It Could Happen Here Weekly 96

could happen here. A podcast that is being recorded far too early in the morning with me to help me stay conscious. Is my friend and coffee entrepreneur prop aka Jason Petty Prop.

And basically what happens is you had this this river boat and it's you know, Montgomery, Alabama's got a lot of tourism. It's one of these big boats that holds about two hundred and seventy people. I think, takes them up and down the river. You know, you go up and down the river, you look at the pretty things. I assume there's there's beer or something.

and cursing at him, flipping him the bird. So he sends over his co captain, and the captain of the boat from the videos if scene appears to be a white dude. The co captain is a middle aged black man. He gets off the boat and he goes over to just like move the pontoon boat right, which is a thing that boat people do when situations like this occur.

It is not like an unheard of situation. And while he's doing it, a whole bunch of the presumably the dudes who own this pontoon boat boat who were all white, surround him and start attacking him. And then at one point that looks like five or six people trying it, and he's, for the for the record, he's holding his own. He's doing as long as you can. Yeah, And then a number of nearby people start running to his aid, including at least one of the kids on the river boat.

Uh hops out or like hops into the water and like swims.

it's Montgomery, Alabama, right, It's also Montgomery, Alabama. So you just from seeing the interaction and the body language of both people in this conversation, you're like, Okay, this conversation is getting intense. And then and then once once the uh the the white gentleman decides he's gonna put hands on his black dude.

pissed at you because you not moving right. So, so when he does that, as you can see, there are people running, you know, black men running as fast as they can to kind of help you know this, uh, this this co captain who by this point is being stomped because he's overpowered by five people. And then you see this young man swimming yeah to the shore, which is like, he's a Yeah, I mean, that guy's a national treasure.

now now, now, now it becomes this this entire brawl right. So, and if you've ever been in situations where brawls break out, they kind of move and shift as different people decide they want a part of it, and other people get tired, and somebody's finally, you know, his nosebleeding whatever. And while this is happening, there's a few clips where you can see whether they're security officers or police, they're.

And this is what happened. You should have moved your boat, shouldn't have been talking shit like like like Kat Williams says, shouldn't have been talking shit, you know.

get punched drunk. So while he's hitting a guy with a folding chair, the there's this other white lady who's attempting to intervene with an interaction that one of the security or cop guys is having with turns out which with probably one of her compadres.

came down, were like shouting the inward adam and stuff. Yeah, so we've all seen the variants of this that are just like, yeah, some some black men or black woman getting abused by a bunch of racists, and this one starts looking like that and then turns into like like a beautiful come uppets, like these people picked a fight against a man they thought was like alone and kind of heavy set and older, and that they could like

wail on and just wound up getting absolutely housed. Based on at least what I'm looking at here, looks like three of the white folks involved in this have been charged with crimes. The police are talking to the chair guy. It's unclear yet like what exactly charges he's gonna catch.

Though two hundred and seventy people are being inconvenienced because I parked my shit in the wrong space, I should bounce, you know, I should probably at least say, oh, sorry, I fucked up. Instead like, no, we're gonna make this a thing because like we get to park wherever the

fuck we want and fuck you like that. That kind of attitude is like it's so frustrating, Like I can't even get myself into the head of someone who would do what these guys did and not like feel like they were an asshole, Like I had to do the thing every now and then I think most of us do where like I park my car in like a a like a red zone or something, because it's like I got to be it's like there's no spaces. I'm thirty students, right, Yeah, and you get out and someone seeing.

So there's so much history in the city. And on top of that, like I mean, there's high schools in Alabama named Robert E. Lee, like Robert E. Lee High School, Like we're talking about we're talking about a place that I mean what it was in the news in the odts that Like I mean, there was a high school that just desegregated, like in the year twenty something, like they got there, Yeah, yeah, they just desegregated high school.

rich history of us of US rebelling. So like it's almost a point a point of lesson, a point of learning for the black community too.

thing to talk about it. I've heard it described as like left handed power, uh kind of in some books that would talk about not just you know what we've been chatting about, which are these kind of big moments of insurrection among enslaved people, but like the everyday acts of resistance by people who were enslaved, like while they are you know, on the plantation stuff, different ways of like pulling autonomy of like you know, teaching their kids how to read, or you know, taking you know, getting

things like money or extra resources you know out of the out of the people who are attempting to uh yeah, to own them. Like methods of escape and resistance, you know, all these methods of like preserving traditional art and religion while you know, in chains like all that kind of stuff is also Yeah, I hope it. I hope it like spurs some of that, you know, the the the folding chair can be added to a richtory of resistance.

is a this is a nice thing to have. It's a I don't know, and it's interesting, like people things are said in a video like this that is just kind of like chaotic brawling, but it speaks to people in a way that you know, a history textbook, uh maybe isn't going to reach them, because there's just something so kinetic and powerful about like watching watching a large group of people realize that an injustice is going down and then be like, well, I guess we've got to

throw throw hands to stop this shit.

There's fucking bigots everywhere. Like no, when we say it's life or death, like you' that's what you're witnessing, Like he could have died that moment, you know what I'm saying. And I think at a at a whether it's front of mine or back of mine. That is something that as a person of color, like you just kind of know that like this, this would this if it would have just been a fight, you know what I'm saying.

don't we draw the line at like cannibalism. And these people that we're enslaving like they practice.

racial slavery system. In the Americas that was completely different, where manumission very rarely happened, and when it did, you were still subject to heinous restrictions on your personal liberty.

stop people from catching a fucking murder charge. But like, yeah, I feel like now at the point at which there's like sixty people fighting on the dock, I don't know that I'm I'm running into that. Like for one thing, it seems like enough people are there. But yeah, you see, you see a bunch of people like kicking the shit out of a man trying to do his job.

I'm on the network, man, and please check out the show.

working people to better the world. Yeah, but not today. Today we're having a real, real piece of shit episode about a real piece of shit, and it's gonna make everybody unhappy. Hello Garrison, Hello James. How are you both doing today?

But a sizable chunk of the very online right, the chunk of the right, particularly that makes their living by having takes on shit has has has been up in arms ever since it came out, and particularly ever since it made more than a billion dollars in the box office. I'm sure a lot of people are aware that our old friend Ben Shapiro filmed a forty two minute video tearing it apart and his signature preteen stolen valor voice a boy.

the fucking Barbie movie. None of this is worth discussing in detail, save to say that Shapiro's anger at the movie, and particularly its comic relief character Ken, seems to have been the more wide spread response from those kinds of people. Now, because I have made, over the years a lot of poor decisions in my browsing and engaging habits over the years, Twitter sends me a lot of weirdo right wing responses to everything that happens in the world, including this movie.

And one of these posts that I caught somewhere in late July or on the twenty second, twenty third, caught my eye. Now, this post features a vapor wave filtered kin photoshopped in front of a burning Viking long house, accompanied by the text exit the long house. Now, when you see something like this and you don't know what they're getting at, like, you have two choices. If you're like, you get like, I don't know, kids, a really demanding job, anything at all going on in your personal life, you

scroll right past it. If you're me, you spend like four and a half hours reading various fascist essays about feminism to try to figure out what the fuck a long house has to do with the Barbie movie. Now, the guy who had made this post is a low level fascist political columnist named Lomez. He is, He's kind of on me. He's a little bit of volapild. He doesn't he's not like a very major figure. He's kind

of several steps below anyone you've heard of. I would say, like two or three steps standard deviations of fame below like Jack Pisobiec, but his writing has a degree of purchase among the kinds of conservatives who trick Ron DeSantis into running in comprehensible campaign ads with son and rads in.

that gets what he's talking about. So on a whim, I clicked to viewed the quote tweets for this post, and I found a post by a user named Siege, which is of course a reference to a book about carrying out acts of terrorism in order to bring about a white Ethno state. The post says, ken is you. He is an exaggerated Western man in the twenty first century, anxious, confused, chasing women who don't care about him. He exits the

long House and discovers his own will to power. Like you, he decides to bring this knowledge back to his fellow man. And it's you know, I'm gonna I'll show you guys this this post here, it's.

memes something that you need to care about now? Unfortunately the answer to that is yes, because all of this ties back to one extremely influential, insurgent right wing ideologue whose followers have been close to the presidency once before and may yet find themselves there again. That asshole is an MI I T graduate named Kostin Alamaru who posts online under variations of the name Bronze Age Pervert. You guys, how aware are you of Bronze Age Pervert or BAP, as he's often known.

on a podcast. Now, this article, I find it frustrating for a number of reasons. I don't think it's great analysis of BAP's work or what people find appealing in it, or a particularly honest, intellectual look at what this guy has to say. But it does have some interesting reveals, including the fact that bronze age perverts. First public media appearance was a parody audio tour for an exhibition at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, written by bj Novak,

who played Ryan in The Office. Yeah, so that's odd, and it's one of those BJ Novak is not a stealth Nazi, don't worry. But the video or the thing that they put together does kind of fit for like a fascist art project. And I I'm going to read how The Atlantic describes this audio tour they put together together,

or put that they assembled together. Novak had recruited a Romanian classmate with a deep voice, and together they'd recorded an audio tour for the exhibition, Tales from the Land of Dragons a Thousand Years of Chinese Painting, with the help of friends. They then slipped cassettes containing their tour into the museum's official audio guides. Art lovers must have wondered about the thick Eastern European accent that greeted them over the twang of a Chinese string instrument. The Romanians

soon became opinionated. Personally, he said, I think this painting is a piece of crap. Then deranged, he alluded to his disgusting anatomical abnormalities. He called his listeners decadent in heerialless maggots, and confessed a desire to smash a glass case with a sledgehammer and rip a scroll to shreds with my teeth, which, by the way, are extremely long and sharp, more like fangs than human teeth. At last, he offered an interlude of idiot music while he fumbled

with his script. This should keep you occupied, you drooling, imbecile, he bellowed at the listeners, by now either amused or complaining to management. So there's like there's like little little whiffs of degenerate art stuff in there, but it's also just kind of like like a little bit like Max head roomy kind of stuff, like where you're kind of tricking people into into into consuming this like parody artwork thing. Like again, I think this was a pretty innocent joke.

On Novak's fall part. But Costin number one probably got picked for this because he's a He's got a thick Romanian accent that he very much plays up. He was noted in this time as kind of talking like Dracula deliberately. He also would always wear these like long and elaborate black coats so that he kind of looked like a Dracula type figure, like he was, you know, he was

he was doing a bit. He was putting on like a That was the image he wanted to He wanted to portray himself as to people's kind of like mysterious and Eastern Europeans sort of sort of figure.

with like pepe avatars. Yeah, and the other group the kind of related people that he fell in with and that he started to have traction with our adherents to a fascist philosopher known as Curtis Jarvin or Minsius Moldbug. Curtis is his real name, Minsius Moldbug is the pseudonym he wrote under Now.

very influential amongst Silicon Valley proto fascists. Jarvin's ideas in Brief is that the US is run and a lot of Western society is really run by what he calls the Cathedral, which is a mix of professors and journalists who act as a Brahmin class dominating the United States

with a progressive state religion. He sees their egalitarian impulses as toxic the destruction of natural civic order, and advocates for his followers to design new architectures of exit to replace the Cathedral with what is effectively a right wing to tatorship. The number one supporter of Curtis Yarvin's ideas and financial backer of him is Peter Teal. Teal has a funded Yarvin's work as a big fan of what he has to say and his philosophy, which is generally

referred to as the Dark Enlightenment. And this is when we're talking about the Dark Enlightenment, we're talking like mid aughts is kind of when this stuff starts to really take off. This is before the alt right that kind of becomes really well known nationwide. Is a is A is a major term. This is like in the pre and right around gamer Gate period is when he's really starting to take off with a lot of folks. And he certainly he feeds into the alt right to Trump,

you know, and to that period of time. But he's much more on the the pseudo intellectual end of things as opposed to the like hitting folks in the street end of things. That's what he gets a lot of Peter Teal money. So, uh yeah, Bronze age pervert is kind of a He espouses a philosophy that rhymes with moldbugs with Jarvin's philosophy in many ways, but where Jarvin dresses his words and is writing up in a costume

version of mainstream academic discourse. Bronze age Pervert is unapot apologetically online and weird, and he writes like somebody who spends too much fucking time on the Internet. A lot of his stuff is cloaked in things that are like half jokes, or at least want to be have plausible deniability of jokes, so that like, if you take them seriously, he can make fun of you for falling for the bit.

But he describes himself on Twitter as an aspiring nudist, bodybuilder, free speech and anti zeno estrogen activist, so just the most irritating kind of guy, the normal guy. Much of his politics centers around a worship of ancient Greece, which he believes settled on the scientifically ideal human form. He believes men should engage in bodybuilding and nude sunbathing to emulate the Greeks. And you'll see sometimes his followers be like, oh,

you're an idiot if you fell for that. But legitimately half of what this guy posts about is just pictures of bodybuilders and his pictures of himself being looking very jacked like he's he's it's it's that if that's all a bit. Then all he has is this silly bit because it is it is dominant in his content. BAP's Ancient Greek or baps ancient Greeks are incredibly straight and hate women with a passion. One of those things is more or less right Greek like upperclass Greeks, not super

pro women. Yeah, not woke. The Cathedral, in his eyes, is an oppressive dictatorship of femininity, if not always of women over masculinity. Cancel culture is a particular topic of his ire, and he seems to see it as basically these that there are traditionally feminine methods of argumentation and conflict, whether or not women are the ones doing them in

any given situation. Cancel culture is like the purest expression of this, and he believes that these kind of feminine methods of conflict destroy masculinity and and make cultural progress impossible. They chain men to this kind of like he sees. You know how, a lot of anarchists will talk about how ancient societies hunter gatherer societies and like were often more egalitarian than a lot of like medieval societies classical societies, and this is often a lot of folks do make

the mistake of like idealizing these cultures. But like, that's a thing that gets talked about a lot positively by some anarchists and I think obviously worth studying. He takes the opposite tact of like these ancient cultures like light, like people lived in the fucking mud and were miserable, and it was because they weren't a galitarian. It was because the women were dominating the men. Right, this is going to lead us to the long house in short order,

but we have somewhat to cover right here. So he focuses a huge amount on anti egalitarian arguments and on supporting a culture dominated by strong, beautiful, powerful people who look like Greek statues and suppress women and anyone else who doesn't look sexy. Basically, you get to feel like that's a big part of it to this guy, like he wants a date a dictatorship of hot, violent men, that's his.

fifty books on Amazon. A former Trump White House official Toad Politico in twenty nineteen and if you're a young person, intelligent, adjacent in some way to the right, it's very likely you would have heard of it. In chapter thirty five of his book Bronze Age, the Bronze Age Mindset bap rights quote, should the tyranny that has descended on our age ever gain the power it seeks and then be

challenged enough to feel itself in danger? The mass annihilations that will be carried out by homosexual, transsexual, and especially lesbian commissars will exceed in scale and cruelty anything that has yet happened in known history. Imagine lesbian Mulata commissars with young Martin sheen face and haircut manning the future Bergen Belsons installations that will span tens of miles.

compensating virtues of say humor or ingenuity. But even I find back worrisome what starts as comedy can become something more sinister and bap shtick. Well sometimes hilarious shows every sign of transforming into a mode of new far right radicalism. He goes on at a various point to be like, yeah,

he likes this book that I like. So I was willing to put up with the fact that he was he was bigoted for years because like we would talk about literature together, you know, I just had so much respect for his mind that I was willing to be strung along for a long time. I know, I find this guy kind.

He is a real motherfucker and an interesting guy. And because he was so interesting and kind of he was very charismatic in his own time and this kind of like very shady figure two, he becomes an early celebrity. He's like one of the first famous people that's really

out there. And a big part of why he stays famous is that Plato will write a lot about him and Socrates, right, and Plato's at writing I think after they're dead, So a lot of Alcibiades is like a character written by Plato as opposed to the actual historical fact about the dude. It's also worth noting, given how anti queer bap is, that Alies and Socrates were lovers.

positions in the government to institute his ideas. It's also worth noting that you can find some fans of bronze h pervert on the so called anti woke left. There's clips out there from the red Scare podcast, which the less set about the better, where the two hosts read segments of his book with a what seems like a degree of appreciation, calling it the good kind of racist.

paganism obsessed with strength and beauty. It appeals to today's young men because these things, strength and beauty are exactly what contemporary society has tried so hard to deny them. The gospel of son and steel, of vitalism and strength and power are exactly would have been denied to the boys of the Western world, and their spirits militate against this. Everything great ever achieved, Bap tells us, was done through

strong friendships between two men or brotherhoods of men. And this includes all great political things, all acts of political freedom and power.

from like a more educated mindset. And there's I think an extent to which you could see his writing as trying to pull in that kind of educated upper crust kids of the upper middle class, you know, with ivy league educations who go into politics trying to draw them in closer to the actual violent insurgent, right, at least in terms of the sympathies of their ideas and support for methods of organizing that are more traditionally found against you know, the Elohim city set, right. I think there

is a degree of that going on here now. Bronze Age Pervert is more supportive of Trump than a lot of these guys, largely because he finds him funny and sees him as an avatar of disruption and destruction.

books about Bronze Age Pervert. He acknowledges that Bapp's work is racist, anti Semitic, anti democratic, misogynistic, and homophobic, but suspect suggested that, like, you know that that's all, that's not you know, that's not necessarily.

always organized around a large, single communal hall. In ancient days, these are where feasts would be held and where groups of families or tribes would huddle together in long cold winters. Bronze Age Pervert conceives of the long house as an example of the miserable lives primitive and shameful cultures not his beloved Greeks, lived in before modernity. In his writing, he makes it clear that his fear is rule by degenerates and our fallen modernity will cause society to regress

to this prehistoric misery. Now part of his hatred of what he calls long house culture is that, in his mind, these dwellings were dominated by women who forced men to live inside the smoky, cloying, stinking confines. This is not really accurate to any kind of history. I expect his conception here comes largely from the fact that long houses are often suspected because we know relatively little about many of the cultures that had them, are often suspected of

having been organized among matrilineal lines. In other words, if you, as a dude, merry a lady, you move into her family's long house. Right, this does sink out. There are modern cultures that that had long houses or have long houses who also live this way, the Iroquois being a good example. Right, there was a long house culture and

where which house lived in was matrilineal. But it is a mistake to characterize matrilineal as meaning like the women are completely in charge, because they were not an Iroquois culture, nor many other cultures where longhouses existed. Vikings lived in longhouses, and you might recognize their society as not precisely anti masculine. Yeah,

the work vikings, Yeah, the woke vikings. So this is more of a problem though with the conceptions of the Longhouse that are spread by Bab's followers, because again, he's using it as a shorthand for the fact that this kind of like prehistoric darkness of egalitarianism is going to destroy the only thing that, in his view, can bring progress, which is small groups of beautiful men enforcing their will through violence. Right, that's what he talks about when he's

talking about the Long House. His followers tend to use the long House as a short end, more of a shorthand for the kind of stuff Curtis Yarvin gets at with the cathedral, a catch all term for progressive modernity, women who get to say no to sex and have their own credit cards, trans people on hormones, vegan meat, substitutes,

and yes, the Barbie movie Now. I open this episode with a post about that movie by Lomez, an adherent of Baptism who wrote an interminable article on the Long House for a website called First Things, which describes itself as America's most influential journal of religion and public life.

it reviles. It refers at once to our increasingly degraded mode of technocratic government, but also to wokeness, to the progressive, liberal, and secular values that pervade all major institutions. The most important feature of the long house, and why it makes such a resonant and controversial symbol of our current circumstances,

is the ubiquitous rule of the den mother. More than anything, the long House refers to the remarkable over correction of the last two generations towards social norms centering feminine needs and feminine methods for controlling direct and modeling behavior. As of twenty twenty two, women held fifty two percent of professional managerial roles in the US. Women earn more than fifty seven percent of bachelor degrees, sixty one percent of

master's degrees and fifty four percent of doctoral degrees. And because they're overrepresented in professions such as human resource management and compliance officers that determined workplace behavioral norms, they have an outsized influence and professional culture, which itself has an outsized influence on American culture more generally so the wall taken over human resources.

H Lomez also goes on to quote Richard Hannania, an influential conservative thought leader who is revealed recently to be a neo Nazi, or at least someone who regularly wrote neo Nazi things in neo Nazi parts of the web and wants to be seen as respectable. Now, well, we'll talk about him later. Lomez approvingly notes that Hannania echoes a bapist talking point when he discusses how female domination of HR has given them control over public and private institutions.

Now again, the way Lomez is talking about this shit is not actually in line with how bronze a pervert conceives of the longhouse. And one of the funnier results of everything that I've been talking about today is that bronze age pervert now spends much of his time on Twitter angrily tweeting at his followers that they're using the long house wrong.

villain from the movie Tangled by Activated Sleeper. If you want a good example of the nebulous long house, look no further than mother gothal Fane narcissism driven by resentment and envy of the young, whose primary and most effective weapons are gaslighting, manipulation, and the rhetoric of fanatical safety ism.

had a fight. One popular bapist response to this story, fifteen hundred likes in counting when I found it, stated, men attempt to take one meeting step out of the long house, and the locks get ten times bigger.

to yeah, go to war, do something. Jesus Christ. Nobody likes being cooped up in a fucking long house anyway. That's that's the long house. That's uh, bronze age pervert. It is kind of worth noting because these guys are convinced that like they are the intellectual vanguard of this movement that's going to overturn what is classically described as liberalism, this idea that like people have like rights that are worth protecting and shit that that's a failed idea. It's

obviously failed. Look at how ugly buildings are today. Then they'll post some picture of like the Chicago World's Fair. These people are like weirdly adjacent to the the Tataria conspiracy theory that one hundred years ago the world was ruled by this like vast advanced Russian empire that made all the nice buildings, and then World War two was a secret excuse for the rulers of the world to destroy all the good architecture and that's why buildings are ugly.

didn't weren't ready for their arguments against them. And it was these like these people who didn't want to be told not to think in certain ways. No, man, they were assholes. They're asshole rich kids who needed somebody to hit him in the fucking face. They need they need a folding chair deployed on them, Like yeah, yeah, we got to see.

know what it's about. I'm your host, Mia Wong. Now, if you've been reading the news about China at all in the past few years, you've probably at least heard of China's Belton Road initiative, probably followed by a stream of almost panicked fear mongering about China displacing America's role in the world and luring countries, and the debt traps that allow the CCP to seize control of the country's assets and then its entire foreign policy, and all of

this begs the question what actually is Belton Road. This is not a simple question because Belton Road isn't really a coherent, single project at all. It is effectively a marketing term slapped onto an enormous array of loans, investments, some things that are effectively grants, infrastructure projects, and special

economic zones across the world. The money for these projects comes from a variety of Chinese banks and sometimes just like government agencies like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and involve a vast array of different Chinese companies and contractors. So what are these banks and companies and governments actually up to. I'm going to run through three examples to get a sense of the kind of program that composes

Belton Road. One very common program is extending lines of credit to state oil companies of oil producers in order to secure china supply of oil. I'm starting here because this is not typically what people think of when someone brings up Belton Road, and it gets at a couple

of the central complexities of Belton Road. One is, you know, a lot of this stuff is just, in some sense almost ban all attempts to just sort of secured natural resources by paying money for them and investing money in them, which is you know, very very standard sort of capitalist behavior. But another complexity of this aspect of Belton Road is that these loans to oil producers were happening well before

Belton Road ever existed. The credit lines were simply absorbed into Belton Road when the project was announced in twenty thirteen, and now these loans are considered Belton Road projects. This

is a very common thread in Belton Road. Much of the vaunted one trillion dollars of investment in Belton Road projects comes from, you know, the extension of pre existing projects, which really sort of puts into perspective all of those like very very scary like maps that you'll see where they're like one hundred blah blah blah countries have accepted

Belton Road projects. It's like, well, yeah, okay, like how much of that's new and how much of that is just people who had like some random agreement with China.

establishing a network of high standard free trade areas. We will actively engage in negotiations with other countries and regions along the route of Belton of the along the routes of the Belton Road Initiative on the building of free trade areas. Now, this is the ancient neoliberal dream.

North South Highway. Here's from an article that was republished in laoson quote. Since Jamaica needed a Chinese loan to finance the highway, Chinese Harbor Engineering Company was granted the right to own and operate the highway for fifty years as part of the arrangement. Also, the tolls collected on the highway cannot be used for debt servicing and rather go to the China Harbor Engineering Company directly as profit. Additionally,

the tolls are astronomical by local standards. To drive the length of the highway, and a standard car costs the equivalents of over twelve dollars each way. This is well out of reach for the vast majority of Jamaican's where the average monthly salary is about six hundred dollars and only sixty percent of workers have a waged or salaried position at all. Many of my respondents wondered for whom

was this highway. The answer may lie in the additional concessions granted to the China Harbor Engineering Company, primarily twelve hundred acres of land across the highway to be held in perpetuity. Apparently, this will be used to construct hotels and adjoining infrastructure by Chinese companies for Chinese tourists, a kind of economic enclay from which locals would not benefit directly,

as acknowledged by the then Jamaican Minister of Transport. Now, this sucks for Jamaican workers who you know, didn't get any of the money from the contract, which you know went through Chinese firms.

very hard to come by. Part of the popularity of the project is that economies who've been through the you know, the just devastating process of IMF structure reforms, who've had literally their entire economy and social system torn apart, who have literally watched food being taken from the mouths of their children in order to pay off IMF loans, are

looking for literally any alternative. And as we've discussed on this show before, Jamaica itself was the first country to be looted by the IMF as the Social Democratic government was forced to shred as well for a state in its economy in the seventies as a condition for getting

IMF loans. This history and the current day threat more of these structural adjustments should you attempt to go to the IMF for more loans, make it more likely that countries will turn to Belton Road rather than the IMF to deal with their complete lack of development and to stave off economic crises resulting from the fact that their government has completely run out of money. And this is

something even liberal imperialist institutions will admit. Here's from the Council on Foreign Relations Belton Road Task Force report quote. In contrast to loans from traditional providers of development finance, China's loans are generally not concessional, and the Chinese Development Bank and the Export Import Bank of China expect to make a return on their investments. The loans also lack Paul conditionality, They contain fewer no exceptions of host country

economic policy or political reforms. Now, the Council on Foreign Relations concludes this with a very slick line that goes quote for many Belton Road initiative countries, especially authoritarian regimes. This is an attractive package, especially compared with other lenders who insist on reforms tied to loans. Now, okay, when do you hear the words, you know, when do you hear that authoritarian regimes don't want to do the quote

reforms tied to loans. That makes it sounds like the quote unquote reforms are like, you know, you dictators seed power to a democracy. Woke at IMF funding. That is not that is not how i am F loan conditions work. What those reforms actually entail is much closer to sell every state out asset in the country to abund of American investors. We will leave your children to.

money that he is like three billion dollars in today's money. Now, clariously, the other people who gave Pinochet a boatload of money was the Chinese Communist Party, although you know, orders of magnitude last, because this is this is like the seventies Chinese Communist Party who do not have much money, but they had enough money apparently to give a bunch of

the pinochet. And it's at this point that I want to remind everyone that China is the third largest voting member of the IMF, which is a real issue for both the sort of liberal and pro CCP accounts of the conflict between the CCP and the IMF over providing loans.

who gets to give people loans. Now, there's other interesting stuff in this report, like an admission that the Chinese you know, the sort of Chinese debt trap narrative is overblown, and this is true. The sort of like case study in about like a Chinese company taking a port in Sri Lanka is not It's not exactly like the story that everyone thinks it is. And you know, like the Chinese company like got the port after like a bidding process and stuff.

their own ways. Do you know who else exploits the working class of debtor countries? It is the products and services that support this podcast and we're back now. What is notable about Belton Road is that Belton Roads infrastructure projects usually do actually get built, but for all of the sort of screaming about like China's geopolitical expansion, its

attempt to subvert the Democrats, subvert the democratic order. The actual reason why these projects, unlike you know, so many other large scale development projects, actually happen and you know, actually do get built, is much more banal. It is a product of internal Chinese economics. So to explain this, I'm going to turn to another example of a type of Belton Road project giving countries loans to buy telecommunications and internet equipment from Chinese companies. Here's some dot org.

China's demand for infrastructure, including communications and internet gear, is not as high as it used to be, said Chinese Development Big President Jang Gigi. So what can we do with the excess production capacity. We can only send it abroad. We may give you loans to buy Chinese equipment and materials, but there must be a Chinese element, Jang told AFP of his bank's loans to help Chinese firms abroad. Now this is an interesting quote for a number of reasons.

Recent sort of American and also Canadian. The Canadians went wild over this concern around Chinese telecom companies. Have you know argued that the spread of Chinese economy communication technology is like a geopolitical power grab by the CCP, a

Chinese development bank. However, kind of like lets the actual game slip, which is that the reason for these loans, and you know, a major impetus for the sort of broader Belt and Road initiative is finding a solution to Chinese production over capacity, which is the giant structural problem which sort of hangs like the doom of Damocles over

the Chinese economy. And this is incredibly important. Foreign policy analysts have a tendency which is replicated in the media to think about Belton Road is fundamentally a geopolitical tool. Take for example, this line from Foreign Policy quote will

the developing world fall through China sway? Many policy makers in Washington, DC certainly fear so, which is one of the reasons they have created the new International Development Finance Corporation, which is slated to begin operating at the end of

this year. Like the Marshall Plan, which in post World War two years used generous economic aid to fight the appeal of Soviet Communism in Western Europe, the International Development Finance Corporation aims to help Washington push back against Beijing sweeping Belton Road initiative. Now, fascinatingly, the authors don't seemed

to understand what the Marshall Plan actually was. Now, the Marshall Plan, you know, despite what you will like probably read in sort of like mainstream like diplomatic histories, was not like originally was not really driven by anti communism

at all. It was in large part a product of massive industrial overcapacity in post war In the post war US, particularly in the automotive sector, demand from the domestic American market couldn't support the enormously expanded auto industry's industrial capacity. And so the auto industry went to Congress and tried to get them to rebuild Europe as like, you know, another market that they could sell there, you know, that they could sell cars to that could absorb the product

or of throbic capacity. The only way they could actually get this to work was to tie it to a raft of anti communism. And this is now how the project is remembered as this, you know, as this sort of like grand anti communists like political strategy, you know. And in this sense, Belton Road can be understood as China's Marshall Plan. It is a bold attempt to forge an international solution to its domestic economic problems. And this means to actually understand what Belton Road is, we need

to go back to the beginning. In response to the financial collapse of two thousand and eight, China carry out what was until COVID the largest stimulus in human history, an incomprehensibly large Kinesian program focused on internal infrastructure development designed to shock the Chinese economy back into shape, and it worked for about one year. In twenty ten, the Chinese economy hit ten percent a year on yr GDP growth,

and it has been falling ever since. In twenty eleven, the round of global uprisings kicked off by the Arab Spring, hit China in the form with the Wukan riots and a wave of strikes, and by twenty thirteen, a year into the first new Chinese presidents, Chichiping, the economy was doing terribly and the government was still not out of

the woods politically either. In response, the government announced two programs within about four months of each other, Belton Road and the so called Mini Stimulus, another Chinese stimulus package aimed at improving Chinese rails at the proper term for it, and it ended improving the Chinese train network. Now, these two programs were effectively the same response to the economic

crisis fased by the CCP. Rising wages of strike activity and later environmental protests were threatening the profitability of the Chinese manufacturing sector in its traditional coastal urban sector.

riots meant that such support was anything but assured. But even in twenty thirteen, it was clear that the vaunted Chinese transition to a consumer economy was going to fail because and this is really blindingly obvious if you think, if you think about how the Chinese economy works for like ten seconds, Okay, in order to have a consumer economy,

you must have a class of consumers. Now, this requires average people to have a thing called money, and both Jesionping and the Chinese capitalist class were broadly just absolutely resolutely refuse to do anything that involves paying Chinese workers more, which is what you need to make this happen, and they just refuse to do it. It is genuinely stunning.

isn't going to like turn into a consumer economy. There's been, you know, there's been some transition into like a service based economy, but like you know, ask ask the US how growth that a service based economy works for you.

And because they've seen the writing on the wall, Chinese capitalists start looking for ways to make money overseas, and this overlaps with a growing demand to do something with the enormous reserves of American dollars that China has from like basically propping up the US economy by buying like a trillion dollars of US bonds in the two thousands and early twenty tens. And like you think I'm joking when I say, like e trillion dollars, but it is

actually around a trillion dollars. Well, okay, this is where I need to make an enormous disclaimer. Why okay, it is atrociously difficult to get reliable economic statistics out of China, to the point where, like the Chinese central government when they get data from their own provinces, who are legally required to report data to them, they have to mess with the data to make it make literally any sense

at all. They have these they have these equations that that they like apply to the statistical data from the provinces they get that are effectively attempts to calculate how much the provinces are lying to the central government and how you know, and try to figure out a way to fix it. And you know, they are doing things. They are doing things like that, they're doing things out of like the old late Soviet Union. They are they are they are using satellite pictures to check how much

light there is from factories at nights. They are like measuring how many freight trains are like going into a province and trying to use that to estimate their actual industrial capacity.

So great stuff, amazing stuff happening in the world of Chinese satistical addicxes.

these assets that are in weird places. But what seems to have happened is that a lot of built in road projects are being funded by Chinese for inch just change research, which is those trillions of dollars of like bonds I was talking about earlier. Of that, you know, we're moved from the People's Bank of China which is China Central Bank to like other banks, and then those banks use that to do investments. And this appears to be some of the money that was used to fund

belt and road projects. And this is where things get very sketchy. Now, these banks seem to initially have been flushed with capital, which you know, contributed to a massive like as as the product is initially starting and up through about twenty eighteen, like it's just you know, it just keeps the amount of money going into this keeps increasing, keeps increasing, and then twenty eighteen, it starts to slow.

And then after the pandemic, and particularly after like twenty twenty twenty two, like the amount of money that's going into belt road projects has imploded, and the amounts of loans that the CCP is writing off has just diminished enormously. Now, Okay,

this is the sketchy part. You will see a lot of people if you look into this, who are going to argue that the reason that these loans have sort of dried up and the reason that this has been decreasing is that China is like burning through its reserve of foreign exchange, like it's burnning out of its burning burning through its reserve of like US dollars that it

has its banks. This may be true, maybe it's probably not true of like twenty eighteen, because and this is the thing that's been discovered very recently, a lot of Chinese's like a lot of things that like are technically foreign exchange reserves were like technically aren't qualified classified as foreign exchange reserves because they've been weird stuff has happened to the balance sheet. I don't know, it's kind of a mess, but like it seems like China has way

way larger. They have these things called shadow reserves that are the things that they've been using to like turn for x into like investments, and this seems to this seems to indicate that China has like way way larger foreign exchange reserves then it tacnically are on the balance sheet. So what the actual relationship between how much forward exchange reserves China has and how much money is putting into belt in run.

in China. And this is something that we've been seeing, you know, in the last year, We've been watching sort of the dogs come like the chickens come home to roost for the Chinese economy, where like, you know, all this debt build ups paying off. Why I say it paying off all this debt build up is you know, like really starting to damage the economy, like the housing is kind of imploding, and you know, Belton Road was

supposed to be sort of the answer to this. Right, If you combined, if you combine the fact that we know for a fact that these loans are an attempt to actually like generate returns, and we also know that these loans are a way to sort of stimulate demand for Chinese goods that there's no domestic market for, we get this clear picture of what's really driving Belton Road.

It's the crisis of Chinese capital, which in and of itself is just sort of a global reflection of the global crisis of overproduction under consumption that's haunted the world since the nineteen seventies. Now, there's one last aspect of Belton Road that we need to talk about that gets way less attention than any other aspect of the initiative. Belton Road also acts as a work program for a

very specific kind of Chinese worker. Belton Road projects, as you see in Jamaica, are run by Chinese corporations almost always, I mean occasionally other firms get contracted. Mostly it's Chinese corporate and they import Chinese workers to do the work. And you know, we've looked at it from the Jamaican end, where you know, Jamaican workers are getting screw odd jobs and wages, but we should also look at it from the perspective of Chinese workers as well. Working in China,

as we've discussed elsewhere extensively sucks ass. Wages are dogshit, the hours are inhuman, and there's intense competition for what.

just not pay their workers. And as a bonus to that, on top of the fact that you're like actually getting paid, and you're getting paid way more of you would for working a job in China, these these Belton road jobs have a much faster promotion track and the cost of living is much lower than it is in China. Which allows workers to save money and cent remittances back home.

That mean this means that Belton Road jobs, which are specifically, you know, in sort of like nationalist circles, conceptualized as quote Africa, which is oh boy, is seen as you know, it's seen as a way out for Chinese workers. And we actually talked about this a long time ago in our Lying Flat anti work episodes. Part of the origins of Lying Flat was his reaction to this sort of like nationalist discourse but like finding your own personal Africa

to break out of like Chinese involution. And you know, from this kind of like ulternationalist, like really racist like concept, you get this like left wing backlash of co opting of like the refusal to work that is you know,

lying flat. But for our purposes right now, the important thing about this is Belton Road was a solution to a sort of new like highly educated Chinese working class who you know, were suddenly realizing that like this education that they put literally everything into and this like they sunk their entire lives into, was just going to get them nowhere. And you know, Belton Road appeared as a sort of mirage of way out. But it's not it's not a way out for Chinese workers. It's it's its

own kind of imperialism. It's the same sort of shit that oil companies do where they said highly paid American workers to oil wells in Nigeria to avoid having to deal with, you know, a class of skilled and politically sophisticated Nigerian oil workers. It's the same kind of sort of racial divide and conquer that funds Chinese workers at the expense of workers in Jamaica, and that ultimately is the core of both Belton Road and the American response

to Belton Road. It is a desperate attempt to keep the embers of capital burning by lighting the working class on fire, feeding it to the flames.

ISIS members as well. And in the Alhol camp you now have a population of essentially ISIS affiliated women and the children of ISIS members who are now housed in that camp as well. And this camp is a serious humanitarian issue. You have these children who are in very difficult conditions. It's a massive security problem for these surrounding Syrian and Iraqi communities that were victimized by ISIS and the world. ISIS openly wants to reconstitute itself. It is

operating inside the camp clandestinely to reconstitute itself. It wants to break prisoners out and go right back to its genocidal policies against minorities in the region like Zidis and Christians, and to continue terror attacks not only in Iraq and

Syria but around the world. It's also a real drain on the resources of the Autonomous Administration and the SDF themselves, who we have to remember are not a state actor, but are dealing with the sort of problems that even the wealthiest and most militarily established state actors would have

trouble with. So they've ended up in this unenviable position of having to take care of essentially criminals from around the world who came to their country to commit mass atrocities, while the victims of these ISIS crimes across Northern and Eastern Syria and victims of the subst Turkish invasions that a Northern and Eastern Syria suffered during and after the

fight against ISIS really lack basic resources. Now, this is something I heard a lot on the ground when I was in the region in February and March, speaking to people from Afrin, which was invaded and occupied by Turkey in twenty eighteen, and to people from Serkanya and Telabyad, which were invaded and occupied by Turkey in twenty nineteen.

Many of them asked rightly why there were so many resources from international bodies and NGOs and governments provided towards the ISIS detainees in al Hole and the ISIS affiliated individuals there, when their communities, their families who had done nothing other than simply living in areas that Turkey decided to invade and occupy, who were displaced because of that in what experts, including myself, would refer to as ethnic cleansing.

These communities are receiving nothing from the international community. You know, they feel forgotten and they have some serious questions about that. Of course, the Autonomous Administration has many needs and many pressing security problems that it simply can't devote enough resources to when it's tasked with managing the world's ISIS members.

So in a recent study that we published at the Kurdish Peace Institute by journalist Matt Broomfield, who spent a lot of time on the ground in northeast Syria during and after the defeat of ISIS. He found that just four percent of foreign ISIS fighters held by Syrian Kurdish authorities have been repatriated since twenty nineteen four percent. The most of the repatriations have been women and children, not

the fighters themselves, who are housed in prisons. But of course the women and children are a humanitarian issue and a security issue too, so think about that. Those are really dangerous numbers.

adult choices at that time. And that's one thing. But like a lot of these people willingly participated in an extremely oppressive and violent regime, and they sort of a being that they're often not portrayed as such in the press. Is that fair to say?

peoples that ISIS targeted. So that I think when you have these genocide survivors saying that no, these women participated fully in these crimes. They facilitated these crimes, They made this system of genocide of crimes against humanity possible. That's

something we have to listen to. And I'm glad that you bring up the Western media portrayal because you really you see this idea that the women could not have been perpetrators themselves, when what we hear on the ground is that that's not true, and what legal cases have begun to find is that that's not true either. There's been trials in Europe for ISIS affiliated women for their complicity in acts of genocide against the Auzeti community. And you know, one point that you hear very commonly on

the ground is that. How can there have only been one or two, just a handful of trials. I'm not sure the exact number. But after all of these people missing, all of these people killed, how are all of these ISIS members? And that's why I said, you know ISIS affiliated women, because I don't think I do agree with you. It's a disservice to just refer to them as ISIS brides or whatever sensationalistic media framing you have. These people

simply aren't being put on trial. And one of the reasons for that is that when we come to female members of ISIS, there is this perception, both in media and from governments, from international institutions, that these women are victims that because they're women, because they subscribed willingly to a political and ideological system that was very, very oppressive of women, that puts women only into certain roles as housewives, as mothers of the next generation of ISIS, that these

women couldn't have committed atrocities.

And so this continued perpetration of sexual violence against these boys who've done nothing other than had the misfortune to have their parents be members of ISIS. You know, this is a very very serious allegation. The reporting about this is something that needs to be taken very seriously. Like I said, this is a massive human rights crisis for these children and it is you know, these women are no less dangerous and no less culpable for their crimes than their male counterparts who joined ISIS.

I think like the ongoing like not only the abuse of children, but like the sort of attempt to indoctrinate children into that same like extremist ideology, the attempts to even like I've seen videos of kids training with little wooden guns, and yeah, I'm sort of raising another generation of people who believe in this kind of hateful outlook. And can you talk a little bit about how common that is or how I guess you don't know entirely, but can you speak to that a little bit.

is to raise the next generation of ISIS fighter. There's no reason to believe that the majority of these women have given up on their beliefs, and there is evidence

that this is what they're trying to do. And of course, when you look at the broader situation that these children are in, it's a situation that's exceedingly conducive to radicalization because of the poor conditions in the camps because of the fact that they remain with their mothers, many of whom believe firmly in ISIS ideology and who see the role of women in ISIS as doing exactly that, as

passing down this ideology. And you know, when these children they can't be safely repatriated to their countries, they can't be put into safe environments where they can receive the support they need, the positive influences, they need, any kind of medical or psychological help that they need in these conditions, it's inevitable that you're going to have the continuation of this ISIS ideology being perpetrated and the adults there, these women cantinuing to pass this down on these children, who

again have done nothing to be put in the situation that they're in. They're continuing to be victimized by the actions of their parents and the other ISIS members. So and the international community too, as it fault here for refusing to repatriate at least these children and to try ISIS perpetrators of war crimes, criinds against humanity and genocide.

of like these people celebrating a drone strike inside the camp, And can you talk about the impact these drone strikes have.

any form of Kurdish autonomy, any kind of multi ethnic project to potentially be able to exist there, either now

or in the future. And this facilitation of the rise of ISIS reached such a level that you've had legal experts through the Yazidi Justice Committee, which published an in depth report on this last year, find based on a review of the evidence that Turkey was quote complicit in the commission of genocide end quote by ISIS by allowing fighters to cross its borders to join the group, allowing ISIS related economic activity to go on, and other forms of facilitation of the rise of ISIS when it was

committee its most serious crimes. So this is not something new. The way that these drone strikes specifically impact this issue. They're part of the broader Turkish campaign of aggression against Northeast Syria. Obviously, the two ground invasions of Afrin and of Sera Kanya and Talabyad had very negative impacts on the fight against ISIS and the drone strikes. Now, first of all, they make it difficult for any SDF or autonomous administration structure to simply do the day to day

work of providing security and providing the government. You know, if a government official or a member of the local security forces has to modify their behavior, has to modify where they go, how they interact with their constituents. You know, what kind of missions they can conduct to avoid being assassinated in a drone strike, They're simply not going to be as effective. Right, So this is a problem in

many areas. It certainly impacts the counter ISIS mission, and Turkey has specifically started to increasingly target ans, SDF and Asayish internal security forces personnel who are directly engaged in counter ISIS missions. We saw this in late twenty twenty two when there were severe Turkish air operations following a bombing in Istanbul that Turkey, based on all evidence, falsely attempted to attribute to Kurdish groups despite there being no

real evidence supporting that claim. These attacks targeted civilians, civilian infrastructure, and SDF forces engaged in key counter ISIS missions, including SDF forces involved in securing the Alhole Camp. And now we've even started to see in addition to these anti SDF anti Autonomous Administration drone strikes, Turkey's been using drones to fire essentially warning shots at the international coalition led

by the US and the other coalition countries itself. We saw this in November when there were a drone strike on the joint SDF coalition base where the SDF and the international community worked together to plan ongoing counter ISIS missions, and earlier this year, in i believe April of this year, the drone strike on Sulimania International Airport in Iraqi, Kurdastan, where there was a joint SDF coalition convoy where SDF Commander in Chief Muslim Kobani was present and US forces

were also present. That strike, for all intents and purposes, was Turkey's attempt not only to threaten the SDF and the Autonomous Administration, but to threaten the coalition as well, specifically for its continuing counter isis partnership with Syrian Kurds.

So this has risen to a level where Turkey is not only using these to disrupt governance and security at the local level in the Autonomous administration, it's not only using them against locally led SDFYPG led counter ISIS missions, but Turkey is using drones to threaten the entire global counter ISIS campaign, of which on paper is formally a member.

for for such a long time. I wonder if you can talk about, like, so, what is the into as far as the international community exists, which is a pretty nebulous thing to really kind of pin down, but is what is specifically like this US led coalition to the

feat ISIS. I think they call it doing to help, and I guess a little more broadly, building on that, this coalition has a very narrow focus in a place where there are a lot of different aggresses to include various other Islamist groups, to include the Turkish State and obviously the day the state in Syria. Can you explain a little bit about how the mission of this coalition is narrow in a way that helps it doing the things that people on the ground they need to ensure peace and stability.

we don't see our political relationships. And this connects to a wide variety of issues related to this immediate problem of ISIS, of securing ISIS prisoners, of bringing perpetrators of genocide and war crimes to justice, but it also connects to the deeper problem of the kind of long term stability in Syria that's necessary to end this ongoing civil war, to bring justice to the victims of ISIS and to all other abuses and atrocities during the twelve years of

conflict in Syria, and to prevent the next endless war in this region from inevitably taking place in the future. So we have this narrow military partnership. The reason that this relationship evolved in this way was going back to the role of Turkey, because the United States and its European allies had no other option but to partner with Kurdish groups if they wanted to achieve a territorial defeat

of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. There was no force other than the SDF and the YPG and the YPGA at that time that would be capable of the military responsibility of defeating ISIS. It was essentially, if people remember the resistance of the YPG and the YPJ at Kobani in northeast northeastern Syria, that held out long enough where the United States and the international Coalition realized that their only option if they wanted to defeat ISIS on the

ground was to partner with these forces. Before that, also, we're recording this in August, the situation in Sinjar where ISIS had gone in had committed genocide against the Azdi community, and we're the only people who were able to actually come in and help Uzidis defend themselves and evacuate refugees to safety in Syria, where again the YPG, the YPJ

and the PKK gorillas as well. Because these Kurdish forces were able to help local civilians in Sinjar defend themselves and evacuate so many refugees to safety, it forced the international community's hand to act. The PKK intervened in Sinjar to start the humanitarian mission on August fourth, US air strikes began on August seventh. It was this local response from these non state actors that forced the international community, you know, these states with actual treaty obligations to respond

to and prevent massatrocities, to take action. But because Turkey views the PKK as a terrorist group, it views the YPG and the YPG as indistinguishable from the PKK and therefore as a terrorist group. The entire counter ISIS mission from the very beginning was faced with this question of how these states that wanted to fight ISIS could do so without offending their relationships with Turkey as a member

of NATO and an ally in other respects. So this connects specifically to the ISIS issue, not only because the contradiction here dates back to the counter ISIS campaign, but because actual international trials for ISIS members, actual security policies that could address the problems in al Hole, would legitimize the SDF and the autonomous administration on the international stage, and would legitimize the political philosophies behind what they're doing,

all of which Turkey deems to be a very serious

national security threat to its existence. I mean, imagine you have a Kurdish woman judge questioning an ISIS member responsible for potentially European and American casualties, certainly responsible for casualties and all sorts of abuses across Iraq and Syria, about the evidence that we have that the international community has, that Northeast Syria has, about how Turkey facilitated ISIS actions, you know, with the YPG and the YPG there for security,

with international observers from the US and other coalition countries facilitating providing legal and security support. That would absolutely destroy Turkey's narrative about what individuals and entities are terrorists and which ones have actually contributed not only to the territorial militarily defeat of ISIS, but to social and political and governance projects that are able to prevent, you know, the

resurgence of the next eye ISIS. So, you know, this kind of fear of building political relationships with the Autonomous Administration with legitimate this fear of legitimizing the Autonomous Administration project and helping it address security problems in a way that would you know, both increase its standing and legitimacy locally and internationally, and would show how the actions of states like Turkey contributed to prolonging and intensifying the civil

war in Syria. States simply don't want to do that yet.

But you know, when we look at the long term consequences of whether it's allowing Turkey to continue aggressive actions against North East Syria and more broadly, to pursue a military solution to its Kurdish conflict, whether it's allowing ISIS atrocities to go unpunished, you know, leaving communities that were impacted by ISIS to be essentially re traumatized and left to live in difficult conditions, you know, not receiving justice and allowing these ISIS MAS members to continue to have

the space to attempt to reconstitute their group and go back to the kind of atrocities they were committing and attacks they were carrying out worldwide in twenty fourteen twenty fifteen. In the long run, this sort of appeasement of Turkey over the issue of the Kurdish question and the role of the Autonomous Administration, it's going to create the start

of the next endless war in the Middle East. And you know, if policymakers want to avoid that, they need to be addressing these problems from a pro peace perspective, from a perspective that brings about justice, you know, political solutions based on democracy, on gender equality, on the equality of all communities in the region, all of these values that while imperfectly the Autonomous Administration is really.

Islamist perspective or on the basis of class interests. And you have Turks ethnic Turkish people who went to North East Syria during the height of the fight against ISIS as members of socialist groups to provide humanitarian aid and to join Kurdish forces in their fight against ISIS. On the ground, you have Yuzids, Christians, Syriacs, Assyrians, Armenians, Arabs. All different ethnic groups in Iraq and Syria are very much impacted by this conflict, and particularly because of the

Autonomous Administration's multi ethnic and multi religious model. And while the autonomous administration system certainly has it's shortcomings and hasn't been able to perfectly overcome years and years of sectarian and religious and ethnic challenges. It has made a real attempt at including all of the peoples of the region.

And that's one of the reasons why despite all of these Turkish attacks, despite the threat of ISSIS, you know, these communities have continued to band together and participate in SDF and autonomous administration structures in order to try to build governance and real post ISIS security. So it's certainly

not just a very narrowly defined Turkish Kurdish issue. It's an issue of civil rights, of political rights, of long term security and stability, of what kind of society and what kind of governance can and should exist in this region, where many Kurds and many other ethnic and religious minorities would argue the europe imposition of artificial borders and nation states onto areas that were multi ethnic and multi religious for thousands and thousands of years was the source of

a lot of these problems that we see today, not only with ISIS, not only with the Syrian war, with the Kurdish conflict in Turkey, as well with many of the issues that we're seeing in Iraq, in Iran, all over the region. So it goes much deeper than that, And I think that understanding, you know, the very deep historical roots of these issues is what can start to point us to the actual very radical solutions that would be necessary to get long term peace and security.

more about this. I think it's something that like so much of the coverage this whole area focuses on, like specifically women in our whole right or women who went to join isis where can people find out more about like the what sources would you suggest for following goings on in this area?

backed groups in the occupied areas. You have arguably one of the best English language resources, not only for their own publications, but for researchers and journalists to reach out to, the Ulsheva Information Center that does a lot of good work on their own and also a lot of really incredible work to facilitate the work of international researchers and journalists. You have the Kurdish media sites like kolar News that will give good updates on what the Autonomous Administration is

doing and saying from their perspective. Of course, there are a lot of official pages and sites for Autonomous Administration and SDF institutions as well. Those tend to be in Kurdish or Arabic, so of course if you know either of those languages you can follow them. For English, you have some of the SDF affiliated sites that have been translated.

The YPG Information and Documentation Office have done a lot of work on this issue of ISIS and the related security challenges, they publish an English, they provide good information from that security perspective, and then really, I think any sources on social media online that provide good perspectives from people who are on the ground, who are providing reputable information, whether it's from a human rights side of things, from

the security side of things, from the administration side of things, it's good to get that full spectrum of perspectives of what different actors are doing and seeing.

who are also fleeing conflict do get. And you can see that in a way that they're literally treated differently in immigration laws. So is there anything people can do to help?

did not come out of nowhere in twenty fourteen. The Turkish invasion did not come out of nowhere in twenty nineteen. And had we as a society and certainly our institutions been more informed and more aware of the root conditions causing these outbursts of violence, these outbursts of violence may not have happened, They might have been addressed before they happened. And so what does it mean to build that awareness?

That means everything from writing a letter to your local newspaper to producing a report at your university with input from institutions in North East Syria, some of these local media and human rights organizations that we've talked about, to hosting an event for your community group on the state of this broadly defined conflict in Turkey and Iraq and Syria in Kurdistan between the Turkish state and these Kurdish groups that, in addition to fighting against ISIS, have been

struggling for autonomy, self determination, equality between men and women, equality of people of different religious beliefs of different ethnic backgrounds. Long before ISIS was on the agenda and Northeast Syria it was on the agenda. We at the Kurdish Peace Institute are always available to help you do this. You can reach out to us on our contact page. We have information on everything from submitting content of your own to resources for reaching out to us for media appearances.

Of course, there's all the sources I'm mentioned as well, and there are other episodes of this wonderful podcast with very talented expert speakers and interviewers as well who've spoken

about issues related to Syria, Turkey and Kurdistan. You can advocate for greater political support for the Autonomous Administration, for an end to Turkey's aggressive actions against Northeast Syria and its ongoing human rights violations in the occupied areas of Afriin and russ A Line, and for international political support for a democratic, just peaceful solution to the Turkish Kurdish conflict.

This is, i think, at the end of the day, the root of all of these problems that we're seeing here, and if this conflict were to be resolved, if Turkey were no longer to take an aggressive militaristic approach to the very concept of Kurdish autonomy, the very social base of Kurdish communities that has the capacity to seek and

organize for autonomy itself. This would mean an end to authoritarianism in Turkey, which has been leading Turkey to all sorts of destabilizing behavior and certainly in miserating countless Turkish citizens. This is one of the reasons why not only Kurds, but many Turkish people of all ethnicities as well have been fleeing Turkey to Europe and even to the United States.

Has been the escalating persecution, poverty, and difficulty of life under Erdowan, which is directly connected to air Dowan's choice in twenty fifteen to end piece talks with the Kurdish movement in order to consolidate his total power over the state using war and far right nationalism. This would end not only these difficult conditions within Turkey, this persecution, this economic devastation, this oppression of all oppressed segments of society.

It would end Turkey's aggressive foreign policy in the region as well, which would be hugely important for allowing North East Syria the stability it means to put ISIS members on trial, hold them accountable for what they've done, begin

to rebuild, give post isis communities of future. Allow these people who have suffered so much to defeat this group, of course for themselves, but really for all humanity to be able to build new lives, recover and have a say in their future, and by doing that, to pursue

a political solution to the Syrian conflict. Right now, northe Assyria is the only major part of Syria outside of government control that has a system that is semi functional despite all of the setbacks of the war and the economic crisis, which again could be a whole other episode, which has empowered women, which has empowered different ethnic and religious communities, They could be part of a political solution in Syria. Turkey's war on the Kurdish movement, you know,

is preventing that. This goes into a lot of challenges in Iraq as well, with increasing Turkish military operations. They're related to the conflict that have made life extremely difficult for many different Iraqi communities. But again, all of this, this conflict, you could argue, is the largest and most impactful and certainly one of the longest running. You know, for forty years now of the modern Middle East. It

is an international conflict. The United States European governments, like we saw with the example of the US and European position on NATO accession and the concessions to Turkey made there, have been very involved in supporting militarily and politically Turkey's efforts to resolve this conflict militarily and to deny the Kurdish people their rights by force. And we you listening to this are communities in all of these different countries that have a stake in this conflict. We're the ones

you can change that. And you can do that on two different tracks. So One, you can build awareness in your own community. You can build connections between your community groups and institutions in North East Syria, in Turkey, in different places impacted by this conflict in order to find ways that you can help respond to specific needs, work

on specific projects together. And two, in the long run, use those connections, your knowledge you gain from those connections, the resources you create as you reach out to the media, as you meet different people working on this, to reach out to decision makers and show this is an issue that their constituents care about. This is an issue that's not something that governments can do without a response from

public opinion. And this is an issue where there is organized pressure to change policy, you know, in favor of peace, in favor of stability, in favor of political solutions. Because when we do that, and there's lots of examples of how different communities and organizations have done that, when we do that on a large enough scale, we're not only addressing a humanitarian problem, we're not only contributing to peace

and stability in the region. But at the end of the day, we can find solutions for these conflicts that mean that there won't be another rise of Isis, there won't be another Turkish invasion and occupation of northern Syria, and there will be models for political and social transformation that can help us end conflicts in other parts of the world as well. So there's lots of ways to contribute.

I hope you're inspired to do so. And I think that just listening to this conversation, hearing about what's going on, and thinking about what you can do, that's already the first step. You're already there, and that's the most important thing.

other really great people. But I'm very lucky to collaborate.

Mexico side. We have operated in a pro bono clinic on the Mexican side, and currently we're providing direct aid with the families of migrant farm workers in Imperial and Riverside Counties.

some of the details later. But I've been reporting on the border for that long and there certainly have been notable changes, And I wonder what changes you've seen, Like we go back to like pre twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, like that was before the whole wall shenanigans, So like, do you guys want to describe what changes you've seen in patterns of migration, and like I guess how safe that journey is or isn't, and how that's changed.

to trust. Yes, yeah, and the people there's a lot of pitfalls to just arriving at the border, even from like internal migration, like within Mexico, people arrive to the border and don't really know how to operate like the day to day there, and it's really made an already incredibly dangerous situation.

like hotel stays that people traveling from Turkey came and they stayed like Inkan Koum for like a month. So like I mean, people are gone from their from their homelands, you know, longer amounts of time now that you know, isn't a comfortable thing. So it's not like you can ax and not like you can you know, rest and you know mentally and physically everything like that. So it's definitely making that part harder for people crossing.

navigating the pitfalls of that. Yeah, it's it's becoming like a more and more difficult and I guess could have complicated issue, but I think what's not particularly complicated is that, Like, no one should have to walk across the desert without water,

right like that, It's it's pretty basic. So maybe we could go through what a water drop is and like what just if we could walk through, like you know, how far you guys walk, What you're leaving at there, what you find that people take, what you find that they need in their journeys. And you were talking about the receipts. I found tons of those and plane tickets and stuff like the things that you find that help you understand how better to help people. I guess.

some areas. But when it's cooler times and the temperatures are you know, below eighty degrees, you know, we can hike you know anywhere up to I think the max

that we did was like just about twenty. But on the average, you know, the cool weather hikes will do, you know, right around ten miles or so, and then when it gets hot and the desert gets really hot out there, you know, like over one hundred and ten degrees on a constant basis and starting to get over one hundred and twenty degrees, you know, we can maybe

do about five miles by foot. We've kind of ran a trial and air this season as far as trying to push further to see how far we can go, and we attempted seven miles and that I mean we

all were gassed right around the five mile mark. So we have to set limits because not only is the distance, but the time spent underneath the sun without shade, and that exposure is you know, what drives the internal body temperature up and everything like that, and if you don't have a chance to cool down, that's when your body

starts to wear out. You get heat exhaustion, and you know, we want to avoid heat stroke at all costs, and we're trying to make sure everyone's safety is accounted for, so we have to kind of cap that in the in the summertime to like five miles.

You know, some drops have gotten snowed out. We haven't been able to complete them because of the snow. And so the protective clothing varies in the summer. It's things like bandanas, cooling towels, hats, socks we leave throughout the year. People's footwear not being appropriate almost almost always. Yeah, blister can be a death sentence out there. So if you get a blister and you're not able to keep up with your group, there's a really good chance that you're

going to get left. So something like having dry socks to change into can very well save somebody's life. So we leave socks throughout the year, pop top cans of food and.

for you know, most of the day. You know, in those you know, harsh months of like January and February where eastern Sandiwo County gets the like the winter storms, the freezing cold, you know, when roads get shut down, we can't even access so as Jacqueline mentioned, you know, when it is cooler, we try to go as much as we can, as far as we can to stockpile as much as possible for when the weather prohibits us from doing so otherwise.

series on title forty two. We spoke to a lot of people, and a lot of people reached out and they like they want to help, and I understand that the border I think for a lot of people, it's like I think reporting on the borders as a rule is not great, like that we tend to see migrants as numbers and not as people a lot when when people report on the border, right, and that that's kind of it happens with with more liberal outlets as well

as more right wing outlets. But I wonder, like a how people who aren't in town, Like if you're not in if you don't live in the border lands, right, it's so you live in the middle of them America, Like, how can they help? What can they do to kind of support the prices that you're doing making this horrible thing? It will kind of.

to be purchased, that sort of thing. So providing material aid is one way of contributing. And then aside from that, I think just following along with this work and sharing it and changing the conversation because, like as you said,

reporting on the border can be really tricky. People tend to not just utilize migrants, but utilize the border as a region in order to have talking points for either like media outlets or people campaigns or that sort of thing, and the border gets treated as sort of like its own foreign area that's not related to either country, like nobody wants to take responsibility for it. And you know, residents of the United States also are complicit in that because they don't really they just.

they haven't been engaged before. But it's I know, it's like it shouldn't be, like we shouldn't be saying we ever get used to how like cruel our border infrastructure is and what it does for us, But people are just blown away every time. Absolutely, Yeah, but I think you're right, like witnessing it is very important, even if you know you can't done it financially, if you can't get down.

most people in the United States don't know. If they

don't don't see it, they'll live near it. So that's you know, something that most people rely on the media and what they see on the nightly news, and you know even that, you know, the big media outlets don't take the most realistic or don't share the most realistic parts of the border, you know, only to you know, kate to their you know, their sponsors or cater to their crowds, and so a lot of people will get like the headlines, but they don't get the real deal,

like you know, what's going on down the border, and so sharing is is a big part of you know, how the word spreads of the work that we do in other organizations as well.

the prototype sat there. They were in the twenty twenty solicitation to like it just seemed odd to me that someone had to tweet a video for them to like understand because they go no one had walked up to it and checked it out, which I don't know. I think it's hard to do border reporting in New York personally, But yes, you're interested in the northern border. So I wanted to ask about Title forty two because I think our listeners are pretty well informed on what that was

and what happened before and after that. So did you guys notice when that came into effect? Just to recap I guess for people, Title forty two allowed border patrol to bounce people straight back south without processing them and in nearly all cases without hearing that their claims were asylum if they had, and then those people were sometimes latterally translated across the border to a border town where they may not have had contacts or family or any resources.

And it often resulted in most people finding themselves in an even more difficult situation than they already were, or trying to cross in more difficult and dangerous places to avoid that. So did you guys notice any changes like around and that came in what March or twenty twenty? As soon as they could as soon as they found an excusing in COVID, and not so much.

something that we came across much. But after that went into effect in twenty twenty, we started running into a lot more people. We started seeing people that knew, you know, somewhat of you know, the policy, and that people would try multiple times every day to you know, cross through, and if they got apprehended and got you know, taken into Mexico, they tried again that same day. And so we noticed a lot more of our supplies being used, a lot more foot traffic, and a lot more you know,

interactions with us. We started seeing a lot more interactions with you know, board patrol and people crossing through. And so when the policy was coming to an end, the only thing that we really saw increase was the amount of people trying to get in before you know, quote unquote got closed off, you know, before like the bands would go into effect and you know, like the no you know, you can re enter for a you know a certain amount of years and all that kind of stuff.

So like the camp in Hukumba, you know, you see you know, thousands of people showing up as that you know, stopped, as Top forty two stopped. We really can't notice too much yet that less people are crossing through compared to the beginning the middle of the policy. Our supplies are still being used at a high rate, still see a fair amount of traffic come through, you know, these these corridors and everything like that. So it's kind of hard

on our end. But you know, we also know that people who do cross not at a porta entry by foot, whether it's over a fence, whether it's around a fence, whether it's through the desert, over the hills. We know that people are still being apprehended, processed, and released with their asylum claims. So it's hard, as you know, on the board to know exactly what's going on because a policy can say one thing.

and that's what we're seeing. Whether we can actually like attribute it directly to like these policy changes, what I think we can attribute it more directly to is like one, global migration, regardless of policy, is increasing all over the world, and that desperation doesn't like really wait for any kind of policy change. Two is like the misinformation and sort of like chatter that people are hearing about like this

pos changing. Oh I heard that, like if you don't use this app, they're going to put you in jail. And like just like literally these things that we're hearing on the border that is funneling people directly into the desert because they want to avoid any kind of interaction with border patrol. Even if they have like what would be a you know, like an asylum claim. People aren't trusting because there's so much change and uncertainty at like

a policy level. There's no accessibility to this information, there's no clarity to this information. Nobody knows what's going on, whether it's people that are working in border aid or people that are seeking asylum. So people are just you know, taking their chances and hitting the desert. And regardless of the policy change, like ever since the last like you know, like we said like three to five years, the increase has been like exponential every single year.

and using people, vulnerable people as pawns. And so the rhetoric coming out and you know, the you know, we're taking a hard stance and this that and the other, a crackdown on immigration, and that I feel it was the current presidential administration just trying to appeal to a larger audience or when the election comes up next year, you know, can you say, hey, look did this, did that,

did this? And the way the numbers have been skewed for apprehensions, you know, that's when you'd have like say in San Luis and Yuma, Arizona, you would see you know, hundreds and thousands of people every day showing up to present themselves for asilence. Those all got recorded as apprehension numbers. So you've got in one month, you know, however many you know, thousands. Now Title forty two ends. Now that number shrinks down. Now that looks better, That looks tougher

on you know, immergion. That looks like you're doing this, that and the other. Meanwhile, you have people just you know, being vulnerable, being you know, in limbo, you know, on the other side of the border, or you have them taking to the mountains and deserts and taking the dangerous trek just so they can be apprehended and you know, plead their case and try to get asylum and try to get released into the United States. So people that are being used as ponds in this political theater that

we always talk about. As always, it doesn't matter the administration, whether it's blue, whether it's red, whether it's orange, whether it's old, whether it's you know, money, it's all money. And unfortunately, you know, we have to constantly like dispel a lot of that false narrative that comes out, and it gets exhausting, but I mean it's what we have to do because you're not going to find that out any other way.

five apprehensions. It's one person, And they were deliberately using that to make this to seem like more people are coming, and as you say, now it will seem like less because that doesn't happen anymore. I think your point about like the jacking and the points about the misinformation is

super crucial and one that again often isn't reported. But like I'm not a lawyer, and I can't give people legal advice, but constantly when I'm in Tijuana, when I'm in Sonora, when anywhere where I'm like on the southern side of the border or on this side of the border, people will ask me, or when the people are trapped in between the two fences that constitute the border, people

will say, hey have you had this? Hey I got this, and they'll play like voice messages on WhatsApp often or show me a WhatsApp and we'll go over like that's not my understanding, you know, like I don't think that's the case, but it's it's I understand you're vulnerable, you're scared, and this shit like I have a PhD and speak all the concerned languages, and I don't understand it fully, Like it's it's complicated and petrifying if this is your only hope of like a dignified life, and I think

it's something that people don't understand. It's how hard it is for those people to get decent information about like what there's quote unquote supposed to do, especially when we have this app, which like I don't have a ton of foyers in around the app, but I don't think I'll ever get any documents back from the FAD to be honest, but yeah, it's it's so toerocious. I think it's ridiculous.

just crazy stuff. Like if people are even lucky enough to get somebody to help guide them through the process, it's not even like a certainty that the information that they're provided is even going to be accurate on purpose, Like people are given inaccurate information to wade through this process that doesn't seem to make sense to anyone. It's it's wildly like convoluted. I mean that's the intention, right, Like it's not meant to be navigated in any way.

money supposed to come from? And then do you know if if your language is you know, aroma or something, it's that much harder to navigate that system, to find

useful resources to explain it to you. And it's yeah, it's people like to talk about like how I know that their family did legal legal quote unquote migration when there weren't these checks in place and they didn't have to do any of this shit, And I don't know, it's I don't think people realize how brutalizing the system is until they've seen it first hand.

probably not going to win that case. The town's a mile away. The town's a mile away, and it's a straight shot and you'll get there in half a day and then you're good to go. And I mean we've heard the most wild stories, like even from people in the middle of the desert lost saying they told me it was two mile walk and that there was they were hiring in the town on the other side of that hill. Yeah, like, and I mean, like who wouldn't at that point it's like you don't have a country

to go back to. Yeah, Like it's no longer like, oh, I'm fleeing my I'm migrating from my country because there's no work. No, there is no country to speak of, at least not for you. And you're here and this Goyota presents you this upper like so it's misinformation and exploitation like every single step of the way. And a lot of the time people's most straightforward avenue is through the desert, even though it's like unbelievable, hardened, very very

often deadly. That's like the surest shot that they have and they take it because I mean it wouldn't.

they'll make more money in the US. It's like I will die if I stay, or someone who's already killed someone I love, and I have to leave now, and especially when like the Trump administration, like the people aren't aware, Like towards the end of the Trump administration, Trump started making claims in presidential debates about the number of miles of wall he was he had built as far as I can work out, he pulled out of his ass, and then the like then they started rushing to build

more wall, and they I asked them how they came up with that number, and then they like they did this thing where they were like, oh, well, we repaired this much wall and they were like eight miles of border wall prototype and like cool man, Like they didn't build that much wall, but they started skipping the harder parts, right like Valley of the Moon, even that boulder Pilo outside of Cumba, Like there are areas that don't have wool and those areas that are harder, and then that's

where people try and cross and like I love to go outside. I'm a pretty fit person, and like the value of the Moon is hard going, like if you're not going up the road, like that's tough travel and that's where people don't have a choice bed to cross, right right, Yeah.

get down there, you just follow this road. Once you get down to the bottom, there's gonna be a buzz waiting for you. It'll take you in. And then they got the stranded for days after going through that terrain. The temperature that's when like the season really started shifting, so the nights were really cold, the daytime highs were pretty hot. And I mean that was the you know designed you know.

and knights to stay warm. And you know, border patrol probably didn't expect that a people locally in Hukumba were going to care or be that the word would get out and so their crual practices that they were in acting on like the first day or two of people showing up and being stranded no food, no water, then it kind of backfired. And then you know, I believe

you went out there as well. You saw how many people showed up to care, and like we were working around the clock to try to you know, organize and

make food, prepare food pack, collect donations everything. And you know that's I've gone through that terrain and you know, after all that was closed down and looking through as you know, as we did like trash cleanups and people you know, would have their last remaining food and water that you could see coming through across you know, the area where they were brought to and like people shedding clothes because the temperatures were so warm dur in the

daytime and then just wondering like okay, so they shed their clothes and now they're like freezing down the bottom of the hill and the terrain's too tough to go all the way back up.

happened to them a couple of years ago. So it's as you're saying, like the fences and like where they're not put it's it's just a point of cruelty and part of the prevention through deterrence policy that's been going on for you know, almost thirty years now, and definitely yeah, and the CBP one app app and all the kind of stuff that's just another extension of prevention through the turns by making it harder for people and pushing people to ways that they can try to get through or

you know what they think they can try to get through easier. And as Jacklin said, it's just it's become more and more deadier. And every year the numbers go up of confirmed US, but that doesn't count the amount of people that go missing every year.

this is and how cruel this is. You guys, I know you're familiar with it, but the young women who died on the shrine trail in was it winter of twenty twenty or winter of twenty twenty one?

turned into heavy winds, like zero visibility snowstorm. And these three sisters that were from Wahaka, who've crossed over for work multiple times, came worked, went back home, you know, for you know, whatever season, came back, worked, went back home. And it was my understanding that they were trying to save up enough money from what they made here in the United States to open up their own business.

that people would you know, leave little little symbols and tokens and little items behind, mostly to you know, the Virgin of Wa Loupe. And from that point it is that that's the last time you can be hiking on that trail that far north and turn around and still see Mexico. Anything beyond that, it's kind of like the point of like you can't see Mexico, Like you've got

to keep moving forward, You've already gone, you know. At this point it's close to thirty I think air miles, so like you know, you know, walking miles is a

lot more than that. Yeah, And they were at this kind of like rock boulder outcropping just about five minutes walk shy of the shrine when the sisters couldn't keep going anymore and because of the extreme weather in the extreme cold, they were soaking wet from the rain and then the you know, sub freezing temperatures with the snowstorm, they couldn't keep going anymore, and so they were kind of huddled up underneath of this boulder. It's the only spot that kind of gave like a little bit of

shelter from that storm. Yet, I mean those rocks are you know ice cubes, you know, being out there that long. So the two brothers I believe left to try to get cell phone signal because you know, you're you're up pretty high in the mountains. I think that elevation up there on the mountain, I think it's somewhere around five

thousand feet. More so that that location where that we're where they passed away, and the brothers that took off to try to get cell phone range to calm you know, ems, which turns out to be you know, border patrol in that region, and so got to hold a border patrol.

Uh border patrol arrived to where the brothers were, and first thing, you know, before you know, rushing to try to make a rescue anything, they you know, detained and arrested the brothers for you know, for you know, human smuggling, trafficking, you know, just you know, being colliotes, and then they put in efforts of trying to rescue. By the time I believe that they got to the three sisters, two of them had already passed away, and there was one

that was still barely alive. Unconscious and due to the whether, as Border Patrol has stated, the agents, the four star you know rescue agents, the search and trauma rescue, they had to take off. They couldn't airlift the last remaining sister out because there's zero visibility. The helicopter couldn't even get like find them, couldn't get like anywhere close to them, couldn't hover because the wind was blown so hard. It

was just about a whiteout condition. So, I mean, the most you know fucked situation possible, and Border Patrol in order to make sure it didn't turn into from a triple fatality to however many of them there were, I think there was three or four's that were out there, so to you know, in order to save their lives,

they took off. They put the last remaining sister like in a like a puffy overall type of situation, and they they had taken her wet clothes, they cut her wet clothes off her, and you know, we're actively trying to warm her with like heat packs and wrapping her, and so they took off and kind of just like left her, you know, with basically, as I said, the best you know chances possible of survival even though someone being left on their own in that condition there's zero

chances of survival. Border patrol took off, allegedly injured themselves, you know, in doing so, got frostbited, et cetera. I think it was the next day, came back out for the would turn out to be the recovery, and all three sisters had passed away, you know, from you know, freezing to death. And so as we learned about that, you know, as the situation was unfolding, we reached out to the the journalist who wrote the article in local

San Diego Union Tribune. His name is Alex Riggins, and through you know, some back and forth contact, he was covering the trial of the two brothers that brought the sisters through their in court for their deaths, and reached out to see if we could find out any information, if Alex could let us know, like maybe where the shrine trail was, or maybe where the location of the recovery was, just something that we would have so we can put it on a map, figure out how to

get there, and give boots on the ground to leave supplies, you know, a few times a year, whether it's going to be really hot, or really cold. We wanted to make sure that, you know, we responded to the crisis as we found out about it. There's something that we unfortunately have had to do all too common in this work is that's unfortunately.

newspaper could have been this location. And he put in a long hike that day and he found the clothing that was removed from the last he found the like the puffy overalls. He found a bunch of medical equipment, like emergency equipment that was used for you know, the three sisters during that process. And shortly after that, I think it was just like a couple of weeks, we got together h some of our strongest hikers, and we decided to go out there and leave a bunch of supplies.

And that is it is a hard, hard hike, whether you're you know, carrying thirty five forty pounds on your back or you're just carrying, you know, a backpack with like a bottle of water and some food. Like, it's hard no matter what. So we got up there and we left supplies. And you know, we've been going back you before, seasons change, where it gets hot, it gets cold, and we track to see if you know, anything has been taken. And it doesn't appear that that trail gets

too much use, but it does get some use. Yeah, So you know, I don't know if if the three sisters passing away there had anything to do with like future travel for people on the trying trail or or what, but you know, we made that commitment in their honor and to prevent anything like this ever happening again.

that's the story that they're reporting. I think we rightfully are skeptical of anything that they say when it comes to rescues and how they prioritize doing so when we have seen entirely the opposite occur on a regular basis when they have the opportunity to provide aid them electing to do so. You know, going back to Hakumba, when people were out there and they had nothing, They weren't being provided a city water for days and days and days.

and they chose not to do it. Like time and time and again, we see these situations and I think, like when you know, before we started recording, and you asked, like, what's the thing that like we want to talk about that doesn't often get talked about, And.

the response is night and day. When there's a migrant that's lost and we are calling for assistance, you know, any kind of can a search be initiated, can we get like the response is so blase and minimal, and there's no accounting, there's no holding them accountable for acting or failing to act right, and it's blatant, like and I think that's the thing that like the general public that isn't involved in this work like should know about how cruel it is and how little the response is

when somebody is lost, when they're dying, when they're dead, like us having to call the coroner repeatedly to have children's bone picked up. That would not happen if that

child was not presumed my grant. So this is like we have story after story after story of like situations like this is just one tragedy, but there's a lot of could have, should have, would have like on the end of like eight organizations that we carry, And it doesn't seem to ever be like a shared weight with any of the agencies that actually have the ability to respond to this kind of thing in like an organized way.

just such a strange priority, Well, not strange, it's a cruel and horrible priority choice, right to prioritize that kind of like enforcement of a human lives like which are being lost. And it's the same like you know, ever bolted in Arizona or a time, I spend a lot of time there. I spent a lot of time here, reported in Texas a couple of times. Like, it's the same all across the border, right, the priority is not

rescuing people. It's and it's not even particularly enforcing the law as it's written, it's just stopping people coming.

so many people I know. I Yeah, I don't know how I went over a ton at that time, but I guess managed to avoid it. But yeah, it's it's that.

And then like I have been in the middle of nowhere in the desert and found cameras, surveillance towers, right like, stuff that would not be the constitution is largely irrelevant, but like there wouldn't be legal or just like unjustifiable anywhere else, And like this spans from here to like our Otum friends in Arizona to Texas, right like, if you live on the border, like or any within one hundred miles of the border, right, the border can come to you. It doesn't matter if you care or not.

It doesn't matter if you consider yourself to be like an immigrant to the US, or if you've sort of decided that that doesn't apply to you or you don't care about those people like then it doesn't matter that surveillance still impacts you, and often it impacts like our indigenous friends, right like my my all time friend Kumii friends had the grave yards bulldose to build the wool.

And yeah, even if you don't care, even if you think the wall is great, that your cell phone still there through distinct ray down.

stuff started the border. And now we see that just recently, like the San Diego City Council approved to have the like the streetlight eras and all that kind of the lamps and all those you know, hundreds of cameras that are going to be out there with that same type of technology, and like, well, if you're not breaking the law, it's like okay, we'll give a little bit of time until you're not breaking law, and then like stuff still happens.

I mean, that's that's how you know things, you know, Snowball.

Kindness online. You can find them on Instagram. You can find James there Brolo el Cordero prott to be able to work out how to spell that, and you can find them on Facebook, and you can find them on Instagram, and you can pretty much find them anywhere you go on the internet by searching Border Kindness, and like James said, they in his I'm looking at his Instagram profile right now,

so it's Brolo el Cordero. I guess b r O l O e l c O r d e r O. James has a wish list, an Amazon wish list, so if if you're not close to San Diego, then you can you can just click on that and buy them something. I'm sure you could collect donations and send those as well. So there are a lot of different ways you could help.

But I hope you all enjoyed this. If you're in town and you want to help, go hike with them and you can reach out to them on social media as well, and I'm sure they'd be happy to hear from you. Thanks so much for listening, Goodbye, Hey.