Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 237

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Starting point is 00:02:12 So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own to say. Hello, dear listener. My name is Carlos Berrios Polanco, and I'm a journalist from Puerto Rico. I'm here with...

Starting point is 00:02:39 It's me, James Stout. I'm a journalist who lives in San Diego. Thank you for being here, James. Today, I'm here to talk to you about the Dominican Republic's immigration system and how it has been shaped by the U.S.'s immigration system to kind of function as a part of of the U.S. border outside of what we would normally consider the U.S.'s border. And instead of diving in immediately to that, I want to start this episode by talking a little bit about the tragic death of Ezra Francis Hollett, a trans person from the United States in immigration detention in the Dominican Republic. I should mention that they use both they them and he-him pronouns. However, I'm going to be using they-them going forward because that's what the friends and family

Starting point is 00:03:31 of Hullet put as their pronouns in the GoFundMe. They were found dead in the Haina Immigration Detention Center, the biggest immigration detention center in the Dominican Republic on June 23rd, 2025. The GoFundMe set up by their family to bring their body back to the states, describes them as a compassionate and sensitive person who live with mental health issues and the after effects of childhood trauma. They were 24 and a really good artist from looking at their Instagram. Per the Dominican news show, Elinforme with Alicia Ortega, who interviewed Hollett's mom.

Starting point is 00:04:05 Hullet traveled to Puerto Rico without their family's knowledge and seemed to be in contact with a social worker here. I found a local Telemundo affiliate here in Puerto Rico that reported that they went missing on September 3rd of 2024. However, the GoFundMe says that they were missing in PR since March of 2025, and Hollett's mom told Elinforme that that's when they last spoke. Around that same time, Hullet flew to the last. the Dominican Republic, according to El Informe. Shortly after that, they were detained inside a

Starting point is 00:04:35 construction site where it appears that they were squatting alongside a Dominican man. After being detained by the tourism police, they were passed onto the Direcéegneral de Migration, or DGM, which does immigration enforcement and manages detention centers. Per Elinforme, this was about 37 days after they entered the DR. I want to preface this next section by saying that the DR isn't particularly kind to trans folks, which I'm sure affected Hollett's experience during immigration detention. Hollett was initially sent to the male wing of Haina, not because the DR is particularly woke and sends people to detention based on their gender identity, but because they were

Starting point is 00:05:14 male presenting and didn't have any ID on them. However, once the DGM was able to identify Hullet, they were transferred to the female wing of Hina. To be honest, quite a bit of the reporting around Hullet is. in the DR and here in Puerto Rico is quite transphobic, and the way that these immigration officials talk about Hullet in this kind of mini-documentary by Elinforme is also quite transphobic.

Starting point is 00:05:39 Videos published by Elinforme appear to show Hullet curled up on the floor next to dozens of other people who were sleeping in two small rooms inside of immigration detention. Some of the notes in videos uncovered by Elinforme appear to show that Hullet was suffering from a mental health crisis throughout the more than two months they were in immigration detention. Pollitt's mom told Elinforme that Hollett suffered from schizophrenia. They also wrote about having asthma and being allergic to milk.

Starting point is 00:06:08 Per Elinforme, Hollet's mom confirmed to them that they needed an inhaler and an epipen. Although news reports say that DGM provided Hullet with some medicine for the apparent mental health crisis they were going through, I can't find any reporting that says that they ever got an inhaler or an epipen that they needed. A coroner's report found that they died from a heart attack, according to Notetisian, a national news website there. Her information obtained by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, quote, at least four facilities that are being used as immigration detention centers present overcrowding, unsanitary conditions, deficient food, and lack of access to health care. The same report states that a newborn died in Haina on November 14 of last year.

Starting point is 00:06:54 last year. Damn. People I've spoken to who've been detained in Haina over the years have described the conditions there as horrific, particularly as the Dominican government has ramped up deportation efforts massively against the country's Haitian population. Detention centers are routinely overcrowded, and people have very little access to food or water for days from what they tell me. Further people I've spoken to, detainees are sometimes beaten or extorted by guards to be able to

Starting point is 00:07:24 call their families to get their documents or for food. And I talk a little bit more about this later on in the episode. But the reason that I started with Hullet's story is twofold. First, because their deaf was significantly undercovered by English language media. And second, because they died as a direct result of an immigration system that systematically abuses Haitian immigrants and has been historically shaped by the U.S. military and the American border apparatus. While they're organized in different ways within the law enforcement structures of their respective countries, there are a lot of similarities between the DGM and ICE in the United States, particularly in their tactics and how they've terrorized immigrant communities. However, before

Starting point is 00:08:10 diving into the current immigration situation in the Dominican Republic and how a lot of it has come as a result of collaboration with American immigration enforcement, I want to give some historical context about how, in a very real way, the United States created the Dominican Haiti border. The Dominican Republic was originally a Spanish colony. Haiti was originally a French colony. Haiti became independent, then invaded the Dominican Republic, then they fought them back to become independent themselves. But throughout all of that time, the Dominican Haiti border was in amorphous space, not the kind of quote-unquote hard border that it is today. There had been agreements on where the border was supposed to be.

Starting point is 00:08:55 People roughly knew where that border was supposed to be on a map and on the earth if they lived near that area. However, it was just kind of essentially an imaginary line that ran along the 240 miles of land that make up the border between the two countries. However, in 1905, the U.S. established a customs receivership over the Dominican Republic, to force the Caribbean nation to pay its foreign debts and ostensibly protect it from a possible European invasion, which is a classic Monroe Doctrine move, of course. Yeah, many such cases. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:09:36 This agreement was officially ratified for a 1907 convention and created the Dominican border guard to police the frontier between the two countries and make sure that all duties were collected from commerce and people crossing the border, according to a journal article titled Haitians, Magic and Money, Rasa, and Society in the Haitian Dominican borderlands by a Lauren Derby. While these weren't the first border guards, they were essential to turning the borderlands into the border as it exists today, one of the most highly regulated and police borders in the Western Hemisphere, and I should also say that at some points throughout Dominican history, the military patrol the border. per a document from the Marines titled Marines in the Dominican Republic

Starting point is 00:10:21 1916 to 1924, North Americans were part of the Dominican Frontier Guard that regulated this border. Some would later go on to become part of the Guardia National Dominicana, which was created by the American military government that controlled the DR between 1916 and 1924. In 1921, the GND turned into the Policia National

Starting point is 00:10:44 Dominican, which also stationed people at the border at that time. For more context, the American government was occupying Haiti at more or less the same time from 1915 to 34. This period of American occupation of La Spaniola greatly defined the relationship that both countries would have with each other going forward, as well as both countries' military and law enforcement. The military occupation of the Dominican Republic also led to laws that prevented the entry of workers who weren't white unless they came through official border crossings and paid for temporary residence permits. This is, according to the book,

Starting point is 00:11:21 more than a massacre racial violence and citizenship in the Haitian Dominican borderlands by Sabine Caddo. While there had always been racial prejudice on Hispaniola, this brought even more, leading to Dominican security forces to arrest people on suspicion that they'd broken this law, even if they hadn't. And it was later used to strip Dominicans of their citizenship. it also strengthened the idea of quote unquote

Starting point is 00:11:47 Dominicanidad as something closer to being white and European a sentiment that continues to this day and in some ways is even stronger now than it was then. What's entering my mind is, I think it was a tweet that said they're coming out with a new version of white that doesn't include you. Like whiteness as a liminal concept is something that can be hard for people from the US to understand.

Starting point is 00:12:12 But yeah, I've heard this directly elucidated to me many times that like Dominicanness and blackness are distinct. Absolutely. Or that Haitian people are black, which obviously is someone who's lived in the UK and the United States is difficult for me to understand. But like all of these things are socially constructed. It doesn't mean they're not real. It just means that people made them, people can move them. Yeah, absolutely. I have also had people to my face say that the Dominican,

Starting point is 00:12:41 identity is completely separate from blackness, you know, and as someone who has lived in Puerto Rico, which is a part of the United States, or owned by it, that also to me was very, very strange. And I'd say this is someone whose mother is Dominican, right? So I was just kind of like stunned when the first time that I heard it. And sometimes it's called Iventia queskela is how it's being marketed by some people in the current day. Although I will say if you've seen the video of the comedian I think saying I know black I

Starting point is 00:13:15 Dominican that's a I have pretty much witnessed something exactly like that said completely seriously several times throughout my life yeah it doesn't mean that like Dominican people coming to the US will not encounter anti-blackness because they will oh absolutely yeah yeah it's just that it also doesn't mean that on return to Dominican Republic they cannot

Starting point is 00:13:35 slot into a different structure which puts them above people. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's a very interesting topic, how those kind of identities are presented in separate ways, depending on where you live. Because for me, for example, if I went to the U.S., most people would say that I'm brown, but here in Puerto Rico, I'm kind of very explicitly a white person here, you know? Yeah, it's so straight. It's such a short flight as well. Like that flight from Miami to Dominican, but if you go Punta Cana or whatever, at the airport, that's like out of Santa Domingo.

Starting point is 00:14:12 And so much change is right. You can literally get on that plane as someone who isn't considered to be black and then get off that and be treated by American law enforcement like you are. Yeah. Within like a one hour flight. And yeah, it's just this is like the nature of creating hierarchies, right? They can shift to include people and shift to exclude people to. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:14:33 So I know I'm speaking to the choir about this, but this kind of definition of borders and national. identity are an essential part of the nation state and immigration enforcement. Because if you don't have an established border, it's very hard to define the in-group that belongs inside of the nation and that group that doesn't, who can then be detained, penalized, and deported for crossing that imaginary line in the earth. These kinds of steps by the U.S. military government were essential to creating this idea that Dominicans and Haitians are two completely different people. However, to be clear. It's not that this sentiment didn't exist beforehand. In particular, the Dominican elite hated Haitians a lot for the invasion of DR by Haiti. That sentiment existed in the borderlands,

Starting point is 00:15:18 but a lot of those people were bilingual, which is very different from kind of people inside of the metropole who saw themselves as kind of this one identity versus along the borderlines, which is usually what happens, right? There is a kind of melding identities in ways that isn't seen anywhere else. Yeah, this is the same where I live, right? Like San Diego, Tijuana is effectively, like, it's not one large city. They're important and very, very, very real differences. But, like, in many ways, one community, right?

Starting point is 00:15:52 Like, so many of our community members, like, I have students at the community college who cross every day. I've had students when I've taught high school classes who crossed every day. Like, I've got friends who couldn't make rent work. work in California, and so they go to Tijuana and, like, obviously, yeah, those people speak two languages or, like, both languages at the same time. I think that's just a nature of living in the borderlands. Yeah, absolutely. So following the U.S.'s exit from the Dominican Republic, dictator Rafael Trujillo came to power in 1930. He was trained by the U.S. military and eventually

Starting point is 00:16:30 rose to the rank of Brigadier General of the PND, then militarized it. And as a word dictator implies, He was not a good guy. Under him, the already burgeoning and existing anti-Hasian sentiment essentially exploded. He introduced the Cedula, a national identification document for all adult men. So Haitians had to pay for the Cedula and a foreign residency permit, essentially ending the binational lifestyle of communities on the border, according to more than a massacre. If the U.S. started the border, then Trujillo marked it as a sign of utter

Starting point is 00:17:07 violence by ordering his troops to ethnically cleanse the Dominican border of Haitians in October of 1947. This was known as the Parsley Massacre, and estimates of people killed vary, but the most common number I've seen used is roughly 20,000 Haitians killed over the course of about a week to two weeks. And this massacre, of course, came about as a way for him to define the border by stripping Haitians of that land because it was mostly done inside of the Dominican side of the DR Haiti border. It's called the Parsley

Starting point is 00:17:43 Massacre because soldiers reportedly recognize Haitians by their inability to pronounce parsley in Spanish, Berejil. However, experts think that this was just a myth, another way to separate Haitians from Dominicans, according to more than a massacre. Also,

Starting point is 00:17:59 as a not so fun fact, a lot of the violence took place along the Massacre River, which a lot of think is called that because of the 1947 massacre, but from the various Spanish language sources, I've read, they all essentially say that this isn't true, that it was, it's called the Massacre River because of the frequent violence that took place there between Spanish colonizers and French buccaneers in the 18th century. And this is according to an article, Lysse Monta Nacres, titled Dominican Republic and Haiti at the crossroads of the Massacre River.

Starting point is 00:18:33 The Dominican Immigration Agency, the DGM, was also established by Trujillo just two years after the Parsley massacre. Not only were they essential to deporting Haitians during Trujillo's reign, but they also forced the Haitian population into the sugar-producing regions of the country. And because he couldn't deploy overt state violence there in the same way that he did along the border, they came up with a new plan. Any Haitian immigrant detained in the area would just be brought. back to whatever sugar plantation would pay their immigration taxes, essentially creating these zones, which still very much exist to this day, of Haitians living in and around these sugar plantations that they also work at. I should say that this wasn't a codified policy, but that it coexisted with other tactics throughout the years. The Trujillo government also

Starting point is 00:19:27 instituted a policy that made all Haitians who owned land or businesses to not be able to work outside of the sugar-producing regions, according to a journal article titled A Vale of Legality by Amelia Hinson. I visited some of these sugar plantations in 2023, and many of the Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent who live there are descendants of the ones Trujillo pushed into the region. While anti-Hasianism already existed before Trujillo, he cemented it into the political structures of the Dominican Republic

Starting point is 00:20:01 to the point that it still continues incredibly strong. into the modern day. About 51% of Dominicans believe that immigration harms the country per a 2024 poll by the polling firm Latino Barometro. Many Haitians come to the Dominican Republic seeking a better life for themselves and their families, much like immigrants in the U.S. And similarly to the U.S., getting a visa or becoming a citizen for them is extremely difficult. This isn't to say that there aren't a lot of Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic, and I should also say that they are by far the largest immigrant group in the country, which makes sense because they're next door neighbors.

Starting point is 00:20:40 The construction and the sugar-cutting industry are completely dependent on cheap Haitian labor. The sugar-cutting industry is heavily reliant on this labor, a lot of which has done by undocumented immigrants. Many people over the years have called it a quote-unquote modern form of slavery. I've been to these camps and what they endure for extremely little pay is horrific. I went there at the tail end of 2023, and while there are some places set up by the companies that own those sugar-producing regions that are, they're called battejas inside of the sugar cane mazes. Some of the battejas have, like, houses made out of cement with electricity, and some are, completely degraded, made from wood that's rotting, and they have no access to running water.

Starting point is 00:21:36 Jesus. Or electricity, there have been over the years attempts by both human rights groups and the companies that own those regions. It wasn't benevolently, is my opinion on it. But more because of the pressure that they've received over the years to move these people into somewhat better conditions. Yeah. And thankfully, for some of them, they have for others. They have not. A lot of the Haitian migration in the last decades has come after the 2010 Haiti earthquake and the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jevonel Moise. The two events, as well as other crises, have caused people in Port-au-Prince the capital of Haiti to experience significant violence and hunger crises. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced out of their homes and left the country over the last decade, per the migration policy. Institute. For many, the national path of migration out of Port-au-Prince is towards the border and towards

Starting point is 00:22:36 the Dominican Republic. And as we've seen, a lot of those Haitian migrants have also tried to go into the U.S. through Latin America. And I mean, not to say that they exclusively go there, of course, but they try to go wherever they're able to go. Yeah, I wrote a piece for NBC. God, when you could still write things critical of the Biden. administration at NBC. And like in 2021, right, when the United States embassy in Haiti had a picture of Biden. It was translated into Creole, right? But it was like essentially do not come. That we'll turn you around and send you back like that. This is the guy who'd run, you know, like months before on a kindness where Trump had done cruelty. I remember like right around that

Starting point is 00:23:19 time, 2021. So there was a large number of migrants, of course, who have been stuck in, in Tijuana because of Title 42. They tried to cross and he kept getting bounced back, right? And so I would cross to talk to them. They moved to like right by where the Ped West pedestrian crossing is now. And they were camping there in the square. Like literally you go over the border bridge that goes over the road. You pop out your first step on like on the ground. The bridge is probably in Mexico at some point.

Starting point is 00:23:48 But they're right there. I remember speaking to Haitian folks there about like they had genuinely hoped for a little bit better for the Biden administration, which of course they didn't get very. common pathway is to Brazil to do underpay construction work for the Rio Olympics and then finding yourself without work, without much of a chance at citizenship or permanency, deciding to come north. That was a very common pathway at the time too. So about 200,000 displaced Haitians are believed to have moved to the DR in the months after the earthquakes, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Starting point is 00:24:36 And after that flow of migrants to the DR and the rising tide of anti-Hasianism, which had been building for a very long time, in 2013, the Constitutional Court of the Dominican Republic ruled that people born in the Dominican Republic to immigrant parents without a regularized immigration status had never been entitled to Dominican citizenship. This ruling is called La Sentencia, the Judgment. What this essentially did was that if you do not have at least one parent who is a Dominican citizen, then you do not have Dominican citizenship. In the U.S., we have Earthright citizenship or Jusoli, which means that if you're born on this land or inside the U.S., you are an American citizen. This, of course, applies almost everywhere except certain colonies like American Samoa. So essentially, in the Dominican Republic, if one of your parents was not Dominican, you did not have citizenship. The thing about judicial decisions is that they typically only go forward in time. But what was particularly evil about La Sentencia was that it applied retroactively to 1929. And I want listeners to sit with that for a second. Even if it applied just going forward, it would be a horrible thing.

Starting point is 00:25:58 But going back, nearly 100 years, is just horrendous. this because what the ruling caused was a chain reaction that stripped entire families of their citizenship because if your grandparents were in citizens, then neither was your dad. If your mom was in a citizen then, then neither are you. Of course, this ruling also affected anyone who did legally still have citizenship but didn't have the documentation going back that far to prove it if the government came knocking. So yeah, essentially, imagine if you had to prove that your great-grandparents were citizens in 1929. I mean, I don't think I personally would have that documentation for my great-grandparents.

Starting point is 00:26:40 Especially living, like, in the lower 48 in the U.S., it's just more likely that one might have documentation of ones like great-grandparents and living in parts of the D.R. But, yeah, essentially, for me, it would be incredibly hard to have that documentation for my great-grandparents. I couldn't imagine someone who has moved throughout their lives inside of the Dominican Republic to also have that documentation. And there's also the fact that because of the anti-Aceanism that was there, a lot of people who did or were supposed to legally still have citizenship were rolled up in the people whose citizenship this law took away. In total, the decision impacted about 245,000 Dominicans, of which 211,000 were Dominicans of Haitian descent, according to the Center for Migration Studies. I, of course, say Dominicans, because they were legally speaking, Dominicans at the time that the Sentencia took place, but now they have been stripped of that citizenship. The Dominican government tried to backtrack this decision just a year later, after a lot of international criticism.

Starting point is 00:27:52 and provide a path to the stateless, but the damage was done. In 2023, it's estimated that as many as 130,000 people remain stateless per CMS. There is no law that provides a path to citizenship for the children of the stateless. So even after this 2014 law that tried to make people back into citizens or provide a pathway to citizenship, if you have a child, that child was not going to have citizenship. Yeah. Because so many people were affected by it. And a lot of the slowness of the government, the ways that government doesn't work,

Starting point is 00:28:30 you have this wave of denationalizations. And because of a lot of the problems of the government, some people who should have had that pathway to citizenship provided to them, still don't have it. Right. It's going to be so much harder to get those people back. And like, understandably, it's going to be very hard to get those people to engage with the state in any way. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:28:53 Because why the fuck would you? It just told you that you don't belong, right? Like, this state is a danger to those people. And, of course, not to mention that the anti-Hasian sentiment that the government has, you know, maybe the government at the top decided to go back, but that anti-Hasian sentiment is still there from the top down, of course. So yeah. Yeah, it takes a long time to get over something like what happened under trio, right? Like the massacre and then ongoing like the state being used as a weapon against you.

Starting point is 00:29:26 Like yeah, people aren't going to just be like, okay, well, this is a benevolent entity now. Let me go, let me go chat with them, tell them where I live and make sure they got all my information up to date. Like it's just, it takes a long time to rebuild that trust. Absolutely. So at the same time that this was happening, the Dominican government, created a sprawling immigration enforcement apparatus that has systemically punished Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent that they made stateless. These numbers are honestly quite horrifying. In 2025, the DGM registered 379,553 deportations, according to their self-published

Starting point is 00:30:09 numbers. Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean 379,553 people were removed from the country because of possible double or triple counting if a person crossed the border more than once and were detained than deported. But even if you cut that figure in half or in freeze, that still is a staggering amount of people's lives who have been touched and affected by this deportation apparatus. To give some more recent numbers, in May of 26, the DGM said that they deported 35,305 migrants, according to their own numbers. And the thing about the Dominican Republic is that essentially every law enforcement agency does immigration enforcement. The great majority of those migrants deported in May were detained by the DGM, the Direction General de Migration,

Starting point is 00:31:04 about 5,800 were detained by the Dominican Army, and about 2,300 by the specialized land border security corps, which is known as CESFront. They essentially patrol the national border with Haiti, and about 1,300 of those people were detained by the national police. These numbers are so staggering because all of these law enforcement agencies are trying to meet a 10,000 a week,

Starting point is 00:31:34 quota that President Luis Abinada is set for the Dominican government in 24 and continues to follow. This number, to me, is really, really staggering. And it's kind of horrific because you read it on paper, and it's hard to really understand the immensity of this mechanism to forcefully move people out of the country, and as well as all of the law enforcement work and immigration enforcement work that goes into detaining those people in the first place, then sending them to immigration centers, and then deporting them outside of the Dominican Republic. And the way that that usually happens is that they are loaded into these trucks,

Starting point is 00:32:17 which are converted horse trucks. Sometimes they're like the little short ones, and sometimes are the very long ones that you see to move pallets of stuff that have this cage built onto the back, and people are just stuffed to the brim inside of their. It's really incredibly inhumane. Yeah, damn. That's rough.

Starting point is 00:32:38 So migrants are routinely extorted while in immigration detention. For an anonymous source that spoke with Listin Diario a national paper in the DR that detainees are routinely hit up for bribes during immigration raids and during their detention. Per the article, guards in Haina, the largest immigration detention center in the DR, were charging about 200 and 270. to be freed, which might not seem like an insurmountable amount of money in the U.S., but it's about half of the average monthly salary in the DR, and these migrants are making much, much less than that. The same report says that guards sometimes charge migrants' families so detainees can get food while detained.

Starting point is 00:33:26 So much of the rhetoric that Abinader and other Dominican officials used to justify their actions, especially in recent years, is that immigration contributes to the destabilization of their society. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Haitian immigrants are just trying to live in peace and escape the violence or crisis that they're facing in their home country. And like I said earlier, a lot of industries in the DR rely on cheap Haitian labor. And I would be remiss to mention that a lot of the people that the Dominican Republic's immigration enforcement are deporting are people that the Dominican Republic made stateless in the first place. So they essentially created this gigantic group of people that they are now deporting. Right. It's it's the way that the nation state operates

Starting point is 00:34:17 to kind of push people to push people that it considers undesirable out of that nation's borders. Yeah, this is like Ben Anderson, right, when he's writing about nations, says no nation can be coterminous with all of humanity. And then when we combine the nation with the state, that's when we get, if no nation can be coterminous with all humanity and the state is policing who and it's not, is it not part of the nation and expelling those are not. Like, that's when we get what we see here, right? And what we see here in the U.S.

Starting point is 00:34:49 We talked about this a little bit earlier, but whenever I talked to Haitians or Dominicans of Haitian descent about immigration enforcement in their country, they pretty much tell me, the same thing. To the Dominican government, everyone black is Haitian. And we talked about this and how the conception of Dominicanidad has become separate from the way that they view Haitians as black. Many civil society and human rights organizations have documented how the DGM uses racial profiling as the justification to detain pretty much whoever they want. This got so bad that in 2022, the American State Department issued a travel warning for quote unquote darker-skinned Americans about the risk of being swept up in the country's

Starting point is 00:35:34 immigration crackdown. And to me at the time, having written about that, it's kind of incredible to see an American agency be like, hey, the racism, this country is so bad, you should be on the lookout. Yeah, yeah, like you might not want to go. Exactly. Yeah, that's wild. Yeah. So the DGM routinely performs midnight immigration raids on Haitian communities, break down their doors and drag people kicking, screaming from their beds, then load them up on the repurposed cattle trucks and horse trucks that I was talking about earlier. There are usually about 30 or so people in those immigration trucks, the small ones, pushed up against the metal bars. And I've seen this personally at the DR Haiti border where they're taken from immigration detention centers and then dropped

Starting point is 00:36:23 off and essentially forced to walk into the Haiti. When I was at the border in 2023, the ones I saw and was able to speak to had grabbed everything that they could as they were getting detained because they knew that it was possible they could never make it back. Some of these people included mothers carrying small children and babies. One worker who I spoke with worked in construction, and he claimed that he was being deported because his boss had called immigration enforcement on them. because they were talking about getting paid more.

Starting point is 00:36:57 Yeah, Taylor's all this time with undocumented labor, sadly. Absolutely, and this is big in the sugar cane cutting regions as well, or at least it used to be. Yeah. And it's a kind of a recurring system because, you know, they get deported, but there's not really any work or safety in some cases in Haiti, so they're forced to come back over the border to do the same job. Yeah. Many Haitians live in fear, hiding from immigration authorities,

Starting point is 00:37:23 as much as they can while trying to work to feed their families. It's especially bad for pregnant mothers who can't go to hospitals for fear of being swept up by immigration raids. There have been several women who were deported very quickly after being discharged, according to a report by the Guardian. And I've personally seen a pregnant mother with a small child forced across the DR-Hady border after being dumped there by DGM. Similar to how the American government essentially created

Starting point is 00:37:51 the Dominican Haiti border and shaped its border guard in the early 1900s, they also routinely provide training for several law enforcement agencies who enforce the Dominican immigration laws. For example, agencies from the Dominican Republic routinely received training from international law enforcement academies, which are international police academies administered by the U.S. State Department, where U.S. law enforcement trained police and other law enforcement agencies from other countries. A training schedule from 2024 I found showed that the Dominican Republic participated in nine sessions throughout the years with agencies like ICE and CBP. However, when it comes to being trained by the U.S., no one beats the Cuerpo Specialized

Starting point is 00:38:38 of Securitra, known as CESFront, or the specialized land border security corps. They are in charge of securing and quote-unquote protecting the Dominican border with Haiti. They are an arm of the military and were created in 2006. That same year, unidentified, quote-unquote, U.S. experts reported that there were a, quote, series of weaknesses that will lead to all kinds of illicit activities along the border, according to a 2006 article from Dominican today. For the same article, the military patrolled the area beforehand, but the study revealed the lack of and bad shape of the Dominican Army's facilities, the lack of. of training, logistics, weapons, vehicles, garments, as well as low wages, and bad nutrition for these soldiers. And I should say that's a quote from the Dominican today's article. And I want to talk a little bit about the border before I explain it later on in more detail.

Starting point is 00:39:37 But a lot of the border that I've been to between the Dominican Republic and Haiti is along the massacre river where part of the parsley massacre happened. And you essentially have this very big cement and iron and steel border wall going up that has completely separated this contiguous piece of land where people were once upon a time over 100 years ago able to more or less walk between and walk over without much restriction at all. And, you know, the place where they've built the barrier, this was not like what, you know, whenever someone from Puerto Rico, whenever someone talks to me about the U.S. border I'm imagining, the big iron wall. throughout the desert.

Starting point is 00:40:21 This was not that. This was kind of very lush, green mangroves. They used to be one big forest, but now they created a bade strip of land that now separates that forest that once was one and then put the border wall there. So a lot of this modern history of collaboration between the U.S. and the DR immigration enforcement

Starting point is 00:40:41 is recorded in Todd Miller's Border Patrol Nation and Empire of Borders, both of which I recommend everyone go read. Yeah, Miller is great. Yeah, Miller's books are fantastic. I know we both really enjoy them, but yeah. Yeah, a real resource for anyone looking to understand the border and its history and, like, how we got to the situation. It wasn't hard to see it coming actually.

Starting point is 00:41:04 Yeah, and a lot of Border Patrol Nation is from the early 2010s, too, so it was really kind of prescient in many ways. Yeah, very much so. Like, I remember reading that book and then, like, thinking about it a lot as I was. in the Dominican Republic and even when I was in Panama last year, like the Biden administration right was financing deportations from Panama of people who had just crossed a varying gap, like chiefly to Colombia, almost entirely Colombian young men. I literally watched these guys get like I watched a family who I'd known from the jungle, right? And then I read and then we reconnected in La Hasblancas, which is a reception center. Reception center is a pretty euphemistic term there.

Starting point is 00:41:47 It's not a great place to be. I think it's close now, actually. But they would come and call out names and was like, what's going on? Like maybe we're getting taken somewhere. Like maybe this is, they want to check our passports and then to start loading men into, same thing,

Starting point is 00:42:01 got like a flat bed truck. And I remember one guy, like having to give his baby to his wife. And I was there and he was like, hey, what are they doing? And I was like, I don't know,

Starting point is 00:42:09 man, like, I don't know that some guy was like, this is how they deport people. It was a very, wow. Yeah, it's horrible.

Starting point is 00:42:16 And then his wife was just like, standing there next to me and like, that's horrible. Like I put my arm around her and she was just sobbing. And of course, like, like, separated from her partner and the father of her child. But, yeah, it's rough to think that then I went home and did my work and paid my taxes and paid my little share of that family getting torn apart. But yeah, that was a, that was blue team. That wasn't a Trump thing.

Starting point is 00:42:37 Like, this is, the US has been trying to move that traumatic violence further and further from its population for a long time. That's what strong borders are, right? Strong borders are tearing families apart. Strong borders are people dying. And there is an understanding shared by both parties that Americans don't like seeing dead people. They don't like seeing families torn apart, as we've seen in the last few years, a couple of years. And so they have sought to move that violence further away from the metropole rather than stopping doing the violence.

Starting point is 00:43:11 Yeah, absolutely. Miller talks a lot about this in his book, right? where part of the U.S.'s internal migration policy as it relates to foreign policy, is that if you can stop migrants from coming into the U.S. at another border, that means that they won't be able to reach their border, right? Yeah. An academic who described it to Todd Miller as kind of border sets in ways that the borders go there. Yeah, like clusters or something, right?

Starting point is 00:43:41 Yeah, yeah, essentially. Oh, it's a dude who he's like a veteran and he was like in Afghanistan and saw, border patrol out there. I'll say, what the fuck. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So the way that veteran, that person explains it, is that these borders are created in

Starting point is 00:43:56 such a way to keep people from flowing into the United States, but able for people inside of the United States to more very easily leave them and pass through them, right? So, for example, let's say a migrant from Haiti wanted to go into the U.S., they would be faced with an incredibly uphill battle of passing several borders. It might be the border from Haiti into the Dominican Republic, then into Puerto Rico, or it might be Haiti to some Latin American countries, then several Central American countries, and then onto the U.S. southern border, right? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:44:35 But versus, let's say, if I wanted to go to Haiti, it would be pretty incredibly easy for me to go there, right? And this is, you know, what we see. Yeah, yeah. the way that this mechanism is constructed for the in-group to be able to move freely around the world and the out-group to have an incredibly hard time actually coming into the U.S. My friend, Erica, from Al-Latolada, like to say, we already have open borders. We already have no borders, just only for some people. Yeah, exactly. And of course, I'd be remiss not to mention that capital flows very easily through borders, as if they're not. do not exist. Yeah, because they don't for money.

Starting point is 00:45:17 Yeah. As Miller lays out an empire of borders, post-9-11, the U.S. adopted a very strong policy of considering terrorism against American interest, quote, over there, needing to be regarded in the same way as terrorism over here, right? And of course, terrorism, the way that the U.S. government sees it is probably extremely different from the way that you and I see it, James. Yes. So this ideology essentially pushed the American border everywhere, because everything that the U.S. didn't agree with was a threat to its interest.

Starting point is 00:46:00 This is essentially kind of the same reasoning as the Monroe Doctrine and the American Empire just massaged it for the modern world in some ways. This is why international collaboration between American immigration enforcement and border security agencies has skyrocketed since the dawn of the millennium, to the point that CBP agents have traveled around the world to show countries how to enforce their country's borders so that people inside of those countries wanting to leave and reach the United States borders are never able to do so. We talked a little bit about this. I can't remember if it was on air or off air about how Bovino did that in Honduras. Yeah, that's right. That was something I found recently I was reading some document about this border of externalization and he's one of the people interviewed. Yeah. It's like when he was in Bortak, right, Bavino was a member of Bortec. And they were going out on patrol with, I guess, I don't know, Honduras has Border Patrol or I don't quite know what the structure they're under is.

Starting point is 00:47:00 But they were going on patrol with them and then like the Bortac guys are armed and running around, but not technically not the ones making arrests. Yeah, like you can read this in the Miller books, but this is a thing that the U.S. does all over the world. Yeah, absolutely. and Miller traveled to a lot of countries where people were agents of their country's border security apparatus or a law or an agency. We're like, yeah, I've been trained by the U.S., of course. Yeah, like talking about the Kitebele's, right? Yeah, like in, yeah, anyway, everyone should read the book. I'm not going to recount the book.

Starting point is 00:47:34 It's good book. So if you look at the border enforcement or immigration agencies around the world, you'll find that they may look like the United States because, they are modeling themselves off of the trainers that train them or help shape their creation. Césfront takes after its border patrol Big Brother in many ways, but one of the most salient is in the wall that they patrol. As I mentioned a little bit earlier, in 2022, the Dominican Republic started construction of a Mexico-U.S-style border wall that, if it's finished, would span almost half of the border with Haiti. When the project is completed, it will be the second longest border wall in the Americas, the first being the Mexico-U.S. wall. It is supposed to be high-tech containing a series

Starting point is 00:48:20 of cameras, radars, and drones that are supposed to run the length of the wall. This wall, like many other border walls, has done intense environmental damage along the course of the border, particularly to the mangroves that run along the border where the wall is being built. In 2023, I visited Dahabong, a town in the northern section of DR-Hiti border, to report on the Dominican Republic's immigration enforcement apparatus for myself. The habong is where the Sesfront has a very important base, and as I mentioned earlier, it's a place where a lot of the violence of the parsley massacre took place. Césphron's base in the habong is painted in a beige-brown camouflage pattern that makes it stick out

Starting point is 00:49:02 like a sore thumb against the green forest background where it's stationed. However, it does blend in to that strip of land where they've cut out to make the border wall, you know, in many ways, the government tries to reshape the land in nature to fit its image. Yeah, it's kind of the same here. Like, that's in the desert this weekend. And I was, like, climbing up into mountains there and you can look down at the border wall. And it's like a, it's like a scar across the landscape. You can, for miles as far as you can see, it's looked like somebody sliced through this,

Starting point is 00:49:36 in this case, this pristine desert landscape, right? And, yeah, I can see it being the only worse in these areas where, like, it's so lush and green. Yeah, absolutely. From aerial drone images that I've seen of the border, it definitely looks like a kind of sand-colored scar, especially in that Dahabong area, where you have green on both sides

Starting point is 00:49:56 and then that sand-color line running through it. So the Dahban border crossing is extremely close to Sestran space there. When I was there, the border between the two countries was officially closed because of a dispute over the canalization. of the Massacre River. Haitians needed the water for agriculture along the border, but Dominican officials said that the canalization would take water away from their own purposes. A couple weeks after I was there, they opened up the border again, which was extremely necessary because border towns like Dahobong and Wanamint, which is the town on the Haitian side,

Starting point is 00:50:33 rely on each other a lot for trade. And this has been that way since time immemorial in that region, right? Yeah. The binational market in Dahobong is pretty much the only place where Haitians are legally allowed to enter, but they have to leave the same day they came in. So essentially, this giant market, and there is a steel wall that runs along the outer perimeter of it, which is where you have SESFront border guards. So if you pass for the border crossing, you do the whole immigration check. You're able to go into the market. Yeah. And you could essentially do like a circle around it.

Starting point is 00:51:12 So you're able to go into the market and then you leave the backway which connects to another border crossing. Oh, so you're like you're in like a like a bubble. Yeah, essentially. Like that you, yeah, okay. Yeah, essentially. That's crazy. They're like going that hard to be like, we want your money. We just don't want you.

Starting point is 00:51:28 Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And it's really it really shows the hypocrisy of these border systems because, you know, they're. Yeah. These two towns are extremely reliant on one of. another, but the countries that represent both towns are like, no, we need to enforce this, this border, right?

Starting point is 00:51:47 Yeah. So, yeah, this market in the habong is where a lot of people on the Haiti side of the border are able to buy and sell a lot of stuff they wouldn't have otherwise have access to. Sure. So the bridge that runs over the massacre river that connects the habong to what I mean is within feet of the national market, and like I mentioned, all encircled by Sisfunds guards. any Haitian who would try to pass that fence without going past the official checkpoint would likely be detained and deported immediately if they're caught by the border guards.

Starting point is 00:52:18 And as we know, even if a border presents itself as extremely rigid, a lot of it is for show, at least in my experience with the DR Haiti border, right? A lot of it is theater, security theater. Yeah. Yeah. So when I was there, I spent the better part of my time there just walking. watching DGM trucks bring dozens of people to the border, then watched as CISFront guards hurted them out of the Dominican Republic.

Starting point is 00:52:46 Jesus. Yeah, it was incredibly inhumane and heartbreaking. I remember taking this picture of a little girl with a suitcase who was just, and this wasn't a person being deported by the trucks, but this was a Haitian person who was leaving of a little girl just waiting for her dad with a suitcase. Jesus. Oh, that image really sticks in my mind. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:53:10 Yeah. So the thing about the border, as I mentioned earlier, even if it seems to be incredibly hard, it's still porous in several places. When I was in the battalillas in the sugar-producing regions, which are the little towns that they have, or little settlements that they have inside of the sugar cane maze, I spoke to someone who had been detained outside of the sugarcane areas without their work permit and then deported. But his family had to pay a buscong, essentially what the U.S. would call a coyote to bring them back across the border. However, this forced him into what's essentially debt bondage to the buscong because the worker couldn't really pay because of the sugar plantations pay a pittance. So they were essentially in a recursive cycle of some part of my money has to go to the buscong. and then whatever's left has to go to paying for my family and my needs. And it was never enough, sadly.

Starting point is 00:54:06 Yeah. So one of the news videos that I watched as part of research for this was at PBS, like a seven-minute clip, where they talked to a Haitian man as they were being deported along the border. And when they went to talk to the guy's family the next day, the guy who had been deported was there because he crossed the border through the river overnight. And you can hear the astonishment in the narrator's voice, even though that script reading was probably weeks later. And it's just an example of how these borders are more porous than the state wants them to be and wants them to appear to be.

Starting point is 00:54:42 So I wanted to start finishing off by mentioning that the Dominican government is now actively collaborating with the Trump administration's deportation campaign by agreeing to accept third country deportees from the U.S. under the initiative. Yeah. This agreement, as I hope I've shown throughout the course of this episode, is another action in a long line of collaboration between the DR and the U.S. when it comes to immigration enforcement. Noticably, the agreement leaves out Haitian nationals and the U.S. is supposed to provide funding to ensure that these deportees have a quote-unquote adequate conditions per the global detention project, which really remains to be seen if that's the case. but if the conditions in the current immigration attention centers are anything to go by, I'm really not holding out hope that they're adequate conditions. So before I finish the episode, I want to return to Hullet's death in Haina, a facility systematically created with a deep racism towards the Haitian migrants

Starting point is 00:55:43 who make up the vast majority of the people detained there. Hullet was killed by a system that the United States helped create and then shaped. the probability that the DGM agents who were at Haina at the time that Hullet died, the probability that they were trained by U.S. officials is not zero. And right now, we're seeing the immigration systems that the U.S. helped train outside of the country, boomerang, back towards us. What I thought was only a thing of the Dominican Republic, where you have a kind of paramilitary style immigration force raiding everyone in sight

Starting point is 00:56:19 and kind of systematically terrorizing in population has now become a common reality for millions of people inside of the US. I hope that we live long enough to see these border walls become ruins. Yeah, yeah, me too. I often thought like it would be a good book project to just go look at border walls.

Starting point is 00:56:39 Absolutely, yeah. I don't particularly want to do it because it would fucking suck. That's a human experience. But yeah, like if you've lived in the US in the last 20 years, you've paid for border walls and border violence all over the world. And in Europe, to be fair, like the EU does this too, right?

Starting point is 00:56:56 If you've lived in the global north, you probably have a hand in the death of migrants just through paying your taxes. And that fucking sucks. It shouldn't be that way. Absolutely. Yeah, it's tragic. I want to thank the person who reached out to us to share this story with us as well, because I wouldn't have been aware of it otherwise.

Starting point is 00:57:14 There's so much horrible shit happening in the immigration system. system that, you know, we miss things. Yeah. So thank you for doing that. Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for showing that with us.

Starting point is 00:57:26 It's a long time. I used to ride my bicycle around the Dominican Republic a lot when I was there. And it was always nice to go out to those areas, like, get it, get out of the Santo Domingo and like, see how folks live in these rural areas. But then also to be reminded of how too tiered rural existence was, especially for people, like you say, Kent and Kane. like it's it's a brutal way to make a living too like hard backbreaking work under the hot sun like a machete like swinging a machete all day like you can fuck yourself up pretty easily yeah

Starting point is 00:58:00 they'll do this for like between 10 to 14 hours a day day after day you know it's just them and sometimes a big hat and some clothes to protect them from the sun and a little bit of water but it's like backbreaking labor that they're working on. And historically, there was a movement of Haitian laborers from the Haiti to the DR who would come for the Safra, which is the sugar cane cutting season. Yeah. And then they would leave after about six months. But as the border hardened, those people had to make a decision whether they stayed in Haiti or stayed in the place where they could get work. And a lot of them decided that they had to stay in the places where they could get work.

Starting point is 00:58:42 Yeah, much the same as it is in the United States, right? A lot of seasonal agricultural laborers would have did the same. Of course. Yeah, it reminded me kind of that guy you're saying, you like, popped back the next day over the river, reminded me of that Woody Guthrie song, where he's talking about the Los Gatos Canyon plane crash and how all those people had,

Starting point is 00:59:01 many of those people had traveled multiple times from their homes in Mexico to the U.S. whenever there was an expense so they couldn't cover with, like, whatever they could sell from their ostensia, right, they would come across and labor, or young people would come across and labor in order to, like, establish themselves in life.

Starting point is 00:59:20 And then go back, and that if they, you know, needed, they had an expense, their children, whatever, they would come back in labor some more, or some people would just come back in labor every year, and then one time on the way back, their plane crashed and they all died. Like, it's, yeah, it's so much needless suffering that happens because of borders.

Starting point is 00:59:39 It's rough to think about people. in those detention centers. Like that always kind of makes me sad. Yeah. Having spent a lot of time around them, it's pretty fucking miserable in there. Yeah. Yeah. Especially like, for me, you know, I became a Dominican citizen in 2024 after I had been there.

Starting point is 00:59:55 And I always think about, you know, I was seeing these people, some of which they had spent their entire lives in the Dominican Republic and knew nothing else outside of it. But they were stateless because of this, this 2013 decision, right? And I was thinking, you know, they've spent their whole lives here. And I have more of a right to citizenship than them just because my mom was born there and then left when she was a small child. Like to me, I don't know, it was an extremely bleak, bleak thing to realize just how the state prefers some people under it and then others not. You know, it was. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:00:33 I always think like, you know, this is this is a person who is a Dominican. And like, this is so, so, like, culturally more Dominican than I could ever be. But I'm the one who legally is entitled to citizenship. Yeah, I used to think about that a lot when, like, I would go there and, like, we'd try and have Haitian folks come over to join us at the time I was, helping with some diabetes education, nonprofit diabetes education for folks there. And how much harder it was for the Haitian folks, even if they, in some cases, They had family who were there.

Starting point is 01:01:08 They had spent most of their lives there. For them, it was so much harder than it was for me. Who, like, you know, I'm just a guy from Britain. Like, I have no stake in this at all, but I could, you know, no one batted in eyelid when you fly into that airport there and come on through. You don't even need a visa. Yeah, yeah. I also think, like, and this might be getting two into the weeds.

Starting point is 01:01:31 But my great, great grandparents had to leave Spain, because of the monarchy and they were part of the people who were, or my family falls into part of the people who get citizenship through the Les Memoir Historica. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I've seen videos of so many videos and read so much about migrants trying desperately to reach Europe. And that, to me, is like, you know, I get to legally become a citizen

Starting point is 01:01:59 because some guy that I've never met had to leave Spain. and I'm just like, this is crazy. Like, I wish I could just pass it on to somebody else because they need it. And, you know, some people who've lived there their entire lives deserve it, like much more than I ever could, right? Yeah, right.

Starting point is 01:02:18 It's such a strange lottery that gives you the right to, yeah, to go there, reside there, work there, whatever, and someone who deeply wants to and whose life will be in danger they weren't able to, who might die trying to, can't have it. they're very determined to keep it from them. Like, it's such a stupid hierarchy or however you want to put it, like, system. But, yeah, unfortunately, it happens all over the world.

Starting point is 01:02:44 Like, it's only getting worse, right? Like, as we're recording this, people in Belfast are fucking attacking people who specifically, I guess, like, I spoke to some people in Belfast today, and they were like, yeah, it's not all of us. It's a small group of loyalists who are very, very racist and have been for a very long time. Yeah. But nonetheless, right? Like, I don't know, there's a crime think sticker that I think of a lot that says a border doesn't protect you, it controls you.

Starting point is 01:03:09 And like maybe Americans are realizing that now that Border Patrol are murdering U.S. citizens in U.S. cities. You know, I said this the other day and we're talking about Gregory Bevino. Like, there is no reforming this shit. Like the nature of what we have done for decades with borders is that it kills people who did nothing wrong. And if we want to get away from the place we're at now when this shit needs to be torn down, all of it, the way to building board a wall now is very clearly with the understanding that they just need to build as much as possible because no administration will ever tear it down. Absolutely. And that's what they did in the first Trump administration too. They literally skipped the hard parts.

Starting point is 01:03:51 I remember being out there in late 2020, even after August, September, October, November, December. And they're like skipping the difficult heli bits just to put more miles of wall. in. And they're building now, they're kind of filling some of those gaps and just building wall in places where we never thought they would because they have unlimited money. And like, they're doing it because they were right in 2020, right? Biden didn't tear it down. In fact, he repaired and maintained and continued to build it. Like, we need to really think about rolling this shit back if we ever want to make sure that this can't happen again. Yeah, absolutely. The depths of the mechanism have to be destroyed because, like you said,

Starting point is 01:04:31 that there's no reforming it. And I specifically use like kind of mechanism or machine to describe it. Right. Because even if you think that the only thing it applies to is, you know, immigration enforcement in the U.S. and seeing ICE and CBP, you know, terrorizing the streets, like I hope I've, I've evidence in the episode. This is a global project.

Starting point is 01:04:58 Yeah. They're not only doing immigration. enforcement in the U.S., they're helping and sometimes doing immigration enforcement outside in, you know, if they could, they would probably go to every country on earth and be like, hey, this is how you harden your borders and do immigration enforcement. Yeah, yeah, it's just saying it's a part of colonialism and spreading our violence around the world. Well, thank you for sharing that story with us.

Starting point is 01:05:23 Where can people find you if they want to read more of your work, follow you online? I'm at Vacero 2XL, V-A-Q-U-E-R-O-2-X-L on all social media, and I'm also actually working on a series of many documentaries about immigrant communities in Puerto Rico for a local website here called Noamillones, and I'm an editor at the Latino newsletter where I have been reporting a lot of immigration enforcement here in Puerto Rico. Yeah, thank you, James.

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Starting point is 01:06:37 Hey, I'm Hoda Kotby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby. Together, we're going to have meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people. Like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges. I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer, and that was more difficult. There's a lot of people who understand postpartner depression. I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeart Radio.

Starting point is 01:07:04 Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, listen up. The Jonas Brothers here. Our podcast is called Hey Jonas. We've here, since everyone has a podcast, we wanted to as well. And we've had some incredible guests so far. And now our good friend Nile Horn is joining the show. How's it going, boys?

Starting point is 01:07:18 Hey, Niall. It was the same thing with Slow Hands. Slow Hands is not about anything else, really, is it? You know, or taste so good can't be about food. You do the same, Nick, with some of the stuff that you've done. You too, Joe. Drop what you're doing and listen to Hey Jonas on the Eye Heart Art Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Starting point is 01:07:38 June is Black Music Month, and on the Drink Chams podcast, we're speaking with the hottest names in the culture, like Sway Lee. Do you realize how legendary you are? I appreciate that. I'd be seeing it, but I'm like, man, I still got, like, so much more to do. Like, Prince, he dropped, like, 30 albums. We dropped, like, five right now. That's the rate we got to be going.

Starting point is 01:07:56 Yep, that's a good attitude. You also hear stories from industry legends and hip-hop pioneers like Fab Five Freddy. I directed when the Nas is early videos. Which one? One love. Wow. I literally filmed in his apartment in Queensbridge. His moms were still up in that apartment.

Starting point is 01:08:15 Nause was just beginning to take off. His pops used to live near me in Harlem. His dad introduced him to a whole lot of, you know, conscious stuff, and he made a young prodigy. No matter the era, Drink Chams brings you the biggest names and the most unfiltered conversations. Listen to Drink Chams from the Black Effect Podcast Network. on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Starting point is 01:08:37 With scenes of the genocide and Palestine, fostering our screens with the past few years, and increasing analysis of the settler colonial and supremacist root of Israel's violence, it's having more about the concept of settler colonialism. Many people know now about Israel's settler colonial past, and its parallels with the U.S., Australia, South Africa, and Canada. Those are common comparisons. But few know much about the settler colonial origins of Liberia,

Starting point is 01:09:11 which has gained a little attention as people have begun learning more about the concept. So I'd like to take a look at Liberia, Israel, and the parallels of settler colonialism. This is it could happen here. I'm Andrew Sage. Andrews I'm on YouTube. And I'm joined once again by... It's James again. I'm excited to learn about this.

Starting point is 01:09:32 Yeah. I'm mainly looking. at the parallels through the lens of analysis provided by historian Patrick Wolfe in his famous article settler colonialism and the elimination of the nature with other historical resources and articles linked in the show notes. First off, before we start making comparisons, I'll need to introduce the concept for those unfamiliar. Settler colonialism is in one sentence an ongoing structural process where outsiders permanently occupy indigenous lands to build new societies. Wolf notes that invasion is a structure, not an event. He calls settler colonialism inherently eliminatory,

Starting point is 01:10:16 but not invariably genocidal, and calls elimination an organizing principle of settler colonial society rather than a one-off occurrence. Unlike the kind of exploitation, colonialism which seeks to extract resources and leave, settlers come to stay, to claim land, as wolfcotes Deborah Bird Rose, to get in the way of settler colonization, all the native has to do is stay at home. Settlers tell various stories to justify their eliminatory ambitions, race, religion, ethnicity, civilization status, but it really comes down to territory. Settlers want to establish lasting autonomous communities by eliminating the existing existing the existing indigenous way of life and replacing it with the colonizer's culture, economy,

Starting point is 01:11:05 and political order. Wolf says that settler colonialism destroys to replace, pointing to the quite visceral example of Israeli settlers uprooting ancient olive trees and replacing them with foreign fruit trees. Or, as Israel often euphemizes it, making the desert bloom. Elimination doesn't have to mean the wholesale slaughter of indigenous. people, though frontier homicide tends to be a trend. But elimination seeks to dissolve indigenous people and their way of life through various means. Expulsion, encouraged population mixing and forced assimilation, enclosure, child abduction, missions and born-in schools, religious conversion, marginalization, labor exploitation, and more, often several at once. Settler colonialism tends to remain deeply

Starting point is 01:11:59 embedded in the laws and institutions of the countries found with that way. But Wolf points to a curious side effect of settler colonialism, which is the way that settler society subsequently attempts to recuperate indigionity in order to express its independence from the mother country. He references Australia's incorporation of indigenous symbolism, for one example. Australia, Canada, the U.S., New Zealand, South Africa, French Algeria, Rhodesia, Liberia, and Israel are all examples. of contemporary or historical settler colonial societies.

Starting point is 01:12:33 But I'm focused on the parallels between just two of them, Liberia and Israel. In 1818, the American Colonization Society scouted what was then known as the grain coast and deemed it a suitable location for their planned African colony, meant to be a home for formerly enslaved people in the US for an emancipation, as well as free black people that already existed in the territory. The first successful settlement was established in 1822, after an agreement with the local chiefs signed in 1821 granted the society possession of Cape Messerado. Now, some free black Americans had advocated return to Africa projects long before the ECS was even founded. So we shouldn't erase the agency in this.

Starting point is 01:13:20 But the ECS was led by a mix of white abolitionists and white enslavers, who mostly just wanted to rid themselves the first. free black population in the U.S. Most free black Americans opposed the project, either initially or in time. Those black Americans that did participate came to be known as Amerioreans. They carried on the American Colonization Society's narrative that the establishment of Liberia was a return to the promised land, an exodus of formerly enslaved people returning to their ancestral homeland to establish an independent land of freedom. and as a minority in that land,

Starting point is 01:13:58 the American Liberians would establish a government and various settlements they ruled that would attempt to expand Liberia's initial territory and bring civilization and Christianity to the natives. Those that went were clearly heavily influenced by their American background, viewing themselves culturally, socially, and educationally superior to the native African ethnic groups they encountered. After a few decades of support from the American Colonization Society, independence was declared in 1847, but only recognized by the US in 1862.

Starting point is 01:14:33 They also very quickly fell into a deteriorating economic situation marked by heavy foreign debt obligations, culminating in multinational intervention and oversight in the early 1900s, as well as the establishment of a million-acre rubber plantation for the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, which would exploit the indigenous people in Liberia for decades. to come. Any time you're setting up a rubber plantation. I feel like that should be a massive red flag that you're one of the bad guys.

Starting point is 01:15:04 Yeah, yeah, exactly. People who have been subject to settle a colonial violence and to like racially motivated, sound like a cop, I say racially motivated violence, like the violence that inherent in racism and capitalism. The idea that the way to kind of right those wrongs is to become the one doing the violence, not the one subject to the violence.

Starting point is 01:15:26 It's seen in Myanmar, right? Like a country that was brutally colonized by the country that I was born in, but in which essentially today, the state of Myanmar is itself a colonial entity, right? We have a number of different ethnic groups, dozens of ethnic groups within Myanmar, and we have one ethnic group which has dominated governance and which has dominated the military and which has used the tool of the state to extract resources, labor, human bodies from the other ethnic

Starting point is 01:15:57 groups, right? Because they've gone from being colonized to effectively being like a contiguous empire, and they've adopted the logic of the colonizer in doing so. Yeah. And fortunately, this is a very common phenomenon, you know? This is why

Starting point is 01:16:13 I tend to view nationalism, even so-called third world nationalisms, as dead ends. as explicitly counter-revolutionary as against the liberation of all people. Yeah. Because that construction of the nation-state or really of states in general

Starting point is 01:16:34 tends to come with the establishment of certain superiors and inferiors, you know, subordinates and rulers. Yeah. And the privilege of certain religions, ethnic groups, skin tones, whatever the case may be, even within so-called ethnically homogenous societies. You can even look at Japan, right, which is touted by, you know, supremacists of all flavors as an ethnically homogenous society.

Starting point is 01:17:08 Even within that society, there's, you know, colorism. Yeah. And there's also the exploitation and marginalization of certain groups within that territory, such as the Ainu. Yeah. I think a lot about, like, nationalism. There was a time when there was a movement to try and use nationalism as a positive thing. Like the idea of a brotherhood of nations, right?

Starting point is 01:17:43 It existed within Catalan anti-fascism in the 1930s. Like, we are a nation which has been suppressed by the state, so we will build a nationalism that doesn't suppress people, right? We saw the same thing with Kurdish people, right, with the Kurdish freedom movement. Their understanding, I would say, was more advanced than the Catalans. and that like their analysis was we are a nation that has been suppressed for multiple states and therefore we will build society without the state in order to literally create

Starting point is 01:18:11 a world where there is no boot so you can't trade on people right i still believe that that is possible but like in the last six months you know i've seen people back away from that within kyristan right and start talking again about the brotherhood of people's was a mistake they feel betrayed. I don't think those people like consider themselves to be superior, but they feel that their project didn't work. That really makes me sad. Ultimately, the Brotherhood of Nations, like, didn't succeed in Syria, right? And we've seen it effectively, like, Syria is still called the Syrian Arab Republic after hundreds of thousands of people gave their lives for it to be a place where everyone could be free. And, yeah, it really saddens me to see that, that, like, a, like, a

Starting point is 01:18:59 hoped for something better, this idea of like Brotherhood of Nations, which acknowledges people's difference, but it doesn't create a hierarchy. But we're not, we haven't made it quite work yet, I guess. And I guess we live in a world, right, where the, where the appeal to nationalism and bigotry and the idea, like, specifically in Syria, I think that, like, Arabs should not be equal to Kurds was appealing through making that appeal. This project was able to be sabotaged, I guess. Yeah, I think that while we're still forging different approaches to liberation, trying to figure out what that looks like, we've seen the track record of nationalism, is my point.

Starting point is 01:19:43 Yeah, yeah, no, I think it's fair. Like, it's been used much more as a force for dividing us and making us hate each other than it has been for creating a world war we can all live together alongside each other. Yeah, this is a digression, but in my experience, In Trinidad, what I've noticed is that there are efforts to kind of construct, and they have been since the establishment of Trinidad as an independent country, Transmago, as an independent country in 1962, first led by Dr. Eric Williams. There were efforts to kind of build this kind of cross-racial, like overarching, like Trinidadian, Trindigonian identity, which, I mean, I use that term. Trin Bego in some of my work. But Tobago was kind of attached to Trinidad against their will.

Starting point is 01:20:37 And even now, there are people who try to push that Trin-Bago unity. But there are also people who will assert, particularly people from Tobago who will assert that, yeah, no, we want greater autonomy. We want even independence from Trinidad. And so for maybe certain people unifying purposes, I would use the term, but I try not to give off that impression that I'm using it for a kind of unifying nationalism. Because I think with the nationalism of such a young, quote-unquote, nation, a nation of nations, of various people from all over the world, mostly brought here against their will.

Starting point is 01:21:15 There are these competitions, I think, over the proportionality of the representation of different racial ethnic groups, the competitions over who gets to define what this Trinidadian nation is what it means to be a Trinadian and effort to kind of balance or imbalance the proportion of representation depending on which government is in power. You know, our current government is

Starting point is 01:21:45 very much oriented toward a kind of Indo-Turnean Indian focus and have in many ways marginalized all other groups, maligned all other groups, disrespect or other groups within the country to kind of elevate the sense of or get back for the Indian people in turn out. And I don't want to go too much down that road talking about that. But it's just another example to me of the frustration and misdirection that comes with investment in nationalism,

Starting point is 01:22:22 which currently holds a monopoly both here and much of the world on narratives of liberation and anti-clonial resistance. It's almost treated as if anti-clonial resistance is synonymous with nationalism. Yeah. As though the two cannot be

Starting point is 01:22:40 distinguished. It should be a relic of the 20th century, right? Like, it was heavily tied to like state socialism, right? The idea of the way that we fight the wrongs of colonialism is through creating

Starting point is 01:22:54 post-colonial nation states and ignoring the fact that many of those states, many of the boundaries, they find themselves within, include a diverse range of identities, like you said, of many people, including those brought against their will to those places, and that many of those identities don't line up with the national identities, and it almost always results in a change of the oppression rather than the absence of oppression. Yeah, I mean, you could literally just look at the entire history of independent Nigeria. Yes.

Starting point is 01:23:26 for one very clear example of that. Yeah. But getting back to the comparisons, right? I don't see an explicitly titled ideology behind the founding of Liberia, beyond settler colonialism, I suppose. But the implicit ideology was the supremacy of the elite American-Liberian way of life and the right to that territory and the label and the resources of its people, while the elite would themselves be subordinate to the global catalyst order, dictated particularly by America and Europe.

Starting point is 01:24:02 So the supremacy of the American-Liberian elite did not place them in a position of supremacy in the global stage. They were still in a subordinate position in some ways. Turning now to Israel, the political Zionist movement emerged into late 19th century Europe, amid pogroms and the failure to achieve equality for Jews in many countries. Its most influential early theorist Theodore Hutzel argued that Jews constituted a nation and that anti-Semitism could not ultimately be solved through integration into European societies. Instead, they required a state of their own. And Palestine was not initially the only territory under consideration.

Starting point is 01:24:45 Various reposals included Argentina, Uganda, and other locations, before Palestine became firmly established as the movement's focus. Not all Jews agreed with this political Zionist cause. That many Jewish socialists, particularly those associated with the general Jewish labor bond, rejected Zionism altogether. They argued that Jews should fight for liberation where they lived, rather than establishing a separate nation state.

Starting point is 01:25:12 Nevertheless, the Zionist colonial settlement efforts began and expanded in Palestine through the late 19th and early 20th centuries, aided by wealthy benefactors, land purchases from absentee landlords, and growing immigration. The movement received a major boost in 1917 when the British government issued the Balfour Declaration,

Starting point is 01:25:35 expressing support for the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, despite the fact that Palestine's Arab population constituted the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants at the time. A settlement expanded, Zionist narratives increasingly emphasized the idea of return. The Jews were not colonizing a foreign land but returning to an ancestral homeland

Starting point is 01:25:56 from which they had been dispersed centuries before. And the state of Israel was officially established in 1948, accompanied by the Nakhpah or catastrophe, when more than 700,000 Palestinians were displaced or expelled from their homes across Palestine. Like Liberia before it, Israel emerged as a state founded by a population claiming a historic connection to the territory. And like Liberia, his legitimacy would be built upon narratives of return,

Starting point is 01:26:25 civilization, and nationhood, while the indigenous inhabitants found themselves excluded from the political order being constructed on top of their home. Now, already, these situations aren't exactly one-to-one, but they don't need to be to apply a settler-colonial analysis. The key questions for ascertaining settler colonialism are if the settlers established permanent residence, if they claimed political sovereignty, if they dominated indigenous populations, if they created institutions that privileged settlers, basically what was the political and social order that emerged after they arrived

Starting point is 01:27:10 and who was elevated and degraded by it? For Liberia, the answer becomes pretty clear once we look at how the new state was organized. Over the course of the 19th century, American-Liberian settlements expanded their territory through a mixture of politices, treaties, coercion, military expeditions, and outright warfare within addition of peoples, who made up the overwhelming majority of the population, but were largely excluded from political life.

Starting point is 01:27:37 For generations, they lacked meaningful representation in government and were treated as subjects to be administered. The settler elite monopolized state institutions and eventually established what was effectively a one-party state, under the True Wake Party, which ruled Liberia for over a century. The Liberian state extracted taxes and tribute from indigenous communities, relied on indigenous labor, and by the early 20th century, international investigations were uncovering systems of forced labor and human trafficking

Starting point is 01:28:07 so severe that they generated an international scandal. While the settlers themselves had once been victims of slavery and racial oppression, they recreated similar class and ethnic hierarchies in their state. Liberia, of course, differs from many other settler colonies, but they retained the basic framework of a settler population claiming sovereignty over territory inhabited by indigenous peoples and concentrating political and economic power in its own hands. Now compare this to Israel.

Starting point is 01:28:39 From the late 19th century onwards, Zionist organizations acquired land through purchases and violence. Following the Nakhpah, which created one of the largest refugee populations in the modern world, the Palestinians which remained within Israel was subjected to military administration for years, while Palestinians in the occupied territories continue to live under a different legal regime than Israeli settlers. The 1952 citizenship law and the 2018 nation-state law cemented the Jewish supremacist heart of the Zionist project, and since 1967, settlement expansion in the West Bank had steadily increased, accompanied by land seizures, home demolitions, restrictions on movement, and the fragmentation of Palestinian communities. And Gaza has been an open-air prison where settlers occasionally mow the lawn, aka slaughter, population since 2007.

Starting point is 01:29:35 It's worth noting a major difference between the two cases, which is the demographic element. America Liberians remained a small minority ruling a much larger indigenous population, but the entire history of American-Liberian ruled Liberia. Those kind of demographics are more akin to settler societies like South Africa, Rhodesia, and French Algeria, which leaned heavily into the exploitation aspect of colonialism. Israel developed differently, intentionally, to ensure that Jewish people became the demographic majority within its territory. So it's more comparable to settler societies like the U.S., Canada, and Australia.

Starting point is 01:30:17 Such demographics necessarily led to a difference in how indigenous peoples were managed between projects. Liberia's system depended upon indigenous labor, while Israel's project has generally prioritized securing land while minimizing dependence on Palestinian labor. In many periods of Zionist history, Palestinian labor was actively displaced in, favor of exclusively Jewish labor. But again, settler colonialism operates according to a logic of elimination. That might often be expulsion and extermination, but it can also mean assimilation, confinement,

Starting point is 01:30:53 and wherever else. Again, the settlers want the land, the native becomes an obstacle, and different settlers societies develop different methods for dealing with that obstacle. The U.S. had its ethnic cleansings, removals, reservation system, and boardings, schools. Australia had frontier wars, stolen generations, and land dispossessions. Canada had assimilation policies like reservation schools. South Africa under white rule couldn't expel the black majority so they maintained apartheid, controlled reservations and extracted labor. But again, what matters for defining settler colonialism is that indigenous sovereignty is displaced and settler control over the land is secured. Of course, indigenous people in all cases,

Starting point is 01:31:39 do not take this abuse line down. From the very beginning of Liberian settlement, indigenous peoples resisted. The crew, Drabo, Vai, and numerous other ethnic groups fought against territorial expansion, taxation, forced labor,

Starting point is 01:31:54 and attempts by the Liberian states to extend its authority into the interior. And despite generations of American-Liberian dominance, indigenous resistance never entirely disappeared. Eventually, the political order that had governed Liberia

Starting point is 01:32:09 of over a century began to crack. Economic crisis, corruption, and growing resentment towards settler domination, culminated in a military coup in 1980, led by Samuel Doe, overthrowing the government of President William Tolbert and ending more than a century of uninterrupted American-Liberian political dominance. Now, that coup clearly did not create a free or egalitarian society. Liberia would soon face dictatorship,

Starting point is 01:32:36 civil war and immense suffering. But it did mark the collapse of the old settler elites monopoly on state power, and efforts at recovery in the country are ongoing. Palestinian resistance, on the other hand, faced a very different trajectory. From the beginning of Zionist settlement, Palestinians resisted displacement and land loss through protests, strikes, political organizing, and armed revolt. The Great Arab Revolt of 1936 to 1939,

Starting point is 01:33:06 saw Palestinians launch a massive strike and uprising against both British colonial rule and Zionist settlement. Decades later came the first and second indifada. Mass movements that combined protest, civil disobedience, community organized and armed resistance. Palestinians have built a number of institutions alongside international solidarity movements in an effort to sustain their efforts under occupation, siege, exile, and apartheid. Even today, amid the destruction and genocide of Gaza, passing in resistance continues. Liberian Israel are both settled colonial projects, but they are different enough in scale and goals and methods and historical development that obviously treating them as equivalent

Starting point is 01:33:50 would be misleading. The point of the comparison is to identify what these societies have in common. Since the coup in Liberia, the old-American Liberian elite has lost its monopoly on power, but in Israel, the settler-clinil project is alive and well, with ever-expaned settlements, occupation, displacement, and brutality. Whether settler dominance in Israel remains or falls is yet to be seen. In Liberia, the end of settler rule does not automatically bring justice, equality, or freedom. The liberation through state power has not brought their relief, especially in the context of a global capitalist order.

Starting point is 01:34:31 the replacement of one ruling class for another has not ended the struggle, but maybe put a semi-cooler on that struggle. I believe the aim of decolonization must be not merely the fight against the people at the helm of the system, but the very helm of the system itself, dismantling the structures that make domination possible in the first place. For Palestine and for all people's struggling against oppression, Ending Settler colonialism is only the beginning in the pursuit of liberation. And that's all I have for today. All power to all the people. Peace.

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Starting point is 01:37:58 It's me, James, today. And I'm very fortunate to be joined by three other people to discuss this indictment in Minnesota. I'm going to ask them all to introduce themselves. So if we start off with you, Mo, that would be wonderful. Sure, good afternoon. I'm Maura Meltzer-Cohen. I'm an attorney, abolitionist, and educator. I primarily represent people arrested in the course of justice struggles, and I do a lot of popular

Starting point is 01:38:21 legal education. I also teach at CUNY School of Law. Wonderful. Thank you. Olive, if you'd like to go next. Hi, I'm Olive. I'm a legal worker, a movement legal worker based in Minneapolis, and I also make outlaw, so you might have heard my voice on here before. Thank you. Mike. Bye. Hi, I'm Margaret. I am sometimes on this show. You probably hear me on Sundays with Closome Media Book Club. Like you all, I woke up to a lot of messages this morning being like, oh, fuck, things are happening in Minneapolis. People are being raided.

Starting point is 01:38:54 As always, we started off with some false information or some like early rumors. But right away, people were like, there's a bunch of people who are getting arrested. And people started sharing that we were about to see a press conference by the federal government. And they were going to be like, we've caught those terrible Antifa terrorists. and I thought that's the kind of thing I like paying attention to. So I woke up, well, I'd been awake for a minute, and then I watched a press conference, and then I read a very long indictment.

Starting point is 01:39:30 And I think I'm not the one who's supposed to do the very short version of it all, but that's my narrative version of what happened. Yeah, I think that's a good narrative. We are going to get on to talking about the indictment, talking about what it does and doesn't do and what it means and doesn't mean. But Mo, I know you wanted to begin with some really important context about the physical locations where the alleged actions took place.

Starting point is 01:39:56 Yeah, I wanted to ground this whole discussion in the historical reality of the United States federal government's violent colonial history in this specific place. So one of the places that is mentioned a number of Times in the indictment is Fort Snelling. And Fort Snelling is a U.S. military installation that was built on a sacred site at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. I think it's really critical that we understand that not only is the United States federal government continuing to perpetuate its violent occupation in the same place. that it has historically done so in ways that are intended to either include or exclude certain groups

Starting point is 01:40:50 of people, depending on what's expedient for the federal government, but that they're doing it in the exact same place as, I think, the largest mass execution in U.S. history, which was a mass execution of Dakota people, that after it was carried out, was determined to have been totally unlawful, and to have involved totally insufficient legal process on the part of the United States government, and to have involved actions that far exceeded the lawful, legitimate authority of the U.S. government. And of course, that's exactly what we're seeing here, again, is the United States federal government taking actions that far exceed its lawful authority and punishing people who resist those.

Starting point is 01:41:40 excesses. Yeah, I think that's really important. One thing I just want to add, I'm not sure if you said this clearly, but Fort Snelling is also the area where Whipple is located. So you're going to probably hear us talk about the Whipple building, and that is the ICE headquarters for the Midwest. It's where people detained by ICE in all of Minnesota are processed through, and protesters arrested by ICE as well. Yeah. Thank you, Olive. I don't think I did make that clear. Yeah, that's a very important context. If people are looking for a little bit more context on Whipple Building, Olive made a wonderful podcast for us that they can listen to about that.

Starting point is 01:42:16 And Margaret and I did some reporting when we were in the Twin Cities as well. We were linked to all of those in the show notes. Subsequently to this, like Margaret, right, I began to receive messages that we would be seeing people have been detained. We'd be seeing oppressor and an indictment. So what's the presser? And then they actually really see indictment, like 15 minutes before the presser, I believe. Yeah, and they were like mad at people from.

Starting point is 01:42:39 have not already read a like 94 page indictment. Yeah, they kept saying read. Well, this is a thing, right? That allows them when they're answering questions to say, well, read the indictment. But then for people not to ask questions about things that are covered or not covered in the indictment. Yeah, it was a shit show. They told people to read the indictment.

Starting point is 01:42:58 The indictment did not say what they claimed to said. Yeah, it was a press conference. So it was exactly squarely what I would expect from a press conference. And people ask questions which are good and they got answers, which were. useless. Yeah. I was impressed with how quick the press was to point out, to identify, even without having read the indictment, to identify the gaping holes in the government's claims. Yeah, and there's been a lot of really excellent local reporting in the Twin Tifties for a long time, actually. It's one of the places where local journalism has not been gutted just yet, which is a good thing.

Starting point is 01:43:39 The indictment that I have in front of me here indicts, I believe, 15 individuals. From what we know, one of those people was already detained. Another 12 have been detained. And I believe two are yet to be detained. As of recording. I think we're down to 1 is yet to be detained. Okay, we're down to 1, yeah. And they suggested in the presser that those people are maybe negotiated.

Starting point is 01:44:08 negotiating surrender. Yeah. And at the time we are recording, there is a big gathering outside of federal court, which is being attacked by feds of some description. I'm not quite sure. Maybe FPS pepper spraying people. We saw

Starting point is 01:44:24 them throwing some kind of less lethal grenades. But like something that people who live in the Twin Cities will have become very familiar with at this point, right? Which is this kind of state violence. Yes. As Mel has pointed out in the chat, these people are being purpose paid for attending court proceedings, which are public.

Starting point is 01:44:41 In the indictment, the district attorney, I guess, outlines that these people were members of a group called Dam Direct Action, Minnesota, previously known as Twin Cities Direct Action. There are a number of other groups and acronyms here that I don't think is hugely important that they are alleging that they were part of a group that conspired to, among other things, disrupt and obstruct federal agents to, I'm going to quote here, the purpose of the conspiracy include the following, preventing the enforcement of federal immigration law by force, intimidation and threats, opposing the authority of the United States government, preventing hindering or delaying by force the execution of the laws governing the identification,

Starting point is 01:45:30 detention, and removal of non-citizens to include the Immigration and Nationality Act, and preventing, impeding, and interfering federal law enforcement from discharging their duties, including enforcement of federal immigration law by force intimidation and threats. They then go on to detail a great number of messages from a number of signal chats. They specifically identify them as signal chats, and a large number of the messages pertain to a protest held at the Whipple Federal Building on the 23rd of January. That's a protest that Margaret and I covered, and you will have heard our coverage of it before,

Starting point is 01:46:16 or you can go back and listen to it. The specific allegations here are that the accused people conspired to create a soft, quote, unquote, and hard, quote, unquote, barricade. The soft barricade took the form of a shield wall that Margaret and I reported on the time. The hard barricade they're alleging was a number of trailers

Starting point is 01:46:40 that they're alleging. The accused people attempted to flip over in order to prevent feds accessing Whipple. From my skim read of the indictment so far, it looks like the actual actions that the conspiracy charge focuses on, largely about the planning and carrying out of two blockade actions at the Whipple building

Starting point is 01:47:03 on January 23rd and March 1st, and then the participation in the coordination of commuting or ice watching by car and general ice watch activities after the occupation drawdown from March to June. And the conspiracy charge and the evidence that goes to those two things takes up most of the 94-page indictment. Yeah. And then as we get to the very, very end, somebody is accused of kicking a government vehicle and somebody else is accused of getting in a road traffic accident with a government vehicle, which, Margaret, I know you'd read that before, but it's being alleged they were deliberately

Starting point is 01:47:39 using their vehicle as a weapon, right? Yeah, the indictment doesn't say that it was a car accident. The indictment implies that it caused physical contact, and we don't know whether that was physical contact with a vehicle or the officer themselves. Got it. In the entire indictment, there are very few things that the average person reading this indictment would be like, oh, that sounds like a crime. And one of those is kicking a police car,

Starting point is 01:48:02 and one of those is this using a vehicle as a dangerous weapon to make, quote, physical contact and inflict bodily injury. And that is number 276 out of 276, not counts, but like claims made in this document. So they are clearly spending the overwhelming majority talking about other things.

Starting point is 01:48:27 Gives it claims, Mo. Is that a reasonable way to refer to them? They said allegations. Allegations, there you go. Ah, yes. So there's 276 allegations, and the vast majority are the kind of things that the average person reading a thing would say, that sounds like the most free speech thing I've ever read.

Starting point is 01:48:44 Not just one of the allegations is that one defendant made a video calling for people to come armed. During the press conference, they actually did a good job. Though the reporters were like, cool, is there any evidence that that person or anyone who that they spoke to actually came armed. And they were like, we're not answering that. Which is more or less what they said to everything. But overall, we are talking about a document that describes how to organize any protest. Yeah. How to organize any protest. It talks about how do we organize our signal groups so that we can communicate more clearly with each other. How do we know that the

Starting point is 01:49:22 people in our group are who they say they are? And it's the kind of thing. that protest organizers have been doing in this country for at least several decades. That's just what I can speak to personally. And it is being framed not in a different way. They've done this kind of thing before. But it is in this current real bad context where everything gets real intense. The point that you're making, Margaret, is very important because a lot of people will look at this and be like, this is standard First Amendment shit. And I don't want people to think that standard First Amendment shit is illegal now.

Starting point is 01:49:57 Because that is what these prosecutions do. They have a chilling effect on protected First Amendment activity. So, Mo, I know you enjoy the First Amendment. Would you like to explain to us exactly what conspiracy is and what's going on here with these charges of conspiracy? I do. I am a First Amendment enjoyer. So if you look through this indictment,

Starting point is 01:50:33 almost all of the allegations that are made about the, quote, overt acts, the actions that were taken in support of the conspiracy are, as you said, really First Amendment protected conduct. So in order to understand how First Amendment protected conduct can be evidence of criminality, we have to look at what is a conspiracy. And a conspiracy is a fascinating legal animal. because what it is is a claim that a group of people made an agreement to do something illegal and then took steps, overt acts, engaged in these, quote, overt acts, in the service of carrying out their illegal agreement or their agreement to do something unlawful, right? So all of these things, you know, there's so many things in here that are clearly constitutionally protected. They're very

Starting point is 01:51:33 preoccupied with people being members of different groups, identifying themselves as anarchists, wearing t-shirts or sweatshirts that are, at one point, I think they say they're Antifa branded. I didn't know we had a brand. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I could send you some merch. Sorry. I don't know if I should make that joke. That's a joke.

Starting point is 01:51:57 You know, there are all these things, you know, people having conversations, people using rhetoric. And all of these things are clearly First Amendment protected. And then there are people talking about the Second Amendment, which of course is also a constitutional amendment. And, you know, all kinds of, you know, interesting evidence where they talk about people following or identifying ice agents or vehicles driven by ICE agents. Well, we have a First Amendment right to observe law enforcement in the public discharge of their duties. Looking at an ICE agent or taking notes on what they're doing is actually, it's not only not unlawful. It's clearly First Amendment protected conduct, right? These people are doing legal observation. And so what is the thing that's allegedly removing the

Starting point is 01:52:51 First Amendment protection from these behaviors is this claim that all of these things are being done in the service of this larger, to do something illegal. What is the illegal thing interfering with the discharge of ICE, you know, I guess I'll say duties for a given value of duties. There's a lot of air quotes happening for people who can't see. Sorry, I remember that this is not actually a visual medium. Yeah, thank God.

Starting point is 01:53:23 I will verbalize this for the record. So the thing about conspiracy that makes it so attractive is that it makes it, possible for prosecutors to criminalize garden variety, lawful, and even constitutionally protected behavior, and whole communities of people who are engaged in those behaviors by making the claim that all of those things and all of those associations and all of those beliefs and all of those otherwise protected activities are in the service of a larger agreement to do something illegal. Now, of course, they're not addressing the fact that people are organizing themselves to prevent ICE from doing things that we know are very much not lawful, right? Like detaining people who are

Starting point is 01:54:20 citizens, detaining, among others, indigenous people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Punching through people's windshields pulling them out of vehicles, like, I don't know, murdering to people. And that's not being dealt with in this at all, right? The idea that Minneapolis is organizing itself to prevent this massive, you know, unlawful occupation that true to form exceeds the lawful authority of these agencies. To your point on Minneapolis organizing itself, it's worth noting that every single one of these indicted people is from the Twin Cities. And they repeatedly said in the press conference and the indictment that these people tried to hijack peaceful or First Amendment protests, but as they admitted in the press, and every single one of these people was from that community.

Starting point is 01:55:16 I would actually like to point something out about that specifically. One of the things that's happening in this indictment is that the prosecutors have framed it as these bad protesters are trying to use as cover the actions of legitimate peaceful protesters. So what they're doing is they're setting up this idea that there are good protesters and bad protesters, which first of all is a way to divide and conquer social movements. But the other thing that they're doing, and I really want people to be alert to this, is that they're making it possible by associating the two. they're making it possible to later come back and go after even those people that they are currently defining as good protesters. So there's a point in this indictment where they make a claim that an organization, I think it's the, it might have been the 50501 organization.

Starting point is 01:56:14 We need to check that. But they are mentioned in the indictment. They are mentioned as a DSA. Yeah. And the DSA is and a union is. there's a point at which an organization asks Twin Cities DA for assistance with a rally. And even though in this situation, I believe the prosecutors are setting it up like, oh, well, this legitimate group is working with this the bad guy group. What they've done is created a discourse that will allow them if they want to, that will allow the government to come.

Starting point is 01:56:51 back and say, look at this group purporting to be a union and doing legitimate peaceful protest, but they're actually enlisting the assistance of, you know, the direct action group. So on the one hand, you know, I think the indictment is playing right into this good protest or bad protest or narrative, which, to be clear, it doesn't matter if you are protesting in the air quotes right way, you will still be subject to police violence, right? The function of this sort of nonviolent protest is that it exposes how unwarranted police violence is, not that police are not violent toward you if you are protesting the quote right way. Yeah, Margaret and I were there very clearly identified as press on the 23rd of January at the Whipple building, and that did not

Starting point is 01:57:48 stop us being exposed to police violence. We saw people approaching the cops to ask what they were supposed to do and get arrested. Yeah. Yeah, we saw a cameraman from Italy get pepper sprayed. Yeah, that was what I was thinking of. Yeah, and actually, Mo, I really like this point because I actually don't think that the good protest or bad protesters split is going to work in the popular conversation in this particular case as effectively as it usually does.

Starting point is 01:58:15 And that's part of why ICE is so serious. scared as relates to Minneapolis is because there is such a I mean obviously I'm sure there's divisions right but overall there's such a unity around like the thing that is happening is far more important than our differences that like I think they're not going to successfully split people in the general discourse they'll do it a little bit right but they're not going to have nearly the traction they usually do so I actually think that this point that you bring up is so vital except of course for the fact that there's no time in history when anyone has ever come for one person in the morning and then a different person at night. I can't think of any examples of that.

Starting point is 01:58:52 Right. That's sarcasm for, yeah. That's my concern and that's really the thing I want to highlight here is that even though they're sort of claiming, oh, this group is legitimate, this group is not legitimate, they've done this in a manner that's certainly setting them up to come for DSA later, to come for the, you know, the extreme liberal groups and behave as though those liberal groups who are, of course, protesting in the quote right way, are actually engaged in violent, militant, revolutionary action. Right. I think the veil on this has already kind of dropped here in Twin Cities, just how people have been charged with the church protesters facing these face acts charges, super serious federal charges, and so many people facing federal 18 U.S.C. 111 charges, most of which have already been dropped with those cases closed.

Starting point is 01:59:43 and the way that we've seen people show up in solidarity has been so cool. Just like your average liberal mom is like drop all the charges. There does feel like this sense of solidarity among people for being brave and trying to get out there and support their neighbors. That feels unique and makes it feel like it would be pretty hard for them to be really successful in pushing this narrative here. I don't think you get to do, like, Anacus bought the violence to this otherwise peaceful protest when you murdered a mother in the street and then you murdered someone else a few days later. And I think this is part of the thing that I'm finding interesting about this indictment is, on the one hand, they're making these factual allegations where they're saying things like paragraph 70 says

Starting point is 02:00:32 that ICE was totally boxed in for half an hour and inconvenienced all morning. It's like, okay, but then on the following page, it's very clear they're talking about, you know, how violent ICE is being. And it's very clear that the stakes are actually life or death and that all of the people who are in the streets inconveniencing ice are doing so in defense of others. And when I say defense of others, I mean in a legal sense, right, a self-defense. or defense of others. And they're not coming there and shooting ice agents. They are inconveniencing them. And so even the indictment itself, even from the government's own narration, you can see that what is at stake for the community in Minneapolis is true life or death stakes. And what is at stake for the ice agents is that they are inconvenienced all

Starting point is 02:01:37 morning. Yeah. One of the things that they spend a great deal of time talking about its indictment is OPSEC, operational security for those who are not familiar. And how that is evidence that they were bad people conspiring to do bad things. And very obviously, this group's operational security has some kind of breach. And we should talk about the time and place to discuss that breach. So if anyone would like to take a swing,

Starting point is 02:02:17 either of those things. It would be lovely. I mean, I would say that, obviously, if you're reading someone's signal messages in an indictment, clearly the security did not fully succeed. But I would just say that actually a lot of the indictment seems to be people being frustrated at the success of the operational security. A lot of the indictment is like, and then they kept vetting and therefore, the implication is like, and therefore we didn't get to the next stage with our attempts. Yeah. I do think it's important to understand that operational security is not evidence of guilt.

Starting point is 02:02:54 And playing who's the cop in the group chat is a game that everybody loses. And also, not everything needs to be said on the internet. I'm going to say it again. If you missed it the first time I said it, not everything needs to be said on the internet. But what if I want to just explain to everyone that I'm really cool and radical? Isn't the best way to do it to just say that on the internet? Do you have an Instagram account? Hey, remember that Tracy Chapman song where she says, talking about a revolution sounds like a whisper?

Starting point is 02:03:37 Yeah, but also had a really fast car. Yeah, great. Sorry, I just really like Tracy Chapman. Yeah, no, no, that's a good point. And standing in the welfare line might be a better, place to do it than online. Maybe. And we also are just seeing that the bulk of the evidence is extensive records of some

Starting point is 02:03:56 supposedly vetted signal chat messages and highly detailed reports from supposedly vetted in-person meetings, both gathered over the course of nearly half a year since January. And there's a lot of ways they could have gotten this information. Some of these events were public events. There's transcripts of a tour that some people did a speaking tour. about resistance in Minneapolis. Those were open events to the public. Of course, there's going to be feds there.

Starting point is 02:04:23 But as wiser people than me have always said your signal messages, if you can see them on your phone and someone else gets your phone, they can also see them on your phone. So a lot of people were arrested here and had their phones seized as evidence. There's lots of ways that these messages could have been obtained. And what Moe is saying, I just think it's worth elaborating on that it won't help anyone. What did you say about looking for the cop in the chat?

Starting point is 02:04:50 Don't play who's the cop in the group chat. Yeah. Yeah, everybody loses is a good way to describe that. Yeah. And just to make it explicit, I think it's because you could read this and be like, oh, my God, somebody snitched or there's an infiltrator. And I just think that's not clear. Yeah, we don't know.

Starting point is 02:05:07 Yeah. We just don't know. And I think the other thing that I would like to say is I'm looking at a lot of these text messages and they're not particularly evidence of unlawful conduct. No, they're really not. Right? And so I don't think the solution to that is to never talk to your friends or to never organize.

Starting point is 02:05:28 I do think that it's important to remember that basically anything you say can and will be used against you. When I say to my clients, look, even when you're saying you're protesting your innocence. You know, when you're telling people publicly, I didn't do anything, that can be used against you. You don't know what police and prosecutors are going to understand as evidence or what they're going to understand it as evidence of. That doesn't mean we don't talk to each other. It doesn't mean we self-censor. It means we have the courage of our convictions. Yeah. And it means that we're thoughtful and circumspect about what we say. Yeah. I think that's just like the most important point to all

Starting point is 02:06:14 of this, we have the courage of our convictions, and that doesn't mean we should be fools. Right. Like, the indictment is much more concerned with that they built shields than it is about their conspiracy to kick police cars or whatever it is that they're accused of their overt acts. Yeah. You know, and a lot of it is around the ideology of these people. And interestingly, it mentions anarchism or anarchists substantially more than it mentions Antifa, with emphasis on the wrong syllable, of course.

Starting point is 02:06:40 And that's actually not new. that's actually really old in American history. But like, it's interesting to me that one of the cases that it looks like they're trying to build with these allegations is that all of these people identify as anarchists. And they're obviously not being accused of being an anarchist because that's not a crime. But it certainly seems like they're attempting to say, like, this person identifies an anarchist, therefore they are more likely to have committed these other crimes or whatever. And I just think that's worth pointing out that that is a thing. that the state is heavily focused on. But for me, as an anarchist, this is about the kind of thing where you're like, well, the courage

Starting point is 02:07:20 of my convictions. It's not a crime to believe that we should organize society and a bottom-up horizontal structure. And to add to that, the reason they're doing that is that they're relying on a popular misunderstanding of anarchism to mean a predilection for chaos and violence. Right. Totally. And the more that we can explain that anarchists mostly just want to make tea for you and be nice to you, then the further we can.

Starting point is 02:07:43 can go to dispelling. Yeah. Like I like to define anarchism as building ways to take care of people that don't reinforce ways to control people. Which includes guarding kindergartens, right? Yeah, yeah. There are many ways that we can do that. But the fewer people who have that misunderstanding, the harder it becomes to make

Starting point is 02:08:00 that argument. Yeah. I think the point in this indictment that perfectly illustrates the fundamental misapprehension that the government has about what an anarchist is and what we're up to is the phrase the aggressive use of shields. Yeah, that was when I was going to clip out as well. Because as you say, we're not food and bombs. Right? It's food, not bombs. We're feeding each other. We're protecting kindergartens.

Starting point is 02:08:35 We're providing security for meetings. We're mostly, frankly, feeding each other. Yeah. Yeah. Not always very well, right? Yeah, a little over-emphasis on badly cooked eggplant. Too many human beans, possibly. But, you know, but we're doing our best out here. And maybe, I actually think that the idea that anarchists are people who engage in the aggressive use of shields is actually, in some respects, really precise.

Starting point is 02:09:07 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If these people will walk, it would be a great album title for someone. There has been a lot of reaction to several federal cases in the last 12 months, right? Maybe 16, 18, God knows how long we've entered this. But this is not that.

Starting point is 02:09:25 This is not Prairie Land. As we spoke about before, more than half the 18 USC cases in Minnesota have already been dropped. Can you maybe help situate this in a place that helps people who are struggling with a sky? is falling feeling right now? Well, I think one really nice thing is the arraignments are, I believe, still ongoing as we are speaking of the people who were raided and arrested this morning. And last I heard all five whose cases had been called or ordered released with conditions of not talking to each other with one exception for people who are roommates. But that's interesting and probably a whole other conversation. But that's a big deal that people were facing

Starting point is 02:10:09 conspiracy charges, which are very serious federal charges and were released today at their arraignments. I think it shows it's an indication of where the courts are at and also just these cases are taking place in these cities where the whole world watched the federal government do absolute terror and people do beautiful human loving each other in all the ways that they could to try and keep people alive while federal agents killed people. So it's just the context that it is in. It's super different than rural Texas, you know, and even the facts that we are dealing with in this are just less hard. You know, there's not allegations that someone shot a cop, which is a harder narrative to overcome in the court of public opinion. And the allegations

Starting point is 02:11:01 generally also seem even less serious than the recent indictment that came out. in Michigan for the Palestine protesters. So I just think that's an interesting grounding thing. And on the other hand, we did recently see that with the Spokane three people convicted of conspiracy, which was, that's the second one after Prairieland. So while a lot of these cases around the country have been dropped, not all of them have. But it's hard to imagine this being super successful, given where it's taking place. And I think that when we look at Minneapolis and we're like, okay, Minneapolis was the, or the Twin Cities.

Starting point is 02:11:35 I'm sorry, St. Paul. I'm so sorry. I keep accidentally doing that. St. Paul, you're also wonderful. And people have done so much work, and they have been this, like, guiding light for a huge chunk of people living in the United States of America in this past year, right?

Starting point is 02:11:50 Like, looking how people have come together to defend their neighbors and themselves. And, like, I think that it's important that we say that unity has to continue. And so it's, like, the reason that I am optimistic is because of the actions that I saw in Minneapolis. Sorry, I didn't go to St. Paul.

Starting point is 02:12:09 But, you know, the actions I saw in Minnesota, but that has to continue, like, during court support, during, you know, so it's not like just a, oh, we've got this, right? But instead, by continuing to say, we are looking, this does matter to us. This matters to everybody. Yeah. I'm hoping that that kind of continues to influence things.

Starting point is 02:12:30 And I think we saw that today, the arraiments, the courtroom was packed. It was overflowing. So people were outside chanting, and that's when tear gas was deployed. And there was unprecedented, I mean, it just was unprecedented here at the federal courthouse to see that kind of force used. But there's tons of people outside. You know, this happened this morning, and the community is not having it. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:12:56 Even though they're car kicking anarchists. Cars are living in fear. We need to remember that no action is over until the last person accused is home and free. Yeah. We have to keep doing court support. We have to do prisoner support. I am so relieved, I guess, to know that Minneapolis and St. Paul have such well-developed legal infrastructure, including not only lawyers who have, you know, decades of experience. experience fighting against the politically motivated abuse of state power against people, you know, on the

Starting point is 02:13:38 basis of their First Amendment protected beliefs, but also legal workers and jail support and people who have really learned over the course of not just this last winter, but, you know, through the course of many decades of movement struggles, how to deal with this kind of stuff. And I know that this particular group is in really good hands. It's not that this isn't a terrible situation. And it's not that it isn't going to be potentially devastating for the individuals who've been indicted. But the kind of solidarity that we have seen and that we saw this morning at the courthouse is really heartening to me. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:14:24 I guess I'll just say, like, I had the misfortune of having to be. a misfortune of having to listen to Gregory Bovino's interviews at the Remigration Conference in Portugal as part of my job. And one of the things he said was that they surrendered to Minneapolis and St. Paul, right? And they felt like they were defeated there. And I don't think it's a coincidence that this is happening right after they got their funding bill passed, right? But very clearly, the people of the Twin cities stood up to ICE and CBP and won. And ICE and CBP know that they are very upset about it. but that means you can do it again. And like this takes a different form when it comes in a form of court support, right?

Starting point is 02:15:04 It's a different kind of struggle, but the way we confront it is the same, which is to say together. We saw people hold each other so close in the Twin Cities and it was really beautiful amidst a horrible, horrible shit. And I think that people can continue to do that and continue to like be this light that the rest of the country looks up to. As a wise mentor, Moe has said many times before the punishment. is the process for anyone going through this. I hope you don't feel that however hard this is is being undermined. It's incredibly difficult to go through this process, but staying grounded in the reality of where you are,

Starting point is 02:15:41 the cases that have been dropped, and the fact that there's not yet a conviction to minimize fear is a way of taking back power from the state, which they get to wield over us by doing things like this to freak us out and make us really scared. And we don't know if this will hold up in court, yet. So let's keep our feet on the ground and hold each other close and try not to let them get us down more than, more than they have to. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:16:08 Pride Month, Toronto. Pride is an opportunity for you to create your own space, to celebrate your existence. Iheart Radio is proud to be an official sponsor of Pride Toronto Festival and we won't stop. Celebrate pride. Turn up the love and listen to IHeart Pride Canada, your 24-7 radio stream and the only. playlist you need for your Toronto Pride celebrations. Pride is so great because it gives a whole bunch of people this visibility that they've never had before. We have a ton to celebrate Toronto. Happy Pride. Iheart Radio. Hey, I'm Hoda Kotby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby. Together, we're going to have

Starting point is 02:16:53 meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people. Like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges. I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer, and that was more difficult. There's a lot of people who understand postpartner depression. I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, listen up. The Jonas Brothers is called, Hey Jonas.

Starting point is 02:17:22 We've here, since everyone has a podcast, we want it to as well. And we've had some incredible guests so far. And now our good friend, Nile Horn is joining the show. How's it going, boys? Hey, Nile. It was the same thing with Slow Hands. Slow Hands is not about anything else, really, is it? You know, or taste so good, can be about food.

Starting point is 02:17:36 You do the same, Nick, with some of the stuff that you've done. You too, Joe. Drop what you're doing and listen to Hey Jonas on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. June is Black Music Month, and on the Drink Chams podcast, we're speaking with the hottest names in the culture, like Sway Lee. Do you realize how legendary you are? I appreciate that.

Starting point is 02:17:58 I'd be seeing it, but I'm like, man, I still got, like, so much more to do. like Prince, he dropped like 30 albums. We dropped like five right now. Like, that's the rate we got to be going. Yep, that's a good attitude. You also hear stories from industry legends and hip-hop pioneers like Fab Five Freddy. I directed when Nas' early videos. Which one?

Starting point is 02:18:17 One love. Wow. I literally filmed in his apartment in Queensbridge. His moms were still up in that apartment. Naz was just beginning to take off. His pops used to live near me in Harlem. His dad introduced him to a house. His dad introduced him to a whole lot of, you know, conscious stuff, and he made a young prodigy.

Starting point is 02:18:36 No matter the era, Drink Chams brings you the biggest names and the most unfiltered conversations. Listen to Drink Chams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to What Could Happen here. I'm Robert Evans. Now, a few days ago, I had the experience of listening to somebody that I've known for a while and known as a fairly mainstream liberal, who does not, in general, support the personal ownership of firearms, certainly not weapons like AR-15s, react to the recent race riots, pogroms, you know, whatever term, I guess, is most appropriate in Belfast, where racist mobs ran through the streets, attacking people in their homes, pulling them out of their homes, lagging their homes on fire, targeting these people

Starting point is 02:19:24 because they were not white. And this person, who I've known for a while, reacted to watching footage of this and reading headlines and their general shock and horror by saying something along the lines of, I guess if this kind of stuff is on the table, I understand why people need AR-15s. Now, nothing had actually changed about the way the world works to alter this person's opinion of guns or of reality. They were simply forced to confront an aspect of reality that had previously been obscured to them, because in earlier days, they had assumed that in any civilized nation, and they considered Northern Ireland to be part of a civilized nation, police would stop this kind of behavior. And if you feel like the rule of law is something you can trust on,

Starting point is 02:20:08 pretty immutably, then someone else saying, no, I would rather have a gun of my own than trust a cop might sound like a maniac. Today's episode is not about guns or gun rights. It is in the most direct sense about data centers and the current people's war on building more of them. I see the current vast groundswell of support for this kind of of activism and this fight in general as the most hopeful change in domestic politics in quite some time. And I think this movement could become a weapon that drives a stake into the hearts of the Silicon oligarchy that currently rule quite a lot of our world. The problem is any mass movement like this, especially one built on what is essentially also like the biggest name in the news right now,

Starting point is 02:20:50 AI, is going to involve a lot of misinformation and even disinformation. People don't just hate data centers for good reasons. They hate them for bad ones, too. Or at least it would probably be more accurate for me to say a lot of people hate them for reasons that don't reflect something data centers actually do or make worse. The broader reason that I've seen some people have issues with this fight, with this mass movement against the construction of new data centers is that data centers are utterly necessary modern infrastructure and incredibly crucial to the maintenance of what we would consider basic daily life. This is something that's true even without AI, and this is something that was true prior to the introduction of what Silicon Valley likes to call AI into all of our lives. Data centers

Starting point is 02:21:36 are what make the age of cloud computing possible. And starting in the 2010s, we decided that the cloud was where everything compute-wise was increasingly going to happen in the future. There were pragmatic reasons for this, having Word save your document to a cloud file that makes it instantly accessible from any machine with internet access should you desire. That's a big leap forward in capability, at least in one direction. Likewise, having like a watch on your body that cannot just take down your biometric data during a workout, but can store it and analyze it over long periods of time, that offers people real utility.

Starting point is 02:22:12 There's a reason products like this are very popular. You can't, however, have the entire world mapped out and accessible for turn-by-turn navigation without needing a shitload of data centers somewhere, and in fact, in quite a few somewheres, to make that possible. Now, of course, there are also privacy tradeoffs for all of these kinds of products. That's been the entire logic of the Internet of Things era. You hand over your data and we deliver utility. Privacy advocates have had issues with this from the jump,

Starting point is 02:22:43 but most people didn't because the benefits were obvious and most people don't like to read or think very hard if we can avoid it. For almost 20 years, consumers largely ignored the rollout of data centers around the world, even sometimes, into our backyards, because big tech had reasonably good PR, and most people were pretty happy with their gizmos, all in all. You get a hint of how uncontroversial this used to be in a 2022 article I found published on Microsoft's Source EMEA website, written by Bill Briggs. The title was, critical to our modern society, how data centers power everyday necessities.

Starting point is 02:23:20 Now, there was a little bit about AI in there, but this is 2022, and the hype cycle had nearly hit its peak at that point. The article spent much more time emphasizing how integral data centers are in things that people like. Quote, simply put, they are the physical infrastructure behind cloud computing, and across Europe, Microsoft data centers are operating around the clock to support a wide spectrum of critical services, from the life-saving work of doctors and first responders to essential services like groceries and online banking. At the same time, data centers also empower everyday necessities like food deliveries, remote work, and video calls to family.

Starting point is 02:23:56 The article goes on to include a quote from Rahil Nasir, an associate research director at a market research firm who called data centers the invisible infrastructure, which I find interesting because absolutely no one would call it that today, right? People only saw them as invisible back then because there hadn't been much public discussion about these things, and there weren't nearly as many of them, to be fair. In 2022, the Deloro Group estimated global data center CAPEX to have been about $241 billion. McKinsey is currently predicting global spending on data centers will reach $7 trillion by 2030. The number of data center projects in development or under contract exploded pretty much right after Microsoft put out the article I quoted from earlier,

Starting point is 02:24:43 and this put millions of people face to face with the reality of data center construction projects. Many of them revolted. Q1 of 2026 saw a record 75 data center projects blocked or delayed nationwide, which made it, in NBC's words, the most blocked and delayed quarter for data center projects on record.

Starting point is 02:25:03 Researchers at Data World Watch told journalists they did not consider this a cyclical spike, calling it instead a structural shift caused as, quote, communities internalize an opposition playbook, legislative sessions introduced formal regulatory uncertainty, and the number of active opposition groups more than doubled to 833 across 49 states. Now, the rapid and obviously organic nature of this growth has alarmed certain Democratic and Republican politicians, largely the ones who have taken money from the tech industry.

Starting point is 02:25:34 Some of these folks have panicked and insisted that Chinese government propaganda is behind the growth in opposition to data centers. The New York Times published a piece by sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom, who argued that Democrats need to make the issue of data centers their issue because she believes that these protests could have a significant impact on the midterms and in 2028. In her column, she states that she wasn't initially sold on the value of data center protests, but time around activists convinced her that she'd been wrong, in part because this was not an issue that inherently drew urban or suburban or rural voters together,

Starting point is 02:26:09 but all of them, like it didn't inherently pull it Republican or Democratic voters. And thus, it was a way to bring people together and get them working together in common cause, which is a really beneficial thing to do if you're trying to pull people closer into like a broader political alignment with you. And I would add to that point, just based on my own research and what I've seen, I feel like the fight against data centers is something that has what I like to call a high likelihood of fundamentalism in it or HLF. And an HLF issue is a kind of political fight that if you get drawn into it, you're really likely to become some kind of fundamentalist on the matter. And abortion would be a good example of this sort of issue, right? That's why back in the 1970s, the Republican Party adopted abortion as a central concern. Because if you get someone to become an anti-abortion activist, they'll vote just based on that, right? And if one party is against abortion and one party's for it, they'll never consider the party that is even open-minded to a party. it being legal in some limited sense, right? They become an absolutist on the matter. These are great issues to pull people into like a voting block with because if you can get them to associate that

Starting point is 02:27:18 issue with your party, you can kind of immunize that chunk of your voter base from economic concerns or their points of attack, at least in theory. Now, different issues tend to create fundamentalists for different reasons. People who are organizing against data centers aren't doing it usually because they think the idea of a data center is wrong. But many of them do believe that AI is evil and immoral, and AI is the reason that so many new data centers are going up. Many more people oppose new data centers for the specific reason they see them as a threat to their own personal environment and to their own power bills and to the cleanliness of their own water and air. It may seem as if this is the kind of support that would tend to breed

Starting point is 02:27:59 shallow activists. If you just don't want a data center in your hometown, that's doesn't mean you give a fuck about one going up in Mississippi or wherever you don't live. After all, none of these people presumably cared about the data centers that had been going up five years ago, ten years ago before the issue became salient to them. But as Tressy Cottom wrote, the realities of doing this kind of organism on the ground have a tendency to transcend the reasons individuals start getting into the fight. Quote, I have been watching this new groundswell of dissent firsthand in community meetings, organizing sessions, and civic trainings here in North Carolina.

Starting point is 02:28:32 The resistance has lifelong joiners, alumni from environmental and housing movements, and young organizers. There are also a lot of people who have never dreamed of being disagreeable in public, much less consider joining a rock as social movement. The imminent risk of living next to a data center may be why they show up for a meeting, but they're committing to the issue for bigger, deeper reasons. Political corruption and corporate malfeasance make them feel politically impotent. Voicing their objections, sharing their anxieties with others, recalling politicians who override them, and in some cases beating the opposition,

Starting point is 02:29:00 is giving them something few politicians are offering a taste of political power. And we'll continue. But first, here's some ads. And we're back. I think it's really important to emphasize something that Kottom said at the end of that last quote, which is that part of why the anti-data center movement is potent and why it tends to draw people in much deeper than maybe the initial shallowness of why they got in would suggest is that it offers them a sense of political power and of agency,

Starting point is 02:29:37 in an age in which people are being trained more and more to feel as if they have no agency. You can't stop this. You can't fight this. Or alternatively, this guy will do the fighting for you, right? People are getting it from all sides, wherever they actually land in the political aisle. And that's, quite frankly, not very much fun. It's really fun to feel like you're a part of a movement like this that's kicking ass and taking names. Now, I don't share the long-term goals that led Codham to write that article, at least not all of them.

Starting point is 02:30:04 I get the sense that she wants to give the Democratic Party a powerful new long-term voting block. I don't care so much about that. Now, I do, of course, want to see the Republican Party beaten electorally, and more Democratic votes is the only current way to do that. But the Democratic Party is not morally or logistically capable of doing anything but betraying these people in the long run. I really do believe that. The reason why is the reason why the party has been incredibly slow to embrace these

Starting point is 02:30:31 activists in any cohesive fashion. This movement is death for. Silicon Valley. And Silicon Valley has a lot of fucking money. And when I say death, don't think I'm exaggerating. Data Center Watch is calculated that the total value of data centers blocked in early 2026. This is just the first three months of this year was around $130 billion compared to a total of $156 billion in projects blocked in all of 2025. Now, a huge month last year for data construction expenses in the U.S. was last July, which was actually a historic month. And that represented about $14 billion in expenses. So the value of the projects that have been stopped

Starting point is 02:31:08 are significant, even in tech industry terms. More to the point, nearly all the money that underlies and underwrites these corporations and their owners is fake. Elon Musk could not produce a trillion dollars of real liquid U.S. dollars if he wanted to, because that simply is not how assets work. Most of his wealth is in stock valuation, and those stocks are worth what they're worth because of consumer sentiment as much as anything objectively real. The entire AI bubble is being underwritten by the belief that this will be worth it. There are trillions in value here, and we just need to spend a few trillion more to unlock them. None of that value can be unlocked without data centers,

Starting point is 02:31:46 and if you throw a wrench in their plans to build more, you can hobble the whole effort. Any delay or serious setback creates the risk of a panic, and panic is their greatest enemy. All it takes is one sufficiently disastrous crash to kill many of these big overvalued companies, SpaceX and Anthropic and Open AI and Microsoft and Meta can't all survive a market collapse, just as they won't, sadly, all die. Nor can their billionaire bosses all remain masters of the universe. If they fall off their perch in a raid that shatters the global economy,

Starting point is 02:32:18 we won't even have to bring all of these guys to court. Some of them will get done in by their former friends overseas. There's a reason why some VC types have already started trying to describe anti-Data Center activism as terroristic. They are, in fact, terrified of it. This segment from an ARS Technica article by Ashley Bellinger should give you an idea of what I'm discussing. Quote, the researchers suggested that the back half of 2025 marked a turning point as data center opposition emerged as a national level narrative that showed the AI industry can no longer

Starting point is 02:32:47 see the fights as individual zoning disputes. It is now reshaping elections, regulation, and site viability nationwide, data center watch reported last year. Where before, officials were criticized for quietly signing deals without discussing construction with nearby residents. now they're encountering backlash before any deal is in the books, data-scent-watch found. In some cases, researchers reported,

Starting point is 02:33:09 opposition mobilized before any project was officially filed. The mere rumor of a data center was enough to trigger organized resistance. Now, folks, when you hit this level of cultural inflection with a movement, you are in an extremely powerful, but also very dangerous, position. There's a reason that Steve Bannon's also made waves recently by encouraging his side to start reaching out to the anti-Data center people, He knows this energy can be co-opted, or at least he believes it can. For my part, I want to see this energy harnessed, I want to see it burn brightly, like the working

Starting point is 02:33:41 flame of an oxyacetylene torch, because I want to see it used to cut directly into the belly of the industry that I hate. The best way for us to do this right now is to create as many moments as possible where projects to construct new data centers clash with protesters. Each of these conflicts has the potential to spark a panic in the market, and every piece of bad press contributes to the overall weight of public opinion and expectation against AI and against big tech. We never know which piece will be the one that breaks this current incarnation of the industry. The name of the game for us then is to create as many moments as we can that endanger

Starting point is 02:34:16 the future of this market and the industry behind it, and we can do that entirely legally by forcing them to confront reality. None of these data center projects are sold to towns and cities based on real, accurate information about how they will impact the environment and the local community. One good example of this recently, from the United States, is a story earlier this year

Starting point is 02:34:37 about a data center project in Box Elder County, Utah. The proposed buildings together would have been three times the size of Manhattan and stretched across multiple sites. The project was championed by celebrity billionaire Kevin O'Leary, who was also the VC behind it.

Starting point is 02:34:52 For a separate article in Ars Technica, quote, "'Resident's top concern was the straight-o data center project draining local waters, and they were willing to pay to protect them, most especially the vulnerable Great Salt Lake. Many locals paid a $15-dollar fee to register comets to block the transfer of 1,900 acre feet of water from a ranch to the hyperscale data center. Other concerns include electricity bills rising and potential risks to air quality, local wildlife, and land. Venture capitalist Kevin O'Leary, chair of O'Leary Digital and Shark Tank

Starting point is 02:35:19 investor, is behind the construction of the project. He told a local ABC affiliate that he regrets not working with state officials to be more transparent about the project from the beginning. We really screwed it up, O'Leary said, while confirming he was not expecting this intense kind of blowback from the public. He claimed that he and state officials anticipated that people would be excited about the major local investment and made huge mistakes by not involving the public more in discussions based on that assumption. We pissed off a lot of people, and that's not the way I do business, O'Leary said. That's not. Now, even that he undeniably did business this way, I disagree.

Starting point is 02:35:54 but that's beside the point. The resistance was successful. Now, the project wasn't killed entirely, but it has been massively scaled back and may yet die on the vine. The fact that resistance to this huge project and many like it has caused so much damage to the industry has prompted a scale response.

Starting point is 02:36:12 In late May and early June of 2026, I noticed a drip and then a flood of new articles and viral content critical of the anti-data center protests. One good example of this would be a June 10th article on the website Bar Chart by Nash Riggins. It was titled, Data Centers get a bad rap for using too much water and energy. It turns out almonds suck up even more.

Starting point is 02:36:33 Now, in this incredibly snotty little shit of an article, Nash is reporting on the fact that a bunch of pro-AI influencers had with shocking coordination, started posting online responding to complaints about data center water usage by pointing out how wasteful it really is to grow almonds. You know, the almond industry uses even more water than AI. does. And, you know, if you want a good response to that, just say, sure, put him out of business. Fuck them. Another popular article in this genre was a blog post by Andy Masley. He critiqued the

Starting point is 02:37:05 argument that AI was particularly wasteful by making arguments like this, per an interview with him on azeefamily.com. Almost all of that 1.7 trillion gallons of water per year is specifically water that is withdrawn in the return to the source, Masley told me, referring to a widely cited estimate from Karen Howe's Empire of AI. The book claimed surging AI demand could use up to 1.7 trillion gallons of fresh water globally by 2027, or half the water annually withdrawn in the UK. Masley says the word use in that sentence is misleading. Data centers do evaporate most of the water they use on-site for cooling, but on-site use represents only about 20% of their total water footprint. The other 80% comes from power plants that heat water to spin turbines. That water

Starting point is 02:37:46 is then returned mostly unchanged to its source. Masley's viral post got him interviewed by the New York Times and earned a correction from the author of the book, but his critiques about specific claims made there shouldn't be seen as having any overall legitimacy to the broader argument about data center water use. For one thing, he acts as if all data centers function the same way, basically, both in terms of how they're powered and in terms of how they do cooling, and thus you can make the kind of assumptions about water use that is making, and you just fucking can't. Now, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute has published an expansive analysis of data centers and water consumption. They point out that this is all much more complex than Masley's quote might lead you to believe. And I'm going to read from that article. Quote, in the context of

Starting point is 02:38:29 data centers, water consumption refers to the amount of water withdrawn from blue or gray sources minus the water discharged by the centers, primarily warm water left over from cooling the IT racks. The consumed water is generally the water that evaporates or is otherwise taken out of immediate human usage. Withdrawal of fresh water from local streams or underground aquifers may lead to aquifer exhaustion, particularly in water stressed areas. Approximately 80% of the water, typically freshwater, withdrawn by data centers, evaporates, with the remaining water discharged into municipal wastewater facilities. The large volume of wastewater from data centers may overwhelm existing local facilities, which were not designed to handle such a high volume. And again, one of the things that

Starting point is 02:39:07 Masley tends to ignore is that even when you're putting this water back into the system, quote-unquote, that doesn't mean it's going back to the aquifers that it was pulled out of. It doesn't mean that it's going back into the same way, which can still cause massive issues. Now, how water-efficient a data center is is going to vary depending on the climate of its location. But because these tend to require a lot of space, many are built in places where land is cheap. Those places are often hot and dry, like Utah and Wyoming. Data centers in hotter climates use more water. Data centers specifically built for the AI industry also have higher chip density, which requires more cooling, which uses more water.

Starting point is 02:39:44 As time goes on, these increased demands lead to more and more being demanded of the local areas that agree to host data centers. Since data centers don't lend themselves to any other industries or create very many jobs, this often leaves local communities dependent upon them, which means they have no choice but to say yes to ever harsher environmental demands. I'm not creating a hypothetical here. This has happened over and over again. and I'm going to read again from that article by eESI.org.

Starting point is 02:40:11 Northern Virginia is considered the world capital for data centers, with over 300 operational data centers spread across four counties. Collectively, all data centers in Northern Virginia consumed close to 2 billion gallons of water in 2023, a 63% increase from 2019. Luton County, with approximately 200 operational data centers, used about 900 million gallons of water in 2023. This has led Luton Water, the county's freshwater authority, to rely heavily on potable water.

Starting point is 02:40:37 for data centers rather than reclaimed water. Now, activists looking for cautionary tales about what data center addiction can do to an area should look no further than Northern Virginia. The region started saying yes to such development decades ago when the industry was very much different. Back then, AOL was based there, and their data center was part of an overall campus that employed more than 5,000 people, per an article by the Lincoln Institute. The campus has since been demolished, and three large data center facilities are being built on

Starting point is 02:41:05 the site. There's a big fence around it for security. purposes, so it's totally isolated from the community now, and it's only going to employ about 100 to 150 people in the same piece of land. That's the difference. That's a quote from a local resident. And we'll hear from some other local residents, but first, here's ads. And we're back. Now, I've mostly discussed the fight against data centers thus far as an American thing. And it isn't. I think it is particularly relevant to our upcoming elections in a way that deserves particular attention, but this is a global fight. And it is a global fight not just because people hate AI,

Starting point is 02:41:49 but because data centers and the AI they enable have come to symbolize the tech elite, who have bought our world and who are in the process of burning it to the ground. Hatred of these people should know no geographical boundary, and this presents the possibility of international outreach as well as collaboration and strategizing. As an example, I'll discuss a small community in Romania, Mishli, which is located in one of the poorest sections of the country. In 20-20, they said hello to a team from Cluster Power who wanted to construct a data center in the area. The mayor gave a welcoming speech that should sound familiar to many of you. We are incredibly proud to have an investor on board and to see people talking about the data center in Mischli.

Starting point is 02:42:27 The company contributes to the local economy by paying taxes here and has chosen this area as its headquarters. So that all sounds great, but I found an article for Algorithm watch that notes, quote, no documentation was provided to verify the tax revenue actually generated for the communes. By June of 2024, only 10 jobs had been created compared to at least 300 that had been promised. Now, you can find stories that are almost identical to this all over the United States, but also elsewhere in Europe, like the Netherlands and Germany and in many other places besides. Everywhere these companies do business, they leave behind broken promises and lies, like a trail of gasoline reeking behind them as they go.

Starting point is 02:43:05 Why shouldn't we drop a match and watch the fire catch them? There are dangers to embracing a movement based around a post-apeutic. the construction of infrastructure, that is necessary for a lot of modern life. But I might argue, those dangers look a lot less scary if we recognize that necessary for modern current life and necessary for life itself aren't necessarily the same thing. In much the same way, as I would give up my ability to buy pistachios and almonds year-round to avoid California not having water, I'm willing to reconsider what miracles of daily life are really worth the cost if it turns out the cost is that high.

Starting point is 02:43:42 And the scariest thing in the world to the people who currently run it is this. Perhaps one day soon, everyone will start to feel this way. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.

Starting point is 02:44:16 entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hey, I'm Hoda Kotby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby. Together, we're going to have meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people, like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges. I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer and that was more difficult.

Starting point is 02:44:50 There's a lot of people who understand postpartner depression. I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, listen up. The Jonas Brothers here. Our podcast is called, Hey Jonas. We've here since everyone has a podcast, we want it to as well. And we've had some incredible guests so far.

Starting point is 02:45:09 And now our good friend, Nile Horn is joining the show. How's it going, boys? Hey, Niall. It was the same thing with Slow Hands. Slow Hands is not about any. Anything else really is it? You know, or taste so good can't be about food. You do the same, Nick, with some of the stuff that you've done.

Starting point is 02:45:22 You too, Joe. Drop what you're doing and listen to Hey Jonas on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. June is Black Music Month, and on the Drink Champs podcast, we're speaking with the hottest names in the culture, like Sway Lee. Do you realize how legendary you are? I appreciate that. I'd be seeing it, but I'm like, man, I still got, like, so much more to do.

Starting point is 02:45:45 Prince, he dropped like 30 albums. We dropped like five right now. That's the rate we got to be going. Yep, that's a good attitude. You also hear stories from industry legends and hip-hop pioneers like Fab Five Freddy. I directed when Nas' early videos. Which one? One love.

Starting point is 02:46:01 Wow. Yes. I literally filmed in his apartment in Queensbridge. His moms were still up in that apartment. Nas was just beginning to take off. His pops used to live near me in Harlem. His dad introduced him to a whole room. a lot of, you know, conscious stuff, and he made a young prodigy.

Starting point is 02:46:18 No matter the era, Drinkchamps brings you the biggest names and the most unfiltered conversations. Listen to Drink Chams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. There you go. The passion fucking fixed it. That's what I've always been, well, I've never said that. There's one thing that SD cards know, it's passion. Passion is negotiable. Deadlines are not.

Starting point is 02:46:46 Welcome to Go ahead, Gary this is it could happen here, executive disorder or her weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House,

Starting point is 02:46:56 the crumbling world and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans. This episode,

Starting point is 02:47:04 we're covering the week of June 10th to June 17th. Some small news items to start. Elon Musk has become the world's first trillionaire. Oh, good. At least on paper. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:47:16 What, There's no other kind of trillionaire. It's all on paper. There's no other kind of billionaire. Yeah, yeah. This is following SpaceX going public on the NASDAQ stock exchange. $866 billion of Musk's wealth is now in SpaceX stock, and SpaceX itself is currently valued over $2 trillion on the market.

Starting point is 02:47:37 Not good. Yeah, great. DHS has announced it will not comply with Virginia's new law prohibiting federal officers from wearing masks. And on June 11th, the DOJ filed a lawsuit. against Virginia, quote, challenging their unconstitutional attempts to regulate federal law enforcement. The French government suspects the Israeli, quote-unquote, elite-influenced cyber and technology firm, Black Corps, of interfering in elections in France, Scotland, and the New York City mayoral race by orchestrating online smear and disformation campaigns against left-wing pro-Palestine politicians.

Starting point is 02:48:13 Well, didn't fucking work in New York, did they? And I wanted to include this because it literally just broke as we are recording. But Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, put out a letter today that states, quote, we have been receiving troubling reports that this is to Cash Patel, that you may be using part of the budget of the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a personal slush fund to make tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in unlawful bonus payments to loyalist MAGA Hinchmen who have engaged in misconduct. And I'm going to quote here from an article on MS now by Kandelanian, quote, Committee Democrats have information that Patel has issued more than $1 million in awards, the letter says. The letter says that the money went to special agents serving on his director's advisory team, which Raskin's letter describes as a curated group of agents who are willing to care out

Starting point is 02:48:58 your unlawful and partisan orders. There's very little else known other than that allegedly some of these payments were made so rapidly that they bounced back. Like, he was sending money. That's what they are alleging. I'm going to assume Cash is going to deny this. And so, well, the FBI, I don't think they've even had time to make a response yet. The FBI is not responded for comment by MS now, at least according to their article.

Starting point is 02:49:21 This just dropped. So that's fun for us all to know. Yeah, yeah. All right. Cool. Sorry, I just felt like that was worth of cleaning. Yeah, great. Leath corrupt administration in history.

Starting point is 02:49:37 Okay. Let's talk about a bunch of other stuff. death, it isn't also great. Yeah. Donald Trump issued a broad executive order on Friday, which rescinded previous orders by the Carter and Nixon administration's limiting off-road vehicle access to public lands. Although it doesn't immediately change the rules,

Starting point is 02:49:54 this has the potential to do massive and irreparable damage to public lands by taking away the pillars really on which they've built regulation of motor vehicle and use of public land. Let's do the other public land thing. Now, friend of the show, Mike fucking Lee, is back again trying to fuck up your public lands again. Fuck Mike Lee, Utah Senator, if you're not familiar. So there was a bipartisan Wildfire Prevention Act, the 2025 World Fire Prevention Act that was going along smoothly in its little Senate journey until Mike Lee decided to put in a spoiler that would rescind

Starting point is 02:50:29 the roadless rule. We've spoken about the 2001 Roadless Rule before, so I'm not going to go into very great detail. I've spoken about Lee ad nauseum. Lee, U.S. his position of chair of this committee to insert this, right? And in doing so, not only is Lee trying for a third time since 2025 to sell off public lands. He is also probably ruining the future of the Wildfire Prevention Act, the funding that this will have, the effect that this will have, it's now unlikely to pass because Mike Lee has spoiled it with his public land sell-off shit again, people might recall Lee tried to sell up public lands with parts of the better, the better business bureau, no, the big beautiful bill, the other BBB. And again, when he attempted to

Starting point is 02:51:19 justify motor vehicle use in wilderness, Garrison and I made an episode about that where he was talking about how you need roads in wilderness areas to allow Border Patrol to do Border Patrol stuff. The Forest Service had previously talked about rescinding the roadless rule through like administrative rule change. That seems to have been an extremely unpopular choice, but that that process is still ongoing, but what Lee's trying to do here is lock it into legislation as opposed to something that another administration could change back. Finally, I guess it's all kind of public lands and related stuff for me this week. Fish and Wildlife Service agent served a warrant on a property in New Mexico after two collared Mexican gray wolves, which are covered by

Starting point is 02:51:57 the Endangered Species Act, were killed. According to an affidavit file in New Mexico, both wolves were killed after being caught in the leghole traps. One was left to die. The other was shot and then beaten in the head. I read this warrant today. It was kind of interesting. I saw something very, very brief reporting on it, and Molly helped me find the warrant. The people who the warrant was served on were horsebreakers,

Starting point is 02:52:20 but I think they worked on a family cattle ranch. It seems that the Fish and Wildlife Service agent set up cameras after the collars of the wolves told them that the wolves had died, and then they realized that they had remained in one area. It suggested that they had remained in one area sometime, then died, i.e. they'd been trapped. They were able to set up cameras and film these guys recovering the traps according to the affidavit. And so they are now going to begin their prosecution, I guess. One more from me. Fifteen people in Minnesota were indicted on criminal conspiracy charges

Starting point is 02:52:54 for events and protests around the Whipple Federal Building and Fort Snelling. Yeah. We covered this in great detail on a show that broadcast on Wednesday, the 17th of So if you'd like to know more about that, we got some comment from a couple of lawyers. And Margaret and I were present at one of the events that this indictment centers on. So we gave some more insight there. For some election news, we still don't have ranked choice vote tallies in Maine for the governor's race there. I will keep an eye on that. But in Washington, D.C., Democratic socialist Janice Lewis George won the Democratic primary in the Washington, D.C.,

Starting point is 02:53:36 mayoral race with 52.8% of the vote. And a DSA cadre member named Aperna Raj is in the lead for the Ward 1 city council seat with about 47% of the vote in the Democratic primary. Both candidates are not expected to face substantial opposition in the upcoming general election. So it looks like big wins for the DSA in Washington, D.C. last Tuesday. Robert, California. Yes. What's going on with it, Robert? Why is it the way it is? In short, James, the Sun. So, California U.S. House District 14 is currently undergoing a special nonpartisan primary because Eric Swalwell, friend of the pod in the, you know, joking sense, not literal sense, because we don't like him.

Starting point is 02:54:28 Definitely not enemy of the pot. Disgraced enemy of the pod. No longer can do his job. are a vowed nemesis. Now, the fun thing about that is that Eric Swal is genocide denier, and he is currently the number one person, and, you know, this is just like the first round of voting,

Starting point is 02:54:46 is Aisha Wahab, who's at about 42.6% of the vote, based on the most recent numbers I have. Melissa Hernandez is number two at about 16.8% of the vote, so Aisha's got a sizable lead here, and her politics are significantly better in some important ways than Eric. Eric Swalwell's, including the fact that she is not a genocide denier. So that's kind of bracing.

Starting point is 02:55:11 That's nice to see. Anyway, that's really all I've got to say. Yeah. So in much bleaker news, on Sunday, June 14th, police in Senatobia, Mississippi shot and killed a one-year-old child named Cohen Wiley as they opened fire on a car in the parking lot of a Walmart, an adult who was in the car, who is a friend of the child's mother, is described as, quote, critically injured after also being shot. I think it's important to hear what happened first directly from Vlessio Wiley, the mother of Cohn Wiley.

Starting point is 02:55:48 It was me, my son, and another friend of mine was at Walmart. As we was leaving out the Walmart, they tried to stop her. But I kept walking because it had nothing to do with me. By the time me and my baby got in the car, she came and then they when we were bagging up they was running out of the cone I raised my baby up because they they redraught their gun she had no tent I raised my baby up trying to show them that he was in the car so she was bagging up and she hit a car as I was opening the door so the dough flew back in by the time

Starting point is 02:56:23 I sat my baby down it was like three to four shots one of the shots hit him in his real cage and the other shots hit her in her arm and her thigh and we left and went to Syntopia hospital where he was pronounced dead My God Yeah That is fucking heartbreaking Yeah that's just a nightmare

Starting point is 02:56:47 It's horrible Yeah it looks like Benjamin Crump's representing her Which is like that guy's a powerhouse Yeah yeah Like Any time you're trying to train people how to use firearms responsibly. One thing you have to drive home repeatedly

Starting point is 02:57:03 is that, like, bullets don't stop if you miss, and they don't necessarily stop just because you've hit the target. Yeah. And so you always need to be not just aware of, but paranoid about what's around you and around where you're shooting if you're going to shoot.

Starting point is 02:57:19 And police are trained to do the opposite of that. You know, they're trained that their lives mean more than the lives of infants. That's what this is. Yeah. God. Yeah. That video, by the way,

Starting point is 02:57:30 per WRAG. So, as was mentioned in the video, the cops were nominally responding to a claim of shoplifting. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigations, per the Mississippi Free Press, claims that the car was driving towards the officers. This is eerily similar to claims made by federal agents after the murderer for a good. Police have yet to release body cam footage. The footage we do have, it's not very good cell phone camera, doesn't show the shooting itself, but shows the car driving away from officers. We also had some of the witnesses basically described the car

Starting point is 02:58:09 like driving away from the officers, the officers shooting. But you're right, it's definitely following the trend that we've seen a lot with federal law enforcement, but not just them. Yeah, this is just local, yeah. Of this idea of vehicle weaponization. Yeah. And that they have the ability to respond to, quote, unquote, vehicle weaponization with lethal force.

Starting point is 02:58:28 Yeah. Which is something we've seen claim a number of lives just this year. Yeah, and this is combining, and we'll talk about this a bit more in a second, but this is combining with sort of the shoplifting panic to create this nightmare of a situation. Yeah. Police in Senatobia have a history of police violence. Here's from WREG again. Quote, last year at the same Walmart, the department came under fire after a woman had a taser pulled on her and was tackled,

Starting point is 02:58:55 to the ground after the department claimed she illegally parked in a handicapped spot. The woman claimed she had just dropped her grandmother off at the store. In 2023, the case of a 10-year-old boy made national news after he was detained for urinating in public in an attorney's office private parking lot. Yeah, so this is, you know, this is Mississippi. This is a place where things like this have happened before the fact that there was a woman, like again, last year who was attacked old, like, in this same parking lot by the police, says a lot.

Starting point is 02:59:33 Yeah, and continuing in the trend of police violence, yeah, the police tear gas protesters on Tuesday, like, in the parking lot, and like the same parking lot where protests were going on, all of this comes in the sort of context of the deployment of a nationwide panic about shoplifting deployed by the right as part of their strategy to bolster support from the police and rollback the gains of the 2020 George Floyd uprising. Everything about police killings has just just continued to get worse since the Trump administration took power. We've had it now from federal agents. We've had it from the police in general. And as Gare was talking about earlier, yeah, this is kind of this intersection of this panic about shoplifting, combining with this panic

Starting point is 03:00:13 about sort of vehicle weaponization and turning into the cops, murdering a one-year-old. I think it's also worth noting in the context of this allegedly being about shoplifting. that nobody involved, like no one who was in the car, which is the mother of the baby, and also the woman driving the car who the police had initially confronted in the story we heard earlier. Neither of them have been arrested. So, yeah, yeah, I don't know, this is one of the worst stories of a police shooting I've ever encountered. And yeah, a protest presumably are going to continue tonight. This is again being recorded on Wednesday, June 17th. They may have escalated by the time you're hearing this.

Starting point is 03:00:53 Yeah. Yeah, the cops in LA also killed a fucking golden St. Bernard doodle. Oh, man. This week. Not to equivocate these fucking cases. I guess this is just in the news. No, absolutely not. No.

Starting point is 03:01:07 No. This is just another incident of police shooting when they absolutely had no need to, right? In this case, the lady had been watching the Knicks game. Somebody called to report screaming. which resulted in the cops coming and killing this person's dog. It's no way near the same as someone killing someone's child. I'm not suggesting that. It's just another example that cops can just shoot first and ask questions later in this country.

Starting point is 03:01:32 Yeah. Six years after George Floyd was murdered. Yeah. And I think to close, one of the things I always remember about the protest is every single city had their own list of names. Yeah. I don't know. Like, we had our own in Chicago, and yeah, I mean, I'm immediately sort of, like, just thinking about the killing attempt at Rice. And, yeah, how we just continue to live in this country where the cops just murder black people constantly.

Starting point is 03:02:08 And the only thing that's changed since then is the police have more money. Yeah. And they're working to be able to murder other groups of people more often, too. That's true. That's true. The feds are expanding out into shooting white people in cold blood. Eventually, the racism will be less noticeable. Yeah. If the violence just becomes more all-encompassing. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:02:30 That's the promise of the future. Yeah. It won't. It'll still be as noticeable, guys. Yeah, yeah. They're not going to come through on that promise either. Yeah. I was going to say, like, this country, like, after Elijah McLean, I feel like anyone who could voice have and be like, yeah, shit's going fine. we just at some point cops just to say we're never going to change yeah and it's i'm going to guess the number of people who stumble onto our shows and don't already think like yeah the cops kill a lot

Starting point is 03:02:57 of people they don't need to be killing that's pretty low so i i feel like we preach into the choir we've done we've we've we've done what we need to here like yeah yeah not that it's not important nope just sad we'll go on a breakdown and come back to talk about iran and sports yep we are We are back. And we are back to report peace in our time. That's right. Donald Trump did it. Somehow, somehow, somehow.

Starting point is 03:03:37 He finally brought an end to a long, lingering conflict that he started a couple of weeks. Yeah. God. Yeah. Calling him the peacemaker. This is like three or four days after like a really long bender when like I'm like, I'm Wow, I actually haven't gotten fucked up at all. And it's been like 96 hours, you know?

Starting point is 03:04:02 I think I've learned a couple of things about sobriety. I've reached a new level of wisdom that's allowed me to transcend. Like, that's what I compare to Donald Trump right now. Yep. He announced that, quote, oil will flow on both ends again for the region and the world. So we initially learned about this deal via true social, right? and I initially wrote this based on what we didn't know then this morning after a lot of people complained that nobody knew the details of the deal.

Starting point is 03:04:33 State Department spokesperson read the text of the deal, allowed to report us on a conference call. So this is a memorandum of understanding, right? The MOU is titled, quote, Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding between the United States of America and Islamic Republic of Iran. It'll be signed on Friday. So that would be the day, if you hear this today, comes out, that will be that day. It's already been electronically signed.

Starting point is 03:04:54 Apparently, it's still unclear if it's Trump. She's going to sign it on behalf of the U.S. I love the idea that if you got a docu sign that's like binging back and forth. Some being fucking Daron is like waiting and like, I refresh my phone, man. I'm like, I'm still not seeing it. I'm still not seeing it. Did you, okay, how did you spell my email address? Let me check the spam, dude.

Starting point is 03:05:15 Trying to get the Trump administration to spell your name right in an email as any Iranian politician. My God. quick update here. Turns out Trump signed the Memorandum of Understanding right after we recorded on Wednesday in Versailles. So it is an MOU of Versailles. Back to James. Once they sign it, they're going to do a 60-day intensive negotiation period, which will certainly focus on the nuclear issue. I can get that in a bit. The MOU begins, quote, the United States of America and Islamic Republic of Iran and their allies, in the current war asserting this MOU to declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and indicate from now on not to initiate any war or military operation against each other and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other, and ensuring a territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon.

Starting point is 03:06:11 The final deal will confirm the permanent termination of the war on all fronts, including in Nebula. We're going to get on to that. Don't worry. Probably the headliner, right, is the nuclear stuff. This is point eight. quote the Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons. There's still negotiation on enriched uranium, but CNN had a leaked version of a previous version of this draft, and it didn't have the following. So this has been added at a relatively late stage, and it seems that there is a quote-unquote minimum methodology for degrading their enriched uranium, which is to downblend it under IAEA supervision. That seems to have been added.

Starting point is 03:06:51 very late. So that's kind of their, like, lowest threshold that the US is willing to accept, I guess, which would be not transferring that uranium, but down blending it. The United States is committed to withdraw down its blockade and its force posture within 30 days. Today, we saw Iranian tankers across the USA's blockade without any issue. Claims about the Strait of Hormuz on Trump's true social account and those that we see on Iranian state media in the document diverge. Trump has Trump has claimed unequivocally that the strait is open without tolls. This is not something we see in Pakistani PM Shabashirif's statement or in Iran's Fah's news agency.

Starting point is 03:07:33 Fah's news agency seems to say that the strait will be administered by Amman in Iran. I'll just read from the MOU here. The Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days only from the Persian Gulf to the sea of Amman of Iran and vice versa. The traffic of commercial vessels will immediately start, and considering the need for removing the technical military obstacles and demining by the Islamic Republic of Iran will be instated within 30 days. The Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialogue with the sultanate of

Starting point is 03:08:06 Amman to determine the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz in discussion with other Persian Gulf littoral states in line with the applicable international law and sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz. not entirely clear there, but it does seem to perhaps leave open some kind of Iranian-Oman toll agreement.

Starting point is 03:08:30 Yeah, they're definitely going to start charging a service fee, man. They're going to make a shitload of money off this. Yeah, let's talk about a shitload of money because that's only, unfortunately, some of the shitload of money they're going to make off this. So the document includes

Starting point is 03:08:45 $300 billion in reconstruction funds, the total sanctions relief. Out of the deal. Yep. That's why they call him deal man. I mean, this is tough because we have destroyed massive parts of their infrastructure and we should pay for that.

Starting point is 03:09:00 But also, dude, you started this war, spent billions of dollars and now we're going to give them $300 billion. What is wrong with you? And the fucking 10 years ago, he was like, you know, the only thing that stopped Iran from falling off the brink was that Obama's, that deal gave him 150 billion. All to circle back to another version of some kind of a raw nuclear agreement. All we've gotten is they say they won't. But now they get to rebuild all their infrastructure using our money.

Starting point is 03:09:30 Because we used our money to destroy their infrastructure. I mean, yeah, they're supposed to be like an international monitoring thing. But like, fuck. Yeah, that's not new. And I think more importantly for like America strategically, it's like, Trump has managed to end the American protectorate of open trade lanes of A thing that has been the core of American power since, like, World War II. And that no one was even thinking about taking away Iran,

Starting point is 03:10:00 and no part of Iran's strategy was to do this. This was not in the, like, this was a move they made because they were in a tight spot and they had the fucking pivot. This was always in there, if shit hits a fan, we will do this. And now we've normalized it. This has always been an option for them. And they were put in a bad enough position that they had to do that, right? It was their Helms Deep thing.

Starting point is 03:10:20 Yeah. You know, is like, well, we can strangle global trade, you know? Yeah. This wasn't even like a thing in like the, like the, I mean, I guess it kind of was. They have done it previously. In like the worst nightmares of like Israeli Fazwigoria about Iran getting a nuke. But like this wasn't even a thing that was like, oh, they could Iran could do this. Like, it's astonishing what they've managed to do.

Starting point is 03:10:43 I feel like it's a good time and everything's very fine. So let's talk about. about at 300 billion. Just because I'm interested in the preconditions for fascism and, of course, paying reparations for a war that you started was one of them first time around in Germany. It does, if you do the math, calculate to

Starting point is 03:11:01 a lot less in the reparations that Germany had to pay after World War I. Of course. Yeah. The document labels the 300 billion as reconstruction funds but does not give a source other than, quote, the United States of America undertakes with regional partners to develop a definitive

Starting point is 03:11:17 mutually agreed plan, with at least USD $300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran. A separate line item details the United States of America undertakes to make fully available for use the frozen or restricted funds and assets of Republic of Iran upon implementation as MOU. So they also get sanctions relief, right? Yeah. So they are getting all of the funds that the US has had frozen. They're getting sanctions relief and it seems like it's conceivable with these two sentences that they're trying to include the unfrozen funds, but also highly conceivable that they're not.

Starting point is 03:11:54 They don't seem to have restricted ballistic missiles. They don't seem to have mandated anything about changing in the regime of Iran, human rights, women's rights, rights for minority ethnic groups in Iran. Iran, since we first learned this MU, Iran has continued drone strikes against Kurdish groups in southern Kurdistan. Iranian Kurdish groups who are currently in southern Kurdistan. Yeah, and then like, it's not over yet, because let's talk about what Israel has to say.

Starting point is 03:12:25 Oh, boy. Yeah, Israel seems to be showing no signs of feeling itself to be in any way restrained by this. Many Israeli politicians are publicly broken with the US on this. Israel's national security minister, Benk Veer, famous for many terrible things, took to Twitter to announce that he had other plans saying, quote, Trump's agreement does not bind us. Israel is not subject to United States. We are an independent sovereign nation. Exclamation mark, our duty is to the citizens of Israel, to the soldiers of the IDF, and to the Jewish people, and our historical duty to the persecuted and murdered Jews over

Starting point is 03:13:00 thousands of years of exile to provide security to Jews in the land of Israel. Every time we succumb to international pressure at the expense of Israel's security, we play the blood place with interest. So I don't think Bangavir feels bound by this to stop aggression in Lebanon, which will make the implementation of the whole thing very difficult. We've seen Trump really break with BB in a way that we'd heard before, but there have now been several more reports of Trump being very annoyed at Netanyahu continuing to effectively sabotage these negotiations, right?

Starting point is 03:13:36 So, yeah, great times, very successful war. Huge dub. Speaking of dubs, let's talk about sports. Oh, yeah. This past weekend, there were three sporting events that I think each reflect a unique facet of current American politics. This is the NBA Finals, the World Cup,

Starting point is 03:13:57 and of course the Formula One Grand Prix in Barcelona. No, it's of course the UFC fight in the White House. Yeah. Before we talk about the UFC, which we will, because there's a lot to do there. On Saturday night, the New York Knickerbockers overcame the curse of James Dolan and beat the San Antonio's first five games to one, becoming NBA champions for the first time in 53 years. After the Knicks drought-ending victory, the city lit up in celebration.

Starting point is 03:14:26 Literally, in the case of a school bus in Times Square. More than one. But thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers celebrated in a largely peaceful yet energized fashion all throughout the streets. buses, and trains until the early hours of the morning. I love celebrating in a largely peaceful fashion. Five police cars did not survive the night. Rippin pepperoni. As is the youth used to say.

Starting point is 03:14:55 But come morning, everything was all cleaned up and the city was sparkling ahead of the Puerto Rico Day parade. On June 11th, the World Cup kicked off with matches being hosted in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. I think, as everyone knows, FIFA has tried to. to cozy up to Trump the past few years, notably awarding the president with the first ever FIFA World Peace Prize a few months prior to Trump starting a war. Well, he'd already started a couple. He invaded Venezuela.

Starting point is 03:15:24 That was a small skirmish compared to, I think, the bigger war. The scale of our $300 billion restitution being paid to Iran. Fair. But the Trump administration's foreign policy and immigration restrictions have still caused disruptions to the World Cup. World Cup referee Omar Abdul-Kadir Artan was denied entry to the U.S. by CPB at the Miami International Airport due to quote-unquote vetting concerns after being detained and questioned for 11 hours. Artan is from Somalia, which is currently on Trump's travel ban list, but Artan had actually already been vetted by the State Department and was issued a valid visa to

Starting point is 03:16:10 referee at the World Cup. The executive director of the White House's World Cup Task Force, Andrew Giuliani, son of friend of the pod and America's mayor Rudy Giuliani, said that Artan was, quote, talking to some very bad people right as he was coming to the United States. There's some classified information we can't discuss now, at some point that may be released, unquote. Just last year, the Confederation of African football named Arton as referee of the the year. The Trump administration currently has tribal bans against four of the qualifying countries participating in the World Cup, that's Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, and Singal, with exemptions for athletes and team officials participating at certain sporting events like

Starting point is 03:16:55 the World Cup. For football fans wanting to attend the World Cup, there are visa bond waivers for Ivory Coast and Singal, but not Haiti and Iran, with the admin citing a high visa over-stay rate among Haitians and national security concerns related. to the war in Iran. The Iranian tribal ban also does have an exemption for certain religious minorities. Fans from the African coast and Singal still have to deal with restrictions. As fans from those countries have reported getting their visas denied, it appears that in order to attend the World Cup, they needed to apply for their visas prior to the presidential proclamation on December 16th. Very few fans from those countries are in, and many have reported getting visas

Starting point is 03:17:39 denied. Bummer. The visa bond waiver just applies to the fee. The visa fee that the Trump administration has introduced and they announced there was a waiver for the fee for World Cup countries. So if they did get the visa, they don't need to pay this extra fee, but they can only get the visa prior to the travel ban going into effect in December. Yeah. Indonesia was removed as a host for the 2023 under 20 World Cup, they don't have diplomatic ties with Israel. And they had opposed Israel's participation in the tournament and obviously weren't going to, like,

Starting point is 03:18:20 I believe they weren't going to allow them visas, but I'd have to check that last part. But at that point, FIFA acted very swiftly, right? They're not going to do that here. And despite the athlete exemption, the Iranian team has ran into issues. Their training base camp had to be relocated, from Arizona to Mexico, and the Trump administration has been making the team enter and exit through U.S. Customs on the same day as their matches.

Starting point is 03:18:49 Jesus. Yeah. They're right there in Tijuana, actually, so, like, they're as close as they can be, right, whilst not being, because they're playing their games up in L.A. I think I played in Inglewood. But still, I'm guessing they are transiting to San, they're probably crossing, having to go to San Diego, and then fly north, it seems. They said they flew. so maybe they fly directly to Tijuana, I didn't they? Despite the tribal ban exemption,

Starting point is 03:19:13 also technically applying to coaches and non-player members of the athletic team, Iranian football officials have had their visas denied. Star Iraqi player Amen Hussein and the Iraq team photographer were detained for, in the player's case, seven hours, the photographer's case 12 hours, at the Chicago airport while going through customs,

Starting point is 03:19:41 Hussein was ultimately allowed entry, but the team photographer was not. Finally, New York City is hosting eight games for the World Cup, including the final, and in the lead-up to the World Cup, Tom Homan threatened to send, quote, more ice agents than you've ever seen, unquote, to New York City,

Starting point is 03:19:59 following legislation signed by Kathy Hokel, limiting cooperation between ice and local law enforcement. Following Homan's threat, Mayor Mammondani said, Quote, the World Cup is supposed to be a celebration of the world as a whole, and some of the decisions that we've seen being taken by the federal administration is enethema to what this tournament is supposed to be about, unquote. Let's talk about one more sporting event, and of course, that is the UFC Freedom 250,

Starting point is 03:20:26 streaming on Paramount Plus, which happened this Sunday at the White House South Lawn, which was turned into a UFC Stadium Arena. Trump and Dana White walked together from the Oval Office all the way to the Octagon.

Starting point is 03:20:44 And like, yeah, it's, this is the most idiocracy things have been. Yeah. It's not like a, like,

Starting point is 03:20:50 even a comparison you can make anymore. It's just, we're just doing the exact thing. So, cool. Welcome to UFC Freedom 250.

Starting point is 03:21:01 Here is the president of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump. Cool. Yeah, that movie's aged better than I would have thought, unfortunately. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:21:16 The cold open for the event was narrated by Ron Perlman, which is kind of the saddest part of this whole ordeal for me. Oh, that's upsetting. That's upsetting. Wait, really? Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. I'm sure UFC offered him a dump truck full of money. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:21:31 Ron Perlman's well-known to do things for dump trucks full of money. I don't know. That hurts. In between the fights, they played a series of largely, AI-generated videos covering American history and showing how the UFC embodies the country's fighting spirit.

Starting point is 03:21:47 Those videos are not good. You can find them on the UFC YouTube channel. They're titled Americana. There's a series of three. UFC veteran announcer Bruce Buffer kicked things off in a way that really encapsulated this entire event, and I do want to play

Starting point is 03:22:03 this clip here. Ladies and gentlemen, we are the South Wales. in Washington, D.C. For U.S. Freedom 250, presented by Ram Trucks, nothing stops RAM, and by Crypto.com,

Starting point is 03:22:31 the world's leading cryptocurrency platform. Man. This is the most cardy-ass bullshit I've ever seen. Crypto.com. Yep. Well. It wasn't just Crypto.

Starting point is 03:22:45 com that had a presence at Freedom 250. The Octagon stage itself was covered in logos for red, white, and blue monster energy, bud light, rumble,

Starting point is 03:22:57 meta, steak gambling, and polymarket. Jesus Christ. Such a good country, man. I'm just, I love this place. I, we're nailing it.

Starting point is 03:23:09 The 4,000 seats South Lawn Arena was mostly filled by members of the military, Trump's cabinets and politicians and billionaires like David Ellison

Starting point is 03:23:16 and Mark Zuckerberg. Man, the incredible ratio of billionaires to guys with 31% APR loans on a Ford F-150, I don't know if it's ever existed before in like this small space. A normal people had to watch from Ellips Park near the Washington Monument. This was a $60 million production. You know, there was a military flyover. The U.S. Marine band played songs like The Boys are back in town. and of course Trump's favorite YMCA.

Starting point is 03:23:47 But the thing that caused the most headlines after the event relates to UFC heavyweight Josh Hoket, who acts as a sort of heel for the UFC while making statements that pander to a mega fan base. After winning his match, he gave Trump a chain and necklace and said, hey, shout out to Trump for having the balls to put on some shit like this, unquote.

Starting point is 03:24:12 Trump's balls received multiple shoutouts. on stage. But following that comment, Josh Hokit said this. Moshell Obama is a man. Am I right, America? Joe Rogan is on stage at the same time, holding the microphone for Hokit. Yeah, he sure is. Rogan never addressed the comment for the rest of the night. And the UFC cut out this comment from their own YouTube upload and has issued takedown requests for this clip across social media. Denna White told Time magazine, quote,

Starting point is 03:24:47 I understand that the Obamas are public figures, but I'm completely against saying nasty and false things about people's families. Everyone knows my position on free speech, but I hate that kind of nonsense, unquote. Yeah, well, you make that bed, you get a lie in it. So that was Freedom 250. I watched about an hour's worth of the Paramount Plus broadcast and the fights. I did not watch the full thing. Most of the actual fighting was just like a regular UFC fight, right?

Starting point is 03:25:16 The Hokit comment was the main thing that was, like, politically motivated actually on stage, besides the fact that, you know, Trump's sitting right there and you're fighting at the White House. But according to the FBI, this event could have gone very different. Here's Fox News reporting. Good morning, everyone. Breaking News out of Washington, D.C. on a potential tragedy that's been averted. The FBI revealing earlier today, it foiled an alleged terror plot that was set to target Sunday night's UFC Freedom event at the White House. That's right.

Starting point is 03:25:50 On Tuesday morning, Fox reported there was a sophisticated multi-step plan involving explosives, drones, and snipers, targeting the Freedom 250 event. Vice President J.D. Vance addressed the alleged terror plot on Fox and Friends, saying, quote, so much of the far-left rhetoric is driving itself towards violence, and also said this. Unfortunately, I think a lot of my Democratic colleagues in Washington have got to look themselves in the mirror and say, why is so much of this political violence coming from our side of the spectrum, maybe they can do something different. So, according to Vance, this alleged terror plot was coming from the Democrat side of politics, a result of turning up the political rhetoric. Fox reported that the thwarted attack was targeting capitalism, billionaires, and APAC.

Starting point is 03:26:35 with upwards of 23 people involved in the plot, five of whom are in custody, with the details of the plan being uncovered on the encrypted messaging app signal. A Fox contributor said that terrorist organizations and countries use Biden's open border to bring people inside the United States, and Vance pointed to the administration's efforts to go after left-wing terrorist funding networks. Almost all of that is not true. Yeah, it's just lies. It's just lies. Complete nonsense.

Starting point is 03:27:04 Almost all of that is, at the very least, stretching what actually happened to a near unrecognizable status, or is completely lying about the context and background of this attack. We will get into what actually happened regarding this alleged planned attack after this at break. Okay, we are back. On Tuesday morning, the FBI and DOJ announced law enforcement had, thwarted a mass casualty attack attempting to kill government officials, with arrests happening over the weekend in Ohio, Missouri, Nebraska, and California. But rather than being the result of the FBI's excellent investigative prowess,

Starting point is 03:28:00 law enforcement only learned about this potential attack because the mother of one of the members of this group that was planning the attack called the police concerned about her son's recent firearm purchases and contact with individuals online. By the time the FBI got to this person, 19-year-old Tyson proper, he was already in a mental hospital. Yeah, literally could not have done this. And just to be clear, the scale of the plan that they're describing, I would think would be difficult for like a nation state actor to carry off successfully in D.C. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:28:39 Absolutely. Yeah. These guys were larping. These guys were larping on a signal group. and there was definitely some mental illness involved in that, too. A group of men larked themselves into federal custody. Yep, yep, yeah. Now, after police were called to Tyson Proper's home,

Starting point is 03:28:57 where he lived with his parents, he was transported to the Dublin Springs Mental Health Center for Homicidal Ideations. Tyson Proper himself told police and FBI that he and others online had planned to use drones to detonate explosives on the north side of the UFC arena, forcing event attendees to evacuate south,

Starting point is 03:29:19 where other co-conspirators would be set up with sniper rifles to fire on the fleeing crowd, targeting politicians and other, quote-unquote, high-value targets at the Freedom 250 event. Proper and for others are charged with conspiracy to commit murder. A family member told officers that Proper talked about meeting up with people he had met online to conduct, quote-unquote, missions, and quote-unquote recons,

Starting point is 03:29:45 and that he allegedly spent about $3,000 of his graduation money to buy, quote, camping gear, food, ballistic plates, a new shotgun, a rifle, lots of ammunition, extra magazines, and plate carriers, unquote. After searching his phone, investigators found signal chats, detailing a planned attack, with maps highlighting potential sniper locations

Starting point is 03:30:06 and drone launch points. The day after local police first visited Proper's home, the sheriff's office contacted the FBI. The FBI then searched Pauper's home and found a journal that the criminal complaint says contained a list of approximately 46 names, including celebrities and politicians, as well as pages, quote,

Starting point is 03:30:27 in which Pryper wrote that the government sought to control people and to sacrifice children and others to a demonic figure, unquote. Family told FBI that Pryper had, quote, recently began interacting with a group online that was comprised of individuals who represented themselves as ex-military and that may share some Christian-based ideology, unquote. Family members said that these individuals were using religion to manipulate proper, and that they, quote,

Starting point is 03:30:57 expressed ultra-religious and anti-government sentiments, specifically citing grievances about government corruption, the handling of the Epstein files, data centers taking up all the water in communities, and other government actions. The Ohio criminal complaint says that Properer's family members also highlighted concerning statements that he had made in recent months, quote, such as making sympathetic comments about Adolf Hitler and posting anti-Semitic comments on Facebook, unquote. When will the left stop its violence?

Starting point is 03:31:29 Yeah, basic Antifa left-wing plot against capitalists here. Yeah, standard leftist Hitler appreciate. Sacrificing children to demonic figures. Yeah. Well, I don't know if you know, Garrison, but they're actually called the National Socialist Party. These people were like Christian extremists with, I'm sure, some very weird views that will all get elucidated. I look forward to reading through the signal chats. This is not really a thing. This is people who are mentally ill. And certainly, I mean, it sounds like if you have a signal chat where you're passing around a map of targets crossed a line where I'm not surprised, one of them was already in a mental hospital.

Starting point is 03:32:10 but there was no danger to the event. Yeah. To be clear, he was placed in the mental hospital after first being interviewed by police, but I think it's not worthy that police did not take him into custody. They sent him to a mental health facility after first contacting him.

Starting point is 03:32:25 Because he clearly had no ability to do this. Yeah. Did he get like an involuntary mental health hold? There was an emergency request to put him in this mental hospital based on the homicidal ideation. The application detailed that he had also sought to

Starting point is 03:32:40 join police or military, specifically just to kill human beings. Yeah. And like this kid sounds like he very easily could have become a mass shooter. Like, I'm sure there's a number of those. Like, it does sound like that's something that was going on here. Ideation is certainly present. So this is very concerning. But yeah, what Vance's description of what happened is so far a field is to effectively be a lie. Oh, yeah. As for the sort of group formation here, proper allegedly told police that Members of the group that was planning this attack were primarily recruited through TikTok.

Starting point is 03:33:15 Yeah. And then once they had been vetted on TikTok, they were allowed in a signal chat. The largest signal chat investigators found contained 19 members. There was also some smaller spinoff signal chats. Even among terrorists, the danger of the spin-off group chat is impossible to avoid. One of the chats was called, quote-unquote, hunters. Jesus. Oh, my gosh.

Starting point is 03:33:37 And the complaint says it contained detailed instructions. for carrying out the attack, including plans to escape. They're completely delusional. They think they're escaping from doing something like that. Next week, I'm going to do a full episode about the criminal complaint here. And we'll get into more details about the attack and their planning. Yes, there was no way this attack as planned was going to happen. They did not have the material, the personnel, or the logistical capacity to pull this off.

Starting point is 03:34:04 No. They weren't just communicating on Signal, though. They also were using another encrypted messaging app called SimpleX. Oh, yeah, simple ex-messinger. Where they had one chat called the Vanguard of the Old Republic. Oh, my God. Oh, dear. This has shades of that fucking dude in Texas who got killed by a security guard

Starting point is 03:34:25 trying to attack the courthouse with a gladius on his belt in addition to his air, 15. I need to see that. Yeah, he had opposed to himself like a modern gladius to defend a modern republic. It was one of the, one of the lamer attempts at a mass shooting. Yeah. One of the co-conspirators who was arrested in California wrote on Simple X, quote, To be clear, I intend to escalate this group.

Starting point is 03:34:50 I don't want to take six business years to do it, unquote. Business years? The fuck, man. Sorry. Yeah, that's a fascinating too. I guess I just saying a long time, right? They're trying to say a long time. Sorry, Garrison, please continue.

Starting point is 03:35:04 Yeah. Also writing that everyone in the group should, quote, consider yourselves an enemy of the state. In this group chat, they also discussed imagining executions. Another co-conspirator also from California read about the need for quote-unquote guerrilla-style warfare

Starting point is 03:35:20 and quote-unquote raid attacks with, quote, skilled operators to work like ghosts to conduct, quote, infiltration missions. Completely delusional stuff. Yeah, it's like, call a duty shit. Yeah, it's the same as the big, what if we were really good at being

Starting point is 03:35:36 terrorists. Would that work? Like, that's what's going on here. Tyson proper showed the FBI the TikTok profiles of other members of the group, and based on those accounts and chat logs, investigators were able to identify other co-conspirators across multiple states. Part of the plan for the Freedom 250 attack was for co-conspirators to meet in Fredericksburg, Virginia a day or two before the event. This obviously never happened, because it appears the group never actually acquired the explosives or the drones needed for their plans. Of course not. That's expensive. And we're still trying to figure out how to get enough money to purchase materials needed for an attack.

Starting point is 03:36:17 Yeah, yeah, that's important. Having the ability to do it is important. One of the members allegedly wrote that the attack would require, quote, five teams of three, each team consisting of one sniper, one tier one operator as support slash lookout, and one drone operator, unquote. Yeah, what tier? Sure, yeah.

Starting point is 03:36:37 Tier one of the singles. You got lying around? Christ. How many next Delta guys you got hanging out? In the extended plan, they had written out four different tiers of operators and what each tier is supposed to do. And how if the tier ones get arrested,

Starting point is 03:36:53 we have to try to break the tier ones out of jail. Right. Yeah, because they're so important. They're super important. We've got to get the tier ones out. One of the members from California did try to drive to D.C. Okay. But his vehicle had issues and he needed to turn back.

Starting point is 03:37:07 Oh, dear. Sure. Yeah. That's, you know, honestly, the Iranian hostage crisis, Delta Force got stopped from doing a rescue. Something similar happened. This guy did admit this to the FBI, but he claimed that he was only going there to protest the UFC Freedom 250 and that he was not involved in any conspiracy. That's tier one thing. But inside his vehicle.

Starting point is 03:37:30 agents found firearms, tactical belt, radios, and other supplies. Inside the residents of the other California co-conspirator, agents found firearms, 30-round extended magazines, and approximately 180 rounds of ammunition. One of the members of the group in West Virginia, who was interviewed by FBI, confirmed that the members communicated online about attacking UFC Freedom 250,

Starting point is 03:37:56 but claimed the attack plan was canceled on June 12th. That's fine, then. Yeah. Yeah, and this is the kind of thing. Again, there's no way this attack ever would have happened. The way the government's presenting this is nonsense. This community, little community, absolutely could have spawned one or more mass shooters. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 03:38:15 Totally. Super glad that it didn't. I find the sort of organizational structure of this really interesting. Yeah. They also discussed doing, like, attacks on the power grids. So you have certain aspects of, like, accelerationist terrorism here. but not organized on, like, you know, telegram, not, not, still anti-Semitic, but not necessarily, like, explicitly the sort of, like, neo-Nazi, like, terrorist model. These people are on TikTok. They're obsessed with, like, like, military tactics. They're very, they're very larpy.

Starting point is 03:38:46 They wanted to do something. Like, they discussed assassinations. They discussed various types of attacks. But they were interested in, in attacks, like, for these, like, general anti-government reasons rather than a specific sort of, like, niche political ideal. Right. Or ties to neo-Nazi accelerationist groups. Like I said, we will go into more detail next week. Tuesday night, Vance did comment again, admitting that the attack plan was, quote, unquote, not that advanced and that the suspects, quote, weren't in town. They had not really done that much planning. Great.

Starting point is 03:39:22 Cool, dude. Yeah. So, yeah, Vance kind of changed his tune later on in the evening. That's good. I'm glad he eventually said something that was not complete bullshit. Speaking of places where everything is complete bullshit, did you guys know Peter Thiel has a new social network? Actually, it's 20 years old.

Starting point is 03:39:43 It's not new at all. But he does kind of have a social network. It's a private invite-only organization called Dialogue. Have you caught this story that's been dribbling out? No. So this first got onto most people's radar in like 2022, when Andrew Gelman, who's a statistician, posted on his blog,

Starting point is 03:40:01 he had gotten an invite to this, like, dialogue 2022, which was like that year's event. It was described as an off-the-record retreat for global leaders. And there was a list of confirmed participants. Like, this was part of the, like, some of the names

Starting point is 03:40:15 that people who have been in this organization were talking about, it was going to be referred to as, like, a hack, revealed some data that had not been, like, effectively redacted on the website to this organization, that revealed a bunch of the members.

Starting point is 03:40:26 But we already had, like, a list of a, like several dozen of the people in this group. And it included folks like Peter Brown, who's a CEO of Renaissance Technologies, Kelly Bayer, Rosemary, who's the CEO of Optus, like, you know, a lot of CEOs, but also folks like Susan Addy, Professor of Economics at Stanford. Grover Norquist was on that initial revealed list. He's an anti-tax activist, I guess it would be like the most basic way of saying what he is.

Starting point is 03:40:51 In the email to invite to Andrew said, quote, there are no speeches or panels, only moderated breakout discussions for eight to 12 participants. Everything is 100% off the record. The agenda is curated based on your interests, and we optimize for introverts, no small talk. So, yeah, there have been, I think, a couple of other previous cases where, like, invites to this have leaked out to different people. Like, several folks who have gotten invited have, like, posted about it. This is not a totally weird thing for billionaires to do. Jeff Bezos has a similar kind of thing, where every year or so he'll have a group of people he finds interesting,

Starting point is 03:41:25 that he takes to a resort or to a nice property or something that he owns somewhere, and they'll all hang out, and they'll have, like, discussions. Sometimes people put on presentations for, like, three or four days. And we've gotten that a couple of people who have been to these have, like, written about the experience. And in some cases, critically. Yeah. There's a big one at Sun Valley, right? That might be the one people are most familiar with.

Starting point is 03:41:45 Yeah, yeah. I think that's one of the big ones. Yeah. So this is not a super weird thing, but the fact that Peter Thiel is who he is, and the fact that he's only gotten more influential, now that Trump is president again, makes this organization a lot more relevant, which is why it's particularly interesting that very recently there was apparently a directory in the website's code. And Swiss hacktivist Maya Arson-Krimi, who is also a friend of the pot, in the actual sense, was tipped off about a directory in the code for the website for dialogue that basically was not, they hadn't done the things that you would want to do. to protect the data of their members, right? That's the basics of this, right?

Starting point is 03:42:28 So something was left undone that should have been handled, and a bunch of information was revealed. And Wired got as a result of this the names of 222 people and records, and these are a mix of folks who were like members of this organization. And dialogue over the years has turned into more than just every year people meet. There's also apparently like a dating app component of it where they're advertising. Like if you let us know who you're looking for, we've got this network of influential people, we'll hook you up with another, you know, the only special and important people.

Starting point is 03:43:01 You know, that's a lot of the appeal, right? These are a lot of star fuckery that goes on in the Silicon Valley set. But because of all of this stuff, there's also information on a retreat, the upcoming retreat, this year's a bit, which is apparently August 12th to 16th. God, I'd love to get a seat at a venue near Dublin, Ireland. That's part of why. And to quote from that, that wired article, and this is talking about like the program for this upcoming event, quote, there's a series of off the record discussions including money does by happiness, bring back nuclear, navigating World War III, battlefield technologies, and how's your sex life? Other talks include build a cult, moderated by the founder of the Christian networking site, pray.com, and build a party run by a former White House National Security.

Starting point is 03:43:50 official. Now, I haven't looked into build a party yet. That's, boy, howdy. But I did look into prey.com. And as soon as I went to the prey.com website, it informed me that the founder and CEO is one Steve Gatina, who has the dead, empty eyes of the shark from jaws. Oh, no.

Starting point is 03:44:08 Are you guys looking at this, Steve now in the research doc? Is this the guy with the prey shirt? Yeah, he's wearing the prey shirt. And I have to say, he's got like the same phenotype as Peter Thiel. It's, it's uncount. Penny. Yeah. Like, he weirdly looks a little like Peter Thiel. Yeah. He looks like his, like, his grin is about to start, like, spreading wider and there's going to be an alien face change, like, transformation. Yeah. That's a lizard person case to be made here. So, I was upset hearing that there's a build a cult workshop at Peter Thiel's private club invite. So I wanted to look into this guy a little bit. And I read up on him. Gatina was before becoming an entrepreneur, an NCAA champion. So he's used to having people take. advantage of him. He played college football for the University of Southern California and won a

Starting point is 03:44:55 Rose Bowl championship in 2009. He started his first company, Rep Interactive, at the age of 22. I run into a lot of these LinkedIn founder guys, and often it's hard to tell what there are many different companies do, because they all have like 30 of them. Yeah. Yeah, or if they're like real companies. Yeah, if that's real, like, they're just bullshitting. This seemed, it's real. It's a, video agency. It's like a marketing agency that helps. do video marketing. It's one of the best workplaces in America, according to Inc. Magazine. I don't know if you pay to be an ink magazine or not, so I don't know how impressive that is, but it seems to be a company that makes money. It's a social media like marketing company.

Starting point is 03:45:36 He also has a stock footage company that has like drone stock footage. And after that, he started a business called Prey.com, in honor of his mentor and business partner who had just died. And when I started looking into this guy, I realized I've been following him before because I periodically on Reddit will go to the LinkedIn Maniac's subreddit. Oh, it's got to be good. That's got to be good, man. Steve Gatina is all over this shit because he's the CEO of Prey.com, and I'm going to read you one of his fucking posts. Oh, I love people who post on LinkedIn. Yesterday, I swung by a 24-hour diner after my late shift at work.

Starting point is 03:46:16 I saw a waitress in her 50 sitting in a booth with a teenage boy. He had a notebook open, and she was helping him tackle some algebra problems. When she got up to refill my coffee, I asked, tutoring after hours. She smiled, looking a bit tired. That's my son. I can't afford a tutor, so we study here between my shifts. The boy looked up and said, she's the smartest mom in the world. It turns out she juggles two jobs, but always makes time to sit with him every night and

Starting point is 03:46:41 help him with his homework. He's going to college, she said with determination, whatever it takes. It's amazing what love can do even when life gets tough. And to prove that this is a true story, he shows a picture of some lady and a kid sitting in a booth looking at a notebook. Wow. I love these guys. And they're inspirational. Definitely didn't happen posts.

Starting point is 03:47:02 Definitely not a thing that happened to you, man. Such a genre. He credits the photo to somebody else. Yeah, he should have done. Where did you get it, Steve? Yeah, there's a lot of great people who, are going to be at these events, which, boy, howdy, it sure would be fun to be a fly on the wall at.

Starting point is 03:47:20 It's also watermarked. Yeah. Yeah. For illustrative purposes only. Because you're stuck on him. Okay. Yeah. So to go back into the people who helped make dialogue, the great organization it is,

Starting point is 03:47:33 the executive director of dialogue is apparently Rafi Grinberg. And he is also the author of a self-help book titled How to Be a Grownup. He did not respond to Wired's request for a comment. But I looked into it Rafi a little bit. And his website, and you go to like Rafi Grinberg's website, he immediately tries to sell you his book directly above a YouTube video titled, Do Princeton grads Know Anything? And it's like a YouTube prank video where he runs to Prince, he's wearing like a green tight, skin tight body suit.

Starting point is 03:48:01 And he runs up to Princeton grads like right after graduation and asks like, do you know how to pay your taxes? And it's also so he can like give out a bunch of copies of a shitty book about like life skills. And like, I'm sure the book sells to like parents who give them to their kids. But no one reads this. this man, when kids need to learn how to pay their taxes, if they don't have parents who know to teach them, they like Google it or like desperately go to H&R Block or they just don't pay

Starting point is 03:48:24 their taxes, but they don't read a book, like, how to be a grown up. And I'm sorry about that, Raffy. Yeah. No, that's like homeschooling parent, uh, target audience. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, man. So, yeah, I don't know. There's like a lot more to say about this. I think I'm going to do like an actual dedicated episode about dialogue in the not too distant future. This is fascinating. It does sound really interesting. And I want to know more about this fun club. But yeah, you should check out the Wired article.

Starting point is 03:48:58 It's really interesting. You should mention Jeffrey Epstein. I was going to ask if there was an Epstein. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. I tried to blow through Jeffrey Epstein's involvement in this.

Starting point is 03:49:09 Now, Jeffrey Epstein is tied to this, but not in a bad way. Well, mostly not in a bad way. There's one email from him where, like, someone who is a friend of Jeffrey Epstein got invited to one of these events and, like, forwarded it to him and was like, hey, should I do this thing, basically? I don't think we know what Jeff responded. But, you know, that caused, because there's that, like, there's an invite to their 2014 retreat in the Epstein files, there was a lot of confusion where people were like, oh, Jeffrey Epstein

Starting point is 03:49:38 was a member of dialogue. And this was furthered by the fact that Jeffrey Epstein was a member of dialogue. but not that Jeffrey Epstein. The former CFO of Oracle was also, so the fact that, number one, in the Epstein file, someone forwarded an invite to the Jeff Epstein who's a pedophile. And number two, there is an actual member of the group named Jeffrey Epstein, just a different one, caused people to believe that he was a part of this, but he does not appear to have been in a way that anyone is proven. The former CFO of Oracle should absolutely change his name.

Starting point is 03:50:10 Yeah. I got to say, very rarely do I accept. in this to especially a member of the Oracle C-suite, but no one will blame you. We won't even joke about it. Like, honestly, dude, like, Jeffrey, it's not a weird name. You had no reason to expect that somebody like this would wind up with your name. You don't deserve to bear this cross, I hope, unless you do. I don't know you, actually.

Starting point is 03:50:36 Anyway, I think that's enough. Oh, man. Okay. If you want to email us, Cool Zone Tips, at Proton. Don't me. Keep it to story tips. Put a trans scroll on your couch. We reported the news. We reported the news. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Coolzone Media, visit our website, Coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the IHeart Radio app,

Starting point is 03:51:15 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources where it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Joy is essential and it's also elusive. But now, there's a new and exciting way to start your journey toward a more joyful existence, Joy 101. It's a new podcast hosted by me, Hoda Kotby. If you're craving inspiration to maximize your joy,

Starting point is 03:51:43 tune into these candid, uplifting, and moving on-air chats. Open your free IHeart Radio app. Search Joy 101 and listen now. Joy 101 with Hoda Cotopy is presented by CVS. All right, listen up. The Jonas Brothers here. Our podcast is called Hey Jonas. We're here, since everyone has a podcast, we wanted to as well.

Starting point is 03:52:02 And we've had some incredible guests so far. And now our good friend, Nile Horn, is joining the show. How's it going, boys? Hey, Niall. It was the same thing with Slow Hands. Slow Hands is not about anything else, really, is it? You know, or taste so good can be about food. You do the same, Nick, with some of the stuff that you've done.

Starting point is 03:52:17 You too, Joe. Drop what you're doing, and listen. Listen to Hey Jonas on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. This Black Music Month, The Questlove show celebrates the visionaries, shaping culture, through sound, from country trailblazer Mickey Gaiden to hip-hop icon Fafi Freddie, the sonic genius of Thundercat and the revolutionary voice of Chuck Dean. I want it loud. So the timing might be off, the sound might be muffled, but what's going to come out of there is something that you can feel.

Starting point is 03:52:48 Celebrate Black Music Month with special episodes of the Questlet. show. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I've been hearing for decades that the markets can solve climate change. Today, we have more incentives for market solutions than ever, and emissions are rising. On this season of drilled, Carbon Cowboys, the story of three market solutions colliding in one multinational boondoggle. You got to give Bruce of the guy's credit. They're Republican. They don't give a shit of money. It's now. Listen on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.

Starting point is 03:53:30 Guaranteed human.

Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 237

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