It Could Happen Here Weekly 205

hearth as in that space where you know, humans were gathering. Yeah, but unfortunately that that ownership of that space has been concentrated in hands of a few people, you know, ritually EAT's and corporations, estate, and some cases still literal aristocracies. Yeah, I'm sure you're you're very much familiar with that.

everyone else who lived there. Like, wow, an extremely feudal relationship.

do is now known as squatting. Right, But it wasn't always so chastised and criminalized with that terminology before it was just you know, you find a piece of land, nobody else is living there, you go in and use that piece of land to survive. So today we'll be talking about issues with land ownership, looking into its history as a resistance practice in England, and seeing where a politicized

approach to squadron could take us in the future. Oh cool, Crime thinks article on squatron was really helpful for this, so I'll link it in the show notes. Land ownership and governance are inextricably linked. Private property and land then the mooge out of peaceful agreements, but violence, wars of conquest, colonialism, slavery, and steed repression have been the true foundation of these

now considered noble and official property titles. What we call ownership today is just violence legitimized by law, and it follows a very similar structure whether you're talking about feudalism and empire, land inclosure, colonization. Your start of the violence, it becomes officialized and then rent is extracted. This is

not something that people took line down. Of course, people have long resisted it, you know, But this is why the government responds with the police and the armies to protect the landlords, and the people have criticized and have called out these practices. Thinkers like Ricardo Flores Margon and

Alexander Berkmann, peterco Potkin mcunan. All of these hammered home the point of the absurdity at the heart of land ownership, the idea that some of they could just pull up somewhere, claim an area of land as theirs, and back it by soldiers and pieces of paper. Now, anarchists not in the business of fixating on just one system of domination or the other, because they're very connected. You know, landlords and governments and all the other authorities contribute to the

system of domination that we all live under. Assander's core rights in anarchists squat in and land use. In the West, land ownership and government use exploitation and manipulation in a similar manner. Where a landowner builds a fence, the government erects. Where land owner charges rent, a government levies taxes. Were landowner advertises a vacant house sas not to waste it

as an income producer. In property, a government encourages migration to those of its territories which are not producing adequate revenue. We are landowner evict a tenant, a government wages war against the population. Right now, in the United States, as we can see, the government is asian war not only against its indigenous population, its black population, but also it's migrant population and a few other populations. The list unfortunately goes on.

private property would collapse. But those things still exist, and it is through those things that the power to exclude, extract, and dominate continues throughout our society and continues to uphold violence throughout her society. You know, slavery may have been formally abolished, but we still find it in the prison system.

So if they may have been formally abolished, but we still find it in slightly different forms with debt and the way that people are tied on by debt, and as long as that principle of extraction and exploitation and and rent is not dealt with, we will continue to see new forms and old forms bringing up.

Core notes called ownership is enforced through eviction. You know, families are thrown out of homes, squatters beaten back by police, villagers raised to expand mining operations, et cetera. Yeah, and then these economic theft and cultural destruction involved as well, you know, because communities are uprooted and digest traditions are severed, neighborhood cultures getting raised by gentrification. And then all this dispossession drives unemployment because without access to land, people are

forced into wage labor on the terms of capitalists. This is really how that rapid period of industrialization got started, you know, with the enclosure of the commons.

own land, a large portion of land. But it's the fact that someone in this case a Trump administration, could lease oil rights in other land which would directly impact their land. Because in this case, the Caribou can't carve if there are oil wells where they want to have

their carves, right yeah. And so like it's not just that them having some land of their own does not provide a solution to the issue, which is that people can, under our current system own exploit and destroy a resource that should be common.

into their own hands. You know. Across the country, families and veterans began to squat because they came home from the war and they had nowhere to live. In Brighton, a group of ex servicemen call themselves Virgilantes, led by the legendary Harry Cowley, started cracking houses for families. The spirit of it eventually spread like wildfire and abandoned army camps which were once beent for miolition soon became makeshift neighborhoods.

By nineteen forty six, over forty five thousand people were squatted in more than a thousand locations, and I mean the government was concerned this could only lead to anarchy, but faced with tens of thousands of people who had self frehoused, the state didn't really have any choice but to step back, right, you know, direct actions solved an issue that their bureaucracy couldn't solve, and the pr of kicking out a bunch of veterans from homes was not

a line they seemed willing to cross at that point in time. Was times changed, but yeah.

a cash twenty two. They had all these rows of council flats sitting empty, rotten, and young men who wanted to bring their families over, can't bring their families over, can't get housing, what are they gonna do? They end up squatting. Right, Organizers like Terry Fitzpatrick, working with groups like Race Today and later the Bengali House and Action Group,

opened up derelict blocks to Bengali families. Pelham House, for instance, which was slated for demolition, was transformed into homes for three hundred people by the end of nineteen seventy six. Over one thousand Bangladeshis ended up living in East End squads during that period, and eventually, through that taking that full step of direct action, they won. By the early nineteen eighties, the council caved, rehoused the squatters locally and they ended up getting to live right where they wanted

to live. But unfortunately, as you might expect, this came with racist violence. In nineteen seventy eight, altub Ali was stabbed to death by three skinheads in Whitechapel and there's now a park that was renamed in his memory, where the history of his people can be remembered and live on. Beyond the English Sandi Bangladeshi immigrants, you also had another marginalized group that took on the tactic of squatter in Brixton.

The Gay Liberation Front took over houses along Rilton Road and Mile Road, creating a network of communal homes which shared the gardens, and as you can imagine in the seventies, eighties and nineties, you know, this was really a refuge, you know, for queer people dealing with isolation and hostility from their families, from their communities. These squats ended up becoming places where they can find love and solidarity and

theater and radical politics. Raylton Road was also home to black radicalism and black radicals squat in in that territory. Ol of Morris and Liz Obi's squatted in the nineteen seventies and resisted multiple eviction attempts and their space evolved into Sabah Bookshop and later the anarchist one two one Center,

which lasted until nineteen ninety nine. Now, this intersection of black queer and squatron created Brixton's reputation as a frontline of resistance police harassment, racist violence, and neglect would boil over into days of rioting in Brixton in nineteen eighty one, and amidst that chaos, the Gay squats of Realton threw open their doors, even dragon tables and chairs into the streets for a kind of riot party, a mix of drag and defiance. And through all this these squats allow

people to survive. They became places where people could experiment with alternative living, even had some people declaring independence. There's a space in West London called Frestonia which is sued to own stamps and had a two year old as

Minister of Education. Yeah, and then you had other squads ended up becoming seeds for future cooperatives and social centers and even some businesses for this goal and age of squat and kind of came into a decline by the nineties and two thousand sons gentrification and new laws had to tighten the screws. You know, streets like Barrington Square or Saint Agnes's Place which were once thriving squatted communities

were cleared up. You know, the law was changed to make could unquote adverse possession harder, so long term squatters could no longer as easily claim ownership. And then sitting councils like Lambeth Council began selling off properties that it had ignored for decades. Evicting people who have been living there for decades, raising families.

It was just such a I mean, looking back, it was the way things were going to be for the rest of my life, at least up to now, I guess. But at the time I remember it being such a jarring experience.

that were there before. The whole town's with like no reason for existing anymore. And then to come on top of that and have like, oh yeah, but it will cost you more just to exist in this town which is shit now and there's nothing to do, but we're going to use all the power of the state to try and extract every penny that you have.

Get the ability of land laws to extract you know, mega landlords now right, These giant corporations building these generic homes all over the UK. It's still very much there, and the state has doubled down on supporting them and completely refuse to support its own people.

Spain had a really rough time as fifty off two thousand and eight, but like the communities hadn't been quite so destroyed by the state as they were in many areas of the UK.

to make it ends to meet because they are. But like people are aware of the concept of mutual aid who may not have been before, and that's been good. Yeah, there's still our squad to struggle. There is still people fighting very hard to like live a dignified life and secure that for other people as well.

old forms of protests and to devoid per see. Right, there are things that we can do as ordinary people, whether we're black, whether we're gay, whether we're a Bangladesha immigrant, a veteran, as an ordinary person, you could you can also you know, take on the right action to create homes, resist racism, build communities and fight the state.

in the ruins of the old world exactly. I think it's a really beautiful thing that people do to you know, take that action to address not just to protest something, but to say, like the system which deprives people of even a safe place to live, even the dignity of being able to sleep in it under a roof at night, Like, we are going to take action that strikes at the roots of that to ensure that we give others that the dignity that they deserve. And that's really special.

this has been made illegal. There's not blind people to the empty buildings or to the use of squat and as a tactic, the crack speaker in Amsterdam East promotes the slogan what neat mag khan knogsteats what is not allowed is still possible forgive my terrible Dutch.

people invite me to join their dominoes game. So I was playing dominoes, you know, like practicing my terrible Kurdish, and these guys were asking me like is it true that like people, and like they were especially interested in, like the veterans who have been US soldiers, like sleep on the street in America, And I was like, yeah, that's the thing, like and they're like, why, what's the deal with that. I know the answer is that we have enough houses for everyone, but we've just treated them

as a commodity to exchange. Right, We've been told that people can't live there, even though there's space for them to live, and even though it's actively hurting them living on the street. Right, it's such a condemnation of the situation we're in as a society in need.

You know, we can collective eze and collectively organize spaces for farming or production. You know, we can really, really could do any number of things. I think the guidance thread there has to be equity. Yeah, you know, it has to be recognition that nobody has a right to land. They don't use that absentee landlordism is something utterly absurd

and can be rejected out right. I think we can also consider the non human in our approach to land in the future, you know, considering the the rights and responsibilities we have toward animals and plants that live in spaces that you know, should have their own existence beyond human utility. There will always be conflicts about how we can use these spaces and also how we might resolve

these disputes. But I think it is clear that whereever there's somebody who attempts to monopolize land by force, we can respond adequately. I think the tactic of squatn is one small, unfinished but necessary step towards a future where we reject property, where land is shared, where domination is abolished, where we as a human community and as a living community, can free decide together how we live on this earth.

We'll just have to see that's it for me or power to all the people this has When it can happen here, I'm Andressage. That is James Stout and peace.

the ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel. Hamas has since released all remaining Israeli hostages, as well as the bodies of those who were killed, and Israel has withdrawn from certain parts of the Gaza strip and started to release political prisoners as well as the bodies of Palestinians who have been killed after they were detained since October seventh. Some of the testimonies from these prisoners is just incredibly

heart to stomach. The degree of the humanization that's been allowed to take place in these Israeli prisons, the torture and abuse that they faced is truly truly harrowing. Some of the Palestinian bodies that have been released are mutilated with extreme signs of torture. Some were released blindfolded and cuffed, returned with a noose around their neck. Greta Tunberg, who was on the flotilla recently trying to break the siege of Gaza, just also returned from Israeli prison where she

was also abused and stripped and mistreated. She said in a recent interview, if they do this to a white person with a Swedish passport. We can only imagine what they do to Palestinians. And of course we are seeing this play out before our eyes. In a fair and just world where international law meant something, there would be consequences for this. Instead, today I want to talk about this plan that's been proposed by the Trump administration, the

twenty point piece plan for Gaza. Reportedly, ex UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has been consulting with Trump and his son in law slash advisor Jared Kushner for some time hashing this plan out. We'll get back to him in a bit, as he's quite the character. This plan, as the name suggests, has twenty points, but it's a little light on details. It outlines the return of remaining Israel hostages very quickly, within seventy two hours. It says the

Gaza strip needs to be quote demilitarized. It talks about the creation of an international stabilization force, an international security force to operate on the ground in Gaza with the eventual withdrawal of Israeli troops, but within a buffer zone, and this force would consist of soldiers from other countries. It also talks about the formation of a quote technocratic a political Palestinian temporary government to run the Gaza Strip

territory until the peace process is concluded. But this temporary Palestinian government would only be allowed to engage in service provision, nothing more. That government would also be overseen by a quote Board of Peace run by Trump himself, his pal Tony Blair, and other yet unspecified members. There is some language on the economic development of a quote new Gaza, and some discussion of initiatives to promote tolerance, essentially to

deradicalize Palestinians. Notably, the plan does not endorse ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza, which was wildly a serious thing on the table for a few months that Trump endorsed, but what it does say is still pretty insidious. Essentially, the plan says that a possible pathway to Palestinian self determination and statehood is conditioned on advances in quote Gaza's redevelopment and a quote Palestinian authority reform program that is

faithfully carried out. Only then, the plan says, quote, conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self determination and statehood. Basically, if the Palestinians do good, if they comply with the International Security Force, if they take orders from the Board of Peace and quote reform the PA in some way, and what that means is a really big open question, then maybe their demands for

self determination and statehood will eventually be discussed. As I've said before on previous episodes, that statehood part is a bit tricky because statehood means different things to different people. Apparently, Jared Kushner talked about maybe giving Palestinians a state without the annoying little detail of actual sovereignty is really prime

minister that signed the Oslo Accords. Yet Zakrabin, which was the first time Palestinians and Israelis agreed to anything, directly said after signing that Israel would only ever give Palestinians something quote less than a state. The international community keeps recognizing a Palestinian state when the Palestinians don't really have control of any territory. It's like, is the state in the room with us now. It's also important to note here that the plan that Trump is proposing doesn't really

include any Palestinian input, at least meaningfully. The goal from Israel and the US's perspective is for Hamas to be removed from the equation altogether. There's some discussion actually still of whether they will actually disarm or not, because Hamas has said to the media that it's not considering this. And as I mentioned, there is this throwaway line about reforming the Palestinian Authority, but what that means and how the Palestinian people actually factor in isn't addressed. Here's my

educated guess. When Trump, an Israel, and the international community say they want to reform the PA, we have to look at what they've been doing and pushing for in the past couple of months to understand what that actually means.

So for them, if we look at their track record, reforming the PA means figuring out an acceptable alternative from their perspective, to replace the octagenarian Palestinian President Mahamud Abbas, so that the PA can seem on paper more legitimate and better positioned to sign away Palestinian rights during future negotiations. They've already been pushing behind the scenes to set that up.

They pressured Abbas to convene the Palestine Liberation Organization Central Council, change the bylaws, create a vice president position, and appoint the guy that's acceptable to the US and Israel to that role. That man was sena che Palestinian businessman and former security guy who polls at two percent with Palestinians.

What reforming the PA does not mean it looks like, is actual democratic reform where Palestinians can choose not only their president but also on their legislative representatives and on

the PLO legislative body, the National Council. It looks like reforming the PA doesn't mean all Palestinians will be allowed to participate if limited elections are held, and it seems it doesn't mean responding to what Palestinian civil society has been asking for, which is reforming the PA by reforming the PLO altogether so that all Palestinians can participate in

the discussion of national liberation. We can guess that the US, Israel, and the international community quote unquote are unlikely to offer any of this because they've propped up the PA in the past and seem on propping up some puppet government of the PA in the future. But they need the PA, as some acceptable Palestinian entity to be even tangentially involved in future negotiations so that they can say, look, the Palestinians agree to this is legitimate, even if that PA

doesn't represent people. Even if most Palestinians eighty five percent in the latest poll are dissatisfied with the PA's conduct and forty two percent support the the solution of the PA altogether, this is a dangerous game to play. Any sort of peace process in the future, as impossible as it seems at this current moment, that isn't predicated on the complete annihilation of one side of the conflict, will need some degree of public support. It will need societies

involved in this conflict to buy into the process. Otherwise you get spoilers, you get political actors engaging in violence to disrupt the peace process, or you don't really resolve the underlying issues in an even compromised, satisfactory way and people get upset and the conflict continues. So, if you don't include people's buy in, what you're banking on is being able to suppress people, and what you want isn't really peace. It's authoritarian conflict management. It's illiberal. It maintains

structural violence in the name of preserving peace. It means Palestinians wouldn't get the rights they have under international law the right to self determination, and it means the occupation in some form doesn't end.

one for the people of the Republic of Ireland. The process of getting to the Good Friday Agreement also included all groups militant groups from both sides of the conflict. This is what it takes for a conflict to be contained in some shape or form. But for some reason, when international leaders or ex leaders in the case of Tony Blair, think about conflicts in the Middle East involving Arabs, then public buy in, democratic processes, sustainable peace no longer

factor into decision making. The buy in an opinion of the public matters, But apparently only certain publics. In other conflicts, also, like the breakdown of Yugoslavia, the perpetrators of genopocidal violence were held accountable by international They were taken to the Hague. They faced repercussions, of course, not perfectly, not entirely, not everyone. Some parties of the conflict that emerged in Bosnia after

were rewarded for their violence. The vision of the Serbian leadership that committed war crimes in Bosnia came to fruition to some degree in the form of Republica Serpska today, which is a semi autonomous region that divides Bosnia Herzegovina. But nevertheless, the international community at least understood the necessity of holding perpetrators accountable for violence and war crimes, even if the execution was incomplete. In this case, there is

no such discussion. A number of human rights organizations and the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory have found Israeli leaders President Isaac Hertzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then Defense Minister Yuav Gallant personally responsible for the decisions made in Gaza, the decision to engage in genocide in Gaza, but the ceasefire plan, which they are billing as a quote peace plan for a new Gaza and they're trying to make the basis of future negotiations,

says nothing about accountability for crimes committed. Trump, in fact, went in front of the Kanesset, the Israeli parliament, and insisted on his support for Prime Minister Nataniahu. He even got involved in Natanyahu's corruption case that he has domestically in Israel. Addressing President Isaac hertzog As Kanesse members clapped and jeered.

display of corruption on so many levels. The fact that these guys are the guys putting together the so called peace plan quotes poorly for the sustainability of this ceasefire agreement beyond the first phase, beyond Israel getting what it wants the hostages a huge buffer zone that leaves Israel in control of Gaza's former urban areas, and possibly they might get the neutralization of Hamas, it's not clear that this ceasefire agreement can actually advance into a sustainable negotiation

that maintains peace in the long run. It's why scholar Marika Sosnowski at the University of Melbourne, who studies ceasefire agreements in particular, calls this a strangle contract. She notes that Israeli withdrawal, release of hostages, and full aid being led into Gaza is the quote bare minimum you would expect both sides to acquiesce to as part of a

ceasefire deal. She expresses concern that this agreement is highly coercive and that it quote enables the more powerful party to force the weaker party into agreeing to anything in order for them to survive. This is in direct contrast to a bargain between two equal parties that can sustain peace. She also very rightly notes that Israel could at any time claim the Palestinians are not abiding by the terms of the agreement and and the ceasefire, justifying restarting the war.

The Palestinians have no leverage at all in this agreement, and obviously they can't rely on unbiased international mediation with the Trump and Kushner and Blairs of the world. At the helm of this Sisnowski quotes a Palestinian leader from Yermut Camp and Syria, who said to her quote, if there is a ceasefire, people know the devil is coming. I think that captures exactly everyone's fears in this moment. The Palestinian Civil Defense Agency says forty Palestinians have been

killed in Gaza today October nineteenth. Children have been shot and killed in the West Bank after the ceasefire agreement. Israel raided the family homes of Palestinian prisoners in five districts across the West Bank before releasing them. Nataniehu has said he won't open the Rafah crossing. These all seem like Israeli violations to the ceasefire to me, but that's not how it'll be reported. And because the Trump administration has twisted the meaning of words, where domination equals peace

and injustice equal stability. Once this happens, I fear very few will question the premise of this agreement and the entire peace process to begin with, a peace process for Palestinians aren't even allowed to participate. No one can be surprised when this doesn't last, and no one can be surprised that this cannot be the basis for sustainable peace. But Hey, I hope I'm wrong. Thank you for listening to this episode of It Could Happen Here. Here's Hoping for Justice and Peace.

this goes out, the numbers will probably be different. There are supposed to be major negotiations underway between Trump and the Chinese government to attempt to come to yet another trade agreement and stave off yet another round one hundred percent tariffs. Now, if you want to follow the sort of blow by blow of what exactly is going on, I'm going to just sort of refer you to my

section tariff talk on Executive Disorder. However, com we need to take a deeper look at what structurally is going on in the global economy that is resulting in the demand for tariffs in the first place. And I think the place to go if that's the thing that you're trying to figure out. And we've talked about the sort

of ideological aspects of this in other episodes. We've talked about the ways that the sort of politics of fascism, the politics of anti semitism, the politics of masculinity lead people towards these extremely ulternationalist policies that are specifically supposed to sort of protect the domestic blood and soil national industry and are supposed to protect material goods over services.

But there are things that are happening structurally in the economy that make it such that people would consider things like the tariffs that have been happening under this regime as a solution to things that are kind of structural problems of the economy specifically. And this is what we're going to be focusing on today. Over capacity and steel. Now, some of you may be asking, Mia, why are we talking about steel over capacity? And I think there's a

few important notes here. One, steel is in some ways emblematic of American tariff policy. It is I guess you would call it the most material of the tariffs, in the sense that it's the one where there's the most actual direct sort of material forces and direct lobbying groups asking for these specific tariffs. The American steel industry has been lobbying to some extent for some measures kind of

like this. Steel is also one of the industries whereas as tariff rates are fluctuated and got up and down and whole waves of like Liberation Day, tariffs got put into place and then removed, and some of them we got put back into place a little bit. The steel tariffs were set at fifty percent and they've stayed at fifty percent since they were set. Basically, there's been a little bit of variation sort of before the final fix percent number was arrived at, but the steel tariffs have

been one of the most stable tariffs. And the reason why it's been this stable if people can think back all the way to twenty eighteen, which I know that was a long time ago, but there was a miniature trade war between the US and China in twenty eighteen, and significant portions of it were focused on Chinese steel production specifically, and you know, this is one of the sort of fights that was had out. Nothing really structurally

changed much from those. There was kind of a back and forth and then both sides kind of pulled back. But Comma, that's not happening this time. And what's interesting, and the reason that I was specifically talking about steel here is that it's now not just Trump that is

tempting to institute large scale tariffs on steel. The European Commission for the EU has released a proposal to double tariffs on imported steel up to fifty percent, which is matched in the US, and also reduce the amount of steel that could be imported into the EU without paying any tariffs at all. And this is actually massive because this is an example of the EU effectively following US trade policy for very very similar reasons as the US.

And if we can get to the bottom of what is going on here, and I promise we will, and I promise this will go towards something that is explaining really truly the macro dynamics of the entire global economy and why it's fucked. If we can actually trace out what's going on with these steel tariffs, we can do that. So let's talk about steel. Over Capacity as a concept is sort of convoluted. You know, you have to sort of ask the question, what is the quote unquote correct

amount of steel? Because over capacity, you know, implies that there's capacity to produce steel over the amount that should be produced. So okay, how do you figure how MU steel should be produced?

you know, total outputs being used. This doesn't work because the utilization rates of these factories of this fixed capital varies seasonally, for example, and it varies due to not just the season, but a whole bunch of other factors, things like you know, labor supply, weather demand pulls, and of whole munch of other factors. Utilization rates of steel producing facilities are very rarely at one hundred percent, even

in Marcus where demand at shrip supply. And this makes it very very difficult to measure China's actual quote unquote overcapacity. I am not going to even really try to give numbers because it's extremely subjective. How do I say this

based on the research that I have done. I think the numbers you normally see in the West are inflated because they are not accounting for things like the weather, because it is in the interest of sort of Western research institutions, but for example, Western financial institutions, specifically steel companies, and they're sort of like allied China Hawk, you know, sort of like academics to have the number be as

high as possible. You will also see numbers from people who are tied to Chinese government, And when I say tied to, I mean kind of in a loose ideological sense. In the same way as the China Hawks are, the Chinahawks tend to actually be more directly connected to the US government. Their numbers are probably also too low. But I don't want to give you the impression that I have a extremely certain understanding of what the exact number

of millions of tons of xsdo production is happening. What we can sort of agree on is that there does seem to be some kind of overcapacity in the Chinese economy, right, and this is something that the Chinese Communist Party also

agrees on. If you go back to a document that really really few people in the US have ever seen to have heard of, which is the wonderfully titled Opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on further Promoting the development of Ecological Civilization, which was one of the founding documentary Chinese environmental policy and the ideological sort of underpinnings of this thing called ecological civilization, which is the basis of Chinese environmental policy. One of the

things that they mentioned a lot is specifically overcapacity. Right, They are actually very concerned about the overcapacity of steal from an ecological perspective. And this is sort of fascinating because we'll be looking at some scholars later who are favorably quoted in Chinese state media's sources describing how there isn't actually overcapacity because states say different things in different places,

and this is in fact extremely common. But there does seem to be some kind of overcapacity, and the Chinese government was to some extent making attempts to reduce it during this sort of period of trade war. Now, the other issue we're talking about overcapacity is that overcapacity is an extremely political issue now, right, It's extremely weird because the Chinese seal over capacity is like my most niche

thing that I've studied. I've had like a paper on this sitting in a drive on my computer for over half a decade. I have never brought it out until now. But it's become an extremely political topic because the different theories of stealover capacity have become a basis for a lot of genuine trade policy. Now. I think a very very interesting book at Chinese stealover capacity is from the

book Understanding China's over Capacity. She's written by two Chinese economists that I think is a really interesting literature survey. This this is around bout twenty eighteen. But I think what's interesting about it it's from before the period where everyone in the West had sort of decided what they think caused Chinese steal over capacity, and so you can

go back. You know, it's not just useful to sort of go back in time and look at the other theories that were sort of floating around academia before or a few of them got specifically selective for ideological purposes. Now, I mentioned earlier, we'd be talking about some economists. You don't think that's Chinese steel over capacity is real, that's these people. I think that part of their thesis is not very good. I think their survey of the literature

on overcapacity, though, is very good. And one of the very interesting arguments they make this doesn't argue with a couple of other economists that has sort of disappeared from the literature is in argument about, okay, so there's steel production that's happening that doesn't need to happen. I think it's pretty fair to say that something is over capacity if it's producing a bunch of steel that sits there in rots because no one can sell it, which is

a thing that happens with Chinese steel. And one of the most interesting theses that has really been abandoned, even though I think it is actually to a decent extent explanatory of a lot of very very weird stuff that happens in Chinese policy circles and a lot of just very baffling investment decisions, is specifically something about local caudras

and their performance incentives. So, okay, something that's very important to understand about the structure of the CCP is that Chinese government institutions are sort of run by these caudras, right, and so if you are, for example, I don't know you are the mayor of a mid size city, right, you get performance evaluations and those sort of yearly performance evaluations. Sometimes there's less frequents than that, but those those performance evaluations rank you at sort of how good you're doing

your job. And obviously there's political maneuver rank here too, But if you do a good job of hitting your targets, this is your path to advance upwards in the party and be moved from you know, like sort of running a small city to like being brought into caudra in larger cities, and you know, moving your way up the part, moving national positions. These evaluations are extremely important. You can

also get sort of busted down if your evaluations suck. Again, there's also what politics are too, But these evaluations actually do matter. And one of the issues with these evaluations

and these are also policy making implementation tools, right. You know, the central government can decide what kinds of policies they want to pursue, and then they can use these codure evaluations to make people at the sort of local level who are usually semi autonomous in ways that I think is not very well understood in the West, these countrare evaluations are ways to try to ensure that Chinese sort of local and provincial government policy kind of aligns with

national party policy. And the waiting on these examinations is such that it has very very weird effects. And what I'm specifically talking about here is that GDP numbers are very very important to these codure value and it matters that it's specifically gross domestic product because GDP is a very very weird number, and there's a lot of stuff you can do to sort of juice GDP numbers that

aren't really necessarily beneficial to an economy. So you can have a bunch of firms that are basically unprofitable or doing something that's like not particularly economically or socially useful, and that can still boost GDP numbers. And one of the things that happens with this is that you can boost GDP numbers by making a shit tout of steel

that nobody actually really wants or uses. And because of the priority that's set on GDP numbers specifically, and there's also a whole bunch of these sort of weird financial games that you can play that's also played a major role in the way the Chinese housing bubble has played out and the way that the government has been unwilling to sort of you know, and when I say the government here, I be in both the national governments and also sort of these lower level governments have been unwilling

to sort of let a bunch of debt bubbles that they've accumulated pop because those things prop up GDP numbers, and the incentive on the local level is to keep these numbers up. This used to actually be one of the things that people would talk about when they talked

about Chinese steal over capacity. But it's complicated, like you can't very very easily explain this to you know, like a right wing congress person and have them go, oh, yeah, right, this is unfair to the American market, and so it kind of has like fallen out of favor and sort of like the explanation to steal over capacity you see in places like the New York Times. But I actually think this is one of the things that does, to some extent cause Chinese steal over capacity. Now do you

know what doesn't cause Chinese steal over capacity? That's right, it is the products and services that support this podcast. So I wanted to talk about the local quadra explanations,

because I actually think these are kind of important. And I want to talk about one other argument that's also not really used much that used to be a lot more common, which is an argument that Chinese economist makes that one of the reasons that there's overcapacity in Chinese steel production is that upwards wealth distribution leads to lower

levels of consumption and thus over capacity. And so what is basically means and this is something that I think is actually also a thing that's the best structural problem in in the Chinese economies, that the Chinese economy is extremely highly unequal and wages, you know, like they have risen to some extent, but they're not rising anywhere near you know, like we've everyone in the US have seen that famous charge of productivity versus like labor gains, right

like wage gains versus prouctivity increases. Wages in China have gone up, they have absolutely not kept pace with sort of productivity growth, and they also absolutely like have not kept pace with the amount of the profit being produced that is going to a very very small number of

capital owners. And this actually to reach the structural problem, and this is we're seeing a very similar structural problem to this in the US, where there is a lot of consumption that if that money wasn't just all going to a bunch of rich people, people would actually be spending it on things, And particularly in Chinese context, the argument was that if if there was a better distribution of wealth, people would buy more houses, and this would

actually reduce over capacity because suddenly a bunch of the slack capacity would be being used to like build houses, except people can't afford the houses. And this is a structural problem that like economists sort of note about for decades and decades, which is that China has been for a very long time. The whole thing was that they were trying to transition into a consumption economy, which is to say, they were trying to transition into an economy

that was fueled by its own internal consumption. The US is to a large extent sort of kind of works like this, where you know, you want to increase the level of consumption and the amount of stuff that people in your country are buying, and this is a way to sort of like create a middle income country, right And China has historically not been able to do this, and haven't been able to do this because they won't

raise wages. But you know, if they won't actually raised wages enough to increase people's consumption levels, then you're left for structural overcapacity because demand is being lowered because people

don't have any fucking money. Now, this is another argument again and I think is also probably correct that is very much not talked about anymore because the argument that is used in in sort of understanding what's going on with Chinese seel capacity is about the Chinese subsidization of state owned enterprises at the expense of sort of private firms.

And the argument here basically said, the state is propping up a bunch of unprofitable enterprises and they're holding sectors of the economy that should be you know, taken over by more efficient private firms, but they can't because they're

being subsidized by the government. And this is sort of true, but this became a massive geopolitical argument because the argument from the American side, and when you hear anyone talking about steal of capacity, now this is the argument that you hear right, which that China is flooding the world with cheap steel because there's a whole bunch of like Chinese state own industries or just like Chinese businesses are just getting money from the Chinese government to produce steel

and they're pumping cheap steel to the rest of the world. And this is not really I mean, like kind of this is happening, but it's also not the reason why there's large scale steal over capacity. And of course the argument is that China isn't competing fairly in the market, like this is very silly. Markets have never worked without large scale state quote unquote interference, Like American companies also get extremely high level subsidization et cetera, et ceteracy, all

of US coregn policy. But you know, this is the political imperative that's behind a lot of the rhetoric coming out of steel producers and out of the American right about why there should be terrocists on steel. Now there's a problem though, which is that all of these arguments are very specific to China.

some extent like so we subsidization. However, Comma, there's a problem. And the problem here is that over capacity and overcapacity and steel is not just a Chinese phenomena. It is a global phenomena. It has been a global phenomena for a long time, and it is largely a product of the fact that we do not live in a global economy that can actually support the amount of production capacity

that exists in the world. This has been a problem really since the seventies, and arguably even since the sixties, where as countries rebuilt from World War Two, and as some some sort of developments in global capital that we're going to be sort of like talking about soon happens that the product of all of this is that production has And this is kind of the thing that the

sort of fascist right kind of intuitively understands. Production has become zero sum, right, It's very difficult to increase production in one country without having it, you know, affect production in the countries there isn't enough demand in the market to sort of like fuel all of these things. So why is there not enough demand to fuel the amount of supply that would be that would be necessary to

make there not be over capacity. The answer to this, in sort of marketing theory is that, as they sort of put it, over production and under consumption are doubly constructed. I'm going to read a quote from end Notes, volume two, and then we're going to explain a little bit what that means. The wage allocates workers to production and at

the same time allocates the product to workers. So what that means is that under consumption and overproduction are in effect the same thing, right, Because the way that we allocate workers to what thing they're going to do, and at the same time allocate products to those workers is the wage, which is one thing. So overproduction and under consumption are the same thing, right, and they're caused by

the same structural elements of the wage relation. Now, this means that the Chinese capacity crisis is actually part of a larger crisis.

Over time in capitalist economies, there's supposed to be an increase of what's called the organic composition of capital. Basically, there are composition of capital is a way to measure how much in the pro labor process. It's like fixed capital, variable capital, so it's like how much factory is there

relative to the amount of worker there is. And Marxist thesis, which has generally been born out, although we'll talk a little bit about that more later, is that this composition is going to increase, and as it increases, accumulation also needs to increase in order to maintain employment levels. This is sort of accomplished by things like automation, which reduces the size of the labor force, and thus, to quote and notes again, as accumulation proceeds, a growing superabundance of

goods lowers the rate of profit and heightens competition. Across lines, compelling all capitalists to, as Mark said, economize on labor. So basically what this means is like as as capital gets turned into more capital and larger amounts of capital, this is the accumulation process. As this continues, right, you get this massive sort of increasing the amount of goods that are being produced. Eventually that lowers the rate of

profit in a sector. And eventually what that does is, you know, in order to sort of economize on labor, capital increases the amount of automation reduces the amount of people that they need in the labor process. You know, this is what what's generally known as automation and the sort of crisis of people getting kicked out of the

draws because of it. As this process is sort of generalized across sectoral lines across different parts of the economy, the relative demand for labor decreases and workers are spin out of the wage re line, which is the fancy Marxist way to say that become structurally unemployed. And you know, the thing that happens when you get kicked out of the capitalist wage relation is you get kicked into informal labor and slums, which you know decreases demand and increase overproduction.

At the same time, over capacity is skyrocketing, right, because you have increasing numbers of people who have been spat out the formal economy who no longer have access to regular wages. The wages they get in the informal economy are less than the ones they would get in the formal economy. And as we were saying write, access to

like the wage, both determines production and consumption. So if you lose access to the wage, right, and there's still more stuff being produced because of automation levels, what you get is a massive, skyrocketing double increase of overproduction and under consumption, right, because there's just not enough money to fucking buy the stuff. And the result of this is a miseration. Everything gets fucking worse. This sort of used to be an academic argument. It is no longer an

academic argument. It is just the terrain on which economic policy unfolds. Now. The miseration thesis is this is you know, as a sort of like general law of capitalist accumulation is called has been argued about constantly. There have been ways that has been avoided. One of the biggest ways traditionally has been by capitalism sort of transforming goods into services.

So for example, like the operative example of this is the transition in the US from rail lines to cars on something that points out, So you know, you get these new industries that are both labor or capital intensive. By replacing train with car, you know, you can absorb huge populations of workers as well as incorporate the peasantry into the industrial economy by sort of like converting these

things into services. This has sort of been what the economy has been increasingly converted into a service based economy of various kinds. That's kind of what's happening now, you know, and you and you can see this process that work in the Chinese economy back when it was you know,

really growing in the nineties and two thousands. But you know, once the peasantry had been absorbed as sort of both a new market and a new labor force with lower cost of production because wages are cheaper for a bunch of structural reasons, the old tendencies of capital set in. And so what happens inside of China was what was happening everywhere else in the world, which is that as labor saving technology begins to be implemented and you know, a bunch of services refused to be turned into new

goods to like bolster the ranks industrial working class. You know, you get what's happened in the US, which is this this full transition to service economy shit that doesn't actually really grow. And you know, if if you look, if you look at Chinese growth rates, like they've been slowing for a decade, actually a little bit longer than a decade.

And so you know, as China was integrated to the global economy, it too became caught in this cycle of industrial booms where you know, you get an industrial boom where you have a country with favorable exchange rates, the stallar that inevitably sets off, you know, the economies of the bad end of the exchange rate to collapse as they're forced to bear the way to global lower capacity.

As as I've mentioned one hundred billion times on this show, it is the one thing I will make sure every it could happen here listener will be able to explain the Plaza Accords and the Reverse Plaza Cords. You know, but this is sort of this is sort of what the Reverse Plazai Cords and the Plaza Cords were about,

was the US. This is the last time the US tried to, you know, use its just sort of like pure political power and military might to be like, eat shit, I'm going to force all of your countries to fuck with your currency so that our manufacturing economy will come back. And again, the US did that successfully and the Japanese economy collapsed because we'd needcap Japanese economy to do it right. And to some extent, Trump is attempting the farce as

farce version of this with with these steel teriffs. Right to some extent, these tariffs are his attempts to pull the Reagan maneuver of Okay, we can just like force other countries to lower their capacity and increase our capacity at their expense. The problem is that, again, this production is zero sum, and if you do this, it will

annihilate the rest of the global economy. And this is the sort of context behind all of the stuff that we've been seeing for the last like thirty years, which that actual profit rates have been collapsing for ages, and right now we're in the middle of a just unbelievably hideously staggeringly massive bubble that is maintaining the sort of last like fake vestiges of economic growth where billions and billions and billions of dollars have been sunk into all

of this AI bullshit, and it's you know, like the tech driven AI is a significant specifically, specifically the AI stuff is a significant portion of total US economic growth. If you want to listen to why that's all going to go to shit, turn on effectively literally any episode of COOLSI and Media's own Exitron's podcast Better Offline and you will you will hear a lot about this. But you know, this has been that, like tech has been

sort of the escape strategy of the United States. Traditionally, it's going to implode, it's going to do tremendous damage

to everyone. But in the remains of that, and in this world in which profit rates are declining, and in this world in which increasing portions of the population are being spat out of the capitalist production cycle, in which increasing percentages of the world population are being kicked into an informal economy, and in this world of generalized overproduction under consumption, what's happening is that there is an enormous effort to get everyone to think that this is because

of very specific tendencies of like the bad government over there, right that you know, over capacity and steel. Oh, it's just because the like the evil communist government in China is cheating at capital by giving their companies money, and so we're gonna do tariffs on them instead of that.

And again, like it's easier for these academics to make this argument because there is kind of stuff going on, right, because there is this sort of cadure evaluation stuff, because there is to some extensi a subsidization of steel production. They can present this boogeyman to sort of pin what is really a global overproduction and under consumption crisis onto just you know, it's just as government we don't like. And then you can sort of implement these ultranationalists tariff policies.

It's a way of deflecting the blame from capitalism onto another country and using nationalism to paper over the actual economic contradictions of capital. And if you want to escape that, it's not enough to sort of just get rid of Trump and go back to the previous retrade regime. You have to actually structurally change the thing at the center of all of this, which is the wage relation.

the people who caused all of this? From Trump, from Elon Musk, from all of the billionaires, from feel from all of the tech billionaires that funded them, from all of the Republican Party Cook Breathern networks. Are we going to destroy these people completely by getting rid of the

social relations of capital that make this all possible. Or are we going to to sit here and let them continue to produce AI videos of them shitting all over us while they take all of our money and commit an ethnic cleansing and continue to fund genocides abroad.

The Border Patrol is currently soliciting comment for its plans to build for the wall through the out Tide Mountain Wilderness and other areas west of Tikati, right, could you explain a little bit about what they're proposing and what consequences that will be.

to Kabacuche impact on the area. This is going to be about two point nine miles west of the Cut port of entry, going through an area that it is very remote mountain region and some of people and this are more familiar than I am. I've actually never been, but I've been talking to some of the local organizations, the new humanitarian aid in the region, and I know the Tekate Peak is in that area, and then you start going west into these beautiful mountains that are also

the birthplace of the Tepana River. That's exactly the area where it's going to go. So right now, CVPS accepting comments and asking people in the community what kind of concerns do they have concerns in regards of the environmental impacts of a project like this, what kind of social and economical impacts? So they open up this section on their website with an email address where people can share

some of these concerns. As you mentioned, and part of an environmental organization, but we also have all kinds of concerns for a project like this, including the border barrier and the system attributes, which are very poorly described for what they mean. Some of the things that they mentioned as system attributes is the increase of lighting, infrastructure, surveillance equipment,

and new roads for access for border patrol vehicles. So one of the things that we're going to expect that we have seen in other areas is more blasting through the mountain, especially on areas where the mountains is so uneven the terrain, there is a lot of heavy machinery it has to come into those places to start bulldozing to level the terrain so they can start building this

border wall. So we can expect some of that, and with that come a lot of issues because there's going to be the need to start drilling wells at the border to extract the water from mixing the concrete for the foundation. If there was any road out there, they're going to probably widen the road two or three times to allow this. Having machinery to access these remote areas, this is just going to be the beginning, just setting

up the panels. But whenever you go to these places and start disturbing the native soil, you can expect all kinds of consequences in regards so invasive species of plants. You can also expect so floating and removal of native vegetation. In some cases, there is some species that are rare on the area that having these impacts you know, can be long lasting for them to be able to recover.

If they're able to do so the area on the south side of the border, there is also an area where animals need to be moving back on course, so species like the native mule deer, a colony that leaves there. There is a mountain lion and other species of mammals pre much everything that is for inches, why it's not going to be able to make it do that border will Yeah. So yeah, we're just raising these concerns and sharing with the community so they're able to also as well.

And an email to CVP crostoms and water but no and express these concerns and also to remember that these areas have been sacred size for the indigenous communities Diamond Memorial, so we might lose some very sacred sides for the tribes forever.

very hard to come across here. And so I've seen deer kind of distraught almost trying to get to this place where they've obviously learned that they can get water, but now they can't. It's really heartbreaking, on top of all the other cruelty that it does. I suppose we should address, Like I'm not sure how much we can accomplish by the comment period, right, but it has value nonetheless, like trying to do something, I think it has value. It shows that we didn't let this just happen.

So Dalva itself is really concerning, but I think it is important that the communities around these areas are aware about this and they get involved, and that there is this community sentiment against this abuse of power that the administration continues to do, and the border lands and using them as the sacrifice zone as these testing grounds for what can potentially continue to happen or expand not only on the border but in other series, like we are

seeing with the span of militarization nowadays.

But since the proposal and passing of the quote unquote big beautiful Bill, we've got to remind ourselves that now the administration has allocated forty six point five billion dollars for border security, and that includes border barriers and system attributes, so pretty much anything related to border security right now, they have the funding to do it. They pretty much out the funding to put a double wall across the

whole US Mexico border. Yeah, so that's that's huge. You know, In recent days, we got a new wave of contracts that were awarded. In October ten, we got this announcement that out of this funding, the forty six point five billion, they are located for a little bit over four billion, and this will fund them two hundred and thirty miles of new physical barriers and four hundred miles of surveillance technology across the US Mexico border from California New Texas.

That's and they put up a new section on their website where there is a map you can navigate. It's an interactive map that shows every single section of the border and what they're planning to do with and as surreal as it sounds, they are planning to double up the wall. So in some places, in remote areas in the desert, like in organ Pai National Monument or Caveca Prieta in Arizona. In those areas, there is plans to

build a secondary wall. So on top of the thirty food barrier that they have, they're planning to do a second one.

where people go. When we build wall in Otai, right, when we continue to detain and turn people back in less remote areas, they will take the risk of going to a more remote area and forcing people into those remote areas and then constructing barriers there too, is just

going to cause more deaths. Said, it's not going to stop people trying to come because there are things that they are living which are terrible, but it will mean that they get stuck out there in the heat without water for longer rain.

people die. But also remember that these areas, like these remote areas were also like semi priestine wildlife environments that you never had humans moving through before. Now, as people have been pushed to these remote areas, you have this human traffic and not only migrants moving through, but you also have the border patrol chasing these migrants. And now you have border patrol wanting to build new roads to these wilderness areas. And all of these just gives building

up into what's already a very fragmented landscape. So by adding all these quote unquote system attributes, because you're pushing and pushing people further and building these doggle walls, it's just going to end the last of the remaining wildlife remote migration corridors as well. So the impacts that this is going to help are huge.

but not as much as it wanted to. And you and I are both very familiar with the consequences that has had, right Like it has caused more people to die. The Biden administration continue constructing and quote unquote repairing border barriers. They also pioneered outdoor attention, and like it just seems like things with whoever gets elected, but more rapidly under

Republicans get worse. What are people able to do? When We've spoken about this a lot on this show, but I'd love to hear your perspective too.

own makeshift wall. So a bunch of people really came together on the community outrage because this was just some really dumb idea and one of the most remote, beautiful areas where there is not even people moving through and it was just going to destroy the environment. And the governor went out there and spent two hundred million dollars of taxpayers money to buy these shipping containers and build

this border wall. So we were actually all the community came together, We show up out there in the and stopped the machines and we said no, you're not going to move any further. And because what they were doing was actually illegal, we were able to get away with it. Those chipping containers are gone right now. Still, Arizona taxs payer paid two hundred million dollars to destroy their own environment just let that same thing we can be using

that money for much better things. So I think that president and that movement, that sense of community that was built after that resistance, it is, has continued after that.

Like there is a lot of self organized grassroots efforts going on for border resistance, you know, and that encompasses humanitarian groups, environmental groups, and we are also organizing nowadays here in Arizona to do some direct action, try to show up to the center of a valley which is where the border construction is going, and started raising some national attach to this issue, trying to invite our politicians, start invited our our native communities to speak out and

using different methods such as art performance, bring up some different strategies together. You know. Now with the technology that we have available, is that how can we make these more mainstream and tell people across the nation what's going on and these remote areas. You know a lot of people a lot of connection to this valley, and this is the headwaters of the Santa Cluz River, the lifeblood

of many communities across the southern Arizona. And at the same time, on the other side of the coin, you know, there is all the oppression by the government to anything that is against their will. So a lot of people feel a little bit afraid of showing up to direct action. Yeah, so it is it's just walking that fine line or what can we get away with and still be able to make a ball statement and show opposition without putting people in danger.

major growth industry. I guess, editors who I could not get to respond to an email or pick up the phone for the last four years and now commissioning pieces of migration. But there still seems to be like a blind spot about the border in the American news media. I don't know why that is. I don't know if you have ideas about why there is, But the borderlands are such a special place for me anyway, you know,

I've spent nearly twenty years of my life here. Some of my favorite places in the world are near the border. I think people think of the border as like Santi Zero, but it contains some wonderfully remote and special places. And I wonder if you have thoughts on why, like the border isn't something that gets talked about that much on a national level.

state or sacrifice zone. And so whenever I talk with people that is here for the first time, you know, I do these group presentations for delegations that come from all over the to experience the Borderlands region, and they're like they have all these perspective, you know, for what they hear on the news about how horrible this is, and then they come here and they're like, Wow, people here is like really nice and we have a great experience, and I really inspire and it's like coming with this

pre fabricated narrative on their minds of this wasteland sacrifice zone, you know, like and then going out after experience and yes, some of that, of course, if you go out to the to the border and experience the wall and the rolls and rolls of concerts in a wired to make it look like you're in a war zone. Yeah, the plows what you already have in your mind. You know,

it just keeps building up the intensity. And then you hear the stories from people, the struggle, from my grants and stories from back in twenty twenty three when we have the search of migrants coming and all these things, you know, but at the end, people leaves with glimbs also like, wow, this place is really beautiful and a lot of wonderful things are happening, a lot of movements of people trying to organize and make it a better place and trying really hard to shift this narrative. You know.

The borlands provide us a good opportunity, you know, because what we see today, like a friend of mine said, it can get worse, and it's going into that direction. Yeah, yeah, it's going into that direction. But at the same time, it gives us an opportunity as a society, you know, because whatever happens at the border is definitely going to have a ripple effect in the rest of the country.

So we are able to figure out a way to shift that narrative and look at the border like like people that lives and experience the word there and the culture of the beautiful things that the border has to offer. Then we hope that that's going to help change a lot of the things that are happening in this country. You know, but we need to start I think organizing from the bottom up. Yeah, a lot of grassroots therefore need to be happening, and I think a lot of

media needs to cover this. You know, we usually don't cover the good stories.

is the Fox guy for the most part. And the one thing I like to do with my friends, or like if someone comes to visit, you know, sometimes I have other independent journalists come visit to walk down to the border wall, and it seems very bleak, right because there's this big wall and it's covered in constantina wire, as you say, and maybe they are Marines or National Guard or Order patrol or any other leg it's people

with guns right in different uniforms. But then if you turn around, you're in this really special place where you don't see the people and you just you can appreciate how beautiful it is. It's also very beautiful that, like you say, there's so much bottom up organizing, that there's

so much people helping people of all different kinds. And that's something we also are in twenty twenty three, when Title forty two ended and subsequently the Biden administration detained people outdoors, like we saw an incredible community response of all different kinds of people of different political persuasions, different faith groups, which was a really beautiful thing. Like it's a thing that a lot of the rest of America right now I could learn from the government was brutalizing people,

and people made that less bad. They kept them safe, and they'd been a lot more people who didn't make it throughout all attention if it wasn't for community support, like I want people to see that. I wonder if people want to support right, let's say they're not in

the border lands. Can you think of good ways for them to be in solidarity, for them to even to experience like I know a lot of people who listen to this have come, like It's really wonderful for me to meet people when I'm not working, when I'm just out there in my capacity as someone who cares about other people, right doing water drops, doing mutul aid with migrants,

or helping people at street release. To hear of people who listen to this and then decided to come from wherever they were and spend some time here and help, Like, that's a really a special thing. But you have other ideas on how people can can be in solidarity and can come and help.

whatever you're passionate about. You know, it doesn't really have to be an environmental issue, but we are remember and social justice and environmental justice is the same thing.

can for them as well. So whatever you're passionate about, and if you really want to and you're passionate about order related issues and you're not able to come, try to support, you know, like financial help is, you know, we like it or not. We're in a capitalist society

and we work with financial support. So a lot of these events that we're creating, a lot of these outreach that we're doing a lot of the people, like new generations that need jobs, that are wanting to join, like let maybe a non profit work or create the own movement or doing something related that's going to help the community. Yeah. So for those if you are able, those are really good ways to get involved and make them change.

do their own things wherever they're at. Like that is how we build a world where systems of oppression of let's able to oppress people.

and I think we could find unity on that. Like, I do not understand how there is a constituency that wants to take land from the public domain and turn it into a military basis and or or fields and mcmhonsions for rich people to have as their second home. Like that should be it's a thing that everyone agrees on. And like he didn't stick the landing on it the

first time in the reconciliation. The quote unquote, big beautiful Bill but I think that's a really good area towe engage people, folks who might not be like, yeah, I will show up for migrants. I think a lot of people.

They could be people who enjoy the outdoors, people who just care about the environment, the Hook and Bullet crowd, like, there are a lot of people even if they don't quote unquote use public lands, like we all benefit from being there and future generation to benefit from them remaining un developed in a in a substantial way.

part of a larger coalition. So even if you are in Texas or New Mexico, feel pretty too, very child and if you have any concerns ideas things that come up to your mind that can maakeure the border of airplace feel pretty for a feretty to reach out, then we can collaborate work together on this or LEAs connecting with some of the local people that are part of the network. Because we're always looking to make this network bigger.

You know, I think there's trending numbers. I'm going to get more and more people to join this coalition in the different states. So even if you're not on the border stages, if you're in DC and you're do lobbying and you're into policy change, but yeah, come reach out and you can find us like a central website or an Instagram account. We also have like a grassroots mid airport right now called Rally for the Valley, and that's what we're trying to do for the San Rafile Valley

over there. You're going to be able to find updates. And we created a decentralized website right now there is called Border Wall Resistance. I invite everybody to take a look at it. It is full of beautiful pictures of the border. When James and I were talking about how beautiful this place is, got to that website and you understand what we're talking about because it's all everts. You know, the border is so unique on each area. You know, the border it's not define but Pjuana San Diego or

No Garlands. You know, it is just two thousand miles of wonderlands, so unfortunately separated by in many cases but this huge metal, dirty food structure.

the funding shuts down. This is a critical lifeline for food for an extremely large number of people, and this is also coming in a period where food banks are already being stressed by just the other cuts to SNAP and other food assistance programs that have already taken place. So yeah, we're coming to a very very critical moment in terms of wide scale food insecurity in this country for a whole bunch of the most vulnerable people in

the country. And yeah, this is a good moment for if you have actual access to food, which is which is a very very bleak thing to be saying, but you know, something is going to have to try to pick up the slack or a bunch of people aren't going to eat, right, and that's probably going to have to be us, because it's first fuck not going to be the government.

people don't have food is bread riots. What is going to happen with that is deeply unclear, but yeah, we're heading into an extremely bleak time.

being spent on weapons. And right now the number one thing I'm seeing people freak out about is the supposed idea from these documents that ICE is purchasing guided missiles and chemical weapons. I have heard people say this is Ice, which is obviously Trump's SS, you know, making their own vaffen ss, which were the armed units of the SS. I'm seeing a lot of shit like this spread, and as Jamee is going to tell you, none of that's true.

missed that in his reporting. This reporting is extremely dishonest, To put it mildly, it's either deliberately misleading or massively incompetent. The piece in question doesn't link to the individual contracts, which, like on the face of its bad form, right, if you're going to be talking about contracts, your contracts are in the public domain. Just linked to them. The piece doesn't do that. I went on USA spending dot gov and I filtered by contracts that have been awarded by ICE.

I gave a date range. The date range are pertained to the things being discussed in the article. And then I filtered by the product or service code for chemical weapons and guided missile warheads. Right, two different products or service codes. Product or service codes are like these, these four digit codes that exist in federal procurement right to put things into buckets basically, and I found the contracts. The contract very clearly states the guided missile quote unquote contract.

The contract with the guided missile product or service code very clearly states it is for multiple distraction devices. Yeah, it's a contract with a company called Quantico Tactical. I did call them yesterday, something that again any competent reporter should do before publishing a piece that does not appear to have been done by the substat guy. They gave me an email. I sent it email more than twenty four where hours ago, requesting commental clarification, didn't receive a

response at the time of us going to press. If I hit back from them before we release this, I will let you all know the chemical weapons. It was as spray. It was fab spray, right.

a door or something. But like when you're throwing a flash bang at a riot, it's a distraction device because the goal is you've got a bunch of people moving towards an area you want to stop them from You distract them by an explosion, you know.

if more people download this podcast, at least not directly. Right, we do not have a direct incentive to make fantastical claims that will lead to people downloading our podcast and being afraid that is not true for people who have these substick outlets, right, Like, I mean, I'll let me clarify. We do have a direct financial interest in there being traffic, right because that is that's how we make our money,

right like, and that's how we justify getting raises and stuff. So, like everyone in media, if more people listen to our stuff, like, we do have a financial interest in that, But you're not checking week to week to see if we're getting if what we're doing is bringing us in more direct money, right Like, That's just not the way our thing works. Yeah, And when people are on their own they're doing these subsc out there is a very real incentive to do that, right.

We also have a team here. We fact check each other.

their ability to build an audience that follows them. Those people have all moved to a platform where they by default don't have an editor yea, and like every journalist worth they're sold I've had my fights and frustrations with editors at a variety of publications, and sometimes they're knowing, and sometimes editors suck, and sometimes publications a big part of what they're doing is just trying to water down your shit. But that's not the only thing editors do.

A major thing editors do is point out, Hey, I get that you're really into this, and I get that you find this compelling, but as an objective observer, I'm seeing this hole in this hole in this hole, and you need to, for example, hall these people and make sure that this because it doesn't look like this is actually a guided It looks like somebody just fucked up putting in a code. We need to check on this so we can state it to a point of certainty. That's what an editor should be doing, right.

occurred to me. I have this question that is not being answered, and you make a couple of phone calls, throw in another sentence, and then that's that's a thing that we're answering, a thing we're accounting for. And if you don't have that, the work isn't as good.

in Portland a quote unquote measured sponse. Now there is a second tro preventing out of state National Guard from deploying to Portland, and this appears to still be in effect, but its fate is unknown. The Justice Department has requested the original judge to spend the order, though the Ninth Circuit itself is considering whether a larger panel should rehear

this entire case. Currently, there is no immediate plans for Oregon National Guard to be deployed, but they do now have the go ahead, but this is still a developing situation. But that's an important update there. Let's talk about that two fifty celebration sing happy birthday. No, happy birthday to the Marines.

kind of simulated landing drill. Not quite sure. What the landing drill they were doing. But this yet resulted in the damage done to a HP car and really fucked up traffic in probably the entirety of southern California. Yeah, from most of last Saturday.

the United States who were residing here. They're like if someone maybe if someone came with a visa and was turned around the airport, they're including that as a deportation.

Musk has put into GROC recently. If you look for mentions on x the Everything website of the one point six million number, nearly all of them are GROC repeating it. God, I don't know if they straight up just said like, yeah, the CIS is your source for information when they were, you know, pro to be less woke but slightly more woke than when it called itself Mecha Hitler. But it seems to be the CIS seems to be heavily weighed in the Grock algorithm these days, which I thought was interesting.

sentiments there was in visa's being revoked. Quote Charlie Kirk was a son of a bitch and he died by his own rules. VISA revoked. When fascists die, Democrats don't complain, VISO revoked. It from a German national, Resilient National said that quote Charlie Kirk was the reason for a Nazi rally where they marched in homage to him, and that Kirk died too late. Visa revoked. There's like four other of these for people making statements of that nature.

All American Halftime Show celebrating faith, family, and freedom. The website has a submission form where it asks which genres should be featured during the show. The options include quote anything in English American classic rock, country, hip hop, pop, and worship.

But right after our Executive Disorder episode from two weeks ago, literally like like hours after, on October eighth, right wing influencers gathered at the White House to discuss with Trump and cabinet members their theories and carrowing stories of Antifa at this big Antifa roundtable. Yeah, I'm gonna play a short clip like a few seconds from Jack Pasoba get in there, noted far right extremist and poster.

I would say it's just a time to be aware of that and be aware of the fact that anytime you are speaking or at a public event where other people are speaking, you should assume that that's being recorded and that people will be pulling out the worst parts they can from it and trying to use that to destroy people's lives. And I bring that up because there's been a couple that just really broke today, some potentially

pretty high profile examples of this. One of them is that at a panel for Firestorm Books, they had a speaker, guy named Eric King, who was convicted of a firebombing. He's a left wing activist. He spent almost ten years in prison, at a horrific time in prison, I mean, just abused by the system and some of the worst

playways possible and is finally out. And Eric did a talk at Firestorm Books and he made basically his statement that activists need to hurt them where it counts, saying we can force them to shut the fuck up when it hurts they're walid enough, or you can find other ways to hurt them. Now that's not saying anything inherently illegal. Again, he starts it by saying we can force them to

shut up when it hurts. Their wallet enough, that's talking about like boycotts and stuff, but the phrase other ways to hurt them is vague enough. That's pretty easy for these guys to cut stuff out. And I'm looking at a post by quote end quote investigated analysts for the Manhattan stut Smith. He's framing this as known ANTIFA firebomber calls for escalation, and again that's not necessarily an accurate

look at what Eric was saying. But it's easy to pull stuff out like this from something like what appears to have been a fairly open zoom call that you know, is not hard for someone to get into and record and pull something out of to try and make the case that someone like Eric should be back in prison, or that Firestorm Books is a party, you know, providing

material support to an extremist organization. And what I'm not trying to do is say like, and so people should not talk and gather in public because they're going to be doing this. But you need to be aware that anything said it's something like this that's in any way open, and even if you try to make it kind of more close than this, they will try to get people in. This is something that is increasingly going to happen, and so people just need to be You can't you can't

just kind of hope that they're not paying attention. You have to be aware of the fact that they're out there and they're going to be trying to infiltrate any sort of thing like this they can to get pretexts for further crackdowns. And another recent example of this Frontlines tp USA, which is Turning Point ussays, I mean, it's

their version of the actual Frontline journalism show. But they did an investigation where they went undercover to the Oakland in Seattle anarchist book fairs, right, and again, there's nothing wrong with doing those book fairs. I'm sure what they're doing here is pulling whatever quotes they could grab from people that sound bad out of context and using them. Tried to make the case that again, these are violent

extremist events that need to be cracked down on. And I will reiterate I'm not saying don't do book fares. I'm not saying don't show up at events like this.

I'm saying if you show up, be aware that stuff like this is going to be happening, that they're going to be people recording that they're going to be people trying to find what they can to destroy people who are at these events, and that that's something that needs to be in your threat model, right in terms of how you dress when you go there, how visible you are, and what you're willing to say around people, right, among

other things. I guess what I'm saying is there's some jokes you shouldn't be making in public at events like this unless you want there to be a high risk of it coming back to bite you in the ass.

of how a network of NGOs are funding Antifa. This is a this is a longer clip, but I think it's important to look at how they are approaching this, like how they are approaching this Antifa as an organization.

Riot Inc. Has many divisions. It doesn't just have the Antifa boots on the ground division. It has pr divisions, it has marketing divisions, it has a very well funded legal division to get these boots on the ground back on the streets as quickly as possible. But it does have those investors that I mentioned. Number two, we have identified dozens of radical organizations, not just the decentralized ANTIFA organizations, but dozens of radical organizations that have received more than

one hundred million dollars from the riot ink investors. These would be the lawyer groups, These would be the groups that advocate for calling good honest Americans fascists, etc. And then three, I think the most shocking thing is that we have found that more than one hundred million dollars in US taxpayer funding has flowed into these funding networks, including at least four million dollars to these very groups themselves, not just ANTIFA types. But there was an event in

Atlanta called Stop Coop City. Over sixty rioters were charged with domestic terrorism. These groups received money for that from both the billionaire class as well as taxpayer money.

Media Matters or like Southern Poverty Law Center who do research into extreme organizations. They could be framing the people like that as a part of this whole ecosystem, and that's that's where they could be looking at for sources of money and funding and like tracking where that money goes is in groups like that. Not obviously you know, your average black clad ANTIFA protesters. Not it's not receiving

payment for their presence at these at these events. But this guy went on to claim that quote unquote Riot Inc Funding Network also supports decentralized crowdfunding platforms which fund organizations like the ELM for John Brown Gun Club and

the Socialist Rifle Association. After he went on this like three minute long speech, Trump asked him and other attendees that if they knew anything about like ANTIFA members, funders, or the organizational structure, to hand over that information to Pam Bondie or Cash Patel and Trump reiterated this multiple times during the roundtable, asking these you know, policy guys or quote unquote independent journalists to hand over their information

to the authorities. Here's one version of him making this request.

be great. Nobody would know better than you. You'll figure it.

they understood the magnitude of what they were doing. This basically started with the Trump administration massively increasing export restrictions to China by changing the rules of what companies are covered by what's called the Entity List, which is a list of companies that American companies are not allowed to sell goods and services to. The administration moved this to include any company that is fifty percent or more owned

by a company on the export list. We've discussed on the show before that a significant part of the structure of Chinese corporate conglomerates are held together by a bunch of different companies, you know, having partial ownership by the same holding companies, which is what sort of binds companies and conglomerates together and integrates them into the management structure of the conglomerates. This is how Chinese state owned enterprises work.

Being state owned enterprise literally means that you are partly or completely owned by a holding company run by SASSAK, which is the State Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council. Because every name of the CCP

is like that. So this shifts to anything that's fifty percent or more owned by a company on the list is actually a massive export restriction, and the Chinese government took this as okay, we're starting the trade war again, so very quickly there's a whole bunch of different tat things that we're not going to track the order of because they kind of don't matter. But on October tenth, Trump made a Twitter post where he said that he was going to implement a one hundred percent tariff and

also a software restriction thing we'll talk about later. Those are supposed to go into effect on the first. He's also been talking in the last week about bringing tariffs up to one hundred and fifty percent. We don't have any kind of formal executive order on that. This was to some extent in response to China implementing massive restrictions on the export of rare earth metals. These are crucial to basically any kind of of advanced manufacturing industrial manufacturing applications,

everything from chips, electric cars at jet fighters. These are set to take effect on December first. I'm going to read this from the New York Times to get an undersetting of how large these moves are. China refines ninety nine percent of the world's prosium, a kind of rare earth metal that is used in chips to preserve magnetic

stability even when they become hot. In the last few years, Nvidia and other semi conductor manufacturers have changed the materials used in electricity management devices called capacitors, which is a really funny way to describe a capacitor, by the way, but on chips to make them more heat resistant. The capacitors are made from ultra pure dysprosium, which is extremely difficult to refine. A single refinery in Wushi, near Shanghai produces the entire world's supply, so prove New York Times.

These export restrictions include any good that is produced with these rare earth metals, and require foreign companies operating in China, like for example, Samsung or any of the sort of South Korean or Taiwanese chip manufacturers to acquire export licenses to sell them to any other country that's not China. That is a absolutely massive restriction on export goods and also again a whole bunch of critical minerals that both the American military apparatus relies on and the American tech

apparatus relies on. AI chips need a whole bunch of these things, so you know, in the middle of this process, the US also started charging Chinese built ships for docking at US ports, which China retaliated by imposing docking fees for American ships. I'm gonna gain read from New York Times here. The new rules are the most stringent for Chinese shipping companies, which for the most part, cannot avoid

the levies. HSBC, an investment bank, estimated that Costco not that Costco different one, a large Chinese shipping line could pay one point five billion dollars in fees next year, which the bank said could reduce Costco's operating earnings by nearly three fourths in twenty twenty six. Again, it's it's worth it's worth noting that these shipping, these shipping companies

are the backbone of blow trade. They also their margins are not very good and a significant number of them basically only didn't go under dream lock during the lockdowns because they effectively lied on their loan applications. And we're just sort of putting in their revenue as if the lockdowns weren't happening. So this is all very very fragile infrastructure that is being you know, attacked, and these these port fees are already in.

export ban. So perb Reuters, what's being considered here, and again we have note we have very few concrete details about this. This hasn't been formally announced. My guests is that it's being leaked to Reuters by the administration, but I just don't know. But what they're considering, basically is a version of the sanctions that effectively Biden applied to Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, which restricts the export

of any product maade with US software. This would be probably the most significant developments of the entire trade war. And so these are all incredibly significant escalations. A bunch of the stuff is set to go into effect on November first, which is very very soon now. In theory, Trump and Chijianping are supposed to meet at the meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in South Korea,

but there's been no formalnouncements of their meeting. Trump that he was going to go to China and early next year, but that's again next year. The American one hundred percent tariff again November first. The Chinese export restrictions on rare earth metals again December first.

mad at him. He's also pissing off cattle ranchers. So both the soybean farmers and the cattle ranchers are mad at for giving a bunch of money to Argentina and not giving them a bunch of money and cutting off their acts to Chinese markets because Argentina again is selling

a whole bunch of stuff to China. One of the things that they sell to China is beef because Argentina is a major beef exporter, So they're all really mad at him for giving Argentina a giant bailout in order to try to save if they're failing economy under their unhinged an arco capitalist and president who has annihilated the economy even more than it was before. And then Trump's response to the cattle ranchers being mad at him was telling them to lower their prices, which means they're even

more mad at him. So he is systematically alienating two of what should be his most important basis of support. And like the cattle industry has been a based Republican support for I mean since time in memorial. Effectively, the lumber and vanity tariffs so we mentioned last week have

taken effect. Now there's been no rollback of them. And finally, I want to close on a story that we're going to be covering more on Monday, which is the continuing escalation of a sort of conflict between Colombia and the US after the US murdered about full of what appeared to be Columbian fishermen. Yes, Columbia has recalled its ambassador and in the US has said that it is going to eliminate all foreign aid and impose a tariff, the

size of which they haven't given a consistent number. Four And this is, you know, very much could look like a pretty massive reorientation of American policy around Columbia, which has traditionally been an American ally and we've ran desk squads out of there for a very very long time. Yeah, and that has been the lightning round rapid fire trade war coverage because oh boy, yeah, yay, we've tariff talked all right.

the fact that they have a telegram chat. But The Political reported that this chat contained messages about putting political opponents in gas chambers, loving Hitler, as well as plenty of anti semitism, talking about raping their enemies, and hundreds

of uses of homophobic and racistlers. The chair of the New York State Young Republicans, Bobby Walker, allegedly called rape epic and wrote in the chat quote if we ever had a leak of this chat, we would be cooked on quote New York Republican Elease Stephanic first denounced this chat after the report, though later called the Politico piece

a quote unquote hit job. The Matt Walsh side of the online right condemned those who leaked the chats, neglecting to discuss the substance of the chat itself, while Vance largely dismissed the affair, writing on x the Everything app quote I refused to join the pearl clutching when powerful people call for political violence unquote. Vance falsely referred to this as a college group chat when TEA members were

as old as forty years old. A day later, while guesting on The Charlie Kirk Show, Jade Vance continued to push back on the seriousness of this story and play defense by repeatedly referring to the grown men involved, who are in their twenties and forties as kids and young boys.

have to say enough of this, bs. We're not going to allow the worst moment and a twenty one year old's group chat to ruin a kid's life for the rest of time. That's just not okay. Like we live in a digital world. This stuff is now extin stone online. We're all going to have to say, you know what, no, no, no, we're not doing this. We're not canceling kids because they do something stupid in a group chat. And if I have to be the person who carries that message forward, I'm fine.

Great plan. Unquote. Shapiro did beef a bit with Walsh on one of their daily Wire group podcasts regarding the substance of these chats. Shapiro did seem more concerned at the growing anti Semitic and not see fascistic element of the Republican Party whereas Walsh is does not care about that at all. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, not a problem for a self proclaimed theocratic fascist Matt Walsh. So that's that's one side of this whole political story that I

wanted to talk about. You should just read the political piece. I'm sure lots of people have. It got pretty popular

a few days ago. But I find the sort of I mean, I would have called it like the dissident right reaction, but when you have the vice president as like, yep, the guy leading the charge on this type of stuff, it's not really distanct Like there is a large number of Republicans who are condemning the contents of this chat, but you do have the vice president of the country playing defense for it, yeah, and for the people involved.

comes out, it looks like this. And that's a really significant factor in why American politics looks like this, which is that like the the people who are entering the Republican Party right now, who are like their sort of youth wing quote unquote, are these people and we're seeing their policies get enacted.

for like nationalism and for all of these things. Now there is a fair number of people who just will straight up defend the Nazis absolutely, but I think it's it's it goes beyond, like like this isn't German national socialism, Like it goes, it goes, it goes beyond to like they're using Nazism as a meme for their political project, and memes get used a lot in these types of

safe spaces where people can joke around. So you see that very clearly here, but you also see it on like the DHS Twitter account you use, you see the same kind of like post ironic stuff, like a few weeks ago they we're fucking moon Man posting. You can google that one if you want to. We don't have time to explain, but that's a very old like internet nazi dog whistle. Yeah, and you know we've I've talked a decent bit about my feelings on like focusing a

lot on like the DHS Twitter dog whistles. But yeah, it is it is in invoking of this stuff for this like mimetic like archetypal context that they surround themselves in.

Yukon Coskoquim River. These are Alaska Native villages, and their inhabitants are now climate refugees at the very start of winter, right in the coldest place in the United States. These villages are very remote. I spend some time earlier this year in Alaska Native village, not here in the interior, just in the Quichan territories. But these guys are really only accessible by small planes or by boats, which will make their recovery even harder.

of Western science. But I would argue that the experience of Indigenous people who have lived on the land for as long as human beings have lived anywhere on this continent and have watched the changes and seen this disaster unfold, should be a warning to all of us that the climate crisis is already here. I reached out to some Alaska Native friends to ask where to donate, and they shared a page which will be in the show notes of the show. So if you're able to help, I

think that's very important thing to do. Recovery for these people with this federal government, with being as remote as they are, will be horrifically difficult. Right now, many of them are living in anchorage right Like I said, they're going into the winter and then they don't have a place to live. It's an unmitigated disaster. So if you're able to help, I think it would be very much appreciated. Before I go, I will say that if you would like to email us, you can use our proton mail address,

cool Zone Tips at proton dot me. If you send from a proton mail address and it's encrypted from one end to the other end.