting
pepper spray or cheer gus out of your eye. All
of them are kind of predicated on this idea that
there's like a chemical reaction you are trying to affect.
And then that is sort of further based on the
idea that the reason this stuff hurts is because it
is acidic. Because I think people think, like, what's a
chemical that burns acid?

Speaker 9 (22:57):
Right?

Speaker 6 (22:57):
These are not acidic. That is not how they work.
They are chemical irritants. And you don't want an acid
base reaction in your eye anyway.

Speaker 5 (23:07):
You want to be doing chemistry experiments in your eye.

Speaker 6 (23:10):
Yeah, you actually usually wear goggles when you do chemistry experiments.
I'm not like a chemist.

Speaker 3 (23:15):
But memium water sure is great, But what about all
that fluoride you're getting into your eyeballs.

Speaker 5 (23:21):
Okay, have you thought about that.

Speaker 6 (23:23):
That'll prevent eye cavities, Richard?

Speaker 5 (23:27):
Anything else to add to that.

Speaker 7 (23:29):
I know, I think you hit the nail on the head,
and I think that when I look at what physicians
typically recommend in terms of response to your gas, I
always think back on the doctor Glockham fleckin thread that
became very popular on Twitter. I'd be very interested to
hear what your thoughts are.

Speaker 5 (23:46):
We're on that.

Speaker 7 (23:47):
Miriam I think like one of the things that tended
to come from from that particular thread because he does
have experiences as an ophthalmologist. He mentioned washing your eyes
with baby shampoo and rinsing copiously. I think like the
challenge with that is obviously, like what Miriaman mentioned. One,
water saline are the better options for for irrigating your eyes,

(24:10):
especially after exposure. For one, the fact that it's you know,
you never know what else, like it's it's better to
avoid any other type of irritants that you could, you know,
be exposed to your eye. Also the fact, like we
already mentioned, the fact that the agents into your gas
there they're nuclear filth, meaning they're they're attracted to water.
So by using water itself. You are effectively going to
help to irrigate it. And you know, we typically recommend

(24:32):
anywhere upwards and twenty minutes for that type of exposure.
And then as far as I'm not sure if you
mentioned milk already, Maria.

Speaker 5 (24:41):
Milk counts me.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
Yeah, we can't mention it enough eyeball cheese.

Speaker 5 (24:47):
We cannot mention eyeball cheese.

Speaker 9 (24:49):
And what.

Speaker 8 (24:51):
Is the.

Speaker 7 (24:54):
Let's let's think about what the context of where we
are in a protest. It's very typically outdoors for many hours,
usually in summertime. Exactly kind of like the idea of
putting this you know, this this culture on people's eyes, like.

Speaker 5 (25:15):
I think yogurt, actually yogurt.

Speaker 7 (25:20):
You may as well, you may as well go and
get some Greek yogurt and pour it on your eyes, so,
you know, he really gets back to the idea of
like constant irrigation. Clean water is perfectly fine. If you
have water at the protests, usually the best thing to
do is have the types of water bottles that have
like a flip off cap, so that way you can easily,

(25:41):
you know, pour it over their face and then recap
it for later use on someone else or yourself I
think the other thing too that's really important to discuss is,
you know, because it's this solid aerosolized substance, it can
sometimes adhere to your clothing, So you know, there's a
couple of different approaches.

Speaker 6 (26:02):
You know.

Speaker 7 (26:02):
Physicians for Human Rights has a PDF that I strongly
encourage anybody who's listening to a review if you find
yourself in the position of either being a protester at
a protest or being a medic at a protest, they
recommend if you've been exposed to your gas to hang
your clothing afterwards in a heavily ventilated place for up
to forty eight hours. If you're not able to do that,

(26:25):
placing your clothing in a plastic bag, including your shoes,
outside and not mixing it with any of your other
non exposed clothing is the ideal response afterwards.

Speaker 3 (26:37):
Yeah, I'll add when doctor Glockinflecken was on our show
talking about this back during George Floyd, we discussed it
and the other thing that he recommended, and he is
actually not just a very very funny internet person, he's
also a very good ophthalmologist. And he also recommended initially
when it happens soon as you can blink rapidly. That

(26:59):
really helps in the sate the tear response. You're still
gonna need water, but it's going to help start get
that jump starter for you, and it's going to require
a lot of water. About one to two leaders is
generally what people will say. So it's hard to have
that much with you on hand when you're out there protesting,
but if you're able to, I feel like water is

(27:19):
one of the more important things you can bring with you.

Speaker 6 (27:21):
Yeah, So to the thing about the baby shampoo. First
of all, Yeah, I think the recommendation with that is
to wash the skin around the eyes with the baby shampoo,
not not directly in the eyes, but that that's like
a less harsh way of removing the chemicals from the
skin there, because you would definitely wash skin with soap
and water, but I could see maybe using like a

(27:43):
gentler soap directly around the eyes. That makes sense as
far as like my technique with doing an eyeflush in
the streets, a continual twenty minute irrigation just is not feasible.

Speaker 5 (27:55):
Now.

Speaker 6 (27:56):
Sometimes at big actions, you know, medics will set up
clinic space, says Tens, stuff like that, and occasionally very
Occasionally you can do the like true gold standard of
eye irrigation, which is twenty minutes of continual saline irrigation,
where you like have a bag of saline like in
a hospital and you plug it into a nasal canula

(28:17):
and you tape that to the bridge of the nose
and just let the person lie down. That works, but
like it's just not feasible in most street situations. So
what I do is I will basically I'll put on gloves.
I will get consent, because you know, anytime you're treating
somebody who's been brutalized by the police, you are like

(28:39):
you are treating an assault victim, and you should prioritize
their consent as much as you can. So I, you know,
do a quick like, hey, what's up. My name's Miriam,
I'm a medic. Can I help you. I guide them
out of the area of immediate danger if they can't see,
and then I flush first one eye twice, and then

(28:59):
I have them blink a whole bunch, and then the
other eye twice, and I have them blink a whole bunch,
and then they're usually able to open their eyes and
navigate safely on their own. Sometimes they need another round
with that, especially if I didn't you know, if I missed,
you know, if it's dark and there things are moving
around and I miss the eye or something. But usually
that gets enough out that they are going to be

(29:21):
able to navigate the situation. And because they are tearing
a lot, that's part of the flush too, right, the
body is doing that on its own and flushing too
much with water. I think in that initial moment, you're
just washing away tears at that point, so doing like
a first round of like forceful of forceful flush. You know,
you're really like using a forceful stream to push the

(29:43):
chemicals out. And then Okay, their eyes are open, they're
still in pain, and like that's just gonna last for
a while. Your eyes are going to continue to hurt,
and like that sucks. You've been harmed. Somebody did a
harmful thing to you, and you are going and to
continue to have pain for a little while. But if
you can see that, your immediate danger is reduced and

(30:06):
you can get out of there, and you can, you know,
in a calmer moment, maybe do another couple eye flushes.
Maybe you know, use soap and water on the face,
clean up a little bit and like be a little
bit happier with how you feel. But my priority in
the immediate moments after somebody's been spread is to like
help them so that they can get out of there
if they need to, because they probably do.

Speaker 5 (30:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:28):
Yeah, well, speaking of things that will make you tear up,
I'm sorry, I'm terrible commercials stay tube will be right back, beautiful.

Speaker 4 (30:48):
All right, we are back, and I guess let's talk
about rubber bullets of various impagnations, and then let's talk
about how people actions people can take to keep themselves
a little bit safe. Right, understanding that you are not
the one who gets to choose if violence arrives at
your protest. The cops are. And we're recording this on Sunday,
like date in June, and people had their big No

(31:10):
Kings March yesterday. They were largely like extremely nonviolent, and
they still got attacked by the cops in La. So
let's talk about impact munitions.

Speaker 1 (31:23):
Right.

Speaker 4 (31:24):
One thing we didn't mention actually was pepper balls. I've
had the a combo, yeah right, I've had the ill
fortune and receiving some pepper balls in the balls. Oh yeah,
very uncomfortable. Cops will try and shoot you in the groin.

Speaker 7 (31:37):
I had a colleague who encountered this just a few
days ago.

Speaker 5 (31:41):
I'm sorry they fucking like, there's no.

Speaker 4 (31:45):
Yeah, it happens with such frequency that you'd have to
be really trying to believe that it was an accident.
So let's talk about things that can hit you, right,
if we start with pepper balls and then move on
up to like what people call rubber bullets, which I
think baton rounds is like a more technical description of
what they are, or marker rounds for a big foam

(32:06):
or rubber things that hit you. Sometimes they leave a
little puff of chalk on you, and theory like that
identifies you for the cops to arrest you. I guess
in practice it's just another thing that they can use
to smash into you. But let's talk about some of
the things that the cops can shoot from their little guns.
Bean backgrounds is another one, right, that comes out of

(32:26):
a shotgun, and it's what it sounds like, right, It's
a bean bag traveling very fast. Somebody here in San
Diego lost their eye to one of those in twenty twenty.
But let's talk about some of these impact munitions and
like what the potential risks are for people there.

Speaker 5 (32:42):
Yeah, I think that.

Speaker 7 (32:43):
I mean, just the one point I want to bring
up in terms of these they're often called in the
media non lethal or quote unquote less lethals. Yeah, and
I think that what's really important to recognize, and you
kind of already hinted do with James, people have been
killed with rubber bullets, plastic bullets.

Speaker 5 (33:04):
We actually have.

Speaker 7 (33:05):
Amnesty International did a report in twenty twenty three that
you know, showed that over the course of about five years,
you know, dozens of people have died as a result.

Speaker 5 (33:18):
Of the use of rubber bullets.

Speaker 7 (33:20):
We showed that between nineteen seventy two to nineteen eighty nine,
just in Ireland, sixteen people were killed. In Palestine, between
eighty seven and ninety three, twenty people died just from
the use of rubber bullets. And you know, that's reports.
We don't know how many in truth actually were impacted
by that.

Speaker 5 (33:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (33:41):
I would also add to the British Medical Journal back
in twenty seventeen looked at about two thousand little bit
or two thousand people who had been affected by these projectiles,
and three percent actually did cause immediate mortality and then
fifteen percent was long term chronic injury or illness or
some sort of being maimed from the event. So, yeah,

(34:03):
you're exactly right. It's pretty significant, especially with the number
of these that are shot. You know, they don't have
to keep record about how many of these they shoot.
So Actually, one other question I have for you, Richard,
that you could help answer to one in LA did
you see them shooting these things and you would kind
of allude to that you felt that they were actually

(34:25):
directing them towards you. Did you feel that, being there
as a medical professional, that you were being targeted.

Speaker 7 (34:33):
I myself was fortunate and not hit by a rubber bullet.
From witnessing my colleagues who were actually there present at
this protest, they themselves were hit with HERR bullets below
the navel. He had previous experience from an earlier protest
that week where he had actually been struggling. The thing
he told me that I remember is like, I'm never

(34:53):
going to one.

Speaker 5 (34:54):
Of these things.

Speaker 7 (34:54):
I'm prepared again. Yeah, because he did have that situation
where he was kind of hit closer to the groin,
So we ended up wearing I remember he was wearing
a kind of a fanny pack for this particular protest
that we were at, and you could very clearly see
the dust marks, like the chalk marks of their bullets
struck on this on his on his fanny pack. Yeah,
you know, it's it's it's definitely something that we noticed.

(35:17):
Many of the other medics at this event commented that
they had been previously struck or targeted once they the
police began firing rubber bullets. As far as we we,
fortunately we didn't see anybody who was struck, you know,
closer to the face. But there were reports after the
No King's protest yesterday that you know, several people had

(35:39):
been struck in the eye or on the forehead. There
was one picture, i think earlier from earlier this week,
that one of the reporters in downtown La had been
struck with a non lethal foam round directly in his
forehead and it was this you could see this very clear,
enormous wealth the size of like a grapefruit, Yeah, and bleeding,

(35:59):
and it was it was you know, very clearly like
aiming above at the face.

Speaker 5 (36:05):
In these cases.

Speaker 6 (36:06):
Yeah, there was a huge number during the Chilean protests
in twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, eye injuries were huge. There
were hundreds. There's a there's a club somewhere of journalists
who've lost eyes to rubber bullets. I think they call
themselves the Cyclops Club or something. They're writers, they you know.

(36:28):
But yeah, like, these things are incredibly dangerous, and eye
injuries especially are really common. They are less lethal only
in that it is less likely to kill you than
being shot with live ammunition. But like most things are
less likely to kill you than live ammunia.

Speaker 5 (36:45):
Grizzly barry is less likely to kill you.

Speaker 3 (36:48):
My friend Rebecca Watson says, you know, samurai blade is
less lethal than AK forty seven, but it's still not
something you want them to have to use against you.

Speaker 4 (37:00):
Ideal if you weren't being attacked doing what is a
constitutionally protected rate in the US. Hey, everyone, I just
wanted to record a little pick up here to explain
a little bit more I guess about forty millimeter and
thirty seven millimeter less lethal projectiles. They are sometimes called
baton rounds that I saw baton round written on the

(37:20):
Safari land thirty seven millimeters one, but they are not
the same as the baton rounds. You will have seen
British military using in Northern Ireland. Most of the modern
ones that I am aware of are not designed to
be skipped off the ground, albeit there deserately are, or
at least were rubber bullets that were designed to be

(37:40):
skipped off the ground at one point. The use of
a bullet made of rubber that's fired out of a
conventional rifle is very rare. In the United States, there
are things called simmunitions, which are munitions fire out of
a conventional rifle using a different bolt, and they are
generally used for simulated force on force training. You can

(38:00):
think about it like going paintballing, but with regular guns
orbit with a bolt that makes it so you can't
load live ammunition into that gun while it's set up
for simmunitions. Those will use extensively. I believe in Columbia
identified some simmunition casings. I've not seen those used by
police anywhere in the United States. What the LAPD uses
is a forty millimeter exact impact round. It has a

(38:24):
plastic body and a sponge nosed and that is designed
to be point of an point of impact right, so
shot at someone like you would.

Speaker 5 (38:31):
Shoot a gun at somebody.

Speaker 4 (38:33):
There are other leslethos in use even in LA I
saw a thirty seven millimeter Safari land round. I saw
FN three H three's, which is like seventeen millimeter. I
saw pepper balls, various different versions of leslethal munitions, but
most of the ones that I'm aware of in twenty
twenty five are designed for point of a point of impact.

(38:57):
They're also extremely dangerous, and as we've said here, they
can kill you. It's wanting to clarify that, So like, yeah,
these things are dangerous, right, like they have caused serious
injury or death. Let's assume for a minute that like
the folks listening have not attended many actions before, right
that they are right, they're younger or like they just
haven't been in that world in that part of their life,

(39:18):
and they've seen what's happening recently, and they're pissed off
and they want to attend, but they're afraid, right, and
they want to know what they can do, what they
can bring, how they can prepare themselves in the understanding
that like, it isn't one hundred percent safe because the
cops can decide to attack you whenever they want. What
can people bring? How can people prepare to be as
safe as they can be.

Speaker 6 (39:37):
Bring water, I mean not just the eyeflushes, but like
bring snacks and water. Like you're going to be out
there for a while, you need to keep yourself going.
You need to keep your friends going. Bring friends like
be there with somebody who is going to watch your back,
somebody who knows a number for like your emergency contact,
you know, if you get grabbed stuff like that, especially

(39:59):
if you're new to the It's like, try not to
run alone.

Speaker 4 (40:02):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, even if it's like just hooking up
with people when you get there.

Speaker 5 (40:06):
You know.

Speaker 6 (40:07):
Yeah, I've been at a protest that was starting to
look scary and a woman turned to me and said,
I'm here alone. Are you here alone? And I said yeah,
and she said, now we're here together, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah,
which is beautiful.

Speaker 4 (40:21):
It's a good place to make friends.

Speaker 7 (40:23):
It's a very like honest feeling to have. I mean,
you're seeing for the problem for many people is probably
the first time that you're seeing someone aiming a project
out at you and am aiming a firearm at you
and firing. So yeah, you know, there's a good reason
to feel worried. That's like the fact that we have
to worry about that in this country period is you know,
it's very chilling. I think that, you know, Miriam mentioned

(40:46):
it bringing friends is really important. Something else that like
we've talked about in circles in LA I think is
like really understanding going in What is the amount of
risk that you are willing to take entering into these
spaces I think is extraordinarily important. I think of my
colleagues who were at the UCLA protests earlier during the
Palestine movement. Yeah, they kind of asked the question like

(41:07):
they kind of framed it in like green light, yellow light,
red light, Like in terms of green meaning like I'm
okay with you know, whatever risks might be involved, like
as far as like what my understanding of what this
protest could entail, yellow being like I'm I'm not prepared
to go so far as to be arrested, but I'm
willing to be present on record if necessary, serve as

(41:31):
a witness for my other colleagues who are going to
be in this space. Red meaning you know, I'm not
necessarily prepared at this point to go that far. I
don't I want to support, but I also don't want
to get arrested. And I think it's important to like,
you know, recognize that not necessarily shame other people in
terms of like where they're at in this.

Speaker 10 (41:49):
Yeah, yeah, understand Yeah, absolutely, because because everybody comes at
this from different places.

Speaker 7 (41:54):
I think it's really important, like when you're in these
spaces to like, you know, kind of understand the risk
of the other people who are alongside you, because if
you're a medic and you're trying to treat other people
and then you have all of a sudden you're by
yourself because the other people are like, well, I you know,
this is what I sign up for out Yeah, that
is also scary, even if you're you know, you're very
willing to be there.

Speaker 5 (42:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (42:14):
So I think just having those conversations and planning more
than anything, planning, planning, and planning is extraordinarily important.

Speaker 5 (42:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:22):
I think that's very well said, great points, and everyone
has a different level of risk. And just to be
totally clear for our listeners, there was over two thousand
different protests yesterday and there was the minimal amount of
violence and they were all peaceful. For the protesters were
the vast, vast, vast majority peaceful and things went fine,

(42:44):
and some like the one I attended was actually kid friendly,
so there was it was a safe place. But particularly
in certain places, there's always a small chance, if not large,
and depending on the police presence there, that things could
go the wrong way, and it is something to keep
in mind. So I particularly like your point regarding everyone

(43:04):
has a different level of risk and that's okay, you're
still contributing.

Speaker 5 (43:08):
I'm not.

Speaker 3 (43:08):
I mean, I'm not a place myself where I'm planning
on getting arrested. That's just not something I want to do.
But I would like to protest that I would like
to support.

Speaker 5 (43:18):
In along those lines.

Speaker 3 (43:20):
What are ways that other people who have medical backgrounds
could potentially contribute or support.

Speaker 7 (43:27):
You in terms of the ways that like medics can
you know, respond in these situations. I think for me,
I have you know, a box of medical equipment that
I want to go to bring on site, like I'm
obviously like and said, I'm bringing water because that's going
to be foremost like my most useful tool to help
anybody who's going to be affected by things like that,

(43:47):
like to your desk, you know, as far as other
things like having extra masks, I think is really really important,
you know, because it's a huge way of reducing respiratory
exposure to the aerosols that are going to be in
the air. And then eye protection, eye protection, eye protection. Now,
the thing about like, you know, we've seen different types
of protection for your eyes that are effective. We've seen

(44:09):
goggles being used like the ones that you would you
would see in a lab. They're not actually effective unless
you close the sides the vents with tape because otherwise
the aerosols actually can still get inside the mask and
irritate your eyes. So if you are going to be
like bringing that type of eye protection, it's important to
think about that. There's like some higher end, you know,

(44:30):
more effective tools that provide both eye protection and helping
to filter particles. Just using a basic goggle mask with
the vents covered in an N ninety five for just
about anybody, I think is a useful tool. So having
those types of supplies for people who need them is
helpful for sure.

Speaker 6 (44:49):
And as far as like a really low risk thing
that people with medical training can do is show up
to jail support, because that's like that is a huge
way you can help not just people who are arrested,
but anybody coming out of jail is by doing jail support,
and what that entails is hanging out where people get released.

(45:11):
People will usually bring food, drinks, clothes, shoelaces. People often
get out without shoelaces, belts, and like a couple of
you know, extra layers of clothes if people get let
out and it's cold, and check out people's injuries. Often
people will be taken to the hospital during processing if

(45:32):
they have something that the police can't ignore. But people
often get released with injuries and it can be really
good to have somebody there who can evaluate them. Honestly,
it's often just giving them like a judgment call on
do you think this needs somebody else to take a
look at it, you know, in a professional environment, or
can I put some ice on it and go home?

(45:53):
Type thing. And almost everybody getting out of jail has
handcuff injuries if they were arrested in a mass arrest
because in mass arrest situations, cops tend to use the
plastic zip tizes, which can get incredibly tight, even more
so than metal handcuffs, which have a little bit a
little length of chain. They strain the shoulders, especially larger people,

(46:15):
especially if somebody has a bag on their back. Cops
will often cuff them in such a way that the
bag pushes on their hands and makes the cuffs increasingly tight.
And having a medical professional or a street medic or
even somebody who's like just there to like take a
look and be like, yeah, man, I see that that's
really fucked up that they did that to you. I'm
so sorry can be useful. Having somebody there to witness

(46:37):
and acknowledge and to document. If somebody is planning on
doing something with that, you know, then that's important too.
So if you cannot be arrested, find out what's happening
with jail, support and go support them because that's chill,
that's calm now. I mean, there are no guarantees in
this world but now, but it is far more likely

(46:58):
to be chill and calm. Yeah, and you can hang
out and eat snacks. Oh and this is the one
situation where medically speaking, bring cigarettes. People want cigarettes when
they get out of jail, and they deserve a fucking cigarette.
Is it good for them?

Speaker 8 (47:13):
No?

Speaker 3 (47:14):
I know, I just am sorry. I hate cigarettes so much.
I listen. I'm not going to say you can't, but
I will never give someone a cigarette. It goes against
things I just can't listen. There's certain lines I will
draw as a doctor. One I have to help everybody
even if I don't like them. Two, I can't give
them cigarettes even if I like them. So I just can't.

(47:35):
Those are two things I can't bring myself to do.
The cigarette one really adjusts me crazy, but I get it.

Speaker 6 (47:41):
In that case, maybe bring some cards for whatever your
local public transit is, or failing that, you know, have
some cash on hand to send people home in a
taxi or have somebody who standing by with a car
to help people get home. Stuff like that that's really
important for jail support, perhaps even more than a cigarette.

Speaker 5 (48:01):
Yeah, I would add that.

Speaker 4 (48:03):
Another thing you can do if you're medically like a
medical professional. Especially it's helped other people learn really big
sic skills. You don't even have to be at a protest, right,
it could be a week later. There are medical professionals
who do street medic training. You can teach people stop
the bleed in a day and potentially save someone's life.
And so if it's something that you you know, are

(48:25):
skilled enough to teach, and you need to be honest
about whether you're skilled enough to teach that or not,
you know if you've watched a for you YouTube videos
and you're not, that's something you could use to really
help other people who are who are going to be
there at a time when you're not comfortable or safe
being there. I guess for the end of the show
to wrap up, if people are just attending to be

(48:46):
fucking mad and there are a lot of people who
are fucking mad right now, what should they bring? And
if people want to access training right like, what are
some some resources that you would suggest. What are some
types of training in terms of like first aid that
people can access, so that people should access if they're
the thinking of attending these things and they're worried.

Speaker 7 (49:08):
I mean, I think in terms of the type of
first aid that you need to be really conscious of,
especially in any any type of like event where you're
going to be with a lot of people and you're
going in as a medic. And this isn't just for protests.
I think it's for any type of event. We do
live in a world where unfortunately there is a lot
of mass shootings. Even if they're firing rubber bullets, we

(49:29):
don't know who else may also attend, who may also
be going with the intention of being violent, So I
mean you mentioned it yourself, stopped the bleed. Having basic
understanding of how to what types of on the field.
First aid should be done. For individuals who have got
received a gunshot wound, I think is really important if

(49:51):
they've been struck by a car. We've already seen earlier
this this weekend that there were shootings in I believe
in a couple of different cities. It's I'm missing which
one unfortunately happened, but I do know of at least
one report of a tesla being driven into a crowd
of protesters this weekend, So it was, Yeah, if.

Speaker 6 (50:14):
I get killed by a tesla, I'm going to be
so fucking mad.

Speaker 5 (50:18):
Indignity.

Speaker 3 (50:21):
That is actually the thing that concerns me the most
most protest is some actor coming in from outside to
do something like that. That part really does concern me,
especially because so many of these are, are, like I mentioned,
kind of family friendly, and they should be. I think
families for the most part, should be able to come
to these things. So that is something that I'm always

(50:42):
constantly on the lookout for.

Speaker 4 (50:44):
Yeah, cause fucking scammy, like I experienced car bombs in
my career, but also just like cause. Driving into crowds
of course undult damage and Americans do be loving large
cause and the cops won't stop them.

Speaker 5 (51:02):
Like, at least in La.

Speaker 4 (51:03):
My experience with the cars were kind of in and
out the whole time, and that did not make me
feel secure.

Speaker 7 (51:09):
We had one individual who was stood in front of
a van that was carrying ice agents and that person
essentially got run over them in that situation, I know
they were not at all stopping for.

Speaker 4 (51:20):
That because it's a big risk, Like I guess with
that in mind, one thing I think about sometimes and
these things is like you don't want to be going
into this, like like traumatizing yourself by doing this. But
a degree of situational when is to include what are
my points of cover and what are my ways out?

Speaker 5 (51:41):
Is good to have.

Speaker 4 (51:43):
Yeah, it helps, It helps me feel safeer anyway.

Speaker 6 (51:47):
Yeah, And that's another huge reason to always run with
a buddy, right because if you're running with a buddy especially,
I mean I think I personally think that if you
are doing medical stuff, you should always have a buddy
just because if you're going to be stopped and like
somebody's got to watch your back and like it's and
you know you might need a second opinion. You can
call in that buddy for a consult. You know, the

(52:09):
Medic collective that I that I run with On really
big action days, we'll put together like little bingo cards
that will distribute to all the Medic buddy pairs as
a situational awareness game. So like, if we're all rolling
out to this, you know, to a big, big action,
we'll put like they'll be squares for like a cop
who clearly is not awake, or your ex or you know,

(52:34):
a person who forgot sunscreen, or you know, just just
things to look out for. Yeah, and I think honestly
like making a little bit of a game like that
if you're going to be out all day can be
kind of fun. And it also makes you keep looking.
It makes you not just look down at your feet
as you as you march another mile, you know.

Speaker 5 (52:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:55):
Please, a's another great reminder. Please prepare for the weather,
prepare for the elements. Bring water, bring sunscreen, bring hats,
all that stuff.

Speaker 4 (53:05):
Sunscreen can trap the chemical irritant next to your skin.
I like to wear a sun hoodie like you can
get hoodies with a SPF. I am a palass person,
right some of you can see.

Speaker 5 (53:19):
Me for listeners. It is indeed true.

Speaker 6 (53:21):
I was gonna say, is that sun hoodie? Why you
in no way have a watch tan?

Speaker 5 (53:25):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (53:26):
Okay, yeah, friends, trends can see my absolutely brutal tan
right now, absurdly white. When I was a bike racer,
I used to have the logos of my sponsors burned
into my back and that was cool and normal. That's unsettling,
yeah right, yeah, yeah, that was a political moment for me. Actually, yeah,

(53:46):
I like to wear sun hoodie because sunscreen it can
trap irritants against your skin. But if it's a creamy kind, right,
I think after point it absorbs and it doesn't. But
I've definitely experienced that kind of paste on your skin
kind of situation. Interesting, some of the nalist like injuries
I've seen have been heat related at protests. If you're

(54:08):
organizing a protest, don't send it straight up a fucking hill,
like I just don't let like like go easy on people.
You know, the people will be bringing a lot of
stuff and they have science and stuff like the might
whether comfy shoes, like could go easy on them with
the with the hill climbing, and then because you're doing
it in the middle of the day often as well,
like you know, don't hurt people, Richard. I know you

(54:30):
were going to mention somebody else.

Speaker 7 (54:31):
The thing I was trying to mention this is this
is less so for i'd say ems non physician individuals. Actually,
before the podcast, I had a chance to talk with
one of the regional vice presidents for CIR, the Physicians
Union that I was formerly a part of when I
was in my.

Speaker 5 (54:47):
Residency, Kayla.

Speaker 7 (54:49):
She has a lot of experience being involved in protests
and street medicine, and the thing that she likes to
mention is like, physicians have a tendency to want to
do a lot in a moment, and so Miry mentioned
situational awareness. I think situational awareness is extremely important. Being
able to know when you have the time to do
a certain intervention versus when it's time to get this

(55:12):
person out of here and to a safer place, I
think is like very very important. Yay, so less does
more in these situations, is what I would say, is
pretty important.

Speaker 5 (55:23):
Yeah. Yeah, Well.

Speaker 4 (55:24):
The thing I do like as a journalist primarily not
a visual one, I often work with photographers right as
a two person team. I have been a photographer protest
in the past, and your world is very small than
that viewfinder, and it's kind of the same. If you're
helping someone right who's injured, that becomes your whole shit.
I will have my physically have my hand on my
photographer a lot of the time on their back right,

(55:46):
and if they need to start moving backwards, I am
going to start moving them backwards. Obviously, you don't want
to leave someone who's hurt, but like if you're the buddy,
it's good to be that close to the person who's
providing care so that you can have a way out
if you need to have a way out.

Speaker 3 (56:00):
This was so incredibly useful and helpful and insightful. We
appreciate both of you coming on. Let's close up here.
What I would like to do is not only plug
something for yourselves, but what I'd like to hear and
our listeners actually enjoy, is to hear something that's bringing

(56:22):
you some joy in these times. Some piece of media, art, film, book, podcast, anything,
you name it, a good restaurant that you really love.
You want to give a shout out to whatever it is,
something that's bringing you a little bit of joy. So
let's do those two things. Marian, Let's start with you.
What can we plug and what's something that's bringing you

(56:43):
some joy?

Speaker 6 (56:45):
So thank you for having me on. This was delightful.
So I will plug Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness, which
is the collective that I'm a part of. You can
find us at Tangled Wilderness on Blue Sky and Instagram
and nowhere else. And we have a website which is
Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. We have a Patreon, all

(57:06):
that stuff. But the main thing I want to tell
you about those guys over there is that James and
I did a podcast recently for the show Lives Like
the World is Dying on protest health and safety, and
we go really in detail on specifics of gear, specifics
of first aid techniques, and I think people should maybe
check it out if they're if they're going to be

(57:27):
out there.

Speaker 5 (57:28):
We'll put it in the show note.

Speaker 3 (57:31):
Yeah, because we're professional podcasters like that.

Speaker 4 (57:35):
You can crazy on it to make it happen here
if you'd like to find the show notes.

Speaker 5 (57:39):
Right. Wait, Miriam, So what's the thing that's bringing you joy? Oh?
I have remember that, Joey.

Speaker 6 (57:45):
I'm familiar with the concept. I have been rewatching the
Shira and the Princesses of Power cartoon.

Speaker 5 (57:53):
Wow, nice, love it. What about Jim? She is outrageous.

Speaker 6 (57:58):
You know they didn't read make that as an overtly
queer Netflix series, so I have had less exposure to it.
But you know, cartoon sword lesbians can't argue with it.

Speaker 5 (58:13):
Yeah, that sounds pretty awesome, all right, Rachel? What about you?

Speaker 7 (58:16):
As far as something to plug, A huge pleasure of
being able to work on Blue Sky helping to put
together the med Sky feeds. So if you're on Blue Sky,
be sure to subscribe to our labeler so that way
you can get your medical specialty on your accounts and
you can get your posts on one of our forty

(58:38):
different feeds. And then also as a Latino, I can't
leave the podcast without mentioning also we are working on
Latin Sky and it's the amount of latinidad and joy
that I've been seeing on that feed over the last
few days, despite the pain, it's been very inspiring. So

(59:01):
I think that's like the plug that I want to
put out there. And as far as the thing that
brings me joy right now, I like I was torn.
I heard it like a bunch of people have already plugged,
and or so.

Speaker 5 (59:12):
I'm not gonna plug, and or you can.

Speaker 7 (59:14):
You Yeah, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna give some
love to Ryan Coogler's Sinners, which.

Speaker 5 (59:20):
Is easily one of them movies.

Speaker 7 (59:24):
I have seen in at least the last five years.
It is an extraordinary movie. Every everything about that movie.

Speaker 5 (59:31):
Is like art.

Speaker 7 (59:32):
I just hope that Ryan Cooler can just make original
movies for the rest of his life and that he
doesn't have to like be stuck doing franchise stuff, because
when he's just given a canvas, he he makes beautiful,
beautiful art.

Speaker 5 (59:47):
Yeah, right on, right on.

Speaker 3 (59:49):
That's for so James, what about what about you?

Speaker 5 (59:55):
What we plug? What can you plug? For you? What
can I plug?

Speaker 4 (59:59):
That was a hot dog guy who went on the
freeway in Los Angeles when everyone else went on the freeway.
So that person's a fucking hero. I would let you
know if you're if you're in the I'm vegan, so
you know, maybe the bun. But for the rest of you,
get after it. You know you can. You can listen
to my podcast. You may be already are It could

(01:00:20):
happen here if you haven't listened. It would mean a
lot to me if you had listened to the podcast
I made in the Daddian Gap last year when I
traveled with migrants who were on their way to the
United States. Those people and those their stories are really
important to me. So if you would listen to one
thing I ever made, it would be that you can
find it by searching Dadien where Dreams Die, and then

(01:00:44):
it could happen here podcast and it will come up
unless you're using a really shit search engine a Google
has been even more fucked by AI. And then, in
terms of stuff that gives me joy, recently, I have
been listening to like the music of the anti apartheid movement. Again,
I kind of when I was a very young person,
my sort of first exposure to activism was through people

(01:01:07):
who had resisted apartheid in South Africa, and they were
very inspiring to me, and they still are very inspiring
to me. I listened to that music with them, right,
Like apartheid, to be clear, ended when I was eight
years old, but like it was cool because it seemed
like at that point the good guys were winning, right,
and so here we fucking are Anyway, I listened to

(01:01:29):
that because it.

Speaker 5 (01:01:30):
Reminds me that they always lose in the end.

Speaker 4 (01:01:33):
So yeah, I enjoy like like the Specials and Eddie
Grant and even the incredibly eclectic sun City album.

Speaker 5 (01:01:39):
Great choices, Great choices.

Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
And for if you happen to be listening on the
House of Pod, you've heard James come and talk about
the Darien Gap. That was a really amazing story and
it resonated with a lot of listeners, and you should
listen to the full multi part series that he put
out on that if it's so much better, So please

(01:02:02):
do that for me. If you happen to be listening
on it could happen here. Listen to the House of Pod.

Speaker 5 (01:02:08):
You like it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
You'll hear James and lots of people you already know
love and meet some new people. And you'll hear us
make fun of medical grifters in the wellness community and
that sort of.

Speaker 5 (01:02:18):
Thing as well members of the Cabinet. And I can't
believe it. Yeah boy.

Speaker 3 (01:02:27):
As for the thing that's bringing me joy, I recently
had a chance to expose my kids on a long
drive to the work of Jeff Buckley, who is for
you younger listeners out there, you may not know who he
was because he unfortunately passed away when he was only thirty.
But he was really a once in a generation talent

(01:02:48):
who was a voice. His songwriting transcended different genres. There
was rock, there's jazz, there was folk. He could span
a vocal range that just really is amazing. And you
only had one studio album, Grace, but it is amazing
and highly recommend that or really any of his live album's,
Mystery White Boy, They're all fantastic. His cover of Leonard

(01:03:12):
Cohen's Hallelujah is the best version of it in my opinion.
I will fight you. I will fight you. If you
say rufus waynewright better, I will physically fight you. So
it's just raw and beautiful and I hope you guys
check it out if you haven't already. Last thing I
will plug June twenty eighth, if you happen to be
in the Bay Area, my band will be playing at

(01:03:33):
the Hotel Utah in San Francisco. It is one of
my favorite places to watch or play music and it's
just super fun. Come up and say hi, and we'll
chat and we'll maybe share a drink.

Speaker 5 (01:03:43):
If we have time. Okay, thank you all so much.
Thanks James. This was fun. Huh, Yeah, that was fun.
It was beautiful. I had a nice time. Let's do
it again.

Speaker 11 (01:03:52):
Okay, bye, hello, and welcome to it could happen here.

Speaker 5 (01:04:18):
I'm here once again with it's James again.

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
Great to talk to you again, James.

Speaker 5 (01:04:24):
Yeah, likewise, glad to be here.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
You know, I spend a lot of time thinking about
the world and how it works and all that jazz,
and I.

Speaker 5 (01:04:31):
Assume you do as well.

Speaker 4 (01:04:32):
I do, yeah, yeah, increasingly worrying about the word.

Speaker 5 (01:04:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
This place, this home is quite the puzzle. And much
like a puzzle, it has been carved up and divided
in so many different ways, sliced, labeled, ranked, and measured
from all kinds of different angles. And that's really what
I'm interested in talking about today, the different ways that
we try to explain the differences we see on the

(01:04:58):
global stage. So going from the concept of civilized and primitive,
to the East and West binary, to the imagined communities
called nations, to the clash of quote unquote civilizations, to
the concept of first, second, and third worlds, to the
development spectrum, to the global North and global South, then
finally to the core and the periphery. So we have

(01:05:20):
a lot of ground to cover in this episode.

Speaker 4 (01:05:22):
Yeah, I really like this stuff. Like as a historian,
like we're always kind of forced into certain divisions, right,
Like even when you apply to you to your funding,
right like you're normally in like a geographical area, or
like you're trying to shoehorn something that's just interesting into

(01:05:42):
one of these boxes that gets funding. And I think
like often that impacts how we see the world, so
we have to write with that goal.

Speaker 1 (01:05:50):
Absolutely absolutely. I find the way that we approach the
telling of history so fascinating And in another life maybe
I would have been historia.

Speaker 4 (01:06:01):
I never I can recommend it. Yeah, yeah, it's I
enjoy the doing of history. It's the doing of academia
that I don't enjoy so much.

Speaker 1 (01:06:09):
So I suppose as a historian, I'm going to ask
you a discomforting question. Great, would you consider yourself civilized
or primitive?

Speaker 5 (01:06:18):
Oh? That's a fun one.

Speaker 4 (01:06:21):
I don't know, Like I don't like that binary because
I think it's it's a value statement, right, And I think,
like James Scott talks about this, Actually this is a
really interesting I've had this. James Scott right talks about
the idea of people who exist outside of the state
being labeled as primitive by the state. It's in the

(01:06:42):
art of not being governed, and that that's sort of
the narrative there. The inherent message is that the state
is the final and superior form of human organizing and
people who have chosen to exist outside it are not
because they chose to, but because they haven't made it
there yet. And of course Scott problematized that suggests that
maybe it's a choice, not a failure to accede to

(01:07:03):
that civilization. And it's a concept that like young Burmese
fighters have echoed back to me, I don't.

Speaker 5 (01:07:11):
Think they're aware of James C.

Speaker 4 (01:07:12):
Scott if I'm being honest, but they they will say
to me, like when, because when they left the cities
to live with the ethnic revolutionary organizations there, they had
always been told that the reason those people lived outside
of the Burmese state was because they were primitive, violent,
But then they came to live and fight alongside them,
and they were like, no, these are a family. They

(01:07:35):
were brothers and sisters and siblings, and like they want
the same thing as us, Like they're not primitive, they
just don't want the state. So I guess in that sense,
I would want to be labeled as primitive too. I
think the primitive people are doing cool shit and then
the civilized people are not.

Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
Yeah, yeah, I mean that's one of I think one
of the one you're in Global binary is one of
the oldest. Yeah, you'd hear that sign of that kind
of just position or civilized and primitive or civilized and barbarians.

Speaker 5 (01:08:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:04):
You know, in ancient Rome you see that distinction between
the civilized Roman citizens and the barbarian other.

Speaker 8 (01:08:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:11):
And in that instance, and in a lot of instance,
it's just used as this ideological tool.

Speaker 5 (01:08:17):
Just at superiority. Definitely. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:08:20):
Like, I think we have to be really careful as
his story about these assumptions that we make. It's always
we love to make a lot of assumptions about revolutions too,
And I would wager that I've attended more revolutions and
many of my academic colleagues, and I think many of
those are grounded in the truths that people accept as
truths without ever testing them. And like, I think this

(01:08:41):
sort of civilized barbarian one, it's kind of the same
like that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:45):
Yeah, it's a classic one. I mean, do you know
where the word barbarian even comes from.

Speaker 4 (01:08:49):
Isn't it the language thing? Like, because I didn't speak
is it Latin? They were just going like bar ba?

Speaker 5 (01:08:54):
Is that right?

Speaker 1 (01:08:55):
Yeah, it's because of what you know, Rome did this
all the time, where they just borrowed, will say, from
what the Greeks were doing. Yeah, so in Greek, barbaros
meant anyone who did not speak Greek. Okay, as the
Romans just kind of took that and expanded to talk
about anybody who wasn't on their whole wave of urban
planning and you know, codified legal systems, the philosophy, the

(01:09:19):
education they are at, all of that stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:09:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
Yeah, the Barbarians didn't have those those refinements, right, Yeah,
you know, but of course the relationship between the two
is not so simple, right because the later on in
Roman history, as you'd know, Barbarians quote unquote were incorporated
slowly into the state and became very useful armies and

(01:09:42):
a reserve full of labor and all these different things
for what Roman was trying to do with the expantship.

Speaker 4 (01:09:47):
Yeah, and luckily contemporary American right has been very normal
about that, and it isn't using that for like it's
sort of eugenic eugenic agenda right now.

Speaker 1 (01:09:57):
Yeah, very very much eugenics VI these days.

Speaker 4 (01:10:00):
Yeah, where my father lives is right on the border
between England and Scotland and you can visit Hadrian's Wall.
I rode my bike all along it a couple of
years ago.

Speaker 5 (01:10:10):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:10:11):
It's like a fun edge of empire kind of thought experiment,
like you beyond this line of the barbarians or uncivilized
people today, it's like unremarkable, like like it's literally it
keeps some people sheep in their fields at points along.

Speaker 5 (01:10:28):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 (01:10:30):
Yeah, like some stones kind of piled on top of
each other and it's kind of an unremarkable novelty. But
it's funny to think that at one point there was
this binary world, right and they felt that the outside
was so dangerous to them that they had to provide
a physical barrier, something we're still doing.

Speaker 1 (01:10:49):
Indeed, and as we're speaking of walls, by the way,
this reminds me of another major empire where this sort
of dichotomy was a curtain. You know, it wasn't just
taking place in the Mediterranean bull you had and of
course ancient China.

Speaker 5 (01:11:03):
This whole identity.

Speaker 1 (01:11:05):
Constructed around these moral and cultural and political ideals.

Speaker 5 (01:11:10):
Of course, you had the.

Speaker 1 (01:11:10):
Whole Confucianism, Taoism, a legalist thought all shape and what
it meant to be, you know, conducting yourself properly and
in a civilized manner. And so those who did not
ascribe to those ideals would have been people who were
labeled barbarians, often the people on the other side of
the Great Wall.

Speaker 4 (01:11:30):
Yeah, we are the United States is literally doing the
exact same thing, right, Like we're building a giant wall
and labeling other ring the people on the other side
of it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:41):
Yeah, you definitely see the genealogy there. Yeah, but I
think there's a closer genealogy we could draw upon for
that particular reference, though, which is how later European empires
would appropriate the Roman civilized Baberian binary to justify their
assimilation and extermination and colonialism.

Speaker 4 (01:12:01):
Definitely one of the things I I like to do,
even with the you know, the United States and it's
in formal empire, right, Like I love to show my
students cartoons, like political cartoons, like there's one of the
White Man's Burden, which like distill.

Speaker 5 (01:12:19):
You know, sometimes the picture is worth a thousand words.

Speaker 4 (01:12:21):
But it distills that whole binary so well in it
in a way that seems like repugnant to most of
my students today. I guess, I don't know, maybe maybe
folks are moving back that way, but like the imagery
and the distinction between the way or even like Lewis
and Clark when they're addressing the indigenous people they meet

(01:12:43):
and calling them children, right like like this this binary
distinction is so it's so apparent, and like, I don't know,
it seems so outlandish, I think to most folks today, maybe,
but then we do similar things, I guess in uh,
you know, it just slightly most subtle ways sometimes.

Speaker 1 (01:13:02):
Yeah, exactly. I mean when you look at what was
taking place with the Enlightenment and that whole development of
this particular order, it's deeped in these particular values with
the European culture was the ideal standard, and everything that
did not measure up to that standard was barbarical. Primative
is just that has never really gone away, you know,

(01:13:25):
and it continues to be used to justify the domination
of Western powers, particularly in the way that they've instilled
these European norms and practices across the world when it
comes to things like relation to the land, when it
comes to things like the divisions between people, between genders,

(01:13:46):
all these things, all these attitudes that are now so widespread,
originated from in part, this elevation of one above the other.
And speaking of I mentioned that we'd western there, and
that's really another way that we've sort of maintained this

(01:14:06):
binary in a different course of pain, although it's not
quite the same. So there's this sort of lingering framework
of the notion of the East and the west. Right
in the ancient times, it was China versus Rome. These
days it's probably China versus America.

Speaker 5 (01:14:27):
China really is that old?

Speaker 1 (01:14:29):
Yeah, yeah, and okay, this is probably a very probably
very gen z reference for me to make. But I
don't know if you've seen these edits circulated on social
media of the Chinese president Chichin Ping going like buzzer Beijing,
and then there's like a whole bunch of like skyscrapers

(01:14:51):
and like like hardcore like electronic music edited to show
like all these advanced ones, and people in the comments
are saying things like be China do nothing win.

Speaker 5 (01:15:05):
I have not seen those.

Speaker 1 (01:15:07):
Yeah, yeah, that's definitely dating me a little bit in
terms of my social media diet. But yeah, just seeing
the dynamic between China, or between the East and the West,
the Orient and the Occident, to use an older term,
it's just another way that we've created this sort of

(01:15:28):
boundary between people that either on one side or the other,
there's a necessary tension between the two.

Speaker 5 (01:15:35):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:15:36):
This concept of the Orient and Orientalism is something that
would side identified famously as something that was constructed by
the West as an exotic, irrational, decadent, and dangerous place.
And so that whole dualistic narrative was then put into
the imperial project to legitimizet domination and to position the

(01:15:58):
East as a passive subject without a voice of their
own and constant need of Western intervention and guidance. So
this West becomes this sort of stage for modernity and
science and region and progress, this whole idea of the
protagonist of history and the orients the East. They're the primitive,

(01:16:19):
I guess, side of that binary. Although unlike the civilized
primitive binary or civilized barbarian binnary of old I think
while there could have been racial components to it in
the past, this one is more explicitly racial and geographic
in its division, because I mean, in ancient Rome, anybody
could essentially become a Roman citizen. You know, it wasn't

(01:16:41):
necessarily racially, you know, pure area and sense that a
lot of New Nazis and stuff today like to look
back at that period as you had a quieter diversity
of phenotypes in the Roman Empire. But you know, when
you come to this orient and occident dichotomy, it's it's
very much racialized. You know, a lot of times when

(01:17:03):
people talk about the Western Wold, it really tends to
be I guess a more politically correct way of seeing
the White Wold. Yes, at least in my observation.

Speaker 4 (01:17:13):
Yeah, yeah, definitely that's often the subtext.

Speaker 1 (01:17:16):
Because I mean that's something I've always struggled with, pin
and down right, because why isn't Brazil considered part of
the West? You know, why isn't Mexico considered part of
the West?

Speaker 5 (01:17:25):
Right?

Speaker 4 (01:17:26):
What will we west of? Like? Like what it's not
even it's not the Western hemisphere like as you say.

Speaker 1 (01:17:32):
Yeah, I mean Western Fami to say is more straightforward,
but is it? Because there are too many colored people
in Mexico and in Brazil.

Speaker 4 (01:17:41):
It seems to be, right, like, it's not even countries
strongly from Western Europe was strongly impacted by settler colonialism
from Western Europe. Because the entirety of Latin America is impact.

Speaker 1 (01:17:53):
And they should be included, but they're not.

Speaker 5 (01:17:55):
That they're not.

Speaker 4 (01:17:56):
Yeah, yeah, and it yeah, it's I've always struggled with
that one. Other than the neoliberal, capitalist white countries. It's
it's it's what people don't want to say.

Speaker 1 (01:18:06):
And Japan sometimes yeah yeah, Japan, yeah yeah, Amber of
the Club.

Speaker 4 (01:18:13):
Yeah, or like sometimes also not Spain. This is a
particular like bug Bury, I guess of Spanish history.

Speaker 1 (01:18:19):
Really, I don't think I've seen enough one.

Speaker 4 (01:18:21):
Yeah, for years, like literally you would be excluded from
European history, like like Africa starts at the Pyrenees.

Speaker 5 (01:18:28):
It's a sort of phrase that needs to be used. Hilarious.

Speaker 4 (01:18:31):
Yeah, Like I guess it compounded because Spain was so
isolated under Franco, right, but like, yeah, that this they
called it the black legend that like Spain does not
belong to Europe and and it's not again it's racialized, right,
it's because Spain had this exchange with the Muslim world right,
and like that that culture deeply impacted Spanish culture. And

(01:18:54):
even after the Conquista, it's like it's like you know,
the French historian, so we're just like, nah, you guys
are tainted, like you, you don't get to come back.

Speaker 1 (01:19:04):
It's kind of a similar situation with the territory. So
the former Artoman Empire as well, technically part of Europe
and yet you know, maligned in some way.

Speaker 4 (01:19:14):
Yeah, yeah, a little bit less than Still, it's like
you'll have too much, too much Turkish to watch Muslim influence.

Speaker 5 (01:19:21):
You all got a.

Speaker 4 (01:19:23):
Yeah, you need like a thousand years to decompress before
we let you back in.

Speaker 5 (01:19:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:19:27):
I mean honestly, if the Pope wasn't based in Italy,
I'm sure Italy would have a similar dynamic. I mean,
Italy is a recent construction, right in terms of as
a country. Ye, but only look at the two Sicilies
for example, that was under North African rule for a
significant period of its history. But let me not get

(01:20:00):
too far off track. One way, we're one more tangent,
and that is I'm far from being a Dungist by
any means, or a Maurist or anything of that nature.
But there is something to be said for the way
that the East of the Orient has been sidelined, marginalized,

(01:20:23):
treat it us lesser than for so long, and now
they're at a point where their geopolitical sway has to
be respected.

Speaker 5 (01:20:31):
Yeah, I'm not.

Speaker 1 (01:20:33):
Rooting for them by any means. I'm not one of
those people is like, yeah, multipolar world. I would rather
we have no poles, you know, as an anarchist.

Speaker 5 (01:20:42):
Yeah, yeah, I do know what you mean.

Speaker 1 (01:20:44):
But it's like it's a bit of shodding for it,
I guess.

Speaker 4 (01:20:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is, you know, ironic in a
but yeah, not necessarily in a good way. Like I've
just seen Ji Jimping meeting with Minan Plang, the dictator
of Miamma today, and I'm like, I'm not excited for
that pole of the world.

Speaker 5 (01:21:03):
Not at all, not at all. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:21:06):
I feel the same way about the way that the
Sahel Federation has kind of kicked out France. I'm like, yeah,
stickt to France. But also military huinteras.

Speaker 4 (01:21:20):
You know, Yeah, yeah, like the rebranded Wagner Core now.

Speaker 1 (01:21:24):
Like yeah, and the the collaboration close collaborations Russia. But
you know, a lot of this thing is really a
lot of these relationships, these geopistical relationships are so opportunistic.
It's all opportunistsm Yeah. End of the day, they don't
really they're not really necessarily guided by principles.

Speaker 4 (01:21:41):
Yeah, like the difference I guess between like, for instance,
I you know, I've been thinking a lot about anarchist
at war, right, and people go and fight in other
people's to depend other people, right, like like the the
people who went to Rajava to fight, people who went
to Mima to fight. Like there's a difference between doing
something out of a sense of solidarity and doing something
get root opportunitiesm And like that always shows itself in

(01:22:04):
the end.

Speaker 5 (01:22:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:22:05):
I mean the Wagon Group's involvement in Africa is the
most blatant capitalists dravn opportunism.

Speaker 4 (01:22:11):
Yeah. These people are not there for the anti colonials
that are like.

Speaker 5 (01:22:16):
Standing with the oppressed peoples of the world. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:22:20):
Yeah, like watching the Battle of Algaeis and setting off
to immediately liberate the people of Africa.

Speaker 1 (01:22:25):
Literal mercenaries right yeah. Yeah, But getting back onto the
main topic, talking about all these ways we divvy up
the world out of the linguistic and cultural and geographical
differences that we observe around us came this concept of nations, right.

(01:22:45):
Nation as an idea also came out of the European
imagine nation. It's commonly defined and it's usable by today.
But it's commonly defined as a large community of people
who share common identity, often through language, culture, history, and
sometimes ethnicity. Then who usually inhabit a specific geographic territory
with its own political organization. The communations without states as

(01:23:09):
simply a cultural community for people feel a collective belong
and then share that snee. But nations are as we know,
mostly tied up with states today, hence nation being used
as a synonym for country.

Speaker 4 (01:23:20):
Yeah, this is one of my bug bears. I guess
is an academic like I tried to develop this concept
of Catalan nationalism that like at the time was inherently
anti fascist, I think or was trying.

Speaker 5 (01:23:32):
To be like that.

Speaker 4 (01:23:33):
It ain't now like this. It's a very Catalan right now.
And yeah, I do still find it hard when people
say nation is the of state, especially Americans, Like, it's
very hard, right because state is like a subset of
the state here, like the sort of motive division of
the federal state. So it can be hard to explain
those differences.

Speaker 1 (01:23:54):
And as you mentioned, this sort of way that the
Catalan nationalism has shifted it really I think gets to
the whole weakness of the nation idea. So Benick Anderson
famously called nations imagined communities because the community exists as
a collective fantasy. You know, they imagine a deep comradeship

(01:24:18):
with people who they've never met, and this fantasy has
boundaries not just about who is included, but also famously
who is excluded. And this fantasy is not necessarily something
that is automatic or natural as we tend to see
it today, But it's really the rise of things like
print capitalism, with the mass production of books and newspapers,

(01:24:38):
and that's what really shaped the standardization and formalization of
these imagined communities through the creational like common cultural reference
and a shared sense of history. And then of course
you had the nation idea further being developed by liberal
revolutions and through the shared experience of clu your rule.

(01:25:01):
You know, we're subject populations with mobilized nationalism to claim
self determination.

Speaker 5 (01:25:07):
Yeah, definitely like it. I'm sure.

Speaker 4 (01:25:09):
The only I'm trying to remember I borrowed this from
someone but the idea of like identity entrepreneurs is one
I like, like it's when religion loses its claim on
universal truth, specifically in Europe.

Speaker 5 (01:25:22):
That's like a market for identity that is open.

Speaker 4 (01:25:25):
And the creation of nations is like, to my mind,
like a bourgeois project, right Like, it's an entrepreneurial endeavor
that they seek to create something, a benefit from it
and like it yet to a agree that's turned against them,
it's still an entrepreneurial endeavor, right Like. Still, you could
be creating a nation which wants to kick France out

(01:25:48):
of Morocco, right that that nation may not have space
for everyone who inhabits that territory of Morocco. Like it's
still it's a sort of for some people.

Speaker 1 (01:25:57):
Construct absolutely absolutely, I think the elite intellectual current of
nationalist movements can go under stated. You know, oftentimes what
stirs up the masses toward that specific direction, because I mean,
the masses will revolt against their conditions, But what sort
of directs it in that national independence direction? And this

(01:26:20):
concept of nation is tends to be that sort of
elite intellectual current. I often look at the history of
and Tobago as a reference point see is that's where
I come from.

Speaker 5 (01:26:29):
The whole process of.

Speaker 1 (01:26:31):
Nation building is always ongoing, and we are in a
position where there's an effort, there's very strong efforts to
both push for a nation building but also recognize our
divergent pasts, you know, because we have this sort of
almost equal in population Indo Trinardian and Afrotrianardian populations, and

(01:26:52):
then a mixed population as well, and then you have
some Chinese and Syria and Lebanese and Venezuela and Filipino
and all these different groups come into Trinidad, and because
of that colonial past, their tensions is between those groups
and things are still play out to this day. But
while those tensions are played ound, there's also an effort
to construct a unity through an allegiance to the nation

(01:27:18):
of trinand Tobago to create a sense of national identity.
And as a very young country, it's still quite difficult
to do. I can imagine, especially in the United States,
it might have been a similar situation where you have
all these different European populations and different populations from around
the world who are in the US, and there hasn't

(01:27:39):
quite yet been a fully built up American identity yet,
and so a lot of those tensions are still kind
of playing out, and so it takes a couple of
generations for there to be a sense of American identity
that arises.

Speaker 5 (01:27:50):
Out of that.

Speaker 1 (01:27:51):
Yeah, definitely, Trinidad being one a younger colony and two
only recently becoming independent in nineteen sixty two, it hasn't
had enough time yet at I suppose develop that patriotism
that America is so known for. And so you still
see a lot of people continue to have allegiances to

(01:28:12):
the ancestry, to their heritage, even before they have any
sort of sense of connection to the country. Concept of truead.

Speaker 4 (01:28:20):
Yeah, the American would be interesting because the people who
did the American Revolution might often call themselves English, right like,
And it's this kind of post hawk nationalism that has applied,
right like, they did begin constructing a nation, but after
they after they gained the apparatus of the state, right like.

(01:28:40):
And sometimes they'll talk about their freedoms in terms of
English freedoms, which they themselves are not granted, right that
they don't have the same freedoms as English people in
England when they are a British colony. This concept of freedom,
they will elucidate like it, and like so much of
it is based on like English common law. Right, they
didn't necessarily see themselves as distinct. That comes later. And

(01:29:02):
like the US, one is interesting because they have to
develop this kind of civic nationalism. M I guess France
has said two of course, but like France is probably
the og there.

Speaker 5 (01:29:11):
But like this.

Speaker 4 (01:29:13):
Idea, like you've subscribed to these ideals, therefore you're an
American because they're like this this nation constructed by people
from all over Europe.

Speaker 5 (01:29:23):
For the most part.

Speaker 4 (01:29:25):
The phrasing is universal, but the implementation is not. Right,
it's also a country where people own other people.

Speaker 1 (01:29:31):
Yeah, yeah, I think, I mean, like I was saying earlier,
it does help in our struggle for autonomy and independence
from clune On rule to have this construct other nation, right,
but it also obscures a lot of the real material
divisions and society, you know, between the wing class and
the elites. And so you have this national identity that

(01:29:53):
is constructed by intellectual and you know, economic elites, and
it's overlaid on a population that doesn't really have us
see in that construction. And so these nationalist projects will
try to downplay or suppress differences in conflicts. And but
as part of why nationalism so often lends itself to fascism,

(01:30:18):
because fascism is an outgrowth of this idea of nation
where they promote this vision of national unity and stifle
class conflict and create a collusion of classes that pushes
aside of people who don't fit within their concept of
the nation.

Speaker 5 (01:30:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:30:37):
Yeah, I often think, like when I'm talking to my
undergrads about nation, Like the most distinct way I could
say is like the salient we through both space and time, right, Like,
it's the people you identify with, it's the us, and
fascism weaponizes us against the rest of humanity or against
us mostly like against escapegoat group who become them. Right,

(01:30:59):
and then like the nation is for us, the state
is for us, it's not for them, Thus they must
be exterminated.

Speaker 1 (01:31:07):
Exactly.

Speaker 5 (01:31:07):
It's an obvious outgrowth of nationalism.

Speaker 1 (01:31:10):
Hence xenophobia, hence anti semitism, anti blackness, anti indigenuity, all
these prejudices. I mean, And that's the thing about nationalism.
It's not necessarily consistent because you'll say, all people from
this land, you know, we should desay to be United
except for those people who are also from this land.
They don't get to count, you know, they are perpetual outsiders.

(01:31:31):
They don't share the true culture. They aren't part of
our destiny. So even if they're legally citizens or legally
a long term residents, or they haven't residents there for
a long time the entire lives for generations or if
the case may be, they don't count. They're outside forever.

Speaker 4 (01:31:48):
Yeah, yeah, they can never assent to like a sort
of higher status of being one of us. British people
like to mobilize this one a lot, right, Like you
can be British, but.

Speaker 1 (01:31:59):
You can never be English.

Speaker 4 (01:32:00):
Yeah, I forget who coined that coined the phrase cricket nationalism,
but it's just particularly kind of ridiculous, Like, oh, if
you know, if there's a Test match between Britain and
Pakistan and Britain Trinidad Tobago, who do you support? Like
is that, like are you really going to make that
the core of your national identity? Like the cene qua

(01:32:21):
non of being British is like which flag you take
to the cricket match? Like it's particularly ridiculous and if
it doesn't reflect exclusion, right, people aren't taking their flag
to the cricket match because like that's the core of
the entity. They're just like, yeah, well kind of I
get treated differently because of my ethnic boundary, like makeup

(01:32:44):
right ethnic presentation. So I guess you guys don't like me,
so like they'll be funny when we kick your ass cricket,
like it's the cause of arrow points in the wrong direction.

Speaker 1 (01:32:54):
I guess I can imagine I will not be bringing
any flags to any cricket match because because I don't
attend cricket matches, I'm not not too big of a
fan of cricket.

Speaker 5 (01:33:05):
It can't be doing it.

Speaker 1 (01:33:06):
I stick to my football, and I say football in
the international sense.

Speaker 4 (01:33:10):
Good, yeah, yeah, I can't stand around long enough to
play cricket, to be honest.

Speaker 1 (01:33:15):
As we're talking about national liberation, these struggles often took
place in the context of the Cold War, right, which
is where we get this other sense of this other
framework for divving up the world now. Growing up, I
was always told that, you know, trant Tobago is a
third world country. I had a social studies textbook, and
I taught first world, second world, third world, But I

(01:33:37):
didn't teach first world second World, third world in the
context of the Cold War, because I grew up in
a post Cold War world and these terms came from
the Cool War but persisted after the Cold War. So
what happened I was taught we have third world because
we are still developing. We're not at that intermediate stage
development where we could see the second world, and we're

(01:33:58):
not at that first world level of developed and like America, right.

Speaker 9 (01:34:02):
And.

Speaker 1 (01:34:03):
That's that's a smaller side for me. But I've always
found it mildly irritated when I see people use this
famous social media catchphrase or America is a third World
country in a Gucci belt.

Speaker 5 (01:34:18):
I haven't seen now on the yet. That's annoying.

Speaker 1 (01:34:22):
I'm sure you've seen similar sentiments, this idea all America's
third world, American.

Speaker 5 (01:34:25):
Stud world, Yeah, I have.

Speaker 1 (01:34:27):
Like, it's just annoying to me yet, So one, it
completely divorces the concert of the third world from its actual
origins and to it. Also, I think reflects that kind
of a blindness to what's happened in the rest of
the world, in the countries that are actually considered third
world and the differences between them, you know, for everything
that we can express frustrations about in the US anybody

(01:34:51):
in the third world, I think, and I've when I
when I've visited the US, I've seen it with my
own eyes. You know, there's still things there that Americans
might take for granted that are just not that would
never be taken for granted in another context. And I see,
of course the divisioncy in America's version of the First

(01:35:12):
World versus you know, some of the European Social Democracy's
version of the First World. So I get that frustration,
you know, the lack of free health care and that
kind of thing, investment in infrastructure and all that. But
let me just get into the background behind the tomb.
Right as we step into the Cool War, you have

(01:35:40):
this concept of the three world model that came after
World War Two. The pre war status cool was over
and you had new conflicts on the horizon. And to
the film, first World originally described the capitalist block led
by the United States and Western Europe, were capitalist markets, liberals,
and rock see an economic progress was celebrated. And then

(01:36:02):
you had the Second World block, which referred to the
communist bloc led by the Soviet Union, where what I
would consider state capitalism and centrally planned economies shape their societies.
So in the First World yet countries like the US, Australia,
Africa today might be shocking. You know, Iran was even
considered part of the First World block during the Cool War.

(01:36:26):
That might be shocking now because when we think of
some of these countries like, oh, those are third World countries.
Those are undeveloped countries. They aren't at the developed level
of the West yet. But in the context in which
has three World model originated, these were countries that explicitly
aligned themselves with the policies of the United States and
its allies as capitalist nations against the Soviet Bloc. And

(01:36:51):
the Soviet Bloc you had, of course countries like China
and Vietnam, Laos, Ethiopia, Yeah, and Huba, all these different
countries align themselves explicitly with the Soviet Union. Then the
third World and where the third will concept came in
was with all the countries that stood against picking aside. Yeah,

(01:37:15):
a lot of these were former colonies and nations that
chose not to side completely with either. And so this
whole concept, this whole idea of the non aligned movement,
it really kicked off thanks to the joining of the
Indian Prime Minister, the Canayan president, the Indonesian president, and
the president of the United Arab Republic, alongside Yugoslavia and

(01:37:38):
so all these countries who all had very different economic
arrange ones Yugoslavia famously was kind of doing its own
thing compared to a lot of the other countries associated
with socialism. India and Ghana they were also kind of
doing their own thing, kind of a mix trance. Tobago's
also considered part of the non aligned movement, and so

(01:38:01):
these classifications at the time, these were geopolitical and all
political ideology is not necessarily economic development. So technically speaking,
the terms shouldn't even be relevant us today. I mean,
the Cold War of the twentieth century is over. But
over time the narrative began to twist. You know, so
because you didn't pick a side, you didn't pick the

(01:38:22):
red team or the blue team, you didn't pick the
First World of the Second World, this narrative developed where
or you didn't pick a side, you're politically independent, so
you're poor, you're chaotic, your failed state, all these different things.
And of course there were incidents in part influenced of
course by state actors in the US and state actors

(01:38:43):
in the Soviet client block would have contributed to this outcome,
But over time you get this sense of or the
third World is failure. All these states were trying different
path of development, different approaches to governance from either of
the two camps, mixed hybrid approaches, but in the end

(01:39:04):
that's just this just got them stuck with the label
of underdevelopment and at having them being seen as lesser.
Now today people don't use food world as much as
they use developing, at least in you know, the more
above board discourse. But that division also has its own implications,

(01:39:24):
right the developed countries versus the developing countries. It's kind
of a softer sorts of version of the same thing.

Speaker 4 (01:39:31):
Yeah, it's kind of gentle, Yeah, the same shit.

Speaker 1 (01:39:35):
What those terms do implicitly, it's like, you know what,
you're fish in water, so you can't recognize water. It's
hard to recognize these things, these ideological impulses when we're
submerged in them. If you take a step back, you realize, oh,
these terms developed and developing, they have very heavy implications.
And the implication is that there's a single linear path

(01:39:57):
to progress modeled after Western cap that all societies are
progressing towards through industrialization, through consumerism, through the ALMIGHTGP growth,
and so development to your underdevelopment becomes a tool of intervention.
It becomes a way to mask imperial interests with the

(01:40:17):
sort of the nair of oh, we're just kind of
helping you out.

Speaker 5 (01:40:21):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:40:21):
It's like we move from your savage you're primitive, so
you're just not developed yet, but theory will help you out.
And that's how you get the whole sort of IMF
and World Bank, introductions of models of debts and policy
conditions and metrics and all these different things to sort
of shape these countries into client states, states that can

(01:40:44):
be used to further Western development. The Cold War is
technically over now, as I said, so I suppose we've
reached the end of history, as the famous saying goes,
but not exactly. In the only nineteen nineties, Samuel Huntington
came up with a thesis to explain the conflicts that

(01:41:05):
would define the post Cold War world and as we
entered into the twenty first century, and so he argued
that the future of global conflict would not be defined
by competing ideologies or economic systems, but by cultural fault lines.
In his nineteen ninety three article in Foreign Affairs, which
Lates expanded into his nineteen ninety six book The Clash
of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order, Huntington

(01:41:28):
predicted that the primary source of conflict in a new
era would be between distinct civilizations. His model would have
pointed to clashes between the West and other groups Islamic nations,
the Confucian East, and of course set up this sense
that the West is this pinnacle of rationality and modernity
and all these others in competition with the fantastic, amazing West.

(01:41:50):
And I always like to call out some of these
strange ways that he has divided the world.

Speaker 5 (01:41:54):
Right, So sub Saharan.

Speaker 1 (01:41:56):
Africa is all grouped up into the African camp, all
of North Africa, the Middle East, into West Asia, all
of that is considered part of the Islamic civilization. Forget
all the differences between any of them. By the way,
Indonesia it's also part of the Islamic block. You have
the Sinic or the Confucian block that includes China, both Koreas, Taiwan,

(01:42:22):
and Vietnam, except for the parts of China that are
under the Buddhist camp, such as Tibet, So Tibetan is
kind of carved up on its own as its own camp.
Mongolia is also under the Buddhist camp.

Speaker 5 (01:42:36):
Thailand and all.

Speaker 1 (01:42:38):
These others in Southeast Asia considered part of the Buddhist camp. Yeah,
and then you have the Latin American block, which is
everybody part of Latin America and even people who are
not technically Latin America and are kind of swept in there.
And I'm going to be a by the base of
the map that I saw on the Wikipedia article on
the subject.

Speaker 5 (01:42:56):
Yeah, I found that map. Now it's some.

Speaker 1 (01:42:59):
Very busy are divisions, and we used to cut up
this will we have the Western rule versus the Orthodox world,
which includes Kazakhstan and Greece and Ukraine and Russia all
under that civilizational banner.

Speaker 5 (01:43:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:43:16):
The Philippines is somehow part Islamic, part Western, and part Sinic.
It's a very unusual blend.

Speaker 5 (01:43:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:43:25):
And then he's just got like Japan, it's just hanging
out there by itself.

Speaker 1 (01:43:28):
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention especial Japan is kind
of it's the one thing.

Speaker 5 (01:43:33):
Yeah, it literally says Japanese.

Speaker 4 (01:43:35):
I've forgotten about that, and then he goes on to
freak out about like the like Latin world as he
sees it, like fucking dividing the United States right like
in his his is it called like who we are
or where we are or something his book about migration
in the United States m it was after Clash of

(01:43:55):
civilizations he wrote this book about like how the like
I think I don't know quite remember how he termed it,
like this, he us Latino or Hispanic or something else,
but like that that that population increasing in the United
States will like divide the United States into two fundamentally
opposed civilizations.

Speaker 1 (01:44:14):
Yeah, yeah, he has some interesting compulsion. Yeah, And unfortunately
his thesis found its voice following the events of nine
to eleven partitions and media. These people were taking his
ideas to kind of justify the one and terror that
would unfold. It also creates sort of cultural device that

(01:44:37):
settle into place at home will not create but shape
those cultural divides as you create the sense of oh,
if there's if we're experience in a clash of civilizations
right now, then this flood couldn't quote of people from
another civilization is a threat to the vision. It's something
that needs to be targeted and fought against. Yeah, and so,

(01:44:59):
in a sense, his classicalizations is kind of a repackaging
of a lot of the binaries and divisions we've spoken
of what before. You have elements of nationalism, you have
elements of civilized versus barbarian, you have elements of East
and West, the Cold War dichotomies. All of that kind
of comes together in this neat package. Finally, we enter

(01:45:21):
the twenty first century, and they are two very popular
ways that we now categorize the world. People tend to
use the phrases global North and Global South as a
softer or more politically correct alternative to develop developing or
first and third world. It's considered less loaded, more neutral sounding,
and it's originally popularized via UN frameworks and the brand line,

(01:45:45):
which is done in nineteen eighty, which drew a literal
line across the globe, separating the wealthier North from the
poorer self. To be clear, though, despite the geographical language,
it's not literally about hemispheres. Australia is considered part of
the Global Nor and Mongolia is considered part of the
global South, but generally speaking, the global salt refus the

(01:46:06):
post colonial regions and the global North refoos the wealthy,
industrialized countries of the world. To me, again, it's not
really a flawless framework. It has all the same binaries
and smoothing over of complexities of internal class divides between
For example, ritually it's in the global South and poor
communities in the North. It gives impression that entire countries

(01:46:28):
share unified class experience, I think. I think it also
has the potential to obscure inequality between South South relations.
So yes, two countries may both be a part of
the Global South, but there could be a massive power
differential between them that you know, set them up for
interventions and equal treaties, and also sort of different sorts

(01:46:52):
of medaline. For example, Saudi Arabia, at least in one
map that I saw, is considered part.

Speaker 5 (01:46:59):
Of the Global South.

Speaker 1 (01:47:01):
But as we know, Sauy Arabia is famous first medline
across Africa and the Middle East. It's interventions, it's financing
of different conflicts across the region. Now I get why
the term is used. It creates a sense of shared struggle,
especially in anti imperialist and climate justice spaces. But I

(01:47:22):
think it has weaknesses. You know, and how we construct
solidarity on that basis.

Speaker 5 (01:47:26):
Yeah right, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:47:28):
And the other and final system that I wanted to
mention that has gained popularity these days is world systems theory,
which is actually older than class civilizations. It came out
of Immanuel Wallastein's work during the Cold War and he
kind of stood out and said that he was rejecting
the three world system and the simplistic country by country
development models. Instead he created this world systems theory that

(01:47:52):
saw capitalism as a single global system, not a patchwork
of individual national economies, on labor roles, on commodity flows,
and on power concentration. And I think in an even
more globalized world it makes the most sense. So to
wall Esteem, they have three different zones of the global economy.

(01:48:12):
You have the core, which as you know, have strong
states financial capital, tech heavy industries controlled over global institutions,
and they tend to exploit the labor and resources of
the periphery, while export and high value goods and debt
structures and the periphery of the countries that tend to
have weaker institutions, extractive or career economies, reliance and export

(01:48:36):
and raw materials debt defendency and structural adjustment policies, and
they often dump in grounds for pollution, waste and arms
from the global North. The semi periphery are then considered
under his model, the countries that mediates between the core
and the periphery. These are industrialized and economies with mixed
labor and capital exports. They sometimes exploit others while being

(01:48:58):
exploited themselves. These include countries like Brazil, India, Mexico, Turkey,
and South Africa, and they tend to seal as the
buffers that stabilize the system while chasing core status.

Speaker 5 (01:49:10):
I think this model is very dynamic.

Speaker 1 (01:49:13):
It could be more dynamic, but it does have the
capacity to highlight the systemic interdependence of this glocal system,
that one region's wealth is contingent on another's dispossession. It
makes it very useful for understanding that, you know, poverty
is not some religious happens, it's land is very clearly
structured and developed by the wealth of the North. And

(01:49:38):
I think also with the corporate free model, you see
the sense of a one way flow where value and
labor goes from the periphery to the core, but there
is another direction that flew goes right because the migrants
from the perifree, they go to the core. They fill
precurious rules and core economy is like care work and
agriculture and logistics, and so they almost become an important

(01:50:01):
periphery within the core. And their absence from the periphree
also deprives the perifhree. Hence the phenomenon of brain drain,
where people are siphered the way as label and the
and the educated population tends to leave, you know, their
countries of origin. But I say, I'm saying it's not
just a one way flow because you also have that
sense of diaspora and diasporic networks that kind of reverse

(01:50:24):
the flow. Remittances for some countries can be a significant
chunk of their national income. I think the Philippines is
a classic example of this. Some of the Caribbean countries,
either historically or presently, we're very dependent on remittances from
their diasporic populations sending money back home. Lebanon is another example,

(01:50:46):
Salvador is another example. They become key part of the national GDP,
that sort of relationship of my creatia. Yeah, but I
think what I want to do with this corporate free model,
or this core prefree semi prefer model is expanded. And
one of the ways that I found very useful to
do so comes from fellow podcaster shout out to Elija

(01:51:08):
j Ayub. Yeah, I read an article of his that
was on the anarchist libraries called the periphery has no
time for binaries. This very crucial point, and I coulte
we are as peripheral to the global selt regimes crushing
us as they are perceived to be by the Western
think tanks and foreign ministers who view their imagined space

(01:51:28):
as the center of the world. China and Russia and
Iran are peripheral to the West, and any and all
activists in China and Russia and Iran a peripheral to
their governments. So I kind of like this sense of
not just looking on the country level, but looking at
particular populations, populations within countries the relationships between them, bringing
that class dynamic. Yeah, with between populations more prominently.

Speaker 4 (01:51:52):
Yeah, Like if you look at the like the example
I'm familiar with, relate like the what we could look
at Kurdistan or meen right, there are ethnic groups within
that country that are subject to colonialism by the core
groups within that country, right, like asides Arab belt stuff
for the Boma majority using classic colonial divide and rule

(01:52:14):
tactics right now against the rahiner in Themma. And like,
I think it doesn't make sense to see that whole
country is peripheral, right, Like that binary doesn't function when
like the salient colonial violence happening, especially in the MMA,
it's happening within the Anma, but it doesn't make any
less salient. And like the experience of colonialism is still violent.

(01:52:40):
And if we only use this like state level binary,
we will totally miss.

Speaker 1 (01:52:45):
That exactly exactly, And I think it's important to be clear.
Obviously I've rejected a lot of these frameworks in covering them.
You won't see me using the civilized primitive binary anytime soon.
But some of these concepts can be useful.

Speaker 9 (01:53:03):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:53:03):
They do shape the way that we view the world,
how we.

Speaker 1 (01:53:06):
See ourselves the imperfect, of course, but because they're trying
to map onto reality, and reality is a shifting beast.
But I think it's good to have some sense or
some language to understand the inequality and podynamics present in
the world. So we can reclaim these frameworks, so we
can reject them. You know, we could use them for
solidarity or for division. But the question I want to

(01:53:28):
leave us with the wrap of this episode is how
do we build a world where these divisions are no
longer descriptive or relevant? And that's all I have for today,
or power to all the people.

Speaker 5 (01:53:42):
Peace.

Speaker 1 (01:54:03):
Hey, and welcome to take it up. And here I'm
Andrew Sage and I'm back with James.

Speaker 5 (01:54:08):
It's me again. Welcome back. Yeah, good to be here.

Speaker 1 (01:54:12):
Great to have you once again, offer you to have me.
I'm not sure the dynamic is here.

Speaker 4 (01:54:18):
Yeah, yeah, MEI it's nice to be together.

Speaker 1 (01:54:21):
It's an egalitarian dynamic. You know, we're both having each
other in a sense.

Speaker 4 (01:54:26):
Yeah, yeah, we're sharing this podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:54:28):
Yeah. I think there are a lot of concepts that
it's good to grasp to get a sense of how
this world works. Kind of continuing from the previous episode
where we spoke about all the different ways that we
can divide up the world and understanding the world and
so on. Today's sort of pursuit of that endeavor. I

(01:54:48):
wanted to get into a particular concept that is so
benign yet supervsive in this system, and it's the idea
of externalization. Do you get what I mean by that?

Speaker 4 (01:55:00):
Yeah, like making people of things other.

Speaker 1 (01:55:03):
Yes, But specifically, I think I want to address how
capitalism persists by pushing harm onto the other, Yeah, onto
the someone or something else, shifting the costs of particular actions,
either environmentally, socially, or economically. I think the easiest example
I could point too is how a company may choose
to save on disposal costs by dumping their waste into

(01:55:26):
a river, which can thus poison the water supply, the ecosystem,
and the health of all those human and non human
lives who rely upon or live near that river. Do
you have another example you could probably point to? Yeah,
I mean there are lots of them.

Speaker 4 (01:55:40):
One of them that I think of a lot is
like how in the US, rightly, products that we can't
recycle or that we can't landfill, we will literally ship to.

Speaker 5 (01:55:49):
Somewhere else to be dumped.

Speaker 4 (01:55:51):
Like, our consumption creates so much excess and so much waste,
and we can't be confronted with that waste, so we
tip it to places where people consume less.

Speaker 1 (01:56:00):
Yeah, it's uh, I mean you see, I don't know
if you've seen, ay the footage of some of these places,
their whole costs of fast fashion waste for example in Africa,
or just eweiste leaching into the soil. It's really quite tragic.

Speaker 5 (01:56:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:56:19):
I remember someone on net once was telling me that
like one of the things that children did where they
had come from was they would pick through e waste,
specifically charging cables to get the copper out. M M.
This would result in them having like these terrible injuries
to their fingers because they were like prying the cables apart,

(01:56:39):
and you know, over time they would get little pieces
of both shards of metal EMBD in their fingertips.

Speaker 5 (01:56:44):
Town.

Speaker 1 (01:56:45):
Yeah, that's terrible.

Speaker 4 (01:56:46):
Yeah, it's pretty pretty grim condemnation of a way of consuming.

Speaker 5 (01:56:51):
Yeah, it's messed up.

Speaker 1 (01:56:52):
It's messed up, and I think when you see that
sort of stuff, it's hard to unsee it. When you
see that impact on't the world, it's hard to unsee it.
But that's part of how this concept thrives, this externalization thrives,
it's by obscuring itself. Yeah, so that's what we kind
of want to do with this episode, get up a
full breadth of its history, its present, and its apparent

(01:57:14):
future so that we can not see all the different
ways that this occurs. Now, this pass and on of
courts may have always been an option on the table,
but we can see that a lot of traditional economies
did not go that route because traditional economies were often
human economies, as David Greeber used the term in Debt,

(01:57:37):
the first five thousand years, you know, these were economies
focused on human relationships. They were embedded in kinship and
land and customs and obligation and reciprocity. So what you
owed was really financial. It was to you enable your elder,
your clan plan itself, and so you could not really
avoid the costs of your actions on others, because that

(01:58:00):
was at the center of it all others. But the
transition to capitalism was a shift in what the economy was.
It enforced the idea that everything is or should be,
up for sale. The economist called Polani called it the
Great Transformation, when land, labor, and money were turned into
fictitious commodities, treated as if they were products for sale.

(01:58:25):
Plenty saw the modern state and the capitalist market economy
as a package deal. Graybot also made this very clear
in Debt as well. For this new kind of economy
to take hold, people had to change how they thought
about work and trade and relation with each other. And
see in the world, those conditions had to be created
by the state, so you could look at how electritional

(01:58:46):
economies and commons had to be disrupted to force the shift.
In England, you had people pushed off of common land
that they had use for centuries, and they had no
choice but to sell their labor to survive and go
into the factories. We have to remember that he never
started in the factories. That actually started in the colonies.
This dispossession of people and from place started through that

(01:59:09):
colonization process. Already amplify through that colonization process extracting the
wealth of people or of labor, of land, of resources
from one place to concentrate it to another to displace
people and land and costs and secluialism was capitalism sort
of training ground for externalization. You plunder a little bit

(01:59:30):
over here, you profit a little bit over there. And
this is really where we get to the core of
capitalist externalization. With the shifting of the costs. On a
small scale that looks like the river pollution example. From
the global scale, it looks like what will steam is
getting into with world systems theory how the wealth and
stability the coronations depends on the exploitation of the periphery.

(01:59:52):
So slavery and genocide and ecological ruin, all of these
are costs that create the wealth that the core enjoys,
but it's made invisible to that core because when you're
part of an ongoing relationship with community, with land, with ecology,
with people, the actions have consequences that matter, They reverberate,

(02:00:13):
you can feel them, and that demands a level of
responsibility on your part. But when you take the things
that have been woven into relationship and turn them into
plain old transactions, those transactions can then offload the costs,
offload the consequences, make them someone else's problem. So, yeah,

(02:00:34):
cloven is very affordable now, but it's affordable because somebody
somewhere was underpaid and overworked. The smartphone. It's convenient, it's useful, successible,
but it's parts of mind and the dangerous conditions. You know,
your food solicious, nutritious, not exactly affordable these days, but

(02:00:55):
it's picked by hands that cannot afford that same meal.
So the harms of these systems, the harms of these actions,
of this level of consumption doesn't cease to exist, it's
just externalized, so it could be rendered invisible to one
point of view. Yeah, and it's not something that can
be set up without a fight. You know, people would resist.

(02:01:18):
Enclosures were met with resistance, colonizations met with resistance, and
even to the workers strike, you know, people do fight back.
It's not just this sweeping and nevitable process. But because
of the collaboration between state and capital, that collusion of
status and capitalist interests, the whole system has managed to
persist thus far. It's a very formidable forward dealing with

(02:01:41):
So we can set it back here and there, but
we have not defeated it yet. Yeah, and I say yet,
because you know, as we get into there are ways
to loosen its script. I think what's fascinating about capitalistic

(02:02:04):
externalization today is just how much it has skilled and
got more sophisticated in terms of the work that makes
the world run. The most essential label is often the
most invisible and undervalued and precurious labor. You know, where
we're talking about the work that's necessary to clothe ourselves,

(02:02:25):
the work that's necessary to feed ourselves, the work is
necessary to build infrastructure such as in the Gulf States
where you have litual modern slavery taking place to build
up those countries where they're talking about gig work, transportation
to livery that sort of thing, or reproductive work stuff
like what it's called housewifery or domestic labor. Should you

(02:02:47):
think of other examples as well.

Speaker 4 (02:02:49):
Yeah, I like the one you gave about your cell phone, right,
like those rare earth materials. Like it's not some like
safe mining operation bring serves out.

Speaker 5 (02:03:00):
Of the ground.

Speaker 4 (02:03:01):
It's human hands in dangerous conditions that kill people.

Speaker 1 (02:03:06):
Exactly, poisons people. It's it's not even necessarily a quicker death,
it's often a slow, yeah, lifelong death.

Speaker 4 (02:03:13):
And it poisons that part of the world for generator.
Like we could stop right now, and it would take
generations for the damage to stop, exactly.

Speaker 1 (02:03:23):
That's the thing about destruction, right, destruction can be very quick,
as the rebuilding that can take.

Speaker 5 (02:03:28):
A long time. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:03:30):
And if you look at how quickly Gazo has been flattened,
this is how long it's going to take to recover
from that.

Speaker 5 (02:03:37):
It's like nine and d yeah, yeah, yeah, like it.

Speaker 4 (02:03:41):
I mean I'm very familiar with that particular example, right,
Like how quickly you can destroy something with a bomb
from an aeroplane, and how hard people had to work
to build it. In October of twenty three, I was
in Kurdistan and like, I know how hard people work
to build it, Jaba, right, to try and build a
little island of democracy without the state in a place

(02:04:02):
where the state has been weaponized against tons of different
ethnic groups who are not Arab, and even against Arab
people who didn't agree with the state's particular.

Speaker 5 (02:04:13):
Wine a thing.

Speaker 4 (02:04:15):
And one night, you know, like the power station's gone,
they bombed while I was there, like an oxygen bottling
plant for people who need supplemental oxygen, either temporarily or permanently,
and like it's gone now. And now to build that
back up in a world where you are largely alienated
from the system of states in capital, right, you're trying

(02:04:38):
to build stuff back up as much as you can
from networks of solidarity and ingenuity, and that takes years.

Speaker 5 (02:04:45):
And yeah, yeah, but it's not visible, and.

Speaker 1 (02:04:50):
That's not even getting into the emotional and mental tool
of something like that.

Speaker 5 (02:04:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:04:55):
Yeah, oh that can be a setback as well. Yeah,
when I've been talking about sources, we're talking about Yeah,
that loss. Yeah, that that that pain.

Speaker 5 (02:05:05):
Yeah, Yeah, the pain.

Speaker 1 (02:05:06):
Made even worse when the skilled people, skilled workers who
were responsible for upkeeping such something like that also wiped
up by that same bomb. Makes it all the more
difficult to recover.

Speaker 4 (02:05:20):
Yeah, or drawn away right by the conditions of becoming
a livable So you have this like brain drain, where
people who have skills that are considered to be commercially
valuable have.

Speaker 5 (02:05:30):
An opportunity to leave.

Speaker 4 (02:05:32):
The people who who don't have those have the opportunity
to stay or don't have your opportunity to leave, I guess,
like or even like, you know, the US made a
bit a different version of externalization, I guess. But like
the US made a big thing of how it defeated
the Islamic state in you know, twenty nineteen, I guess.
I can't remember when the last Atlan Alba goose was,

(02:05:54):
I think twenty nineteen, But like we externalized it off
florid the cost of that's yeah, the dying part, like
the Yeah, US pilots did a whole lot of killing,
but the dying part that, yeah, we externalized that right
to Kurdish and Arab and as Syrian fodder. Yeah, to
people who would whose lives didn't matter. Yeah, Like I

(02:06:18):
remember a time standing in a cemetery there, just looking
at lines and lines of graves, and I just left
the house of someone who's thirteen year old son was
killed in a drone strike and just thinking, like, each
of these is a mother burying her child. That like,
we essentially asked for the most part, right, like, to

(02:06:40):
do that. We said, hey, what you guys do the
dying part because we don't want to like it kind
of sucks, sucks for the United States and Britain in
Iraq and Afghanistan, so we'd like someone else to die now.
And then you know, here we are a few years later,
right and like the night before, Turkey has been bombing
the place where I'm looking at these graves, and the

(02:07:02):
US a doing shit to help, right Like, even though
these people had like made this massive sacrifice, the US
wasn't like, yeah, we're your friends. It's not a friendship relationship,
you know, Like it's it's like you said, it's an interaction, okay,
like a yeah, purchase more than a solidarity based thing.

Speaker 1 (02:07:22):
Yeah, And once again we really see that core externalized
and its costs onto periphery and We see that both
in the sense of on the global stage between countries
or between populations cores and peripheres, but even internally within countries,
as we mentioned in the previous episode talking about that

(02:07:46):
divide between the core and the periphery where you have
but a lot of people have called the economies biggest trick,
you know, your socialized failures and privatize profits. Yeah. So
in two thousand and eight with the financial crash, people
were evicted, but the balance got built out and the
early stages of COVID corporations got relief, gig workers were exposed. Yeah,

(02:08:10):
you know, in the process of austerity resulting from neoliberalism,
social services get cut in order to balance the books,
but there's never any consideration of or let's trike cutting profits.

Speaker 5 (02:08:25):
Yeah, and that's one thing that can never go down.

Speaker 4 (02:08:29):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, I think or even like within you know,
we all all food come from the soil at some point,
right that, Like I can't tell you how many people
I know that my family are in agriculture, right, who
have died or.

Speaker 5 (02:08:43):
Lost limbs on farms.

Speaker 4 (02:08:45):
It's the same is true if you're in the mining industry, right, Like,
that's not something that's visible. You know, you don't like
go to the supermarket and bite your bread, right, and
you don't think that someone got their arm in the
combine harvester when they were doing the field that went
to the flower that major loaf of bread that costs
one dollars ninety cents, and now the person doesn't have
an arm.

Speaker 5 (02:09:04):
It's invisibilized. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:09:07):
I mean, it's the same thing when you see like
these natural disasters taking place right, floods or burnings, right
when when California is on file and when Pakistan is
completely flooded out. Those are the consequences of the actions
of corporations, of the actions of this entire global economic system.
And meanwhile, the corporations are getting carbon credits to continue

(02:09:30):
doing what they will always do it. Yeah, you know,
and so the actual consequences of what they're doing, they're
paying for carbon credits, but the actual consequences of what
they're doing are being paid for by the communities that
are displaced by the consequences of this climate change.

Speaker 11 (02:09:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:09:46):
Yeah, And we never talk about when we talk about migration, right,
like that's a great The climate change is a great
example that we don't talk about how the bulk of
people coming to the United States are coming from the
place is most heavily impacted by climate change.

Speaker 1 (02:09:59):
Yep.

Speaker 4 (02:10:00):
Like I was in the Marshall Islands a few years ago,
and there will be no more Marshall Islands within our lifetime, yeah,
because of the consequences and massive corporations have made. But
like they don't have any agency. It made me really
like it was hard because they're doing stuff like they
use a to get it to get around the atolls, right,

(02:10:21):
they use little like two strikeout boards, and they're trying
to build solar canoes instead and solar boats so that
it's it's cleaner energy, right, Like less than a percent
of a percent of the world's carbon emissions come from
the Marshall Islands, and they're like trying their hardest to
do their part to reduce their emissions, but like they

(02:10:42):
can't make the impact that needs to be made to
stop the sea levels rising. And arguably, like when the
world had a chance to do so, like you see
them speaking at the United Nations and then the UN
being like the line has to go up.

Speaker 1 (02:10:55):
Yep.

Speaker 5 (02:10:55):
That means your island does to sink.

Speaker 1 (02:10:57):
And that's why you know, reform is not in can
be enough, because this is how the system is designed.
It's designed to push risk downward and outward, onto the
working class, onto the global south, and onto the next generation.
Because that's another dimension of externalization. Right time, even our
future gets externalized in a sense. You know, all of

(02:11:20):
our resources are limited or finite resources that can used
up now at an increase in velocity.

Speaker 5 (02:11:27):
Right. Yeah, the national debt.

Speaker 1 (02:11:29):
Of some countries is being something further and further into now.
Right the emissions the center of all those emissions now
fossil fuels, you know, all that stuff, because we don't
have to do the consequences, so the future don't have
to do the consequences as the system digging its own grave,
because even though the system needs stability, it will sacrifice

(02:11:53):
future stability for present profits. It will sacrifice nature, which
is the basis of the economy. It will sacrifice nature
to the economy in service of the economy. It will
treat natures disposable and infinite and something external to the
way that we run things as if as if it's
not going to catch up to us, and so as

(02:12:14):
collapse will accelerate, as the consequences become more apparent on
the sacrifice zones of the periphery. The powers that beyond
interested in fixing it. You know, they're going to fortify
themselves against it through border patrols, through climate walls, through
militarize disaster response. They're going to double down.

Speaker 4 (02:12:34):
Yeah, make it harder and harder to see the consequences
of a excessive consumption of capitalism, like until the levy breaks,
I guess literally or metaphorically.

Speaker 1 (02:12:47):
Yep, literally or metaphorically. And I want people to keep
in mind who are listening. You know, this Qan periphery
is und just the periphery out there, it's also the

(02:13:07):
periphery within that we're talking about in terms of consequences,
the internal dumping grounds, whether it be you know, indigenous reservations,
or the neighborhoods of black and round people, or the
prisons that often serve as the holding tanks for discontent
and for poverty and for all the nasty consequences that

(02:13:29):
society doesn't want to deal with because of the way
society has been structured.

Speaker 4 (02:13:33):
Yeah, or just like under the bridge near your house,
you know, like like we.

Speaker 1 (02:13:38):
Exactly treat exactly like.

Speaker 4 (02:13:42):
San Diego has this particular legisative initiative, which I find
like obviously it's fucked, but also like it's very so
it's so obvious, like they they passed to think on
a camping there where they're going to make it illegal
to be.

Speaker 5 (02:13:57):
Unhoused on the sidewalk.

Speaker 4 (02:13:59):
You're like, it's a bad and it's band against camping
on the sidewalk, right, And all it does it doesn't
provide housing for people, and that it doesn't solve the issue.
It moves people. Our cities very hilly and we have
lots of canyons in which they can't build. It moves
people into these canyons.

Speaker 5 (02:14:17):
Wow, and it.

Speaker 4 (02:14:18):
Just makes the same people invisible, right, Like that's the
goal that the goal is not to provide any form
of solution. It's just to move these people away so
they don't have to be poor in public. And so
the people who who use homes as a vehicle for
wealth creation, not as a place for humans to live,

(02:14:40):
don't have to see the consequences of their actions.

Speaker 1 (02:14:44):
Exactly. It's all about what they want, right, I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah,
you know, in a sense, depending on how you look
at it, any one of us can be a core
and any one of us can be a periphery. You know,
to our rulers, we are all the periphery that they
can push their consequences onto. In another sense, you know,

(02:15:06):
I am part of the periphery, and do you are
part of the core, James? And in another sense, you know,
I might be considered part of the core in my
own country in some ways because of my class position,
because of my educational background, because of some of the
ways that I can be insulated, whereas you know, other ways,

(02:15:26):
you know, you might be the periphree in the United States,
to the core, to the elites, to the ruling class.
And so this isn't to diminish the very real differences
between the global core and the global periphery. It's also
make it clear to those of you in the global
core that you should be in solidarity with that global
periphery because their consequences are ultimately your own. You know,

(02:15:49):
ultimately we are all the ones who are going to
be holding the costs, cleaning the mess, surviving the fallout.
And then it's nothow tough. It is because when you
live with a system that is based on externalization harm,
you can end up lashing out on others as well.
You know that that that logic, that systemic logic becomes

(02:16:11):
it o an lies, become as part of how you
navigate even your relationships. But we don't have to accept
that way of doing things. The periphery, regardless of which
prefer you're referring to, does hold the potential for change.
And so you know, in the beginning, when we were
speaking of externalization of economic and the economic dimension specifically,

(02:16:34):
it's important to understand capitalism relies on these flowers, these
very smooth flows of labor, energy, and resources and data
from periferrey to core however you define those terms, and
so when we interrupt those flows, even briefly, we can
shake those foundations. And that sort of approached, that effort

(02:16:56):
to interrupt, is really part of what social revolution is about.
It's how we make the changes that we want to see. Yeah,
you know, I speak a social revolution as not some
flashy one time event or moment in history, but as
an ongoing process, as something that is taking place right
now at different levels, in different ways all over the world.

(02:17:19):
And so we can speak of the things we do
to oppose the current system, like these strikes and blockades
that have taken place around the world, the indigenous land
defense struggles that are taking place around the world, they
rent strikes and mutual aid that have taken place around
the world. And then beyond that sort of opposition, talking

(02:17:41):
about the things we do to propose and alternative to
construct the kind of world and the kind of life
that we need so we don't have to rely on
these systems anymore, that exploit us, to make these systems obsolete,
to build the cooperatives, to build work a control, collectives
and disaster response outside of the state, to sort of
crack the system, and to create in those cracks the

(02:18:04):
space where a different system, a new life can grue. Yeah,
to not become one big machine or one centralized struggle
or movement, but to multiply and interconnect and adapt to
the niche circumstances we're all dealing with, like my celium,

(02:18:26):
you know, like the mushrooms.

Speaker 4 (02:18:28):
Yeah, yeah, that technology, Like it's sort of you're like
opening a crack thing paraphrases Zappatista texts right like and
they have this either just phrase I like from Supermandente Marcos.
That translates just like, we don't have to change the
world because we're building another one right now, and you
know you don't have to we don't have to conquer.

(02:18:49):
Like there's this obsession on the left with like revolutionists,
like you said, like an act that occurs at a
point in.

Speaker 1 (02:18:56):
Time capital r revolution.

Speaker 4 (02:18:58):
Yes, yeah, as opposed to like building the world where
the things that we don't wish to see become irrelevant
through our actions every day. Like you use the example
of people being an house, which I mentioned before, right,
Like the way we build a world where those people
aren't externalized is by not externalizing those people. Like you know,

(02:19:20):
it's not hard to do. You probably talk to human
beings every day anyway. Just continue to do that, you know,
take your neighbor a sandwich, and like that's the revolution
that you can build slowly, and maybe it's not as exciting.
It's like, you know, the one way you I've attended

(02:19:42):
the revolutions where people fight against the state, but you
still have to do the hard work. You still have
to do that, like day to day building of a
different way of relating to one another, even in those
revolutions where things change quickly and violently exactly.

Speaker 1 (02:19:56):
Yeah, yeah, and I mean even before we get to
that point you know, to be able to change the
way relate to each other. It starts with mindset, It
starts with shifting our realm or possibility is, you know,
not necessarily killing the memes of capitalism, and I mean
memes in the sensor. Richard Dawkins originally use the term

(02:20:17):
as these cultural ideas that persist, that spread, that adapt
It's difficult to kill those those memes, but you can
replace them with better memes. And so replacing and popularizing
those memes, those ideas, you are challenging the idea that
you know rest is laziness, you know, challenging the idea

(02:20:38):
that you know the end goal is profit, that there's
no other system besides Catholics, and that that's something better
isn't on the horizon. Shift in that sense reality, I
think is a very important part of the struggle, and
with every act, because I think ideas have to be
accompanied by act. With every act, I think it helps
to break the spell, to cut off, to put an

(02:21:02):
end to that externalization. Because even though capitalists and will
continue to try to push its arm outward and downward,
are we and away from view, we can continue to
challenge it inwardly, to push our struggle upward and to
center our struggle in the center of view so we
can see it, so that we can feel us, and

(02:21:23):
so that we can act against it. And that's all
I have for this episode. All forward to all the people. Peace.

Speaker 9 (02:21:52):
This is it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. Today
I'm joined by Mia Wong. I am reporting from the
beautiful and side People's Republic of New York City, and
we are Zoe back. It is Clover Dimes Squares on
Suicide Watch. Zomentum is sweeping the nation. Zoronimum Donni has

(02:22:14):
won the Democratic primary for the mayor of New York City,
beating veterans sexual harasser Andrew Cuomo. It was it was
quite a night in New York last night. We are
recording this Wednesday morning. The final ranked vote will be
done in about a week, but Cuomo has conceded the

(02:22:36):
race to Zoron, who has declared a pretty decisive victory.

Speaker 12 (02:22:40):
It's been very funny seeing the dashing weeping of the
Quotmo camp has been very funny. New York has officially
been upgraded from a Tier two to a Tier one
point five. Chinese City given give it another decade, it'll
it will have entered Chinese civilization.

Speaker 5 (02:22:55):
The vibes are good. The vibes are good. Well.

Speaker 9 (02:22:58):
The only difference is that now we will have an
actually communist government in a city instead of the fake
state capitalist governments of the Chinese mega.

Speaker 12 (02:23:07):
City objectively more communists to one point five chety city government.

Speaker 5 (02:23:15):
An American bogeeli.

Speaker 12 (02:23:17):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (02:23:18):
It was. It was a pretty exciting night in New
York last night.

Speaker 9 (02:23:21):
I and many people were not expecting a clear result
so soon. I think Cuomo conceded around ten to thirty
as the boat was still coming in, but it was
pretty clear that Zoron did a like very very impressive,
very impressive sweep, really solid turnout across the boroughs, just

(02:23:42):
to like get a sense of like where we were at.
Like I got to announce to a pretty pretty large
room full of trans people at the Metropolitan Bar that
Cuomo conceded to Zoron, and Zoron has won. And I
had not felt better in months. It was really in
big rating Is was like the first like ray of

(02:24:03):
hope in a political sense that I've that that it's
been like so deeply felt. Nothing ever happens. Camp Is
Is is finally finally taking.

Speaker 13 (02:24:11):
It so jover for nothing ever happens the shear, the
sheer like joy and excitement being in like a room
of like one hundred, one hundred queer people, as as
as Cuomo gets defeated and so on securing the primary,
it was it was just infigurating.

Speaker 9 (02:24:32):
In many ways, this feels a lot bigger than even
like AOC's win a few years ago. And it feels
so much more real than like the Sanders campaign really
ever did, because New York is such as like as
such a condensed concentrated area. Now it has not quite
like an inevitability but of a pretty a pretty strong
certainty of of what's going to happen come November in

(02:24:54):
the general election.

Speaker 12 (02:24:56):
Yeah, And I think the thing that's maybe in some
ways the biggest deal about this is that New York
was like the capital of the giant sort of right
wing backlash inside the Democratic Party to twenty twenty. Yeah, right,
like this is the city that elected Eric Adams in
twenty twenty one.

Speaker 5 (02:25:12):
Right, like it just.

Speaker 12 (02:25:12):
Straight up a cop is ruled for like four years
by just like this unhinged, corrupt alliance of like fucking
real estate developers and like unhinged right wing billionaires and
the cops who ran this really really effective sort of
politics of like the demonization of unhoused people and like

(02:25:33):
anti immigrant politics, and the shift right in this in
the Neu Democratic Party like single handedly shifted the entire
country to the right. You could literally see where the
New York media market was in the twenty twenty two elections.
You could see on the map who was getting the
news because it was so right wing. And that's just broken.
That whole thing, Like this place was just which was

(02:25:54):
like the capital of of the kind of revolution broke
and that whole tide like you can it's you know,
in the same way that like Hunters Thompson talked about
how you could see like you could see them with
the tide of the sixties broke standing in Vegas, Like
sitting here right now, you can see the place where
the tide of that right wing surge in New York broke.
And it was last night we saw their high points. Yeah,

(02:26:16):
they couldn't elect the fucking sexual predator. That was as
far as they could go.

Speaker 5 (02:26:20):
A Cuomo too, Like like.

Speaker 9 (02:26:23):
I know some people are slightly annoyed about like the
outsized influence of the New York mayoral election, affecting everybody
who's like online and cares about politics in the United
States and even even abroad. But this is like not
not only as New York, like the biggest city in
the country. This is like more so a representative battle

(02:26:45):
for the future of the party and like what the
future of democratic politics, not just the Democratic Party but
literally like like democracies and like what the future of
politics in this country is going to be is kind
of emblematic over how this race went. Are we going
to go back to like the same old establishment dem
Party stuff, Clinton's Cuomos, Obama, Biden Harris, or are we

(02:27:08):
actually going to legitimately chart a new course forward to
counter this fascist element taking power across the country and
against nearly all odds and like thirty million dollars, the
underdogs actually would and pulled it off really strongly, And
this really is like the battle for the future of
the party. Early turnout was massive for this primary. In

(02:27:31):
the final three days of early voting, we saw like
the youngest demographic of voters come out in high high numbers.
One quarter of early voters were first time Democratic primary participants.
And young voters between the ages of twenty five and
thirty four made up the largest share of early turnout.
And this was all up against the entire forces of

(02:27:51):
the Democratic Party establishment coming together in the past few months,
just specifically to stop Mamdani from taking the primary election.
There was twenty five million dollars of super pac funding
behind Andrew Cuomo, which is the largest in New York
City mayoral history. This pack was backed by Michael Bloomberg,
Door Dash, Bill Ackman Trump funder and this pack allowed

(02:28:15):
Cuomo backers to spend three times as much money than
what Quomo's actual campaign legally can. In comparison, Mamdanie's pack
had just one point two million dollars plus five hundred
thousand in anti Cuomo spending from the Working Families Party.
In an attempt to seal the deal, the Cuomo team

(02:28:36):
got the coveted Bill Clinton endorsement, really really forming like
the Toucher's alliance with Cuomo and Clinton, Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton.

Speaker 5 (02:28:47):
There's one more sex pens for you to endorse. It's
time for you to endorse Donald Trump. What world job
that like?

Speaker 9 (02:28:56):
That that really was like emblematic of like the type
of democratic party that Mamdani was up against, right, and
the one that working people of New York and people
around the country we're hoping might finally get defeated after
it's won one over on Sanders for the past like
eight years, and last night it finally happened.

Speaker 5 (02:29:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (02:29:18):
And I also want to say, like this is not
just when we're talking about the sort of political apparatus
to the Democratic Party being deployed in support of Cuomo.
It wasn't just like the DoorDash guys like bringing out
their checkbook. It was like the actual internal political machines
of a whole bunch of very very important and influential
local and sort of mid level political officials through their

(02:29:40):
entire political machines behind Cuomo and then got fucking rolled
in ways that are just absolutely hysterical. Entire political machines
basically just got annihilated trying to stop this.

Speaker 9 (02:29:54):
It was.

Speaker 12 (02:29:55):
It reminds me in a lot of ways of like
the way that like a bunch of the old machines
broke in in Chicago with with Brandon Johnson were like
you had like Mike Madigan making one last appearance the
most powerful figure in Illinois politics for thirty years and
just gets crushed in that election. So this was both
a money efforts and a we're using our political machines

(02:30:17):
on the ground to try to do this, and they
fucking lost.

Speaker 5 (02:30:20):
And it rules.

Speaker 9 (02:30:22):
They were photo shopping images of Zoron to make him
look more brown and muslimah. They were making its beard longer,
they were making his skin and his hairy darker. Like,
they were pulling out all the stops and it didn't work.

Speaker 12 (02:30:35):
It was like Clinton two thousand and eight, like Barack
Hussein Obama, like burther conspiracy shit. Yeah, like, that's the
last time I remember this party being this racist, like
very specifically in these lines.

Speaker 5 (02:30:45):
And it failed, and it didn't work. It failed.

Speaker 9 (02:30:49):
We'll talk about some of the actual results and Zoron's
campaign itself after this break. All right, we are back.
It's a beautiful sunny day in New York. It's actually
way too hot. There's a massive heat wave going through

(02:31:13):
the entire East coast. New York has been like one
hundred degrees the past few days. Thank god, it was
one hundred degrees on the day of the election. It
kept all those Cuomo supporters home. We're calling him Mandate
of Heaven Mandani, good stuff. So let's let's let's talk
about the actual results so far. So as as of

(02:31:33):
this morning, Wednesday morning, we got ninety three percent of
the vote in on the first rank, Mondanni has forty
three point five percent versus Cuomo's thirty six point four
and Zoran ally brad Lander with eleven point three followed
by a whole bunch of others. Now, really, as soon
as like numbers started coming in, like after the early vote,

(02:31:54):
which which we expected would lean in favor of Zoran,
but after more and more results started coming in, Manhattan
started to looking more and more orange. And that's the
that's color at the times as using for Zoron. And
this was the first like sign for me that Zora
might be having a pretty good night, because people were
expecting that, you know, pretty big chunks of Manhattan and

(02:32:16):
certainly like Staten Island in the Bronx would be would
be going towards Cuomo decisively, or at least if this,
if this was going to be Cumba's night, that's what
we would be seeing. And that's not what happened. The
northern tip of Staten Island leaning towards mom Donnie and
really most of Manhattan except for the Upper west Side
and the Upper east Side went to Zoron. And that

(02:32:39):
is like super super I guess, like surprising, but like
positive surprise, like surprisingly, this is this is like this
is great. Yeah, like a really really strong night.

Speaker 5 (02:32:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (02:32:49):
One of the most interesting trends of this was that
Mandanny just just absolutely annihilated like every Asian district up
up fifteen, up fifteen and not Okay, so you would
kind of expect this in South Asian districts. He went
into a bunch of what are generally pretty conservative, like
like Chinese districts and like Queens and shit, and just

(02:33:11):
fucking rolled them.

Speaker 5 (02:33:13):
Yeah, Like in like South Brooklyn.

Speaker 12 (02:33:15):
Like a very very powerful sort of like right wing
Chinese political machine like went to war against him, just annihilated.

Speaker 5 (02:33:20):
Right.

Speaker 12 (02:33:21):
The Asian vote in general had kind of been trending
right in the last half a decade based on sort
of like anti immigrant shit, anti homeless shit and all
of that. Just like instantly pivoted.

Speaker 9 (02:33:32):
Everything's out of astoria in Queens just just full full
zor On. Yeah, and like just rolled these districts.

Speaker 12 (02:33:38):
And I think this is a thing where I think
We're gonna talk more about the ice stuff later, but
I genuinely think part of what we're starting to see
here is like.

Speaker 9 (02:33:45):
Brad Lander, who the MVP brad Lander honestly like like
a critical part of this who knows to him like absolutely,
like we certainly have different opinions on some key issues,
but he really pulled out the stops to make sure
that Cuomo does not get in, yeah, and helped him
defend against them pretty pretty horrific yeah, is homophobic attacks.

Speaker 12 (02:34:04):
Yeah, and like, and that alliance I think was actually
was really really important because it meant that the kind
of like left flank of the liberals and the progressives
and sort of social democrats weren't fighting each other, which
has been what's happening and like fucking every other city
is that these two factions go to war and then
like just the fucking sex predators win the election because
of it, and shere you get a very very important

(02:34:25):
strategic alliance that allows a bunch of people to vote
for Mamdani who wouldn't have. And this this sort of
alliance that they've forged here was just like stunningly successful,
basically like outperformed expectations basically everywhere. I think this is
also a kind of decisive anti ice thing because both

(02:34:45):
Mamdanni and Lander have been actually straight up on the
front lines of like anti ice stuff. Lander famously got
arrested for trying to get in the way of a
just hideously illegal disappearance of Uffish constituents and got fucking
arrested for it. And I think that stuff we're seeing
the political impacts of everyone being like, holy shit, they're

(02:35:08):
trying to deport like every nu migration in this country.

Speaker 5 (02:35:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (02:35:10):
Madanni up six points with the Hispanic up five with
white plus fifteen Asian. Quomo is is up eighteen percent
with the black vote.

Speaker 5 (02:35:22):
And Quomo like underperformed there too, he did underperform.

Speaker 12 (02:35:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (02:35:25):
One thing that's interesting is the medium income levels. Madani
did better with middle class and high income vote middle
class up ten, high income up thirteen, whereas Cuomo did
better up thirteen with lower income, Which I mean, this
is like some classic We see this a lot in

(02:35:45):
like national elections, where like people vote against their own interests.

Speaker 5 (02:35:50):
This is weird.

Speaker 9 (02:35:51):
This is like what the Republican Party gets so much
of their support from. So this is also like education
bracket difference.

Speaker 12 (02:35:59):
Yeah, and I think some of it also is like
a lot of the voters who would have voted vandor
and would not have supported Mondani like were given permission
to back him, and that boosted his vote share a lot.

Speaker 9 (02:36:09):
Yes, But like in terms of like why lower income
is swinging towards Cuomo, Yeah, specifically people making under fifty
k year swinging more towards Cuomo, even though Zoran is
running a campaign specifically for those people that is also
largely up in the bronx.

Speaker 12 (02:36:24):
I will also say, like, the other thing that's very
weird about the way these are tabulated is because it's
it's tabulated by area, not by the actual people, yes, correct,
which means you can get these things where like you
see this Trump sometimes where like it looks like he's
doing really well in like a district with like a
really with like really low median income. But what's happening
is like every single rich person in that district voted

(02:36:46):
and then no one else did. Yeah, So the numbers
are a bit weird when when when you're looking at
these sort of like priestin counts. Yeah, votes, but yeah,
it's it's been a I don't know it's a it
is a constant trend in the Bara Ohough, I guess
this is everything that was actually very very different from Chicago,
where in Chicago it was like basically pure income line
for Brandon Johnson, the sort of like vaguely left person.

Speaker 9 (02:37:09):
There is like New York is a very like middle
class city in a lot of ways, Like there's a
lot of people in the middle class bracket, a lot
of people in the lower class bracket as well, but
in terms of like like medium income levels, there's like
a huge, huge number of like middle class voters. Specifically,
like the vote map for the for the middle income

(02:37:30):
is so much bigger. I think it is worth highlighting
what made Zorn's campaign special right, Like people are probably
pretty familiar with like the slick videos, which yeah, he
was really good at making videos. He is a great communicator,
probably his biggest, like biggest strength is his ability to
be like personable and is of just a pretty good

(02:37:53):
public speakers, great at communication. His mom's a relatively well
known filmmaker, and not super surprising that he put he
put a lot of work into making sure his like
online TV ads were like top notch. One of the
more unique things that he did is a huge focus
on multi language outreach, which like, obviously New York is

(02:38:13):
a city of like dozens and dozens and dozens of languages,
and the Quoto campaign did not focus on that, but
this was a huge, huge focus of Zoron's campaign. Like,
when you signed up for phone banking, you got to
go through a massive dropdown menu of languages to phone banking,
and Zoron himself was like speaking multiple languages. On the

(02:38:35):
campaign trail, he had a huge, huge volunteer ground game.
It was canvassing door Knox phone banking. My apartment had
people stop in multiple times in the past week alone.
The biggest focus of his campaign itself was a focus
on affordability. I want to Play a ad that started
running on TV and online about two weeks ago. This

(02:38:57):
is one of his less personal ads, right, like as
opposed to his ads where he's like talking around New
York talking to people, like addressing straight to camera, that
kind of stuff, which is kind of in the staple
of his campaign. So like, this ad is not that
it is more like a classic political ad, but I
think it still hits really hard. And this one like
kind of brain wormed itself. Into my head because of

(02:39:18):
how like concise it is, and it hits so many
things that even because of the last like general election,
right like the twenty twenty four presidential It reflects the
things that a lot of voters are concerned about, which
is affordability, even if that means they will vote against
their interests and vote in support of these like crazy tariffs.
But I'm going to play this thirty second ad here.

Speaker 5 (02:39:39):
There is a myth about this city.

Speaker 8 (02:39:41):
It's the lie that life has to be hard in
New York. I believe we can guarantee cheaper groceries, we
can raise the minimum wage, we can freeze the rent
for more.

Speaker 5 (02:39:51):
Than two million tenants and.

Speaker 8 (02:39:53):
Build hundreds of thousands of affordable homes. It city government's
job to deliver that. We are done settling for less.

Speaker 5 (02:40:02):
Are you ready for a city we can.

Speaker 12 (02:40:03):
Afford a.

Speaker 5 (02:40:08):
Rising?

Speaker 1 (02:40:08):
Went Thromlicus.

Speaker 9 (02:40:10):
So that was the main app that's been going across
TV the past two weeks. This is this is his
like final final push, and it addresses this like a
conception of New York that's definitely been in my mind
ever since I was a kid. I always thought this
is a thing you can only live in if you're
you know, very rich, if you're well off, and like,
upon visiting here for the first time, I just realized
how much that isn't true, how much this is like

(02:40:31):
actually a working class city. How many people keep this
massive like concrete machine running who do not live in
like a Manhattan pent house. Obviously, and yes it can
be challenging, but we've like almost abandoned this place as
like a zone of combat, as like a place to
actually like build like an affordable, an affordable, stable life.

(02:40:52):
And to see a candidate just directly address this is
so invigorating. He ran on freezing the rent, free buses,
a pilot program for city run grocery stores, free to
low cost childcare, raising minimum wage, and he didn't cave
or waiver on controversial issues, or apologize or redact for
past statements. He got really good at deflecting when people

(02:41:14):
asked him about like previous statements out about how you know,
the NYPD is terrible. He did really good about moving
towards talking about how NYPD should not be handling people
in like mental health crises, how there should be other
public safety workers who can help people in distress who
are not the NYPD and just a very very slick
job handling some like massive, massive amounts of anti woke attacks,

(02:41:39):
referencing like the twenty twenty era of politics. Let's go
on a break and then talk about his acceptance speech
and the reaction from the National Democrat and Republican parties. Okay,

(02:42:03):
we are so back. So the past few months, Democrats
have been asking this question like, how do we how
do we reach young voters, how do we reach the
young white to male vote. We need like a Joe
Rogan of the left, all these types of crazy things.
And you had this guy Zord who started to get

(02:42:24):
massively popular with young people, including young young men, and
that you saw this entire party mobilized to stop him,
to suppress any any movement that Zora was able to make.

Speaker 5 (02:42:37):
And David Hogg, who is currently also being.

Speaker 9 (02:42:40):
Rap fucked by the Democratic National Committee, has been campaigning
with Zoran the past few weeks, and he he said
a few days ago, quote, the same establishment that is
spending millions to destroy Zoron will say in a few
months that we need to spend millions on polling and
testing to win back young people. Open your goddamn eyes.
It's free and yeah, he's right, this is the solution.

(02:43:03):
The solution is staring them in the face and they
were wanting to stop it.

Speaker 12 (02:43:06):
Yep, young people are begging you to co opt them,
and they won't do it because they know what they
would rather have Nazis and one percent higher taxes.

Speaker 5 (02:43:14):
They want to be co opted.

Speaker 9 (02:43:16):
And like actually fight for something, like actually have something
to strive for, and like that's something that the Democrats
have been so resistant to the past eight years. Like
even even Joe Biden's campaign wasn't like fighting for anything,
it was to like return to normal. Kamenthris's campaign wasn't
really fighting for anything either. It was just to stop
Donald Trump. And this is like this campaign wasn't just

(02:43:38):
about beating Cuomo. It was also about like envisioning an
actually positive future of the city. And I was legitimately
surprised that Cuomo conceded so early on. In his speech,
he said, quote, tonight was not our night, Tonight is
his night. He deserved it.

Speaker 5 (02:43:53):
He won.

Speaker 9 (02:43:55):
And from the moves that Komo's making, it seems like
he's probably not going to run as an independent in
the general like he maybe have been planning to if
it was closer. It does not seem to be going
that direction. It seems like he's kind of realized that
his career is finished.

Speaker 5 (02:44:10):
Yeah, he got rolled. Go back to the suburbs. Motherfucker.

Speaker 9 (02:44:16):
Ugh Chuck Schumer called Soharan Wednesday morning and posted quote,
I've known Zora Mamdnnie since we were together to provide
a debt relief for thousands of leaguered taxi drivers and
fought to stop a fracked gas plant in a Storia.
He ran an impressive campaign that connected with New Yorkers
about affordability, fairness, and opportunity. I spoke with him this
morning and I'm looking forward to getting together soon. Alkim

(02:44:39):
Jeffries said, congratulations is Zar Mumdanni on a decisive primary victory.
As having been, Mumdannie ran a strong campaign that relentlessly
focused on the economy and bringing down the high cost
of living in New York City. We spoke this morning
and planned to meet in central Brooklyn shortly. The top
dogs are bowing down.

Speaker 12 (02:44:57):
All these Chuck Schub retreats are just straight up Please
don't primary me because AOC is going to beat him
by thirty.

Speaker 9 (02:45:03):
He's gonna get primary like he's done. Who did you
get obliterated? But I was expecting slightly more resistance, And
it seems like parts of the Democrats have like realized
that this actually is the future of the party now
and there's no use fighting anymore.

Speaker 5 (02:45:16):
This is the way to go.

Speaker 9 (02:45:17):
Yes, it goes against what all like the consultants are saying,
right to be like, you know, the Democrats went too woke,
we went too far to the left.

Speaker 5 (02:45:23):
We have to return to the center.

Speaker 9 (02:45:24):
Even though that's what we've been doing for the Democratic
Party for eight years. This election shows how much of
that is like a complete bullshit lie that no, it's
not about going too far left, it's about actually wanting
to fight for something real. And I'm kind of surprised
that the these these two top dogs are giving in
to the zmentum.

Speaker 12 (02:45:44):
I think also, and this is the thing like some
one of my friends brought up, is that like mom
Downy like isn't really like aoc no, no, no, this
is something like very very important for like New York politics,
which is like he's not like I'll be politically he is,
but like he's not a complete outsider to New York politics.
All these people know him they know him from like

(02:46:07):
legislative shit right, and he has like relationships with them
in a way that would be very very different if
if he was, like I don't know, just like some
like a complete outsider who'd been like a protest leader
or whatever.

Speaker 5 (02:46:18):
He has he has proven himself.

Speaker 12 (02:46:20):
He has like tense relations but like yeah, but like
he like these people know him, and that's something that
can matter a lot in terms of like how these
reactions play out and in terms of like how desperate
they are to stop him.

Speaker 9 (02:46:33):
The Attorney General of New York was making like Obama
two thousand and eight references, being like this, this was
the energy in New York last night. And I wasn't
around for the two thousand and eight presidential election. I
mean I was alive, I just don't remember because I
was also in Canada. But it did feel pretty exuberant
last night walking around Brooklyn. And like this absolutely still

(02:46:56):
is like a rejection of the Democratic Party establishment. That's
what these results show. And we have to like claim
a firm victory now, like hard line with with with
with such a strong fist that like any potential fuckery
in the future, whether it's from like other Dems or
from the Republicans, like from Trump right, like they're obviously
willing to arrest the New York City controller. So like

(02:47:18):
any potential fuckery needs to look so much worse. People
have to close ranks around zor On like immediately and
like strengthen him. He needs to be like the face,
like if they're going to take this guy down, he
needs to be like the face of everything for like
the next while.

Speaker 12 (02:47:33):
We're sort of seeing like slightly smaller sharks, like trailing
around the wake of the shark. Like you were talking
about the Democratic Turnyan General Leatitia James, who gave a
really really compelling speech, like I actually think she's like
a better speaker.

Speaker 5 (02:47:47):
Than any of the people involved in this race.

Speaker 12 (02:47:49):
And she is like she has one hundred percent primary
in the governor, like not one hundred percent, but like
probably primary in the governor next year. Like this is
you know, like people, people are sort of people have
been flocking around this for a while and I think,
I don't know, this is this is some real doesn't
take a weatherman to see which way the winds are
blowing shit Like they are, Yeah, they are, they are.

(02:48:10):
They are living in fear they are, they are bending
the knee, they are et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 5 (02:48:18):
Very funny.

Speaker 9 (02:48:19):
And now the Republican Party is going to be on
the attack. The baton's being passed from establishment Dems to
the Republicans to.

Speaker 5 (02:48:27):
Try to take down.

Speaker 9 (02:48:29):
Zoron, or at least paint Zoron as this new like
radical face of the Democratic Party, like like racism levels
are gonna They're gonna reach never before seen heights. It's
gonna be like Post nine to eleven all over again.
The National Republican Congression Committee is already calling Zoron the
new face of the Democratic.

Speaker 5 (02:48:43):
Party, which yeah, he should be.

Speaker 9 (02:48:46):
That's not like fucking bring it if you want, just
like a breath of fresh air, I would recommend watching
some financial news from from Wednesday morning.

Speaker 12 (02:48:56):
Oh it's so good, Hot commy summer Baby, hot commed Sumner.

Speaker 5 (02:49:00):
Who I Am.

Speaker 9 (02:49:03):
Executions in Central Park are about to begin.

Speaker 12 (02:49:06):
The Workers Republic is established, the Commonwealth of Labor rules.

Speaker 9 (02:49:11):
We're waiting for Chairman mcdani to make the final call.
Lists are being made.

Speaker 5 (02:49:16):
Only you can ford the Soviets seize your workplaces. At
the time is now. I do want to play a
brief click from c NBC.

Speaker 9 (02:49:29):
If you've seen where what Batman is up against in
Gotham and what the guy running for mayor is up against.

Speaker 5 (02:49:36):
That's what it reminds you.

Speaker 9 (02:49:37):
They're taking Wall streeters and make him walk out onto
the ice in the East river as and hope and
then they fall through.

Speaker 2 (02:49:45):
I mean there is a class warfare.

Speaker 5 (02:49:47):
That's so what's happened here? I think it's a rich type.
There's a division within the Demo. Whoa, that's right. There
is a division. The revelation baby.

Speaker 9 (02:50:02):
Eat the Wrench. There is a division of the Democratic Party.

Speaker 5 (02:50:06):
Walked them out onto the ice. We're sending him onto
the ice.

Speaker 9 (02:50:10):
Is all on hand in hand with the Bain and
Chilly and Murphy are gonna be.

Speaker 5 (02:50:16):
Sending them on to the hunts and the spirit of
occupy lives. Oh my god.

Speaker 9 (02:50:23):
Bill Ackman Cromo and Trump Backer said quote, I was
a bit depressed when I woke up this morning, but
now I'm optimistic. I have a great idea on New
York City, and I will share it as soon as
I can. We are looking into legal issues. Good luck,
good luck, Bill, have fun out there.

Speaker 5 (02:50:44):
Oh no, they're good. Wait, this is they're just gonna
do persperas in Agane who cares. Oh no, bring it,
bring it. I will say like this this coverage, like
I like, people don't.

Speaker 12 (02:50:54):
Understand how one hints coverage is going to be. Like
in Chicago when when when Brandon Johnson won the election,
Brandon john is like significantly to the right of mom Donnie.
Right when Brandon Johnson won the election, the Chicago press
went so insane that all of them pretended to be
pro immigrant. Oh yeah, Like, do you understand how unhinged

(02:51:15):
the press has to get here because like like one
of Johnson things that he was like fucking over like
immigrants here, and he was like this immigrant the shelters
are putting put in where substandard and people are getting sick,
and like we had the best coverage of immigration issues
under Biden in the country because specifically that was the
thing the reason to attack him.

Speaker 9 (02:51:30):
I'm super curious what the Times is gonna do because
like they've also pulled out all the stops the past
the past few weeks to try to to try to
stop Zoran.

Speaker 5 (02:51:39):
It's gonna be unhinged.

Speaker 9 (02:51:41):
The winds blowing in his direction now though, like I
don't know what they're gonna do.

Speaker 12 (02:51:45):
I don't know, Like I think that specific class of
people is just going to hate him until the end,
Like I think. I think, like like David Brooks is
going to be writing college about how there are like
pagrams going on like on this streets, Like Brett Stevens
is gonna be like I don't know, they're going to
go to call it like super Lebanon, Like it's gonna
be like levels of unhinged no one's ever seen before.

Speaker 9 (02:52:06):
Now, speaking of the Times, Obama's tree strategist was quoted
in a New York Times article Wednesday morning, quote, there
is no doubt that Trump and Republicans will try and
seize on him as a kind of exemplar of what
the Democratic Party stands for. The thing is, he seems
both principled and agile and deft enough to confront those
sorts of confrontational plays. I do want to read off

(02:52:30):
from a Fox News screenshot this morning, showcasing Zoron's horrific,
terrifying communist platform, which includes housing freezing rent, building afford
level housing, creating city owned grocery stores whoa fair, free buses,
raising the minimum wage to thirty dollars by twenty thirty

(02:52:51):
and LGBTQIA plus protections expanding and protecting gender affirming care citywide,
making NYC and lgbtq a I plus the sanctuary city
and trump proofing NYC to end ice cooperation. Hell yeah,
thank you, thank you Fox News for that, for that
great list of reasons.

Speaker 5 (02:53:11):
It's to like Zaran Mamdani, I think.

Speaker 12 (02:53:14):
I think I think it's actually genuinely really important. She's
like the only Democratic candidate in fucking ages who actively
campaigned on like putting more funding in the trans healthcare
like sixty five million dollars of funding.

Speaker 5 (02:53:24):
Yeah, fucking being pro trans wins.

Speaker 12 (02:53:26):
Being anti trans gets your ass kicked back to the suburbs.

Speaker 5 (02:53:29):
Like fucking Cuomo, eat shit, eat shit.

Speaker 12 (02:53:32):
Your Democratic strategists fuck off and die eat shit. You
will be the ones in the fucking graves that you
were digging for us, Like, fuck off, we have dunk
your electoral grapes.

Speaker 9 (02:53:45):
This is why when I was at this like trans
open mic at Metropolitan last night, like the whole room
just like lit up in cheers, because yeah, like we've
been we've been dealing with the past like six months.
This idea that like trans writes is like the thing
that's killing Democratic paulics and fucking know it isn't.

Speaker 12 (02:54:02):
Yeah, and Quo Quoto Cuoto read as a fucking transphobe
because he is, and it didn't work. This is the
joint feminist transgender victory over the forces of the turf
sex predator.

Speaker 5 (02:54:14):
Fuck them.

Speaker 9 (02:54:16):
To wrap up my stuff here, I do want to
play one minute from Zorn's acceptance speech, which I think
uh speaks for itself.

Speaker 5 (02:54:25):
And it's where the mayor will use their power to.

Speaker 14 (02:54:29):
Reject Donald Trump's fascism, to stop mass ice agents from
deporting our naghbor.

Speaker 5 (02:54:43):
I to covered our.

Speaker 8 (02:54:45):
City as a model for the Democratic Party, a party
where we fight for working people with no apology. A
life of dignity should not be reserved for a fortunate fuel.

(02:55:08):
It should be one that city government guarantees for each
and every New Yorker. If this campaign has demonstrated anything
to the world, it is that our dreams can become reality.

Speaker 9 (02:55:28):
I sure hope this is the model for the Democratic
Party going forward. Via you wanted to close on a
sad note.

Speaker 12 (02:55:36):
Yeah, I was really depressed this entire night because I
remember feeling a lot like this in like twenty twenty
three in Chicago.

Speaker 5 (02:55:44):
Yeah, because this happened in Chicago. Yeah, well not this,
but a version of this. Yeah.

Speaker 12 (02:55:49):
Like obviously Brandon Johnson was like significantly to the right
of like everything that's been happening in New York. Like
not he wasn't like a right winger, but he was
like you know, like the local DSA had conflict with
him from other stuff. But like, you know, I remember
feeling like this and then one year later, like swat
teams like deployed by the mayor that.

Speaker 5 (02:56:08):
He claimed he didn't send.

Speaker 12 (02:56:09):
We're beating up art students outside like literally in the
middle of downtown for trying to have a Palestine encampment.
And you know, like my bitter cynical personally got rap
fucked by the mayor's office.

Speaker 5 (02:56:21):
Yeah, like Citicis, I'm on, this is like it's gonna
be weird. There's gonna be a lot of shit that
sucks this.

Speaker 9 (02:56:27):
This guy is like advocated defunding the police and is
attacked like the NYPPD for years. Yeah, and now he's
intensively going to be in charge of it, and he's
he's not gonna be able to abolish the NYPD like
that that's not gonna happen. No, So there's gonna be
a degree of like you know, moratl like crisis. He's
gonna have to work against some of the things that
he stated he believes in.

Speaker 12 (02:56:48):
Yeah, And on a structural level, there's there's a really
significant problem here, which is that, like the moment you
become the leader of a capitalist city, right, it becomes
your job to keep the economy running. And the problem
is that like keeping keeping a capitalist economy running means
you have to your job is now maintaining growth for
for this economy, right, and maintaining growth through the economy

(02:57:10):
means figuring out how how to have corporation continue to
make more and more money. And that's not compatible with
being a socialist. And everyone who has ever tried to
like deal with this crisis you either like you have
two pass it's like one you become a capitalist, right,
and we see this fucking all over the place, right,

(02:57:32):
it's like you know, it's it's it's Barcelona and Caboo
coming into power, which is like this sort of like
left wing council kind of like books to Nite thing,
and then they immediately start like evicting migrates right or
two or two, you actually do the thing. You do
the thing you do, you do the actual socialism, and
we fucking we like you know this is this is
the beginning of the end of fascism in a way

(02:57:53):
where we see a fundamental change in the structure of
our economic system and that can be the outcome of this,
but we have to build it, not him, like.

Speaker 9 (02:58:00):
And I think the most he's gonna be able to
do is provide a bit of a safer zone for
us to operate in in New York.

Speaker 5 (02:58:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (02:58:07):
Yeah, he's going to be introducing more like social democratic policies,
Like he's gonna make the city like financially easier to
live in. Yeah, things will suck less, which is good.
He is going to to the end of his power
fight against Trump's.

Speaker 5 (02:58:21):
Efforts to deport your.

Speaker 9 (02:58:23):
Neighbors, and like, that is so much better than both
what Cromo would do and Eric Adams, who is actively
collaborating with the Trump administration. So this man's not going
to actually be the least algae. He's not actually going
to be the guy that ushers in the Red Revolution,
which is not even something I necessarily want. But I
think what he can do is make this an actually

(02:58:44):
better place to live right now, and specifically make it
a better place to live as the national politics in
this country are controlled by a fascist and a cabinet
full of fascists.

Speaker 12 (02:58:55):
Yeah, and he can make the largest city in the
country the rock upon which the tide of fascism breaks and.

Speaker 9 (02:59:01):
That matters, that does well, that doesn't for us today,
greatest city in the world.

Speaker 5 (02:59:07):
Cheer one point five Chinese City. Let's go.

Speaker 2 (02:59:34):
Oh, who's got ed?

Speaker 5 (02:59:38):
That's not how we start these episodes.

Speaker 2 (02:59:40):
Wow, that's how we're starting this one, Garrison, it's already begun.

Speaker 9 (02:59:43):
Welcome to Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening
in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it
means for you.

Speaker 2 (02:59:53):
That's right, motherfuckers.

Speaker 9 (02:59:55):
That's Robert Evans. I'm Garrison Davis. I'm also joined by
Mia Wong and James Stout. This week we are covering
the week of June eighteen to June twenty five.

Speaker 2 (03:00:05):
That's right, a good week where nothing but good things happened.
Assuming you are someone who manufactures thirty pound gravity utilizing
bunker busting bombs.

Speaker 5 (03:00:16):
Thirty pound that's quite a small one.

Speaker 2 (03:00:18):
Thirty thousand, thirty thousand, that's thirty thousand. Sorry. Anyway, we're
talking about Iran. We're gonna start with Iran. We're gonna
start with Iran's nuclear program, and I think we should start.
We need to start by giving the kol Zone media
cool kid's guide for how to enrich uranium.

Speaker 12 (03:00:34):
Oh no, I don't want to get arrested robbers, now, Mia,
it's not illegal to tell people how to enrich uranium.

Speaker 2 (03:00:42):
Google will do it, and I assume they're correct. Robert,
it is legal for white people to do this. I
don't know if it's legal for.

Speaker 5 (03:00:49):
Me to do this.

Speaker 2 (03:00:52):
It's okay, it's okay, it's okay. Look, if I've learned
one thing, it's that it's okay for white people to
talk about any kind of bomb on the internet. So
we'll be fine. I'll be fine. That's what matters, Robert.

Speaker 5 (03:01:04):
Do I have kidnapping insurance? Do we have an extraction
team for me when I go to ice prints? We don't.

Speaker 2 (03:01:11):
We have an extraction team, but it's not the cool
kind anyway. So let's talk about how to make nukes.
Because one thing you'll constantly hear whenever the US or
Israel talks about Iran's nuclear program, is that they're just
three to eight months away, right or weeks away. This
is what you'll hear sometimes just technically if you three
months is a number of weeks away whatever.

Speaker 5 (03:01:31):
And they've been saying this for longer than I've been alive.

Speaker 2 (03:01:36):
Here's the thing, it's technically correct, not in a way
that like is correct in the way they are trying
to push it, but in a way that is like
literally correct, which is that Iran paused their nuclear program
in two thousand and three. The current Ayatola has not
given the command to start it up again. There is
no evidence that it is currently operative. Back in March,

(03:01:57):
US military intelligence the DA concluded that there was no
indication Iran had decided or attempted to restart their nuclear program.
That said, it has been true since two thousand and
three that they are potentially about three months or so
away from having a nuke because of the way that
making nukes work. So in order to make the standard

(03:02:17):
kind of nuclear weapon that we're talking about here, you
need a bunch of enriched uranium, right, and there's two
kinds of uranium. There's two thirty five and there's two
thirty eight, and naturally they always show up together, and
there's always a lot more two thirty eight than two
thirty five, and two thirty eight is fucking bullshit. If
you're trying to make yourself a bomb, right, you want

(03:02:38):
the two thirty five. And I'm not going to go
into a ton of detail about like how you do this,
but because of just the nature of how uranium two
thirty five and two thirty eight work, they're chemically identical,
so you can't use chemical reactions to separate them, right,
So you can't use any of the easy ways that
you would like separate one from the other in order

(03:02:59):
to constant trait the kind of uranium that they want.
The only way to actually do that is by using
a centrifuge, which is, in short, uses the magic of
spinning in order to separate out the uranium that you
want from their uranium that's not very useful to you.
And Iran has a substantial quantity of like sixty percent

(03:03:21):
enriched uranium, which is basically one step away from ninety percent,
which is like what you need to actually build the
bomb that they need. And they've had a shitload of
this uranium sitting around for a while, right, because it
keeps well, and theoretically, if they were to start their
program up again, it would be theoretically possible to enrich

(03:03:42):
it in fairly short order to the concentration that you need,
right and at that point, once you have a sufficient quantity.
And you'll hear slightly different numbers, but generally agreed that
they have a sufficient quantity of uranium that is fairly
enriched that if they were to finish the they can
make somewhere between like eight to ten warheads with it, right,

(03:04:04):
like something somewhere in that vicinity, and they could have
a functional warhead within a matter of weeks after enriching,
because enriching the uranium is the hard part. Once you've
done that, it's very easy to make a nuclear weapon, right,
sufficiently skilled people could do it with like fairly minimal
technology if they like. Getting the rich uranium is the
hard part. So it's technically true that Iran is that,

(03:04:27):
you know, close to having a weapon they have been
since two thousand and three. But the more important part
of the story is that they have not been working
on a weapon, and there's no evidence even for the
DEA concluded in March that they were not actively working
on a nuclear weapon. So what's actually been going on
here is that while the Ayatola has not reauthorized the

(03:04:47):
program in quite some time, pressure has been It's been
generally agreed by people watching, you know, Iranian politics, that
pressure has been building on him in order to reauthorize
the program.

Speaker 5 (03:04:57):
Right.

Speaker 2 (03:04:58):
There's a good CBS News article on this that notes
that the US Intelligence Community assessment stated that there was
an erosion of a decades long taboo on discussing nuclear
weapons in public, brought on by all of the pressure
against Iran by Israel.

Speaker 5 (03:05:11):
Right.

Speaker 2 (03:05:11):
In other words, the more Israel and the United States
threaten and actually do bomb Iran, the more public support
there is, and the more acceptable it comes to talk
about restarting the program, right, because continuing to bomb and
attack them makes the case very strongly that well, we
probably need one of these fucking things, right, because otherwise

(03:05:31):
they're simply not going to stop. And that's been the
lesson of the twenty first century, which is, if you
are a country that has beef with the United States
or any other nuclear power, the safest thing to do
is get a nuke and then get more nukes as
quickly as possible, right, So that's the situation that we're in.
Iran has not moved any closer to having a nuclear
weapon over the last twenty some years, but because they've

(03:05:54):
got this uranium, you can always technically say, well, they
could be months away.

Speaker 5 (03:05:59):
Right.

Speaker 2 (03:06:00):
So this all leads us up to last week's strikes
on Iran. These were using a wing of B two bombers. Actually,
there was quite a few aircraft involved. Prior to the
bombing attack, there was a lot of discussions like the
United States preparing for much more extensive action in Iran
because we flew all of these different, like refueling planes

(03:06:20):
all around the world, and we're like setting up very
clearly this like massive set of infrastructure to refuel and
keep a bunch of planes in the air. Now, the
reality is that all of these refueling planes and whatnot
were part of this bombing mission, and the bombing mission
did not just include the seven bombers that actually struck Iran,
but another wing of B two bombers that flew in

(03:06:41):
the opposite direction as part of a feint, as well
as fighter jets and reconplanes that were necessary to help
set up and protect the whole apparatus that we were
setting up to get these seven B twos to the
target area. Right now, the actual mission was about thirty
seven hours, which is not the law longest mission B
two cruis have flown. That was forty four hours, and

(03:07:03):
it was over Afghanistan in two thousand and one. And
keep a pin in that because we will be talking
about how successful that mission was, because there's some similarities
between it and what was done in Iran. Now, the
B twos that we flew over Iran were armed with
these big thirty thousand pound bunker busting bombs, and well,
we'll talk about these as well in a while, but
I want to I found out there's a very interesting

(03:07:24):
article on a CNN Politics by Michael Williams that interviews
one of the guys who was part of the longest
B two mission, that mission over Afghanistan, who talked about
like what you have to do in order to carry
out a mission like this. And I want to bring
it up because, you know, in the middle of this
very shameful episode for the United States, it reminds me
of what makes me proud of this country and what
makes me proud of this country is our tendency to

(03:07:46):
dose bomber pilots with massive quantities of amphetamines so that
they can be absolutely spun off their asses when bombing
a foreign country. And that's exactly how you get bomber
teams over to a country like Iran for thirty seven
hours of flight time. Is everybody is prescribed amphetamines and
they are high as shit. They are pissing in ziploc
bags full of kitty litter. They've got a chemical toilet

(03:08:08):
in the back. They're just spun off of their asses,
pissing into cat litter. And that's that's how strikes like
this are managed, which I think is beautiful.

Speaker 9 (03:08:16):
Yeah, except for the whole you know, Trump starting a
little war aspect of it.

Speaker 2 (03:08:20):
Yeah, sure, sure, the massive civilian casualties are always a.

Speaker 4 (03:08:24):
Tragedy, Yeah, the death eminicent people.

Speaker 2 (03:08:26):
But you know it also, it was from fighter pilots
that we get a swinger culture. And it's from fighter
pilots and swinger culture that we get popularized amphetamines in
the United States. And without that, you know, I don't know,
we actually probably wouldn't miss out on much that was
very good.

Speaker 5 (03:08:42):
But the seventies would have been different. Value was lost.
Might have been better, Yeah, it might have been better.

Speaker 2 (03:08:48):
I don't know. I feel like Jefferson airplane wouldn't have
been as good. But maybe they'd be close something else. Yeah,
maybe they'd been called something else. So the primary munition
that these B twos were supposed to be dropping over Iran,
and the whole reason why the United States was needed
because Israel had carried out a bunch of strikes on
Iranian nuclear facilities. But basically, Iran, being intelligent, knew that, like, well,

(03:09:10):
they're going to bomb these facilities like as long as
they exist, and it's very difficult to get like these
centrifugias made, right, Like that's the hardest part of getting
a nuclear weapon is getting the equipment that will allow
you to enrich uranium. And so it's very precious and
you can't you don't just have you can't just remake
it super easily. So Iran buried this shit, right. They

(03:09:31):
had a number of different sites which were hit by
both the US and Israel, the most deeply buried of
which was a place called at a place called Fourdoh,
and the actual facilities were buried underneath like the ridge
of a mountain beneath ninety meters or about three hundred
feet of rock. Right. And we have this tendency in
the West in part because of generations of like military

(03:09:52):
industry propaganda, and in part because the Air Force really
wants you to believe this that bombs are a lot
more powerful than they are now. Bombs are great at
blowing up buildings that are just hanging around on the
surface of the earth, and they're great at killing people.
They're great at killing civilians, people who are not you know,
armored or defended against them. They're awesome at that. You know,

(03:10:13):
what bombs suck at is going more than a couple
of feet below the earth. They're terrible at it. Even
really big bombs, even the scariest bombs we've ever made,
absolute dog shit at getting through, especially like stone and rock.
And so Israel was like, we don't have the capacity,
we don't have the technology to actually like crack a
facility like fourd oh. The only thing that can is

(03:10:35):
these bombs that can only be carried by the Bee two,
which are these thirty thousand pounds bunker busters.

Speaker 5 (03:10:41):
Right.

Speaker 2 (03:10:41):
And the question that comes up then is like, Okay,
well this four doah is ninety meters. It was beneath
ninety meters of rock. How deep can these GBU fifty sevens,
these massive ordnance penetrator bombs, which had not been used
in combat before? How deep can these fuckers go?

Speaker 5 (03:10:56):
Right?

Speaker 2 (03:10:57):
That seems like a simple question. You will usually see
most of the graphics on the news will show that
it penetrates sixty meters right or two hundred feet, and
then it detonates, right, which you could do damage to
a facility that's buried deeper. Right, If you're detonating it
like sixty meters down and it goes down ninety meters,
that explosion could do enough extra damage. It could damage
a facility that's just like another thirty meters below.

Speaker 1 (03:11:19):
Right.

Speaker 2 (03:11:19):
Theoretically, however, that doesn't tell the full story. And I'm
very indebted in this part to an NPR article by
Joff Brumfel, who did actually like the math. Right, So
we figured out a long time ago when we started
bombing things, there's like a mathematical equation to how far
a bomb that's a given weight and dropped from a

(03:11:40):
given height and has a given explosive payload can penetrate
through different kind of substrates right that you can just
kind of plug that equation in. And yeah, I want
to quote from Jeff's article right now, because it does
a very good job of like looking at kind of
why this was sort of a dogshit plan from the start.
I went back to take a look at the math

(03:12:01):
from those early studies and I found it was actually straightforward.
The so called penetration equations have existed since the nineteen
sixties and depend on a limited number of factors, including
the shape of the nose cone, the weight and diameter
of the weapon, the speed at which it hits the ground,
and crucially, the type of earth it gets dropped on.
It depends enormously on the kind of rocks, as Raymond
Gene Laws, the professor at the University of California, Berkeley

(03:12:21):
and one of the original authors of the two thousand
and five National Academic Study and Earth Penetrators. When I
ran the calculations using a key equation from that study,
I found that the GBU fifty seven could go up
to eighty meters underground if it was dropped in salty clay.
In medium strength rock, things looked far different. The GBU
fifty seven could only go around seven point nine meters
beneath the earth, So that's not nearly the sixty meters

(03:12:44):
that you're seeing claimed on most and it's nowhere close
to ninety, right, And there's a good amount of data
we already have. Trump obviously claimed as soon as we
did this bombing run, because we dropped a fairly heavy
cluster of these bombs, twelve on four to zero. And
Trump's claim was that, like, yeah, it was completely destroyed.
His press secretary said, when you dropped twelve thirty thousand

(03:13:05):
pound bombs with perfect precision on a target, there's only
one result, complete destruction. And that's not true even if
you just like look at the past of us using
these weapons. I mentioned earlier that two thousand and one
mission to Afghanistan that was us trying to blow up
that's purported like cave fortress that bin Laden had.

Speaker 10 (03:13:22):
You may have seen the diagram in Tora Bora, and
we didn't. It didn't work because it's really hard for
all of our technological might, it's very hard to blow
up something buried under rock, Like it doesn't matter how
many of these giant bombs.

Speaker 2 (03:13:39):
You have, We're shit at it. Right now, there's still
some debate. The DIA assessment says that basically, we did damage,
but it was at most maybe enough to knock them
back by eight months, and probably less than that. Right,
it's kind of debatable, and we don't have perfect data
on this, right, I don't know that Iran has perfect
data on this, because one thing we can confirm is
that the bombing sealed the intro, so it's possible they

(03:14:01):
can't get into Ford Oh quite yet. Right, Like, there's
going to be some work needed to do to be
able to get these facilities if they were to do that,
which again they were not based on US military intelligence,
were not doing prior to the bombing, but based on
satellite imagery, it does not look like there's not really
good evidence that we did any kind of significant damage.
There's some reports that some centrifugias were damaged, but those

(03:14:24):
reports state that other centrifugias were intact. So it's one
of those things where like there's not any strong evidence.
And in fact, the DIA's report suggests that, like, the
damage done was fairly minimal, given the extreme cost of
this operation and the brags that the administration has been
making that like they totally destroyed these facilities, right, right,
We simply did not totally destroy these facilities. Now, it's

(03:14:47):
a little too early to say so precisely, like how
bad is this? Right, But you know again, that's kind
of the early data is that, like the DIA assessment says,
we set them back maybe a few months at most.
One of the fun things about this is that Iran
moved their uranium prior to the bombing, right, Like, you
can't really move these giant centrifuges or these big underground facilities,

(03:15:09):
but you can take the uranium and you can just
drive at places and we don't know exactly where they
hit it. The head of the IAEA, which is the
International Atomic Energy Commission, has already come out and said, like,
I have no idea where Iran's uranium is. And it's
the job the IAEA's job is to account for every
fucking gram of uranium held by every country in the world. Right,
they are supposed to know at all times where it is.

(03:15:32):
And he's like, I have no fucking idea, Like, we
don't know where it is, and we don't know how
much damage is double, we don't know where this is.
There is at least one report stating that Iran's plan
was basically load this up into the trunks of a
bunch of cars and park them in public parking lots
because they probably they're not going to bomb a public
parking lot outside of like a store, which is really funny,
actually fair, The US might do that.

Speaker 4 (03:15:55):
A Israel will send me bomb a fucking pokin they
hit a press, which parking there's so yeah, yeah, and
they'll pray a show game, right like they will send
hundreds of trucks and vans from every location.

Speaker 5 (03:16:06):
Yeah right, they'll send way more.

Speaker 2 (03:16:08):
It's it's just the funniest thing in terms of it
also points out how doomed efforts like this are where
you just like, well, with our technology and our fancy
stealth bombers, we clearly we should be able to figure
this out. And it's like, nah, we're just gonna park.
We need one hundred cars. We'll bring in six hundred
cars and we'll park them randomly all around the country.
Fuck you, what are you gonna do? Bomb every parking lot? Like,

(03:16:32):
it's very funny quote.

Speaker 5 (03:16:33):
From parking lot bombed? What are you gonna do? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (03:16:37):
Anyway, that's uh, what's going on with us? Bombing Iran
and so again very expensive. Yeah, probably did not do.

Speaker 4 (03:16:45):
Much Trump the Doves strikes again the peace maker they
calling them the peace maker.

Speaker 2 (03:16:50):
Yeah, we'll talk about the peace bullshit after this. We
should throw to ads first.

Speaker 5 (03:16:54):
Thank you note from Grumman for sponsoring this segment.

Speaker 2 (03:17:09):
We're back. So like the fourd Oh nuclear enrichment facility,
Trump is between a rock and a hard place with
with this whole carrying out illegal stripes on a sovereign
nation thing. I'm a jig in that he came. He
came to power a large part by promising I'm not
going to do a World War three. I'm not gonna

(03:17:30):
All these democrats are crazy warmongers, but not old Donnie t.
You know, you can you can trust me to be
a peacemaker. And then he fucking bombs around, which is
kind of a major escalation, right, So, and we're not
gonna There's been people arguing with this have happened under
Kamala Yaddiya. I don't, I don't, I don't give a shit.
I don't really shit it's happening now. Fucking fuck off,

(03:17:50):
Like it's not it's not worth talking about that. We're
talking about what's happening, which is that this is a
major escalation. But Trump has had to He's kind of
been hedging between like, yeah, look at how fucking cool
our weapons are. We fuck them up so bad, and
also and now it's time for peace. We have to
stop the violence. Why don't you guys come to the table.
Let's all be friends, and getting pretty pissed at the

(03:18:11):
Israeli government, Yes, because he announced a ceasefire, and Iran
was like, after striking back and hitting US bases in
a number of countries, was like, okay, we're done. Like
we did the thing we had, we did the face
saving thing. We have to launch missiles after youbamas. We
can't not do that. Yeah, but we did it. We
got our strike off, and we're not going to continue
if you guys don't continue, right, And Trump was like,

(03:18:33):
I did it. I made peace. Look at look at
how good I am. And then Israel immediately starts carrying
out more straits and Trump is, are we gonna play
the audio of it cursing on TV because it's very good.
Here's here's Trump being confronted about this, Like, within hours
of this Israeli strikes.

Speaker 5 (03:18:49):
You know what we have.

Speaker 14 (03:18:50):
We basically have two countries that have been fighting so
long and so hard that they don't know what the
fuck they're doing.

Speaker 5 (03:18:58):
Do you understand that?

Speaker 2 (03:19:00):
So that's a pissed off man, and he's pissed off again.
I do think people are generally wrong when they're like, oh,
Trump's much better on Israel because he can confront net Yahoo.
That hasn't really proved to be the case yet. But
unlike Biden, Trump clearly doesn't care about Like he's willing
to be pissed at net Yahoo.

Speaker 5 (03:19:17):
And he was really pissed in this openly, like yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (03:19:21):
Openly, very yeah, because again he's hanging a lot on
like nobody would dare go back to war when I
said they were at peace? Right, Like that's that this
is like an ego thing for him more than anything.
He certainly doesn't give a shit about the human cost
of any of this. But yeah, and so that's where
we are right now. Are we done? Will there continue
to be more strikes and retaliation strikes. Something's gonna happen.

(03:19:43):
It's not done, right, none of it's done. No. But
you know, also, Iran's not stupid, right, This is a
country that has been in these circumstances and in variations
of this conflict for a long time, and they are
neither foolish nor suicidal. So they're not going to be
completely reckless here, right, Like I think you're seeing and

(03:20:05):
what you've seen is pretty calculated responses where they are
aware of how much they think they can push when
and where, right, And so I, you know, I think
we're likely to like I don't know that. I think
the escalation ladder is in like a runaway state. I
don't see that evidence right now. But this is not
the end of this, right, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (03:20:26):
So something we got news of today in the last
this is Wednesday. We got this in the last.

Speaker 12 (03:20:30):
Hour or so, is that Trump like send on TV
the thing that you're not actually supposed to say, which
is that the US and Iran coordinated to have the
Iran shoot these bases. Oh my god, it's like okay,
like they like we literally went on TV and said, quote,
you saw that working vessels were shot at us the
other day, and Iran was very nice. They said we're

(03:20:53):
gonna shoot them at one at one Okay, I said,
it's fine.

Speaker 5 (03:20:57):
Everybody evacuated.

Speaker 12 (03:20:58):
Not the basis Like obviously the US has always done this,
but like we've never had the president go on TV
and just say, yeah, we let Iran shoot empty military.

Speaker 5 (03:21:07):
Basis, Yeah we worked it out with them. Yep, yep.

Speaker 2 (03:21:12):
This highlights something that's so interesting when I when I
say this, I don't mean to ignore the fact that
real people are dying, like particularly in Iran. It's horrifying,
But there is a massive degree of this at the
at the the nation state level that is kfa right,
and that that proves it like Iran is like okay,
look k.

Speaker 5 (03:21:29):
FAE with the cost of like yeah, thousands of lives,
people will die. Yeah, it's it's it's dick measuring.

Speaker 2 (03:21:35):
The fact that iron is only to talk with you
us about like okay, what can we strike that's not
going to escal things for you, like yeah, we'll pull
you know whatever. And also that's to a degree that
was going on with the strikes on Iran, right where
they got enough of a warning that they were able
to move their physical material right Like this is there,
which is not to say that like things are like
copasetic and friendly, but everybody's got everybody, but Israel has

(03:21:57):
like a vested interest in things not escalating to much
even the Trump administration, right has a vested interest in like,
there's a line we don't want to cross because we
just don't see any like benefit in it, right, and
that is that is a part of what's going on here. Yeah, anyway,
that's probably enough talk about Iran and news and stuff.
But anyway, remember, folks, you too could be a nuclear

(03:22:19):
power if you can just figure out how to make
a functional centrifuge and get a shitload of uranium. You know,
it's not that hard.

Speaker 4 (03:22:27):
It just comes out of the ground, depending on what
that ground.

Speaker 2 (03:22:30):
Is, depending on where that ground is.

Speaker 4 (03:22:32):
Should you talk about immigration, sure, all right, I love
immigration sadly, but Congress does not agree with you.

Speaker 2 (03:22:39):
They rarely do, James, they rarely do.

Speaker 4 (03:22:42):
Yeah, that is one of the things they say about
Robot Evans. I want to start, actually with a little
no disclaimer rant. Almost every day for the past six months,
someone has sent me a tip saying that ice are
rating a hospital. This has happened almost every month for

(03:23:02):
the past ten years. I have received this tip thousands
of times. To my knowledge, it has never been true. Nonetheless,
this rumor persists, and especially among people who might be
newer to migrant advocacy or newer to observing immigration enforcement.
What is happening in one hundred percent of these cases

(03:23:22):
that I have looked into, is the customs of Border
Protection or ICE or some other immigration detention agency is
taking somebody who is in their custody to the hospital,
and then that person is getting treatment, and then they
are released again to that immigration agency. Normally, those immigration
agents can't enter non public areas of the hospital i e.

(03:23:45):
Treatment rooms, but they can into public areas i e.

Speaker 5 (03:23:48):
Lobbies.

Speaker 4 (03:23:49):
This rumor, which continues to spread, which I've seen people
including journalists sharing on social media, kills people right. I'm
aware of one incident in which someone was having a
medical emergency and didn't want to go to hospital, a
medical emergency which could very well have killed them within hours,
and didn't want to go to hospital because they had

(03:24:10):
heard that ICE was at the hospitals. I understand that
people are coming to this with varying levels of experience.
It's cool, it's great that people are showing up for migrants,
but people need to exercise caution around this because it
is not harmless to spread that rumor unless you are
absolutely certain that it is true.

Speaker 5 (03:24:30):
It hurts people and I.

Speaker 4 (03:24:32):
Keep seeing it and I think it's important to say
something about it, including two other journalists. Okay, with that said,
let's start with some good news about immigration. ICE agents
in San Diego scattered from the San Diego Court when
the newly appointed San Diego Bishop Michael Farm, who is
himself a refugee. He was an accompanied miner from Vietnam,

(03:24:54):
entered the court to accompany people to their immigration hearings.
Bishop Farm was joined by Taha Hassane. I'm saying that
correctly of the Islamic Center of San Diego and our
Lady of Guadaloupe Church, Pastor Scott Santa Rossa. They say
they're going to keep doing this quote as needed. So
this is actually one of the very few things, at

(03:25:16):
least in court houses, seems to have worked.

Speaker 5 (03:25:19):
Right.

Speaker 4 (03:25:19):
We've covered this in previous weeks that what is happening
is that the government is dismissing the case against people
and then immediately detaining them and forcing them to fight
for their asylum well detained.

Speaker 5 (03:25:31):
Right.

Speaker 4 (03:25:31):
This has been happening all across the country. San Diego
is the only place I'm aware of where religious leaders
right from across the religious community are accompanying migrants to
their detention hearings. So we saw Brad Lander doing this
in New York politician, but this is the only instance
I'm aware of where clerics are doing it, and it
seems to have worked. It seems to have in this

(03:25:53):
incident or in these instances, prevented ICE from detaining people.
And like, I'm not a religious person myself, but I
will say that I respect this. I think this is
this is cool. I've reported before, I spoke a lot
about Jesuits in the Darien Gap and the how impressed
and in awe of their work with migrants I am.
And I think this is another example of people organizing

(03:26:17):
with groups and they might not normally organize with but
that having really beneficial results.

Speaker 5 (03:26:22):
Right.

Speaker 4 (03:26:23):
This huge win for the woke Marxist pope as well.
It's always good to see.

Speaker 5 (03:26:27):
Yep.

Speaker 4 (03:26:27):
Hell yeah, huge win for Marxism this week. Yeah, generally
a big week for Marxism in other years. A district
court has ordered another man, Geordian, Alexander Melga Saint Maron,
returned from El Salvador. He's Salvadorian, but he was removed
thirteen minutes after a court order barred his removal and

(03:26:50):
thus he was removed in violation of that court order right,
and the District Court has ordered him returned. I'm not
aware if he's being returned yet. On Wednesday, we shall see,
I guess, because the Supreme Court has allowed the Trump
administration this week to continue removing migrants to countries which
are not specifically noted on their removal orders. We spoke

(03:27:12):
about this before, in the case of the attempt of
the DODA to remove people to South Sudan. We've spoken
about it in terms of removing people to El Salvador
who are not themselves salvad are in right. This isn't
really deportation, and I think rendition is a more accurate
way to describe it. And it will certainly result in
people facing hardship and more likely than not, people facing

(03:27:33):
torture and probably being killed.

Speaker 5 (03:27:35):
It is a disaster.

Speaker 4 (03:27:38):
It was a very short and unsigned order, and the
justices that it wasn't a final decision right, that they
paused the Massachusetts District Court ruling, which had in turn
paused the process. So the process is now ongoing again.
It's worth noting that the Massachusetts District Court ruling didn't
stop them doing it, it allowed them a meaning attempt

(03:28:01):
at expressing their reasonable fear of torture.

Speaker 1 (03:28:04):
Right.

Speaker 4 (03:28:05):
Three justices dissented, so to Mayor, Kigan and Jackson. So
to Mayor wrote the descent, I'm going to quote from
it here briefly, apparently quote the Court finds the idea
that thousands will suffer violence in far flung locales more
palatable than the remote possibility that a district court exceeded
its remedial powers when it ordered the government to provide

(03:28:26):
notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and
statutorily entitled. As she pointed out, the government was seeking
relief from this order in Supreme Court, but had also
been openly flouting here right. This flouting of lower court
orders lines up with a res Ruvenni, a DOJ lawyer

(03:28:47):
who was fired for I guess not following the DOJ
line in the Aberdegogavcia case. He filed a whistleblower complaint
in Congress this week that the NAT has seen. You
can read the whole article in the show notes, but
in there you can hear Emil Bouvet, who's he was
Trump's personal Laura in twenty twenty three. Trump is now

(03:29:09):
nominated him to be a judge, but he tells DOJ
lawyers that they need to be open to responding fuck
you to court orders. The allegations in a whistleblower complaint
are pretty concerning, right in terms of the ability of
the courts to stop the DOJ doing anything. I would
urge you to read it. It's going to be linked

(03:29:30):
in the show notes. We don't really have time to
summarize all of it here, but I think I think
the fuck you comment summarizes it pretty well.

Speaker 2 (03:29:35):
Yeah, and speaking of things that you should buy, here's ads.
We're back, And since we've just done ads, let's let

(03:29:56):
James give an ad for something that's not a product
or service but as better yeah things, if you have
any money left.

Speaker 4 (03:30:03):
After investing in all the wonderful goal their appetites to
want to sell you. One of the people who we
have interviewed on this show extensively, who came into the
Artistrates through Acumba and who provided us with a really
in depth account of his immigration detention, has let me
know that he is struggling to find a lawyer and

(03:30:24):
pay for a lawyer. So far, he's been taking care
of all of his legal paperwork himself, which is very admirable,
but obviously, like many migrants, he understands his chance of
the success will be much much better with a lawyer,
something he himself is struggling to pay for right now
whilst also supporting a family. If you would like to help,
the link for that is www dot GoFundMe dot com

(03:30:48):
slash f slash Standing with our Family. It will also
be the first link in the sources for this episode,
so if you're listening on your podcast app, you can
scroll down to the show to find it that click
it and help out if you'd like to.

Speaker 5 (03:31:04):
Well.

Speaker 9 (03:31:04):
I think it's time for Gahre's good news round up,
and let's start with some actually like fantastic news. My
mood Khalil has been released after one hundred and four
days in ice custody.

Speaker 5 (03:31:18):
He missed the birth of his first child.

Speaker 4 (03:31:22):
Was it his first time meeting his child? Did he
get to meet his child?

Speaker 2 (03:31:26):
I think he'd gotten one visit where he got to
meet his kid, if if I'm remembering directly, it's still
kind of about two thirds of the way through his detainment.

Speaker 9 (03:31:35):
But now he is back in New York as his
case will continue. This is a good step in the
fight against disappearing people for political differences.

Speaker 5 (03:31:46):
Like, this is important.

Speaker 9 (03:31:47):
This is possibly like the one of the most important
national pieces of news. That's still a developing story right now.

Speaker 2 (03:31:55):
I've seen some responses that are like, yeah, so after
one hundred and four days of being illegally detained and
you know, a guy finally got released, this is still
a bad thing, And like that's true, this is a
bleak story. But like it's actually kind of like foolish
to not acknowledge this as a significant win, right, Like,
it's important.

Speaker 5 (03:32:13):
They did not want to release him.

Speaker 9 (03:32:14):
They wanted to keep him, Yeah, forever, they did not
want to release him.

Speaker 2 (03:32:18):
Yes, this is good. This is a good thing, and
it's proof that it is worth fighting because you can win.

Speaker 5 (03:32:25):
Yeah, Like every.

Speaker 4 (03:32:26):
Day he's not in jail and that he's with his
family is a better day.

Speaker 5 (03:32:29):
Yes, is a win. Yeah, it's a victory. Yes.

Speaker 9 (03:32:32):
Also some good news in New York it is so
clover Soran Mamdani won the Democratic primary for the mayor
of New York City Tuesday night.

Speaker 5 (03:32:46):
This is quite exciting.

Speaker 9 (03:32:47):
I got to announce to a massive room full of
trans people that Cuomo conceded to Zoron, and I have
not felt better in months.

Speaker 5 (03:32:55):
It was like one of the one of the one
of the.

Speaker 9 (03:32:58):
Brightest rays of hope that we've had, and a rejection
of like the old Democratic Party establishment. Yes, Zoron had
to beat like thirty million dollars of super pac funding
against him. He mobilized the youth vote in ways we've
never seen before in New York. A quarter of early
voters for first time that Democratic primary participants. Zoron ran

(03:33:21):
a very very solid campaign with slick videos online and
on TV, multi language outreach, fifty thousand like on street volunteers, canvassing,
door knocks, phone baking, and a distinct focus on affordability,
including freezing rent, free buses, pilot program for city run
grocery stores, free to low cost childcare, raising minimum wage,

(03:33:42):
and resisting Trump's efforts to use ice to deport New Yorkers.
Myself and Mia did a full episode yesterday if you
want to have a more in depth look at the
New York mayor roal primary.

Speaker 5 (03:33:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:33:55):
We should also note here that per acbs New York
inner with former Governor Cuomo. He has stated that he
is considering running against Mom Donnie as an independent, So
we'll see how that goes. We might get to see
Cuomo lose twice in a year, which would be pretty funny.

Speaker 9 (03:34:12):
Yeah, I mean, honestly, I would be surprised if he
actually decides to run in the general. A lot of
like like Ackman is going behind Adams. It seems they're
certainly going to be targeting from like Republicans and maybe
even some den like establishments.

Speaker 2 (03:34:27):
Oh yeah, sure definitely.

Speaker 9 (03:34:29):
So to like remove Zoran as like a viable candidate,
they're going to pull out some crazy like red scare
communist shit from the fifties. Absolutely, they might try to
remove his legal status as a citizen, like they're gonna
pull out the stops. But this is like after the
twenty twenty four election. This is like the first first
like clear look at what a new Democratic Party could

(03:34:51):
look like. And right now is the face of Zorrong.
Yeah that's all I have.

Speaker 2 (03:34:57):
Yeah, and you know, it's nice to see a win again.
It's like the Mahud Khalil thing, right, It's it's nice, absolutely,
like this is this is good things can happen now?
Does this mean is this a part of a fucking
progressive wave that's sweeping the country. Does this prove that,
you know, being pro Palestine and pro trans is the

(03:35:17):
best electoral strategy in one hundred percent of districts? Now,
like this is this is New York. We like, this
is one election, but it's like good news and it
it I think it there's a very solid possibility that
we will see this as like part of a growing
trend that when candidates are actually left wing and unabashedly so,

(03:35:38):
when they don't try to tack to the middle, when
they don't try to embrace you know, a hodgepodge of
like contradictory policies in order to please some sort of
like farcical median theoretical median voter, that they do better.
I do think that, like maybe that's what we'll see.
But you know, obviously one election in New York City
is not a one one primary in New York City

(03:36:00):
isn't enough to prove that like this is going to
be the same kind of thing we see nationwide.

Speaker 5 (03:36:04):
I mean, but it did show how to mobilize like
a huge number of like young people and like a
lot of a lot of like young men, which which
the Democratic Party has been like whining about for the
past few.

Speaker 2 (03:36:14):
Months, terrible about Yeah, and that's a big.

Speaker 9 (03:36:16):
Deal, Like how do we reach out to the young
men in this country? And like Zoron showed you how
to do this, it's actually fighting for like real things
that make your life better.

Speaker 2 (03:36:26):
You can get people excited about your candidacy. If you're
standing for something and getting people excited, it's even more
important than just being like, well, this theoretically polls the best,
because if you do take all the positions that poll well,
but nobody gives a shit and you don't have any
kind of excitement or the ability to build like a
grassroots ground game, then you'll do worse. Like if you

(03:36:47):
have that behind you, if you have all that enthusiasm,
you can make less popular positions more popular. That's how
politics works, right, Look at Trump, you know, like the
whole everyone's always wondering like how does he get away
with all these things that were forbidden for so long?
Is because he had a lot of enthusiasm behind them,
and that wave allowed him to push a bunch of boundaries.

Speaker 5 (03:37:10):
And like that's how it works.

Speaker 2 (03:37:11):
It can work the other way too, if you try,
if you're not just gutless if you're not a fucking shumer.

Speaker 12 (03:37:18):
So in less good news and the less good news,
I mean really really horrible news, terrible news. Yeah, So
last week we got the results of the United States
versus Gremetti. I think most trans people have been expecting
that this was going to be really bad, but it was.
It was I guess technically not as bad as it

(03:37:39):
theoretically could have been, but this ruling was. There's a six'
three ruling that Upholds tennessee's yeah ban on gender affirming
care for. Minors that ban IS i mean just like hideously.
Illegal it's like very obviously ces. Discrimination The Supreme court
gave genuinely LIKE i had a friend described, as like

(03:38:03):
we're just in Pure calvin ball, Land like it's if
you read the, decision it's fucking.

Speaker 5 (03:38:08):
Nonsense it's. Gibberish that also.

Speaker 12 (03:38:11):
Makes it hard to figure out what's gonna do because
the legal reasoning is just so unbelievably.

Speaker 9 (03:38:16):
Nonsense like it leaves it it leaves in place the
twenty twenty ruling on sex discrimination in the workplace for
trans people, intact but it invents this new justification that
you can discriminate against trans people if you're discriminating against
gender dysphoria as a diagnosis specifically not necessarily them being,

(03:38:38):
trans but but the ability to treat gender.

Speaker 5 (03:38:41):
Dysphoria, yeah it's it's really really fucking.

Speaker 12 (03:38:44):
Weird i'm probably gonna do like a full episode looking
at like like bringing into actual legal people to talk
about with degal. Impacts you're going to be this is really.
Bad this means that like twenty five states bans on
gender firming care go into.

Speaker 5 (03:38:58):
Effect. Yeah one of the.

Speaker 12 (03:39:00):
Worst parts of, this right is that you, know and
this is this is one of the biggest issues with
like targeting and trans kids in, general is that just
the structure of the family and if childhood makes it
really hard to help these kids because they're significantly more
isolated than. Transadults, right it's harder for trans kids to find.
Community it's harder for the community to find, Them. Yep
and because of the structures in place, here like they

(03:39:22):
are denied the autonomy to keep. Living and if their
parents decide to just be like fuck, you we're just
doing we're going to do conversion therapy on you by
refusing to let you, transition they can do, that and
it's extremely hard to resist.

Speaker 2 (03:39:35):
It, yeah the root of so much, AUTHORITARIANISM i would, argue,
like the absolute core of the fascist movement is the
idea that parents own their. Children, yeah and that like
that is the most that is the single most important
property right that, exists is your ownership of.

Speaker 4 (03:39:54):
Kids i'm going to, say it's bed time if we
ready get to the core of, it isn't, It, Robert,
yeah it's.

Speaker 9 (03:39:59):
No robert's go in full like no future queer, Theory
LIKE I i agree with.

Speaker 2 (03:40:04):
You, no he's, Right, no this is THE i don't
think this is even debatable as someone who has raised.
It it's this and it's it's not a simple, problem
right because like kids are not adults and shouldn't like
have full autonomy about, choices like you, know because they'll
they don't understand the world. Fully there's a degree to
which kids need to be like.

Speaker 9 (03:40:24):
Guided, yeah you should stop a child if they're gonna
walk into the street and get hit by a, bus right,
yeah like grab a fire or.

Speaker 2 (03:40:31):
If they only want to eat candy for, dinner, Right,
like that's there are. Limits but the idea that like
and so parents own their, kids they're like that that
is just it's pure poison and it's killing us.

Speaker 4 (03:40:44):
All and like more, broadly like guys who hate that
kids are the fucking full front.

Speaker 5 (03:40:49):
Of fascism right.

Speaker 4 (03:40:49):
Now like, Yeah Elon musk Bought twitter because he hates his, Daughter,
yes more more than if any any other. Thing like
it's uh, yeah it's a repugnant. Ideology it's just.

Speaker 5 (03:41:00):
Gusting. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:41:01):
Yeah, anyway we'll do some sort of more detailed look
at this that like that at some, point BUT i
think we've you, know covered the.

Speaker 12 (03:41:09):
News, YEAH i, MEAN i think the last the last
THING i want to say about that is like if
your trends AND i know this was a bigger thing
and the immediate wake of last, week but keep.

Speaker 2 (03:41:18):
Living yeah, yeah, yeah stay. Alive maybe get a passport
because you can do that right. Now there's a lot
of benefit even if you're not going to, travel if
you don't have the money to, travel there's a lot
of benefit in having that.

Speaker 5 (03:41:30):
Id.

Speaker 12 (03:41:31):
Yeah, yeah we're all going to see the sun rice
together like we, are and it's going to be.

Speaker 9 (03:41:35):
Beautiful but do you know who won't is a man
From norway who will probably never be seeing The United
states ever.

Speaker 2 (03:41:42):
Again, god oh my, God, Okay, Garrison.

Speaker 9 (03:41:47):
So to finish this, episode we're going to talk about
the one deportation we're kind of allowed to laugh. At
not because the guy is. Bad the guy seems perfectly,
fine but the circumstances around the deportation are so. Bizarre
it's wild shit and it Affects. Norway so it's you,
know it's like, Whatever garrison Anti norwegian, ACTION o no
offense To. Norway i'm just, like it's it's not like

(03:42:09):
this guy's getting deported to a place where he's in.

Speaker 4 (03:42:11):
DANGER i love You, norwegians even If garrison.

Speaker 2 (03:42:14):
Doesn't this is not a guy who's going to. Suffer
he's not going To South, suda, beer life threatening or.
Whatever he's.

Speaker 5 (03:42:20):
Fine.

Speaker 9 (03:42:20):
YEAH A norwegian man was coming to The United states
for vacation and at the border check point AT i Think,
newark he was questioned and handed over his. Phone on the,
phone porter agents found a photoshopped picture of BABY JD
v sorry of bald BABY jd. Vance yeah, yeah and

(03:42:42):
for this, reason BABY jd denied entry into into The
United states and deported back to Your.

Speaker 5 (03:42:51):
Thomas country On.

Speaker 2 (03:42:52):
Earth. Anyway said photo has now been shown in The
Irish parliament because we live in it's beautif the world's.

Speaker 9 (03:43:00):
Beautiful they're Deporting norwegians for Jd vance. Memes, now this
is the level that we're, At like The party Of
Free speech deporting people who has have Jd vance memes
on their.

Speaker 12 (03:43:16):
Phone, like on the one, HAND i think you can
make the argument that fascism has always been this, stupid
like google Google mussolini's headquarters and look at that.

Speaker 5 (03:43:26):
Building is this? Dumb but, like good, lord LIKE i,
just oh my, GOD i have personal.

Speaker 12 (03:43:32):
Vanity there's such fucking tiny babies about. It like that's,
like that's like the really defining characteristic of this era
of fascism is that if you make fun of them
the tiniest, bit it is the worst consequences they've ever
stuffed in their entire, lives and they fucking lose their
mind that everyone doesn't fucking love.

Speaker 9 (03:43:47):
Them, yeah they they're they're fully like willing and like
desire to use the complete might of the states to
uh to step on anyone who dares defy their, authority
even even when that defiance is manifested through having a
picture of baby Jd vance with a bald head like,
that that is too. FAR i DON'T i don't know

(03:44:09):
what else to say about bald BABY Jd.

Speaker 2 (03:44:11):
Fance you, know get get a, tattoo get a full
facial tattoo or like a bin afflet.

Speaker 5 (03:44:20):
Denaturalized for YOUR jd events back.

Speaker 2 (03:44:23):
Tattoo you can't punish you not for a. Tattoo, no it,
is it.

Speaker 9 (03:44:28):
Is it is funny how much vans in the border
patrol do not understand the barber strikes that in. Effect
this picture is now. Everywhere it shows how how HURT.
Jd fance is by these, photoshops even though he's tried
to laugh along in the.

Speaker 4 (03:44:41):
Past, Yeah i'd love to, know like how is there
a directive that has come? Down like no streams did
some like office and field operations, guy.

Speaker 9 (03:44:51):
Did they send it up To Stephen miller with like Hey,
steven is this?

Speaker 5 (03:44:55):
Okay it seems like, no, no, no.

Speaker 4 (03:44:56):
It's somewhere a take offence on behalf Of Vaughan's like
that could be very.

Speaker 5 (03:45:01):
LIKELY i think that is.

Speaker 2 (03:45:02):
What, Happened like that all of the data suggests that's what.

Speaker 4 (03:45:04):
Happened roberts talked about this like working towards the furor stuff.
Before but like we're seeing a version of that, here, Right, like.

Speaker 9 (03:45:11):
Oh, YEAH i mean like all of the current border
agents are Like trump cultists, essentially like they're they're the
most evil people you will you will ever.

Speaker 4 (03:45:18):
MEET i, mean of the of all the federal, agencies,
right IT'S cbp that has had the lowest vaccination. Rate
they're playing One american use in their break, Rooms, like,
yeah they are more ideologically sympathico with what's happening THEN
i would imagine most OTHER feds. Are, yeah, certainly LIKE
ice are pretty much in lockstep with The trump. Administration,

(03:45:39):
yeah if you want to HELP, AMOS i guess don't
send A. Jd vynce baby, meme but you can send
your money again to GoFundMe dot com slash f slash
standing with our. Family they'll be in the show notes,
Too and if you would like to contact, us you

(03:46:01):
can do so using proton, mail which is only encrypted
end to end if you are sending from an encrypted
email address like a proton mat. Address and the way
you can do that is by typing the email address
cool zone tips at proton dot me into the two
field and sending an email to. Us that, way we

(03:46:23):
do read them. All we don't respond to them, all
but all of them get.

Speaker 5 (03:46:27):
Read we reported the. News, oh we reported the.

Speaker 1 (03:46:32):
News.

Speaker 2 (03:46:40):
Hey we'll be Back monday with more episodes every week
from now until the heat death of the.

Speaker 15 (03:46:44):
Universe it Could Happen here is a production of Cool Zone.
Media for more podcasts from Cool Zone, media visit our
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Speaker 6 (03:47:02):
Descriptions thanks for.

Speaker 3 (03:47:04):
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