It Could Happen Here Weekly 230

you can make your own decisions. Hey, everybody, this is it could happen here and I am Robert Evans, and initially this is supposed to be a slightly different episode. I have been pondering over the fact recently that I feel weirdly optimistic, particularly in the last couple of weeks, especially compared to a lot of the people that I

know and spend time around. And I think it's because I've been interpreting some of the same pieces of news differently than they have, and because I've been coming across

some different pieces of information than they have. And I wanted to kind of walk people through why I've been feeling so optimistic, and so I wrote something and I recorded it around Thursday of last week, and then over the weekend a gunman attack the White House Correspondence dinner, and actually, this hasn't really changed any of my overall feelings.

We'll talk about that this week, probably on ED, but I did make some alterations to the episode as a result of that, although I do think it reinforces my primary point, which is that the political era that we now find ourselves in is one dominated by extremophiles. Extremophiles are organisms with unique cellular and molecular mechanisms that allow them to survive and thrive in extreme habitats. I'm talking about places like volcanic events at the very bottom of

the ocean, or the Dead Sea. If you've ever wondered why it's called the dead sea, it's because for a very long time, people thought it was too salty to host any life. Modern research has disabused us of this notion. The dead sea hosts life. It's just weird life, because the dead Sea is a weird place. The term extremophile was coined in nineteen seventy four by R. D. McElroy to describe microorganisms scientists were increasingly finding in places that

should have been devoid of life. The word is a hybrid term that literally means love of extremes, and while it is usually used in a scientific context to describe small organisms and very odd locations, some experts have over the years pointed out that the label might well apply to humans too. In the journal article all about Extremophiles JOHNS. Hopkins Universities, James A. Koker wrote that quote, despite common perception, most of Earth is what is often referred to as

an extreme environment. Yet to the organisms that call these places home, it is simply that home. They have adapted to thrive in these environments, and in the process have evolved many unique adaptations at the molecular and atomic level. In our human centric view of the planet Earth, we tend to think of ourselves as being in the Goldilock zone, not too hot or too cold, protected from radiation, and filled with all the things next necessary for life to exist.

To some extent, this is true. However, this view keeps us from acknowledging several basic facts, including that the Earth is mostly a cold place. Over ninety percent of its oceans are at or below five degrees celsius, and it has an average temperature of around fifteen degrees celsius, and several conditions we humans consider normal i e. Twenty percent oxygen in the air actually make us extremophiles from the point of view of other species.

and everything since has been a slow downhill slide. People have different reasons for this. Some of them blame nine to eleven. Some people will argue that we were in that sweet spot where the Internet existed and could tap you into cool and interesting things, but social media hadn't

come along yet and ruined it all. You know, different people come up with different justifications for this, but this view keeps people from acknowledging some very basic facts about the nineteen nineties, which is that they were full of genocides and Rwanda and Bosnia just named two, and repeated US military adventures and misadventures in other parts of the globe,

some of which ended disastrously, as in Mogadishu. Our president for most of the nineties was a sex pest, and members of the far right staged a series of bloody terrorist attacks, including the Oklahoma City bombing and Olympic Park bombing. And while all this was happening, a new and more openly extremist Republican Party captured Congress, while hapless outmaneuver Democrats

gawked in awe. The reality is that the nineties were a time of extremity, of extreme weirdness and darkness, just like every other period of human existence, and the extremity of the era helped birth a new conservative movement, one radical enough to wrench power from the liberals and bring us ultimately into the slavering jaws of the Bush era. Today, those same neo conservatives seemed tame next to their modern descendants, the Maga movement, But in their own time, they were

the craziest bastards out there. And this hits at a fundamental reality in American politics. If survival in extreme times requires extreme adaptations, then It's no wonder that for much of our lives, the extremists are the ones who have primarily thrived electorally. Democrats like to forget this, but Bill Clinton felt like a pretty big swing to folks exiting the era of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, just as Barack Obama was seen as the most extreme

choice imaginable by roughly half of this country. In fact, he was such an extreme choice that the Conservative movement had to birth the Tea Party and eventually the Maga Movement in order to unseat the Democratic Party and repeal the changes from the Obama years in power. I like thinking about this stuff because I find it interesting that one common theme from evolutionary biology to modern politics is this in extreme environments, extreme adaptations are necessary to survive.

We Homo sapiens, have been in the business of extreme adaptations for as long as we've existed.

Internet and satellite guided thermonuclear bombs. Extreme adaptations are not always good, but once you've found yourself thrown into an extreme environment, you can't just wish the weather was different. You've got to adapt. That's the bad news about our current political situation. The good news is that the pendulum

has started to swing back our way. The extremism of the Trump era is provoking its own equal but opposite reaction, and you can see the first stirrings of that and the popularity of Zoron Mandani, or the fact that a former pillow of neo conservatism like Bill Crystal is currently

advocating for the abolition of ice. We are in the process of deciding the next extreme that will dominate American politics, which means we have the opportunity to adapt with policies and changes that are every bit as good as the ones that Trump administration has forced through our bad To do that, we're going to have to be brave and we're going to have to start getting our shit together now, because this window of opportunity won't last long. The way

I see it. The GOP entered office this time around, intent on waging the political equivalent of a shock and awe campaign. They burnt up any goodwill or benefit of the doubt they might have had in an orgy of careless and brutal cuts to basic government functions carried out by the least sympathetic group of Groper's imaginable, one of

whom was nicknamed big Balls. A fleury of state and local legislative pushes and criminal investigations aimed at hurting left wing activists and queer, particularly trans people have done tremendous damage, as have relentless ice raids on mostly non white Americans. It's been bad, and yet we're still here. I won't pretend we're in a good situation today, not at least in terms of what we'd like good to mean in

the everyday sense of the word. Many of us haven't survived the first sixteen months or so of the Second Trunk presidency. Fewer of us are going to make it to the end. But this regime came to power with the knowledge that their success or failure hinged on speed and violence of action. They had a limited window to make resistance impossible, and they missed it. You can see some evidence of this in our War of Choice against Iran.

President Trump wanted a quick, brutal triumph that would look good on the evening news, so he told his military to bear down on Iran with all the speed and violence of action they could muster. That plan failed, and the reasons why are weirdly similar to how the Republican Party has overplayed their hand in our ongoing culture war. Back in Trump's first term, the DoD established the Algorithmic

Warfare cross functional team nicknamed Project Maven. The goal of the project, as per Lieutenant General Jack Shanahan, was to automate the analysis of drone footage and other data humans previously would have gone over by hand, in order to speed up the rate at which targets were identified and struck in wartime. Project Maban from the Jump was a product of the worst kind of military thinking, How can we automate as much of our planning of warfare as possible.

This is the kind of project you pursue when your finest military minds still believe that victory is as simple as killing or destroying a preset number of bad guys, causing them to give up. The goal was to create a system that could collate and synthesize huge quantities of data in order to allow one thousand targeting decisions per hour. Kevin Baker, writing for The Guardian, notes that this means quote three point six seconds per decision, or from the

individual targeteer's perspective, one decision every seventy two seconds. Now, we're going to talk about where this kind of thinking has led us in our conflict with Iran. But first, here's some ads we're back. Now. If you listen to the advocates of this kind of military build up that people who are really bullish on AI for military purposes talk and their podcasts and on their blogs, the reasoning behind why you need to be able to make a

thousand targeting decisions per hour is pretty obvious. They're obsessed with the idea that a future war between the US and a peer or near peer adversary, most prominently China, right, that's what they're planning on now. The Chinese military is also heavily invested in AI. There was a major New York Times article earlier this month, in April of twenty twenty six, titled Mutually Automated destruction the escalating global AI arms race.

intentions are clear. In twenty seventeen, mister Putin declared that whoever leads a AI will become the ruler of the world. Mister z said in twenty twenty four that the technology would be the main battleground of geopolitical competition. In January, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed all branches of the US military to adopt AI, saying they needed to accelerate like hell.

the US would proceed. But given that very few people in either country want that war to happen because it would kill us all, I think we might do best focusing on the war our country is currently fighting, where this logic has resulted in a catastrophic failure for at least the second time in my life. In two thousand and three, the United States invaded Iraq. After more than a year of build up, in years of intelligence gathering, our military planners put together a list of fifty high

value targets. The idea was, if we could use our incredible super advanced spying equipment and our precision guided weapons to wipe out the most important figures of resistance in Iraq, we could hobble any response to the invasion. All fifty targets were struck, none of the people targeted were killed. Now that doesn't mean no one was killed. It just means we missed all the people we thought we were

going to hit. To quote from Kevin Baker's great article, again, the targeting cycle had been fast enough to hit fifty buildings and too fast to discover it was hitting the wrong ones. Fast forward earlier this year, Administration orders the launch of Operation Epic Fury and unleashed a nightmare arsenal of hyper advanced weaponry on the people and leaders of Iran alongside the Israeli Air Force. In the first two weeks, US forces hit six thousand targets picked with the help

of Project Mavin. One of them was the Monob Girls Elementary School, which was destroyed by a missile, killing one hundred and fifty six and wounding ninety five. Now, Alex Karp, the CEO of pallanteers hyper advanced AI and a multi billion dollar network of satellites backed up by decades of intelligence gathering by the CIA, and the massade wasn't enough to drop us from striking a school that we knew

contained none of our targets. We had data that the people we thought were there at one point were no longer there, and it was a school now. But some of the data Maven relied on was old and outdated. And these machines aren't capable of real judgment and the way we think of it. And because people trusted them so much, no one thought to check before ordering the strikes.

This is a human error. This is not an AI error, but it illustrates a massive law in the fantasy that winning a war could be as easy as building a smarter machine. Got to be accurate, and it is important to note a lot of those six thousand targets were what we thought, and they were accurately struck and killed. In the opening salvel of the war, President Trump and his mouthpieces celebrated their successful assassination of Iron Supreme Leader,

alongside many other prominent military and governmental officials. This seemed at first to be way more successful than the opening strikes against a Rock. They didn't get any of those fifty guys. We got a bunch of our initial targets in this first wave of strikes. Maybe we just didn't have the right technology when we invaded Rock. Maybe now we're doing it right, you know, finally we'll be able to win a war this way. However, that quickly proved untrue.

All of those strikes put together were not enough to break Iran's will or its capacity to fight and fight back effectively. Now Donald Trump finds himself trapped in an expensive quagmire, one that is already bleeding him advanced munitions and equipment while it crashes the global economy. The most recent ap the NARC poll, puts Trump's overall approval at thirty three percent, which is down five percent since just back in March. Only thirty two percent of Americans approve

of his leadership on Iran. Because most of this country can still see a man shooting himself in the dick

for what it is. Pete Hegsath is our most lethality obsessed Secretary of Defense and History, and in him we see the result of a long sickness first incubated during the Vietnam War, when embarrassed generals needed to spin their failure to make progress as a kind of victory, so they turned to bragging about how many fighters they had killed, inevitably defining many civilian dead as enemy combatants, and bragging about the tonnage of trucking that they destroyed based on

wildly incomplete and inaccurate intelligence. Ever since this calamitous era. Informed students of military theory have seen doing body counts as the death knell of a military entity's ability to make intelligent decisions that move their forces closer to victory. But because the entire conservative project in this country is built on the thoughtless worship of military pat prowess in power, we've seen this kind of thinking trickle down to the

sarey cadra of influencers who call themselves right wing intellectuals. Today, I'm talking about dudes like Matt Walsh and Chris Ruffo who've built their reputations on picking targets to drum up mobs against and uses the basis of attack ads. These people have proven legitimately good at stirring up haate and forcing laws all over the country restricting things like drag shows or the use of chosen pronouns and government documents.

All these people are by definition huge assholes, and so are their followers, and thus when those people get radicalized to take action in their communities, they make those communities worse. This pisses off their neighbors, which has resulted in significant backlash across the country. As an example, Moms for Liberty was formed in Florida on January first, twenty twenty one, by Republican activists and former school board members who were

outraged about pandemic safety protocols and schools. They became a vehicle for the parental rights movement, a nebulous and deeply toxic force in American political life. It sees the parent as a kind of absolute sovereign over the life and mind of their child. Any influence that might lead that child to become a different kind of person than the parent envisions must be pruned away. The group used the then fresh moral panic over critical race theory as a

lever from which to force themselves into American life. In June of twenty twenty one, they started filing what would become a long series of criminal complaints against books available in specific school libraries across the nation. Schools started removing books, and Moms for liberty inspired candidates began winning school board

elections around the country. It looked, for a little while like a popular wave of hysterical fear might yank America into a Fahrenheit four to fifty one style future, slightly ahead of schedule, but just a couple of years later, a funny thing happened, Moms for Liberty backed candidates started losing major elections, first a series of school board races

in twenty twenty three in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Iowa. But even as the Biden administration kareemed towards a disastrous new election in twenty twenty four, one in which the far right seemed to have all the momentum, regular people kept rising up and organizing to protect their schools. One of the first was karen's Foboda, a mother of seven in

Duchess County, New York. In twenty twenty three, she told NPR reporter Jim Zaroli, I looked into the local Facebook page of Moms for Liberty and just browsed through some of the social media of some of these individuals, and what I saw was very upsetting. As a mom of kids who were members of that community, it was very concerning to think that these people would be trying to get onto the school board, because what does that mean

for my kids? So she started a group of her own, Defensive Democracy, which organized like minded parents in her community to warn each other about Moms for Liberty. It defeated an entire slate of Moms for Liberty backed candidates in twenty twenty three, all with the infrastructure of a Facebook

page and weekly zoom calls. And the really remarkable thing is that even while the twenty twenty four election took over the national discourse and the Democratic Party completely shat the bed, people kept connecting and organizing in school districts across the country to fight for their children's educations. In November of twenty twi, the Houston suburb of Cyprus, Texas, saw Democratic candidates sweep three school board seats and take

the majority, ending two years of Republican dominance. This trend was repeated elsewhere that same month, per a political article by Liz Crampton and Madison Fernandez quote in Pennsylvania, Democrats slipped at least two dozen school board seats, per an

ongoing tally from progressive recruitment group Pipeline Fund. The under the radar trend was enabled by voters increasing weariness with the culture wars that helped the MAGA movement engineer school board takeovers and generate hyper local interest in politics as the COVID nineteen pandemic raged. In addition to Texas, Republicans lost seats in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio and the national battleground of Pennsylvania the result of well funded campaigns

orchestrated by local leaders. Now, one of my favorite details from that piece is a quote from one of the new school board members, Leslie Gilmart, who stated, folks just wanted their school boards to be boring again. They wanted normalcy. Once the board was taken over by a superpartisan, extremist majority,

folks across the political spectrum were dismayed. Now, I continue to be an advocate of the thought that Tim Walls might have made a more effective vice presidential candidate if he'd kept calling the Republicans out for being freaks because they are. Their obsession with the lives and behavior of their fellow citizens and their naked slavering need to control their neighbors is upsetting, an unnatural.

hideous way. In either case, the human cost will be nightmare, But either action would just be the flailing of a busted gambler putting everything he has on a fantasy that Americans want to see foreign enemies broken while they can't afford to fill their car at home. Every poll of the American people seems to suggest that most of us as a pretty low appetite for unnecessary wars. Outside of Florida, it's hard to find regular people who are scared of

the Cuban government. The idea that they represent any kind of threat to folks in Michigan or Kansas is absurd on its face. The further Trump reaches, the angrier people get. Fascist governments rely on the complicity of the masses even more than their enthusiastic support. And many Americans have proven themselves unwilling to be complicit in most of what the Heritage Foundation and their friends want for this country. And that's a nice note to roll to ads on.

be allowed to compete in women's sports. And the dasher in question was fifty eight year old Sharon Simmons, who was a I Mean, it's been widely reported, is a Republican activist. She'd previously spoken out in favor of the no tax on tips policy at the House Ways and Means Committee field hearing, and even when she was under the gun next to the President, Simmons wasn't willing to

agree with him on the weird anti trans stuff. She replied, I don't really have an opinion on that, and I'm not here to call her a hero for that.

bigger question than the just Trump. A large number of government officials, of elected leaders, military officers, and law enforcement officers have implicated themselves in the crimes and what we might call the oughta be crimes of this administration. It's not unreasonable to ask what if they won't leave power without a fight? And I don't have a comprehensive answer for you that I feel comfortable putting in the last couple of pages of a podcast script, but I will

point out that just In the last month. As I write this, Victor Orbon and his entire political movement faced sweeping defeat at the polls. Orbon had been previously referred to as a quasi dictatorial figure. He was the leader of the Hungarian government, and he had led a massive right wing crack down the detacked schools that attacked the LGBT movement, and that became a major funder for much

of our own right wing movement. It's come out that the Orbon government was sending money helping to fund Sea Pack. They were sending money to specific right wing influencers like Rod Dreyer. And despite the fact that Orbon was the guy that people like Tucker Carlson a couple years ago was saying, this is the future of American politics, Orbanism is what we want. Despite that fact, when they lost

an election, he and his cronies back down without a fight. Now, ultimately they did this because they still think they're bulletproof.

a very different position geopolitically. But the rapidity with which some former Trump stalwarts like Marjorie Taylor Green and Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson have abandoned MAGA suggests one thing. They think it's more personally profitable for them to not be seen standing next to the president or the MAGA movement right now. And here's more good news. Remember how basically every social network is now owned by an openly evil, right wing billionaire.

Visiting and posting activity on Twitter, slash x, and Facebook have fallen by nearly fifty percent since twenty twenty, with the decline on Twitter x driven primarily by reduced participation among democratic users. Now, this is broadly speaking a good thing for the mental health of Americans overall and for the future of our body politic but the Americans who remain in social media aren't all doing so hot. Over the same time period, traffic on Twitter and Facebook grew

markedly more right wing as both sites shrank. In his paper, Tornberg warns as casual users disengaged while polarized partisans remained vocal, online discourse comes narrower and more ideologically extreme, or in other words, as the algorithms that govern what gets seen on these shrinking social media sites reward more extreme content. Less extreme users leave, and the ones who succeed and become more widely shared are the most extreme. It's, you know,

another extremeophile kind of situation. Part of why the people near Trump all believe they're winning is they live in these same Internet fever swamps, and they've gotten used to the Internet mattering a lot more than.

putting and gross. The data shows that folks, particularly over sixty five and under twenty four, are increasingly fed up with not just social media, but the whole state of affairs we've been locked in politically. In the recent Virginia

governor's Racemocrat Abigail Spanberger won by a comfortable margin. Republicans devoted a huge amount of their budget against her to anti trans attack ads, writing high off their inaccurate belief that anti trans propaganda had one trump the reelection in twenty twenty four, but only four percent of voters in that election listed transgender policies as a top issue. Now, that alone might just point to the overwhelming impulse towards

centrism shared by much of the American middle class. People don't like to stand out, particularly as a political radical. But a year after Spanberger's election, a majority of Virginia voters approved a radical redistricting measure. This was entirely framed as a response to the Republican party fighting for their right to redistrict several states in their favor. The usual chorus of voices piped up to say, Oh, I don't know, guys, we shouldn't do the same thing they keep doing in

order to defend ourselves. That doesn't seem fair. And this time, thank goodness, most people ignored them. The controversial measure outperformed Kamala Harris by eight points. And yes, the federal judge did immediately rule the measure unconstitutional, but you know how these things go. We're off to a series of court battles now, and however those end up. Two useful things

have been accomplished. The liberal majority of a state has banded together to fight the Republicans on their own terms, and a clear message has been sent to those same people that Republicans benefit from a different set of laws than democrats. Now, any anarchist or left as political organizer you've ever known would have told you the right wing always benefits from an interpretation of the law that she shucks seems to deny their opponents the right to do

the same things in self defense. It's bad that things work this way, But good for rank and file liberals to be reminded of that reality. If it weren't, the current gatekeepers of our news media wouldn't be rallying so hard against this measure. The same day I wrote all of this, the Washington Post published an opinion column by Theodore Johnson titled Why Virginia went back on its word. It opens with a particularly idiotic paragraph. Partisanship died its

best impression of democracy in Virginia. On Tuesday, voters approved a referendum permitting the state's congressional districts to be redrawn to help Democrats win four additional seats. It's retaliation to recent redistricting by Texas to hand Republicans five more seats. At the best of President Donald Trump. It's a red versus Blue tit for tat over who can jerrymander more efficiently?

A necessary evil, the parties say, to protect democracy. It's actually not necessarily I mean, not that it's a necessary evil. The parties say. It's that one party was already doing this for years. The Republicans and you didn't speak up the Washington Posts. You know, this guy didn't write the same column when this shit's been happening in other states. He only does it when Democrats do it in Virginia, right, And I also might point out to a majority of

voters approving a measure is democracy. You know, if your only concern is the overall health of democracy, Redistricting that favors democrats really corrects a structural imbalance in our political system that favors loosely populated rural areas with an unfair proportion of political power and marginalizes the greater number of

citizens who live in urban areas and tend to vote Democrat. Anyway, there are other good reasons to see hope for a fierce swing in American politics, not merely back to the middle, but far to the left. Simply as a matter of practical necessity, the Republicans have spent their time and power gutting the Parks Department, the Post Office, the VA, the FAA,

and every other useful part of our state structure. And this is a big part of what's radicalized people, because they've very quickly come to notice that things are missing and shit is not working right. For decades, the government has been the enemy to millions of Americans who went out in the world and relied on government services every day of their lives, and yes, that's irritating and unfair, and no, we don't have time to fix that up

right now. What we can do is use the fact that the Republicans broke all these systems to point out to people, actually, you don't hate it when the government does stuff, You just hate the way Republicans run the government. And the fact that the Democrats have usually been too scared to push for policies as extreme as they need to.

Right this is an opportunity to convince a lot of people, oh shit, paying taxes to support a vibrant civil society with the extensive and functional infrastructure is a lot better than letting big balls de leete half of civil service, right like. That's I think the opportunity we have right now, and pushing that basic line on as many Americans as possible in the next two years is I think one of the most important things we can do at the moment.

Along with that, we need to keep building support for enforcement of consequences against the cadra of billionaires and their lackeys who have been robbing our shared heritage blind this whole while. If I had my way about it, I'd point out to people that there are an awful lot of billionaires who we knew colluded to take over the federal government put something like Elon Musk's doge in place. You can just see that in some of the texts

between Mark Zuckerbergeting and Elon Musk. These people are enemies of the state with an awful lot of money that we could confiscate to do things like replace the books Moms for Liberty tore out of public libraries. Now, we also need to see consequences for the criminals who have weaponized the organs of the state to fight their war against transgender Americans. This is an issue you can, in fact,

get centrist voters to support. The average swing voter may not be particularly woke on gender theory, but they don't like seeing the government bully people who are just trying to get by. The widespread suffering created by the MAGA movement also creates potential for widespread solidarity between its victims. If the midterms go badly for the GOP and the twenty twenty eight elections go even worse, the USA's new elected officials and surviving citizens will find themselves in the

same situations. The man who just unseated Victor Orbon and his supporters, we all learned how temporary a victory can be. After twenty twenty four, I've seen more than a few comments online by liberals who decided Orbon's defeat was a good time to attack a straw man caricature of a leftist, and these posts were generally laughing at this idea that a lot of people on the left express that electoralism

can't defeat fascism. Now, I do share a frustration with the blanket rejection of electoral politics that some people on the left champion, but every online and real life lefty that I know was thrilled to see Orbonde get the boot. However,

they all did share a fear us. This one fear that I've seen in common with every analyst and expert on Hungarian politics that I've read, which is winning the election isn't going to be enough for Magyar Orbon is an extremist, someone who took power because things were extremely shitty in Hungary and voters got angry enough to vote for a guy who promised to burn things down. They did come to regret that, but things are still extremely bad in Hungary. Joe Biden was a moderate who tried

to govern in an environment of raging extremes. His promise was that he would bring things back to the normal of the Obama era. He failed to do that because it's impossible, and his failure opened up the way for Trump two point zero. If we don't want to repeat that cycle, the failures and ultimate collapse of the MAGA movement have to be met with new strategies, new tactics, and new politics as we seek to fill the void

that they're going to leave behind. I wrote and recorded the first draft of this piece, as I said earlier, just a few days before, a gunman stormed into the Correspondence dinner. His manifesto has made it clear that he wanted to arm the President and members of his cabinet. Within hours, his social media accounts were archived and his life was put under a microscope, as it always happens

with gunmen these days. All of this revealed a liberal man, one who had previously expressed very common centrist opinions, including a dislike of firearms. I've seen this used by people to justify a conspiratorial narrative that immediately followed the attack. This guy is a perfect patsy. Obviously they cooked this up in a lab as an excuse to crack down on Democrats. I don't believe that, and here is not a place for an argument as to why.

anti Trump resistance. Here's a quote from that article. At town halls in their districts and in one on one meetings with constituents and activists, Democratic members of Congress are facing and growing thrum of demands to break the rules, fight dirty, and not be afraid to get hurt. One of the lawmakers that they talked to for that article related a conversation that he'd had in a meeting with a constituent.

in an extreme environment. We see this in the thousands of normies in Minneapolis who have been willing and eager to confront armed federal agents in bathrobes and risk their own life and limb to protect their neighbors from ice. And we've also seen a very dark reflection of that in the actions of that gunman last weekend. Now, the fact that an educated and informed thirty one year old man decided to buy a firearm that he hated and

attack the president represents many failures. One of them is a failure of the Democratic Party and the Liberal project to provide him with anything that felt like a useful outlet for his rage and hopelessness. People start talking and acting like this guy was acting, you can either throw your hands up and back away, or you can try

like hell to present them with a counter offer. In this case, I mean a set of policies, activist campaigns, and organized actions to make this country a less horrific place. The victory and wild popularity of Zoran Mamdani is proof that you can, in fact do this even in twenty

twenty six. The widespread support for formerly extreme positions like abolishing ice, taxing billionaires, radically redistricting states, halting the construction of data centers, and expanding and packing the Supreme Court are more than enough evidence to show that people will get in line to back a candidate and a party

who promises radical change. Moreover, everything I've seen lately suggests that people are starving for a movement like this, Hungry for their own candidate who feels like Mamdanni, hungry more than anything to feel hopeful again. When Oregon Senator Ron Whiten posted see you at Nuremberg two point zero after Christy Nome got fired, I watched a coalition of left wing radicals and centrist dims who never came together over anything else, express wild glee at the very thought we

can do this. We have the tools, and we have the opportunity. It's going to take a big old step into the unknown, but that's our only option besides waiting until we get another chance to look through the social media ar types of a gunman.

that have facilitated American presence in the region. With the strategically and economically critical straight off home moods in jeopardy, with France, the UK, and Germany aka the usual suspects indicating potential involvement, and with the potential Russian and Chinese involvement also being floated in some circles, it seems to me that without any formal announcement, the war on the world has escalated potentially to a point of no return. Hello,

and welcome to it grappen Here. I'm andrews Age andrewism on YouTube, and I'm joined again by It's James Hi, and how are you doing as well as I can be?

Spring was sweeping the Middle East and North Africa. Among the countries caught up in the fuva against the prevailing states was Libya, a North African state ruled for the previous forty two years by the Colonel Mumar al Gaddafi's government. Masses had taken to the streets across the country, starting in Benghazi. The government had some successes in putting down the revolt, killing hundreds of rebels and demonstrators alike, and

some failures as the masses managed to hold position. The people had many motivations Spanish Islamist democratic SI militant to tribal, to just disaffected against a government intent on its continued survival. Revolutions, uprisings, protests, revolts. They tend to messy your fears. I'm sure James, you're well away of that.

it later becomes a something revolution. But especially in the Arab Spring, right like in that time, it was just like we've had enough of being under the boot of these regimes and it was extraordinarily heterodox, and that was quite beautiful in the early days.

those same civilians in that same place. It is possible for two things to be bad, and like in Iran, Yeah, there is a monarchist opposition. It sucks. I spoke just this morning to a Kurdish group which is opposing the regime in Iran, and they had nothing but bad things to say about the monarchists. Right, they said, this is the PAK write the coast down Freedom Party I'm quoting here. They do not have a foothold in society to actually achieve anything. The lies and delusions of a group of

people sitting in nightclubs cannot make any real impact. That You're free to use that one next time someone tells you all the opposition in around its monarchist, it's nonsense.

And I don't believe that it's any less human if you live in North Africa or the Middle East, or South Africa, or an island in the Caribbean or an island in a Pacific like I believe it comes from our human nature, and so it strikes me as therefore obvious that there cannot be a country where people's human nature is fundamentally distinct and they're all just like knee jerk monarchists. I wouldn't see the world the way I see it if I was able to believe that. Yeah.

any ideological commitments at all. The majority of the human population is not ideologically committed one way or the other. Most people are just trying to live their lives and meet their basic needs, and they're submerged in society that lends them towards a particular inclination. But that's not set in stone. Most people in the Arab of Spring likely sought just the end of whatever it was they were

suffering under before. And of course in these kind of incidents, geopolitical actors will choose to back particular factions, lend them creedoms and prominence according to their geopolitical interests, but don't give them undue credit. You know, during the Cool War, for example, the US would have backed rebellions they believe benefit them, and vice booths of the USSR backed rebellions

they thought would benefit them. And even today, the US is claimant to care about freedom but has continued to work with the Saudis, who infamously invaded Bahrain to crush the Arab spring that occurred there. At the time, France's love for democracy didn't exactly match their offer to aid

Algeria and Tunisia in putting down their own Arab springs. Now, as I've been saying quite often pointing out hypocrisy, it's kind of a baby's first geopistical analysis, right, none of these governments have any consistent values beyond their own interests. But I think it's important to make this kind of

heterodoxy in movements clear to contextualize what happened next. There's another notion that the US intervention is entering these countries during these conflicts ahold humanitarian and aims to liberate the women or to liberate minorities in that region. The United States,

like all the cover months, is opportunistic right. It is taking advantage of often genuine struggles by people to serve its own situation or goals without a care for what happens those people, either openly intervene in or covidly intervening. The most obvious recent example is with the goods in Syria. At the time, they were convenient to the United States interests until they weren't and they were abandoned. And this is especially the case when resources like oil come into

the picture, and Libya is extremely oil rich. So tragically, the West saw this uprising in Libya as an opportunity. On a timeline and Encyclopedia Britannica. On the nineteenth of March twenty eleven, Libya was attacked by the combined forces

of the United States, the UK, and France. These countries now condemned Kadafi as an oppressor of the civilians they were swooping in to say, though for years before the UK and France were selling in weapons they, alongside the Katari and Saudi allies, took advantage of the protests to assert their military might. This move was authorized by the UN Resolution nineteen seventy three, and NATO would soon take command of the operation. While claiming to protect civilians under

a responsibility to protect doctrine, they bombed them. An allegedly humanitarian intervention led to the deaths of tens of thousands of a national population of just over six million. Key infrastructure was devastated by the Natal Woman campaign and by the struggles between the government and the now armed rebels

of the National Transitional Council or NTC. A quick by the way, the NTC appointed themselves as the leaders of the movement, and despite the struggle being kickstarted by mostly working and middle class militants, often of an Islamic orientation, the NTC was composed mainly of regime defectors, businessmen and exiles who had a broadly pro Western, conservative and free

market stance. Some of the elements in Gaddafi's government and military had defected to the rebels and equipped those previously unarmed protesters with firepower, and so up to now we only have estimates regarding the civilian death doll infrastructural devastation, and arbitrary detentions, disappearances and kidnappings carried out by both Progadafi and anti Gaddafi forces, not to mention the Liberate targeting of black Libyans and Sub Saharan African migrants by

rebel forces that took place during and after the twenty eleven war, with the claim that they were Gaddaffi's hired mercenaries. Many of those Africans attempts to escape were met with callous disregard by Europe.

As Matt will Gress notes in jackbn quote on the day Tripoli fell, the New York Times headline the scramble for access to Libya's oil wealth begins was telen Libya's vast oil reserves, along prized by the West for being the largest in Africa and incredibly close to Europe, were

now open to business for foreign investors. As is the case with all imperial interventions, the attempts to get profits flowing from multinational corporations comes long before any ideas of reconstructure such as es central infrastructure projects or insurance services end quote. And really up to now that infrastructure has not been established, and even access to Libya's oil is not yet secured, even though they allegedly managed to loot

some of that oil. In twenty twelve, Nakadafi himself fled after the fall of Tripoli, but he was found NATO bombed his convoy and he was captured alive, then executed by NTC forces in October twenty eleven, after which the war was declared over and the ANTC declared Libya and Islamic democracy in their constitutional declaration. The NTC estimated thirty thousand dead, and a UN report from twenty twelve estimated that more than nine hundred thousand people had to leave

the country since February of twenty eleven. Many were not Libya nationals, but more than six hundred and sixty eight thousand Libyans also fled, and an estimated two hundred thousand people had been internally displaced, continuing without timeline. In twenty twelve, the NTC handed power over to the General National Congress, or GNC, and despite a formal end to the war, Grafi loyalists, local militias, and tribes shaped against each other

and the GENC. The militias wouldn't disarm. The Graffi loyalists continued to fight, and the GNC failed to put forward a new constitution, so in twenty fourteen they were ousted by the newly elected House of Representatives and in twenty fourteen, a second civil war would begin in Libya, with the nation split mainly between the House Representatives or HR, with its Libya National Army or LNA, based in Tobruk to the east, and their rival, made up of mostly Islamists

from the former gen C with their Libya Dawn Militia based in Tripoli to the west. They didn't win the election, they didn't consider it legitimate because of its low turnout, and they didn't appreciate the amount of former Gaddafi supporters in the new government, so they rose up to fight, claiming to be the National Salvation Government or NSG. So

you have the HR and they have the NSG. Beyond these two factions, yours had an al Qaeda affiliated militia and the Islamic State, both engaged in insurgent struggle around the country, sometimes holding entire cities. Eventually, the two governments came together to sign the LPA, the Libyan Political Agreement to form the Interim Presidential Council and Government of National

Accord or GNA in late twenty fifteen. With that attempt at cohesion didn't really work out, as the U went back to GNA, now based in Tripoli, couldn't consolidate power. By the end of twenty sixteen, factions affiliated with the NSG still resisted the GNA, and the HR, still based in Tobrook, refused to endorse the GNA's appointments, so they went from having two competing governments to kind of having three, though the main opposing forces when all the GNA and

the HR. The JNA was backed by Tihi Qatar and the EU, especially Italy and the UN, while the HR was backed by Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Emirates, and to some extent, France, who technically recognized the GNA but also provided support to the HR for their struggle against the Isthmists. The US was also supposed to be back in the GNA, but Trump jumped out to praise the HR at one point, so the US's position was

exposed as a lot more ambiguous in practice. Yeah, so, the GNA and the HR would keep on struggling against each other for control over the central bank and oil companies and territory over the years. By the end of one particularly significant offensive in twenty nineteen, which saw the

country's largest oil field brought under HR control. The situation was such that the HR's leverage came from their control over the oil field, and the GNA's leverage was that it was internationally recognized and could legally sell the oil.

GNA leader Fayez Al Seraje and HR leader Shalifa Afta seemed to be developing in cooperative relations, and in March or twenty nineteen they were supposed to have a national unity conference, but then the HR tried to take Tripoly whoopsie, so they and I had to put spone in that conference. The resultant fight and led to the hrt in st a major city between the Libya's east and west halves.

With Turkish support, the JNA successfully repelled the HR from the Atropoli and situation was stabilized with a battle line just east oft.

was officially over in October twenty twenty. According to reporting by Al Jazeera. The UN initiated a new attempt at a unifying government in twenty twenty one, which was approved originally by both rival parliament, leading to the establishment of the Interim Government of National Unity or GNU in March twenty twenty one, thus replacing the previously un baked GNA.

So we went from GNA to GNU, but then the GNU would be opposed by the HR, which withdrew from the GNU in September twenty twenty one and established the Government of National Stability or GNS in March twenty two. So the GNA was replaced by the GNU, and the GNU was now opposed by the GNS, and thus the country remained split into up to today between the UN back to GNU and the HR slash Libya National Army

backed GNS. And in all of this chaos, people on the ground have been suffering they've been suffering human rights of uses, disappearances up to recently, the GNU imposed a morality police, and they even numerous reports about open slave markets in Libya where migrant Black Africans are auctioned to the highest bidder. This is a result of human trafficking and debt bondage, so not exactly the same as chattel slavery, but the experience and racial undertones are all too familiar.

The suffering in Libya has also spread beyond its borders. Following Gaddafi's fall, the weapons of his military stockpiles ended up in the hands of militants across the Sahel region of Africa and even in Syria. You'll remember in my episode on the situation in Nigeria, some of those weapons ended up in the hands of Bokoharam and other Islamic

militant groups in the region, Pulani herdsman as so on. Tragically, because Libya just cast seem to catch a break at all, September twenty three also saw catastrophic floods devastating the country. The hurricane strong Storm Daniel caused two dams to burst in the coastal city of Durna, which is within Jena's territory in eastern Libyia. The flooding killed at least four thousand people, though potentially even more, left on thousands missing

and displaced more than forty thousand others. The nation, still wrought by civil war and still unrecovered from the devastation of the NATO Obomban campaign, surely could have mustered a more adequate response to the tragedy if not for those conditions.

In fact, it is theorized that the tragedy could have been avoided altogether because, according to reports by the Middle East Eye, a Turkish company was supposed to reability to field dams, but the their works were reportedly interrupted by the twenty eleven uprising and subsequent civil war.

because of that. War that made things like the earthquake worse. Yeah.

of their actions. I don't want people to get it twisted though, because in the time since, as people have observed the devastation wrought by the civil wars, there has been an effort to most whitewash Kaddafi and to limit our vision of possibilities to a binary of either perpetual Gaddaffi rule on one end or perpetual civil war on

the other end. Those are not the only possibilities. So we've discussed the legacy of nature intervention, which deserves condemnation in this episode, and it should be an indication that to the Western invasions and wars not going to liberate anyone.

became politically more expedient. But I happened to have some insight into these various Kurtish groups, having spent some time there and having contacts there, And so I went to the website of these various you know, big publications which are left or left leaning or even sort of liberal, and I saw these borderline campus takes on what's happening

in Iran. And it's just so so frustrating to me, Like, it makes me so angry that people continue to view the world through this binary Marvel movie lens, which sees it as impossible that two things could be bad at the same time. Yeah, it's infuriating to me.

by foreign intervention. In Marshal twenty eleven, the US, the UK, and France launched a military campaign through NATO under the UN mandate to protect civilians. The war toppled Gaddafi, but killed tens of thousands and devastated infrastructure. In the aftermath, Libya fractured into rival governments, militias, and foreign backed factions, triggering yet another civil war in twenty fourteen, and despite a cease fire in twenty twenty, the country remains divided

between competing administrations. While ordinary Libyans face instability, human rights abuses, and economic hardship. I think it's fair to say that the NATO intervention was a net negative for the country. But in this same breath, I cannot agree with those who seem to believe that Gaddafi's rule could have continued either that he was some force for good in the country. And in this episode, I really want to get into the y to identify and dissect the actions of the

man Kaddafi. According to his biography and en Psycopoedia Britannica, Murma al Kaddafi was born in nineteen forty two near Sirte, Libya. Sixty nine years later, he would be captured and killed in Sirte, Libya. After spending his early years in at tent he graduated from the University of Libya in nineteen sixty three and then graduated from a military academy in

nineteen sixty five. In nineteen sixty nine, at the age of twenty seven, Gaddafi pulled off a blood less coup to seize power from King Idris, the First of Libya. For the next four decades plus, he would be the de facto ruler of Libya. Gidraffi was both a passionate Arab nationalist and a Muslim in power, he tried to

push both of his ideologies. He expelled Western military forces, expelled remaining Italian settlers and Jewish communities in Libya, nationalized the country's oil industry, banned alcohol and gambling, tried to unify with his Arab neighbors occasionally by attempting coups in their countries, and stood against normalization with Israel. So a

very mixed bag. So far. Until nineteen seventy seven, Gaddafi ruled the Libyan Arab Republic, but the culmination of his Cultural Revolution period from nineteen seventy three to nineteen seventy seven would sideline his political and religious opponents, who would begin in to see him as unstable, huboristic, and authoritarian.

That period would instead cement Gaddaffi as the sole ruler of what he would rename the Socialist People's Libya and Arab Jamahiria, as recounted in Libya The History of Gaddafi's Pariah State by John Oakes. Jamahiria was a term he coined in his Green Book, likely inspired by Mao's Little Read Book, published during the Libyan Cultural Revolution period. Jamahiria was his idea of a state of the masses governed by people's congresses and popular assemblies. And if it's one

thing that makes a political movement, it's empowering. It's slapping the people's and popular label on everything, regardless of any additional context. So they had these democratic local assemblies called basic People's Congresses that met three times a year, and those congresses appointed executive people's committees which did most of the day to day stuff, and above it all was

the General People's Congress. This period was simultaneously an effort to encourage popular participation through these congresses while suppressing descend through his control over the secret services. It was clear that Gaddaffi was still in charge even after he stepped down from his formal position as Secretary General in nineteen seventy nine and simply and humbly dubbed himself the brotherly leader and guide of the revolution.

were poorly attended and easily manipulated. Issues were often raised and rarely resolved, And of course compounding those flaws was the fact that these people's Congresses had no actual power over the things that mattered in Libya, the oil industry, the armed forces, the security services, and foreign policy, where

Kadafi and his compatriots still ruled. Gaddaffi decided where the oil money went, and he directed some of it to a great man made of a project that would extract from the ancient and non renewable aquifer under the Libyan desert to supply the course for some more stable water supply. Frustratingly for him, I could assume Kaddafi did not get what he wanted out of the revolutionary people's congresses, so he created revolutionary committees to mobilize the people and safeguard

their rule through commandos that answered to Gaddafi directly. These revolutionary committees could arrest counter revolutionaries, establish revolutionary courts, and eliminate enemies of the revolution at home and abroad. The people he called stray dogs. All of this for the people, of course, and for the revolution.

So in the Return of Mormon Gadaffi by Tunisian academic hate M. Gussemi, he hadised the cult of personality that was forged over the years of Gaddafi's rule that has resurfaced up to today. His opponents often pointed the good that he did for the country, establishing basic social services, free health, gain, education, howies in and land distribution, accessible loan programs, women's rights and so on, and with that welfare state came naturally some base of popular support for

people who had little to nothing before. Other fans of Gadaffi point to what I like to call hype moments and aura. So there was a time when he was in the UN General Assembly and he was supposed to be a short time to speak, and he just went on and on and on and on and on and on, and he tore up the UN chatter hyperments and aura, right, and yeah, that's like something that a lot of people

point to. He was also, at one point in time the Chairman of the African Union, and he wanted to keep that position permanently, and he was proposing a whole United States of Africa, like he had a whole period of African solidarity, which we'll get to.

above everything else. Yeah, he was like, they need to be mothers, but they shouldn't be treated as property or objects.

up to today. So not the best for women. What about for Africa, right, his whole pan Africanist are He styled himself as a Pan African who would support the struggles of people like Mandela and would fund infrastructure projects around the continent. But he had a history of attemptant over through governments in Africa and support oppressive ones, including Idi Amin of Uganda and Charles Taylor of Liberia. So his Pan Africanism was never concerned with the freedom or

well being of African people. It was I think very much according to his own self aggrandizement.

He had policies, as reported in the BBC in New Internationalists aljaz right elsewhere, he had policies that included the bannon of minority languages, the bannon of minority names, the discourageon of cultural expression, and sometimes denying citizenship to groups outside the Arab identity. So naturally, many of these minorities took part in the twenty eleven movement, and after Gaddafi's

fall there was a revival of language, cultural institutions and publications. However, the NTC and these that followed have continued to ignore the minority plight. Minority groups are still struggling for constitutional recognition, representation, and equal rights in a country that is, of course still divided, and some minorities have chosen to boycott the

national political process entirely in favor of pursuing local self governance. Also, minorities were not the only people being persecuted in Gaddaffi's Libya. On the political front, Despite coal and himself a socialist, Gaddaffi was really all over the place ideologically now internationally, he may have backed the Palestinian struggle, the Irish struggle, the African American struggle, but he was consistent in suppressing actual leftists in Libya. Marxis dot Com identified some of

these repressive efforts in their article on Gaddafi quote. Gaddaffi was very clear in expressing his anti communism. In nineteen seventy one, he sent a plane full of Sudanese communists back to Sudan, where they were execut by Nimri. In nineteen seventy three, the regime publish an official document to commemorate the fourth anniversary of Gadaffi's rise to power under the title Holy War against Communism end quote quite the center. Later on, however, he would get more chummy with the ussry.

But Gadaffi was no marxisilatist, and communists and leftists and workers were not legally capable of organizing independently in Libya. Aside from them, you also had the murder and torture of civilians and journalists, the assassinations of rivals and Libya and around the world. It was not the free speech utopia that Kadafi tried to paint that as instead of emboldening the left to sermons, he emboldened these tribal groups and set the foundation for the Libya that we see today.

them from the roof. Two tops of officials came and took command, ordering the shooting to stop and promising to address the prisoner's complaints if they returned to their cells and gave up the guards they had hostage, and the following day shots fired from eleven am to one thirty five pm, a mass slaughter of approximately one thy two hundred of the sixteen to seventeen hundred prisoners in Abu Salins.

The families who suffered a blow were among the first on the streets of Benghazi twenty eleven, but those families were not originally told that they loved ones had been killed. Some of them continued to visit the prison for weeks, months, years after, bringing gifts for their relatives who were already long dead. In the twists and turns of Gaddafi's ideological development or lack their of. Following the fall of the USSR, Gaddafi would also pursue economic liberalization. He started opening up

to the West slightly. There was slow progress and a brief hiccup, but by two thousand and three, free market advocate Chukri Ganim was appointed Prime Minister. Before long, three hundred and sixty state enterprises were privatized. By two thousand and seven, Libya was laying off as many as a third of the government workforce four hundred thousand public sector workers. According to a New York Times article from twenty eleven.

The IMF had actually praised Libya's economic reforms, So why twenty eleven conditions were so unbearable for so many workers, especially young people. There's no wonder that some of them fought with nothing to lose. The last aspects of Goodaffi's rule that I want to touch on was his complex relationship with Western powers Billionais rule in the seventies and eighties. He did style himself an anti imperist revolutionary, and that is the image that our people uphold of him to

this day. Libya funded an armed revolutionary and Milson movements worldwide, from the African National Congress or the ANC, to the Palestine Liberation Organization or PILO, to the Irish Republican Army or IRI. He aligned himself with the so called radical camp in the Middle East, including Bathist Syria and Iran,

and Western governments accused Libya of supporting international terrorism. Libya was considered a rogue state, but as noted by Syrian anarchist Mazen Kamalmas in an interview with Jose Antonio Guitairez quote, even when Gaddafi was declaring himself an anti imperialist long ago. It was just a lip service while he engaged as an authoritarian in trivial terrorist acts that never meant to

support the libertarian objectives of the victims of imperialism end quote. Still, Reagan called him a mad dog, and the US bombed Libya in nineteen eighty six after attacks in a West Berlin nightclub were attributed to Libyan agents. Those bombans narrowly missed Gaddafi himself, but they killed his adopted baby daughter. Libya was also blamed for the nineteen eighty eight bombing of PanAm Flight one O three over Lockerby, which led to sanctions both the United Nations and the US, which

isolated Libya economically and diplomatically. In the nineties, however, with four of the USSR, Libya began solely shifting toward cooperation. They handed over the suspects in the Lockerby bombing, and sanctions began to loosen as they attempted to normalize relations. Western intelligence services soon started cooperating with Libyan intelligence against Islamist militon groups, including the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which

is a thorn in Gaddafi's side. The early two thousands had Libya renounce its weapons of mass destruction program following the invasion of Iraq. The US and the unsuresequently lifted sanction and diplomatic relations were restored fully with Western countries.

Gadaffi hosted Tony Blair of the UK, Nicholas Sarkozia France, and met with Obama as well, and many of these meetings with Western leaders produced multi billion dollar energy in business deals BP Royal, Dot Shell, Excellent, Mobile, Chevron, Total Energies. They were all get in pieces of Libya's wealth. As Libya began adopting more neoliberal economic reforms like currency devaluation,

trade liberalization, and more openness to foreign investment. Libya was also able to cooperate closely with Western intelligence during the war and terror, including assist in the CIE and MI six in rendition and torture, as uncovered by Human Rights Watch. So by the mid two thousands, Libya had mostly reintegrated into the Western their global system, and the West, for

their part, simply ignored Gdaffi's continues. Human rights abuses. The counter terrorism cooperation, the oil and gascon tracks, and don't forget the brutal African migrant control were all too valuable for America and Europe.

went to make our feelings known. And the Oxford Union's very silly institution, right, which prizes itself on free speech, and really it just does kind of class reproduction for the most part, right, And of course there was not freedom of speech for people who are going to be rude to someone who was in charge of a state, even if they were being rude on behalf of the thousands of people he's had murdered and tortured. And yeah, that was my little personal running with Goodafi when I

was what like eighteen. But yeah, I can't remember if we were like not allowed in or we were booted out, because I am like two decades and half a dozen traumatic brain injuries since my teenage years. But yeah, I do remember just being like, people are triating with I guess some kind of fucking novelty, and this person has real blood on his hands, like real people have suffered tremendously and died because of actions he's taken, like it's not funny or cute.

valuable than people. It's the revolutionary rhetoric. Yeah, like with a sad right, Like you can murder your own people with chemical weapons so long as you pretend to give a single shit about Palestinians, even though you've spent decades using your weapons to kill your own people and never once use him to actually help the people of Palestine, to actually protect.

They still saw him as unpredictable and unreliable. In fact, even while he was cutting deals with these multi billion dollar corporations for the oil contracts and so on, when he wasn't getting what he wanted, he would threaten to nationalize to get what he wanted. And so to West,

being opportunistic, we're just waiting for an opportunity. They were done with playing his game, and that opportunity came when the people organically rose up against Kadafi in twenty eleven, not long after NATO intervened, and the years since Libyans have suffered and died with no end in sight. It shouldn't be uncontroversial to say this Gadafi was not a true antime perialist. I don't think it's possible for a

statesman or a government to be truly anti perialist. Government is foundationally exploitative internally and when turned externally, that drive exploitation is what we understand as imperialism. All the markers of imperialism worthy of condemnation, be it economic exploitation, cultural dominance, military violence, et cetera, is carried out under the label of governance when done within its own borders when done against,

for example, the non Arab minorities in Libya. I think what's missing from now popular anti imperialist narratives is that connection, that analysis and a gap in the analysis is what's creating this false consciousness that leads people to combs to conclusion that anti imperialism means that XYZ government is anti imperialists and good, and ABC government is imperialists and bad. That's not how the world works. States are never going

to be liberatory. They're not able to produce a liberatory framework. At their best, they function as a welfare state. At their worst, you get mass suppression and culture personality. Sometimes you get a combination of both, as with Libya and a Giraffi. And that's my message for today. Please stop Lionis and leaders stay woke. Yeah, and all power for all the people. I've been and youre siege. This is a Kapania peace.

decent number of which probably were bisexual. I suppose technically we were directly above the Basement nightclub in the Knockdown Center event venue. Gathered this Sunday afternoon to attend Mayor Zoron Mamdani's one hundred day address. I'm Garrison Davis. This is it could happen here. I show about things falling apart and sometimes putting stuff back together. This one is

one of those rare episodes focused on the latter. Earlier this April marked Mayor Mamdani's first one hundred days in office. This episode, I'll discuss what Zoron has done these first one hundred days, some of the challenges he's faced, if he's been able to deliver on the promises of his campaign, and how he's adapted to the power and constraints of running the biggest city in the country, and finally, what all this could mean for the future of working class

and left wing politics in the United States. Let's first return to the one hundred day Address above the Basement nightclub, upon entering the venue, you found yourself in a museum

of the administration's first one hundred days. This little installation displayed the Mayor's snowshovel from the historic blizzard during Zoron's first few weeks in office, a tenant organizing suggestion board from the rental ripoff hearings, and a child sized mayoral podium used to announce a new free childcare program for

two year olds. Museum plaques detailed victories for labor and tenants rights, as well as infrastructure accomplishments like scaffolding reform and a pothole blitz that filled over twenty thousand potholes in just three days. Before the mayor's speech, a Bronx parent, two tenant organizers, and a city worker from the Department of Transportation spoke to the crowd about how life is different under the new administration. Mamdani's speech was effectively a

state of the Union for New York City. The mayor outlined the campaign promises the administration has fulfilled so far in their short time in office, and connected his style of governing to the Sewer Socialists of Milwaukee from the first half of the twentieth century. Who focused on strengthening public services.

the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. The event in general was focused on uplifting civil servants and celebrating public service, whether that be bus drivers, school teachers, or the sanitation workers that kept the city running during the worst snowstorm in years. It feels like for the past few decades, the only public sector job that gets regularly celebrated as noble by those in government or in the media and

promoted by pop culture is being a police officer. Being a cop is the only public sector job that gets uplifted with propaganda. Zoron's little videos promoting three point one city call center workers is to quote front of the pod Ben Lorber, rolling back decades of neoliberal propaganda reasserting the dignity of public sector work and workers. A common turn of phrase uttered by Mayor Mumdani is if you can't solve the smallest task in someone's life, why would

they ever trust you to solve the biggest one. So let's go over some things big and small that Mamdani has been able to do in his first one hundred days. One of Mamdani's core campaign promises was to freeze the rent. On February eighteenth, Mayor Mamdani appointed six new members to the nine member Rent Guidelines Board, which each year is tasked with determining the rent increase percentages for the more

than one million rent stabilized apartments. In the city under airic Adams, the board approved a three percent rent increase for one year leases and a four point five percent increase for two year leases in just a few weeks. The new board will hold a preliminary vote to freeze or raise rents before their final vote in June. Public

testimony on rent adjustments is currently underway. Housing in general is one of the top issues affecting affordability in the city, and the Mayor's approach has not been limited to filling vacancies on the Rent Guidelines Board. After Zora's and aaugurations beach on January first, he went to a neglected apartment building just east of Prospect Park to sign an executive order revitalizing the Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants and appointed

a tenant organizer to lead the office. This apartment building was owned by a literally bankrupt landlord called the Pinnacle Group, who was responsible for more than five thousand housing violations and fourteen thousand complaints. The revamped Office to Protect Tenants and the Mayor intervened in the bankruptcy proceedings and successfully secured thirty million dollars in repairs and upgrades for tenants

as well as protection from future displacement. Through this office, the administration has continued to crack down on bad landlords who violate New York City law and mistrey tenants. Just a few weeks after the inauguration, Momdanni announced a two point one million dollar settlement from A and E real Estate Properties for tenant harassment and hazardous conditions across fourteen buildings in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queen's As a part of the settlement, A and E was also required to correct

more than four thousand building condition violations. In February, the Department of Housing, Preservation and Development released a public list of the two hundred and fifty buildings with the most severe housing code violations a city wide and put them under heightened oversight via the Alternative Enforcement Program, with the city stepping in to make repairs, then billing the landlords if they failed to address violations.

can say the landlord was egregious at Realty. The city brought a case against Miller for dangerously direct conditions at nine to one to nine Prospect Avenue in the South Bronx, and for the first time ever, courts imposed the maximum penalties under the city's nuisance abatement law, a one thousand dollars fine per day until housing violations are addressed and two point one seven four million dollars in retroactive penalties.

During the first one hundred days, the city held five rental ripoff hearings, one in each borough, providing New Yorkers a platform to discuss various problems with their landlord, from poor conditions to repair delays or junk fees. This was a dedicated public forum for tenants to speak directly to

city officials and collectively shape housing policy going forward. A month into office, the mayor announced a thirty eight million dollar investment to install modern heating and cooling in seven hundred and twelve of New York City's public housing units at the Beach forty first Street houses in Queens And technically this is after the first one hundred days, but I think it's worth mentioning that just a few days ago, zorunannounced a two point five billion dollar investment in public

housing to deliver new energy efficient lighting and faucets to forty five thousand homes, heat pumps in twenty thousand, and ten thousand new induction stoves, all affecting the Nische public housing in New York City. On Zoron's very first day in office, he also signed two executive orders to accelerate housing construction by building on city owned properties to increase the supply of affordable housing and cutting red tape to

make it faster and more affordable to build. The development approval process for building affordable housing has been reduced by more than two years by the administration's implementation of the new voter approved Expediated Land Use Review recedure, combined with a new program called the Neighborhood Builder's Fast Track, which will pre select qualified developers to shorten the pre development timeline by eight months for certain projects. On city owned land.

Another of Zorn's core campaign promises was universal childcare. On his eighth day in office, Mayramdani announced a partnership with Governor Kathy Hockel to provide free childcare for thousands of two year olds in New York City with a one

point two billion dollar increase in state funding. Since then, the mayor has expanded the free three K program for three year olds to more than half of all school districts in the city, and announced two K fall enrollment for school districts eighteen, twenty three, ten six, and twenty seven, which serve lower income neighborhoods. Two K applications open for the first time on June second, with the program operating on a full day schedule from eight am to six

pm all year round. As a part of the three K expansion, seven new early childcare education centers are opening in Western Queens, Staten Island, South Brooklyn, and the South Bronx and On March thirtieth, the mayor announced the city's first pilot program for free on site childcare for city workers, based at the David Dinkins Municipal Building, with applications opening

on April thirtieth. The city also created a new accessible childcare provider map with interactive features to filter by location, age group, and cost. The mayor says that all these steps will lead to free childcare for every three year old and two year old in the city by the end of his first term. Another key promise was fast

and free buses. The administration is making headway on the fast part by building more bus lanes, redesigning streets, as well as adding protected by clanes on mcguinnis Boulevard, thirty first Street in Astoria, Ashland Place across Flatbush, East, Flatbush, Midwood, and Brooklyn and Kingston Avenues in central Brooklyn. Amdani restarted the Stall Madison Ave bus lane redesign to make buses faster and more reliable for ninety two thousand daily riders.

The city announced a new bus lane for the Bronx crosstown bus service to Yankee Stadium and restarted the Fordham Road bus Lane project to improve the busiest bus corridor in the Bronx, servicing an average of one hundred and

thirty thousand daily riders across four routes. Just this week, construction began in Brooklyn for the redesign of Flatbush Avenue with the goal of improving bus speeds by over forty percent for one hundred and thirty two thousand daily riders, and before the World Cup this summer, Zoron has promised to complete new bike lanes and pedestrian upgrades in Lower Manhattan. As for the free part, that will be a bit harder.

Mamdani maintains that his administration is working with the state government in Albany and the MTA to eventually make New York City buses free, and proposed a five week free bus pilot program during the World Cup. Nope, it's unclear if that will happen. It's not all sunshine and rainbows

in New York City. Upon taking office, Mayor Mumdani discovered the city was facing an unexpected financial crisis in the form of a hidden twelve billion dollar deficit left by former Mayor Eric Adams, stemming from years of fiscal mismanagement and the under budgeting of essential services like rental and

cash assistance, shelters, health insurance, and special ad as. Mayor Eric Adams covered up this massive budget deficit by leaving the gaps grossly understated, gaps that were made worse by divestment in New York City by the state under former

Governor Andrew Cuomo. The mayor is actually required by law to have a balanced budget, so rather than sweeping this under the rug by continuing to cook the city's books like his predecessor, Zoron chose transparency about the financial crisis he's inherited and signed an executive order to designate chief savings officers in every city agency to streamline processes and

eliminate waste. Some of these savings so far include canceling twenty thousand dollars of Slack subscriptions to saving one hundreds of thousands of dollars by foregoing vacant office space. Through his relationship with Governor Kathy Hochel, the mayor secured one point five billion dollars in state aid in February that, combined with higher than expected Wall Street revenues and savings measures,

shrunk the deficit to five point four billion. Zoron's preliminary budget, released last February, sparked criticism for failing short of promises to increase funding to parks and libraries. While campaigning, Zoron advocated for city libraries to receive zero point five percent of the city budget, but the preliminary budget only allocated point three nine percent, which is actually a twenty nine nine million dollar cut from the last Adams budget down

to four hundred and fifty six million dollars. Meanwhile, the park budget remained effectively flat at about zero point five percent, rather than boosting it to one percent of the total budget as Mamdani previously hoped. Though in March, Mayor Mamdani announced new capital investment of fifty million dollars to reconstruct ten parks in underserved neighborhoods. This February budget is preliminary and subject to change as Zoron's negotiations with the city

council and the state continue. In February, Mamdani reversed a previous policy against the force removal of homeless encampments after twenty people died in the street during a horrific blizzard

and sudden cold snap in late January. Despite the efforts of outreach workers visiting known homeless people every two hours to offer warm shelter and check if they needed help, fourteen hundred people were placed into shelters and warming centers during that first time freeze, with eighty five people involuntarily

moved or hospitalized. The new encampment SPEEP policy will be led by the Department of Homeless Services rather than the NYPD as they were under Eric Adams, which mcdonnie said put homeless New Yorkers in danger and was ineffective in

moving people into shelter or housing. Under the new plan, after posting a removal notice, outreach workers will visit encampments every day for a week with the goal of connecting people to shelter and establishing a pipeline to stable housing, while opening new shelters across the city, including New York City's first ever pet inclusive transitional housing facility for families.

Much of the criticism levied at Zoran revolves around his choice to retain NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tish, something he announced before of the election. Zoron did cancel and Eric adams plan to add five thousand more NYPD officers, but as promised, their budget remained effectively the same despite the financial deficit.

But Tish specifically has been seen as a rare moderating force in the administration, an outlier that may be preventing police reforms that Zoron campaigned on like disbanding the SRG, the Strategic Response Group tasked with responding to both protests and terrorism, as well as getting rid of the NYPD

gang database. Critics have noted that Zoron seems to be moving towards quote unquote reforms of the gang database rather than his previous call to get rid of it, saying in early April, quote I've made my critiques of the database clear, and the NYPD has also implemented a number of reforms as per the recommendation that came through, and the implementation of those reforms and the results of that are part of the active discussion that we are having unquote.

The gang database in New York has shrunk by forty percent in the last two years. As for the SRG, Mayor Mamdani still maintains that he remains quote steadfast in my commitment to disband the SRG, to do so in a manner that upholds both First Amendment rights of New Yorkers and keeps New Yorkers safe, and that is the subject of an active conversation that we are having unquote.

Commissioner Tish has been particularly resistant to the idea of disbanding the SRG, though earlier this month, Mayor Mumdani's chief of staff, Elbasgard Church, said on the News that the administration remains committed to fulfilling the campaign promise of disbanding the SRG, and that a delegation of City Hall and NYPD officials traveled to Columbus, Ohio to learn about their protest policing model focused on quote communication and quote de escalation over mass arrests and aggressive force.

this power with the NYPD as of yet. In March, Zoron took the first step in establishing the Department of Community Safety by opening the Office of Community Safety, led by Deputy Mayor Ronita Francois, who directed de Blasio's Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety and advised Campaign Zero, which opposes the Gang Database. The new Office of Community Safety will develop strategies and coordinate efforts to combat gun violence, mental health,

crisis response, hate crimes, and substance abuse issues. At the announcement, Francois said, quote, the evidence is clear. Addressing what ails our communities, whether that be crumbling physical infrastructure, social disconnection, or a lack of access to economic opportunity, is how we best ensure that our communities are safe.

Through his working partnership with Governor Hokeel, the mayor has been able to extract wins from the state, particularly for universal childcare and the one point five billion dollars in state aid. In the realm of discourse, some leftists, anarchists or ultras have jumped on any fault or policy shift as a sign that Zoron has wholly moved to the right or betrayed the movement. Such opinions are rewarded by the social media economy, which tends to encourage whatever is

seen as the most radical, extreme, or divisive opinion. This tendency has been present even among some of Zoron's earliest online supporters. Behind this tendency is a willingness and frankly hunger to turn on Zoron, not necessarily for anything he has or has not done, but because of the position he now occupies. Zoron used to be an outsider challenging the democratic establishment embodied by Andrew Cuomo, but now he's

one of the most popular Democrats in the country. DNC social media accounts are hosting Zoron memes and hype videos. This could be viewed as a massive accomplishment evidence that the Democratic Party can be forced to bend toward left wing populism because of the working class voters and mass organizing that put Zoron in the position he's currently in. But others view Zoron's acceptance and select promotion within the party as a sign he's been corrupted, co opted, recuperated,

or made palatable. Both of these things can be partially true. The Democratic elite certainly have their own motives for dipping their toes into the Mamdani hottub, just as Zoron and the New York City DSA have their own aspirations for influencing the direction of the party towards social democracy and democratic socialism. In general, there's a lot of confusion or disagreement on what it means to be a democratic socialist

in a position of power. As an executive, Zoron is in a unique position that not many other DSA members have ever had, being in such a position of power informs and shapes the way someone interacts with the systems of party and state in a way that those outside of power cannot fully understand. It filters ideology into material actions. This idea frightens many, but differences in political horizons also affect the way people interact and move with these systems.

The question is not what should Zoron do if there were no constraints on his power, because then obviously he

should just implement utopian communism. But his power obviously does have constraints if the goal for the left is to build a working class movement to that end, as a function of Zoron's constraints, it may actually be more effective for him to operate down certain state pathways that allow him to facilitate the building of a working class movement and avoid other more extreme pathways that, because of the current constraints on executive power, would either be in af

fect at best or self destructive at worst. As the mayor, Zoron's job is to run the biggest city in the country, and as a democratic socialist that means using government to make life better for the working class. His task is to govern in a way that alleviates economic conditions to make it easier to organize and build a working class movement. But building that movement is not his job. It's yours.

It's the job of the people, and such a movement is the only way of holding elected leaders like Zoron accountable. Zoron is not a revolutionary nor is he an organizer. He's the mayor of New York City, and as mayor, he has to serve more than eight million New Yorkers, not just the fourteen thousand members of New York City DSA.

The mayor may join the picket line with striking nurses and fight for working class New Yorkers in city Hall, or even open an office of mass Engagement, like Zoron has done, but it is up to those outside city Hall to move in tandem by working to rebuild a labor movement. Assuming that Zoron or some random public official can just do whatever is the most extreme radical thing mistakingly sees the state as having more power than it

actually does. People often see the state as an ahistorical, abstracted seat of power, but no, the state is just the mediator between capital and labor. The power of the state to support labor is exercised by doing things that are in the interest of labor and society as a whole, rather than just capital. But this ability is directly linked to the extent that labor is organized. So if labor is largely unorganized, then Zoron is more restrained in what

he can do. What he can do then is use his position to help build working class power, which will then enable him further so on and so on. The state has no power against capital outside of the power that labor gives it. Our situation is one where capital is very strong, which means when the state serves capital it's quite strong, but in its function of serving labor

it's rather weak. Because the left is failed to reckon with the fact that right now labor is actually quite weak, which means that state actors, even those on the pro labor left, are very constrained. So the main thing they can do to strengthen labor is providing better conditions for which labor power may be built, and importantly, organizers must

utilize those conditions to build the labor movement. Zorn's other task is to demonstrate that left wing working class politics can actually govern, not just critique whether or not he succeeds at governing and delivering for working class New Yorkers, determines the perceived viability of democratic socialist politics nationally going forward. As Mamdani has said, the worth of an ideology can

only be judged by its delivery. Mamdani is not the first democratic socialist to be put in such a position. In his one hundred day address, Mayor Mumdanni spoke about the so called sewer socialists of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who one hundred years ago quote built the greatest public park system in the nation, and whether the Great Depression better than almost any other American city, Milwaukee purged corruption, built the first municipally sponsored public housing development in the nation, and

transformed the city's sewage disposal system unquote. Mayor Mamdani is trying to revive this legacy of municipal socialism by acting on his mantra there is no problem too big, no task too small. On day six of office, Mamdani fixed the infamous Williamsburg break bump that has long plague cyclists, and in response to the historic winter damage affecting city streets, the administration launched a five borough pothole blitz filling one hundred thousand potholes in less than one hundred days.

Hall isn't just an abstract ideal. In the first one hundred days, the administration secured nine point three million dollars in restitution.

reinstate ten thousand wrongfully deactivated delivery workers. In March, the administration won almost two million dollars for over eight hundred fast food workers at Taco Bell and retail workers for

violations of worker protection laws against unpredictable scheduling. The mayor signed executive orders strengthening consumer protections by targeting hidden junk fees and impossible to cancel subscriptions, and expanded the protected time off law to four point three million previously unprotected workers and issued compliance warnings to nearly sixty thousand employers.

Speaking of sewer socialism, at the end of March, Mayrormamdani announced a one hundred and eight million dollar investment to upgrade and replace more than six thousand and seven hundred water catch basins to combat flooding. This quote unquote pothole politics, least the groundwork of public trust needed for larger systematic transformations.

Zoron's core campaign promises. The first of five city owned grocery stores will open next year, with one store being opened in each borough by the end of Mamdani's first term. The location of the Manhattan Municipal grocery store has already been selected. Le Marquetta in East Harlem, a public market opened by the New Deal era Mayor Pharaoh LaGuardia. The city will build a nine thousand square foot store at the site to offer cheaper groceries than the capitalist competitors.

We will not be ashamed of investing in youth mental health clinics, or working to close rikers, or fighting for immigrants targeted by ice. To any New Yorker, whether you're under attack from the federal government's cruelty or suffocating under the affordability crisis, we will stand beside you because government is a series of choices, and socialism is the choice to fight for every New Yorker to extend democracy from the ballot box to the rest of our lives.

five hundred million dollars in annual revenue. And if owners want to avoid the tax by moving into the residence, that's fine too, because then they'll have to pay New York resident taxes, So you get taxed either way. Part of pushing back against the libertarian ethos in America by showing that government can actually make your life better is

actually showing people what local government is doing. Since taking office, Zoron has employed the same widely successful messaging style that helped get him elected to make psays and inform New Yorkers about what the administration has been able to accomplish. This is something Democrats have largely failed to do by either just not doing this sort of outreach while governing, making any outreach inaccessible or hard to understand, or having your outreach come off as cringe or out of touch.

Regardless of how much effort is put into outreach, the people have to also see the improvements being talked about in their own lives or in their own neighborhoods. A dense population and having a cohesive city culture like New York helps with that. Millions of cyclists cross the Williamsburg Bridge every year, so when the mayor fixes the bump during his first week in office, that's an easy reference

point for people. The success of the administration's comm strategy has been by using Zoron's popularity to promote the public sector and public sector workers while actually showing people how social services help city residents. As the mayor says, New

York belongs to all who live in it. While in office, Zoron has largely declined to explicitly talk about how his administration may impact the future of democratic socialism across the country, instead keeping his vision laser focused on improving the lives of working New Yorkers and making this city more affordable. To quote the mayor, we cannot burden ourselves with the

question of what this means beyond this city. But before the mayor went on stage at the one hundred day address, they played a clip of the Progressive New Deal Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia saying that the greatness of New York City is in the services to its people, where public problems are really the problems of all the people, quote. And if we succeed here, surely it can be done elsewhere.

When former Socialist Mayor Bernie Sanders made a surprise appearance during Zoron's speech, the Senator spoke about how what's happening in New York is influencing those outside the city.

about whether my politics includes them. And I think what we can see is that a democratic socialist politics is one that should be judged on its delivery, like any ideology, and what we're showing in this city is we can pursue the big things like universal childcare and do the pothole politics at the same time that we're showing and not just filling in the potholes, changing the catch basins, but also repaving over a thousand miles of roadway.

I think that this is a politics that can flourish anywhere because, frankly, there is only one majority in this country that's the working class, and it's time we have a politics that puts them at the heart of what it is that we're pursuing and not.

more than Twitter, maoists and your small DSA caucus. Navigating all these problems will require not just principal leadership with a commitment to working class politics, but also growing the mass organizing apparatus that helped get Zora elected, and continuing to build power in city hall, state government, and in.

Forty two House Democrats voted to reauthorize twenty two Republicans voted against the bills, expected to be stalled in the Senate at least this version of the bill, as it included an amendment about digital currency, which the Senate will fight over. The ATF released a new list of proposed reforms and regulations repealing the Biden pistol brace rule, as well as requiring quote unquote biological sex be used on

ATF forms. The State Department is releasing a limited edition passport for the United States two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, featuring a portrait of President Trump superimposed on the Declaration of Independence and an American flag with his golden signature below. Google Trump Golden Signature for more.

a moment you would. I'm not clear how one goes from Gold Card citizenship, and the only way we'll find out is by closely following Nicki Minaj.

critical support to Jimmy Kimmel. President Trump, David Allison, Todd Blanche Stephen Miller, Barry Weiss, Paramount's chief legal officer, and several CBS journalists met in a closed door dinner in Washington, d C. Last week, as the Paramount buyout of Warner Brothers and CNN progresses nightmare blunt rotation. Main Governor Janet Mills vetoed the state's eighteen month data center moratorium, the

first of its kind in the country. Days later, Mills dropped out of the Senate race, paving the way for populist candidate Graham Plattner to receive the Democratic nomination and go up against Susan Collins in the midterms.

guy went about campaigning in a very dedicated way. He visited basically every county that like he could, and it goes to show that the consensus that builds online around candidates will never matter as much as like what they're out there actually doing in the world. And it's useful to get a reminder of that, whether or not you think this is a tremendous disaster, just the degree to which all of the talk about this guy online had no impact on his ability to actually like win. Now,

this is a unique case. There aren't a whole lot of seats that are like the seat that he's going to be taking, right in terms of like both the weakness of your primary right and the weakness of the other party if you should happen to win the primary. Like, this is not every congressional district, but it's still kind of an interesting case study.

Vessels are advised to transit with caution and report and the suspicious activities to UK MDO authorities are investigating. I saw another incident where a ship had fired a flare people who were allegedly attempting to board it right that, it seems like there has been an uptick an incidant, especially as ships generally are having a hard time right now. The United States has also been boarding a number of vessels to inspect them as part of its blockade on

Iran and Iranian goods. Secondly, j NIM that Ali Islam while Muslimin and the Asquad Liberation Front in Mali launched a shock offensive this week that saw them sweep into Mali's capital, assassinate the defense minister, and force the military Hunter and its allied Russian forces to abandon whole cities. They also abandoned a number of bases right there. J and I AM have captured like massive amounts of Russian Africa core material. But this is a pretty ground shaking offensive,

a big change for Mali. The Hunter in the Ammar I still keep calling them that they've rebranded themselves as a civilian government. They're not now min A Lang gets retired as a general and just become president and change closed and done the same shit like the Hunter reclaimed Falam this week, which using Chin State. It's capital of Chinn State. Fighting has been happening there for months. I've been talking to people pretty regularly who are taking part

in the in the battle there. They're obviously, you know, they lost friends in the battle. They are not happy about this, but I think it's fair to say that spirits among the resistance generally remain pretty high, and they hope that they will return to Palam soon enough. Doug Bergham has announced a United States Geographic is it geographical or geological USGS geological server?

Maine there Leaving that aside. Lithium mining is incredibly disruptive to the environment. Right Generally, there's two ways you could do it. You can extract it from brine like they do in Chile, and I think other places think they're trying to do that in California. Otherwise it's open pit mining. The water use, energy use, ecological damage will be huge. Potential for disasters is not zero, and the people of apple Lecture should be more than familiar with how this

tends to go right. This is the long history of mining and mining disasters. Moving on, Donald Trump has reposted a tweet about changing the name of Ice to nice nice Agents. They should do this. I want them to do this. It would be absolutely disastrous for audio journalism.

the more people get deranged. So at least this everyone knows what's happening.

the Constitution. The new ruling substantially undermines the nineteen sixty five Voting Rights Act, reinterpreting Section two provisions against racial discrimination to require evidence of intentional racial discrimination, not just discrimination as the effect, so in the future, proving discriminatory motives may be needed in order to win legal challenges

against gerrymandering. By citing the Voting Rights Act. This ruling specifically depowers black voters while enabling Republican jerrymandering to continue. Republicans in the South will now be able to redraw house district maps that lean Democrat that have a high number of Black voters, and pr strates. At least fifteen

house districts are now at risk of elimination. In the dissent, Justice Alanna Kagan wrote that court's decision will set back the foundational right to Congress rented of racial equality in electoral opportunity unquote. Yeah, this is that this is possibly the worst escalation of the continued undermining of the Voting Rights Act.

his family and cabinet were located. As the defendant did so, he held a shotgun in both hands in a raised position parallel to the ground. A United States Secret Service officer observed the defendant fire the shotgun in the direction of the stairs leading down to the ballroom. The Secret Service officer and others at the checkpoint heard the gun shot. The Secret Service officer drew his service weapon and fired

five times the defendant. The defendant fell to the ground and was restrained by law enforcement and was placed under arrests. The defendant suffered a minor injury to his knee, but was not shot. We can in a second talk about whether he shot the Secret Service officer.

Someone at the ATF gets an email. I bet like these things that are very rare and they have a certain consumer base.

primarily something that has like cachet for drug dealers. But I guess also my interpretation and I guess we're I know, maybe this is getting too much into my SA side of things, But I do have a theory as to why he would have picked this gun and the shotgun that he picked.

knife in a in a downwards draw configuration. He is carrying a pair of pliers and a pair of wirecutters in a holster on his left side. On his right side, he is carrying a small leather bag which allegedly contained more shotgun rounds, and the nineteen leve is in a crusteral showd to holster right. None of this screams highly trained.

fired in the mos Bog shotgun. The government's preliminary ballistics video analysis show that your client fired his shotgun in the direction of Secret Service Officer VG, which Officer VEG observed. Additionally, at least one fragment was recovered from the crime scene that was physically consistent with a single buckshot pellet. That fragment was recovered from a location at the scene consistent with your client firing his shotgun in the direction of

Oppicer VEG. The government is aware of no physical evidence, digital video evidence, or witness statements that are inconsistent with the theory that your client fired his shotgun in the direction of Officer VG or the officer of VEG was indeed shot once in the chest while wearing a ballistic vest, they go on them further to say, the government also recovered five spent nine millimeters LUGA cartridge cases, each of which was determined to have been fired from Officer Veg's

service weapon. The government also identified five separate bullet holes in the walls opposite from Officer VG, consistent with the direction of Sevigi fired his service weapon. That's like the most Yeah, that's the most detail that we've seen from them of their case.

were consistent with handgun rounds. Now, that's not like a firearms technology. There's a lot of WU there, but it's also pretty easy to look. I mean, sometimes it could be kind of messy because like the balls and like a double lot buck shotshell are kind of similar in size to nine.

was passing through the magnometers. The magnetometers, right, they didn't say it happened to elsewhere. They said it like as he was going to that checkpoint that you can watch him sprint through like he's fucking rudo running his way into the correspondence dinner. And in their frame by frame analysis, the Post only found evidence of four muzzle flashes, all of them from the agent who was allegedly struck by something's weapon.

the chamber of his twelve gauge. But number one, that's actually not an uncommon way to store that kind of twelve gage shotgun with a spent shell in the in the breach, because it makes it easy if something were to happen. It makes it easier to basically get a fresh round in without needing to have a chambered round at all times, which a lot of people, most people don't.

It's also perfectly possible he fired later. But it's really weird that they wrote it out that way if that's what they're alleging, because we see him when he's at the security checkpoint at the magnanometer and he doesn't fire in the footage.

discharged the shotgun. It's surprisingly easy for bullets to get lost, right, and by that, I mean just get so destroyed and what not by impact that there's not really much of anything to find. That happens all the time. It's really rare, and I would argue impossible to discharge a twelve gage shotgun with any kind of shot shell in a fucking hotel like this and not have there be some sign of what you They make holes in things, that's what

they're full. They make multiple holes. Yeah, unless it's a slug, but then they make a really big hole. And cold had specifically written that he was not intending to use slugs in his manifesto suicide know, whatever you want to call it. He specifically stated that he was using a twelve gage loaded with buckshot because he wanted to reduce the chances of overpenetration and of injuring or killing someone he did not intend to hit.

academy that he worked at. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I had found by the time I got there, which is like twenty minutes after the name started spreading the Facebook page of the school that he worked or of the tutoring academy whatever that he worked at, which I'm not going to name, but it was hundreds of posts already being like good to see this is who's teaching your kids, you know, like you hired a terrorist all this kind

of like yeah, yeah, it's it's it's bleak. It's the normal thing that happens, you know, with anything related to this in this case. Right after that, Trump posted a picture of the detained and stripped, mostly naked gunman that was obviously the Cole Allen who had won the Teacher of the Month, like immediately visible, like you could do. It was a positive idea was very quick from that

point on. So at that point a couple other things started coming out because you know, I had looked through from that Facebook page, I had found a couple other posts about Cole Thomas Allen or different places where he had accounts, which made a couple other details of his background obvious. He was a mechanical engineering student in Caltech

kind of during the first Trump administration. Yep, you know that was honestly, like most of what was like immediately obvious is that like he'd been an engineering student at Caltech, he'd worked as a teacher, and he'd been a part of In his LinkedIn, you can see that he'd been a part of Caltech's Christian Fellowship and the NERF Club. Right yeah, now, Ken Klippenstein talked to one of his

co fellow peers during this period of time. He knew that while he was at NERF Club, cal had like kind of led there was like a conflict within the club over people modifying and otherwise altering their NERF guns to make them more resemble real weapons, as NERF has also come out with more guns that look like real guns over the years, and he was really against this, Like, he was very against the idea of like NERF guns that were modified to look like real guns, or just

like people playing with things that looked like real guns.

was following about one hundred and fourteen people. He did not post often on his own, but when he did, in like the two different occasions I could find of him like posting on his own in this incomplete archive of his Blue Sky. One of them was him posting in like sympathy and solidarity with Ukraine, which is something that was very consistent. He reposted a ton of different fundraisers from different Ukrainian military units that was.

His bio read hi, I'm a random Californian guy, with posts about American politics, support for Ukraine, and observations of small creatures. And then he includes a quote, I choose my own battlefields, not through my blood, but with my heart. I stand on the battlefield to protect what I want. So that is I like type that quote in and that is a quote from an anime, the same anime that his his profile picture was also from this specific anime,

which is Kagura. I don't know how that's pronounced. I think the character that he had is PfP of was Kagura. It's this like red haired lady with these weird like ball things on either side of her hair. Like I don't fully know how to describe this lady's hairstyle. It's kind of like vaguely Princess Leiah esque. And that appears to be whos his PfP photo is. Okay, the series

is called Gintama. I don't know much about this. I've heard people online being like, oh, he was a fan of like this anime that means something or other, but like, I don't actually understand enough about the anime to give much of an analysis of that. I think it's just people being like, because of the character he likes, it makes sense that he's a guy who would do something

very extreme. I don't know enough about the anime to say how relevant that is, But the quote kind of does sound relevant to what he actually did, Like I stand on the battlefield to protect what I want.

new political protest. It's where Hassan tried to introduce the term micro alluding to the discourse, which I don't support at all, but it was like a pro shoplifting kind of like are you kind of getting a casual and jokey pro shoplifting argument, right, I don't want to People have blown this out of proportion, but it's interesting that

he came down against Hassan's side on that. He was basically reposting someone who was like, Hey, I've spent a lot of time in countries where graft and grifting are like normal, and it's really bad for that to happen. You don't want that to happen to your country. So he's certainly not like the on the far left, like direct action is good. I love committing crimes anarchist side of things. He is not at all that kind of guy. He's a Will Stancilite. He is a lot of Will

Stancel reposts, a lot of Will stancil posts. Yeah, yeah, he reposted me a couple of times. He posted me like talking about like the Pope, right, like because making fun of Trump for calling the Pope soft on crime, like not any of my like spicy.

saying abolish ice, okay. And there's a couple of different posts that he shared about or from people who were criticizing the White House Correspondence dinner, and particularly like when Jake Tapper fucking made a post about, like here's the napkins that we've got that have like freedom of the press, you know, the First Amendment stuff on it that like is supposed to be like this is our protest against the president, right, Like we've got these these monogram napkins,

And he made fun of that, like a lot of people did. He was generally critical of anyone who would be at the correspondence dinner, which was reflected in his manifesto where he said that like the journalists and the other people at the event who are not in the

administration aren't my targets. And you know, he said he didn't want to hit them, but also he was quote I would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary, on the basis that most people chose to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist and trader and are thus complicit.

guns right and celebrate like military style weapons. I kind of wonder if he picked the firearms he picked because they did not look like the pistol didn't look like a glock or like the standard police guns that he sees people owning, and a shotgun doesn't look like an AR fifteen AAR fifteen. Yeah, I kind of wonder, although he says it was to minimize penetration, so maybe that's more likely.

when he had started planning to do this. And you know, there's so much different shit happened around August of twenty twenty five, it's kind of impossible to say this is definitely it. I did notice that August twenty fifth, twenty twenty five, is when Trump issued his additional measures to address the crime Emergency in the District of Columbia Executive Order.

about it. But there are some references in the manifesto that kind of make me feel like that that may have also been like a major thing that helped push him to make this decision, because he specifically stated that I'm a citizen of the United States of America. What my representatives do reflects me, and I am no longer one to permit a pedophile, rapist, and trader to coat my hands with his crimes, right, Like, there's some reasons to believe that that probably played into it as well.

life will have, and kind of rebutting them. An objection one is as a Christian, you should turn the other cheek. Rebuttal turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed. I'm not the person raped in a detention camp. I'm not the fisherman executed without trial. I'm not a school kid blown up, or a child starved, or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration. Right, So he specifically is justifying this as a Christians on

Christian grounds. He thanks his church, which seems to have been a major part of his life. So there's a quote from Ken Klippenstein's article about his time at Caltech. He was pretty prominent at the Caltech Christian Fellowship, pretty Christian and mellow. If I didn't see his face eating carpet.

I would have never believed it. And then I found a Christianity Today piece that just came up a few hours ago, and a line from that is Alan's father, Thomas Allen, was listed as an elder at Grace United Reformed Church and Torrance and an evangelical congregation that describes itself as preaching a gospel that is Christ centered, covenental, and confessional. The church's leadership page and social media pages

have been pulled down, and yeah, it's fucked up. They had to have like security guards, armed guards, like escort worshippers inside and out this weekend just because of like all of the press around this. Elizabeth ter Linden, who also knew him at the time, told The New York Times he was definitely a strong believer in evangelical Christianity. At the time that I knew him, she was in

the Caltech Christian Fellowship with him. So this guy appears to have been like a very strong evangelical Christian, like a liberal Christian.

Oh yeah, okay, right, Like these were some of the people who like back Lincoln. So he joined some group and Alick has called the White Awakes for some period of time, he starts talking more radically, starts showing up to more protests, and I think he's helping with a couple of different kinds of things with the cup different groups. But that's when his sister says, he starts making like a lot more radical statements and maybe sometimes aggressive statements.

And that lines up with when he buys a gun and he starts training after twenty twenty three. So this may have just been a thing where he he didn't have a full plan at that point, but he accepted the possibility that he might need to do violence in order to support, you know, his his ideals. We don't really know, but that's that's all we've gotten in terms of a journey.

left wing protests and organizing. He becomes angrier, and then after twenty twenty four, he gets really really angry at Trump and Evince, probably some time late last year, decides to take action, and for whatever reason, picks the Correspondent's dinner to do it. It's probably also worth noting that he sends this manifesto thing out right before he carries out the attack, Like he's staying in the hotel for a couple of.

This was not helped by the confusion in early reports, because once you get every journalist in DC in one room and then an event happens, that means every journalist has a kind of different version of the event that gets immediately blasted out online and on the news. So there was no not a clear sequence of events. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, there was reports that

maybe was just dishes being dropped. Eventually it was clear that no, there was an actual shooting, and Wolf Flitzer did lose a shoe in the course of the events.

I think for a lot of these people of importance that gets ripped away when the Secret Service pulls all of the people who are important out of the room and you're just left wondering if you're in danger, Like that's what it'll be like if there's a nuclear war.

All of these people will suddenly have the few folks who have a detail get ripped out of the room, and then you'll just hear the sirens start and have nothing, no idea what's happening, and realize that your whole life in pursuit of being close to power has brought you no security. Crazy stuff, wild times anyway, Garrison.

the Trump Butler photo. Now, the alleged shooter also had an undergraduate research fellowship at NASA for the summer of twenty to fourteen, and the name of this Twitter account matches the name of someone at lockeed Martin who published a NASA paper at the same time that the shooter was at NASA, and the shooter worked for the Jet Propulsion Lab, the same labs that those scientists who have

gone missing also have been working out of. When I saw this, I started feeling a little bit scared because I thought I was getting too I don't know, I was afraid, needing help. But this is But that's not all because the Pepe the Pepe Twitter account was also connected to a time travel study, because the color streak banner photo was traced to a website on how to build a time machine, and this photo was used on the web page for the time machine study. So what's

what's really going on here? First of all, this quote unquote time Machine website is actually a europe based project for quote three D digitalization of cultural heritage, scanning like artifacts and uploading them online as like three D models. That's their quote unquote time Machine is preserving cultural heritage. Yes, an archive, and actually this color streak image has actually been floating around the Internet for a long time. I

found versions of it since at least twenty eighteen. There are hundreds of people named Cole Allen in the US on data broker sites. Right now, the first archive of this pepe Twitter account whose profile picture only mat Trump's because it's a tuxedo, one of the most common outfits from men at events like this.

post to boost engagement on the platform. Now, those aren't any more likely than just a simple coincidence, But there are other explanations other than gesturing vaguely towards a pre planned psyop spreading images of this. A Twitter account isn't necessarily putting forward a specific conspiracy theory. He just gets used as a data point other unconnected data points to sew public mistrust and undermine reality inferring meaning from odd coincidences.

that's not necessary for a presidential assassination. Yeah, Now there are some other things that propped up in this conspiratorial uh shenanigans. In the wake of the shooting, a Fox News reporter was calling in to report herk's varience at the dinner and suddenly cut out when she started talking about something that Carolyn Levitt's husband said to her.

know this? Well, it's actually quite simple, because Trump announced he was attending this dinner in early March, and according to Core documents, Cole Allen started searching for information about this dinner in early April. A month later, before then booking two nights at the Washington Hilton, Trump already announced

that he was going to be attending the dinner. The oddest aspect of the conspiracism post this event is that Trump needed to stage this not for any national security reasons or to seize more power, but to construct the White House ballroom, which has been the main thing that people on the right have been talking about after the shooting.

The people on the right have not been using this shooting to go after liberal terrorists, but have been talking NonStop about how this security breach demonstrates the need to construct Trump's massive ballroom, and that's the main thing they're talking about. It's so funny the idea that they would stage that the deep state it's going to stage a false flag just to push for the ballroom.

their court case, which they didn't against. Subsequently to this, the events of the White House correspond.

a grain of fascism. This poll is actually pulling the Butler shooting, not this recent one, and people did not acknowledge that when they were spreading this poll around. So we don't know how many people actually believe that this shooting was staged, but you can certainly see a lot of people asserting as such on the internet.

and five and has resided here ever since. He's there for deemed to be an applicant for admission by section one two to five A, that he is not quote seeking admission because he is not requesting law ful entry

into the United States after inspection authorization. The government's attempt to muddy these textually clear waters defies the statute's context, structure, history, and purpose, contradicts of Supreme Court dicta in Jennings and long standing executive branch practice, and its interpretation of statute raisive serious constitutional questions that should be avoided even if

the statutory language were ambiguous. The statute in question here is the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of nineteen ninety six, and specifically the fact that it has a mandatory detainer for people quote unquote seeking admission to the USA. Now, this ruling puts the Second Circuit in agreement with over three hundred and seventy judges across the nation, but notably odds with the Fifth and Eighth circuit.

seeking admission to the game. So hopefully that's that they explained to people that the argument that the government is making here is that someone who has been in the country for a long period of time is still seeking admission.

quote for five presidential administrations have nearly three decades. It did consistently release detainees on bond, whom the government now argues are covered by Section one two two five B two A. Even in President Trump's first term and the first few months of his second, the agency adhered to the decades old understanding and the relative scopes of sections

one two two five and one two two six. The these circumstances, the fact that no president has ever found such power in the statute is strong evidence that it does not exist. That pretty much explains itself, right. What I have not been able to work out is whether this pertains to people who are detained as in who are arrested in the second circuit, or people who are held in the second circuit or both. My guess would be both, because it is the law in the second circuit, right,

so it applies in the second circuit. Certainly, most attention facilities are not in the second circuit. A lot of them are in the Fifth, which has come down the opposite way on this. This is why the Supreme Court exists, right, big disagreement between these several circuit courts here. Moving on to talk about the border wall. Before leaving office, Secretary no massigned several waivers for border war construction. This was not in the week before she left office, but this year.

One of them waived twenty eight laws in the Big Bend area of Texas. The waiver included a hundred and empty five miles of the riverfront of the Rio Grande, including parts of the State Park, National Park, and federally protected river. These some of these areas are very popular for outdoor recreation. These waivers are now being challenged in court by the Center for Biological Diversity. They're atteditus on. You'll see them in a lot of border legal cases.

The Friends of Roridosa Church and a telling were river guide named Billy Miller. It's an interesting coalition, right that we don't often see, like a church group has the sort of approach to this that it would destroy historical and cultural heritage to build the wall there. Obviously, the river guy, Billy Miller, Mister Miller has the claim that it would be disruptive to have business and to people's enjoyment of nature on the river. Currently, what they are

doing is focusing on Chispa Road. That's it's Neil like Valentine, Texas northwestern MafA where are carrying out road improvements that they did not notify county officials about, which is obvious the course of disruption. I've actually ridden my bike out there a fair bit, did some work making a film out there a few years ago. It's a really beautiful part of the country. I'm sure a lot of people will be familiar with Marfa, which is nearby. Oh, it's

a great city, great Muffa's great. I love that area Texas.

Evidently to build barriers at the riverfront, they have to build roads to get to riverfront, which will also spread this damage over an area that like, especially in Texas. Texas is not a state which is abundant with public land now. It is not like those states further west in that regard. And I know this is an area which is very special to a great deal of people. I'm really interested in rating more about this, so like especially people in the outdoor industry or folks in that region,

I'd love to hear from you. You can do cal Zone tips at proton dot me if you want to talk about that. Do you want to do that?