It Could Happen Here Weekly 194

trickle down effects for everywhere. It's just one example of how America so goes, the US so goes the world. You know.

genocide yep, taking place some in Sri Lanka. I mean, there's so many things happening across the world right now, it's really difficult to keep up.

against militarism. And those who don't know, militarism is the belief or policy that the nation should maintain a strong military and be prepare to use it aggressively to defend or promote its interests. It often involves glorifying military virtues and ideals, and prioritizing military strength and readiness above other

aspects of society such a basic Google definition. My copy of the Anarchist Encyclopedia is the English version, which is aberged, sadly, but the original French has the full unabridged Anarchist Encyclopedia. So with a bit of shaky online translation magic and managed to pull its definition of militarism as well. Miltarism is a system that consists of having and maintaining military personnel. It's essential and avoult goal is a preparation for war.

The recruitment of a standing army in the organization of the cageris of reserve army. The accumulation that put it in place turn into the state of service of ever more modern, more perfected war material. In short, is the preliminary organization of war. All are the implications of that, well, all over the world, I think we can see, you know, the consequences of statism, the might makes right, pursuit of conquest, the fighting wars abroad or at home, for the strategic interests,

ideological commitments, resource claims, whatever the case may be. The rivalries within the ruling class, and how that pleas out, and how it's that that blows back on all of our faces. You know, the profits the military industrial complex which keeps this whole system chuning on, you know, the blood of innocence. Of course, the longstanding consequences and continued work of colonialism. And of course the way is that militarism gets turned inward with this suppression of strikes, of activism,

of popular unrest. When the now militarized police aren't enough, they often bring in the military itself and reports. With militarism, we also have the narrative component, you know, the building of patriotism that so plans the seed of fascism. States can survive without militaries. It is true the state typically depends upon some effort or some attempt at monopoly on the legitimate use of violence within the territory by some definitions.

But the states which do not have militaries often can do so because they've outsourced the military functions to another state, and or because they have other systems in place to control descent, to develop a certain degree of social condition and pacify the population.

The people in the Marshall Islands have seen the horrors of war very closely and also the danger of militarization, right like, the United States nuked the Marshall Islands, a country with which it had no quarrel, with which it was not at war, just to practice in case it needed to in Nuk, a country with which it did have a quarrel. I guess the legacy of that is very obvious and continues to this day there. But if

marshal Ly's people wish to join a military. They can join the US military, and the US guarantees the security and theory that it's it's yeah, it is again distinctly. For instance, if you join the US military in the Marshall Islands wish to access your veterans benefits, the easiest way to do so is to take a five hour flight to Hawaii. Like, like, they don't have any any

any benefits for victual veterans there. So I guess in that case, like maybe it does give people a different relationship to like state violence.

that actually benefit the lives of everyday people, you know, the reduction of pain and suffering throughout the world, the abolition of borders which so often are the motivating force behind military exercise. And while no anarchist to deny that armed struggle is necessary for defense, it's not the same as having an imperialistic or hierarchical ambition toward you know, power over towards dominating populations of people.

anti militarism. And that's why we didn't see like there was not a like standing army beyond you had affinity groups, right, and then you had like defense committees of six six to eight people, and those people like took on the role of organizing for a potential violent like in order to defend the community right, like to use violence to

defend the community against violence. But even as it became clearer and clearer that Spain was like spiraling towards conflict, they resisted the idea of establishing and I think more militarized than that.

You know, we're not in World War times anymore. You know, the strategies and the discussions and the approaches that may have worked back then, it doesn't work this in the same way now. You don't even have to declare war officially anymore. In this day and age. You can just say that, oh, you're doing a special military operation, or you can just send billions of dollars of aid to a country that you want to support, and even troops to the countries want to support, and technically you have

un declared warrior. Yeah, and you know, not only that, you also get to unleash generational trauma and poison upon generations of people. But it's okay because you're going after some terrorists. You know, you just get to push money and supplies towards this camp or that and whether the US is concerned and at least used to have to seek congressional approval, but as we see, that's not really

a thing now, especially post nine eleven. You know, back in the day, people thought putting pressure on the elected officials through protests probably enough, and you know there's the b to be had to the extent to which that worked for situations like the Vietnam War. But as we've seen with this song and Dance again and again and again, the protests are not hitting like they used to. You know, the response to the protest has been so it's routine

at this point. You know, you just send the police to bash the heads in or bet to get the military, because the movers and the shakers on the people who can actually be reached with these protests, you know, and no matter how peaceful we proclaim our protests to be we're talking about moneyed interests here. You know, a military industrial complex that has to have lyne go up, you know who, Yeah, doesn't have to give a down about

some people walking on the road. You know, the system has grown since the nineteen tens, the nineteen fourteen years. It has grown in such size and complexity to the point where you know, you don't have to care necessarily about a single movement part about a single action of protests.

the same as the Islamic State, because Palestine Action undertook it in non violent direct action. Right, But it's ludicrous to suggest that that that was terrorism and that it doesn't mean any reasonable definition of the term. But yet, where we were in a stage now where governments can declare anyone the enemy without any particular oversight, and that's the logical conclusion of two decades of this.

is and has always been labor right. Not to say that labor and labor struggles to be all and and all of our politics, but it is to say that if we want to make a significant impact, that is what we have the greatest control over our labor. And so when I talk about things we can do to affect change, I always had to take it back to

the ongoing process of social revolution. The things you do to oppose and the things you do to propose, you know, on the opposing side of things, that includes counter messaging.

You know, even though we may not have the resources of mainstream media or government communications, We have weight of mouth, we have trust between ourselves, and we have alternative media that can be, especially in this day and age, just as powerful if sparked right, especially considering the fact that the general center and the populist sentiment has, whether coming from a leftist direction or a right dist direction, the

general sentiment has been moving toward anti establishment poll of sics. The anti establishment sort of momentum is what's growing right now, and the issue of course being that sometimes that anti establishment momentum can be hijacked, such as what Trump did, you know, to get himself elected the first time he rode that wave and you know, this whole Epstein situation, we may see that foundation of his base potentially crumbling

apart a bit. But we have to look at what is actually motivating people right now and how they can be reached. An alternative media with an anti establishment mess message is I think one of the better ways to do so, you know, wherever you see it.

manufacture consent for war. You know, to be wary of potential forced flags can be used as a justification for military action to consistently poke holes in the narratives that have allowed you know, nationalists and and xenophobic sentiments to become the force that they have become today, and of course even engaged in that message, and of course ty not to let campus infect your counter message in either.

You know, that's how you get people who are you know, they gung, who are about a free Palestine, and then they start when they ask them about Ukraine, all of a sudden, it's actually really complicated. It's actually the fault of the US and the EU and na too, and not Russia, even though Russia is the one who actually invaded and is actively killing people in distrial infrastructure as we speak, right.

I Mean, there's conversation to be had about the US and EU and about NATO obviously, but it's very.

what irritates me so much. The right wing sets the conversation. Yeah, you know, you have people they say, oh, we want to talk about critical race theory, and then everybody's talking about critical race theory because they talk to or they want to target trans people, and all of a sudden, we have to scrabble to respond to all their erroneous and ridiculous claims about trans people. That comets messages is important, is important, but it cannot be all that we do, right, Yeah,

and this is a bit how to let feel. But you know, of course I'm not the one who is partialty liketoral approaches. But you can see some of that not just counter message in but also actively messaging taking place with Zora Mum. Danny's strategy, you know, when you look at how he speaks, how he addresses some of

the badly the arguments are made against him. His rhetorical strength and popularity in part lies on his refusal to carry on the conversation on the enemies too, you know, so they will go at him for something and he's going to spit it right back around owned to talking about the things that it's just really matter to people to set the conversations to get people to respond to that, because all other response is toward him have been trying to distract from his actual messaging and his ability to

steal on message as something I find really admirable, despite you know, my concerns about the investment of energy and electoral strategies.

around war. It's like I spent some time in the Anes and what people call Java, and like one of the framings that I've consistently seen and it's mostly in like the lib leaning mass media, I guess is that people went to Rejaba to fight against IS or Dash or Isis, whatever you want to call it, right, and like in doing so, that is how the revolutionary Jarba is not understood by most people, right, and they have taken the power away from it in their framing of it,

because people didn't just go. Some people did go. Justify I s right that there. They went because they saw what I was doing. They understood its inhumane and they wanted that to stop, and that's admirable. But people also went because they saw what people were building in Rajava and they thought that was beautiful and they wanted to

defend it, and that's admirable too. And sometimes the messaging around specifically ra Java, Mi and Mar to an extent right there international volunteers there too, and of course that like folks from the Amma who have picked up weapons who never thought they would, and they didn't just do it to oppose the Hunter. They did it because like in there, despite all the horrible things about war then

and like it should be avoided at all costs. In the conflict, they have built liberated spaces and they've experienced freedom, they have experienced how that feels and they've built a revolution that is beautiful in spite of the war, not not because of it, and they want to defend that.

And I think that's a messaging that we should we should consider, right, like, because the messaging that everything has to be against something bad always sort of it presupposes that that they can't have been something good, and in some cases there has been something good, and like, we won't fully understand what was happening there unless we understand that. And I think we should push back on that messaging what we see it, especially in the great legacy media.

building something else. You know, swim a message and you want to be able to redirect people's energies to the actual frustrations and interests, you know, to re center the conflict and the lens on the actual divisions of society, such as class, to make money interests known. And you know, even though it's never been easy to be anti war, you know, especially in the center of empire, and in

many ways, technologies today have empowered much greater repression. You know, in Russia, individual and mass protests are met with severe oppression, massive finds, sentences, et cetera. In the US you can face police brutality, censorship, even deportation. And in Israel, well, I haven't seen or heard anything from the Israeli populus in terms of resisting what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. But I know that those who do stand against the

mandatory conscription do face jail time for their refusal. So it's not easy to be anti war, especially in militarized and empire building territories. I get that stress and that worry, that opposition is still necessary, but there's other things. But we can we do it than just message it.

like I used to. It's become like a pressure valve or a tool of passification that could be tolerated for a time and then met with repression the moment it's time to wrap it up. And they have a couple of reasons why protests are not you know, able to do as much. You know, they have the moneyed interests. You know, they can end up being divided according to

various arguments of a strategy. And I'm sorry to say this, but protests as of late haven't accomplished very much besides getting people mutilated or jailed or worse in the past few years. And in fact, a lot of the resources that could be spent you know, building alternatives are being spent instead on you know, paying people's bonds and getting people out of jail, prison, relieve that sort of thing. Not to say those things are not necessary, you know,

don't leave your comrades to trot and jail. But I think we need to consider the free data that we've basically been giving away to the relaying class in the form of pictures, names, addresses, identifying data that they can be used to repress or dis erupt or infiltrate protesters and protesting organizations down the line, as James Herod and

synother James. As James Herod wrote in the Weakness of our Politics of protest, we have been getting some of these critiques of protests from He says, thus, instead of powerfully concentrate in our mental and physical energies on solving this problem to eliminate this obstacle to defeating capitalism, we are taking to the streets once again, mainly protested, merely incased in what is basically mindless active end quote. Later, he says, it's easy to agree on what to protest against.

The list of things that need to be stopped on the capitalism is long, so long, in fact, we don't even need to agree, there's plenty to choose from, so just pick something that suits you. Perhaps this is why I meant so many activists got involved in protesting. It's not so easy though, to figure out what we want to replace capitalism with, to work out convincing arguments about how it will possibly work, and they set about creating such a social world, especially since so little energy has

been devoted to the task end quote. And you know, I get why protests are popular. You know, as he says, it has a low barrier to entry. You just have to show up. And in a society that has been so deliberately atomized, where mass collective action has we made so difficult, protests has become pretty much a very easy avenue to get those things done. Yeah, and you know, protests can work in Sydney instances for limits any goals.

But I think that those uses are diminishing dyd in the cost benefits analysis.

proposed an alternative. It just said it pointed to something. It said bad, something I've tried not to do in my journalism, right. It is very often we do this with a journalists too. We point something and say bad, and we don't look for the ways that it could become better. And so like protesting could become such an

identity for people like you see it. I'm just thinking of like every time I get sent a link to Instagram, right, which is a platform m I don't really participate on, but I will look at things and they'll be like, oh, San Diego protest news, San Diego protester, so cow protester, And like, I think we should resist that being an identity because we want to build something beautiful as well as oppose what is bad. And if we don't have something beautiful to propose, what are we doing out there?

not be our default right now. They are our default, and I think they are better uses of our collective time, energy, and resources, even though protests are very easy compared to some of the things that are more necessary right now. You know, but if protest is where your dead set on funneling your energy, I would just say that you should at least learn de arrest strategies. You know, there are resources online to get some information on that ond

arrest strategies. You can look it up. But if it's possible, if you see the situation playing out, you know, trying not to sit by and let your comrades get pulled away, you know, it is very possible the numbers on your side to prevent the police from harassment targets and taking away people. You know, there's other stuff you can do as well, besides protests that I keep alluding to, because you know, sadly the media is no longer you know, a safe space to share things and depth in some cases.

But just remember the key is actual disruption. You know, the media will not be with you, It'll be trying to get my factor consent on everything that you do, manufacturer consent against any action taken on the things that you do. And the only way to counteract that is to maintain relationships on the ground, to maintain actual local solidarity.

Because once you have those local relationships and that local solidarity, there's no amount of things that the media can do the media could stir up that can prevent the people who see that you're on their side, see that you're stand up for them, to turn attention right. What problem happens is when you don't have any relationships, you don't have any networks, you don't have any community building, You

just doing stuff. The messaging is unclear. You know, That's where I think the media could really pounce on that. I would also say, you know, sabotage you know, hit their pockets. And the main thing, the thing that I've alluded to earlier, is to strike, you know, to organize strikes to use the labor power. Workers power still comes from a participation in production and the threat of withdrawing

our participation. We have to realize that in this time we'll live an in even the effectiveness of strikes have come on the threat in two ways. The first way is that the permanence of employment is not what it used to be. And with the rise and spread of AI, you know, you have to ask yourself how long will strike since certain fields be effective anymore. You know, I have my doubt that EI will ever reach a point

where it can replace people. But honestly, for a lot of these companies, they don't necessarily care about whether it's capable of replacing people or not. They will still try and use it to replace people. So we have to be cognizant of the fact that this is the direction they're pushing things in, and we have to be able

to stand up against that. Before we reach a point where between AI and you know, the nature of temporary work of the gig economy, it becomes was harder and harder to organize ourselves.

many unions are terrified of crossing. Every I has to be dotted, every ts to be crossed, and so the things that would actually make union action the most effective after the things that unions nowadays will refuse to do, sympathy strikes, general strikes, and so, what can we do if we are in an industry where the union is collaboration with management, with union is utterly reformist to the union review U is to actually step up and represent

the people supposed to represent it. And this is where historically wildcat illegalist strikes have had to come into play. Strikes that do not depend upon legality, that do not sit back and wave per mission, that carry far more risk, of course, that are far more difficult to organize, but are going to be necessary if we want to liberate ourselves from this constant capitulation toward the machine. In the article Striking against the Work War Machine by Jeff Schant

and PJ. Lily, this head quote wartime strikes and sabotage party because they're illegal and unsanched of nature, bring rank and file workers together outside of union structures. Workers have to make crucial decisions work for this strike directly in face to face meetings or on the picquet lines. Bureaucrats who are left to their fundamental role of broken with the bosses can be relegated to the sidelines, and such situations. In Germany in nineteen seventeen, illegal strikes helped us sweep

the union structures right out of workplaces. Strikes increasingly took on an anti union as well as anti boss character, with wildcats occurring in crowing numbers throughout the Armistice and beyond. So I wanted to of course pull on this example because this is not a unique issue. Right Even historically, where unions have stood against the struggle of workers, against WAW or against you know, actually defending the class interests, the rank and file have had to organize themselves accordingly.

So that's also something to keep in mind. And last, but not least. I just wanted to see to Stroy briefly on the proposed side of the social revolution equation when it comes to anti war struggle, and as usual, this is going to take solidarity materially, not just saying that we stand in sor diarity with such and such and such, actually share an aid, share a notes, support and refugees and going fully there, because this, I think is where a lot of our energy needs to be

right now. Our efforts to oppose are going to be for the most part, to us as long as we don't have an underlying structure that we are building upon that we are seken to defend and to Expand you know, we are not at a position right now where we pose much of a threat yet, and we also have to consider that merely posing a threat is not going

to liberate us by itself. So I wanted to consider, as we, you know, wrap up this episode, what you can do to put forward out all seriative to actually try to create the new social arrangements that we think

should replace capitalist, statist, militarist order. And this is something that I talk about on my channel, of course, I talk about building the commons, building alternative media, well sense of the economy and developing all powers or drives and our consciousness and so you can check that out if you'd like. Unfortunately, this is it is happening here and don't forget. You could check out the YouTube, the picture on et cetera. All power to all the people.

twenty twenty five. NPR reported in May of this year that Gaza has already reached Phase four of the Integrated Food Security phase classification. The IPC just coordinated out of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and an organization called the Famine Early Warning Systems Network.

Phase five, the situation in Gaza is dire. In July twenty seventh today, when we're recording, there's reporting that there might be air drops, that the trucks on the Egyptian border are moving towards Gaza, after the Israeli government has received a lot of pressure over the ongoing aid crisis. But of course that may be too late for many gazas. As I said, we're speaking with Bush today, who will talk to us about her work from the vantage point of ox Jam.

for example, farming communities, providing them with irrigation pipelines. You know, it could be agricultural inputs needed for growing their crops. It could be technical support to farmers to support them and growing, for example, vegetables. How do you grow crops

of vegetables around date trees? You know, So it's kind of that kind of work in terms of the food security component of that we have a big part of our work is with women's organizations, women's cooperatives, women's farming cooperatives as well.

insurance to the farming sector here and palastline. Other things could be could look like, you know, small grants to start a small kind of business women for example, ceramics, women's cooperatives and farming. I mean, so a lot of it worked like this, and most of our operations are actually run through partners. So we have about ninety partners kind of across the OFFI fied filesting territory, and about eighty to ninety hoard of our operations are actually completely

implemented through partners. But of course after seventh of October, our programming really drastically kind of shifted to fully humanitarian where you know, we are now basically providing high eigiene kits, food parcels, some agricultural inputs as well. Where we could you know, set in Gaza, it looks like setting up latrines, hand washing, state like mobile stations. It can be like water trucking. I mean, it's it's changed, you know, depending

on the access that we've had. So for example, since March this year, we've not been able to enter anything because of Israel's full total siege on Gaza, so nothing kind of entered. So our operations look like psychosocial support to women, young girls and shelters, trucking water from one area to another where we've felt like these communities potentially needed water or had a little access to water. It

could look it looked like a cash for work. We do a big, big, big, big part of our both now in the West Bank and in Gaza is providing cash for work. So for example, we have daily workers that will remove solid waste with their bare hands unfortunately

because there's no materials to remove waste in Gaza. But then they would receive like kind of daily daily rates in order to get paid and then there's like cash vouchers for the most vulnerable, where they can you know, have a voucher in a store and they can you know, purchase items that we've read for example with the store owner to that you know, people can purchase with our with our kind of cards.

this goes back decades. I would say kind of the most notorious development in shrinking space we call it shrinking space is twenty twenty one when they declare six organizations Palestinian civil society organizations mostly are human rights organizations that some of the most notorious and well known human rights

organization where they're designated as terrorists organizations. So that was kind of the first big you know where many of those partners, those six partners were actually partners of international organizations. So you know, we found ourselves kind of advocating for continuing our support to these six despite the designation by Israel. Never you know, and there was never, of course evidence provided by the Israeli government as to what evidence they had,

why would they deem these organizations terrorist organizations? But you know, they continued to operate under very very difficult circumstances. Their offices were rated, their assets were confiscated, but you know, they're still operational and we're still certainly supporting them. And of course, you know shrinking space or the restrictions on humanitarian civic space, it translates into, you know, into so

many different restrictions. It could be you know, restrictions on permits, restrictions on what crossings you're able to use as a humanitarian you know, whether you can go through that crossing or another.

has reverberating impacts to the rest of the terrritory. But for us, I think the first kind of sign of turmoil was when there was already a decision but nothing had been kind of formally communicated of a new registration process for international organizations that started already in twenty twenty four, where the civil Administration announced to our respective organizations that there will be a new registration procedures Israeli Simple Administration,

Israeli Civil Administration. And so it was only kind of ten months later that the criteria was kind of presented to us, and only a year later that the criteria actually came into effect. But in that time where they were announcing these new measures, there were lots of visa denials. Permits of course, were completely non existent for humanitarians. So for example, you know, I had a permit to Gaza

for six months, that of course stopped. All of our staff in the West Bank had permits to travel both to Gaza and in Israel. Those stopped on the seventh of October, and say, and vice versa. Are our colleagues in Gaza who had permits to come to Israel to travel through the Allen b Bridge because of course, you know, policies don't have an airport, so they have to travel through ALLENB to travel through Ammen.

it's made of basically thucks. You know, if you look at the background of some of these people that are in the committee, I mean, you know, it's and they are now deciding of.

registration from. But obviously because of the you know, unrecedented number of humanitarian workers that have been targeted and indiscriminately targeted as well. In Gaza, we've got more than four hundred humanitarian workers killed. At this point, we are unable to submit our staff lists because of you know, we

have no guarantees of protection. Even though we have guarantees under protect you know, international law, this is not applied when it comes to Gaza and in Israel's conducts, and it's in the hostilities against humanitarian workers in humanity in space. So that's one of the criteria. But there's also other criteria where, for example, we would be revoked our registration or not re registered if we are seen to support some of the designated organizations that were designated early on,

which most of our organizations do. So many of us are facing about to face basically being deregistered in Israel and losing our presence in Jerusalem, which is you know, has such a big implications, not because you know, we're so desperate to have presence in Jerusalem, but because it says a lot about what the future of East Jerusalem means.

Because you're moving aener wha, you're removing the INGOs, and you're moving all the program and the support that goes to organizations that are operating in Jerusalem, providing legal services to people that are losing their homes, that are getting their homes demolished on a daily basis, legal services for settler attacks that happen also in East Jerusalem, and school provision of school services, educational items, educational activities, summer caps,

you know, I mean, et cetera, et cetera. The list goes on that will be removed. And that's kind of you know, it's working now in parallel with the annexation kind of plan that Israel has been threatening and implementing at the same time, so you know, everything is moving

towards this annexation. It also has fast implications because many of our organizations operate in areas C because the most vulnerable communities you know, are in area and so we always, you know, we as part of our programming is obviously reaching the most vulnerable Palestinians and those that need to help and support the most and so annexing areas CE and de registering at the same time de registering us from Israel means that we will also have very a

lot of difficulty assing these communities and accessing areas see as we mention here in organizations, we've not had visas for international staff for since the.

in Gaza. Of course, it looks like our materials have been systematically and deliberately denied, rejected, delayed, you know, over the course of the last twenty months. But of course, adding it's worse since March second, when Israel imposed it's total sea jong Gaza and basically has completely sidelined the

un IGOs and policy in the civil society. And since then we've not been able to enter anything in Gaza, and I doubt that we will be able to enter anything moving forward, especially that the registration kind of window ends in September. Beginning of September, that's when we'll finally know who is going to be registered who's not. But I expect for an organization like OXBAM, it's part of the registration process. It's very vague, so we don't know

how they will apply it. But there's something about basically calling again, you know, calling out or speaking out or calling for accountability of individual soldiers and members.

deliberate policy of Israel. That is, you know, it's carried out against the kind of human humanitarians, civic space for years. It's also there's another law, there's a law that's against Israel a human rights organization where it will start taxing. It's really human rights organization that are receiving foreign funding by fifty to eighty percent or something like that. So it's just it's it's you know, it's deliberate, it's thematic.

We have been the only ones in Gaza that have been able to actually report independently on what's happening in Gaza, like the humanitarians happen, not even the journalists, because of course, you know, I can argue that, yes, Palestine journalists are independent, but you know, the most of the world would probably disagree with that. So really, I mean the independent kind of eyes and the neutral eyes, or let's say part impartial eyes, I won't say neutral happened the humanitarians and

UN agencies. Sidelining us means that we'll also see a reduction of quality reporting on what's actually happening in Gaza.

Bazilos Motrich, finance minister today had the decisive plan that said, you know, you either surrender or transfer, and we're at that level.

just in itself. You know the services that ohwa provide. You know, we have to re emphasize like education, health services, I mean, you know, shelter, oh no, what provides key services that the Pelstine authority is none to respond to? What is going to happen to all of these people when you know and already know what So listeners, electricity cut off and real love.

so quickly with this. You know, right wing, far right wing government that's you know, has zero checks and balances, zero nobody holds them accountable to anything, and so you know they're able to get away with all of this.

So I mean, my my sense is that you know, very soon you will no longer see kind of the long standing organizations that have been here for decades that have very much understood the context very well and have understood that it's impossible to do the work that we do without also bearing witness and speaking out on what

we're witnessing. And I think the UN and it's in that way, you know, even the United Nations, where in Pelsline, has made sure that the States committed to that mandate because of how important it is to speak out on what you're seeing around you. I think like that's purely I think, like, you know, we're the only ones that are able to witness and record independently what we're seeing on a daily day basis. And I think the UN

has been incredible in keeping a record of that. I mean, I think they started recording in two thousand and eight, so it's like eighteen years now almost of monitoring violations all across the territory. And if it wasn't for the work that the UN has done in that, we wouldn't be able to say that there is a genocide being carried out in Gaza, or that the risk of ethnic

cleansing has risen exponentially in the West Bank. The reason why we're able to say this is because we're able to see the patterns and the data, and you know, you can contest the data. But you know, even you were talking about the IPC, the IPC is not even reflective of what's really happening, and they say it themselves. But you know, of course the media the way the media kind of focuses on what the results because you know,

you only have time for sound bites. But if we read the IPC alerts, it's clear that one they're always delayed, so they're always talking about a time that's already passed and we're way, we won't beyond that. And two it says that it doesn't have access to Gaza. But look at the testimonies, you know, just like just reading the testimonies that some of our organizations have recorded in the last week, just talking about our own colleagues and how

they're facing starvation themselves. I mean, I think the testimonies speak to themselves on what is happening, guys. And I don't need the IPC to tell me that there's a classification four or five. It's never going to declare famine when it's not there, Like, there's never going to be a time where the IPC because that's not even the role of the IPC.

about the root cause? In every way, in every direction, the Israeli government is attempting to hobble the ability of international organizations of the Palestinians themselves to be able to solve the root causes of these problems. Yeah.

So I mean, I I it's it's so uncertain, but I think the fact that many of these organizations have been here for so long understand so deeply the context. I think organizations will also do whatever they can in order to ensure that they continue the important work here and find ways to continue to work.

plan a year and a half ago. It was maybe May last year we saw the General Islands plan on what they wanted to do in the north when they started the ethnic cleansing campaign in the north of Gaza where they besieged the north and tried to force everybody south. The idea then was already they had already were already hearing about something called humanitarian bubbles. And the bubbles are

the sites of what it's what's what's become the sites. Right, But this idea of what has been floating around for more than eighteen months. It's just that nothing kind of transpired until May. I guess that's when May the operation started. So it's really launched. This as an authorization mechanism. This is how it was originally kind of and that would expand basically Israeli military control over how aid enters, moves

within and is distributed inside Gaza. And of course I mean that and on its own is a clear attempt to instrumentalize humanitarian aid. So you know, and I think it's it's it's it's very important to clarify. You know, our organizations we operate and there's extremely rigorous standards and mechanisms where we're ensure the aid is not diverted. And I think a diversion, you know, it's been talked about like Hamas eight divers A diversion exists everywhere. Its exists

in every crisis we work in. Like it's something that is part of you know, crisis mode, like this is where when there's a crisis, when there's chaos, that's where there's space for informal actors to start popping up. So it's a symptom of every crisis around the world. And so you know, it's not just a Gaza thing. So we have totalcols on how we can ensure that a

diversion doesn't happen in operations. And of course as humanitarians, we would never accept military or profit driven intermediaries overriding what we call principled aid delivery, because it basically means that you're expanding military control over aid operations by an actual party to the conflict you know, which, of course, risks that aid will never reach the most vulnerable you know, of course at a time when it was most needed.

So from our perspective, there is no scenario where we would accept any attempts to militarize and privatize humanitarian aid, whether it's a GAZO or anywhere else, because such actions actually biolate international humanitarian law, but also they undermine the core principles of humanitarian law, which are in partiality, independence, in humanity. These are principles that guide all of our work.

And of course, what is the most dangerous about this model is not only the massacres that have occurred near daily at these food distribution sites run by the GJEP and other actors. It's it's set such a dangerous precedent where occupying powers around the world will now be able to dictate the terms of aid based on their political agendas and their military goals. That is what's effectively now happened is that if it's happened in gays of why can it not happen in Uganda and d Orski and Sudan?

And I want to also take it a little back. Let's talk about the peer. The peer last year is exactly the same.

I think it was the way that camp the refugee camp at the time and were able to obviously, yeah, rescue hostages, but kill I mean, you know a dozens in that operation using the peer, and hence why we're like we do not we would distance ourselves and from the beginning distance ourselves from the peer.

it's that we were prevented from doing it. We were deliberately prevented from doing it. So it's a political decision. It's not a logistical decision that prevents us from doing

our work in Gaza. And so branch thing Israel control over who receives the aid, where they received the aid, and from who has basically turned what is relief what should be relieved to the civilian population is actually a tool of coorsion because what we saw is massacres, people being shot indiscriminately at I mean, we heard doctor Nick

Maynard yesterday. Yesterday he came back from Gaza a week ago where we've heard of children being shot in the testicles at these distribution sites, you know, and no one he mentioned on the same date he saw half a dozen boys with the same injury, sniper shot, sniper shots

in the testicles at food distribution sites. So what's happened now is that what Israel has done is that it blurred the line between what humanitarian assistance is, what a military objective is, and of course putting the civilian helstine civilians and aid workers as well, because aid workers, we know some of our colleagues in different organizations that but even themselves I've had to go to these food distribution sites because there's nothing and we're unable to even support our.

that were killed. But also and in that movement of the population towards the south, because that's the only place that they had food, right, So, you know, this is not protection.

Israel's occupation or israel siege or Israel's military control. So not only has this scheme reinforced military control over the God's ship, it has completely dehumanized posts by design, like Palasinians are only worth a box of food. That's that's what basically essentially What has happened is that we have reduced a humanitarian response that addresses hospitals, medical care, water sanitation, wastewater shelter. It goes right to dignity, to a box

of flour. You know that you can get killed getting or you get killed. And not only that, it's the first come, first serf. You know, it's whoever's the strongest. It's the survival of the fittest. That's not what a humanitarian aday is about. We're supposed to meet the most vulnerable. We need to reach the pregnant moms, the people with di stabilities, the number of record number of amputees in Gaza, the record number of disabled people than Gaza right now.

whatever you want to call them. I don't even like calling them distribution sites because they're not distribution sizes. It implies that there's some sort of like system to it. There's no system. It's literally the gates to hell. And then everybody flows into the you know, floods, and we've heard of people carrying knives to protect themselves because they're getting looted because's not enough of course food.

at the at these age sites, and I couldn't mention that in things that I wrote because they didn't believe Kalestinian testin I mean.

So you know, I can see for the clear conscience that we did what we needed and we could you know, what we could do, and we did warn that this would happen and this would be the result, and now.

I also want to point listeners to a volume that was released called Suppressing Dissent, edited by Zaha Hassan and h. A. Hellier, because full disclosure, I do have a chapter in that book, but it's about the shrinking civic space prior to October seventh and the dynamics that we have we have seen,

you know, basically playing out at this point. Thank you so much, Bushel for coming and speaking with us under such severe circumstances and explaining I think really succinctly the dangers of this moment, because what is happening in Gaza will change the world.

I can even think of that the day I was there, and it's quite it's impactful to see that all these people have died in places I know so well. Perhaps we can explain, like the scale of this is huge, right, do you know how many exactly how many data points there are on here?

data and some for example, Wegg County Medical Examiner. They don't give up their data to anybody, and there's a lot of issues with them potentially like not having actually performed autopsy on a lot of autopsies on a lot of migrants, and there's some potential bookcases about that going on.

the incident narratives from the medical examiners. We can actually tell when Border patrol was involved, and so we mark when border patrols involved when they're not involved, and then when that case doesn't actually get counted by Border patrol, okay, and it doesn't actually really line up.

that person ends up being in Vortical Patrol's database. So, I mean, they've been in trouble with the GAO multiple times for undercounting or improperly counting or recording these debts, and so they have access to medical examiner data. Medical examiners send them the data, they just don't use it.

We often also noticed that the causes that get really don't match up in a lot of really specific cases like yeah, for Walfalls, for instance, was the most notable one see a huge amount of cases that medical examiner will say one force trauma, and then border Patrols data will say medical examiner and detainment or exposure or any number of other things which like for the most part,

causes the death seem to line up. So the fact that these Waalfall deaths it happens to not line up is like, you know, I don't want to assume they have that intent, although obviously Bordemtrol is bad intent, but it seems like it happens regularly enough that it's hard to feel like it's not at is somewhat intentional that the cases that they're kind of choosing to change the couses of death.

cup facility, all those things, who would count as in custody. Okay, it's just important because at least one of the cases, the border patrol agent involved said the person wasn't in custody, he was just detained, which for the purposes of reporting, there's actually no difference, right, Yeah, but he said that clearly to not have it be labeled as in custody death right, and what it seems like that ended up

not being very able to deserve custody death. So it's definitely I think they're they're aware the fact that these are being equalted and kind of frown not to have.

A person is like in al Paso or San Diego or Imperial County more is chased, ends up going in a canal or jumping into a canal to escape and drowns the idea or chase on foot, and then motor vehicle pursuits are Yeah, the person is being chased by Border patrol and the glowing passions and people are chilled.

through through full time of four. Yeah.

that like wouldn't have been the case previously. I wonder, like what does this data set in terms of like recommendations, right in terms of like how we can use this data set? Obviously, we're at a time when I when I guess the Trump administration like had its complete asylum band stayed, but we're back at like people can't in good faith like turn up to a port of entry anymore and just be like, Hey, I'd like to claim

asylum and really really hope for the best. Like what does this data set tell us in terms of like what policies kill more people? And like I guess, like like what recommendations arise from the data in terms obviously, I guess bit of the recommendation is to have laws that allow people to fucking enter this country and claim

asylum without walking across the desert. But that seems like it's too much to ask, So like what do we learn in terms of like specific policies that are particularly fatal and like the way is that that could be mitigated and if it's not already by like water drops and search.

will have like kind of stopped. They'll see like this is unsustainable, and then here we are all these years later and it's worse than it's at again. Yeah, and the original prevention to de terance policy is like this strategy of essentially killing people in the hopes, I know, people will stop trying to cross the border or something, and kind of just is the original thing that it's really hard to get away from.

had been there for about three days dead. It was about forty feet from the busiest the busiest road in the entire town. Yeah, and that's just not something that really fits in with the ordinary narrative like Prevenual to de Terrance, people getting pushed out to these more remote areas, and I think just a level of militarization is just up to the level that it really is just deadly

kind of. I mean even yea, all these deaths in San Diego, as you know, also do so like all these Walfall deaths are pretty much all since like twenty seventeen, we're even more recently so the construction of all this new border wall. You can point very directly to a huge amount.

the policy goal. Like I'm just looking, like I'm looking at Pinto Canyon, which San Diego people will know it is, Like it's pretty like, don't if you're listening to this, don't go to Pinto Canyon. You might die. It's not a place to just go looking around if you're not experienced traveling out in the desert. But like, even Pinto Canyon is Gnali. But looking along the wall, the wall kills way more people than this rugged and difficult piece

of terrain in the middle of now. Well, it's it's things that we have paid a lot of money for that kill the most people. And that's pretty brutal to confront. One of the other things that you guys were able to determine was that like a number of United States residents had died right in this data set.

back ends of the country. Yeah, including I mean, it's really heartbreaking to even see. There's there's a lot of cases where the person who actually finds the body or recovers the body is not person's family members or their spouse or their children, even which only happens because you know, Board of Control is generally not that interested in recovering

bodies or in looking for people who are lost. So often Yeah, often it will be yes, somebody's somebody's spouse who comes when when it is actually the first person on listening.

out there in the trucks the last night. Like I can remember in running into some migrants in like twenty twenty three and then being like, hey, there are some other people down there and I was like where, how

do you know? And they found them on a snapchat mat wow, and like that that was you know, the only thing that maybe said those people's lives And yeah, it's pretty brutal to think that like there's still really there's no one where there are people you can call, I'm help you, But it's not the people who are getting billions of dollars. Let's talk very briefly before we

finish up about desks outside of the United States. I see you have some data, Like obviously my familiarity is with the Daddy and GAP, which I could like getting. I don't think that data exists, but like, I see you have a number of data points within Mexico. Can you explain like how you came across service and to what extent that data is if a toll like representative or complete.

Where if people want to find this data, or perhaps there's someone who's like a ninja with with data and data visualization and they want to offer to help, like where can people find this and how can they reach out to no more desks if they'd like to help in some way.

about that don't look here in the public database. So happy to share that with researchers, activists, advocacy people, journal.

This is about how we understand the messaging of fascists and understand how rhetoric and anti fascist like education works and ways that I think it's currently being misapplied.

comma a homeland worth defending. So on the surface, you know, maybe a slightly hashtag problematic sentiment here with a hashtag problematic painting or at the very least of painting depicting the genocide of Native Americans and Indigenous people specifically with like a white supremacist outlook, with this enlarged white woman bathed in a white cloak, bringing forth that the tide of quote unquote progress as Indigenous people are are forced to flee from the edge of the painting.

this tweet? Mea fifteen no, so close, so close, fourteen fourteen words in this tweet, which might remind you of the fourteen words the Nazi signifier, which I probably just explain. Surely most people listening to this is familiar with the fourteen words, since it seems everybody thinks they are an armchair expert on fascist rhetoric. But the fourteen words we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. This became a popular hashtag dog whistle,

especially in the past. I would say ten fifteen years, usually by implanting fourteen's and usually fourteen eighty eights with eighty eight meaning Hale Hitler because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet. This became a common Nazi tag. You could see this in graffiti, You see this embedded into into posts, see this in like Nazi artwork. And going back to this DHS post, we cannot only count

fourteen words in this tweet. This is actually a fourteen eighty eight because two of the h's in this in this post are capitalized unusually, and that means hal Hitler Wow because hc eighth letter.

administration and finally proves that they're fascist. You can just look at all of the fascist policies the Trump administration is enacting. Instead of doing numerology on tweets, people are thinking, ha ha ha ha, I have decoded the secret Nazi message with AHHD one eight eight fourteen. Nice trigroipers. Meanwhile, you can just look at the actual text of the post. You can look at the painting. Both of those things have an inherent fascist quality. It's literally defending the concept

of ethnic genocide, of manifest destiny. While the administration, the DHS is currently furthering as no nationalist policies.

already fascist. If they're just saying things openly and furthermore doing things, what purpose does a dog whistle haen? And this is something that we're going to discuss. Are not just saying this and closing the episode, We're going to get into these And I think part of what's happening here everybody is so cooked by the paranoid style of American politics. Everyone is so eager to decode the hidden messages that we're missing what's right in front of us.

QAnon has a total victory. Qwanon does not really exist in the way that it did in twenty eighteen. That the q Andon cult conspiracy theory as like a singular cultish project is kind of no more. But q Andon has a cultural victory over the entire United States, and not just on the right wing, not just on Mega.

in which they think that election was legitimately stolen. And obviously there was many events leading up to that which contributed to this. Yeah, and I think one of the biggest fracture points for liberal was the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, with people creating whole new alternate realities that that event was staged and because that door is opened.

Now I am seeing such a massive flood of things that I would label as bluing on conspiracy theories, which is kind of a nonsense term, but it gets the point across. And gonna do a whole piece on bluing

on very soon. I've been collecting blueing on conspiracy theories for a while, but I want to do something specifically about this fourteen eighty eight and like secret codes thing, because it's so evocative of like, you know, Q drops, and it's evocative of, you know, searching for Masonic codes, something that American conspiracy theorists have been doing for generations.

And we're to talk about that more and read a little bit of an essay on that topic after this ad break, and I will let you know there's gonna be two messages in the ad break that if you decode, you win a special prize at the end of the episode, So make sure you listen to every single second of the ad in case you miss the code. Okay, we are back, speaking of the paranoid style in American politics. I want to quote a few sections to kind of

frame what I'm talking about here. This was an essay written in the sixties by Richard hoff Setter Hofstetter Richard Hoffstetter one of the first like modern pieces on American conspiracy culture and politics. I'm gonna I have three paragraphs here that I that I selected as as being relevant to the current the current topic at hand.

in apocalyptic terms. He traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point, like religious millinery. Now he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days, and he is sometimes disposed to set a date for the apocalypse. As a member of the avant garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it

is fully obvious to it. As of yet to unaroused public, the paranoid is a militant leader. Demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid's sense of frustration. Unquote, Hofstetter is talking about something that that me and Robert specifically have have have

discussed a lot on this show before. How everyone in America wants to have access to secret information m h. Everyone wants to have the exclusive piece of secret intel that will solve everything, and like having having that like informational exclusivity in a world of information saturation, right of a vortex of like meaningless noise. It's such a romantic idea that that I alone have the info or the clue to pieces together, and it's my duty to inform

the masses. It's a very romantic notion, and it's also one that is exactly perfectly anti suited for the moment we live in, which is actually just a moment where everything that is happening is just so clearingly literal, like it's all out of the Oden, like what is happening

with the Trump administration. Okay, In twenty twenty, there is a massive uprising to attempt to attempt to fundamentally change like the structurally racist nature of the United States, to deal with its fucking class inequalities, to deal with the

structural violence of the state. This was reacted to by a massive fascist movement that spent half a decade gaining power and then finally took power in the form of like a bunch of pissed off petite bourgeois fucking car dealers and like literally a billionaire real estate mogul backed by the richest tech company guy in the world right,

and they came together to build fascism. This is the most straightforward, like if this is a conception of how a fascist takeover works that is so thuddingly literal that it defies narrativization because it's just there. There's no subtlety to it. They're just saying it. They just want to do it, and they're doing it. But everyone is convinced that there's like some kind of secret hitting conspiracy and

it's like, no, they're just doing the thing that they're saying. Yeah, you can argue that we have a griper occupied government not because of counting words and posts, but because of not only who they're bringing on for DOGE, but literally Ice in DHS as of today, which I'm recording this on Wednesday, I think, because this comes out Wednesday night, are copying like Patriot Front style tactics of loading up ICE agents in U haul style rentable trucks to do

hunt down people to assault and kidnap, like they're just copying the Patriot Front playbook. Here the ICE director said that he wants an Amazon like mass deportation system, calling it quote unquote Amazon Prime, but with human beings. They're saying this, you can say, listen to the actual words. I'm going to read another quote here from the Paranoid Style of American Politics essay quote. A final characteristic of the paranoid style is related to the quality of its pedantry.

One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is the contrast between its fantasized conclusions and the almost touching concern with factuality it invariably shows. It produces heroic strivings for evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed respectable. Paranoid literature not only starts from certain mortal commitments that can indeed be justified, but

also carefully and all but obsessively accumulates unquote evidence. The paranoid seems to have little expectation for actually convincing a hostile world, but he can accumulate evidence in order to protect his cherished convictions from it unquote. And I think that gets into the psychological mechanisms on why people are doing this Nazi code hunting. It's actually a form of

self coping. Looking at the horrific state of the federal government, looking at the brazenness in which ICE is operating, and this is a self preservation mechanism. Someone on Blue Sky that I was talking to about this is like arguing, like ICE doesn't need to dog whistle, they have no reason to.

using explicit ethno state rhetoric. In a post from this morning which has one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight nine ten words not fourteen ten words, Wow, DHS said quote, serve your country, Defend your culture, no undergraduate degree required. Defend your culture. It's not about locking up criminal migrants. It's about defending a culture from its destruction through ethnic demographic shifts. It's they're not trying to obscure

what they're doing. In the slightest No, And I want to return to something else that the Hofstater said that in that second paragraph that you read about how like one of the central conceits is that, like, you know, there's this giant conspiracy that's being unleashed and the American public doesn't know anything about it, and like, yeah, you can. You know, it is distressing to a large extent, the extent to which people just don't know what the government

is doing. But also like if you look at any pulling at all, but anything these people are doing, everyone hates it. There isn't like a secret thing you can say to convince people that they're that all these people are Nazis, because it's like and that's not even a particularly useful project because everyone fucking hates them already, Like trying to fight this in the realm of sort of the accumulation of the evidence of conspiracy instead of in the realm of like, hi, i'm your neighbor, you also.

attempt to hopefully prevent them from expanding their power. And we may have succeeded in education, but we may have failed in the prevention.

with a clear attempt to normalize white nationalist rhetoric. And like, first of all, like codes aren't rhetoric, codes or codes, And the textual fascist sentence.

that's not the purpose. So trying to conceptionize this is like we have to we have to make sure we call out the use of Nazi rhetoric that doesn't apply to this specific thing that we're talking about.

with anyone. It can stage any protest movement it wants to right. And I think you've seen this a lot in the American case, where like I see people who are like genuinely well meaning leftists who are convinced that if you do anything to resist the American State, you will immediately be killed because the American state is all powerful and irresistible. And that's just fast just propaganda. Yeah,

you're falling victim to the panoptic house. Yeah, but but it's it's fascist propaganda that fits into the narrative structure of conspiracy. And because the state is dangerous, right and can hurt you, it's very very easy to you know, accumulate structures of evidence that support the emotional sort of core of this thing that is just literally fascist propaganda.

People are resisting the state every day, right, Why is ICE fucking doing patriot prayer tactics and fucking like hiding people in like fucking U hauls to jump out and grab people. It's because when they tried to fucking mass we stomped them, right. And when they drive around in their cars and you can see them through the window, everyone follows them. People can follow them around and alert

their community members on where ICE is. Like again, mother motherfuckers and fucking Lulu Levin shit are like screaming at ICE agents when they try to arrest people, like yeah, that's the actual condition we're in, and like we get regular people.

political situation on the ground anymore. We are actually not in Charlottesville. This is a different situation. This is twenty twenty five. And one other like defense of this, you know, code hunting that I've seen people say is, quote, Nazis love playing games like this, so it's important that we call it out. And another person saying, quote, this is a fun little game for their group chats while they kill and disappear people, unquote, and like, first of all,

this is not a game. This is actual people's lives are who are being deported, who are being sent to

foreign prison camps. These are not games. And and I think that view of like anti fascist like education risks repeating like the Okay symbol debacle right where dog whistles end up being created or spread further due to this gamified version of like Easter egg anti fascism, It's kind of like the Barber streisand effect where you end up almost accidentally making them start doing the thing, which Nazis always have that like frustrating impulse because they're the little

bitch boy ideology. I think as a rat, Limit put it one of one of my favorite posters, and like, I'm not saying that Nazi signposting should be ignored, but I think we should be thoughtful and careful of how we do it. To recap the Okay symbol thing that was invented as like a fake dog whistle to try to trick leftists into convincing like the media, and had then having the media trying to convinceate with people that anyone who uses like the okayhand symbol is secretly a fascist.

And this scheme worked, and eventually the Oka symbol became an actual symbol used for fascists to identify each other through this ironic attachment because it was being talked about in the news as a secret Nazi symbol, even though this whole thing was like invented as like a joke online.

And I'm afraid I've started to already see a similar thing happen with the fourteen words dog whistle, with an increased use of the fourteen words and invoking the fourteen words among far right accounts, specifically because of this whole debacle with the DHS gov account and there a heritage to be proud of, homeland worth defending American Progress like ethnonationalist posting. And I truly cannot say one way or another if that American Progress post had a intentionally embedded

fourteen words dog whistle inside, I can't. I can't tell you that. And the point trying to make is that it kind of doesn't matter, but the way we talk about dog whistles does matter. And as frustrating as it is that sometimes this feels like we're just living in the meme where where the Nazi starts shaving his head because everyone's calling him a Nazi, that is how Nazis work sometimes. And I don't want to play into this

attention spectacle that they so badly want. But you know what I do want right now?

that they were doing it in the first place. Fascism is a little bitch ideology because it's too timid to enact as cruelty until it can frame its cruelty as retaliation against others for anticipating it, and this has been proven right faster than I think what rat limit predicted. There's this current trend on x the Everything app where white girl aspiring influencers are doing Nazi style salutes and trying to mimify the backlash. Several posts going going viral

of these. Of these like aspiring influencers either at the pool or cooking or doing laundry or walking your dog while having a your arm in a Elon Musk, my heart goes out to you Nazi salute style fashion. Yeah, and I think focusing media attention on someone like Musk doing a Nazi salute makes sense, right, he is like an actual person affiliated with the government. But making a whole media blitz about random blue check Twitter girls, maybe

not so much. Maybe that doesn't have any actual value if a random like a random Twitter poster from Missouri is trying to garner backlash by doing a Hyle Hitler salute in their kitchen next to their instapot.

And that's I think what a bunch of the backlash being focused on the aesthetics of the Trump administration, like how they film like gaudy ASMR videos that they post from the White House account of deportations and use military planes. Those are aesthetic differences, and those differences may be important, and they're they're bad, right, It's I'm not saying these things are good. Those things are still bad.

Since February, the Trump admin has averaged about fourteen thousand and seven hundred deportations of month. The highest number of deportations ever was in twenty thirteen under Obama, averaging thirty six thousand a month. The Biden admin averaged almost thirteen thousand. When the Trump administration started using military planes for deportations back in January, mainly as an esthetic choice, that triggered

backlash and rejections from Mexico and Colombia. Mexico refused to allow US military aircraft carrying deported migrants to land in their country. Colombia also barred two military planes full of migrants, but later caved as Trump threatened unitive tariffs. And you can see the same thing about deploying military to the border, something that Biden also did, but it has a larger aesthetic backlash under Trump. Do you have something you want

to say on this like image aspect? I have some quotes from Fisher and that's kind of all I have left.

the Nazis. And one of his arguments was that, you know, one of the cores of fascism is the replacement of politics with aesthetics, Right, that aesthetics would allow you to you know, feels like feel representations of do the action. And this is this is an analysis that has been sort of like folded through a whole bunch of different

analyzes of how capitalism functions. Right, this is this is one of the three lines of the society a spectacle, and it's this real issue that we're dealing with now because again kind of in a sense, what has happened to everything right, And you can argue to some extent that like our channel being called cool zone Media is sort of this is that all politics from every side

has been completely reduced to aesthetics. And completely reducing it to aesthetics allows like allows the fascist mode of politics to simply draw in a bunch of people who can sort of just now passively experience living through these sort of through this sort of collection of images and this emotional aesthetic. Yeah, and it also is doing the same

thing to us. But the thing is they have the fucking state and we don't, right, And so if you don't fucking exit, if you don't exit the sort of mirror world of esthetic of sort of like of fucking living in images, right, and you know, go do the actual shit that the board is talking about in the

society a spectacle. Were you when all your friends formed workers councils and fucking start taking all of the ship back from all of the people who were taking it from you, You're just gonna live in the fascist nightmare forever.

blood and soil. That's why they're posting American progress driving out the indigenous people with the aryan white lady carrying the torch of progress. It is an aestheticized politics on like a very pure level. And again, to quote from my goat, uh this antigoat quote Mark Fisher in captust Realism quote, ultra authoritarianism and capital are by no means incompatible.

In tournament Camp's enfranchise coffee bars co exist, neoliberals, the capitalist realists par excellence have celebrated the destruction of public space, but contrary to their official hopes, there is no withering away of the state, only a stripping back of the state to its core military and police functions. Unquote. This is very similar to something that me and Mia talked about right as Trump got elected, in terms of the state becoming more removed but hostile.

is being lived through. There is no punctual moment of disaster. The world doesn't end with a bang. It winks out, unravels, gradually falls apart. What caused the catastrophe to occur? Who knows its cause? Lies long in the past, so absolutely detached from the present as to seem like the caprice of a maligned being, a negative miracle, a melidation which no penance can ameliorate the turn from belief to aesthetics, from engagement to spectatorship is held to be one of

the virtues of capitalist realism unquote. And yeah, that's what me is talking about with Gidebor and society of the spectacle. That's a trap that I think a lot of people are falling into right now. And though it's arguable that living in a liberal contradiction may be preferable to fascist authoritarianism, that stullsn't mean it's like good, right, That's not what we're arguing here. Fisher then quotes French philosopher Alawn Badu

quote to justify their conservatism. The partisans of the established order cannot really call it ideal or wonderful, so instead they've decided to say that all of the rest is horrible. Sure, they say, we may not live in a condition of perfect goodness, but we are lucky that we don't live in a condition of evil. Our democracy is not perfect, but it's better than bloody dictatorships. Capitalism is unjust, but

it's not criminal like Stalinism. We let millions of Africans die of AIDS, but we don't make racist nationalist declarations like Lamosovich. We kill Iraqis with our airplanes, but we don't cut their throats with machetes like they do in Rwanda unquote. And already parts of this are slightly outdated.

But you know, until people actually break through the sort of pure opposition to the aesthetics and actually start, you know, having a kind of totalizing opposition to the system that is doing this, we're just going to be stuck here.

And this is I think one of the limits of using anti fascism as this like aesthetic code hunting, is because a few days ago, the ths posted a Woody Guthrie song, his song America the Beautiful, with the DHS posting the promise of America is worth protecting the future of our homeland is worth defending. Notably, everyone in this video is all white people, which this sentiment is the same thing as the fourteen words, except it has fifteen words,

so therefore not a Nazi dog whistle. We're safe, guys, we're good. I counted the words. There's fifteen of them, so you can disregard what the actual text is saying. And I think that is like the prime the prime contradiction in which I am growing increasingly frustrated So that's most of what I have to say about the limits of Nazi code hunting and the the aesthetics of superstition and the paranoid style in American politics. Mia, do you have any any final wise notes?

I probably don't have to explain the reasonings why. There's some pretty obvious reasons why you'd want it to work this way. But there are, however, some downsides to it. You know, potentially you can be depending on whether or not your side is doing it. It's a downside or an upside, right, which is that if you have a side that is the minority in the government and they don't want a vote to go through, they can just bounce.

And if they bounce at the right time, before the legislature has been called and like no one's there, then you can't get a quorum and nothing can get done. And this is big news right now because in order to stop a redistricting vote, a bunch of Democratic legislators have fled. But this is a thing that has been going on for well over a century. And it is a thing that both sides of the aisle have engaged in with substantial regularity. I'm not an expert on any

of this. The earliest example I can find if anyone doing this is in Texas. And I'm not saying that means it's the earliest example of anyone in the US doing this, But the earliest example I found in my

research was from eighteen seventy. So there's an article on this in that by the Texas State Historical Association called understanding the rump Senate of the twelfth Texas Legislature, and the rump Senate is a term applied to the fifteen radical Republican members of the twelfth Texas Legislature who fled in eighteen seventy to stop a vote on a militia bill. And this bill gave the governor power to declare martial law. It gave him the power to establish a state police force.

It increased the appointed power of the governor.

happened a lot of other times since. Right, So this is eighteen seventy. Should note it didn't succeed, right. This is, however, one of the fairly rare times when this kind of

thing happens. If it goes on long enough, every time, the governor basically will declare an arrest warrant for the legislators who have left, And as a general rule, this does nothing, right, Like, the governor has the ability to find them a certain amount per day, and it has the ability to call out an arrest warrant, but it's not like a real arrest warrant, like if you murder a guy and then lead to another state an arrest warrant will be issued that law enforcement in that state

has to abide by. Right because you murdered somebody, this is not a real crime. Basically, if you flee back, if you wind up back in the state that you left, you can be taken into custody by law enforcement in the state, but they can't leave the state to get you. And almost I would say, like ninety percent of the time when something like this happens, nobody actually gets arrested. However, in eighteen seventy several Conservative members were held under arrest

for like three weeks until the Senate could pass the legislation. So, as is usually the case, whenever stuff like this happens, it only succeeded in kind of delaying the inevitable. It didn't succeed in actually stopping things. And this has happened a number of times in Texas, most recently Texas Democratic lawmakers broke quorum in twenty twenty one. And I want

to quote here from an article in ABC News. Quote Texas state lawmakers left Brookquarran twenty twenty one when Democratic House representatives fled Texas to prevent measures restricting voting options. The measures eventually passed after internal democratic fissures led to enough representatives returning to form a quorum. And this is the kind of thing where Governor Abbott allowed the Sergeant of Arms or commanded the Sergeant of Arms to arrest

the members within Texas. Weirdly enough, a couple of them did return. The first was Philip Cortes, who briefly came back to Austin to handle personal business and there was a civil arrest warrant signed, but then he fled the state again before he could be arrested. There were warrant signed for the fifty two remaining absent legislators, but law enforcement didn't arrest or detain anybody. Eventually, enough democratic legislators

came back into the state for like personal reasons. Some of them had like shit to handle, like in their own life. Some of them had other things they wanted to push through in terms of like legislature, and so they were like, I guess I'll come back and let this happen. And eventually the House reached quorum. And this past Democrats did not face the five hundred dollars a day fine that they'd been threatened by the governor, and nobody was arrested. Now, I've been talking about Texas here,

but this happens all over the place. In fact, when this story first broke, the immediate thing I thought back on was what happened very recently in the state of Oregon, and has happened a couple of times in the state of Oregon.

Oregon Daily just is licensing this thing. But anyway, in Oregon, the most recent case of this happening was in twenty twenty three, after Republicans staged a six week boycott, which is the longest so far in Oregon legislature history, over a rule a law of the Democratic Party was pushing to protect abortion rights and the right to gender firming

care for transgender people. This again did not succeed. This was passed in the legislature and there were actually some consequences, although it hasn't been enough time to see how serious

there will be. Because there was a different GOP walkout over climate change legislation which also failed in twenty twenty two, and as a result of that twenty twenty two walk out, voters approved an amendment to the state constitution in Oregon which barred lawmakers from getting re elected if they had more than ten unexcused absences in a single annual legislative session. And as a result of the walkout the next year over abortion rights and gender firming care, ten Oregon Republican

lawmakers were barred from seeking re election again. As I stated, this is something that very rarely actually does anything. There's a twenty twenty one case in New Hampshire where Democrats walked out in protest of an anti abortion bill. The Republican House speaker locked the doors to maintain a quorum. I'm going to quote from the Central organ Daily article. I'm locking the doors right now so that everybody in

the chamber will stay in the chamber. Shout at House Speaker Sherman Packard, who later refused to let Democrats back in to vote on the bill.

I'm glad they're fighting it. However, very rarely is the actual law stopped or is anything but a delay achieved. One of the rare cases in which something more was achieved is in twenty eleven in Wisconsin, Democratic state senators fled to Illinois as a protest against Governor Scott Walker.

He was attempting to strip public workers of their union rights and this, you know, this walkout was staged at the same time as a mass pro union demonstration at the capitol, and after several weeks they won a partial victory. Republicans weakened the legislation, which is like significant, right, like the fact that they actually got concessions over this, and

sometimes the delay can be significant. The same year that that all went down in Wisconsin, Indiana Democrats also left, for for whatever reason, ILLINOI is where you go if you're doing this. I don't No one wants to come get you know, wants to go.

every worker does you want the union protecting you. You don't want to have to give up your money, So it's the kind of thing you could I think the Republican plan was use the natural greed that people have in order to hamstring unionizing efforts. Many such cases and the Democrats left, which left the House short of its quorum and threatened to stay in the other states until they were promised that the bills would not be called. Republicans successfully passed the bill, but they had to wait

until the next year. So again, every now and then you ECO win out here or the side doing this eeks out a win, and everyone does it, and everyone has been doing it for more than one hundred and fifty years. Nothing about this is new, with the exception of the fact that they actually look to be pushing some serious legal consequences. The most I've been able to find in the history of this is what happened in eighteen seventy where a number of people were arrested and

held in custody for a few weeks. Usually no one is arrested, and usually the fines aren't even actually levy. Right now, this does cost money. The last text walkout, Texas Democrats were spending like ten grand a day on food and board, you know, paying for their hotels or whatever, which was I think Beato Olor raised most of the money through his pack which is what covered it.

being trying to stay out of the state until November. In terms of consequences, new House rules adopted back in twenty twenty three after the twenty twenty one quorum, I can impose a five hundred dollars fine per day for missing lawmakers, not just from the governor. Now on Monday, the Texas House Republicans voted to issue civil arrestaurants for the lawmakers, empowering the Sergeant of Arms and the Texas State Troopers to locate, apprehend, and transport the rogue legislators

back to the capitol. Governor Greg Abbot announced he had mobilized the Texas Department of Public Safety to return the Democrats to the chamber. Now, these warrants really only apply within state lines. These are civil warrants. They're not facing criminal charges though. Back in twenty and three, during a similar quorum break due to gerrymandering efforts, fedral resources were

used to track planes with suspected rogue Democrat lawmakers. An Abbot has already proposed trying to declare their House seats vacant if they do not return, a tactic which would probably prompt some lengthy legal battles and require new special elections to take place to fill the seats. So that still would like delay this process. That's not a quick solution. But there has been some breaking news as of this

morning recording Thursday. On Thursday morning, Texas Senator John Corbin announced that the FBI would now be investigating and working to locate the Texas House Democrats saying in a press release, quote, I thank President Trump and Director Patel for supporting and swiftly acting on my call for the federal government to hold these supposed lawmakers accountable for fleeing Texas. We cannot allow these rogue legislators to avoid their constitutional responsibilities unquote.

So the extent of the FBI's involvement in tracking, down, locating, or apprehending the Democrats is currently unknown. The FBI has declined to comment, but this is something that's going to develop in the next week, which.

it's just him basically lying. But he was lying about how mRNA technology has been ineffective against upper respiratory infections because it only targets a single protein which not only becomes obsolete due to mutations, but actually accelerates the mutation process in prolongs pandemics.

the funding and removing access to vaccines. And this is the stuff that he promised not to do. In his confirmation hearings, he said that he would not take away vaccines yep, and he would not change who's on the vaccine advisory panels.

and the flu. It also affects all of the other ways that mRNA technology can be utilized. A lot of these research projects are about expanding the possible use of this technology beyond upper respiratory infections.

marriage rates. He announced that he was expediating plans to launch and operate a one hundred kilowatt nuclear.

on it, especially space science. Like Duffy's trying to manufacture this new space race and prioritize like manned moon missions, all while cutting at least fifty percent all NASA science missions and just like absolutely crippling NASA's capacity to actually develop technology. Now, Duffy said at a press conference and end seeing this new directive on Tuesday, quote, we are in a race to the moon, a race with China to the moon, and to have a base on the moon,

we need energy. Unquote is that fucking nineteen fifty talk? What are you talking about? That is the time when the greatness happened Garson.

any indication for how this will go. It will be mirrored in failure and many years behind schedule at best un quote. This new NASA directive from Shan Daffey calls for a Fission Surface Power Program Executive to be named by the end of August, who will then yes, yes, impleant, and oversee the project while reporting directly to the NASA Administrator.

The directive reads quote. Since March twenty twenty four, China and Russia have announced on at least three occasions a joint effort to place a reactor on the Moon by the mid twenty thirties. The first country to do so could potentially declare a keep out zone, which would significantly inhibit the United States from establishing a planned Artemis presence

if not their first unquote. And this is I think a big part of why Duffy is wanting to do this, and the contractor I spoke to you said quote, if they're able to extend some quote unquote exclusion zone around a reactor on the surface where other countries aren't allowed to land. It's not difficult to imagine that they may try to use this to de facto claim areas of the Moon for the United States.

that shit. What we instead have time for is the just massive array of tariffs on a list of countries so long that we just genuinely can't read them all. Okay, this is a very very confusing raft of tariffs. In a lot of ways, it's simpler than the other ones. But okay, so so Persian, And if the US runs a trade deficit with you and you're not also in one of the other special categories where we have imposed a really high tariff on you, it's like fifteen percent.

If we have a trade surplus with the country we imposed a ten percent tariff. This doesn't make any sense, sure, Okay. So it's like in terms of the state of motives of the tariffs, it doesn't make any sense except in terms of like raising money, which these raised very little actual money run relative to like the amount of money the US spends.

unclear what the fuck that means. Apple hasn't pledged to invest one hundred billion dollars in the US. There's this very very weird thing on the right where like they just they think that you can make iPhones here. You can't. You just simply cannot. We you don't have the labor force, you don't have the technology. Yeah, but Tim Cook did just bribe Trump with a.

in Taiwan. It's not just a problem of the technology is really hard. It's a problem of the machines to make the machines that you need to make. These things exist in like one place in the world, in Switzerland, right, So in order to actually scale up production of this would just in theory, what these one hundred percent imported semi conductor tariffs are supposed to do. Right, You have to go up three layers of the supply chain. You have to make the machines to make the machines that

make the machines that make the semi conductors. Right, That's like the simplest way to explain it.

these trade policy people. Now, it's also worth noting that there's been you know, another I guess kind of tariff that's been enacted other than hilariously the countries that tried to negotiate with Trump got worse rates than the ones who just waited until the imposted fifteen percent rate.

to release Bolsonaro. There's been some updates on that front where Lula is just straight up refusing to do direct talks at the US. Lula had an exclusive interview with Reuters where he said, quote, we had already pardoned the US interventions in the nineteen sixty four coup, said Lula, who got his political stri blah blah. Listen, listen to the Lula episodes we did, They're very good. More more Lula quote, but this is now not a small intervention.

It's the president of the United States thinking he can dictate rules for a sovereign country like Brazil, it's unacceptable. It's worth noting that this is actually a pretty massive change for like Lula specifically relations with the US. Lula actually had very good relations with George Bush. But he is writing a massive tide of Brazilian anti American nationalists, and he's attempting to spread this tide elsewhere.

The EU's also wonder a thread of thirty percent tariffs if they don't just sort of like see the Trump's demands. But like you know, again, India also negotiated a deal with the US and then immediately got their tariffs, like he's now being threatened with eighty percent tariffs, so you

can't negotiate with him to escape this. So I don't know, Lula, maybe this is the beginning of sort of organized, like large scale organized terriff resistance to the US being framed in this sort of like collective struggle versus the US thing. That's an interesting political trend that will be following as all of this continues. Okay, and the rest of the unhinged amount of tariff news we're going to be covering Monday.

I will make a brief note that the Yale Budget Lab is estimating like like a twenty four hundred dollars increase for the average family just in terms of like inflation prices for this, especially on things like clothing. They are specifically, I think there's a Ceneta articleipus. They're specifically talking about running shorts and shoes and anything any goods from South Asia massively increasing in price at talking thirty

percent increases very quickly. So yeah, now, obviously all of this news is I don't know, the stock market has kind of like accustomed itself to tariff news. Yeah, but COMA, we've got a really really bad job support last month, and.

of the dictatorship. So you know, you can only lie about the inflation rate for so long before like someone goes like, hey, you've been lying about this the whole time, and I don't know this has this has brought down military katters just before, and that's why we have to hold archive of our own accountable for faking those inflation numbers.

they do. The actual data, even at the highest estimate of undocumented people, shows that it's around ten times more foreign people who are in the UK with documents. This is indicative of a broader issue, right that the discussions we're having around immigration are nearly all based on massive amounts of misinformy. Misinformation by a mission was extremely common in legacy media until very recently, right like, there was

simply not people covering immigration in a serious fashion. Even in the Biden administration, the reporting that was done was atrocious. This comes as the Labor government's disapproval rating in the UK hit sixty seven percent in a yugo of pol which I think is very indicative. What Labor did right was try to adopt right wing culture war positions to get people to vote for them, and it does not work,

and it is not working for them. You can look at their policies towards trans people, right, they're atrocious, and it's not buying them to favor they wanted to moving back to the United States. Yon sou Go, she's called Sue by her friends. It's been released by Ice after being detained at a routine hearing. A twenty year old young woman as a Korean national South Korean evidently right, and the daughter of a priest. So she's here on

a visa as a dependent of a religious worker. There are religious worker visas, and she's here as a dependent. She is I believe in the process of transitioning to a student visa. She had the hearing, her case wasn't dismissed or evoked. She had another hearing set for October. I claim that she overstayed her visa. Her lawyer says,

I claim it's not true. I'm particularly interested in this case because of the intervention of the diocese, the Episcopalian Diocese of New York, and so it was the Episcopalian Diocese New York's legal team who fought for her release. She was very quickly moved to Louisiana. We know that ICE likes so do this right. It likes to move people to places where it feels like it has a

favorable circuit court. The dioces of legal team was able to secure her release, but they are still working on the rease of a fifty nine year old ProView and asylum seeker who has been detained after having her court date moved up. So in her case, they said, hey, we've got a hearing that's opened up. When don't you come in on Thursday and then detained her, which is

just reprehensible. It is really good. I think that these big religious organizations are getting involved directly in these cases, that they are taking on responsibility, that they're using their pulpits as a place to oppose this. I think that's good. I think, regardless of your stance, aren't organized religion, you should be happy about that. These are institutions that have

power in this country. Talking of institutions that have power, detainees in Florida's Alligator Alcatraz are being denied their right to file court documents because federal courts are claiming they're not under federal jurisdiction. State courts are claiming they're not under state jurisdiction, which is fairly reasonable given that they have not been charged, whether or accused of, in many cases,

any crimes in the state of Florida. Right then, they're not being held They were not detained by well, sometimes they were detained by Florida law enforcement, I guess, but only in their capacity to enforce federal immigrates law. Yes, with the special deputized nawty, Yes, it's yeah, it's deputies, which we're about to talk about. There have been some very funny outcomes of that. This isn't it like I've seen it report as a loophole. It's not a loophole.

It's extremely fucking clear that they were detained by the federal government for immigration reasons, and they have every right to representation in immigration court right that this is not a loophole. They're just denying people their rights, and I think reporting it as a loophole is entirely ridiculous. A judge has ordered a document showing who is contracted by whom at the facility be produced as part of a

civil rights lawsuit. So what that will do would obviously document in the federal government's.

sort of stake here. So we talked a little bit about those Florida deputies right who have been I guess secondid to ICE orgs. They've been crossworn to do ICE work. ICE is recruiting very heavily right now. I'm offering fifty thousand dollars sign on bonuses. It has reduced the minimum age and it seems to have no maximum age cap. From what I can tell, this thing. Border Patrol has been issuing all kinds of waivers for years, right for all kinds of things that it's supposed to have as

like standard for its recruiting. So it isn't particularly new. ICE has been known for a while as kind of if you want to be a FED and go around and carry a gun, and you can't get hired to do gun stuff for the FED. To other agencies, ICE is probably the place you're going to end up, right, their standards are lower than other agencies.

They were issuing raptors to field agents for a while. They're not the best vehicles. Like, I've had plenty of agents complain about the raptism.

This has resulted in some very funny beefs between agencies including can I share this video? Can I screenshare?

They call these IRIS and MORRIS based on their initials. Right, these are for ers, so that's their enforcement and removal operations brands BO two pitches. IRIS is being able to identify people with no physical contact based on the tears in their IRIS. This technology has been used by police for a while, so you'll notice it was called the inmate identification so that the way they would obtain these Irish scans would be scanning people who were detained. CBP

will also have IRIS scans so well. Uscis right. This is one of the pieces of biometric data that's sometimes collected from migrants as part of their process and moving into the United States and then getting their documents, etc. What MORRIS will do is allow them to search a registry of previous offenders. In twenty twenty four, Niagara County Sheriff's Office were the first sheriff's office to add IRIS

to their vehicles. But a feeling reported as this is as a CBP officer or ice officers are going to be scanning people's arises with their phones. I don't see any evidence of that technology existing either in the contract that the government has or on the website for the

company that makes it. And guessing what this will do is if they have somebody who for instance, has previously been detained, somebody who has done time and come out, then they will users to like as a web of identifying them right when after they've detained them, before they take them to wherever. The big issue here, right, is that B two owns this database of scants. So this database includes Morris right, which is previous people who have

previous offenders. They have a sex offender registry within it. They also have databases of seniors who are at risk for going missing, so that I think there's people with dementia that people can voluntarily sign up to. And they have a data of missing children as well. They are two interesting company. They also they offer a bunch of services for detention companies. They previously partnered with the support our Sheriff's Foundation to provide lower cost prescriptions to sheriffs

and deputies. They're pretty embedded in this law enforcement world. Other contracts they saw for ice new tech solutions for fingerprint scanners. Again, fingerprint information is routinely taken from migrants and many one people getting green cards, people getting visas, people getting citizenship. Yes, yeah, anyone who has in any capacity and really engaged with uscis like all those categories

you mentioned, Garrison will have already done this. They did also purchase gray Key, which is more concerning, which is for breaking into cell phones locked cell phones. Yes, it's trying to get around the lock on your cell phone. I've written about grey Key before for Input magazine. Generally, the way they do this is that they try and make a copy of the cell phone and work on a copy so they don't get locked out of your

cell phone. But grey Key is an extremely various piece of technology for breaking into people's phones which you otherwise wouldn't be able to access. So yeah, that is that is what I have for ices spending spree this week.