It Could Happen Here - EU Border Enforcement, Part 2

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

James talks with Mick and Roos about the EU’s external border, how it contributes to slavery, the abuse and death of migrants, and the role that we can play in advocating for the right to move.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.

Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep, 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 be right back. on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. CallZone Media. Hi, we're back. And just to remind people, if you haven't listened to the episode yesterday,

you probably won't pick up what's going on today. So I suggest starting there as we commence on our second part of the discussion about the EU's border. Today, we're going to discuss the EU's external border and what that means for migrants. We'll pick up with Mick and Rose and we'll start off more or less where we left off yesterday. Like you can map and I'm not the first one to have made these maps but you can look at humane borders in Arizona and then you can look at EFF's map of fixed and mobile towers and you can see people and again this is something I'm more familiar with than I'd like to be. People dying in the shade of the surveillance towers without help, without water,

without the very minor things that it would take for them not to have died. And so, yeah, this provides justification. It provides a massive outlet for the post-war on terror, like military industrial complex to continue to, to make its money and to, to continue to make its money through innocent people dying. Yeah.

I think it was either a bullish Frontex or the transnational institutes. I got some hands on some literature they were spreading. And there is a direct, you can draw a direct line between like, the end of the Cold War in the 90s, with military industrial complex, having to find new ways to sell their products to states. And that's also why the border keeps getting more and more militarized, because this is the one point where they can still sell a lot of things without there having to be a war. Yeah, there's a very serious lobby of companies who just want to make money out of making our borders deadly,

and they're really successful. Yeah, I think they just want to make money, and they don't care if they make our borders deadly. The end goal is always profit for them, right? And everything else is a consequence of that. Think of the stockholders. They have to live as well. What I personally find most troubling is this extension of the Iron Border into non-European countries.

this extension of the iron border into non-european countries so the eu is making deals with countries in which for the in exchange for large sums of money that those countries are now containing or stopping migrants and refugees from ever leaving the middle east or africa like rose said earlier the turkey deal is essentially a political deal between the EU and Turkey for Turkey to hold a portion of Syrian refugees over within their border to stop them from coming into Europe. And I think we paid a few billion, more than a few billion probably, for Turkey to do that. So the most prominent of these deals are like as i said turkey but also tunisia and libya we're essentially outsourcing the abuse and human rights violations to countries that are outside the scope of our media who have regimes that we

would declare dictatorships and autocracies in In the case of Libya, it's even like rebels and warlords being funded with EU taxpayer money. Today, the EU pact with Libya has given rise to a full-fledged slave market run by cold-blooded human traffickers who, incentivized by the EU's crackdown on irregular migration and the resulting business downturn of would-be profitable passengers are now auctioning economic migrants and refugees as slaves yeah we're just doing slavery with extra steps now so uh to make it inescapably clear how bad the situation is i'm now going to quote from an amnesty international article from 2021 tripoli's uh shara al zawiya center is a facility facility

which was previously run by a non-affiliated militia and was recently integrated under the dcim and designated for people in vulnerable situations situations a dcIM is an acronym for Libya's Directorate for Combatting Illegal Migration. It's essentially a department of their interior ministry. Former detainees from that facility said that guards raped women and some were coerced into sex in exchange for their release or for essentials such as clean water. a pseudonym said she was heavily beaten for refusing to comply with such a demand i told the guard no he used a gun to knock me back he used a leather soldier's shoe to kick me from my waist two young women at the facility attempted to commit suicide as a result of such abuse three women also said that two babies detained with their mothers after

an attempted sea crossing had died in early 2021 after guards refused to transfer them to a hospital for a critical medical treatment. Amnesty International's report documents similar patterns of human rights violations including severe beatings, violence extortion forced labor and inhuman conditions across seven dcim centers in libya in abu isa center in the city of al-zawiyah detainees reported being deprived of nutritious food to the point of starvation end quote yeah libya is is just on a completely different level. We have systematic torture on almost all border crossings by European border guards. But Libya just manages to do worse than that.

And just systematically enslave, rape, murder, torture. And I think it's important to stress that there's this Libyan Coast Guard. They're funded by the European Union. So the European Union will go out with drones, spot a boat of migrants. Previously, the European Union actually had rescue ships. But the European Union, if a boat is near another boat in distress there is an obligation to rescue and after the rescue you have to bring the people

to a safe port so having a boat at sea meant that the European Border Agency Frontex was obliged to rescue people at sea and so they just thought let's just do away with the boats and let's just have helicopters and drones

so we can still spot boats that are sinking, but we cannot help them. They are not obligated to help anymore. Yeah, I mean, they're physically, yeah, exactly. They managed to escape that responsibility under maritime law. And then they paid the Libyan Coast Guard to rescue people, quote unquote. Libya is so bad that reportedly migrants just jump in the water if they see a Libyan Coast Guard because people prefer to drown than to be taken back to Libya. The Libyan Coast Guard takes the people on the boat, brings them back to Libyan mainland

and actually sells them to the militias running the detention centers. So the Libyan Coast Guard gets paid twice for stopping migrants, first by the European Union and secondly by the militias that will later sell them as slaves or use them for slavery. And this is what we have been funding for years and there have been extensive documentation about these human rights violations and the very direct link of the eu funding and it just keeps going yeah i think it was a year or so back where i saw a video of like uh someone a woman on a dinghy who was just incredibly emotional and she was just exclaiming all the time like i'd rather die than go back to libya which yeah it's yeah just literally what it is yeah yeah i would encourage the the listeners to just google something like libya migrant detentions or or

something and look at the pictures because it's you you might get like traumatized but you will be more aware of the horrors in the world yeah yeah they're not great pictures to look at but don't go before you go to sleep like uh. I think it's important to see those things because that is the reality that we in Europe often do not get to see. And it is the reality that has been created by our overlords. So what the EU is doing is, to be very blunt, extending its own borders into sovereign territory of states outside of Europe to stop migrants from even entering the EU. Proponents of these policies

will undoubtedly argue that this saves lives by preventing people from crossing the Mediterranean in overcrowded boats and dinghies. Personally, I would argue that people will continue to make that crossing if only to escape the eu funded hell holes that these regimes create in order to get that sweet sweet eu funding what is definitely very concerning is that despite criticisms from ngos such as amnesty international and human rights watch europe will likely continue these practices only last year did it sign a deal with tunisia with the intention of using that as a third country as they call it to prevent sea crossings european commission president ursula von der leyen stated that this could be a blueprint for cooperation with other countries. To the surprise of no one, this will very likely increase the human rights violations and abuses that happen there.

And after this, I have two examples of stories that happened at the EU borders that are, I think, particularly heartbreaking. particularly heartbreaking and this was also the hardest part of for me to write because there are so many stories out there that i think deserve to be heard and deserve to have like some light shown on there yeah just to show people the reality but that would be that would turn into a very very long episode yeah can i can i quickly just i would like to say something about the these deals and i think there is something very ironic about the european union pretending to value democracy and human rights and blah blah well i mean what what you've just said makes it abundantly clear that human rights in europe are just for europeans and not for humans but i would also just like to stress that it's it's very strange and i think not not maybe often enough addressed that

what europe is doing is it's just bribing countries it is bribing countries to stop migrants it is bribing countries to take unwanted migrants back through deportation. It is often also forced to take on its own citizens. So it's not only people from sub-Saharan Africa traveling through Libya, but it's also Libyan people themselves. So they have elected a government. They have an interest themselves as well, maybe, in having the ability to move away from Libya.

And the EU needs to come up with enormous sums of money to force these governments to uh yeah why do they need that money because that is not in the interest of the country or its citizens to to do this and especially in the netherlands there is this enormous yeah there's just this expectation that if we don't like something other countries should do something about it yeah so in the netherlands moroccan migrants specifically are vilified a lot and uh and algerian migrants and uh they both countries have not been very collaborative with deportations but like why the hell should they support the forced return of their own citizens who don't want to go back to their countries yeah like there's no there's no reason for them to do that except if europe is just abusing its power and forcing it

these countries to to do things that are not in their interest. I mean, a lot of these border guards, I think Libya is an exception because they actually make money out of the migrants in so many different ways. But if you look at Serbia or Bosnia, they are forced to control their borders, which is super expensive. And these are countries who have other issues to fix like yeah maybe they should maybe they want to focus on building up their country and and improving living conditions but instead the eu is just giving them money to to yeah to protect to protect borders of people who are mainly just walking through their countries like that's not really a big problem for them and yeah it's very ironic because europe is like justifying its migration policies with this idea that every country has sovereignty over who it allows access

that's like legally that's like the fundament of migration deterrence but it only claims that right for itself so if other countries say well i don't care if there's syrians walking through my country like maybe they'll spend some money and they'll just leave anyway yeah other countries don't have the right i think belarus is an interesting example as well because belarus welcomed migrants and then brought them to the EU border with Poland and Lithuania mainly. And Belarus has every right to give visa to people, you know? It's actually like, just like the Netherlands has the rights to give visa to people, Belarus has that right too.

And then, of course, people can also go to the border and cross the border if they want and ask for asylum. So yeah, I just wanted to highlight the irony of how incredibly one-sided Europe is in how we can claim that we want to keep people out, but other countries are not allowed to have sovereign migration policy. Yeah. We see exactly the same in the US, right? Like we're trying to outsource processing of migrants to Guatemala and Honduras. We are trying to, I mean, we pay Mexico massive sums of money to enforce

our border, right? Like, we saw, it's funny, there are three gaps outside of Cumbia that people who have listened to this podcast will be very familiar with my reporting on and we saw those gaps closed down not when people started coming so much but once once legacy media outlets showed up then in by december right the u.s had a bilateral meeting with mexico and very soon thereafter we saw mexican national guard sitting at those gaps in the border wall the u.s is bored border like if people are leaving mexico it's not mexico's problem uh but we saw them with technicals and machine guns policing those gaps in the border and the u.s gives a ton of money to countries to to enforce its border right to prevent migration and uh get extremely the u.s has even taken actions to um prosecute airlines that fly people north

so that they can yeah we do that too yeah yeah yeah it's uh yeah the sanctions are in like insane like half a million or something for like bringing one migrant without a visa yeah yeah yeah that too is externalization just as like bribing Libya to protect the border is also like actually forcing carriers like forcing transport companies to be the border guard yeah to ascertain whether you have a visa or not decide if you have the right to travel 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. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. further stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, wherever you get your podcasts. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes.

You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. let's pick up with those examples you mentioned because i think it is important for people to kind of have a uh a human face or a human story well to preface this like migrants are under eu law migrants are supposed to apply for asylum in the first eu country that they enter

this policy is likely the result of fear from more affluent European countries that the majority of refugees will travel to those countries. This means that the countries geographically closest to Africa and the Middle East are the ones supposed to take in most refugees. Think of Spain, Greece, Italy, Bulgaria. They however are not too Enthusiastic at the prospect of taking in Huge amounts of migrants Nor are the migrants Themselves by the way I can imagine

That they're also not too keen To live in Bulgaria Especially after what follows Next because This story happened at Turkish Bulgarian border But i also personally it's just incredibly cruel that like the netherlands and germany and uh the scandinavian countries are like oh no you should take it all you should take all those refugees like we don't want them here

and i would say that's like where the outsourcing starts. That's EU law. We have Schengen, so we have free travel within the EU. But that comes with extremely violently guarding the outside of the EU. So if you are a border country, you are only welcome if you can prove to us that you are cruel enough to discourage people from crossing this border. Because again,ia doesn't really have that much interest in guarding the borders if people can just if they anyway want to go to to western european countries right so it's a way to to again to i would say the border

externalization already starts from like the main countries of destination which is like france and germany and yeah even bulgaria would not have much interest in stopping migrants if there were not all of these rules to make them responsible exactly but again which is why i said like the more affluent countries within the eu don't want that for uh reasons I think anyone can think of. At this point of the story is where pushbacks come into play. This is a tactic used by the countries I just mentioned. It's a set of measures that force people back over the border they crossed, often immediately after it. This practice is often enforced with violence and does not take into account the circumstances of migrants and denies them the opportunity to apply for asylum. This means that the EU does

push back people that have very legitimate reasons to apply for asylum under the EU's own rules. I'm going to quote, pushbacks violate the prohibition of collective expulsion of asylum seekers in protocol four of the european convention on human rights and often violate the international law prohibiting on non-refoulement no it's french yeah ah okay um i was never good at French. All right. It's a fundamental principle of international law that forbids a country receiving asylum seekers from returning them to a country in which there would be improbable danger of persecution based on race, religion, nationality,

membership of a particular social group or political opinion. That being said, I'm, I'm aware even like the dutch government has sent like lgbtqi people back to countries where they could be like yes persecuted for that so again those rules seem to be very optional so what follows now is two examples of border practices that i think are particularly egregious so on october 3rd 2022 abdullah muhammad at age 19 a syrian refugee attempted to cross the bulgarian turkish border after being pushed back by border guards they threw stones at the border i want to emphasize here at the border itself not at the guards yeah after this a shot rang and abdullah fell to the ground with a bullet

bullet lodged one centimeter away from his heart he survived and was interviewed by lighthouse reports he states that there was an intent to kill when he was shot, that's his belief. The bullet also pierced his hand, which is now partially paralyzed. There seems to be no justification or reason whatsoever for border guards to have shot or to have shot with live ammunition. This was the first time that such an incident was caught on video. If you want, you can find it linked on Lighthouse Reports, attached to the article about this incident. The video is not as bad as you might think, but watch at your own risk. As far as I'm aware, there have been similar rumors rumors before but this was the first incident that has entered like the public record or the first time it was actually documented. Needless to say no one

should be shot for attempting to cross a border. I don't care about anyone's opinion or bad faith nuances. People have a right to apply for asylum and as far as I'm concerned this was a deliberate and calculated attempted murder. Yeah I do think there have been quite a lot of videos of people being shot and definitely people making statements about it and just having the actual bullet in their body to prove that it happened. Yeah it happened in Croatia, it happened in Greece. Greece has a habit of shooting at boats as well, and in that way making people drown. Yeah, and of course, apart from the shootings, which I would say on the European borders,

they are still kind of rare. Yeah, the pushbacks and the violence and the torture is, yeah, the evidence of that is like an enormous pile there's when i was working in bosnia i think that was in 2018-19 there was no video footage of a pushback and there was a journalist who volunteered with us for a while and they were the first one to film it but in the past years there have been like many many horrible videos of people being beaten up yeah and actual torture yeah of course in the us under the pretense of protecting us all from the coronavirus which still killed millions of people in this

country we we have something called title 42 which allowed border patrol to uh quote unquote repatriate people to mexico even if they weren't mexican and and just drop them back in mexico to include laterally transferring them which is a pseudonym for kind of trafficking them halfway across the country and then dumping them in a place where they have no connections no money and no way of establishing themselves right and and this led to massively increased a fatalities at the border because people were trying to avoid border patrol rather than coming in and surrendering themselves for asylum it's like as we see now and massively increasing counters at the border. Encounters don't necessarily represent unique individuals.

This is my, I will beat this fucking drum until I die. But apparently our colleagues at the New York Times haven't worked it out yet. Wall Street Journal, almost every NPR, every big outlet in the United States that likes to commission border reporters who don't live on the border will tell you that the number of migrants went up. An encounter is an encounter. If someone crosses and then gets bounced into Mexico and then crosses again and does that five times, that's five encounters. It's the same person. BP doesn't keep records of unique individuals under Title 42 or didn't keep under Title 42. We don't know how many people, but we know that more people tried to cross. And we also know that every time you try to cross, you risk your life.

And so we certainly know that more lives were put in danger because of this policy. Because again, like turning someone back is not going to stop them, especially when you're dropping them in a country where they don't want to be and where they're not from, like the people aren't just going to be like, cool i'll stay in mexico and like that has not historically been the case yeah we had exactly the same kind of juggling with numbers i remember people in bosnia some of them would get pushed back like 40 or 50 times damn and so they would be counted as individual stops yes indeed so it would sound as if there was like i don't know tens of thousands and i was like it's really not that many though yeah yeah

we're saying the same thing literally count the same person again and again and again yeah and also i would like to say that like yes it is the border like the EU border countries, but it is also much deeper into the territory. So we externalize the border towards like Libya and Niger and way further even. But we also internalize the border. So we would have people who had made it to Austria or Italy. They would get caught in Austria or Italy, be pushed back to Slovenia, taken over by Slovenian police, brought to the Croatian border, taken over by Croatian police, often in Croatia, get tortured,

and then be dumped on the Bosnian border, which would be the EU border as well. So that's what they call chain pushbacks. And yeah, so I worked in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is non-EU. So we would get the people after they had been pushed back. Yeah, the things that people have done, like border guards have done to migrants are... Yeah, I don't know if you actually want to use this footage, but it's really it's really really gruesome like in bosnia they would there would be like snow for like they have very long and very cold winters they would take away people's shoes and socks and like make them walk for five hours on bare feet so one of the main tasks of our volunteers our medical volunteers was amputating toes people would fuck people would come back with

broken bones, broken skulls people would be sent back with just their underwear at minus 20 degrees Celsius, I don't know how much that is in the US I think they come together around minus 20, it's extremely fucking cold

the colder it gets the more accurate so at some point we started to call this cold torture around minus 20 it's extremely fucking cold the colder it gets the more accurate yeah so like at some point we started to call this cold torture as a kind of specific yeah tactic that mainly the croatian border guards were using that's yeah also yeah and i also want to stress again that yes it is the european border countries in the east and in the south. But when I was working in Bosnia, Croatia was not yet part of the Schengen zone. And like politicians were pretty explicit about Croatia can only enter if they have solved their border problem, even though there was constantly proof of torture coming out the same happened with bulgaria and romania so these countries were very very much pressured

by countries like the netherlands and germany who like you know pretend not to have anything to do with these atrocities but who were very very explicitly saying if you are not if you don't get your borders in control you cannot join the economic yeah that you you cannot have the open borders within the eu yeah we um it's so sad to see all these ceremonies like this is very depressing my friends and i were helping someone who had it like the early onset of like like trench foot yeah a couple of weeks ago yeah yeah we don't do it like i guess as a policy as much as just by default but um in the mountains and then desert here in california when it rains areas that are dry for the rest of the year turn into rivers and migrants have to cross them we've also seen a large

number of migrants drown this year in san diego and i more will have drowned if very brave people hadn't risked their own lives rescuing them not people who were working for the government just individuals who cared we've also seen a young man from jamaica recently passed away this was in early probably early in February and March in February and March he was on a migrant trail I know exactly where about a few hundred yards actually from where my friends have left warm clothes hand warmers jackets food water but he wasn't able to make it that far and it for whatever reason you know like one death tragedy in a million statistic or whatever but that really impacted me he was actually on the other side of the border when he died but like he could have thrown a stone into the u.s and it's

not a fence to border there but yet we have chosen a policy which made that young man die of hypothermia by himself on the side of a mountain because some for some reason that's the what we've decided or our government has decided is better than having him come here and be able to to make his case and live with us and get a job or what have you and yeah that was just a particularly heartbreaking one for me because I knew that like if he was five minutes walk away 10 minutes walk away from potentially being okay and like that that's why my friends and I like to go out and leave stuff for people but it shouldn't be a group of anarchists and and migrant activists and people of faith like hiking into the desert every weekend with backpacks full of

water and food and warm clothes like that shouldn't be what prevents people from dying coming here yeah there's a kind of cruelty in that even like it is amazing to to help people to be part of a group of people who commits themselves to yeah to resist these incredibly violent borders and to support people who decide to cross them but at the same time it is just so problematic that someone's life like access to food or health care depends on whether or not there are some crazy volunteers willing to do that so like it shouldn't be like our you know our like yeah like i don't want to have that power over someone's life and i think no one should have that power over someone's life but this system where basically migrants lives are disposable also mean that it's like optional to offer super

basic things that can save these lives. Yeah, very much so. Are we ready for the second depressing story? Yeah, let's get the second depressing story. Let's hit rock bottom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm sure you've heard this story before, but still I think it's very much worth repeating. So on June 14th, 2023, the Adriana, a ship on its way to Greece, capsized and subsequently sank.

The boat allegedly had the capacity for about 400 people, but carried around 750. Of all those lives, 104 were saved. Of all those lives, 104 were saved, 82 were confirmed dead, and up to 500 are missing and presumed dead, the majority of which are women and children. I'll refer back to Lighthouse Reports, who did a reconstruction of the incident, which makes this even worse than it already is. Transcriptions and witness statements obtained by Lighthouse reports Der Spiegel, Monitor S.I.R.A.J., L.Pias, Reporters United and The Times strongly suggest that the Greek Coast Guard attempted to conceal their own involvement in this tragedy. Nine survivors were asked to make statements, none of which appeared to blame the coast guard. Different

suggestions were given for the capsizing, blaming it on the age of the ship or the lack of life jackets. Four of these statements contained near identical phrasing. It was later discovered that one of the translators was a coast guard himself. There were other translators, all of which were sworn in on that very day. Later in Greek courts, six of those nine stated that the coast guard did in fact tow the boat before it went down. Two survivors thought thought lighthouse reports that certain parts of their testimony was omitted in the transcription to clarify that a bit because of what i said earlier that migrants have or obligated to apply for asylum in the country in which they arrive it's become a habit of like coast guard and frontex to drag them to certain areas of no of water that are part of for example italy or greece uh this particular one boat may have been uh an attempt to drag the

boat to italian waters so the greeks didn't have to take them in. So to quote the report from Lighthouse, 16 out of the 17 survivors we spoke to said the Coast Guard attached a rope to the vessel and tried to tow it shortly before it capsized. Four also claimed that the Coast Guard was attempting to tow the boat to Italian waters. While four reported that the Coast Guard caused more deaths by circling around

the boat after it capsized making waves that caused the boat's carcass to sink end quote not great bedtime stories um if you ask me yeah i think that's horrible it's there there's just no words like yeah i got nothing i got nothing to say like i don't think anyone should be okay with that 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 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. 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. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of black writers

and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit 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 Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search,

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better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Perhaps I think we're going to talk again about how people can oppose this and how people can try their best to to a change the system and be do what they can you know while we're stuck in this terrible place to to make things more survivable and less cruel so perhaps we can finish up here with you guys plugging anything you want to if there are orgs or social media where people can follow both of your work. Um, then I'd love to hear about them.

Yeah. You can follow us on my grades. Dot E N. I think that's like for English and migrate is I G R E A T. Yeah. The system is super fucked. It is super, super,

super fucked. It is. Yeah. super fucked yeah it is super super super fucked it is yeah it's really treating human beings as disposable and human a migrant life has absolutely no value but i also just wanted to say that i think a lot of migrants who cross borders they are aware of the risks but i think it's also important to say that it isn't it's a kind of resistance it is a kind of we started that episode with talking about passport privilege and the lottery of birth and i think we should not only look at like the bad border guards and the good people helping or something but i think we should also acknowledge that the people crossing the borders are taking unbelievable risk, often also to help their families or their friends.

Yeah. And I think crossing a border without permission is a kind of resistance. And I think we, as people who do direct support or direct aid, we are... I mean i mean for me that's also part of the resistance is like helping people cross the border i don't mind if yeah people get one accuse me of being a smuggler or something or like aiding illegal border crossings like the whole point is that people should be able to cross that border yeah yeah i think that's a really good

someone recently accused us of in hakumba that said that people people come to hukumba because we feed them and like hey it's fucking ludicrous like you didn't fucking come from a guinea because i'm gonna give you a peanut butter sandwich on some bread i got for free like the best food yeah yeah yeah like it is it is not the best uh it's the best we can do for like you know less than a dollar a person or what have you but like no like but i guess but i am doing it because i believe that person should be able to and not just because they're in those dire circumstances but because i i fundamentally support their right and like i want them to be my neighbor yeah i'm okay with that and that's why i'm doing it yeah absolutely i think i think we should all keep in mind how many of our

friends and family or other loved ones have moved at some point in their lives for a job or opportunities or love or whatever not that the essence of like human movement is the same right right there yeah yeah yeah and it is our politicians who choose that this movement is a problem that the movement of these people specifically is a threat or a danger whereas i think like yeah if you talk about like racism or systemic racism, the question is always like, yeah, but what is the system then? This is the system, the visa policies, the actual border. This is what is keeping people like is trying to keep people in exploitable conditions in the global south is doing incredible cruelties to them just for political gain is exploiting people who do make it but who are undocumented or on fragile resident status and are still exploited and and

deprived of basic rights even if they do arrive to their country of destination like this system is designed to create an underclass of people that is easily exploitable there are companies who are profiting from this there is absolutely no intention to stop migration but there is definitely an intention to marginalize and segregate migrants and um yeah and just profit of it yeah and meanwhile we we do the absolute bare minimum to provide aid to those countries to make the living conditions there better. Yeah, these borders are playing a role in keeping people exploitable there and making it possible to make them work for incredibly low wages and horrible labor conditions. Yeah. These borders are forcing them into those into those conditions i i think the

the mandatory international development aid that countries should pay is like 0.007 percent or something of the gdp and the majority of like western countries uh are not not make not doing that even that so it's very much like the problem is that they're coming here not that the conditions there are shit and we're keeping them shit yeah yeah what a great system i'm a bit bummed now yeah yeah sorry we left you all sad we will come back with uh with rose again and Mick to talk about ways to make it better. Is there anything you wanted to plug, Mick? Anything you want people to give the time, money to follow on the internet?

I just want to give a shout out to organizations such as Migrate, but also the Abolish Frontex campaign and United Against Refugee Deaths. And I would urge anyone who feels compassionate to help out. There are so

many ways you can help out, even if you don't know it yet. It is sorely needed. Wherever you are, whoever you are, you can help out. 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'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 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. 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. 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. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas,

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