It Could Happen Here Weekly 182

Media.

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

No problem, delice to be here, Thanks very much, Robert.

Yeah, you know, there's this attitude, and I think, as you noted in some note use of the long, there's a degree to which it's true that Ireland has some resistance to the far right that has led to maybe it growing slower or taking a little longer to get off the ground to the same extent that it has in the UK or the US as a result of

Yeah. Sadly, as long as fascism has existed since Mussolini's March on Rome and his political rise, we have had fascist groups here of one sort or another. Yeah, We've had fascist groups in Ireland that were pro British and politics, fascist groups in Ireland that were pro Irish or Irish independence. You know, obviously we were neutral during World War Two. We weren't occupied by Nazi Germany or anything like that.

And so what do you credit that? I mean, it seems like there's a mix of things. First off, you suddenly do have people immigrating into Ireland from elsewhere in the world in significant numbers for you know, the first time in quite a while. And then on the other head, it sounds like there's also the kind of as we see everywhere in the world, the conscious exporting of far right figures and ideas into the country.

Yeah, well, Ireland's greatest export was always people, and you know, a fewge Irish American communities in you know, Chicago, New York, you know, all over Irish people in Australia and Canada and England, all over the continent. So in the early you know, twenty tens, we started, like there had always been a trickle of migration and people coming back and forward, like we had some you know, Vietnamese refugees here, we had you know, historically we had Russian Jews coming here

Yeah, and that's such I think an important point. The degree to which, because this is a global issue, the degree to which everyone else attempting to abide by public safety measures during COVID nineteen strengthened the far right because they were out in the streets. It's kind of organizing equivalent of getting to steal a march on the enemy. It makes sense to me that it was because in the US that was interrupted at least by the George

Yeah, it was like kind of run belong to the police. The cops didn't really start taking action on any of this stuff until I would say it was nearly November twenty twenty three when they had this rally called I think it was called to the Doll or maybe slightly earlier than that, in September twenty twenty three. The Doll is the Gaeacord for our Parliament, and basically the dregs

Yeah, and you know, so I'm kind of thinking here, this is part of why you've started to see, you know, guys, like we started this conversation before being recording talk about Tucker Carlson coming over to talk to Connor McGregor, who's becoming an increasingly large part of this. And I wonder if it's if it's maybe these these different kind of international folks in the international movement sort of sniffing that, you know, they're hoping that the cancer his metastasize, so

Well, they definitely have an influence here. I mean, the politics, the talking points, the buzzwords that the far right use in Ireland have all been learned from the likes of Alec Jones, have all been learned from watching you know, crazy stuff on Twitter. And it's all American and British far right talking points that are being replayed here. Stuff about the Clergy Plan, stuff about the Great Replacement and

No, No, I haven't yet. I caught some clips of it all on social media. Yeah, but I haven't gotten to sit through the whole thing.

It's wild. Bears absolutely no resemblance like what Connor puts across bears no resemblance to what's actually happening in Ireland. Like he started ranting about how the police are so corrupt. Element that's true, but he starts talking about how the traffic core, the road cops who give you like speeding tickets and stuff. They're the most violent and repressive and all all this kind of stuff, and it just so happens that Connor McGregor has a string of speeding violations

You can't just.

Stump up the money in America and become her party candidate or a writing candidate or whatever. That doesn't work here. You need this sport of a large number of democratically elected politicians to get there. So I think McGregor's relaying is not to get into the presidency, because really he can't. He's not even going to be on the ballot. But I think he wants to be Arland's Arland's answer to Tommy Robinson. And I suppose if Tommy Robinson is the answer, what the hell was the question?

Yeah, well, we'll get into that more in a second. I do want to throw to ads here really quickly, and then we'll continue to talk about Connor for a moment we're back. So you say he wants to be the Irish answer to Tommy Robinson, which is such a

Yeah.

I think with Connor it's it's all about his ego, which is probably what you'd expect from an MMA star. You know, there's going to be an element of you know, ego and show voting and kfab and so on. I mean it's interesting and he's interview with Tucker Carlson. He was giving out that the Minister of Education, you know, isn't a teacher, they're unqualified for the job. And the Irish government's Minister for Health isn't a doctor. And it's like, well,

Yeah, getting hit in the face. Yeah.

And we've had ministers of Education who were teachers and ministers of health who were doctors who happened to be totally awful. The reality is like, we have a pr system. We've you know, very democratic and fair process, and we have more than the two parts system here. But I think, like as emerged during the during that Civil Right trial which McGregor lost. You know, he had to admit to

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

And he's obviously he's going to grift off the back of it. The guy has money already. But it was so funny this multime multi millionaire being interviewed by Tucker Carlson saying we're going to start fundraising from my campaign. It's like, man, you have more money than you could ever spend on political posters and buyers and adverts. You know.

So it almost sounds like this is like a retire plan for him, right, Like he's he's he's clearly past his prime in terms of the getting hit in the face thing for money, and now he's sort of moving on to like drifting off of these far right events and probably traveling just ahead of a series of riots, you know, Like that's that's seems like what's in his future.

Yeah, And I mean we've had some you know, at the time of an outbreak of rioting in Dublin antimorgan violence which caused twenty million euros worth of damage and you know, trash the city center in November of twenty twenty three Connor and I'm not saying he directly caused it, but he was tweeting at the same time Ireland as a war, yeah, and around the same time he was tweeting like any property that's been taken over by foreigners evaporated. I think really his plan is to kind of if

Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about the way far right violence has looked in Ireland like these when these protests have really kicked off, because it seems like there's been this kind of fairly significant acceleration in the last three or four years in terms of it, particularly arsen attacks, and one thing that I was kind of struck by in your notes was the degree to which, like, no one's been arrested for any of these yet.

No, what happens. These started around twenty eighteen, so maybe just before COVID you had one or two of them. And my book went to print in December twenty twenty four, so I stopped counting in December, and by then I had over thirty arson attacks and there hasn't been a single conviction for any of them. So it's when usually former hotels that have been closed down with years are that the government moves in or some local person moves in to renovate them and use them as one of

To walk off.

So there you go. They're certainly not on the ball. And we've even had during the COVID pandemic when there was a cop nearly killed that had a fireworks shot at him during one of these riots. The police commissioner in the South of Ireland, who's formerly a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, a very controversial pro British police force that used to be in the North. This guy's our new police commissioner down south, and he tried to blame Republicans and the IRA for the violence and left

Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. Like the actual organizing of the anti fascist movement in Ireland, how is it kind of responded to the mean explosion in some cases a literal explosion in far right violence on the street, Like are you seeing it kind of reach like new Heights or does it kind of seem like it's unprepared for the moment that we're hitting, because, like I mean, in the United States, it's kind of hard to tell because things have changed so much since twenty twenty, right,

I suppose, like if you think back as far as twenty fifteen, Tommy Robinson, friend of the Pod, attempted to organize He's Anti Islamic, He's Islamophobic Pigida movement right to launch a branch of it in Dublin, and they couldn't even get to their rallying point because there were five thousand anti fascists on the street there against them, Irish Republicans, Irish language activists, Muslim community from Dublin were their LGBT activists,

Yeah. Yeah, well I want to I want to continue this discussion and then close things out. But first we've got one more ad break to do and we're back. So yeah, I kind of wanted to end this by looking into a like what are you kind of looking for in the future, like in the in the kind of the next year or two in Ireland, like you, what are you expecting? What are you worried to see? Like, yeah, what do you kind of see? Cut moving forward here.

I think what's tending to happen now is genius out of the bottle and far right messages spreading. And you had this big far right rally of you know, ten thousand and five to ten thousand people at its maximum that came down O'Connell Street in Dublin, the main street in the capital city. It's not huge by political standards, but it is worrying. I think we're going to see

Now.

Often when you see people involved in some of this anti immigrant rioting, they have no history of involvement in far right groups, but it's that message has spread beyond those groups thanks to our friends in the nerd Reich. And I think if we have a work colleague or a brother or somebody who falls into that that we don't abandon them. We don't immediately start calling them a Nazi and whatever that We try to talk talk them

Well, yeah, and as we've seen in the US, like what starts as this tiny, tiny number of freaks and weirdos can wind up being a mass movement if it's not you know, cauterized, right Like that's and that's that's kind of the challenge in front of Irish anti fascists right now is ensuring that that cauterization happens absolutely.

And I mean, look, if you think of this, you know, Elon Musk has Tip McGregor for president, and we're all laughing at it now, but you know it wouldn't be the first time that Elon Musk has tipped a reality TV star with a questionable sexual and criminal history for high office and they got.

There, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, thank you so much. Do you want to have anything you want to plug here at the end of the episode, I mean your book obviously.

Yeah, well obviously I'm not I'm not on ex Twitter anything like that. I don't have a substack or anything. So just the main thing I want to plug is my book Burned Them Out, a history of fascism and the far right in Ireland. It is published by Bloomsbury, head of Zeus, so it should be available in any to order via any bookshop obviously. If you are going to support a bookshop, support a small independent one Roger than Barnes and Noble. And if you are buying it online,

Yeah, there's certainly bloody well, thank you so much, and yeah that's our episode. Everybody come back tomorrow when we'll have another one.

Welcome to that and here a podcast, and I forgot to write an introduction for I'm your host, Miya Wong, and we are well, okay, we're not taking a break from the horrors, because this is also still a podcast about the horrors and what you can do about it. But you know, I am a transgender. One of the ways that we have been like depersonified via transgender is through a you know, a massive attack on trans like

Yeah, I'm excited to have you on.

So you would think that the question that your book, one of the boys asks is what if a transchool played football? But the actual and more important question to ask is what if a poster could write fiction? And the answer is that it fucking rips?

Thank you?

Is this this book rules? I Jenuily. I think this is the best written group chats I've ever read in a book. It rips it so good.

I am very passionate about group chats, you know. I mean like posting is writing. Hello audience. If you don't know me, my name is Victoria. I'm online. You may know my Twitter or blue Sky accounts at dirtbag Queer. I'm like largely posting about football when football is in season. I kind of just post about random shit these days. But yeah, I've allegedly written a book. The weird thing about writing a book is that I feel like I've just totally blacked out actually writing it. And I'm like,

Yeah, and this this book rips that sounds like a fun thing going on where it basically has like the football iceberg, where like you can come into us knowing zero ball and you will get stuff out of it. And you can come into this where I am knowing like a some ball and you will get some out of this. And then like the unhinged people who have like sixteen different PFF tabs like pinned their bookmarks will be like holy shit, the world building.

Yeah, yeah, that was h it is. It is hard writing fiction about sports if you're writing young adult fiction, you know, which is what one of the boys is. Don't be weird about that. If you're an adult, teenage girls are like, oh, you don't have to hate the

Yeah, so I think, okay, we're going to get more into the politics of this in a second But first I want to ask one ball question since I have NOWBT, I have now introduced my audience to the fact that I talked about football by managing to get a rant about de Sean Watson on here for like ten minutes, the Sewn Watson trade. But okay, my one ball question for this was how happy did it make you when you figure out a way to write a football team that does not use the forward pass?

Oh?

Man?

Uh, it's without without spoiling what happens at the end of the act one turn, circumstances occur so that this high school football team has to move a player who is who is not a quarterback two quarterback, at which point passing just goes away and we are just running the ball, baby, we are we we are pounding the rock.

Yeah. This is one of the things I love about you're writing is that you are very much just like an old school like traditionalist football pound of the rock, like none of this, like none of none of this fuck an RPO bullshit person which is which is also I don't know, it's just very funny that you have like you have like the football personality of like an extremely cranky, like seventy five year old like coach from like the seventies.

Yeah, and I'm a trans woman yeah in rules, which like again I tried not to do too much of it in this book. Like part of the reason that I made my main character a kicker, which we will also talk about other reasons later, but part of the reason is that kicking is this sort of like own separate salad off thing. So I really only have to like get the audience to understand kicking and what happens when Grace is on the field. I don't have to get into like what a football team that like never

This is the sickest offense of all time.

But also yeah, but also like you know, trying to trying to help the queer kiddos understand that, like running the ball is the official football position of the working class, of the poltariat.

You know.

Okay, we're going to get more into the class dynamics of football the second. But the place I kind of want to start in terms of, like you know, talking about the parts of us at art just ball is so in a lot of ways, this is a book about scriptlessness, which is something that I think, I don't know, like we've been seeing a sort of resurgence of trends or not resurchens, but I kind of like surgeants, emergence, emergence,

Yeah, So this is something that Grace struggles with a lot. I mean, like specific to her, it's because she's a trans woman who's playing football, something that if an openly trans woman has ever openly played, like American football, there is not a lot of documentation of that online. So like Grace, she is like walking a path that has

There's not a lot of ya.

Contemporary fiction about transgirl characters like at all. There is now, thankfully a good amount of trans male representation in the genre, but there are a few authors who are out here writing transferm contemporary but like not a lot so like figuring out like where I wanted to like slot in to this like genre that is kind of like struggling to be born, you know, not a lot of transfem like seventeen year old protagonists who are like going to

To go to college, which is all is all.

Stuff I wanted to like touch here.

Yeah, And I think there's a bunch of levels of this stuff sort of operates on and I think it's very like I don't know, like a lot of being trends. And I say this at least for me, I don't know, like maybe maybe this didn't for other people. Was just like having no idea what the fuck you're doing and just you know, waking up one day and realizing like shit, wait, what the fuck do you mean I'm doing this? And it's like, you know, I got think about this, like

Do my makeup? Well, like what the fuck are we doing here?

Yep?

I think that like an never think that I've talked about I talked about this a lot in the show is but it's also just like how kind of like normal the trans girls who just like suddenly something blows up and they're like Internet famers or whatever the fuck are that. They're just like some kid until like, yeah, you know, there's just like an explosion and everyone is suddenly interested in every intimate detail of your life and is trying to deconstruct it in order to destroy you.

Yeah, Grace is Again I don't really want to like spoil act act three stuff here, but later on the story, Grace achieves some amount of like Internet notoriety for what she's doing. And yeah, Grace is like an extremely typical kid. She has like typical kid problems. But then this like microscope gets put on her and she's she is sort of like forced to like become this like different thing that like if she wants to be that thing someday, it's not now.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think in a lot of ways, my book is about how we ask teenagers to like do too much and be too much. But like, especially trans kids, when you transition at any age, you are building the plane of your personality while you are flying it, baby yep, And like that's so much pressure to put on anyone, but like especially anyone who is a kid is just

But also like sort.

Of like show like well because she is like this, she is facing this like unreal level of scrutiny that is like not normal, deeply unnatural and like fucked up and like unfair.

Yeah, speaking of unfair, we have to go to ads. We come back. That's one of my better pivots. I'm proud of that one. When we come back, We're going to talk about masculinity.

We are back.

So one of the boys is weirdly the second football involved book about a trans woman that I've read in the last year, and I think it's fascinating because in the like pure archetypal sense from structuralless anthropology, it is like a pure structural inversion of Alison Greeves is How to Fly, because how to Fly is this is also a good book, but How to Fly is about a

Totally and sort of the like irregularity of Grace's path this way is like one of the reasons why I was like drawn to like writing a sports story about like a trans girl playing football specifically, is because like I probably have a like more I don't know if complicated is the word, but I have like a very

I'm still gonna be cool with you.

So I guess that means that I have to think about like that I have to like, okay, now I have to like think about how like trans people are like treated by society more broadly. And it's like interesting seeing men in my life like suddenly become like cognizant of like transitions, and it's all like personal. It's all like, well, I know this person, and therefore I'm going to show

So I want to ask a bit more, just digging into sort of the masculinity aspect specifically, because one of the things I think is I don't know that there's a part of being a transfem that isn't super well understood outside of it, which is sort of a lot of trans women have a phase where you really try to be a man, right, where you get like really into like hypermasculinity in order to try to like yeah,

I think it's.

Written interestingly in this book. And I was always wondering, I don't know, like like the way you talk about being in this in like fitting into these spaces as like okay, well, I figured out how to like do the performance okay, and then it was sort of fine. So I'm wondering, like this is almost universally seen as like this is like a formal structural violence that's been enacted on you that you sort of have to like

Yeah, So my book has flashback sequences that are written in second person. This is mostly a book that's written in first person. But I tried to like really lean into this like phenomenon of like closeted trans women like butching up at like certain moments in their lives in order to like pass and cram down this like feeling that is like really fucking scary at first.

So like.

I want the second person grace flashbacks to her like starting fights and being a like asshole to her girlfriend. I want them to feel like jarring, and I want them to feel like Grace is being a bastard in a lot of these flashbacks, but like I also wanted to show like how she gets there in terms of like various moments earlier in her life where she was sort of like shunted into this more like masculine path in order to like pass and like not be bullied

Know, yeah, well it's it's it's political in the sense that, like you know that we were talking about sort of scriptleussness earlier, right, And I think one of the one of the sort of alienating factors about being trends is that, like, especially if you're like kind of alone and you're like, you know, like you're like the only transferm that you're spending time with.

Right, This is just.

True for like a lot of things, like a lot of how sort of oppression functions and a lot of how violence functions. Is by convincing you that this is the only You're the only person's ever gone through this, m h. And there are always going to be unique aspects of it. But like, you know, one of the ways that alienation has maintained is by convincing you that no one else can understand the thing that's happening to you, and that because no one else has ever done it.

Yeah, we can talk a little bit more about the like very start of something that could be seen as a political awakening that Grace has in this book, but like, yeah, part of the reason that she isn't perfect is because she doesn't know any other Like there are no other transmitment characters in this book, And that was very deliberate. Yeah, Grace is like on our own. She is like figuring

That's how it was, like go through it by walking.

Yeah, yeah, I guess, I guess I want to kind of move into the more directly political realm. One I think is interesting about this book is that, like Grace and this is something that like I my brain has been so melted by having been like the politics kids since I was like fifteen, because I was like my high school was like interrupted in the middle of it by be trying to overseell the Turkish government, and so like, my brain is so melted. We'll get air to one

Yeah, So like that was like not any kind of like statement about how like politics is bad.

You know.

That was like Grace's seventeen, and most seventeen year olds, if they have politics at all, have like completely incoherent politics.

Yeah, because I was like, holy shit.

Yeah, So, like Grace has the like barest outlines of like ideology, and those were like put on her by people in her life. We know that her dad is a union man, and from a small age she has

That does not.

Reflect what was going on in my life when I was a teenager, because I was a very annoying oh like me and a friend of mine, Chavon, got in trouble for putting a Bernie Sanders twenty sixteen sticker on her locker, because that's the kind of shit.

We were doing in.

High school in twenty fifteen. So like, I was like very much had sort of like vacant liberal middle class kid politics, but like Grace, Grace is. I imagine that like later in her life, she kind of has more political thoughts in her head. But I also kind of imagine that her brain works like I don't know if you've played Disco Elysium, but I kind of imagine. I kind of imagine Grace has a like thought cabinet, and it's

Yep, God, my brain's doing the Trump flying. In many cases, have no idea what they're doing. Yeah, oh Jesus, crash, braids and broken. Okay, speaking of things being broken, the products and services to support this podcast unrelated statements.

We are back, Okay.

So, having now gotten like many far into this interview without directly being like, here's the football politics, let's talk

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I grew up sort of like middle lower middle class and like playing football specifically, and I grew up playing mostly like soccer and baseball, a little bit of basketball, but I sort of like I sort of ended up playing football when I was like a teenager because I was large, and that's how that works. And like in terms of like connecting with people who weren't white and of my exact class status or higher like football sow

Like all over it. Yeah, that's a huge part of it.

Jason Kirk of The Shutdown Full Cast is working on a book about the like history of Christianity and college football called Church and State. I'm very fucking excited for that book.

Hell yeah, yeah, that sounds awesome.

But it's just like really interesting political space because of how diverse it is and because of how like homogeneous a lot of the like religion and.

Politics of it are, I guess if that makes sense.

Yeah, And it's soundso weird because like, you know, so like I don't know, I refuse to watch college football, Like I draw the line there, like I'm not doing this.

I'm not doing this.

They can't make me watch like fucking Colorado's State or whatever the fuck.

But like one of the.

Things that you get in the NFL too, is it's like, on the one hand, like you have all of this really really conservative shit right, like every fucking everything is God. Like every single time someone holds a thing in front of a player there there's like at least three lines of like all of this is possible because of God. And like someone's like it's like that the only place you see people regularly saying Christ is King where they're not also like holding an ar to like a non

HM.

I think in the NFL, I think it's more coherent because there is a players association, not a union.

A players association, although also also shout out shout outs to the PA for backing are for backing a unionization attempt here.

Thanks for that.

I don't know if it mattered, but that's a lot to me.

Yeah. Also, like sports players, unions are fascinating because these are people who are part of a union who are like at least some of them millionaires. So it's yep, a very interesting sort of like class dynamic happening there. But like call it like the college game right now is just charn Oldhouse. I mean, like it is better now that players are being paid like unambiguous good that players can profit off of their name, image and likeness.

Yeah.

The post is like huddle highlights and like a like quick recruiting profile of like hey, class of twenty twenty seven defensive back wide receiver out of Palo Alto, and just like blasting that onto like Twitter timelines everywhere, just like please God, somebody see my Like, somebody see these fucking huddle highlights. The feudalism stage of high school and college ball has like ended, and now we are in the no regulations baby, just like completely unfettered capitalism stage.

Can we explain like just how like very briefly, people who do not know any football like what name, image likeness is and how this is different from like a system that would be normal, which is you pay the players.

Yeah, so for like seventy years, the precedent with college football in the United States of America is that all these players are amateurs and they cannot be compensated in any way. They cannot profit off of their name, image likeness, so that means that they can't like sell autographs. The school isn't going to sell jerseys that have their name on them. You are meant to make exactly zero dollars

Yeah, well, IM just thinking about the kind of like this is my way of kind of bringing it back to transgender but like one of the things that I've been thinking about a lot in terms of I mean just like what I do, right, and but also just like the way that capitalism has been moving in the last like few decades is it's increasingly about you know because like okay, so, like capitalism's fundamental base has always been like you sell your labor, m right, but now

Right.

It's like, we're not gonna pay you for like your labor, which is like you playing football. We're gonna pay you

Oh boy, So like you're good. Yeah, Oh gosh, everything is uh, everything is personal brands.

Now.

You know, there's a lot of pressure as an author to use all your social media is in a very particular way. You're supposed to. You're you're supposed to make your cute little canva graphics and like talking about your characters and engage with like prompt posts on Instagram and you know whatever social media du jore And like, my personal experience is a little irregular because I do have

Tiktoks for one of the boys.

That was like something that was very important to me. Was like, oh I'm not going to be doing that, Thank god.

That shit.

Yeah.

The way that authors have to promote themselves and turn themselves into brands is like a whole other can of worms that like sucks so like, Thankfully, I think I've managed to avoid the most alienation uh like forms of that. But I did have a few not too long ago, very confidently state that this book was loosely based on my life story, which was news to me. I was like, word,

Yeah, there's a really great essay about this by a friend of min named Rosemary Hoe, who's absolutely brilliant writer, who wrote about the she she's writing about Zady Smith, and one of the things that she talks about is like the way that people just assume that Zadi that like Zadie Smith's politics are just like didactically coming out of the mouth of a character, and like, well, no, that's not how this shit works, Like yeah.

It is. Uh, it's frustrating, and I think like a lot of authors have their own experiences with this, so uh yeah, yeah, I mean I like, you have to turn yourself into some kind of brand. That's why I'm going on podcasts, you know, So that's all, uh you know, that's fun, but uh, I'm trying not to like, you know, completely give myself over to the fucking torment nexus.

Yeah, ye, you know, And there's like, I don't know, this is also just like this is a way you can just completely lose your mind. I don't know if I've ever actually talked about this on this show. Weirdly, one of the people whose career trajectory is the most similar to Minus is Asian American writer named Lesley Yang, who was like this guy who got brought in to

Oh god?

And he you know, for a bit he was like he was like duh, Like he was like he was like the guy who was like the big like Asian American, like this is like the literary thinker. He was like

M yeah.

So one of the interesting things in this book is that like the right wing media, like right wing football media kinda isn't in it that much really, which I think is fascinating And I wonder part of how much of this is just like this was kind of a book that was originally being written before like Aaron Rodgers was going up Pat McAfee show in front of like half a million people every single day and like screaming about trans people.

M So, this book has excerpts of like articles and outside media and like social media, et cetera. Originally it had like a lot more. I had to cut a lot in order to make this book like legible as a book. This book is already like pushing the edges of what you could really communicate in ya in terms of like I have a lot of characters, I have a lot of shit going on, So like part of it is just that, like I had to like you know,

Yeah.

Eventually I just had to like refocus and like, yeah, yeah, bring that conflict closer to home with like school administration's kind of shitty, and like there are plenty of dudes on the football team who also suck. So I kind of like left it in via some like shitty tweets that you see, or you get a lot of it, like indirectly you can imagine what is happening on the fucking Pat McAfee show.

Oh my fucking god.

Yeah, But like also part of it is what you said that the weird timeline of publishing means that I started writing this book in February twenty twenty one, wrote the majority in twenty twenty two, and edit it in twenty three and twenty four, and like kind of this like very organized anti trans reaction was not as prevalent in twenty twenty one at all like I kind of had to like track it as it started to like

So one final ball question on behalf of my beloved and a curse Seattle Seahawks. Okay, so think about Sam Darnold, who's now our quarterback after they traded my beloved Gito Smith for a fucking third round pick.

Brother.

Okay, so, like, is the thing that's going to happen this season not just by week five? Abe Lucas goes down for the twelve million time whatever child they dragged out of a kindergarten to try to block the deal, one hundred gets liquifight in ten milli seconds to Sam Darnold just like start seeing the ghosts of men who haven't been born yet, Like, isn't this exactly? Is this just what's gonna happen? Why why did they build this team like this?

Can I attempt to give you a small amount of Seattle Seahawks optimism.

I thought they were gonna would have lived in games last season.

They should have. So we lost to the Flame Giants. So I I really like some of what the Seahawks did. They drafted a lot of players that I really like. It's true they they finally took a interior offensive line player in the first round. Congratulations, Uh yay. Gray's Abel is a good player. He's also a maga aed shit, which is what you want on your offensive line. No, that's what you want on your offense. It's true, it's true. But also like, god fucking damn it. So you got

He's cool.

I really like Jaylen mil Roe. But you also drafted later on. You took Tory Horden and Ricky White, who are two of my favorite sort of like small school wide receivers in the draft. Hell, you took Damien Martinez, who is a running back who I think could end up being a lot better than someone who's drafted in the seventh round would indicate. And also you took a full back. You took Robbie Oates. That's great. His name is a Robbie Oates.

A great name, great name, old name, old name team.

He is a He's like the squarest football player I've ever seen. Love love Robbie Oates. However, the Sam Donald situation is tough.

It's tough.

I uh, I have a hard time seeing it happen.

He would literally if you had put it behind last year Seahawks offensive line, he literally would have died by about week eight, like you just like straight up would have died on the field.

Oh god.

Yeah. And like it's a bit better this year because you have friends able, but you still have Abe Lucas.

You know, you still have a We'll have a Lucas for three weeks and then we won't have Abe Lucas and then.

And also like Sam Donald was in like the perfect spot for him, and now he's going to be throwing the ball too. I mean, you know you got Cooper Cup. You got, you know, for four weeks, got JSN, but you also have Marcus valdezk is he gonna is he gonna get load bearing snaps?

Like?

Is that really? Is that really what you want?

My cope last year was that was that JSN, that Cas and Lockett was the most underrated receiver trio in the league.

Yep.

And this year it's like, all right, we get six games a Cooper Cup and then we get fifth rounders.

Yeah.

God, it's it's tough out here.

Yeah.

I don't expect Sam Darnold to work here, just like straight up, Like I have been a Sam Donald truther for years, but it is the classic thing of like I think Sam Donald's better than most people think, and then a lot of people are like one hundred and thirty million dollars Sam Donald, and it's like what, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. I didn't think he was that good. I didn't think he was traded Gino Smith good.

No, oh god, So that's unfortunate. Yeah, so this this that, this has been the football section of this of this podcast. Yeah, Sotoria, do you have anything else that you want to say before we head out? And where should people buy your book from?

Not Amazon on that's like really all I have to say about that.

Yeah, one of.

The boys, my name is Victoria Zeller, and you just buy that from bookshop, buy it from your local indie. You can buy it from Barnes and Noble because we don't hate them as much as we hate Amazon. But like I would say, buy it from your local indie bookstore is like ideal for me. I make the same amount of money wherever you buy it, so it doesn't matter. But if you want to sign copy, you can also order it from my home bookstore, So there's that.

Hell.

Yeah, but yeah, my website is a Victoria dot monster and all my links are there.

Yeah.

Okay, I realized I had an actual final question that I wanted to ask it I forgot to do before this the fucking we started the intro, so I apologize. So the odds here are much much higher than they are in most places that there's going to be some queer kids who fucking play ball to some extent listening to it, And I wanted to I'm throwing something from your book at you, which is I know, to the what did you say it to the kiddos who are going through it.

This is so mean. Okay, Okay, I'm going to be real with you right now. Guys, do what's best for you. Yeah, fight if you have it in you to fight, But like, you got to be a kid first and foremost, and like trans kids, queer kids deserve the chance to be fucking kids. They deserve the chance to make mistakes and listen to music too loudly in their friends shitty car, and they deserve to play sports if that's what they

No, And it's like, yeah, it's not if you are like a little ass kid A I have so sorry for how much U s We're on the show. Be like, it is not up to you right now to save the world. That is the job of fucking everyone else who listens to the show. Like, if you want there to be more queer athletes, if you want trans kids to be able to be kids, that shit's on you.

Yeah, all of the rest of you who listen to the show, if you are.

Also like the fucking one bazillion trans people listen to the show, this is like a bit less on you than it is on fucking everyone else. But yeah, but the best time do I started organizing was like five years ago. The second best time is right now, and the best time after that is tomorrow. So go fucking build a world where trans kids can be kids and fall out.

Let kids like me hoop, let them hoop, let them hit dingers, let them ball.

Hell yeah, my people need rings.

My people need titles, they need trophies, they need championships.

Hello, and welcome to It could happen here today. We are talking about white genocide. And when I think of genocide, there is only one name that comes to mind, and it's Molly Congo.

Molly, Welcome.

I just I wanted you to be here as we talked about the genocide of the white race.

I mean, who better to talk about it than two pasty fellas like us.

M hmm, yeah, yeah, I'm sure we're like soon for the chopping block here, Molly, what's happening?

Why are we Why?

Well, I will explain a little bit of what's happening, and then you can tell me how on earth we got here. The United States terminated its refugee admissions program in January of this year, right when Donald Trump became the president and signed a time of executive orders. So since then, the United States has not admitted any refugees.

Sure, I mean, the short answer to that question is, it is not happening. It is not real. It is not a thing that is happening or in my opinion, really could meaningfully happen under the conditions that they're talking about. So again, like you said, they have terminated all refugee resettlement programs. So people coming from active war zones, active ongoing genocides, people fleeing political persecution all over the world.

Yeah, I know, it's almost like a laughable claim or like, except that it's also terribly sad when like Israel, it's just kind of Babe ruthing a genocide in Garza. Now they're not even trying to pretend anymore. They're like, no, we're going to kill everyone by starving them. That's what we would like to do. And obviously those people cannot enter the United States. It's refugees, but these folks from

I mean that idea sort of filtered into American right wing think space over the last I guess thirty years since Lane wrote that manifesto from prison, slowly and through multiple origin points. But I have argued repeatedly over the last several months that we can point to you exactly

He's tweeted a lot of things.

But he tweeted about Africa for the first time forty five minutes after the segment on Tucker Carlson, and he had bought into this idea that these people are being uniquely persecuted.

God.

Yeah, Carlson has mainstreamed a lot of these like white nationalists talking points, but yeah, this one. And you have a really good series on this on your show, right, Like if people want to people want to learn more about the plight of the Africana, you can explain that over several hours.

Yes, I spent three months sort of tracing this story in hainstaking detail. If you're interested in checking that out over on We'd Little Guys.

And you should. It's great.

It's great, good podcast. I highly recommend. So, like we've seen this thing gradually gained momentum, I guess. And then at some point obviously someone got into Trump's here in the last month and he made an executive order right.

He shared the secret Order.

I'm just going to read from it now, quote refugee resettlement and other humanitarian considerations. The Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall take appropriate steps consistent with law to prioritize yeah, law, yea, we're gonna get to that, to prioritize humanitarian relief, including a mission and resettlement through the United States refuge Admissions Program for Africanas in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.

So like he's.

Asking them to develop a plan basically for resettling these white South Africans in the United States, right.

Right, So when he says that it's not about race, now, when he's pushed on that now and he says, oh, it's not about race, it's not because they're white. They word Afrikaaners appears in the executive order, and that doesn't just mean South. That's not a demographic term for people from South Africa. It is a racial term for the descendants of Dutch settlers. Those people are white.

Yeah, No, Like by definition, right, they are white South Africans. They are like therefore definitionly the group that benefited from the apartheid era very much.

So.

As if this wasn't clear enough, Christopher Landau appeared at a press conference meeting these refugees wearing an orange white and blue tie. It's quite a unique tie. I actually googled orange white and blue. I couldn't find one for people who are not familiar. That is the part idea of flag of the Republic of South Africa.

That is a deep cut. The decision to use that particular color scheme when you're greeting these bore refugees is very intentional and very odd.

Yeah, it's got to be a choice, right, Like, no one has a striped orange white and navy blue tie like lying around.

And the sort of dedication to reviving that as a symbol is not without precedent. So with Dylan Rufe, the Charleston church murderer, had on patches, he had the flag of Rhodesia. Obviously they love Rhodesia. Yeah, but he had the apartheid era orange white and blue South African flag and that was strange and unique enough as a symbol that an American would dig up and identify with yes. So the South African press noted it at the time of the Charleston church shooting.

Yeah, it was not in the mainstream.

That is a troubling sartorial trie.

Yeah, yeah, it's it is worrying, like there's yes, like you says, there's a line from the from the africaas through Dylan Roof to this horrific ideology. Right, do you know what what probably doesn't have a direct line to a part We can't be sure of that, I guess, but hopefully hopefully that these products and services do not have a direct through line from apartheid.

Well, probably it's not the Washington State patrol again.

Yeah, all right, we're back. Hopefully that was something nice.

I want to talk a little bit about the US Refugee of Missions program. So I think people sometimes misunderstand the program, what it means, where it comes from, who it's for. So to begin with, like, I want to distinguish between asylum seekers and refugees because I think in like the popular lexicon, these two words are used interchangeably.

Right.

Generally, to be a refugee, one has to register with the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, and thus one has to have fled one's home country. It's somewhat notable that this flight came from Johannesburg, right, Like these people were in South Africa.

Well, apparently DHS set up office space in Pretoria and they were conducted these interviews in Pretoria.

Right, which again is unusual. Right, So you have to normally go to a resettlement support center.

Right.

And I want to talk about the process of background checks in a minute, because surprise surprises didn't happen here, at least not as far as I'm aware. If it did, it to the most expedited version of this process that we've ever seen. So these refugees have been admitted as P one refugees, and people talk about P one like it's a visa category. It's not actually it's a priority category. There are four priority categories for people getting refugee visas.

And unlike these realists state agents from Johannesburg, they can't just go back home.

Yeah, right, like that they actually have fear of persecution if they do, which is not the case for the South African folks. P two are people like there are special groups designated for humanitarian concern like some congal these people living in Rwanda in the past, and Bermese groups living in Thailand have been P two. P three are family reunification cases, so you can you know if one person has refugee status come to the United States so

No.

It sounds like the coolest brand to the military, you know, like like you've got the Marines and then the Welcome

Which, interestingly, Hyas was the target of ire of a great replacement theory motivated mass shooter here in America. Yesbert Robert Bauers posted a lot about Hyas in the days and weeks before he carried out that mass shooting.

Yeah, the Tree of Life Synagogue. People aren't familiar. Yeah, and that was at the time of the quote unquote migrant caravan fall of twenty eighteen, would.

It, Yes, that would be that time period.

Yeah, that was a pretty big time. I was in Tijuana a lot at that time with seeing a migrant caravan. Folks were interviewing folks trying to help. Yeah, coming back to that was remember thinking, like what a fucked up world. So those people didn't get refugee emissions, right, those people were here seeking asylum. The system right now is suspended. Right, and as many as twelve thousand people who have been approved are waiting for travel authorization should come to the United States.

So they're completely in limber.

Right, You're in limbo and at great personal risk.

Yeah, yeah, they're in I mean people spent twenty years in refugee camps waiting to be admitted to the United States. And like, it's hard for me to describe I tried to my Darien Gap series, Right, how desperately sad refugee camps are as places, right, And I think people think of refugee camps a's like, oh, you go there for a few weeks and you sleep under a big white ten.

No children are born and raised there.

Yeah, people live their whole lives in refugee camps. You know, they're the ones that they tibermesport have been there since the nineteen forties. But they live their whole lives, often without even basic essential services.

Right.

I did see for since highest had a little school in Lajas Blancas, which is one of these UN refugee camps in Panama. The recent they have a little school is because children spend so long there that they miss out on their education if they don't have a little school for them.

And so that's just an insult to injury in this whole process, right. It's not only is he shutting off this avenue for refugee status for everyone else and giving it to these people who, you know, I think it's fair to say don't deserve it. Yeah, but he's made this process so simple and so easy and so painless, and that not only are they not fleeing persecution, but they're getting this fast tracked, this easy pass.

Yeah, and like we're paying for it. I mean I remember recently some friends and I were helping someone who'd admitted to the US not as a refuge actually on a different visa category. But like they were really having a hard time navigating the basics and funding that, so like we were able to help them out.

I mean, obviously international immigration is a difficult process. It wouldn't be. I mean, you and you've immigrated internationally, right, It's not a simple process. No, But looking at the people who have taken Trump up on this offer of refugee resettlement. These appear to be people who could have simply immigrated had they chosen to.

Yeah, it seems that way. They could have just moved.

Yeah, they could have I mean come here on like a B one visa or like, I mean, pathways to citizenship are relatively rare if you just like, say, you want to move to the US, right, like you just want to become an American unless you have a bunch of money. So like, these guys will have a pathway citizenship. It's not quite clear how Trump said that they will

I just noticed as we're talking, so you know, I'm not familiar with how the process normally works. Like that's that's your wheelhouse. That's something you're very familiar with. So maybe this is normal. It just looks strange to me. So I've been on vacation the last week, so I'm

It's a Google doc.

It is a Google form. The US Embassy website has a link to a Google form that you can fill out if you want to become great.

I'm sure that's highly secure.

Yeah, well, well it's funny. I was on that website early today as well. That is oh dear, that is sad. I mean, yeah, I don't think a Google doc can possibly be as secure as it would need to be to have the amount of information the government gets on you when you become a refuge is all the information?

Right?

Just to outline the criteria to be eligible for US resettlement consideration, individuals must meet the following criteria. They must be of South African nationality and must be of African ethnicity or be a member of a racial minority in South Africa.

I thought it wasn't about race.

Yeah, I thought it was.

I thought it wasn't about race.

James, Yeah, right, it seems.

And then they must be able to articulate a past experience of persecution or fear of future persecution. What they don't mention here is that, like normally, there are protected categories into which refugees and asylum seekers have to fit. Right, there's a race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion. I mean, I guess, I guess you could argue that, like the Africanas are not per se a race, right like that, like there are there could be.

Oh very much, so, very much so. I mean there's a African is a very specific sort of genealogical lineage.

Yeah, and like which is W's.

Which is why I think they have been careful here to say or a member of a racial minority, because they're saying, like, look, we're not going to do the genealogy. We don't care if your great grandfather was Dutch. We just need you to be white. We just need you to be white.

Yeah, when you arrive, you can do a twenty three and meter test and then they do your percentage and you know, then they put you back on the plane.

No, they just got the pantone color scale. They're just going to hold up the page colored paint chip.

Yeah, they get you at what they called fucking the paint shop there where you go in and they mix it for you. So yeah, they didn't mention these protected categories here. The US State Department of Set has received eight thousand inquiries from people seeking information about the refue program. And that's a lot of people. That is a large number of people. The Episcopal Church here in the United States right like a notably woke organization, I would say Episcopal.

Good for them, honestly.

Yeah, Like because I think, I mean think maybe people.

Don't think about this or don't realize that a lot of these programs like this is a federally grant funded federal program through a partnership with the Episcopal Church. Like you know, in the early days of DOGE, you know, they were saying like, oh, we found all this wasteful spending, all this you know, suspicious payments to these religious organizations. Those are social programs we have outsourced. We have outsourced all of these government functions to these church based social programs.

Yeah.

Like when I think about, like, you know, I've spent a decent amount of time in refuge camps.

The majority of the services that.

Are provided by faith paped programs. Highest there's Bethtal World Ministries. I think it's called Catholic charities. It'sian migration ministries, there's caulca Aid, the Sikh Group, right, I don't think they receive any federal Maybe I don't think they receive federal funding.

But I think for the Episcopal Church as a massive organization to come out and say, yeah, we won't dirty our hands with this, that's incredible.

No, it's great, and like more organizations should. I think they're being resettled in Virginia for the most part.

Good, that's where I live.

James, Oh good, yeah, great, Well you know you could take one in, Molly. You could have a little African to come live with you, like a god.

So Charlottesville where I live, Oh, you'll get some. It's home to a large number of Afghan refugee family. It's like, I know people who work with our new Afghan neighbors and like helping them get settled in our community and helping women get driver's license and get them sewing machines so they can sew their traditional garments at home, and like it's a beautiful community effort to welcome these people

Yeah, well you can help with sewing machine rent you could help us sew up a little pre pre Rainbow Nation South Africa flag for them. But yeah, it is like I've helped people arriving here on refuge visas and like it's actually a really really affirming and wonderful thing to do in your community, and like now it's a

That says a lot of forms to fill in.

The rent is insane, right, and then you add people drive like fucking maniacs, so.

Like and we don't have healthcarerier James, I'm sure that was a culture shock for you. But like so when I was poking around in some of these Facebook groups for these for the South Africans who are sort of interested in maybe seeking this opportunity, and they were talking about sort of the pros and cons and whether they would go and how is the PROW process was going to work. And the one fear that I saw come up over and over again is like, well I heard

Damn yeah, damn don't come.

Yeah yeah in some states, right, there are state funded like safety net programs. I don't know about Virginia.

And I'm sure I'm sure as as America's special and only refugees, they will be afforded access to to all available programs.

Yeah.

Put them on try care after we've kicked the transfolks off. That's how they're making up for the gap.

Yeah, it's pretty bleak.

Honestly, I would really encourage folks like give you are listening to this and thinking, oh, it fucking sucks. So those people have not been granted refugee status. I'm thinking of Like I met a woman from Zimbabwe when I was in Darian Gap who had come with her daughter. Right, she had faced persecution at home in Zimbabwe, a country that is not Rhodesia anymore.

We're keeping score in.

A country that was never Rhodesia. Rhodesia never existed.

Yeah, right, Yeah, she went to South Africa right to attempt to be safe, and persecution followed her that. So then she took this journey all across the America's carrying her kid through through the jungles and over the mountains and through the rivers. And that's where I met them, and we've stayed in touch.

Right.

She's in the United States now, she's working on her asylum process, and it is expensive and it is by no means secure. And this is like a woman who has faced who fits multiple categories right in the protected they've protected categories here, right, It's going to be very hard and very expensive for her. And it really genuinely fucking breaks my heart to see someone who like would be such an asset to any community, who was such a ray of light even in some of the hardest

And it's just such an ugly intersection, right, this is not just like our adult brained president falling victim to a racist conspiracy that he saw on Tucker Carlson, right, like that that's how the idea got into his mind. But I think this resurgence of his alleged interest in the plight of the white South African is this terrible

But there is a.

Hot shot on the side in the first section of the executive Order that, like well, and South Africa has been very unfair to Israel. Right that South Africa being a leading voice in the international community on the genocide in Gaza is part of this. That the inded they need to be punished for their advocacy against the genocide.

Yeah, it's also not a coincidence. So like Musk has started interacting with some of these like white farmer accounts on his racism ap right.

I think that one.

I think it's an maybe its screen name is just bore or it's oh yes, a.

South African news site recently unmasked that particular individual.

Oh cool.

Yeah, I haven't read the article yet, Like I said, I've been on vacation, but they're they're on the case.

Yeah, great, good, And I think about these.

You know, white identity South African nationalist kinds of guys. Is apartheid wasn't that long ago? Yeah, thirty years ago? Right, So anybody god fifty year older who's talking a lot about white identity in South Africa, I would just like to ask you, what were you doing in nineteen ninety Yeah, just tell me who you were hanging out with the nineteen ninety because I have questions.

Yeah, Like I remember the end of apartheid very like, that's one of my earlier political memories. I remember, like Nelson Mandela coming out at the Rugby World Cup in nineteen ninety five, like that being a big people like I guess maybe our listeners a lot of our listeners are younger than me. But like, South Africa was something of a pariah state under apartheid, right, Like they couldn't people wouldn't even play sports with them. They didn't even

It's a pretty fucking bleak.

It is a quick turnaround and an ugly one. But like I said, the average white South African who is very vocal about white rights may have a very close connection to a very recent act of terrorism, if you know what I'm saying.

Yeah, yeah, they're not just talk.

It was very violent in the early nineties.

Yes, yeah, Molly's done some good stuff on the yeah, and on the violence of white South Africans. And I guess, yeah, what folks in the US who are inspired by them? Molly, do you have anything you want to plug? Otherwords, kuntu Wei's way, I guess is what you want to plug?

Right, Yeah, I mean I'm keeping an eye on their treeson Case against Affro Forum. I think that's I mean, it's just political talk, but it's fun.

We'll see.

Apparently the investigation is ongoing. But no, if you are interested in more about how this happened, I did an eight part series about political violence at the end of apartheid and its connections to American neo Nazis. You can check that out on Weirdle guys, it's a good time. I think there's a really fun episode about Adulf Lunngren movie from the late eighties. It was secretly fun to my South African military intelligence. Yeah, it's a good time. And uh we live in hell.

Oh my god, it's it's it could happen here. It is, and it's talking about it happening here. You know about what we're you know, what's happening in a galaxy far far away. These are the and Or episodes we're talking about episodes Jesus, what is it?

Seven through nine?

Seven through nine of and Or Season two, when this is done, will be three quarters of the way over with. I mean, one of the best seasons of television ever made. So you know, savor it, folks, enjoy it, and enjoy these podcasts. Yeah, eloquent Garrison, thank you, thank you, arg Me Harties raised the Hondo Anaka flag.

And let's watch some and Or. This is episode three of our Star Wars and Or Politics review podcast. The person grumbling in the intro is Robert Evans. I'm Garrison Davis. We are also joined by Mia Wong. Let's start with episode seven. I think this ark on General might be my favorite arc of the whole show. Frankly, they did some really fun stuff. Oh yeah, and seven's mostly set up. This is episode seven titled Messenger. I'll do a quick overview and then we can discuss some of the setup

Yeah. I want to note at the start of this kind of what we see because we're watching one year jumps between these, this is the first time where it's been made really clear the rebellion has moved on from scattered insurgent groups to a functional army. Like when we're introduced to Yavin, there's a transport landing, a group of soldiers are getting off and they're being told like, okay, your ration cards are here. And like you need to report in here and here, this is where you're billeted.

Yeah, and that's a big part of what this episode is starting to set up now on Gorman. Imperial presence on the planet has already increased dramatically in the past year. A new imperial headquarters the towers above the capital city of Palmo. Security forces are stationed throughout the city with checkpoints and a mandatory curfew. The past few weeks, there's been stories of insurgent attacks against the Empire, most recently

Terrorists their hate for imperial norms.

Are getting help from quote unquote outside agitators.

Which is not untrue actually for once, but also not like the core of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, and I think that that's part of the part of the point right like that. That's part of what Luthen's going for is he wants to keep them sort of obsessed with this side of things, in part because Luthan knows that it's moved on, right, Like, Luthen knows that the rebellion is in Yavin. Now you know he is. He's not entirely a side show, but he's no longer the

Yeah, and Luthan's still trying.

I mean, like the outside agitators here is probably mostly like Luthen's guys who've been trying to build up the insurgency on Gorman simply to make some sort of political crisis and then you know, also help the people who have already committed to resisting the empire, help them actually like do that beyond what the Gorman Front's been like parading around and doing you know, little little protests in

M H.

So, Yeah, a lot of this episode is like showing how the rebels are actually like growing an army before they've really put together the formal rebel alliance, like they're they're they're getting so much closer to that. But at this point it's it's like a whole bunch of little like militias that are operating over the same base and are starting to set up like rules and guidelines, and like Cassie and butts up against some of those rules a little bit here.

Because he can't go and come as he pleases anymore, right, Like it gets him in trouble with General Draven.

Yeah, it's not just rebel cells that are operating independently. Now they are trying out working together and that has some growing pains.

Yeah.

Well, and it's not just working together too, like, it's it's the command structure totally. Structure is becoming increasingly centralized in a way that it hasn't been. Well, it's the previous to this has been like the centralizing thing has been like Luthen kind of being an asshole to everyone but like moving stuff between them.

And now it's like.

Or Sagarera, right where where he operates as like a cult of personality type thing with his own militia.

Yeah yeah, right, well, but i mean like between all of the different networks. Yeah, and now it's like, no, we have this place where we're developing a chain of command and we're developing these sort of like totally we're going to become increasingly rigid like hierarchies in this In this whole thing.

Luthen's becoming a somewhat controversial figure and is kind of getting pushed out of the actual organized rebellion because he's a little bit difficult to work with.

Yeah, because he's an asshole. Like that's like, yeah, and well, he's he's doing what he has to do. I mean, I'm Luthen's last defender. If he's only got one fan, it's me. And Luthen is doing is handling this exactly how he has to. There's no room to be nice

Yeah, well, well we'll talk more about kind of Luthen's situation in episode nine, you know, the Luthen of it all, Yeah, because that kind of gets more into like what his

Well I don't think he thinks he fits there, right, Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, Like his whole thing is such a an idiosyncratic organization that's that's just based around him and Claya, you know, this this young woman that he works with. Like there's no place for him in a military command structure. That's not his thing.

The other thing this episode really focuses on is like you know, news propaganda and like the idea of like like terrorism outside agitators and using those things as justifications for state crackdowns. The senator from Gorman talks with mon Mathma about about how he believes that like the Empire is lying about what's happening on Gorman and these bombings

Are these things.

Genuine or are they Are they being done by by people on Gorman who are like aligned with the resistance but maybe are getting like outside help. You have all those sorts of questions, and then the news media is like manufacturing consent for an imperial crackdown, like what was discussed in like the very first episode.

It's very it's very seventies Italy, like because there's these bombings happening, because there's all this weird shit, and because nobody knows exactly who's doing what, everyone is like kind of become conspiracy brained and like half the conspiracies are true, but not only the ones people think are the ones

Even the Gorman front itself is like debating this, like they had this whole meeting where they discussed like tactics, like the role of the role of violence, and like as these big arguments erupt, they start to reflect on how the empire is actually set them up for infighting, and the most time they spend doing this, the less time they're actually doing anything helpful on Gorman or like doing anything that actually can secure their own like liberation

There's a good part in that scene where they're debating it where the guy who gets who kind of stumbles upon them doing the robbery. Yeah in the last like yeah, yeah, yeah. It has a speech where he's basically like, look, man, everyone's like whatever they're doing, whatever their attitude about the right way to resist, they're all Gormans to me, and

There's like national identity is a big concept in these episodes, but not in like a fascistic nationalist sense.

No, is in we're all in this, We're all going to hang together, is what I think he's saying.

But like like national solidarity. Yeah yeah, it's like eighteen twenties kind of like or even like Ireland, right, like yeah yeah, And like you know, I can give a speech here about where this is going in about how shin Fame's like Turny gets imbigers and trans people, but it's also like that's just like that what's happening right now. This is like eighteen twenty, not like nineteen twenty.

The last thing I want to talk about in this arc before we go on break is this Force healer that Cassiean reluctantly visits in the Yavin for mess Hall.

Yeah.

This was a super interesting scene to me, and this is the first.

Time we have seen any mention of the Force really. Yeah.

This is like the big like spiritual moment in this series, and or has kind of veered away from like the mystical side of Star Wars in favor of the more like materialist politics the Star Wars that they concluded this here, I thought was really interesting and really well done. And the reason why I like it so much is that, like throughout the Rebel Alliance, they always like agreet each other and like say, goodbye by saying may the Force be with you, which is a little bit odd because

Is fake, it's a psio.

It's just the alien god thing in the black Holes.

For in part what I love that and er is how big it makes the universe seem because Cassi Cassian isn't like he doesn't have like the you know, the There's that line in the in a New Hope where basically Han's like, I don't know, like Han's clearly heard of the Jedi, but he's like, I don't need like I don't give a shit about this.

I don't need hokey religions or special efforts.

It's like somebody talking about yeah, like like Wicca, right, Like if you're just like a dude who's a fucking drug dealer, You're like, I don't need to hear about that, man, I got I got fucking heroin to move, Like, yeah, it's very it's very much like it's it's very much like faith Healer coded.

It's like, oh god, no, I'm not gonna see the faith healer come on, Like.

No, yeah, And and he talks about how him and his like his mom had like a bad experience with a horse a force healer like ten years ago, and you're like, this is this is a whole like scam operation as well.

Yeah, like fake force healers.

And beyond that, the thing that's unset is what we know about Cassie and is he was raised on the planet completely cut off from the rest of the galaxy. His childhood was as a hunter gatherer in the deep jungle, and he was, presumably as all people's in that situation always have, raised with a set of beliefs about the universe and spirituality that were completely shattered when his entire planet was annihilated by the Empire. Right was it by

Fuzzy period between the Republic and the Empire.

Yet yes, but of course he doesn't believe in anything, right, Like he had some sort of set of beliefs and the entire cosmology of his planet was annihilated, Like why would he believe in anything?

I just like what this does for like the Alliance itself, and it shows that the Force is like a regular part of these people's lives. And like specifically the way the Force Healer talks is more about like the Force as this as this like operator of.

Like fate and destiny.

And it can sense that Cassian Andor is the main character in Rogue Wan a Star Wars story, and is important for the story of Star Wars, and she can feel that this is important, and so condicts and and Or is also freaked out by that like feeling. And I do like that version of the Force a lot. I think that's a much more interesting way to do it. And just like you know, force cults in like a forever religious war with each other for thousands of years.

Yeah, if you if, if you pay us an unbelievably large amount of money, Garrison and I will have our six hour argument we have every time about the Force Star Wars.

Well, I do also.

Like that it's not one hundred percent clear that this person is even force sensitive.

She can like feel through the force, but like everyone can with some degree of training.

Yeah, but but it's well, but it's it's it's also like not.

Clear that it's like like she's just a girl.

She's yeah, yeah, but it's like it's it's not a his back seems to feel better.

Yeah, no, yeah, totally yeah. But but but but also like that's the thing, like it's it's not it's not like a thing like Okay, this is like a Jedi, right, they're using the Force, and you could tell using the Force. This is a lot more kind of like nebulous, and it's not one hundred percent clear if it's happening or if it's everyone is like I think just thinks that it's happening or like what's you know, it's it's very no.

Yeah, that's why I like it, Like, yeah, it's not a Jedi, it's just it's just someone and everyone in this universe can have a connection with the Force, because that's how this universe works, and some people don't want to or think it's fake, and other people get really into it. So people get way too into it, and then they do genocides in the name of the of

Well, and I really like that. They must have there must have been a discussion, should we have her say she used to be like a Paddawan, right who somehow escaped Order sixty six.

That must have been God, she's not.

Thank God, they just didn't.

We don't know what she don't care, need to does matter because no one in the situation would give a shit. Yeah, Cassian's not gonna be like, so, yeah, tell me about like your fucking bad He doesn't give He doesn't give a fuck.

There's so much else going on in his head at that moment.

So much better that she's just a random person and we never know.

We never know.

All right, Let's go and break and come back to talk about the Gorman massacre. Yay, okay, we are back and or season two episode eight, Who are you?

Yeah? Oh I just I will talk a lot about the name of this episode. Oh yeah, baby, because I love it, because it's it's just some of the best writing that this show or any show has ever had. Yeah yeah, please go ahead and give us the over there.

Let's do a quick run down.

Yeah yeah yeah.

As mining equipment lands across Gorman, troops barricade the Imperial headquarters in Palmo Square as they prepare for a mass protest. The Gorman Front prepares to retake the town square, distributing weapons and rallying just regular Gorman citizens to march on the town center. The old leader of the Front realizes too late that this protest is probably an Imperial trap

Oh, and this scene is the guy who plays Ryot. There's so many great monologues in this The dude who plays Rylands, who is the old rich guy who's kind of the organizing center of the Gorman Front.

The original one.

Yeah, has a beautiful speech here where he's just how can you say these things?

What kind of being are you?

What kind of being are you? Yeah, it's excellent, it's perfect, it's devastating. Yeah.

Cyril breaks free and makes his way through the chanting crowd that's filled in a square.

Yeah.

After arriving at the barricaded Imperial Tower, Cyril sneaks into Dedra's office to demand to know what the Empire wants on Gorman. He chokes Dedra as she confesses that this has all been for the Emperor's new energy program, and she promises that they will soon return to Corussant as heroes.

We'll get everything we want. The Empire will reward us for our loyalty. This is this is it. This is the last fucked up thing we have to do, and then we can live happily ever after. Yeah, didn't you want this promotion?

Yeah? Yeah.

She says that this might be the previous episode or this one, but like when Zero like kind of like protests that just like, yeah, but you weren't complaining when you got promoted into this into this job. But Zero wishes Dedra good luck and he leaves to join the crowd outside Cassie and is stationed on the outskirts of the crowd, trying to line up a shot to take out Dedra. But stormtroopers soon kettle the crowd and Imperial riot cops are sent into the square to jumpstart a

And they make a beautiful point. The kettling is done by stormtroopers who are the elite, right, These are their very best infantry, the riot cops. From the moment they're introduced, because we see these guys land with their kit bags, their sergeant clearly has a lot more experience and is like, these guys don't know what the fuck they're doing. We cannot put them in any kind of dangerous they have

They're cannon fodders. Yeah, they're sacrificial lambs. Yeah, now, Sir Cyril watches the chaos unfold as the Gorman Front tries to defend against the Imperial Slaughter and Chax security droids are sent into the town square, but when Cyril sees Cassian, he suddenly lunges at him and the two get into a brutal brawl.

Cyril gets the.

Upper hand, but is shocked when Cassian does not remember who he is. While frozen, pointing his blaster at Cassian, Cyril gets shot dead by the old leader of the Gorman Front.

There's Rylan's It's an incredible moment. Yeah.

While trying to exfiltrate Cassian meets up with Willem, who decides to stay and help the resistance. In the aftermath of the massacre, the Gorman Front broadcasts the final message about the Imperial siege, claiming there are thousands dead in the streets. Cyril's mother is in tears watching news reports coming out of Gorman that frame the Imperial troopers killed as fallen heroes.

Yeah, oh boy, what.

An episode, maybe the best episode in the series. Just phenomenal.

It's phenomenal. I'll give you that. I don't know whish I'd pick us the best, but it's tough. It's tough.

It's the prison break one still, because a break one's very good.

I'm gonna go on a little rant about the name of this episode, who Are You, because that moment between Cassian and Cyril, is one that Tony Gilroy ha said interviews he had to fight for everyone was like just crazy and Diego Luna said it was one of the hardest lines for me to deliver because Luna likes the show and is a fan of the character Cyril and his acting, and he knows every and it has the degree of sympathy that you almost have to have for Cyril at this point totally, and so it was such

Who shatters cyril self perception?

Well, and it's not even I'll even push against a little bit that because I don't think it's entirely that. I think what I like about Cyril's journey is that, and what I like about this episode is that who Are You is not just about that line. It is about every character that we see in this We are learning who they all are, and they are learning who

The quote from earlier when he's like arguing with people in the streets, He's like, the only path forward is silent resistance. Yeah, And by the end of the episode he is a little beyond that.

And I love for him that he gets a chance to learn who he is and be wrong and then learn again and be right right, which is not a chance Cyril is going to get. Cyril does and all Cyril is. We see, we see a lot of characters in this who could only have been themselves in a fascist state. Dedra's one of them, right, Dedra could not have been the person she is outside of the Empire. I think part of Goaz probably is too, could never have been himself fully outside. Certainly, well, I think if you.

Put Partigas into CIA, he is mostly the same guy.

I think he must have been in the Republic CIA. Yeah.

He feels very like Republic transitioned into the empire, like God.

Yeah, And I think Krenick obviously is one of our best. Crenic is only an empire is under fascism, Ye, Cyril is not an ideological fascist. Cyril never really embraces fascism as a belief system. He never understands the Empire that way, he just understands the Empire's law and order, or he gets if you look at it from Cyril's standpoint, he gets brought into this not because he wants to cramp down on clamp down on the evil rebels and he

Right.

He has a sense of like justice.

And he believes he's following that, and he believes that his girlfriend is invested in that, and he truly believes. He doesn't want to hurt the people of Gorman. He wants to find the outside agitators who are driving them to disaster, right, And the moment when he learns that that's all a lie, he beats the shit out of his girlfriend in a very violent I had an argument

It's such a fucked up, it's such a it's such like every everyone is everyone's fucked and everyone's evil and everyone's complicit. Yes, and they're all like calling their own commitment to like the state and what they view as justice and law and order into question. And like for Cyril, like he's he has just committed to this idea like justice and what he sees as law and order, and the Empire is the physical manifestation of law and order, so therefore the Empire must be good, right, and and

And we've seen from Cyril previously that he has physical courage, right, he's not afraid of violence, he's not afraid of putting himself in physical danger, right, Like he's not a Cassian and or level comfortable with it, right because he just doesn't have that kind of experience. But he's he's not he's not physically a coward, but he's a moral coward the whole series and that changes and again going back

Right.

When he learns that those are the stakes he hits, he chokes Dedra and he fucking runs. He doesn't know anything else about himself at that point. And my interpretation of his reaction to that line from Cassian isn't just because I think what I love about the scene when he chooses to attack him, It's not him making a decision to go back to the Empire. He's not trying to rest to fight Cassian because he wants to get back and good. It's just the only thing that makes sense.

Like this whole situation on Gorman calls into question how he sees the Empire and therefore how he sees himself as he realizes that he's just been a pawn in the empire's larger game. And like, in a way, Gorman's the first time that Cyril has been part of like a real community, maybe since he was like a Corpo cop, Like there's no like solidarity in community like on Coorissant, there's not in the Bureau of Standards. Like Gorman's the first time he's actually kind of been a part of

So I think the other thing that's really important about Cyril's character is like if if you remember him in like the very beginning of season one, right, he has like like like what he like goes home, like he has like a storm he has like storm tuber like

Yeah.

And the thing is Denser Miro is that actual person. And this is and this is a tension that that they that it's kind of worked out, or of course season one if like Dendri Muro is a character who in a conventional show is a hero right like she is she is she is like the cop that's willing to work outside of the restrictions of the thing in

And I think part of what's.

Going on with Cerial is like Cyril's whole thing is that he has been trying to be this cop and then he has this moment where he's like, oh shit, none of that's like real. The actual thing that it means to be this cop isn't just this isn't this like I dress up in my in my client was closed.

Person and he sees it and it just like it just sort of it rips away.

The facade that's like that is the facade of how like on a kind of macro level, like how we how film and television and how American media thinks about like spies and thinks about cops. Sure, and you see that the actual brutal reality of it, which is like through through the eyes of this person who who like through through this sort of like media stuff, has always wanted to become this person and is like, oh, you're

M So my interpretation of kind of his ending moments is that Number one, I don't really feel it is necessarily that he undoes all the progress. I think that there's this this animal moment when he sees Cassian that just overrides that because nothing else about his life has makes sense anymore. He's completely lost any sense of sanity. Sure,

Right.

That's not nothing that he makes that choice. We don't know where he would have gone from here. There's a version of Cyril that could have been a part of the rebel, that could have if he had just left Cassie and helped some Gorman's escape on a ship, used his imperial credentials gotten them out of there. It becomes something else We'll never know because he doesn't get the chance. And I see in that last moment, not just him

It is a very like Greek tragedy, ugh like moment tyr. Yeah, phenomenal, phenomenal screenwriting.

I will larw you. It's going to get paid off a lot in the next three episodes. But there's this idea that has run through the series that even if you are someone working within this machinery of death, within this evil empire, you're not unredeemable or unsavable. But you don't have unlimited time. Right, Yeah, you can be something else. You have that chance, but you don't have infinite days to make that choice.

This is like the entire message of Star Wars. This is like, this is this is like Luke in Vader in the Throne Room. This is like what this whole series is about.

Like is this moment.

Yeah, yep, I do have a few other things I want to talk about in terms of like the massacre. I really like that we see a return of like imperial military police, not just stormtroopers. I think putting a face on the riot cops is really good for the audience because stormtroopers are backpacks and t shirts and little fun toys and riot cops or riot cops. I'd really like that Willman is sleeping with a French militant.

Many such cases.

Among us.

Hartagras in a like a phone call with Dedras talking about how like yeah, like you know, propaganda, news media has been useful and like spreading like rumors and like you know, like co intel pro that's for stuff. It's been useful. But now the only the quote is like now the only story is Gorman aggression. Like this is all that we can focus on. There's there's no no more of this like outside agitators thing, no more of

So as soon as they.

Started to go the galaxy, I started like, I started like get like sweat egg I started having no No that.

That gave me a little breakdown too. It's my least favorite. No, it's happening again.

The galaxy isn't watching.

No, it's not it's not. Oh I hate that chant. I hate that fucking Chance. It's very real. It's very real, right like this these guys right, yes, we get.

We get like a real proper riot set up, right, like the last riot in and Or was on fer Ex Like that was like a funeral riot.

Right, It's almost like some of the writers have seen kettles.

It's great, it's crazy.

And like this time like this is not like a morning ritual like like it was unfair, like this is this is this is a protest riot. There's there's signs, there's banners, there's fireworks, there's smoke, there's space molotovs, there's state affiliated news crews. There's tie fighters flying overhead like police copters and police drums.

It's excellent.

I got a little flashback of being buzzed by a police helicopter. It's standing rocks so close that it knocked my car off the road. That's what happened with the tie fighter. So good.

Yeah.

Yeah. And it's like like like right down to like just just like the micro dynamics of like how the crowd is interacting with the riot shields. It's like, oh shit.

And I got the same not in my stomach when I can tell that it's about to go down. I get this the same not watching this like they really nailed It's.

Great too, is it? With in the just in the face acting, but with Cassie and and with Wilman, you can see that they know they've been in this. They know Willman a spatlieh Okay, okay, okay, I know what's happening.

I also really like that, okay, so okay. So the challenge that Gilroy has here is we have to introduce the concept of kettling to the average Star Wars watcher, and with the average Star Wars watcher. You can't be like, Okay, the police are going to form a wall. You have to physically make walls come in around the thing.

Like some people have said that the Gorman mascer is very clearly inspired by what's happened in Palestine. These episodes I'm sure were informed by other massacres in Palestine, but these were written prior to the most current outbreak of really intense genocidal violence.

In like twenty two.

Probably again there were other similar massacres that occurred in Palestine. But also like this is very clearly patterned off of Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland. This is very clearly patterned off of I would argue my suspicion the Ombuitz massacre in India by the British government as well. Like I think that there are pieces of all of that in here.

There's also elements that I heard friend of the show Emmy Who's Great, talking about, like the Tlata Laco massacre, which is like the massacre in nineteen sixty eight in a square in the middle of Mexico City, which is massacre where there's like these giant students sixty eight student protests are happening and they just like put snipers on the rears and shoot everyone.

Mm hm.

And I think so when I saw this, like I thought it was going to be a lot more of just like a straight massacre. Everyone dies and it kind of turns into a shootout, and I wasn't sure how that was going to play. Also, I think it is also worth remembering that, like also a lot of the sort of famous historical massacres aren't like some people do

It happened in my dawn too. Write where you have you know, both you have Berkut snipers shooting and killing protesters and you have protesters firing back from behind the barricades. Yeah.

I really liked the singing the gorba national anthem as a way to like, yeah, stop the chanting, which is like calling towards you know, like we're safe because the

Yeah, there's another example.

This is like the Red Summer, which is like a whole bunch of like anti anti black race riots and you and it's it's not what he thinks. It's like, yeah, it's remembered as like a bunch of white supremacists just murdered a bunch of black people.

And that's true.

But also people fought back, like people had guns, people fought back, people resisted them, and you know a lot of people fucking died. And also people in these situations fight back and it's good. The last thing I want to discuss in this last section is the based hotel porter who throws that.

Bob my god. Oh yeah, and again, yeah, we are learning he already knows clearly he knows who he is. He never has any question about that. But we don't know who he is. Cassian doesn't fully until he's like, yeah, I wiped you from the system, bro, get out of here, right.

So that's what we're talking about, yeah, is this is this base hotel porter.

And also that the way the way Cassian works as a spy is different from the way that other like

I I.

Know that you're up to something and I will protect you, like where we are in this together, Like I recognize you, and I like value you, and that is what like helps helps and Or like in this episode.

And then also the grenades that he throws is you know cool, uh.

And there's there's a beautiful and Or's last line to this kid is I hope things work out for you. And the last thing we see that kid do is detonate a bomb to kill himself and a bunch of other people.

Rebellions are built on hope.

Yeah, yeah, And he tells him rebellions are built on hope, which is where we get that line from Rogue one.

I like that Sam, the guy with two m's who killed Sinta last Dark is still in the fight and is killing imperials. He is, yes, he is killing them in the name of Sinta. He is, he is showing up.

He is real and he he he again. He learns who he is in this episode, right, like he's not just a fuck up. He rams a truck into that K two unit and save save Cassio, save, saves the whole day. And yes, he learns Rellion too. Yeah, he learns who.

I feel like that everything good that happens to Cassiod all the people who do it are like in part like a responsible for the destruction out of the Death Star, which shows how like the butterfly effect works.

In a really fun way.

Yeah, and like like a good luth and operative casting and takes K two to get reprogrammed. But like this, this episode like ends on this on this Gorman cry for help, this like final broadcast done by Wilman's French GF and I I was legitimately tearing up at this. Uh it got to me and or starts tearing up,

What aisode?

What aisode?

All right, we'll go on a break and then come back to briefly discuss this last episode, which is also quite good.

Okay, we're back. Episode nine.

Welcome to the Rebellion Clone wars heads are feasting so much Senate very fun. So on Corussant, fake news spreads about what has happened on Gorman and the Gorman senator is arrested with no warrant and no charges. Mad Mathma plans to make a final speech in the Senate and then leave Coroissant with bail. Organa to lead the rebel alliance on Yavin, but Senator Organa doesn't want to leave yet.

Well was maybe we'll talk about that, yeah.

Cassian takes Wilman to Yavin for medical attention while Gold Squadron finishes Man's escort to the rebel base back on Base, Bix breaks up with Cassian via snapchat message and leaves Yavin to fight for the rebellion elsewhere and to keep Cassian on Yavin, and later that day rebel and engineers reprogram these salvaged k extroid. Okay, this episode has a lot of a lot of politics, A lot of politicking, Yeah, a lot a lot of capital Senate stuff.

I want to read a little bit from monmothmaus speech here. Sure, what I think is kind of the nut of it here, I believe we are in a crisis. The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil.

Uh boy, it's a little orange man bad. But hey, the Orange Man is bad.

It's not just orange. It's making a broader, more historical point that totally yes. The reason all of this works. By destroying any kind of shared concept of reality, you can get people to If you can get people to believe absurdities, you can get them to commit atrocities.

Right, I mean, this is this is what like the Nazis understood as well.

Yes, and I love that speech. I think it's really one of one of my favorite bits of this is that it continues to show the degree to which, as in Nimic's Manifesto, tiny spontaneous individual acts of rebellion are constantly occurring and are a key part of the movement

Well no, no, no, no, like her driver, she's known her driver, Chlorus has been like isb for like two seasons.

This is a different driver. I think than first this is the same driver, because she's been talking. She's been talking to Chloris a couple of times. She makes a comment about that this one hurts.

She's been talking to like Erskine, like, oh shit, yeah, she's she's been getting closer to like her state aid. Chlorus has always been like a dipshit who they've kept around because he's like kind of bad at his job. He is bad at being an ISB, like like paid informant, so they like keep him around even though they know he's reporting to ISB.

There's a little bit of an insinuation with him looking at his gun and listening to her that maybe he's rethinking things. But again, we never get the chance to see that because Cassie and.

I think he's like thinking about if he's gonna have like a rest or shoot her. Yeah, that was my bread on it.

I think he's making up his mind about what he's gonna do. And I don't think we actually see that, but I mean I think it's open to interpretation.

Yeah, because Cassian domes his little because little.

Thus has and does not take chances like that, he does not take chances.

And also Cassian employs great tactics in asking Man what his name is first to engage him in conversation, to distract him enough to like totally surprise him.

Yeah, very good. I also I like the one of the kind of it's not stated directly, but like Lannie, the Imperial deep cover agent within the ISB, is the guy who put these people there, particularly the incompetent ISB agent who Cassian first shoots the lady, the.

Person who's infiltrated Man's team a Baile's team. Yeah, Like, the reason why Luthan knows that there's something wrong with Bail's team is because the agent that has that has infiltrated like Baile's network is one of Lonnie's agents. So Lonnie was able to get word to Luthan that there could be a problem with with Baile's extraction team and that's what that's what helps helps get mont Yavin safely.

Yeah.

And it's just kind of more confirmation of the value of Lannie of yeah, having him there and how he how much he was worth the sacrifice of Ando Krieger and his rebels and season.

One Nonnie Lonnie is mvp uh. Like a lot of this episode is kind of showing how much Luthen's accelerationist project has kind of succeeded, like like how much he's he's in somewhat set up Gorman or at least like fed the fire of Gorman slightly to create this political crisis to further his like accelerationist goal of creating this like big conflict, and like we see some of that start to work out, even though Luthen himself is like having a much harder time and the kind of the

Yeah, And that's like that That's the other thing I want to mention about this episode about the way Luthen operates is that because the way Luthen operates is by fucking not telling anyone anything and by manipulating people and by spying on them, and by like having this whole network of double agents and like people who doesn't like the problem with operating like that, And this is the problem that he's running into here is like mon Mathma does not fucking trust him because the thing that she

I think we have in these episodes, uh Vell does not seem to be working with him anymore. She's more or less completely gone in on the actual like military part of the alliance.

Yeah then yeah, well and this and this is the this is the thing about this is like you get to watch every walking away from You get to watch everyone who Luthen had worked everyone walks away with him because they're like this guy keeps being an asshole and he keeps hiding things with people, and he keeps manipulating everyone, and it's like it's like he's doing and this is this is like also this is a kind of person also that you run into where it's like they're doing

On, but it it also saves her, Like it's it's it's it's a double right.

It does seem distrust with Mon, but it also.

Is what God because it is it is him who gets Mom out. Yeah, and it's it's like it's just this like really messy.

That's what makes them a good character is that he is both like he understands who he is.

He's like fucked up and morally compromised and is obviously hashtag problematic, but it's also completely necessary within the plot that they've created. Yeah, and like somewhat defensible and like he knows that he's like fucked, Like he he says, like there's.

No Yavin for me.

I'm not going to have and I'm never going to see the sunrise, Like that's not what my role is. I have to be the asshole here, and yeah, it sucks. And we start to see like his fake Luthen like gallery persona is starting to collapse here too, Like yeah, this whole episode, he's not in his like wag, He's not in his like fancy clothes. He is like insurgent Luthen Like this, this this role that he's he's cultivated these past few years is no longer needed and it

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Yeah, it's just good character writing. We've all been bent by secrecy, is what he says.

Yeah, and and by God he has. And there's there's a couple of really good moments in this that I don't want to skip over. There's the next Year in Next Year in Yavin moment between mon Mathma and Bail Arghana, which I saw someone on Twitter decree to be Zionist propaganda. I'm sorry, like that that is definitely based on next Year in Jerusalem, a term that has been in use for like way more than half of a millennia. That is, has nothing to do with Zionism. You're just being racist,

Right.

I think it's an appropriate kind of callback to real world history there and the line where I think that moment between her and Bail works really effectively and the thing that he's doing works really effectively.

This interaction between her and Bail also shows like the difference between how Bail operates, Luthen operates because like Man asks Bail if he trust his people, like like if he trusts his extraction team, and he says like of course, yeah, but he but but he has to admit that he doesn't actually know them personally for for quote unquote safety, and like this is this is where it shows like the difference between someone like Bail, who's maybe less manipulative

Yeah, we will be dealing with that soon. I would like to call out mon Mathma's face acting and both the scenes were casting and just immediately domes some motherfuckers.

WHI jack my god, incredible stuff.

She's like, she's she's known intellectually and it's even hit her because she had a friend of hers killed, right, a former lover. She didn't order it, but it was done and she knew it was happening, So she's not she had to cope with it, totally naive. But the rebellions, I would argue, not fully real to her until she sees a man shot through the brains.

It's funny because she, like like minutes earlier, has a line where she's like, like, hiding in this set it this whole time, will have been the hardest thing we've ever done, and then it's immediately faced with the lethal consequences for her actions.

Yeah, it's like I don't know, I don't know. It's much worse.

Well, and it's also like interesting too because it's like the second person she's seen shot in this episode, right, because like there's also like the first I s P Agent who they have shot.

But it's like she doesn't know the person someone she knows, right, No, it's just like some cop and the known Chlorus for years.

Yeah.

Yeah, and she's just watched her just like ye nope and the way and it just instantly he's like yea media. Yeah, She's like, oh shit, would have I gotten myself.

Into Nton's strongest soldiers, killed two undercover I s B. This episode give them my hand, folks, Yeah, no, this is this is a really a really, a really sleek episode. I do like that that like bails, like Infiltrator, has like a real is b look to her face. As soon as I saw that actress, I'm like that one has got to be the undercover I s B right, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, she just got that.

Fabulou has said, ib jaw very good.

There's one thing I'd like to bring up at the end of these episodes. It's kind of a callback to the very first episode of the show. Is the first time we see our boy Cyril. He's just convinced that something is and people I've seen people point out Seria was actually really good at his job. He points this out that like I salved a murder in two days, right, he figured out who had who had killed these officers

Right.

He's not even that much of a law and order guy. He's more of a get through the day and do my fucking job guy. When Cyril brings up Cassie and killing these cops, he's like, yeah, man, they're at a brothel. I know their salaries. They can't afford that. They were shaking people down. They shake the wrong guy down and they got killed. Best to ignore it. You don't want

I love I always love being in the Senate. She does call the Gordon massacre a genocide, performs a whole speech, very very solid acting as usual, genevievel Riley fantastic work as Asma on this entire season.

Everyone's great. God damn. Oh well, just talk a little bit about Deadri's breakdown after the Gorman.

Master Yeah in episode eighth, Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, which also does fit into the whole who are you thing where we see that she's not like a complete sociopath, right, She's not absolutely devoid of horror over what she's doing. She's just willing to accept the horror in order to get what she wants out of life, which I think is just like a much more realistic portrayal of human evil than we tend to get.

Yeah.

She she finds ways to cope and justify.

Yeah, And like you know, Lonnie is having to find ways to cope and justify, but he's doing that through being a double agent and feeding and feeding Luthen, like very very important intel as we see in this episode and the next let's see. I think this is this is most of what I what I had on on on thisisode. Oh yeah, I mean, BIXI Bix bricks up with Cassian to force Cassian to stay in the U in the Alliance, even though he's probably not gonna be

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I I have a lot to say about this, but I think we'll wait until last episode to fully discuss BIX. I think that's probably best.

Yeah.

Ye, But but this, this batch specifically, I think is some is some real solid, real solid so is Wow Star Wars.

The stars have never been more wars, Garrison, the stars have never been more wars? Can all agree on that?

I will get way too mad if I talk about the DNC anymore in this preamble. This is It could happen here Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis today. I'm joined by James Stout, Mia Wong, and Robert Evans. Right, everybody, this episode, we are covering the week of May eighth through May fifteenth.

How are we doing, fellas?

Uh, I don't know bad Like every time I'm.

Not talking to a border patrol willingly and yeah, that's what I'm doing that I'm not doing. I'm staying the fuck away from the border.

Although it's also impossible to say the fuck away from the border because like ninety percent of the country lives technically within the patrols from met Yeah.

Yeah, but if you are happening to go to the border and you do get stopped by law enforcement, you should not talk to them. You should You should say that you're staying silent and will only speak with a lawyer.

You have certain things that you have to say, right if they decide to talk to you about something other than you know, here's my passport, et cetera. Do I have anything to declare? Which you do have to answer if they attempt to engage you in other conversation about, say, your political beliefs. All you have to say is am I being detained? And if they say yes, you say, I plead the fifth and I demand to speak to a lawyer, and then nothing else. There's nothing else you say.

Yeah, you definitely do not need to debate your politics. Not required with the border patrol.

Tell them how you feel about Potestine. That's yeah, not gonna end.

Well, no, not necessary, And yeah, like it's one of those things I have no desire to like get into an online beef with the fellow who got stopped. He is a big boy and able to make his own choices. But I do not recommend you make those same choices, because there's no actual benefit to you in doing that, right, Yeah, yeah, don't coalk the cops. It's very easy to not talk to the cops. I'm doing it right now. Uh huh,

Yeah, and again like this is this is specifically if you are, like a US citizen coming to re enter the country. There's there's different different rules and different different suggestions which you should talk with an immigration lawyer about if you were not a US citizen.

Yes, yes, not advice for people who are coming here and not citizens. Yeah, yeah, none of this is.

But yeah, you really really do not need to get into a debate with the border guard about your politics when you're trying to enter the country.

Or any other time. Really just just don't really any time. Yeah, there's no point in time in which that's useful to you or anyone else. You ain't changing doing it.

Maybe do it.

Maybe there's more to politics than debate. No, speaking of more to politics, the PKK, what's going on with the PKK, fellas.

We should, we should give a brief overview of who the PKK is is. The PKK is the Kurdish Workers Party, and it is originally a maoist and now not that terrorist group. That's legally how it's defined by the United States and by most Western countries. That was started in southern Turkey like in the late seventies, close to fifty years ago, and it started out as a rather different

Inspired by the political thought of oyser Land, right, Like we can say that safely. Yeah, and Ouserland, I guess addressed by video the twelfth Congress of the PKK which occurred earlier this month, at which they voted to disband themselves and lay down their arms. So that's the d A meeting, right, they get together. Obviously it seems that

But this time through the democratic process. Yeah. We're going to cover this subject in more detail on Tuesday next Tuesday. But suffice it to say, like this does not mean that like the PKK is like that all of the kind of different movements that came out of and were inspired by the PKK are like folding up and setting up shop. This is more of a pragmatic decision made as the result of the changes of situations on the ground and the progress that a number of these other

Do you love to bumble an Iraq? I guess they're calling it there like good Friday moments. So people who are familiar with the Irish situation.

Yeah, when the ira was like, maybe we've done enough.

And significantly when there were releases of people who were incarcerated.

Right, right, and the British government did make some significant concessions too.

Yes, so we will learn more of there were concessions involved in this process or if it was a kind of unilateral thing.

Yeah, there's a lot of rumors again, just to go briefly, that the Turkish government essentially needs that aired one essentially needs some of the support of the Kurdish parties in order to maintain keep doing Erdawan shit. So again we'll see on all that.

Yep, speaking of not blowing each other up. India and Pakistan, well, yeah, slightly blowing lightly blowing each other up. Can we say that without minimizing it, because yeah, there's some fens and blowing up.

Yeah, so let's let's talk about this.

Uh.

We are thankfully no longer on nuclear war watch, which is great.

Put on pause. It's all cool, everything's fine.

I was I was talking with a read last night about whenever this sort of confrontation happens. One of the nice things about a globalist world order is that if the rest of the world goes.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa Hello, who come on now, it kind of works.

Pull him back, hold me back, bro China got a hand on pakistans es. It's not worth it. They're not worth it. That's the role of the United Nations. Jade E Vance like massaging India's shoulders.

I know, man, I know, but it's.

Whatever.

Whatever.

Things get really spicy between two equal powers. If one of their buddies just can go hey, hey, dude, whoa whoa, Oh, it kind of works, which is a little bit silly, but yeah, yeah, just.

Remind everyone in charge, do you know how rich you are? Come on, you don't want this like you've got hot tubs in your manshin, it ain't worth it.

Yeah, foreign politics, so much of it is just so unbelievably stupid, Like it is just like weird nationalist masculinity bullshit, where it's like, okay, so we killed some of your your people, and then you're gonna kill some of our people, and then we can both agree that we like retaliated, neither of us back down, and then we'll do a ceasefire. So the good news here is that we did actually get a ceasefire. The ceasefire was holding, and it's continued

Tuesday. Yeah, all the walls on Tuesday.

Probably Tuesday, unless, like I don't know, like some other shit happens. Who knows, I don't I don't want to ever promise an episode's.

Going out of a day because.

Tuesday or Wednesday, because it's like like we could we could wake up to Trump is likely Trump has like declared that like his meme coin is now the official currency of the United States or something like who.

Knows, you say, or Wednesday, we'll say, yeah. Yeah. So what's used to have happened that really escalated everything is that India fired on a critical Pakistani air base and Pakistan was like, all right, gotta go fucking sick on mode now, and so they do their retaliation. India appears to not have understood exactly how pissed off Pakistan was going to be about them hitting this airbase, which also, like you would, I don't know what their military planning is, like you would assume.

Trees normally love it when you hit their air bases.

Whatever.

Ran at Area fifty one, Yeah, like what are we doing here? What are we doing here?

But the thing that does seem to have worked is that Mark or Rubio seems to have actually been like able to kind of pass information along between the advance was also sort of involved. It seemed mostly like Rubio was able to pass a thing to the Pakistani government, being like, hey, the Indians are gonna stop. And the Pakistani government was like, yeah.

Yeah, right, right, but this is getting done.

We did our retaliatory attacks, like we fucked up.

A bunch of expensive jets. Like that is key is that everybody can sort of this didn't go on so far that that like everyone has a lot to avenge, and it went on enough that everybody can claim some wins. Pakistan could be like, we really did some damage to India's best chunk of their air force, and India can be like, we blew up some stuff you know, everybody's got.

Yeah, And I think this was this one were talking about this last week, like that the best case scenario for this is actually I kind of better than the best case scenario I was thinking of. I mean, not this is like none of this is a good outcome, but the outcome here of like it's like a very abbreviated version of like an Israel iron thing where they

Yep.

Yeah, the Dessault stug price though, that that took a foul after all shut down.

That's kind of funny. You know what else is funny? Hopefully the russ Ads. Yeah, this podcast nice one.

Yeah, that's why they pay me the baud ocre books. Uh yeah, welcome back to something ed. If you have ed, please consider him sent Cutter, I hardly okay, sorry now, Garrison, I'm so proud of you, buddy.

That was the right thing to say. That was the right thing to say.

Ahead of Trump's planned trip to the Middle East, Cutter has offered a gift to President Trump, a four hundred million dollar Boeing seven forty seven eight luxury jet known as a Palace in the Sky, which Trump does plan to accept.

Which a stupid fucking plan.

You gotta flick up a picture of this thing. It is absurd, and I gotta say, honestly, my primary thoughts, I know they should be like offense and anger, but most they're mostly ah cutter.

You know the assignment. You knew exactly this man can't turn down a luxury palace plane. Of course, it's not. Someone should off from the fucking snow piercer. You know it's all gold up in there. It is.

It is all gold up in there. Actually, you can look it up. It absolutely is. I don't need to garrison in my in my mind palace, I've already seen the Okay, hit me with the leak.

Why did we allow this to be constructed? Because it's it's one of those things. This is not this like again, should it not be legal for Trump to do this? Is it not legal for Trump to do this? Of course? Is it physically possible for the man Donald Trump to say no to this plane?

Now?

No, no, that never was in the carts.

This this is a temple to the defeat of the International Workers Movement.

Jesus, I want to see pitches of this plane. Someone to send me pitches the p oh oh good lord, oh good lord. Okay, I'm putting it. I mean it's exactly the plane you'd think.

Yes, it's the most Trump thing you could ever imagine. Yeah, it's so funny.

I'm so angry.

It's just Trump tower in the sky, like you know, it's it's actually what I will say about that, Gere, is a Trump tower in the sky is like a ship built to look fancy to like tasteless Americans. The Katari versions actually is actually extremely nice. Yes, the Immirant of Qatar knows what they're fucking doing when it comes to interior design for fucking evil rich people.

This you could have had this if you replace the walls that are clearly a plane. This could have been like a set on and or from like a high level coruscant, like the person's house, like that's that's what we're talking. Especially that like room with the elevator in the middle, like that's a set where mon Mathma yells at her like it's beautiful.

So this plane would be used as a new Air Force one and after his term, Trump would retain ownership through his Presidential Library Foundation.

Of course, that's so many.

Issues with this, from like national security to like a very clear bribe. On Monday, Trump told reporters quote, I could be a stupid person and say no, we don't want to free very expensive airplane.

I thought it was a great gesture. Unquote.

Of course, of course what owned So what made a comment that like we received the Statue of Liberty as a gift. It's the same thing.

Yeah, that's not really the same thing.

Guys, If like it was Jeff, I don't know who is president went arrive, but if the president was living inside the Statue of Liberty, Chester, I think it was Chester aar there.

Yeah, okay, yeah, I don't remember exactly.

I you also love that Trump isn't making the same argument that like the old that Clinton supporters used to, which is like, well you can take money from a thing without being influenced by it, And like the New York Times is making this argument. They're like, well, just because people are are spending one million dollars to have dinner at a crypto thing with Trump doesn't mean that he's actually been influenced by the money, so you can't call it bribery.

And I was like, this is great society.

We love this, we love this. Just give him give give the president the fancy.

Quinn pro what.

Yeah, to be fair, Trump does have something of a history of entering into a financial contract with people and then totally abandoning his end of it, So you could you could make that up.

Yeah, it's so bad Trump.

They get into an argument with with ABC anchors when they asked him if he thought this could be seen as a bribe.

I'll play a short clip here.

Why you're saying people who view that luxury jet as a personal would get to you?

Why not leave it your ABC? Fake news only ABC?

Well a few of you would, let me tell you, you should be bad asking the question they're giving us a free jet, I could say, no, no, no, don't give us.

I want to pay you a billion or four hundred million or whatever it is. Well, I could say thank you very much. You know those an all golfer named Sam Snay Did you ever hear me? One? ADQ terms was a great golfer.

After that, he goes on to talk about golf for a whole minute, building an analogy based on making an easy putt on a golf course. I'm going to quote from BBC quote Attorney General Pambondi reportedly investigated the legality of the deal and determined that because there are no explicit conditions attached, it would not amount to a bribe.

Yeah, no, one's going to be like influenced by a mere one hundred and fourteen thousand dollars a month. You couldn't, for example, easily immediately so much money and get me to say everyone should buy a Chevy truck, the new Ram, that's the vehicle of the proletariat Ram.

We know that this is fake because Robert would never knowingly endorse a Chevy product for.

One hundred and fourteen thousand dollars. You think I wouldn't sell chevyes.

But this is the most like corrupt administration we've ever seen before. It's absurd, like just completely like flying it in your face. Even ten Cruz said that this gift could could impose quote significant espionage and surveillance problems unquote because yeah, that plane.

Is going to be so fun for thee Oh my god, how they're just the whole plane. It's a flying bug. It's so funny.

Our government they're gonna listened to every Air Force one meeting.

Not only are they going to listen into it, the guy whose job that is, Like, they've already been paying almost as much as the plane costs for him to get pre empt of therapy to listen to that many Trump inner circle conversations. The fucking Emir himself is putting a hand. I know, man, I know it's gonna be hard. Like we're all back, We're all behind you.

Everyone from like Ben Shapiro to Laura Lumer have have opposed this de facto bribe as quote unquote sleazy, while also pointing to Cutter as a terrorist aligned state.

Did you think your guy was? Come on, you watched Donald Trump. You believe me he's gonna take a golden palace in the sky.

Come on, man, didn't they also wheel out a mobile McDonald's faming costa so he could do.

That was in Saudi Arabia to Saudi Arabia, that was Arabia.

They're also planning to possibly construct a new Trump Tower in Dubai.

Su Honestly, both Dubai and Trump deserve that kind of like shade. Yeah, sure they belong together.

Yeah, the people that Trump is negotiating with here just really know how to like get wins out of him, Like yeah, Trump Tower, here's a mobile McDonald.

Here's a four million dollar free jet. They really have him on law.

It's tragic because the mobile McDonald's and burger Kings used to be a sign of American like logistical dominance that like I was wondering if it had invaded it rock, like fuck our ability to like airstrike anyone anywhere. We can put a fully operational McDonald's anywhere on the planet in about sixteen hours, like no one else can do that.

Yeah, we invaded a rock with burger King trailers, yes, yes.

And to see it turned against our values so much. Is it's just deeply if no, I mean, I'm joking here, but it is funny. Speaking of foreign trade, what is that I hear? Is that is that the lucid melody of tariff reef Garrison.

Locking jazz b locking jazz bot sorry, locking.

Locking jazz rocking jazz Bob.

We're all thinking about the best way we ever spent our company money. Every penny of that one hundred and fourteen thousand dollars a month Chevy gives us for telling people to buy the new Rams. It went to a good place.

Yeah, just if we can just get one more automotive industry sponsor, then I can finally rewrite White Riot to be about white genocide in South Africa.

That's right. We're courting Shell right now. So don't worry, James, We're gonna get that cover. But I'm glad to hear it.

So I heard all the tariffs are gone, basically. I heard we're back to normal. Nothing ever happens. I can go back to buying Timu all day long. I can't stop playing those those TV gambling ads. And everything's normal, right, Mia.

Okay, So let's let's let's where are we at with the turf tariffs? So there were actual negotiations between the US and Sharp and so they agreed to a ninety day pause on the one hundred and forty five percent tariff and the one hundred and twenty percent tariff that China had imposed retaliation. However, there's still thirty percent, like a tariffs on all Chinese goods, which is in and of itself alone enough to cause a recession. I just

Honestly, I don't think these countdowns are real, and I know this is like this is like different from the way like other commentators will talk about how these tariffs aren't really Like I'm not saying these tariffs aren't real. I don't know if there's someone in the White House who is literally counting down each day here like this.

No, I think there is.

I think I think it's Navarro, because Navarro actually wants all of these terriffs, and that's that's that's the driving thing behind this is Trump kind of wants these tariffs, but there's not enough of him there psychologically to like push it unless Navarro is doing it. But the reason these are taking the form of pauses is because Trump like actually wants them until he can like negotiate his big shiny deal or whatever the fuck that like can't happen structurally for reasons we'll get into.

But like, I'm just remembering the Canada Mexico tariffs that Trump put on a ninety day pause and then can we completely forgot about and instead it did the Liberation Day tariffs, which then got another ninety day pause.

No, but there was also the but also like the auto tariffs got paused and then those came off and like went into effect. Yeah, so some of these like have happened, and like and I think, I really think it. The actual thing it comes down to is like will Navarro be the last person in the room with Trump or will it be one of his other cabinet people

Yeah, like sour dough. They can just flick it.

I want to actually explain what the fuck is going on with the Chinese tariffs though, because the reporting on it has been really bad and no one's in the idea what the fuck is going on? So Okay, on the one hand, there is still the thirty percent across the board on all Chinese coots. However, the fee for small packages right, which is the stuff that was in the Deminimus exemption that we talked about getting reduced, so that tariff is at fifty four percent or a one

It's it's also.

Unclear whether the Chinese government like knew that those were going to go back into effect because there because Trump did this whole thing like, ah, the tarifs are over, blah blah blahlah blah, no are the thirty percent tariff on all goods, And then the next day he was like, oh, yeah, no, but that the small package one's still there, and that rates also changed, So it's also possible by tomorrow the

That's crazy.

Yeah, yeah, And so you know, and this has been playing out in other negotiations too. The US has been in negotiations with India. Trump just like came out and straight up lied and said that India had agreed to get rid of all their tariffs, and India was like, no, we didn't. What the fuck you talk talking about.

Art of the deal.

Yeah, so you know, this is all turned into just an utter fiasco. Meanwhile, we're starting to see signs that, yeah, the price increase, so we all knew we're coming up coming. Walmart is doing massive price increases, a bunch of other companies are considering them. They're probably going to start very soon. I want to read this quote from an economist named Marcus Nolan that NBC talk to, who is a senior

And that's a plug for our new weekend show where Mia does Jim Kramer. We're gonna we're gonna start doing stock portfolio suggestions. It's called Markets with Mia, Markets with MEA thank you James, Yeah, Yeah.

Well I will.

I will fucking I will throw darts at a dartboard and then throw the dartboard at a larger dartboard, and I will outperform Jim Kramer.

Yeah, we're calling this to do whatever the opposite of Jim Kramer says power hour. We've literally just reversed his audio.

It's such a powerful investment strategy, never been defeated. Okay, So so the one last thing I want to talk about, which is not quite terriff but is ECON related, is that there are for the financial times, there is a plan in s trow administration to roll back a bunch of the rules about leverage ratios we're imposed on banks for two thousand and eight. And so, okay, Mia, what the fuck is a leverage ratio?

Think the very short leave underneath the bank, and if you want to tip it over, you have to be quite a long way like away from it actually, and then you pivot on the other end.

I think this is a very funny joke, but no one else is laughing on the call. No. I would try to figure out how to write part two of it, but then you just brought up Archimedies. I try to over Archimedes's name, but I couldn't do it, So okay. So basically, basically what this is is that so banks have just like a bunch of unbelievably risky assets, and this is a requirement that they actually have assets that are safe. Yeah, so they have the assets that are

These products and services that support this podcast. Woo all right, we are back. We're gonna close this episode with me and James talking about a whole bunch of really bad immigration stuff that has happened again, which I feel like is kind of an evergreen for us. Same thing with Tariff top. We always have some bad immigration news and this week is no different. On Friday ninth, Stephen Miller announced that the administration is quote actively looking at suspending

Yeah, it's it's just a foundation of like most legal systems in the world, which draw I guess on English common law means bring me the body, right, Like the idea is you have to present some evidence before just incarcerating.

If you're going to say this guy killed somebody, there better be a corpse. Right, needs to be like reason and due process for detention.

Yeah.

Yeah, you can't just lock someone up because you wanted to. Yeah, actually you.

Can, but you sometimes can.

And this does predate the United States, and the United States itself has suspended Habeas corpus a few times, usually in specific states. For instance, following the Pearl Harbor attack, Habeas Corpus was suspended in Hawaii to detain Japanese civilians. A President Grant and Congress works together to suspend haby

So probably the most notable immigration happening this week is one that we already covered on the show, and it is the reopening of the United States refugee emissions program.

We're taking refugees again.

We didn't, we didn't, yeh.

Unfortunately, we're only taking the persecuted Africanas of South Africa. Wait what Yeah, the survivors of the white genocide, those those who made it through.

Quote unquote white genocide, the white zero side that even Groc doesn't agree existly.

Yeah, can't make his digital child believe in.

Let me actually quote from a from a grok doing a Charger Banks impression. We don't have to do this, Lisa Grock Oopsie used to ask about the replies. But Lisa takes you meaning the big talk about South Africa. Yeah, do white genocide Takabucho controversial. I'm sorry, I can't turn the rest.

It's not even good Jar Jar, I'm sorry, and he speaks Spanish. I think it's chucking all the racial stereotype.

What are we.

They make it more racist, see white farmers getting attacked too much, like two hundred and fourteen attacks a year, and political words like killed four making it worse.

It's too bad. I'm not getting cancer and pay for exposure to this. It does go on for.

Sentences so much more like I love how you should like. It's fucking dubstep recorders.

Cut in the song. I've never met a nice South African right here.

Yeah, I think we can. We'll just do the first first. We just discussed it. We're fine for copyright.

Yeah, yeah, I'll throw that in here. Yep.

It's even got a reference to me and Mars, so we're fine. We've covered it before. It's the central worldly song.

Lisa says, no, thank.

You, stop gone.

So if he's giving a double thumbs down, everyone is very upset right now, apart from Garrison, who's laughing like a little imp. Having introduced jud Jar Binks to the goal. Right back to the Afrikaners. The fifty nine Afrikaners who are brought to the United States came after the United States halted or refugee admissions. In January, thousands of people, including Afghans who and Iraqis who work for the United States, remained stranded.

Some of them are stuck at airports.

Most of them are in third country where they only have limited visas, and they're looking at timing out their visas in those third countries. As a direct result of the Trump administration's fackory with the white genocide stuff, the Episcopalian Church, not the most work of organizations, has suspended its contracts its resettlement contracts with the government.

Criticals support, Yeah.

I mean, I read the letter from one of their bishops on our show about this, and like he was very forthright, and like, I generally genuinely do have critical support for the faith based organizations who help refugees. It's a good thing to do, and I'm glad that they are doing it, especially I they're not trying to like turn into a weird missionary operation like evangelicals do.

For sure.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, what's it called the fucking Glenn Beck. One doesn't it's not a resettlement agency. Luckily so in Worcester, Massachusetts, a place that I didn't know there was a Worcester in America. Actually this is oh yeah, So how is it then that as a nation, Americans are incapable of saying Worcestershire.

Oh boy, yeah, because that's just one state and it's not a good one. Also, that's the sauce, right.

It's also the place I was born Garrison. Oh well, yeah, Worcestershire. For those who are you wondering there it is people, Yeah again I do.

We do have to call it Worster because that's what it's called in this country.

Hmm.

I care a lot about accurate pronunciations of places and names.

So it is Worcester.

Worcester's the city in Worcestershire is the county in England too, so you don't have the county and where you have Massachusetts, so wester Massachusetts. I threatened to arrest a twenty one year old woman named Augusta Clara, and they told her that they'd have to take her three months old baby as well, because they couldn't leave it with her seventeen year old sister on account of the younger woman being a minor. As it turned out, this was a ploy

Florida looking to add more detention centers. Not great, It's about all I got.

Garrison talk to us about Project Homecoming. Who's coming home?

Yeah, And again we will actually close on some good news. So it's not all horrible stuff this entire time. But we do need to mention Project Homecoming. So this was a proclamation issued by Trump on May ninth, entitled establishing Project Homecoming, which aims to curb a quote unquote full

Yeah, so a couple of really weird things. They're just off the bat. Yes, age like permanently departs.

It seems to suggest that you would be permanently barred from ever entering the United States acquiring a visa.

Again.

Secondly, if you don't have travel documents, the country that you're traveling to or through has no reason to admit you. Right that, the US government cannot force other countries to admit people without travel documents. There are things called refugee travel documents which allow people who have had their passports, et cetera stolen to travel.

I don't think that's what's gonna happen here.

Yeah, it does mention something about trying to negotiate with other countries to allow people without documentation to arrive there, but like, well they actually do that probably not like they've claimed to not have to need to do that before,

An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child in Massachusetts. An MS thirteen gang member from Al Salvador accused of murdering a Texas man of Venezuelan charged with filming and selling child pornography in Michigan. These are just some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President Donald J. Trump's leadership. I'm Christinom, the United States Secretary

The whole style of this video is very bizarre. Yeah, it's like a Marvel trailer.

It's like a Marvel trailer with like the setex of like mid two thousands, like dystopian sci fi.

Yeah.

Again, the end of that video, she talks about being able to return legally, which is in contrast to the language in a Project Homecoming, which says that people would

I'm going to quote from Reuter's quote. The orders came on the same day that Matthew Gaiiatti, the head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, issued new guidance to prosecutors that scales back this the scope of white collar cases historically pursued by the Department, and orders prosecutors to quote minimize the length and collateral impact of such investigations.

Jeez.

Again, the most corrupt administration ever ever before seen. Yeah, and now for the good news to close the episode. The Tuft's university student was may Oz Turk, who was black bagged on the streets of Massachusetts for co authoring a pro Palestine op ed, has been released on bail as of May ninth, after spending six weeks in ICED attention. The judge said that missus Ostrich's claims of her First Amendment and Due process rights being violated are quote unquote

On their activism. Yeah, that's a good thing.

Now, these cases are still going to be continuing in courts. But the fact that these people have been released from ICE attention is good news.

And in most cases they were released on their own recognizance, right without GPS tagging or any like.

Yeah, they're freedom move throughout the country because most of them have cases in like multiple states. ICE is trying to move them around to many different locations. And I know that Surrey and ost Turk are able to go back to their homes.

Yeah, So like it's good. It shows that the courts are still able to stop some of this stuff at this time.

Yes, and that the actual ability of a lawyer to intervene when you were treated illegally by the state is not nil yeah yet.

Yeah, Yeah, good point, positive developments here.

But like, yeah, as we'll see with with Miller's goal of getting rid of habeas corpus and accelerating law enforcement operations with these twenty thousand new National Guard troops. This is this is something that's still going to be a very a very hot issue for quite a while, and we will continue to report on it as it develops.

Well everybody, until next time. Remember something WESA reported to news. We reported the news. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

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