It Could Happen Here Weekly 174

that North and East Syria exists and the SDF exists, which has been largely missing and like the legacy media reporting on Syria, but b like there's been atrocious reporting on what it means for the SDF, even though there's

a very clear answer to that. So for people who have you been reading papers which either just ignore the existence of the FDF entirely or speculate as to what they're going to do when they've given a very clear answer, could you explain to people like where this leaves the SDF.

bolts with the blue and something crazy is happening. Really, it's unfortunately it has to actually be talking about in a kind of more long term and intelligent way that sets the context and like yeah, puts that and makes things a bit more clear, because it is something with a background and it's connected to a lot of things, and of course that whole political process that a Jan's

recent statement is a part of. It's going to affect the situation here in northern East Siria because the situation here a lot of the time depends on the actions of the Turkish state and on expansion. It is on an aggression from there, and so as the political situation shouldn't changes, it will affect that. What it is not is like a call or a statement that means that the SDF has to lay down their arms and started this thing. This is for several reasons, absolutely not what

it is. The main one of those being that the SDF is not and never has.

a big question and a big change. But it's much more to do with what's been happening in Syria politically, and to do with the government and the interim government had said, yeah, government that installed themselves here, and the regime games, and of course the ongoing war and situation of invasions that they're facing. So there's a lot of

big questions for the SDF. But I think it's important right now that we don't kind of confuse and misunderstand but this sort of parallel process that's going on.

explain those acronyms to you. But yeah, we've had this situation right where since December, the situation in Syria has drastically changed and we now have two state actors. Well, we have lots of stay active. We always had lots of state actors intervening in Syria, but we have this new state actor in the Syrian state, right and I think people if they're you know, if they're like reading the New York Times or god forbid, seeing Charles Lister, then that they'll have a certain vision of this that

sort of exempts the SDF. It sort of just ignores this whole area of Syria and says like, oh, well, the Syrian Revolution has succeeded. I think we should address like what has happened to the SDF to northern East Syria since the collapse of the said regime in December.

organizing across Syria, like all of these things. It's a very complex situation, which I won't pretend I can completely

lay out and summarize for everyone in five minutes. But yeah, what you did have was the culmination the end of a period and a massive change when as you say, there was a regime change, there was a change of government, and that happened with this like offensive sweeping down from Idland to Damascus, succeeding in taking over the government in Damascus from the Asad family, which was the end of a sixty one year brain which caused absolute jubilation, say

to say, all across Syria, and that includes where I am and lone from Syria because anyway, just yeah, people were very happy and celebrating. But also there were cities here. When you look at the map and you see this like sending autonomous region, what you had to understand was that there were actually within the cities, there were neighborhoods and sections that were still under the ASAD government. It wasn't as simple as like the whole city is in

the autonomous administration. So here as well, even there were still statutes of a Sad and people took the streets and tore them down, and really close to actually where I'm recording this today, there's a roundabout where they took down the statue of a Sad and it's been replaced by pictures of the martyrs of people who have fallen fighting for the autonomy of the region here and fighting

for their political system. So you know, it's very very beautiful. Yeah, people celebrated and more happy with a qualifier, with a very big qualifier, you know. So that jails opened as well and the flags went up, and yeah, it was

a real moment of jubilation, celebration. But unfortunately the force which eventually succeeded in toppling a Sad and installing itself as the now as they're saying that interim or transitional government Syria, you know, we can say it was not one of the many like progressive democratic alternative forces that originally in the uprisings weakepped the A SAD government. Yeah, back in twenty and eleven. Since then, things have changed,

and isn't a podcast directly about that. I'm sure you guys speak about it as well at other times, but instead what you have is HTS, who are kind of conglomerate militia of these different militia groups. There's another acronym for you there names I.

a perspective. A lot of people in these organizations are like really really similar unfortunately and all too familiar to the people here who fought against ISIS, the Islamic State, because they're coming from similar backgrounds, and also to al Qaeda and the organizations who were kind of the Syrian

branches of al Qaeda. But like, I've played a really direct role in finding HTS and they want to now sort of put on a new face, put on a suit, go out and shake the world's had it and become world statesmen from the government, which unfortunately it looks like all of our governments are all too willing to very quickly accept. And we'll get in a minute we can talk a bit specifically about the roles that and almost your listeners are in the States, so that the American

government has been playing here. But yeah, so there's a big qualifier on how much people are celebrating because of the very dodgy history and the real like threat the xts's politics holds unfortunately, particularly for ethnic minorities, on women, and they're established their power and it's by no means a kind of non violent or peaceful process, and there's

a lot of tensions flaring up with a lot of problems. However, yes, it is the case that in a lot of Syria, the majority of Syria outright like warfare on the ground as for an asstop because there's one group have taken power and so we're in a different moment, we're in a different kind of process. So what's different up here, what's different up in the north and East, and what's

not being discussed as much. And the point that I'm often trying to make, what I'm trying to write articles and doing interviews at the moment is that like actually the war in the whole Syria has not completely stopped. YEA mostly yes, you can say in most regions, but significantly here in northern Eastyria. It's not just that there is still classes or flare ups between different groups like

there might be in other regions. There is like a full scale invasion, a ground invasion with air support that has also been going on. Yeah, and that was tied. Where has that come from? Like what is that? Ones that look like this is another group another history letter had drill in for you. But the important thing to understand is that this offensive was tying to coincide with

the HCS takeovers. Also has a lot of links with the Perkish state, and I wouldn't I personally would bot those with bars to say that that government is a Turkish public government or that the relationship is that direct.

But there is a relationship there and what you saw when they kind of successfully went on the offensive was at the same time, other armed groups which operate are kind of loosely affiliated and mostly operating on a mercenaries of a paid basis rather than being kind of ideologically driven or whatever, but are affiliated under the name the SNA, the Syrian National Army, which is even more confusing because they're not and were never the National Army of Syria

what they are. And yet these paid militias, which yeah, we can describe if he might describe as hard as gangs, mercenaries, et cetera, et cetera, and it kind of depends that

it's like a mix of different forces. What's very important there is the very close relationship that they have with the Turkey state that essentially the Turkish government has made the choice that it wants to continue its aggression and its expansionism onnotany Syria, and other than immediately sending their own army, they instead pay and fund and direct and support these militias who are also operating for their own benefit. Yes, but the relationship between them their actions right now in

the Turkish state, it's much more direct. So at the same time as you have this this sweep to the south that caused the Regimi change in Syria, heading to the east, so to originally the reason Zeppa, followed by the city at Mindage in the region around there, you have this onslaught from the essay and that is what the SDF, if you originally mentioned, are currently up against. And that's the situation that we're in and it's it's

still ongoing. It's very much not stopped. It's still much very much like hot engagement and hot fighting that is happening.

decade ago. And like, if you haven't been following, I suppose it would be easy to be confused by this, But the SNA have not been backwards in documenting their war crimes in the advance towards I guess their advanced westwards towards the Euphrates and even over the Euphrates, and there have been some really horrible things, some of them, like I've shared online if people want to. They're not hard to find if you want to find them, but are not going to put them right in front of you,

because they're horrible. And as the SNA have advanced, they've reached a couple of locations that are very crucial, right, and that's where they've been kind of stopped by the SDF, because the SDF haven't been in like such a large sale conflict for the last couple of years. They've been fighting against like Islamic State splinter cells and to a degree,

the SNA. But like the SDF has modernized a lot more than the SNA have, I guess in the past years, right that they've embraced the use of first person view drones. They've even shut down several Turkish Biractar drones, which they previously if they had the ability to do it then then they weren't able to use that ability until very recently.

So like they in a sense, their resistance has been very impressive, right because we have, on the one hand, it's the second largest army in NATO giving its like full support to the SNA, and on the other hand

we have the FDF, which is interior US partner force. Right, there are US bases still in Syior, there are US troops still in Syria, well yeah for now, But like I mean, I remember when I was in Java in October twenty twenty three, the US shot down a Biractar drone over a US base and then it did not shoot down the dozens of other Biractar drones that were bombing the cities the city that you're in right now,

city that I was in, other cities. You know, I met a mother who had lost her fourteen year old son to one of these dwined bombings. Really like horrific and just cruel bombing of all of very clearly civilian targets. So like, the US is there, but they're not doing

anything to help supposedly their friends, supposally their partners. And like every interview I conducted began with like five minutes of me being asked why the Americans weren't being friends when the SDF had been friends to them in a battle against ISIS, And like, that's not something I have a good explanation for, other than like I think most Courtish people can understand the difference between people and government and people and state, and like I might have a belief,

but it's not the same as the government of the US. So can you explain the role of the US here because people will be very confused, right, And I think it's easy to sort of simplify this as like America is in Syria for oil, but there's a little bit more to it than that.

of fills itself in as well. Like that seems to make more sense when they are put in that context. And I think a good place to start maybe is Yeah, this consistent for a long time, like American attitude to this whole region, not just Sylia, which is to play yet to play very carefully to your advantage and make alliances where it suits you and continue to where it suits you and not stick to them where it doesn't.

And that is Yeah. One aspect of that is the resources, which goes further than just oil, is also gas and is also the resource of the space to create a trade route, right, Like, that's a really important question in the Middle East at the moment, and it's one of the reasons that Kurdistan is such an important place politically, a lot of these lines of potential trade routes and these kind of lines of power and money they intercept and they cross over here. So there are all these

different resources at play. And I think another thing that's important to look at is that, yeah, the US as the US government as you put it, as distinct from the citizens in anyway, doesn't just go into this blind and kind of react day by day. It's not like a reactive force in the world. The US government is and would you know, proudly announced I think as well with Creey thing on this one point that they are, no matter who the administration is and where it's politically

leaning at the time, a very proactive force. They have a plan where that they go and they try and put it into practice. And famously, historically and very intensely, a lot of that has played out in the Middle East because of the Middle East position in the world resources and the role that it's played in kind of who gets to be the big dog in the world over the years and throughout history, it's become for those

various reasons that very important. And so yeah, again without it's many podcasts of its own, and I'm sure you are making them, So I won't try and like summarize it, but I think you can't talk about America's role in Syria and the Middle East in general without mentioning like Israel and the role Israeli state place for for and

with America and things like. You know, we're all sort of following and for you guys following more closely because we're all following the current Americans administration and leadership and what's been coming out of there. And sometimes you think, like, God, is it just not when you look at something like you know, the video for like the new Gaza that they're going to make, for example, and Trump's Gaza whatever that was. Yeah, yeah, So I mean it makes it sick.

And then you're also not sure if it's it's serious or if it's mad. But I think unfortunately it's actually, Yeah, it's quite an intelligent play. And what it speaks to that is relevant to what I'm saying here is this kind of long term flat right that to annihilate a region to the best of your ability so that you can move in and develop it. Yeah, is a tried and tested method of many many governance, and America is

not the only one. But at the moment we're at kind of crucial moment in the Middle East when one sort of wall of forces are trying to greatly reduce the role and power of some others so that they can put their plan into place and so that they can yeah, they can, so they can make money. You know, you always were following money and where development can be

made and where trade routes can be made. And so what happened the tiny of the regime change that we've just discussed, the timing of HDS being able to move into the Masters and take it over. It's no coincidence that it came after like a shift in the Israeli like genocidal war on Gaza, and after what the then military action they were taking against Tesbola in Lebanon, which they felt then had up to a point achieved what they wanted to achieve, and then things kind of moved

to Syria. Right, So I'm not saying that the new government has kind of come from has been sponsored by that at all. I think there's a huge amount of tension there. But the withdrawal of like the weakening and or withdrawal of forces to Iran and Hezbela here played a huge role with then being able to establish themselves

as a government. So that is also something that you know that's not directly necessarily every step sort of kind of puppeteered by the US at all, but it is a part of the politics that the US has kind of long historical influence on and that it backs and that it's in conversation is in the whole of the Middle East. It's this kind of greater Middle East plan,

it's vision for it, if you if you will. And the other aspect that I think is important to talk about is the US's relationship with North and Eastria specifically you mentioned they're like, you know, there's like supposed friendship with we can say that like friendship with the Kurds

as people will refer to it. Or the alliance and coalition between the SDF and the US, which was sort of most most famous and most well known during the fight against isis when the international coalition, it's always the spearheaded by America, was bombing and providing air support for the SDF as the as they pulled it. The boots on the ground, the actual brand force that could go and take territory back from Isis, which yes, did look

like a kind of did look like a friendship. But I think from both sides, everyone always that that was a practical alliance, perhaps perhaps a strategic alliance at best. We can say, but I think that the US has not got a history of operating on a basis of like friendship or of that kind of commitment to the forces it works with, and a lot a lot of

history and modern recent history can attest to that. And from the side of people here, I think it's really important to say that, yeah, people were angry, and that you know what you heard you were talking about interviewing people and then kind of being like, well, what are

they doing? Like we we fought all with them, partly on their behalf like and then they deserve Yes, people are angry, but the more kind of politically engaged someone is sort of moving up that scale, I think the less face they ever had in the US.

next to the oil fields. It was a bit it was almost tomical, sort of like when party and parts next to the oil fields. But that withdrawal was symbolic.

That withdrawal was they withdrew from bases right on the border with Turkey, which lies just to the north of Syria and as such just next to north of Eassyria for anyone without the about the map immediately in their head, and they announced it very very clearly and very publicly, and so it was a kind of it was a green flag to say to Turkey, yeah, coming on, you come, yeah, we're not going to stop you. We're not gonna because what you don't want to do is hit an American

by accident, as you gave the examples. They you know, they brought down a drum, but it was over an American base, not because it was bombing civilians nearby, which dozens of other were, And so that you had that kind of symbolic withdrawal led to in twenty nineteen. It's one of the times that Turkey has like annexed section es centrally annexty section of Syria North and East Syria under the remit of the Autonomous Administration, but nonetheless still

technically Syrian territory. And in that time it was sarah Kanya and Gerrispi, which people may have heard of, and so that, yeah, that was the like green flag to Turkey to take that step. And at that time, yeah, maybe share. It's a lot of a lot of political stuff, a lot of acropins, a lot of all this and

maybe I'll just SHAREO be anecdote. Yeah, at that time when they made the announcement they were going to leave, people organized a march to an American base, and I was here at the time and I joined it with some of the women's organizations. It was the most amazing day. Like I sort of went home and wrote this massive journal antique. I've already been here for a very long time, but my mind was still a bit blown by it.

For one thing, it was such an example of how the social movement here works and what society is like in all the complexity, because yeah, a lot of people here are very wedded to the liberatory, progressive, grassroots democratic women's freedom ecological movement that I'm sure you've spoken about in your programs on Rashava, and thousands and thousands of people completely take ownership of that and see themselves in

that and are the driving force of that. Obviously, that doesn't mean every single person here is one hundred percent sold on movement at all. Yeah.

in NATO. Yeah, so you have this sort of actually even broader than usual kind of coming together, like groups from the sort of like tribal clan structures here that are still like a really political force, and that don't you know, have a kind of uneasy truth and sort of slowly learning each other. Relationship with the movement, you can say, but they really came out in force as well as well as like the Curdish movement as well

as like lots of different ethnic groups. And we marched, and to be honest, I didn't know we were going through an American based A lot of people didn't. It was quite confusing days because I think they didn't want to announce things too widely until they got there and we went and did this kind of the Yeah, they like read out a letter symbolically. I think in some of the Arabic community leaders went up to the base

and we the majority of people. There's got hundreds of hundred of people in this crowd, and they stayed back at a distance. And I found out later that that is because the American soldiers said, if two bigger groups of people come close, we will we will open fire. Like that that information was given. Yeah, I don't know what they were scared of.

and nobody teared or clapped. Obviously there was no sense of oh, it's the Americans, right, yeah, but nobody sort of through you know, for anything else, through insults or chanted anything negative either. There was just this stillness and this really helpable energy of this kind of sense of people looking at you know, obviously they're just these soldiers that happened to be driving these trucks, but they really

symbolized something more than that. And people were kind of looking sort of insisting that you looked them in the eye, saying like, hey, if anyone owes anyone, you owe us. After everything we fought for and everything we've.

and admit what you're doing, because you know what you're doing. Yeah, and it really yeah, it really felt it was very kind of moving at the time, and that I feel like it's very symbolic into politics here of how you know, someone asking the other day what was it like for people to rely on America knowing that they'd betrayed them, And I said, well, they didn't, they never relied on them.

understand what that means. What that means is they're talking about potentially giving a greed of blag for more military aggression, and I think they kind of haven't decided yet. It's really going to do it, and there's a lot of things in the balance, and in terms of I'll just say one more, one more thing, and I think gets a bit longer in terms of like the plan for

Syria and America's role, like this is my opinion. I can't say for sure that this is the definite reality, but my understanding in the situation is that once again people here in this in this movement are kind of

caught between a rock and a hard place. And the rock and the hard place now looks like You've got the new government that set itself up in Damascus, Yes, and their goal, if they can wangle it and get the outside and international support, is to build your sort of socially at least, if not politically, the model is going to look a bit like Afghanistan and the Colabat, right, Like from the signs of changes they've made to the constitution,

incidents of like violence, sectarianism and feminist side of been rising, attacks they've already made on women's rights like very rapidly, and things that have been put in like the president that legally has to be in Muslim all of this stuff, right, Yeah, that's sort of their plan. But on the other hand, I think if you kind of let the American government

loose on Syria to build up its plan. At the moment, I think they are seeing an opportunity to use this kind of formula from Iraq into and I think they want to create this sort very open to capitalist market who trade kind of space in which the North and East area with majority though not entirely Curtis, can sort of play this role that the Kurdistan region of Iraq has played.

better move on before we finish up. I want to talk about the current manifestation of resistance right and specifically at Tishrin Dam, because that's something that A has been reported on and B like it mirrors what you saw in twenty nineteen, and that like it's not just a military resistance, right, but also like a civil sized society resistance.

Can you explain maybe if people have seen anything, they've seen that horrible video of people dancing and then SNA drone just dropping a mortar bomb right in the middle of them, But can you explain how we got there?

on the Euphrates River. And if you look at a map Asia, Euphrates is kind of in the middle of the top and that is the region roughly where there's offensive that we spoke out of the Turkish funded militias, which has come from from the west across to the east, at times closer and further away from the river, and currently like a few kilometers away, that's where that offensive has been stopped by the FDA and cannot progress any further despite intensive air support from Turkey, and they're sort

of increasingly putting pressure on that, but it hasn't got anywhere. But it's close, right, you know, it's not too far away, and people are following the news. And what's right on the other side. If you get across the river there there's the dam, and then there's a bridge further to the north of Krakos at bridge that's similarly kind of crucial. And if you get across the river, you're not far away at all from the city of Kabani, which I'm sure most of your lessons will parad off. Is this

massively important symbol of anti fashion resistance. It was one of the ignition points of the revolution for the social movement here and it was really important a plight against Isis. And I think it's safe to say that Turkey via the SNA had its eye on Cabani again and that this is in fact an attack on Kabani, which has been kind of held back. And so the Dan is important symbolically as this like strategic river crossing. It's this kind of no pass that are like they will not

pass moment. It's also important logistically, like for the society here because it's a hydroelectric facility. It supplies electricity, helps with the supply of water for various reasons. For thousands and thousands of people. It's now out of action, might go without saying, but when you're in the middle of an active war zone, you can't keep running a place

like that. So that is directly attacking and impacting the society and normal communities here, and so yeah, it's no wonder that those normal communities and that society but always feel very very implicated and are kind of ready to to stand up and defend themselves. It's not as Yeah, the military assault is not kept separate from the society in the society is also under attatch indirectly attacks on infrastructure such as that, and directly by like drone strikes

on many many civilian targets. Unfortunately, Yeah, in recent times that has increased, particularly in villages surrounding Banni, and you seem like kids also hospitalized and killed as a part of that. So on the eighth of January, what began was that what they call a convoy, like a big big trek of different vehicles got together and arranged and organized from different towns across Anotomy Syria to go to

Kishin dam As. This very like the day symbol is very clear like important physical location and also very symbolic thing where war has also been fought before. There's also in previous campaigns against for example, there was fighting in the regions, so people feel like, you know, their sons and daughters have fought for diffree river crossing before. It's

still you know, it's there in the historical memory as well. Yeah, and people went and since then, which is almost exactly two months as we're recording this, we're right around the two months anniversary months and there's been a constant presence there protests on the dam and that's got several different kind of aspects to it. It is mostly to raise the voices and raise awareness and make visible what's happening.

And yeah, if it's hard to understand why like hundreds of people would go from their homes to somewhere that is closer to the active fighting, to somewhere that's in a very unstable region, Like yeah, first of all, you have to understand that nowhere in notedly Syria is actually sick, right like in Commas, for the city where I am, there's been residential buildings bombs dropped on them from drones

like within the last couple of months as well. It's not like and there's this sense of safety wherever you are. The difference is a sense of doing something about and of standing together and coming together in these like amazingly brave and amazingly creative ways that only the communities have

not in Assoria can manage. So Yes, Unfortunately, during these two months there have consistently been air strikes on the dam, and I don't have the exact statistics, and you wouldn't necessarily get an honest answer about how many of them have come directly from Turkey and how many have come from SNA drones, right, but the Sena drunes are paid for by the Turkis state anyway, So at the end of the day, yea morally, how much difference does it make?

And they have attacked the civil protests there and up until now, I believe twenty five civilians have been killed and many more than that hospitalized. But despite this, and in the shadow of this, with the most beautiful defiance

like that, protest has continued. And what the videos that maybe don't get shared as much or shared enough that people might not have seen are also these images you know, which are very I can attest are very real because I went there myself a few weeks ago, which is everybody getting out and dancing at the slightest opportunity or the slightest excuse, lack of an excuse, and the most amazing art that's been made, like paintings of the people

who've been killed, or they would say here fallen martyr. In these two months, Yes, there's been theater, like theater performed using the bits of the bombed out cars that were bombed just a few days before as props to kind of like, yeah, tell the story of what's been happening,

like the most like creative things. Also statements for the press, and all your different organizations show ups, so like the organized youth show up as the youth, and obviously the women's organizations as women saying like, you know, this is our revolution, this is our community, and we know what it looks like when it gets occupied. We're not just going to stand by and see it happen again. It's

our land, it's our water, and it's our kids. Is the refrain that kind of gets repeated over and over again. And of course they're they're in solidarity as well with the with the SDF themselves, with the military force. It would be it would be crazy if they weren't, because yeah, they are also embedded in their communities. No, they're not extracted from the society the way that most kind of state armies are. So yeah, the situation at Tiswine is still ongoing, and when I was there, it was it

really was the most amazing experience. There were bombings while I was there, and tragically, one of the people I got to know there who was a journalist, his name was Eggy Brush. Just less than two weeks after I got back, I found out that he'd also been killed in another drawne strike.

You said yourself, thirteen thousand fallen in the fight against Isis alone, and since then, like war one way or another has been going on. So people know what lost means already they've already lost, but they're not going to let that make them step back. They're gonna do their fall and loved ones justice and continue to stand up

in their name. And yeah, it's a very sort of big thing, but it's really powerful when you see it in person and and all that kind of humanity and humor and joy despite the situation.

mad or they'll think of wars. But like you should also think about all the people who exist outside of the conflict, or who don't think this outside of it. It's around word, but who who are not fighting at the front line. Like the experience of revolution is very joyful one even amidst very difficult times, and it's difficult to explain it if you haven't experienced it, because it

sounds so juxtaposed, but it isn't necessarily. The guy have actually really fond memories of meeting Kurdish people coming into the United States in the mountains at a time when the United States was retaining people outdoors in very difficult conditions, and like dancing with them there at a time when

like it was miserable. The ability to salvage joy. It gives you a sense of sovereignty, I suppose, and I can understand why that's such an important part of the Curdish freedom movement when every expression of Curtis's identity has been suppressed for so long, like the ability to seize your moments what James Scott would call like little small acts of resistance, Like it's important. It's it's more important, I think people understand. And if you're understanding it from

a Western military doctrine, it doesn't fit. But that's because you're using the wrong framework. Yeah, exactly, Jenny. If people are interested in following your work about this, or perhaps they're interested in doing what they can to support the revolution and what is a challenging time, a very changing time, how can they do both those things?

to the Kurdish Red Present and stuff like that. And then specifically, yeah, I mean there is a lot that people can do and whatever it is, it all starts with getting more I wouldn't say informed, I would say getting more connected. Right, So getting informed is a part of that, but not just in the sense of information learning, like it's also connecting with like the feeling of things here and why it's become so important to so many

people across the world, not just people from here. Yeah, and the more we learn about that, I'm all, we'll start to see like how we can be a friend to the movement here and where how our role can fit. And I know that there are specifically in America a couple of organizations, is it that theybi book Chain has been really prominent in organizing one of them.

And you also got like think it's like the Kourdish Piece Institute, that kind of lobbying, and so yeah, there are some there is some stuff from coming from the United States as well, But I think, yeah, the more people get a chance to kind of learn about stuff here and see the connection and be able to see and find themselves in it, And I think that's got a lot to do with what you were just speaking about.

Hearing you put so well, I wouldn't extend it much more, but yeah, like people here, it's really there's always war happening, and always war kind of filing on top of you, but that's never what it's about. The question is always what are you're fighting for and what you're fighting to defend? And what would you be doing if there was no war.

Everyone here'll always say if there was no war, we'd still have enough work to do with all the really like I was that word ambitious, like social transformation that people here are really committed to. There's enough going on and it's very big and as you put it, it's very beautiful and very joyful, and so that's Yeah, that's the bit that I encourage people to try and learn more about, because that's the bit that makes you stay.

It makes peopleeople like me stick around for years, finding out more and more, making friends and getting closer and closer to there.

stick around. It was until the sixteen twenties, over a century later, that Jesuit and Franciscan missionary set up religious settlements, but unfortunately, by then, Uruguay's native population had already begun to collapse. Thousands of people were succumbing to European diseases, so they had no immunity to a couple of centuries later, in eighteen hundred, Uruguay continued along with the very small population.

At this point it was about thirty thousand people in total, and a third of their population lived in the capital city of Montevideo.

Aires Argentina was among them. But while Argentina was fighting for its independence, Montevideo was a Royalist stronghold backed by the Spanish military and naval forces. On the country side, it was a different story though Uruguay's greatest independence zero kind of came out of that space. His name was Jose Crevasio Artigas, and he originally led a Spanish cavalry unit, but eventually turned against the crown in eighteen eleven and rallied an army of rural fighters, freed African slaves and

anti royalist leaders from Montevideo. So with the back in from Buenos Aires, his forces were able to score key victories and eventually oust the Spanish. But Artigas had much bigger ambitions. He wanted a confederation of provinces to resisted the dominance of Buenos Aires. In fact, he wanted Montevideo to become the center of a rival confederation, as prior to Argentina becoming Argentina, it was sort of a loose

confederation centered in Buenos Aires. Artigas's ideas also included things like redistributing the land to freed slaves and Poiuguayans, which made him obviously very popular among the poor and very much a threat to the elite. Eventually, he was forced into exile because because he made some enemies that basically sat on their hands as the Portuguese Brazilian forces invaded and took over the region despite his exile, though the

fight really wasn't over, you know. After the occupation, which was often called Brazilianization, it was resisted very heavily by locals and exiles, and of course Argentina, which had become some lot of a rival power to Brazil in the region. It saw Brazil's influence in Uruguay as a threat. So eventually one of Artigas's exile officers, a guy named Juan Antonio Lavaller, would lead a force that would cross the

river and reclaim Uruguay. The fight would end in a steel meat and then British deplomat to step in, because of course the British had their own interests in the region. But eventually, in eighteen twenty eight, a treaty was signed officially created in Uruguay as an independent Natia buffer state between Argentina and Brazil. In eighteen thirty, Uruguay's first constitution was ratified, and at the time the country had a population of just seventy four thousand people.

The Blancos were backed by Argentina, the Colorados were backed by France and England, and then eventually Brazil, and after about a decade of war, there was still no clear victory as to who came out of it as a success in state. The interior of the country was devastated, government was bankrupt, its very existence as an independent nation came into doubt, and the divisions between the people who

backed either party became more stark than ever. Eventually, the Colorados were able to force Blancos out of power thanks to their back in by Brazil, and that move ended up alarming Paraguay, who was also a freedom Brazil's influence. So Paraguay ended up launching in what became known as the War of the Triple Alliance, which is something I

covered in the episode of Paraguayan Anarchism. Eventually, after getting out of the civil wars and all these disputes and foreign powers medalist affairs, we have the situation Uruguay found itself in in the nineteenth century, a situation that waves of immigrants and also anarchism would find themselves in So Capelletti identifies a few of the early forces that shaped

igu radicalism before anarchism and cynicalism. The first factor shape in the radical landscape in Uruguay's eighteenth century was utopian socialism. It came to Uruguay with Eugenio Tanddet in eighteen forty four, and he was a French utopian socialist and follower of Charles Freyer.

five that had some two thousand attendees. They established something of a manifesto where one line had asked, who better and of greater faith than ourselves can destroy the criminal exploitation to which we are condemned as a whole. The manifesto basically ask workers to unite, and this was in a time where anarchism was finally starting to pick up in the region.

forty pesos on behalf of libertarian prisoners in Lyon. They also collected money to support their papers and to support peoples and efforts elsewhere, like in France. What's interesting about the Uruguayan anarchists is that they were among the most internationalists that I have found so far. You know, like other parts of Latin America, they did have a large immigrant population. Yeah, but because I suppose the size of Uruguay compared to other countries, the immigrant population was probably

larger proportional to their neighbors. So they ended up having a much greater connection to movements and you know, things that happened in other parts of the world, including their home countries.

able to. But he he had served as a Esperanto translator at the Popular Olympics and like lived out his whole life with the stream of like if we can, if we can, if we can break down the linguistic barriers between workers, and we can we can get together and change things.

of those, ninety thousand were affiliated with the FRU. So what's seventy six percent of those industrial workers were affiliated with an explicitly anarchist organization that included port workers, construction workers, metal workers, horse drivers, railway workers, and a lot more.

And to be honest with you, I'm not entirely show what kept them from taking Boulder action compared to some of their neighbors, considering their proportion the numbers they had, But unfortunately didn't take very long for the movement to be divided, particularly after the Russian Revolution. There was, of course the influence of Bolshevik ideas that had split the movement somewhat, bringing workers onto the Bolshevik cause, and then

of course you had Bolshevik sponsorship. It was within the USSR's interest to support USSR aligned movements worldwide, and so a lot of libertarian groups around the world went into decline in that time, including in Uruguay. Some of the unions and up faltering under the pressure of both the state and of course the new draw that was the Marxist Leninist groups. But of course the Libertarians never really gave up, they don't tend to historically speak it. So

the unions and groups continued acting, continued producing papers. In fact, there was a major surge and unionization in the nineteen forties. According to Poor Sharkis the feracio and anarchista i Uruguaya, especially among the textile workers, royal women talkers, construction workers and meat packers. And then outside of the union and paper pushing scene you are set Uruguaian writers that continued

to shape the cultural scene with anarchist ideas. Florencio Sanchez, for example, was a playwright in the Rio de la Plata region whose experience in nationalist militias led him to align himself with anarchist circles. He worked as a journalist while actively participating in anarchist organizations and publications, including La Partesta in Bunros Airis. His plays tackled social issues such as class struggle, intergenerational conflicts, and the hardships of the

working class. Then you also had other Uruquian literary figures influenced by anchism and contributing to the libertarian literary movement, including poet Julio Herrera Ierseg, novelist Torresio Kiroga, and Bohemian writer Roberto de las Carreras. And interestingly, there was another notable figure in anarchism connected perhaps the most or one of the most notable figures in anarchism, and that was the friend and biographer of Erico man A Testa himself,

Luigi Fabri. Fabri founded the journal Study Sociali, which was one of the strongest libertarian publications in Uruguay and Latin America, and after he died, his daughter, Lucy Fabri, continued his work and edited the journal until nineteen forty six. Lucy Fabri was also one of the founders of the FAU and she also published quite a few books in her time, many of which have yet to be translated into English. I wish I could you know, check them out.

a beautiful book. Because he was a groundskeeper at the Libertarian Club in Marseille, the young people of the Libertarian Club were so influenced by his life and his experiences and the way he talked about the world that after his passing they translated his diary and then wrote this huge historical sort of The footnotes are four times long as a book because the footnotes explain that the things that he's talking about and who the characters are, and

it's it's a really kind of beautiful text. And it has the authors called themselves the Shewmnologues like that, the followers of Antoine j Minez. So it's kind of anonymously authored and I thin it's a really special like literary project.

connection in those spaces. So these people spent about twenty years living together, making decisions together, sharing finances, and sharing education. But the Irguayan military dictatorship stepped in and put an end to the project in nineteen seventy six. They spent

that time afterwards living in exile. First they settled in Peru, and then they ended up in Spain, and then after that they found themselves in Sweden, of all places, where they continued their communal life and engaged in international political education. So that's all I ended up learning about them at first.

But I wanted to digg a little deeper and find out what happened to them after that, and I wasn't finding that information in English language sources, so I ended up unfortunately having to lean upon Google Translate for the Swedish and Spanish wikipedias, but those pages went into a little bit more depth, and so I was able to find out that this group ended up taking part in the occupation of the Mulvaden neighborhood in the late seventies,

and they also translated Latin American anarchist texts into Swedish

and vice versa. And then when the dictatorship in Uruguay ended, they returned to Uruguay with the money they raised with the hell of their Swedish comrades, and initially a few stay in Stockholm, so there was a split effort between Uruguay and Sweden for a bit, but the ones in Sweden were able to send money and equipment home and so eventually they were all able to focus in Uruguay and set up a printery and established a farm in

the countryside outside Montevideo on land purchased with money collected in Sweden, where they focused on collective farm and organic agriculture, and apparently there's still active today. I found what seems to be their website, but it's no accessible.

eggplant and produces its own tomato sauce. This small scale industry that the organization has built up is mainly run by a women's group, Comunidad There's Sosuro also participates in the collective Lapi Tanga that works for equality between women and men and against violence against women end quote. So they're doing some really important work in Uruguay after all these years. I can't find their exact location, but it

seems they're based somewhere in La Palce. If anybody wants to reach out for food, the details what they're up to these days, their story is really fascinating to me, So I'd love to find out just that whole idea of this group feacing this victoria repression, resettling somewhere else, catching their breath, engaging actions elsewhere, and then me are being able to return home and continue the work. I find that very inspiring.

bit of Senate bullshit. So basically what's happening is that they need a resolution to keep funding the government for a little bit until more negotiations.

So you've probably been hearing. If you've been hearing about this, you've been hearing you called a culture vote. So what that is is basically the absolute shortest version of it is, it's a vote to kill a philibuster on the bill. You filibuster by continuing debate. Culture ends debate, c et cetera, et cetera. So this resolution is staggeringly unhinged. It is not a very long funding continuation. It includes thirteen billion dollars and cuts a non military spending and also six

billion dollars in military spending cuts. There are a lot of things that have been sort of defunded by this, including like a lot of like housing and urban development stuff. It's research ship, you know, and that's obviously really bad. Because normally with these resolutions, you're just sort of like continuing the funding, right, But this is not a normal continuing resolution.

a dictator by sort of pure fiat. And Okay, you can sally say this and you think this is an exaggeration, but what this continuing Resolution actually does is normally in one of these resolutions, Congress tells the executive how parts of the budget are supposed to be sent, right, it does allocations. It'll be like, okay, so there's this money for this thing. It goes to this purpose and you have to spend it here. This continuing resolution just.

in which she can't and can't do this. But I'm gonna read some stuff from Senator Patting Burray, who is the vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which is the committee that handles like where money goes in the budget.

that because good God. Quote under this continuing resolution, that Trump administration could, for example, decide not to suspend funding previously allocated for Combating Fence and all the Support Act and other Substance abuse and mental health care programs or specific NIH priorities like Alzheimer's disease and vaccine research, and

instead steer funding to other priorities if it's choosing. It could also pick and choose which military construction, Army Corps, or transit improvement and expansion projects to withdraw funding without direction from Congres, leaving democratic states and priorities in the lurch.

reliable thing like that will have devastating economic consequences. If they just start randomly yoinking contracts and not paying people. That's they did with the USAID suppliers, right.

hurricane prevention is not going to help that. And the thing about this, right, because this resolution has thirteen billion in direct budget cuts and then it also allows Trump to do more cuts on top of it by doing by doing these funding allocation things. Right, So it's it's like it's it's a fucking like double Yeah, it's sort of double set of cuts here. And this includes you know, he can he can reallgate money away from the FAA.

One of the most absolutely terrifying ones is that this continuing resolution allows RFK Junior to eliminate funding for the universal flu vaccine.

nuclear explosions.

all run by an army of staffers. And the thing about it all being run by an army of staffers, and the fact that Republican staffers are increasingly drawn from a class of like genuinely the most unhinged people who have ever lived, this class of fucking internet gropers and fucking white nationalists bullshit, means that one of the parts of this I think people have heard about is the one billion dollars in spending that was cut just from

like the city budget of Washington, DC. Now, looking at what's happened next, I genuinely think they did this by accidents. That's been the explanation that's been given is that they literally did it by accidents. And the reason I think it might actually be true, it's it's either it's either

actually true or they saw the pushback. But immediately after this bill got passed, there was like a separate bill that was drafted to restore the funding, and that was approved unanimously by the second So it might legitimately have been a mistake. So it was either legitimately a mistake or all of these people realize that the entire population of DC was about to like fucking march on the capital of Pitchforks. So I don't know one of those

two things. So we're not talking much about the DC stuff because it seems like the funding is going to come back, though if it doesn't well cover the catastrophic impacts of that. And there's one more thing, James, which I couldn't find details of, but one of the things that's supposed to do is eliminate protections for people an immigration course.

that out. I would have to go through the resolution, and maybe I will at some point, but yeah, there is stuff that the federal government does right now that provides people with some protections in immigration courts, right, and yeah, I can see. I mean, look to the extent that that matters because they're just deporting people in open violation of court orders right now, we don't know. But it's still bad either way, right, taking away the very few

protections that might have. Yeah, it's bad. Yeah, So speaking of bad things, we're going to go to ads and then we're going to come back.

annihilation by doing this. And I'm just going to read out the names of everyone who did this, because there's been a lot of focus on Chuck Schumer, and Chuck Schumer is to like probably the primary person responsible for this, but fuck every single one of these people.

that was allocated. Oh yeah, And like Cain is at least, I guess astute enough to see that when things get harder of his constituents, he can go, yes, they did this, and I voted against it, and you need to return me to office so I can continue opposing this shit, which is very cynical approach. Yeah, but then, yeah, we've just got Chuck Chuck Schumer who just kind of bowed down and kissed the ring.

But this is like every faction on every side of like the whole series of fights from like twenty fifteen and like Bernie's first thing through twenty twenty, even like the mid late twenty twenties, Like all of these people

were on exactly polar opposite side. They fucking hated each other, and they're all like coming together specifically to agree on a fuck Chuck Schumer campaign to the point where like again like Arslaus neoliberal and like Nearer, Tandent, who are like have been just absolute stalwarts at the party right for ages are like are.

staggeringly opposed to. And they released a joint statement against this, right, what is sort of happening here, And it's happening fucking too late to stop anything, But what's happening here is like we are genuinely starting to get a kind of

and I'm seeing this sort of online. We've been I think we've been seeing the sort of echoes of it is like, but there's a kind of realignment happening among you know, obviously this has been being opposed by people outside the Democratic Party and by a lot of the Democratic Party's base for ages right and the Democratic Party's base, and also just like people who don't want to get be ruled by fascist forever have had, you know, incredibly

staunch opposition to all of the collaborationists investment happening. But what's happening right now is that like the actual like inside of the Democratic Party, there was a fucking rupture happening, and inside of the people who are like, you know, like inside of the politic cost there was a rupture happening between people who are collaborationists and people who'd like want to be less collaborationist.

black bagging. It's just like just fucking black bagging Mamu Khalil and is going like, holy shit, we are maybe about I mean, it's maybe eight steps away from that happening to be, but that's eight steps that you can fucking like, that's a path you can walk down. And this is also these people that are realizing just the unbelievable anger among just like regular what you would call sort of like regular liberals who aren't like, like, you vote for the Democrats, but if you aren't like.

people are turning on them. And the reason this is all happening, and I think this is a very very important thing to understand about the entire political landscape going forward, is that one of the core, an extremely important basis of Donald Trump's support is in the leadership of the Democratic Party, particularly the Democratic Party in New York, Right Schumer,

this is Eric Adams. This is also increasingly becoming true of people like Gavin Newsom and a lot of the sort of Democrats out of the Bay to some extent, And you know, and you can you can see this in sort of various border states too, where you know, these people fundamentally are doing this because they fucking agree with him. That's why why, that's why they're fucking collaborating.

Like that's like his that's like his fucking thing. And his response was, well, obviously they didn't crush the campus protests hard enough, but cutting four hundred million dollars spending might hurt students who didn't protest, like maybe, And he's not even clear about that, right, So if you read between the lines of what he's saying, his arguments is that it's actually fine for Trump to do all of these fucking budget cuts of all of these people from

these universities, as long as it's specifically targeting pro Palestinian protesters, such as anyone who's vaguely pro Palestine. And he also gets you know, he gets asked about the Trump administration just straight a black bagging Moo Khalil, and he says, quote, I don't know all the details yet. They're trying to come out and there'll be a court case which will determine it. If he broke the law, he should be deported. If he didn't break the law on which and just

peacefully protested, he should not be deported. It's plain and simple.

they're not suggesting that he did do a felony. And like if Schumer can't find it in himself to condemn that, like yeah, like folks need to move on because because he agrees with it, Like that's the thing, Like, yeah, what he is saying here is that he agrees that if a permanent legal US resident commits any crime, well doesn't though he's not accused, he's not accused of a crime, like he's he no, no, that's not's no.

the administration. He is a slight matter of degree like off from them, but like he's he just like he's collaborating because he fucking agrees with them. He agrees with them both on on the fact that the state should be used to like destroy anyone who supports Palestine, and

she agrees with them on the fucking deportation ship. Because you know, this was one of the other things that Democrats have fundamentally aligned with Trump on since twenty twenty is that fundamentally, like they agree that we need more immigration controls and we need to do more border violence. You can see the evidence of this from when they fucking passed that just unhinged fascist bill to do allow border state of emergencies.

with them in any way. Right, they I'm sure, people like Schuma continue to blame people from both of those movements for their ass whooping that they took at the polls in twenty twenty four because they decide, I did that it was more important to do genocide than it was to listen to Vose in this country rather than listening. Now they're blaming them, and the only logical way for them to go is right, and the only logical place for them to take it is more state violence.

it contesta for election. And the answer is that after twenty twenty all of their politics became about opposing the uprising because they you know, that there was a period dream the uprising where they were scared enough that like you get like the Kent cloth shit, and they're like, you know, and they're talking about like and Biden like runs on a significantly more left wing platform than like Kamala Harris did, right, yeah, like because of the particularly

because of the pressure of those protests. Now obviously, like presidential platforms just lies, right but right, yeah, it's just likes you need to tell to get the votes.

who else. His entire politics like came into the fucking political sphere as the right wing reaction to the uprising. Oh wait, Donald Trump. Donald Trump walked down the fucking escalator in twenty fifteen, immediately in the wake of the giant uprisings in Baltimore in twenty fifteen, which I think people have sort of memory holds, like Ferguson and Baltimore.

He like, it's like right after Baltimore that Trump fucking comes down the escalator and that and people forget how fundamentally, the right wing reaction to those protests deranged people who even the Tea Party hadn't pushed like far enough to vote for Donald Trump.

nuke police for the third time. So the opposition to this isn't going to come from inside of the electoral system because again that ever coats are being run by collaborators and there's not enough time to fucking oust them. So if you if you want this to not continue, you were going to You're going to have to find ways to do organizing outside of that system. We have approximately one million episodes about this. You can also go back to my you already know how to organize episode.

down with the collaborationists. Yeah, fuck them. Yeah, absolutely fucking fun. Chuck Schume in particular.

to news stations across the country. This presidential ad campaign started with Trump announcing that he himself would buy a Tesla in some of his unique advisor Elon Musk, whose business ventures have taken a sour turn as of late, to assist Trump with his purchase, The South Lawn was temporarily turned into a Tesla showroom with five different models parked in a row to choose which shiny new car

to buy. A significant portion of this Tesla sales event was spent by Trump praising Elon Musk's work at DOGE, as well as Elon's business ventures, and complaining about people treating Elon Musk unfairly, saying that he quote shouldn't be penalized because he's a patriot.

everything's computer. At the end of the live streamed Tesla commercial, Trump said that he would pay with a check, though for the duration of the event, Trump served as both buyer and salesman as he read off from a sheet of notes on pricing and features for various Tesla models, like how quote Tesla's can be purchased for as low as two ninety nine a month.

stock value and encouraged others to buy Elon's cars. The next day, Tesla shares did rise four percent, but are now trending back down amid a global wave of protests against Tesla four Musk's involvement with Doge and the Trump administration,

as well as Elon's Nazi curious behavior. Trump has tried to face this wave of hate against his new best friend, head On truthing on his platform of choice Truth social last week quote, Elon Musk is putting it on the line in order to help our nation, and he is doing a fantastic job. But the radical left lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the world's greatest automakers and Elon's quote unquote baby, in order to attack and do harm to Elon and

everything he stands for. They tried to do it to me at the twenty twenty four presidential ballot box. But how did that work out?

White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said, quote ongoing and heinous acts of violence against Tesla by radical leftist activists are

nothing short of domestic terror unquote. There's certainly has been a surge of violence targeted at Tesla vehicles and dealerships, which I will discuss in detail later this episode, but for the past months, there's also been a wave of nonviolent protests and mass mobilization against Musk and Tesla at dealerships all around the country and even overseas, which the aforementioned boycott is a part of the quote unquote Tesla takedown protests. Call to quote sell your Tesla's, dump your stock,

join the picket lines. We're tanking Tesla's stock price to stop Musk unquote. Their website has a map of Tesla dealerships around the world and a list of upcoming protests at various locations, which can be searched through via zip code. There have been reoccurring weekly protests at dealerships every Saturday in cities across the country, with demonstrations at more than fifty Tesla showrooms attracting crowds of between dozens to a thousand,

like in tucsona, Arizona. The boycotts and public demonstrations certainly aren't helping Tesla's stock price and international reputation, but they are not the only display of displeasure directed at Elon and Tesla, as others are employing more direct methods to damage the company. Beyond peaceful protests, picketings, short lived dealership occupations, and waiving anti Elon Musk signs outside Tesla stores. Tesla

vehicles themselves have become the nation's hottest graffiti mural service. Actually, around the world, people have been using Tesla's to scribble epithets against Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Even some eco conscious owners of Tesla vehicles have defaced their own cars with stickers that read I bought this before he was a Nazi, which, hey, you can also put on your

old Kanye West records. Speaking of Kanye West, some individuals have taken to marking Teslaus with a swastika, which at first raised eyebrows and confused some investigators as typically when there's swastika graffiti, it's supposed to be anti Semitic in nature, whereas in this case, based on external factors, this is most likely a public attempt to link Elon Musk and Tesla with Nazism, following Musk's own anti Semitic posts, fall

right politics, and the whole salute thing. Stickers and flyers have spread from the UK to San Francisco, reading don't buy a swasti car, but it's not all stickers and graffiti we'll talk about the other Tesla attacks after this ad break.

midwave of vandalism at Tesla dealerships. On March eleventh, wheels were damaged on multiple vehicles at a Tesla dealership in Dedham, Massachusetts. In Meyers, California, Tesla superchargers keep being sabotaged, with epoxy found in the charging cable and anti elon musk graffiti

with chargers marked with swastikas. Seven Tesla charging stations at a shopping center were arsened outside of Boston, Massachusetts, on March third, and on March seventh, Maltov cocktails were thrown at a Tesla charging station in South Carolina with long live Ukraine on the ground in red paint. A twenty four year old man was taken into custody on March thirteenth. But it's not just wheel thefts and supercharger sabotage. Tesla dealerships have been a target for anti musk graffiti, vandalism,

and armed attacks. Some commentators have been conflating the picketing protests and graffiti with actual instances of arson and property destruction, people like libs of TikTok labeling simple spray paint as quote unquote trans violence or trans terrorism, which is not to say some people aren't taking a more destructive approach towards their elon musk grievances. Whether that qualifies as terrorism

is another issue though. On January twentieth, a man wearing black pulling a wheelie cart approached a Tesla dealership in Salem, Oregon, and threw a Molotov cocktail at a cyber truck. Surveillance footage shows the man pull out ignite and throw three more Molotov cocktails from his rolling cart before realizing an eyewitness is charging their Tesla nearby. The man in black pulls out a suppressor mounted AR style rifle and points it at the witness as they drive away, before continuing

to throw more Molotov cocktails at parked vehicles. A rock was used to break the glass of the dealership showroom, and another Molotov cocktail was thrown inside the building. A criminal complaint claims that this incident caused around five hundred thousand dollars in damage to the dealership, including damaging seven Tesla vehicles. A month later, on February nineteenth, the same dealership was hit again, this time with gunshots breaking through

windows and hitting vehicles. In early March, a forty one year old man was arrested in connection to both incidents, with court documents claiming fingerprints were identified on recovered glass bottles used for explosive devices and the suspects car was identified in footage captured by a police car parked near the Tesla dealership a bit north of Salem. In Tigered, Oregon, there have been two incidents of gunshots being fired at

a testa dealership just this month. A Tigered police press release reads quote for the second time in a week, Tigered police are investigating shots fired at a Tesla dealership Early this morning, March thirteen, twenty twenty five, around four fifteen am, more than a dozen shots were fired at the dealership, causing extensive damage to cars and showroom windows.

the dealership. A few days later, a security guard confronted an individual spray painting the front windows of the dealership, and on February twenty fourth, a suspect was arrested at the dealership, a li a, llegedly in possession of bottles and gasoline.

in Seattle, Washington. On Monday, March seventeenth, two cyber trucks were set on fire at a dealership in Kansas City. Here's how local TV news reported the incident.

in Charge Spencer Evans. Evans said that while it was too early to call the attack in active terrorism, it had quote unquote some of the hallmarks and a potential political agenda unquote. Now this particular instant in Las Vegas really got to Elon Musk, who spent the rest of the day complaining on Twitter that Tesla has quote done nothing to deserve these evil attacks unquote. Attacks on Tesla

have not been contained to the United States. In early March twelve, Teslas parked outside of a dealership in southern France were set ablaze, and outside Berlin, unknown persons set fire to a high voltage transmission line on a power pylon, cutting power to a massive Tesla manufacturing plant in Germany for multiple days. This follows a series of direct actions and a forest encampment where the Tesla gigafactory seeks to expand by leveling two hundred and fifty acres of forest.

The German forest encampment lasted nine months before being successfully raided by police this last November, with police destroying treehouses and trashing tents. After the whole My Heart goes out to You salute and subsequent endorsement of AfD, Musk's reputation

in Germany specifically is suffering steep decline. To quote the Washington Post quote, Tesla stock has fallen by more than thirty five percent since Trump's inauguration, and last year the company suffered its first annual sales drop in more than

a decade. In Germany, Tesla car sales plummeted by seventy six percent in February compared with a year earlier, according to figures released Wednesday, and some owners have expressed buyer's remorse over owning a car some now see as a symbol of far right politics, a stark departure from the environmental consciousness it once epitomized, and we'll talk more about how these protests are affecting Tesla's international resputation after this

ad break. Okay, we're back right. After the November election, Tesla stock surged to a never before seen high of one point five four trillion dollars, but as Musk's direct involvement in the government was ramped up, Tesla has fallen

to about seven hundred and seventy seven billion. The massively inflated value of Tesla stock is directly related to the public perception of Elon Musk and Tesla stock greatly determines Musk's own net worth, which is down more than one hundred and forty billion from this past to December peak. When Elon's reputation gets damaged, so does Tesla's and vice versa.

Tesla stock has been declining for nine consecutive weeks. JP Morgan analysts recently said that Tesla has lost so much value so quick that there really isn't any comparison.

About fifty three percent of respondents to a CNN poll published last week said that they hold a negative opinion of Musk, compared to roughly thirty five percent with a positive view and eleven percent with no take unquote. Overseas, Tesla sales in general are way down, even as electric

vehicle purchasing is going up. New data from the European Automotive Manufacturers Association show that Tesla registrations in the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, and the UK have dropped by forty five percent when you compare January twenty twenty four to January twenty twenty five, and this decline from Tesla comes as overall electric vehicle sales have increased thirty seven percent in the same January

twenty four to twenty five head to head comparison. China's own evs are surpassing Tesla in global production and sales in China, which is a huge EV market, and Chinese manufacturer BYD is on track to overtake Tesla in global sales this year, and so if you consider the Tesla protests as a sort of public display of unhappiness with Tesla and Elon Musk, combined with all these other economic factors impacting the automaker, if these trends continue, Musk and

Tesla could be in real trouble. After the Las Vegas attack this Tuesday, Musk went onto Fox News to explain the situation as he sees it.

the Trump administration. And compared to protesting the government. Tesla is a soft target, with cars and dealerships all across the country, not justin state capitals or in Washington, d C. Whereas government facilities are to hard targets by both being

less accessible and more protected. GP Morgan analysts wrote, quote, mister Musk's work with the Department of Government Efficiency has proven controversial domestically, and while as many members of the political right may be pleased as those on the left are displeased, the effect on Tesla sales seems nevertheless negative.

a charge. And I don't drive enough to go further than four hundred miles, So I'm good. And maybe it's just a gesture on my part, and I like it. I like new technology, but it's just a way of saying, you know, look what they're doing to this guy.

I've only done productive things.

Attacks on the Tesla dealerships, which have been linked to the Indivisible Project, a left of Stalin ngo that organizes street protests for the Democratic Party with shady prepaid debit cards that they run through Act Blue, are committing economic terrorism meant to Tank Tesla's stock and drive a wedge between Musk and Trump.

Thanks Elon unquote. Now, the main organizations behind the Tesla takedown protests, two activist groups called the Troublemakers and the Disruption Project, don't even fundraise on Act Blue, that they have no affiliation, but that hasn't stopped Elon from targeting specific activists and accusing them of committing crimes simply for organizing pickets outside stores, meanwhile invoking the old antisemitic George Soros conspiracy as Elon himself has funneled hundreds of millions

of dollars to right wing politicians this past year, and has threatened to primary any Republican Congressman who doesn't cave on Trump's agenda. So anyway, that is what's happening with Tesla derangement syndrome all across the country and even the world. Every day it feels like we are getting closer and closer to the cool zone.

mass deportation agenda. They're now using this one, and very briefly, it's a two hundred and twenty six year old piece of legislation that hasn't been used since World War Two, when it was used to justifying tournament camps, which were a bad thing. These people aren't being deported back to Venezuela, right. The US doesn't have relations with the Moduro regime, although it has deported people back to Venezuela on an airline that was previously sanctioned, which could now land in the

US for the express purpose of deportations, which is great. Instead, they're being sent to Al Salvador. They're being sent there with no trial or hearing or seemingly right to appeal. When they get to El Salvador, they've been parade in

front of video cameras. Very degrading treatment. Right. Their hair is being shaped, sort of being walked with their heads forced down, they're being filmed on their knees while all their hair and facial hair is removed, and then they're being sent to second If you're not familiar with this, it was the subject of State Department human rights reports very recently, and now we are sending people there. It's a mega prison in El Salvador. It roughly translates terrorism

confinement or terrorism detention center. I guess it's been very recently built by Bokel who's the president of El Salvador, and it's part of his Supermanodoro like Iron Fist. Super Iron Fist would be the way you were translated. I guess. It is routinely criticized by human rights organizations for the disgusting conditions of people are kept in right, the United States government intended to send three hundred people there, and in return it paid six million dollars to El Salvador

for the cost of their detention. At the time that I wrote this, two hundred and thirty eight people who were accused of being part of trendell our work was sent there, and then twenty three who accused of being part of MS thirty. They were removed on flights the trumpdministrations, claiming they were removed before a district court judge in

DC blocked their removals. But there are a series of timelines that you can see online, some of which will be linked in the source of this episode, would suggest that they were in the air when he blocked their removals. Nonetheless, the judge very explicitly said, I'm quoting here. Any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States. This is something that you need to make

sure is complied with immediately. This did not happen. The planes continued traveling to Ossabadoid, stopped in Honduras, and then these people were paraded before the cameras, right, and they're now presumably being detained in this prison, which doesn't let basic s ender the human rights. The government has given various reasons for ignoring this ruling from the judge. Press Sextuary Caroline leave It claimed that there was quote no

lawful basis for it. Obviously that the process here is, if you don't believe then judicial ruling is correct, you stop doing the thing and appeal it. You don't just keep doing the thing and say like, oh, well, I don't believe you. It's not true. Obviously, this only matters in so far as the judge can enforce his decision.

They also claimed in court that the verbal order that the judge gave is not the same as a written one, and they claim that because the flights where every international waters, this was a foreign policy matter, and that the judge couldn't intervene in a foreign policy matter. That's a power of this reserve to the executive.

is horrifying. Also horrifying is the fact that if you actually look up the common lawal citation, the next words after king special favor is in a time of war.

have rights. Is unbelievably hideous. It is pure, pure state of exception, the total fac shit. It's fucking horrifying.

been used very heavily. Here is tattoos. We know from court filings that one man, Barrios, he has a football tattoo, right, like a tattoo of a football with a crown on it is this diocelic god underneath it was supposed to be I guess similar like a play on the logo of Al Madrid. But they've used this to claim that it's evidence he's a member of a gang. Gangs like tender Agua don't have like gang signed tattoos, right, Yeah, but they're smarter than that, Like they've seen what's happened

to gangs like MS thirteen because who do. Like Madras, Central American gangs have have had these things like as part of their tradition for a while, and they've been used heavily by law enforcement. I remember Christmas Eve twenty twenty three. I was in the desert with my friends and a large number of my joints across that day. I remember meeting a Venezuela man who was like covered

in tattoos. They had to toe very heavy tattooed. That dude spent the entire day building a shelter for someone else's sick kid and then slept by himself in the freezing cold outside, and like, I know, I've been thinking about that guy a lot because under this ruling, right, like just his appearance of having tattoos would have him

classified as a terrorist. And like when thousands of Americans living within an hour of that place did nothing, and that little girl who was sick had nowhere to sleep, like this guy took it upon himself to help, even when he himself was in a difficult place, And it just really makes me kind of sick. I think that this is where we're at now.

to be entirely fair, quite a few prominent thought leaders on the left absolutely folding and not just not just failing to like counterpoint this stuff, but like diving in on it because they either had prejudice of their own or they saw it as like an opportunity. But like, you know, the whole nativist deal is just disgusting. Yeah, yeah, I don't know what else to say. I can't just keep yelling about it.

But like, yes, when we could detain people, including little children outside and we could leave them there in the snow, and like little babies could be shift ring, and I could be giving away my own coat almost every day I was out there because I was worried someone's baby was going to die of hypothermia, we kind of conceded that these people didn't have rights, right and the Democratic Party let that happen, and people on the left let

that happen. And that is a stepping stone on the pathway to where we're at now.

but like they're not unrelated. You know, this kind of unitary executive theory is a through line through the last several administrations, and if anyone had pushed back prior to this point, Trump wouldn't be able to do a.

One of them has been around Ukrainian minerals. And you know, in February you had the administration talking a lot about how the US was going to gain control of Ukraine's minerals in order to pay us back for our support of their war effort. And Zelensky drew a very firm line, as he often does, like no, I'm not gonna You're not just going to get all of this, all of our country's minerals. And I should note here that like

this is a fairly significant issue in global terms. It's estimated that Ukraine has about five percent of the planet's critical raw materials, including massive reserves of graphite. They're somewhere in like the top five countries in terms of proven graphite reserves, which among other things, is a critical ingredient for batteries in electric vehicles. They supply about seven percent of Europe's titanium. They're home to a third of European

lithium deposits. This is not an exhaustive list that's just kind of you know, to start things off. And initially, when there was this kind of pushback from Zelenski saying like, no, you're not just going to get all that putin, came in and was like, well, hey, you know, we've occupied a bunch of Ukrainian land that has raw minerals on it.

Will give those to you, right, And so this went back and forth, and eventually Zelensky and Trump's people put together like a deal that they were supposed to sign earlier this month that was like at actual like bilateral agreement on the use of Ukrainian minerals. And essentially what it would have done is the deal did call for Ukraine to use its mineral resources to repay the United States to the tune of about half a trillion dollars, but not in a manner like where they were just

handing us their minerals. Essentially, Ukraine would contribute fifty percent of revenues earned from the future monetization of government owned mineral resources and other natural resources. But these were critically revenues earned from those resources like future modernization, right, so new mines, new oil and gas plants not included in this were like current reserves, like actively being exploited for profit.

So kind of the key to this is that, like mining is not something that you can turn around on a dime. Generally, once you have actually proven you know that you have sort of the reserves in an area, it takes about twenty years to actually get like mines up and running, and you know, this is an extremely expensive process. So one of the reasons why Ukraine considered this a good deal for them is that we're essentially putting a lot of those revenues in the hands of

the US. But it was revenues from minerals that Ukraine was not currently exploiting and that the US would help and provide funding to exploit. So it was not just paying back the US. It was something that would allow

the rebuilding of the Ukrainian economy post war. There were some issues with this, including the fact that mining is an extremely energy intensive task in Ukraine is in the middle of an energy crisis at the minute, But among other things, it would have brought the US in and given them a financial stake and continued peace in the region, which was seen as positive. That all blew up at a White House meeting a couple of weeks ago, where if you remember JD Vance and Trump basically had a

little like wwees SmackDown with Zelensky. It was a pretty ugly meeting, and after that kind of talk of the bilateral mineral deal faded significantly. Now what's interesting is that just today it's come out that Zelensky and Trump have had further conversations and there's a new deal apparently on the table, or at least the White House claimed that there was a new deal on the table. Both the White House and Zelensky's office said that it was a

very post productive meeting. There's some evidence that Zelenski, after that big blow up, has been kind of doing the thing you've got to do with Trump, which is like massage him and say nice things to him so that he'll like you more, and that Trump has gotten kind of frustrated with the fact that Russia clearly has not

been overly motivated to move towards the ceasefire. But then, in the middle of this meeting that everyone seems to agree went really well, the White House comes out and says, and we're working on an agreement where the US will control all of Ukraine's nuclear reactors, and Ukraine came out and said, no, we're not absolutely we did not say that that was a deal. So I don't know what's actually going to happen here. Ukraine is a massive, like

nuclear energy state. In fact, the only European country that competes with them or that is like on the same level as they are in Europe in terms of nuclear industry is France. They've got four nuclear power plants with fifteen reactors in total. Now, obviously, like the Zapharizia plant is still under Russian control, which is a significant chunk. It's like six of the fifteen reactors in the country,

and Ukraine is in the process of building more. They've actively added capacity since the end of the Soviet Union, and so one of the promises for sort of future Ukrainian economic stability is that they will be able to export nuclear energy to the rest of Europe, which is also going through an energy crisis. So it's unclear what's going to happen. There's definitely evidence again that Zelensky has kind of figured out how to massage Trump a little bit.

There's a quote from an article in The Conversation that I found very interesting here While Trump still leans towards putin his relationship with Zelensky seems to have improved. The Ukrainian president appears to have learned that Trump doesn't have a long memory and that flattery goes a long way with the US president. Trump meanwhile, is no longer calling Zelenski a dictator, and yet there is no mention of

halting US military aid or intelligence to Ukraine. There's the opposite, in fact, is the US has said it will assist in finding more patriot missile defense systems after Zelenski mentioned they were sorely needed. By giving Trump credit for the ceasefire initiative, Zelensky is putting the ball in Russia's court, and his apparent receptiveness to Trump's idea about the US taking over Ukraine's nuclear power plants will appeal to Trump's

transactional instincts in addition to offering Trump business deals. And I don't fully know what the conversation is saying here because Ukraine or Zelenski's office has stated like we're not

considering handing the US control. I think this may be something like what happened with the energy deal, where essentially what they talked about was the US having a financial interest in the rebuilding an expansion of the Ukrainian nuclear power grid, which would be an extension of existing programs because Ukraine's nuclear power grid is already very reliant on a US nuclear energy company, Westinghouse, that provides both the raw fuel for nuclear reactors to Ukraine and also provides

a lot of actual technology for different kind of system in the reactors. So I kind of think that what's happening here is that basically it was floated like, well, we can extend and expand this deal, so the US will have a financial interest in this potentially very large Ukrainian industry, and then Trump and his people kind of took that and said to everyone else, Yeah, the US is going to be in charge of Ukraine's nuclear power. That's my best guess for what happened here.

is calling this Liberation Day. On April second, he is planning to impose reciprocal tariffs on every single country on Earth.

It looks like the plan right now, when this is also just to change, because again, this is the Trump administration, and who the fuck knows what they're gonna be saying or doing in two weeks. But what we know right now is it looks like they're going to separate every country on Earth into three tiers of tariffs. So it's going to be like a low tier, a mid tier, and a high tier. And it's it's unclear exactly what

levels they're going to be. These are going to be on top of all of the additional tariffs that they've already imposed. So say, for example, trying to gets put into high tier one, they put like a fifty percent tariff on it. That means a terrifra. It's going to be seventy percent because there's already twenty percent tariffs on their business. Insider seem to think twenty percent is like the low one. I don't know about that. I think they're going to be pretty high.

US will also impost twenty percent terriffs. And this just spials out of control into a version of a trade war so unhinged, like none of us have ever seen anything like it in our lifetimes.

We have again April second, quote unquote Liberation Day, the day that this all goes into a fact. I bet they wanted to do April first and realize that they couldn't.

like it. The Second Amendment is a fundamental right under the Constitution, and it's bad to say that this class of people forever lose a fundamental right because they're involuntarily institutionalized.

it is significant. And so the fact that the GOP is attempting to peel this back and essentially reverse integration of the military is bad for two reasons. One, it represents, as you've said, creating separate classes of people and peeling fundamental what are considered under the law in this country, fundamental rights away from groups of people. And it's also just dangerous for them to remake the military into an

all white organization, right, like all white male organization. There's a reason why that's also.

people who are not considered equal before the law. We just spent this entire fucking like first part of this episode talking about what happens when people are considered to have no protections under the law, which at the state can just fucking black bag you and send you to a goolag. Yeah, Like that is bad. That's what's that fundamentally at stake here, not like whether you think the army is good.

their lives. And people are now going to lose that.

the military service, and are eligible for VA healthcare. So basically they will not be emitting like new patients to receive gender affirming health care.

Now now you can't say the word I and you're like no, like come out like what like that's not what they mean, Like you have to understand like the dog whistles that they're using.

isn't a good thing. Like, for instance, if you already have VIA healthcare, you're not in the military anymore, and now you decide that you would like to receive gender affirming healthcare, now you can't at least through the VA.

he also had the flu unquote. Now Schmid has since been transferred to multiple ice facilities. He had a misdemeanor charge for marijuana possession in California back in twenty fifteen, but that charge was dismissed the following year due to

changes in state law. But I think that this incident may have flagged Schmidt on the customs and border protections like database and Hillary Beckham, CBP's Assistant Commissioner for Public Affairs, give a short statement reading quote, when an individual is found with drug related charges and tries to re enter the country, officers will take proper action unquote. But essentially they like tortured, black bagged this person who's had a green card for like almost two decades for a dismissed

marijuana charge like ten years ago. This is like, you know, like a very white man like Fabian Schmidt, like this is this is super freaky stuff.

and attend the public funeral of Hassan Nashraala. Upon a return to the United States, she was detained at the Boston Airport, had her H one B visa revoked, and was deported on a plane to France on Friday, March fourteenth, before she could attend her in person hearing that following Monday. According to court documents, her deportation was prompted by deleted pictures on her phone of like Shia Muslim figures like

Neshraala and the Ayatola, another very very frightening incident. In those documents, it's unclear how Customs and Border Protection was viewing deleted photos on her phone or like like like like open of her phone, right, because like, if you recently deleted a photo, it is still contained in your recently deleted folder, assuming you have like an iPhone or equivalent. But it's unknown how they like got into her phone, if she like let them look through it, or if they used one of like a many.

can be considered terroristic, so that's bad. There was yet another case, which is a slightly different one, which is Buttercon Surrey, who is a postoc at Georgetown who was detained and sent to an immigration facility, who's here teaching. He's a postdoc at Georgetown on a student visa who has been sent to an immigration facility based on basically a right wing panic about his wife, his wife's father being Hamas and because of this, he's been black bagged

in a way very similar to Mak mckhalil. Yeah, now Georgetown is backing him on this, but this is you know this, this this is another one of these fucking blackpackings that they're just doing now with someone who is here on a student visa who has committed no crime, who Georgetown was like, has committed no crime. And again also if even if you've committed a crime, this is fucking horseship. But yeah, all of these things are just continuing to ramp up, and they're getting boulder and boulder.

and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew it was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, My only concern was for Newer's safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours. I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation.

At twenty six Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor in the early morning hours. Agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request. My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed

in full force Monday night with January ceasefire. Now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling two small shrouds, and families are forced to waste starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom. And again I really recommend reading the whole thing. It's it's very good, but yeah.

figure who was at Charlottesville, to quote Shane Burley. This tweet that was reposted by the head of this anti semitism task force claimed that quote, Trump has the ability to revoke someone's Jew card.

The president is supposed to get control of all discipline and can expel and suspend students, and they want to crack down student groups. They want and this is also a tie into the other thing. They want the IHR definition of antisemitism and like specifically, the Trump's like letter to them specifically says like classifying anti Zionism as antisemitism.

And they want to put the Middle East, South Asian and African studies departments in academic receivership, which means stripping away power from the faculty and giving it to someone outside the Yeah, Columbia is about to give into these demands. It seems like they want to try to find another word other than academic receivership, but they're going to fucking do it. So and Trump have the legal authority to do this, No, obviously not. But you know, does he

have the moral authority to do this? No obviously not, like this guy is, but.

this by just fucking vaccinating their chickens. The Biden administration refused to vaccinate chickens because it would cost money and because it might make it harder for us to export their chickens.

encrypted to encrypted. It still doesn't mean it's it's perfectly safe. It just means it's encrypted. So send what do you think you can send over an email? That is that way?