It Could Happen Here - EU Border Enforcement, Part 1

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

James talks with Mick and Roos about the EU’s deadly border enforcement against vulnerable migrants.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Today we're talking about a little of both of those things. I'm joined by Rose, who's a migration activist in the Netherlands, and Mick, who has studied migration. We're going to talk about the EU's border today. And we're going to talk about, I think a lot of people, especially the bulk of our listeners in the United States, won't be aware, perhaps, of how incredibly cruel and fatal the EU's border is, what it does to people, how it does it, where it does it. So we're going to talk about that today. It's very very exciting there's even more war than we have in the united states so i'm looking forward to that and say hi welcome to the show both of you hi thanks for having us hi thanks for having us yeah thanks for being here the way we wanted to structure this was mick has like a

an excellent presentation on for we're going to structure this over two episodes first we want to talk about the state of things and then we want to talk about activism and ways that people can meaningfully make a difference in uh in in this situation so mick yeah if you'd like to take it away with your uh with your script here rose and i will interject whenever we feel like it okay uh fair enough let's go so uh the eu border crisis uh is largely crisis of the mediterranean the sea that separates europe from africa and it is arguably one of the most deadly borders in the world if not the most deadly border according to several activist organizations such as the united against refugee deaths and Deaths and Abolish Frontex which is the EU border agency in charge of protecting the border over 52,000 people have

died at this border as of June 2023. This number is almost certainly higher due to a number of factors one of which is that a significant amount of bodies are never recovered which makes it very hard to verify whether or not someone has died or is lost somewhere in the migration routes migration patterns are very hard to keep track of people travel hundreds of kilometers to simply get to points where they can get access to boats or other means of being transported across the sea. I have a picture here that I would like to share with you. Listeners can find it in the notes and sources. Maybe we'll try and describe it just so, you know,

if someone's driving or something, they can, I guess. Yeah, go ahead. Give me your best shot. Okay. It's a map of continental Europe with adjacent to it Africa and Eurasia. And it's a bunch of arrows coalescing onto certain points that grow bigger and bigger. And these represent the migration routes and the number of people that take a particular path. As you can see, the thicker the line, the more people it represents. The thinner lines come from the Middle East and further to the East. In terms of obstacles and danger, I think it's safe to say that crossing Iraq or Syria is not

without risk. Yeah, yeah, I've done that. It's, yeah, and i've done it in cars and with permission and it's already pretty high risk it's interesting this map is it's a 2017 map am i saying that right yes it's from the frontex quarterly reports uh two which covers april till june 2017 yeah so maybe this is after the peak of people leaving that iraq and syria area the like so-called islamic state yeah the after 2015 mayhem yes yeah exactly not not that there are not still significant numbers i mean i speak to people in syria most weeks who are trying to leave syria it's become harder and harder due in part to the eu making its borders harder and harder and more and more deadly to cross and due to a number of other reasons but yeah i think those those lines

would have been fatter if we'd gone back like you know three or four years yeah i mean people in europe will probably have been familiar with this i mean of course there's the when was the photo taken of the the young child who passed away that was Alan Kurdi yeah I think that was in the summer of 2015 or in the autumn yeah yeah Alan Kurdi yeah the boy's name was Alan Kurdi I think a brother of his drowned as well yeah people can look that up if they want to but i'll try not to include it it's quite a horrible thing to have to witness no it's it's it's not a nice photo to see uh ironically it was one of the few moments where like european people could muster some sympathy for refugees but yeah that went at some point yeah it's always the case like i don't know i am

spoken about this before speak about again but like the other day i was out dropping water and we came across a little three-year-old girl and her mother from guinea and they the young girl was was very hypothermic like at first we didn't notice because we're like oh this girl is very quiet and then when i go okay this girl is it's very very very quiet and perhaps you know we should be concerned and like I don't know how and no one in their right mind would be like yeah this is normal and good and I'm really glad that this child is in a place where you know if left for several more hours she might die and everyone in that situation to include people who were just driving by were like oh fuck yeah we need we need to help but sadly when we

abstract it to numbers which is the way it's always reported on right it's not stories it's not people it's not little children it's 50 something thousand people you know it's hard to imagine 50 something thousand people dying it's easier to feel something for one little boy yeah and it's easier to feel something for a child than for a man it's easier to feel something for a woman than a man and also even the death of alan coady despite all the yeah outrage it provoked it was also used as a to make the turkey deal which was intended to stop people crossing by boats from turkey to greece even though that was actually one of the safest migration routes we had at the time and it closed up and people started to move to Libya and instead of three

kilometers of sea that meant people had to cross a hundred or more kilometers of sea which was obviously way more deadly yeah and just the journey to Libya and their time in Libya is where we'll find out later it is far from risk-free. Yeah, Libya is a very different place than Turkey. Yeah, significantly worse to be than Turkey. So to get back on track, as you can also see from the picture, a vast majority of those migration routes cross the sahara desert people who die in the desert or through other dangers on on their journey do not make it to the mediterranean

and therefore tend to not end up in the statistics of people dying there but i would still argue that it is undeniable that those people in fact died due to the migration policies that the EU puts in place and enforces. Definitely. It's just outside of our purview. The United list of refugee deaths is taking into account anyone whose death can be attributed to the border. So they do also include people dying in the desert, but there is much less news about it. So the figures of Frontex and of IOM usually do not include those but the number you just mentioned that with 52,000 it also includes people who

committed suicide in detention centers or who died of medical neglect in camps but it also includes people who died further from the European border but still on borders that are controlled or influenced by European policies. Yeah. In the US, to give a sort of comparison example, the statistics we have that come from Border Patrol, those are the remains that are found, which is a subset of the remains that exist. And it doesn't take into account people who died crossing Mexico, Creepio who died as far south as the darien gap right um which is it's very dangerous and it's becoming more so as more

traffic goes across it people who died taking boats around the darien gap right or for whatever reason didn't make it uh so we we too have this kind of attempt to i guess when we get government statistics we have to remember that they come from a government perspective and they will try and minimize the obvious cruelty that's happening. I think that's a characteristic of almost every government that keep the numbers low and don't really engage with the actual problems that are at hand. So before we go into more specific territories, there are a few things that should be made clear. The EU does not follow their own rules about migration. Hopefully at the end of this, the listeners will also accept that the humanitarian and migration crisis is much more

a product of border policies rather than the policies being a consequence of migration. rather than the policies being a consequence of migration. To first illustrate this, here is a quote from government.nl, the English version of the Dutch government website. Asylum or return? All refugees entering the EU may apply for asylum. They must do this in the country where they enter the EU. Asylum seekers who do not require protection must return to their country of origin or to a safe third country. The EU respects the human rights of refugees both when dealing with their

applications and with regard to return. So I want you all to keep this in mind when we continue because this phrasing ignores other policies that make it much harder for migrants and refugees to even enter the EU or to be able to apply for asylum. So and before we dive deeper into the atrocities that the EU enables, I think it's important to first briefly explain how the border system works and the history behind it. Europe is no stranger to migration and migrants, and it is something that has been happening in waves over the past three to four decades. In the early 90s, there were multiple waves of migrants from Albania to other European countries. The main cause of this was the isolationist policies that were enforced by the communist

regime that was in charge there. The unrest that followed at the end of the regime and the crisis of Kosovo, for those unaware, Kosovo had a war with Serbia for independence and Kosovari people are largely ethnic Albanians with the same language. And because of this, it was easier albanians to merge with the kosovari refugees and use that to migrate further and easier into europe other waves are caused by other geopolitical events such as the jasmine revolution in tunisia which i think mia and robert covered in their episode on self-immolation yeah okay and much more known to everyone the wars in syria and libya my interest in the border like has always run parallel to my interest in conflict

and reporting on conflict and like it's just become such a such a recurrent experience to either learn about conflicts at the border here because someone is telling me about them um or learn about often like repression of ethnic or national or religious minorities because someone here tells me about them or to go somewhere you know i was in syria in october i was in iraq the and then return and see people from there at our border and like as people will be aware the asylum system and it will cover it later the asylum system allows people who are in very in danger of persecution for various categories to apply for asylum it's it just it's not functioning it's not functioning in the u it's not functioning functioning in the US. Like I've seen that persecution with my own eyes

and the consequences of it. And I've seen people try and get away from it. Every single time I'm in somewhere like that, people will ask me for help. And it is fucking heartbreaking to be like, the country that you see flying the F-16s or the F-35s over your head, the planes that cost more than this entire town makes in a year

no we can't have a functioning fucking immigration system like in the case of the u.s it's this app which doesn't work and you can only use it north of mexico city and it's this broken system leads to people they're not like getting in a boat across the mediterranean crossing the darien gap walking across the mountains of northern mexico they want to have a better iPhone. They're doing it because whatever the alternative is seems worse. People are fully aware that they're risking their lives on these journeys.

It's not like they live without access to news and the internet. They know about the deaths in the Mediterranean. They know about the deaths in the Mediterranean. They know about the Darien Gap. When I talk to migrants who haven't crossed the Gap, like I was talking to a group of Colombian migrants two or three days ago, and they were coming in to the U.S. through, it's in an area east of Jocumba, which is very rugged and very mountainous,

and they were coming into an open-air detention site where Border Patrol holds them, uh i was talking to them i said how many of you walked how many of you flew most of them flew and then were able to to walk forward the ones who who walked everyone was like oh shit that's horrible like you must have seen terrible things like they're very aware of how dangerous these journeys are the reason that they're taking them is because it seems like staying at home would be more dangerous yeah although i i would like to add that it's not every migrant is a real refugee and not every migrant has to be a real refugee yes at least as the definition was established in the 50s by a bunch of pretentious

guys who kind of decided this is a good reason to migrate and all other reasons are not at first yeah at first i worked in greece and that was mainly with people of like what what are considered like objectively real or good refugees like people from afghanistan and iraq and syria whereas when i was working in bosnia it it was mainly people from Morocco, Algeria, Pakistan. And a lack of opportunity can be a very good reason to move. I think most white people who moved to America did so because of that. Yeah. Not because they were imminently bombed in their home countries, but because they wanted to make something out of their lives. And they didn't have opportunities at home.

And I think this whole concept of refugee. Is meant to distinguish between good and bad reasons to move. And good and bad people. Migrants in the end. People can do really dangerous things. For giving their children a better life. Even if their children are not in immediate danger. And the other thing I would like to stress is that I think the migration regime that we see today is very tightly connected to colonization and decolonization. For example, specifically in the Netherlands, Suriname was a Dutch colony.

And one of the reasons why the Dutch government agreed with decolonization was because the Dutch society started to get worried about all the black people showing up so and the same something similar happened with the independence war that Algeria fought against France. France preferred to give them independence rather than give them equal rights and access to the french territory so lifting like creating those barriers and keeping people in the global south after these countries became independent is very tightly connected with decolonization but of course especially with like new colonization and new ways of controlling people in the global south and exploiting them yeah if we look at like the u.s context the united states government

has managed to engineer this this sort of compromise where capital travels freely across the americas and people don't right so it's possible for them to exploit lower wage labor for u.s companies to exploit lower wage labor in mexico and other countries to the south but not for those people to come and seek a better way a better way of living in the country that is consuming the products of their labor. And so this is obviously not new to people, right? This is a thing that Zapatista has highlighted in 1994, and it's been the case for 30 years. But yeah, we have in the US, because the United States did colonialism in a somewhat less overt way, although often in a pretty overt way it's facilitated

undemocratic regimes and a low quality of life for people all across specifically the americas but also the rest of the world and and it's now seeking to prevent those people from coming here after it destabilized their countries right or in the case of climate change again like the consumption habits of certain countries have had an impact on people all around the world to include people in more dire economic circumstances and then it shouldn't be any less we should we shouldn't like have any less empathy or solidarity with those people because no one's bombing them and they just want a chance for their kids to do the same shit like i moved to america and i was 21 because they want many jobs for me at home like there's something very arrogant about

thinking that you can decide whether someone else has a right to exist somewhere totally and i think that's kind of what migration policies are yeah and as you pointed out they were established after the after the second world war with a very narrow set of categories. They don't include, not only do not include climate change, but also like generalised violence, right? The generalised violence. Yeah, actually fleeing from a war is not making you a real refugee according to international law. Which is something people don't know. So like an average Syrian refugee is actually legally not a refugee. They are fleeing indiscriminate violence

but not like they don't have like political uh they don't have a right to political asylum yeah or like people in Ecuador will uh will talk to I'll talk to people from Ecuador a lot you know and they'll be like well you've seen man they took over the tv station so some gangs took over a tv station there recently and it's kind of a armed takeover and then like as you can see like would you want your child growing up there you know if you had children and and of course it's a very compelling argument and if i was in that position with young children one guy i met the other day his son needed medical care that he couldn't obtain in his country you know like that's a perfectly valid reason for coming here but none of those things count for asylum. So those people are either lumped into quote-unquote economic migrants,

which is still, you know, like people have a right to a living wage and to be able to pay for their family to have the things that they need to survive and thrive. But you're right, the asylum system is very narrow. Yeah, and we should also not forget that even if we're excluding war, you can't really separate migration from the things the West has done in those other countries to maintain that neocolonial relationship and, you know, keep those people dependent on whatever whims there are in the West and whether that's for resources, whether that's for, uh, because there were like communist regimes there that we weren't happy with. Like you, you can't separate that. You can't separate the conditions that are happening there right now to things that have been decided in the West years prior. Yeah, very true. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max.

You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast Post Run High is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout?

Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating

our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Black Lit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech. billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you

love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building Thank you. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. All right, we're back. I hope you enjoyed those adverts for products and services following our discussion on how capitalism has made life unlivable in certain parts of the world. So, Mick, let's pick up with you explaining this EU border to us. Well, I found a very nice scholarly article that breaks down how the EU borders work and makes a very clear distinction between the different layers that protect fortress Europe. These layers will be called the paper border,

which largely consists of visa policies and similar bureaucracy that regulates movement to the EU and within it. Then we have the iron border, which is exactly what you imagine it to be. It's the physical structures and forms of control that we put up to keep people out. And then we have the post-border, and that's about the reception of migrants, migrant shelters, and similar constructions that keep migrants and refugees ostracized and isolated, even after being allowed access into the EU and having started an asylum process.

For those stories, we should turn to Rose when we get there, because she has much more underground experience than I have with this. So we'll start with the paper border. During the mid 80s, the EU started to propose and enact a series of treaties and policies that in effect strengthened the external borders and loosened the borders within Europe. I think no one is particularly interested in this series of treaties, so I will name the only one is the Schengen Treaty. This treaty essentially unites the external borders under EU command rather than as a task for individual states.

EU command rather than as a task for individual states. In practice this also means that EU citizens who have proper documentation can move freely between countries who have signed the Schengen Treaty for holidays or work. Rose, you and I, we could move to Germany tomorrow if we wanted to and have little to no obstacles in terms of documentation. Only if we wanted to and i have little to no obstacles in terms of like documents economically independent though like that is very crucial about eu your freedom of movement is is conditional on you making money yeah having enough money to support yourself but you can move like it's this is very funny because it pissed off uh british people who are living in spain right when they uh when britain brexit didited because they hadn't realized that it would impact them.

They thought it was only the Polish that we, yeah, like the undesirable migrants, but they assumed themselves to be desirable. Well, yeah, I don't think we use the word expat, right? Like Brits would use the word expat to describe a migrant from Britain to Spain.

It's, yeah, it's ridiculous. I mean, I've lived in france i've lived in spain i've lived in belgium and and uh i was i guess somewhat economically independent made 12 000 euros a year as a bike racer but that was you know i could do that it was very easy for me but it is i i do think it's important because i think it's one of those post-border things that what we see, for example, in the Netherlands is that most homeless people here are not the undocumented migrants. They are not the refugees or Dutch people, but they're EU migrants. So people have low paying jobs, break their legs, get kicked out of their houses, lose their jobs and are not welcome in the homeless shelters because the netherlands says well you are not economically independent anymore yeah um so this is also part of the migration regime and this is also part of keeping migrants exploitable even if eu citizens have the right to work they don't they're only allowed to work they we only want them if they bring in

economic profits right you don't want them when they're sick or in need or whatever yeah and then mostly we want them for jobs that we feel too good to actually do when i was younger i used to work in a greenhouse and there's an immense amount of people from like poland or other eastern european countries coming there because dutch people tend not tend not to want to work in a greenhouse and it's one of those things it's an extension of that uh like like a colonial perspective right that like we these are not jobs for us exactly because you get your hands dirty and we can't have that here um to put uh the whole thing about the paper border into a less academic term, the EU started to act like a nation state

and started to make sharp distinctions between native and non-native European citizens. I think it's worth pointing out that what counts as EU is also a supposed European identity. It's very closely tied to geographical location and therefore also implicitly linked to christianity countries that are largely non-christian but connected to europe tend to be excluded turkey is partially in europe but not part of the eu and And Bosnia-Herzegovina, which is a majority Muslim country, is also excluded from that. But much like Turkey is being tempted with the whole,

maybe you can join if you do this and that, but we're not really committing to that. That, however, is a story for another time, maybe. The point that I want to make here is that the visa program for europe is based on geographical discrimination countries outside the geography of europe are blacklisted and cannot gain access to the papers that they need to legally enter the eu this bureaucracy prohibits people from entering the EU before fences or border guards have even entered the equation. Hence, the paper border, since entering or crossing without a paper visa is nigh impossible.

Yeah, I would like to add, of course, it is geographical discrimination, but of course, indirectly, it is discrimination based on class and race. So it is people of color, but not the super rich people of color and it is yeah it is it is formerly colonized countries that are largely that even have an obligation to get a visa so people from the us can travel visa free um same for people from australia so this it is like it is very ironic i find that it's in europe it's considered legal to discriminate based on nationality even though it is very clearly a very smart way to discriminate actually people based on the color of their skin and their economic status exactly what you said uh rose like uh all the countries that are blacklisted are like from the the global south

so to speak almost all of them but i talked to about this with a professor of mine a while back and i think if you can put down like 30 000 euros then you can get a visa even if you're from those countries exactly so the super rich actually the super rich have freedom of movement yeah but the it is always the the poor migrants whose movement is is problematic and whose movement is yeah in britain and in the u.s there's a lot of discourse about like open borders i've noticed like oh the border's open right like the border has always been open to people like me i i live in the united states right i am a u.s citizen now i'm also a british citizen uh i've lived and worked in spain i've lived and worked in france i've lived and worked in belgium i can go and i can get a visa to iraq

i can get a visa to anywhere i want the borders have always been open to white people who have financial means uh what what they're saying when they're saying open borders is implicitly borders open to people who are not white not wealthy perhaps not christian and the the what one can infer from that is a great deal of bigotry and a great deal of like uh unease about living you know alongside people who you feel like are not like the same quote-unquote as you which is particularly ironic in the united states right in a country which is itself a settler colony yeah it's all all very very uplifting stuff i do i do want to end this particular bit with the quote from that article yeah because i think it it says it much more fancy than i ever could rather than guards with

guns this first border of the eu is watched over by bureaucrats armed with paper and entrenched in faraway embassies through this political technology all citizens of a large group of nations barred a few are blacklisted this means in practice that most of the citizens of these blacklisted countries cannot acquire the visas they require to legally travel to the eu the implication is that the paper border of the eu remotely and invisibly cages people in the inequitable lottery of birth end quote i think it's very much worth highlighting that if you're as we've established unless you're like wealthy or white you cannot legally enter the eu and even though our politicians keep saying no no we're just against the illegals now there is for a lot of people there simply is no way to enter legally it's impossible and it's

a large part of the conversation that we conveniently ignore because it doesn't fit like the political narratives that people want to spread yeah and of course most refugee conventions allow for people to enter between ports of entry and in whichever way they can to claim asylum like one does not have to enter in a certain way to claim asylum despite what the discourse might suggest yeah and i think this border is like probably the most overlooked because it doesn't create any dramatic pictures right it is indeed it's just people sitting in an office and looking at papers and deciding no but these are like in dutch yeah these are people working at the immigration office and these are the people who then decide that the only

option for people is to to go on a boat so these visa policies and the people who are executing them are super crucial in enforcing people onto dangerous routes exactly because there there is no way to do it legally therefore i have to just set foot on that soil and then you know apply for asylum because the other route is like before i even tried already closed off yeah and i really like that term the inequitable yes i like that too birth we call it like yeah but it's one of the most insane or like most fundamentally unjust things that we see that that we are living with and that we don't see or like that many people don't see so just because we were born like I was born in one

of the richest countries of in the world my parents had a Dutch passport that's how I got a Dutch passport I did literally nothing to get that it is impossible for me to lose my Dutch passport I commit I can commit like the worst crimes and they will not you know they will not lead me to lose my my passport whereas other people who are born in countries where life expectancy is crazy low or where there's no healthcare or no proper education or jobs, they too did absolutely nothing to be born there

or to be assigned to that nationality. And so somehow this border and this passport is legitimizing the fact that some people just die and we're fine with that and other people have insane privileges and opportunities and the the nationality is kind of a justification because if you really think about it there is no reason why the minimum wage in Ethiopia should be lower than in the Netherlands like there really isn't the only reason is that they have a different nationality and somehow that makes it normal and it's just yeah it's just these injustice unjust structures that are so invisible and and that are not questioned or

talked about enough so i'm glad we're talking about it today but good it's such a stark reality when you live on the border like I live on the US Mexico border and like what on earth like you know the justification for being like oh yeah this person should earn less money and they can't come here but you can go down there and buy stuff at the same price they can that's fine like it's totally fine yeah this is and oh we're going to build a giant fuck off wall and uh it's just so when i spent a lot of time in the more remote parts of the u.s border and for most of the time that border contrary to what you might have seen on the news is a one meter high cattle fence with a single strand of barbed wire and it's so obviously just a light like very often cattle will cross the border

and like you that will have to be herded back right like it's just a notional line in the sand when they built the border wall it really fucked up the migration habit of jaguars bears deer i've seen animals unable to comprehend like but no that's where i go and get my water right like it's such a arbitrary distinction that results in so much cruelty but we do build walls better than you yeah that's a good segue to the to the european iron board and let's talk about the thing we are more cruel at than the americans yeah yeah it's finally something we can beat the american sets we're working on it believe me okay. Okay, well, not too hard. We want to keep this trophy for a while.

You know what else is competing to be the most cruel, Mick? No. It's potentially the products and services that support this show. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show,

where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, Love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire?

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back. We hope you enjoyed those products and services hopefully it wasn't for like a border surveillance technology or you know something similar walls okay so the next part is the iron border this is very similar to what people already think of, but somehow worse. The Iron Border is a collection of fences, walls, barbed and razor wire, or even fortified enclaves such as Suta and Melilla in Spain. Sorry for butchering those names. It is both a deterrent and a performance.

It's meant to project security for people within the walls. like it's meant to project security for people within the walls it shows that eu uses an iron fist to protect europeans from irregular or illegal immigration migration what is more important to highlight it also makes for very good outrage media for right-wing and fascist platforms refugees will continue to breach those fences and the photographs and videos of it make for very good propaganda about how borders need to be strengthened. The fenced borders of Europe have increased from 300 kilometers in 2014 to a shocking 2048 kilometers in 2022. That's substantially more than the US.s and we have of course it's america so it's miles but the most generous estimate uh based on pre-existing war repairs trump war

building is 748 miles that was actually i would say about 750 because i've seen construction happening since then so that's what what, like 1,100 kilometers? We're just over half of what the EU has. And I think for me, when I was at the physical borders, like the border walls, I mean, it feels like a military zone. Like I was on the Hungarian border, there's drones, there is super heavily weaponed soldiers walking around, like helicopters flying around.

It's like, it's a very intimidating feeling. But if you talk to the people crossing the fence, the fence is kind of a joke. Like you can just bring, yeah, you can just go to a gardening shop and buy stairs or like a ladder and just put it over the fence. You can buy a super simple scissor that you would use in the garden to cut your vegetables and you can cut the fence open with it. People were building tunnels.

Of course, it takes time to cross it. So in that sense, it's a hindrance. But the entire promise that a wall will stop people is is is indeed it's just a political game and the politicians know that it's not true it's it's just a a way to show how tough they are and how how rough they are and at the same time i think this is a good moment to instate some palestine into the discussion so most of the european borders are equipped with razor wire and that is literally like knives wire you know like it is like it's razors it's a little half razor blades yeah and this is designed by the israeli army and weapons industry

and the aim of these this razor wire is to gut as deeply as possible into people's skin without causing pain so people don't realize how heavily wounded they are in order to make them bleed as much as possible. This has been tested in Gaza and the Israeli army liked it and now it's sold in europe to sometimes stop the same people leaving fleeing gaza uh trying to reach europe so the border in one hand is is kind of useless but at the same time it is really built to be as cruel and as harmful as possible and i know a lot of people with a lot of scars on their bodies just from those razor wires. Yeah.

I think if we want to draw that connection further, like Elbit Technologies has massive multi tens of million dollar contracts for border surveillance where I live. The same things that are surveilling people in Gaza are surveilling you. If you go for a hike in East County, San Diego, they're also surveilling migrants. The razorware that you mentioned is everywhere out here right um it doesn't work it gets cut eventually it gets blankets thrown over it but in the meantime it hurts people and the the wall itself right there's also walls between israel and palestine between kurdistan and Turkey. What at least these larger ones do is they force people. The US wall is also one that's entirely breachable. I've seen people climbing it.

I've seen people climbing it this week. I've seen people go under it. I've seen people go through it. I've seen people go around it. But what it does tend to do is force people into the more remote areas where they didn't build wall. And those areas are where you're more likely to die. And every year that we've built more wall, we've seen more deaths. And as someone who engages in mutual aid, every year that they build more wall, we have to think about where will people go? How will they get there? What state will they be in? How can we make this journey less deadly?

And that becomes harder and harder for us. We did a water drop on Sunday. It took us five hours to hike a very small section of this trail that people hike in order to surrender themselves, just as they would if they could come through a port of entry. But it's a lot more deadly now. I think that kind of sums up most migration policies or obstacles to migration in europe as

well they don't actually stop migrants but they do hurt them and they do push them into danger or actual deadly groups yeah because you're never going to stop it but you can use like quote unquote deterrence uh in the hopes that it will slow down, but you're just going to get people hurt and killed. Yeah. Yeah. That is like how incredibly cynical the border is. I think that the main deterrence is the people dying and that this,

this is part of the political game to disencourage migrants. Yeah. This is part of the political game to disencourage migrants. And then you can use other policies that we'll get to to present yourself as the good guy for wanting to make sure that people don't cross those walls or cross the Mediterranean. And you can present yourself as the good guy trying to prevent those deaths that your policies are you know causing i think that's where we're going to end it for today we'd planned for this to be a one-part episode but we really enjoyed talking and we had a lot in common so this is going to be a two-parter tomorrow we will be

back to discuss the eu's external border and how it has non-eu countries enforcing its border in in ways that are very detrimental damaging and deadly to migrants so I hope you look forward to that and we'll see you again tomorrow. Hi everyone, it's me James and I just wanted to read you this today. We're going to put it in our episode this week because it's a cause that's important to us and so we thought it would be something that might be important to you too as well. On the 10th of June 2024, Leonard Peltier, an enrolled member of the Turtle Band of Chippewa of Lakota and Ojibwe ancestry, and the longest serving political prisoner in the United States, will be appearing before the U.S. Parole Commission for the first time since 2009.

He faces staunch opposition from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies due to having allegedly killed two FBI agents in a firefight on the 26th of June 1975 after the agents appeared on reservation land to execute a pretextual warrant. The initial firefight occurred during the quote reign of terror on Pine Ridge in the wake of the occupation of Wounded Knee, a time of extreme violence when federal law enforcement installed a puppet tribal chair and was arming vigilantes who targeted indigenous traditionalists. Everything leading up to these events, as well as the subsequent investigation, and Mr. Peltier's extradition, trial, conviction, and sentencing,

were characterized by gross misconduct on the part of law enforcement, the prosecution, and the courts. Mr. Peltier's co-defendants were separately tried and acquitted on grounds of self-defense. Mr. Peltier was railroaded and his case is tainted by discrimination at every level, ranging from the withholding of exculpatory evidence to the torture and coercion of extradition and trial witnesses, and from the refusal of the judge to dismiss an avowedly racist juror to the apologetic gymnastics of the courts affirming his convictions in the face of meritorious legal challenges and admitted evidence of outrageous government misdeeds. Mr Peltier has been in prison for more than 48 years

and he's almost 80 years old. He suffers from chronic and potentially lethal conditions for which he receives insufficient and substandard medical care. If you want to take action to hashtag free Leonard Peltier, you can call the U.S. Parole Commission at 202-346-7000. And if you'd like to find more information on how to support, you can go to this URL. It's http://ndnco.cc slash freeleonardpeltier That's F-R-E-E-L-E-O-N-A-R-D-P-E-L-T-I-E-R Or you can follow NDN Collective on social media

for more ways to support him. For more information on Leonard Peltier, listen to Margaret's podcast on the Lakota Nation, A Read in the Spirit of the Crazy Horse, by Peter Mathewson. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at

the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T. Connecting changes everything. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. We'll see you next time.