It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 104

Episode Date: October 28, 2023

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file You can now listen to all Cool Zone Media shows, 100% ad-free through the Cooler Zone Media subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. So, open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “Cooler Zone Media” and subscribe today! http://apple.co/coolerzone See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons?

Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast,

Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app

or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking music, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and

influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, Call zone media. There's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Hello, everybody, and welcome to It Could Happen Here. This is Shereen, and I am so excited to be joined by author and journalist Sim Kern. Their latest novel, The Free People's Village, is available now.

So go to your local bookstore and order it and support a voice that I believe we all need in our zeitgeist right now. So welcome, Sim. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. For those of you who don't know, Sim has been making videos recently about the genocide in Gaza from a queer Jewish anti-Zionist perspective. And this is one that I think a lot of people need to be exposed to and to listen to. I mentioned this to you before the recording, but a Jewish friend of mine told me how much she connected with your voice and how much she's learned from you and how your videos have been helping her approach really awkward and difficult conversations with her peers. So I appreciate you very much. Happy to do whatever I can. When you decided to start making like the

first video that got a lot of attention, like, were I can. When you decided to start making like the first video that got a lot of attention, like, were you seeing something that you wanted to like, make sure you correct in the zeitgeist? Like, what was your perspective as a Jewish person? Well, this is the first video that I made was encouraging people to read books by Palestinian authors, just to learn about the Palestinian perspective, which is so often censored and not really allowed in our media. And also what you really have to go seek out in publishing. And this isn't the first time I've done this since I think 2017 or something was the first time I created Read for Palestine Challenge on YouTube. And just creating this Read for Palestine Challenge was enough to get me put on the Canary Mission website.

I'm like outed as a as a anti-Semite by this very Zionist website that of course is a block list of mostly students who organize with like Students for Justice in Palestine and really anyone who speaks out publicly against Israeli apartheid. So simply like encouraging people to read these books, I think is really powerful. And I know for me, growing up Jewish in the United States, I was just inundated with a lot of Zionist propaganda from my more conservative family. My more liberal family would take the line of like, it's just very complicated. Both sides hate each other. Who can say who's right? And it was only by reading Palestinian voices that I really developed an anti-Zionist perspective. That's awesome that you did the Read for Palestine challenge, but also like not surprising about the Canary Mission thing, unfortunately.

But I'm glad that that didn't stop you or discourage you. When you start to learn more about Palestine, how did you approach conversations with your friends and family? Again, like I guess initially it's different talking to friends and family than it is talking to the Internet. Honestly, it's much easier, I think, sometimes to connect with the internet because there's not that like personal connection. I think I've made more headway and had a much greater impact online than I have with certain friends and family members. But, you know, I do think that everyone having those conversations, putting your beliefs out there, whether it's one-on-one and face-to-face conversations or whether it is doing it online where like certainly your friends and family

are going to see the things that you're posting and the things that you care about. It has a great impact. And like I've definitely noticed friends of mine over time who maybe a few intense bombing campaigns ago were very checked out on this issue are now very active and are and are speaking out themselves and so that's I guess that would be my message to other like anti-Zionist Jews is even if the first time you're putting stuff out there about Palestine it feels like no one's listening. It feels like, you know, you're not making a difference. Over time, you're planting the seeds of like questioning the Western media's, you know, pro-Israeli perspective over time. Yeah, that's a really, really good point. My friend also mentioned she would never have been

exposed to your voice if I didn't share it or if people were not sharing it. So I think people really underestimate the value of social media sometimes or speaking up on social media. They're just like, oh, people are already talking about it or whatever, but everyone has a community they can reach that no one else can reach. So I think that's important to remember. You made some points in some videos that you made that I would love for you to not like regurgitate, but maybe just like cover for people that haven't watched your videos or are just unaware in general. I think a really important point you made was how suffering is not monopolized or exclusive or any worse or better than other people suffering, regardless of what identity they are. Can you get into that a little bit? Yeah, so I made a video that was actually responding to a comment by someone saying,

how dare you compare the suffering of Palestinians to the suffering of Jews? How dare you compare genocides? That's disgusting and that cheapens the Holocaust. And that was, again, I think, responding to a video where I was saying, read about other genocidesens the Holocaust. And that was, again, I think responding to a video where I was saying like, read about other genocides besides the Holocaust because I think, again, as a Jewish American, I grew up steeped in Holocaust literature.

I read every book I could about it. I think a lot of Jewish kids, by the time we're adolescents, we have like this PhD level knowledge of the Holocaust. I think that our peers who are non-Jewish maybe don't have quite as much exposure and understanding of the Holocaust, but that is often the only genocide that is taught in U.S. schools. And so there's a narrative that the suffering of the Jews and the persecution of Jews is uniquely specific

and that it was all about the religion. It's something about Judaism itself is why we've been persecuted. Well, I, as an author, currently I'm writing a book on Jews in the 17th century, and I've just done a ton of research on medieval and early modern Jewish history. And of course there was religious hate, but it was motivated by, and I contended in this video, that all genocides are motivated by land and wealth and power. And the hate is manufactured by people in power to justify taking people's land and wealth and to solidify their own power as rulers.

And the Christian church used this against Jews in the medieval and early modern period. And in our times, there's no one religion that has a monopoly on committing genocide. There's no one state, because really it's states that are committing genocide, that it's not directed to one people. So I've encouraged people to read books about here in the United States, obviously, the genocide of the Native peoples, the Congolese genocide, you know, I just recommended a couple different titles, the Rwandan genocide for a more recent example. And it is I reject the framework that you can't make comparisons between genocides. I think

that keeps us ignorant. I keep think that keeps us from being in solidarity with one another and understanding the mechanisms of power and control and wealth accumulation that underlie all of these genocides. And I do believe what is happening in Palestine right now is a genocide being committed by the Israeli state. Yeah. And also really good point about justifying it by creating all the people in Palestine as barbarians or terrorists or this rhetoric that becomes really dangerous and harmful. And as we've seen, like people can die, a 60 year old can die from this rhetoric. And as we've seen, like people can die, a 60 year old can die from this rhetoric. Right. And Yahoo just said this is a struggle between children of light and children of darkness.

Like that is genocidal rhetoric. I cannot believe that tweet. And I mean, he deleted it. But I mean, the Internet is forever. I just can't believe that was that is so normal for him to tweet just confidently, even at one point, just to say that out loud. I think that's absurd. And also just like to see how Yoav Galant has been saying like human animals or referring to Palestinians in such a dehumanizing way. You mentioned something really important that I think I appreciated about how maintaining the dehumanization of the Palestinians is vital to maintain the white supremacist imperialistic thing that is Israel. Can you get into that a little bit? Yeah, well, I think that was me trying, that came out of me trying to understand why there was such backlash when I first, when I first years ago started recommending people read Palestinian

books is because when you read a book by a Palestinian author it is going to humanize the Palestinian people for you and that is incredibly threatening and Palestinian authors face a ton of discrimination within publishing I mean look at what was it earlier this week? The Frankfurt Book Festival pulled or canceled a ceremony for a Palestinian author, Adania Shibley, and then has made more time for Israeli voices and Israeli specific panels at that book festival. And simply because she's a Palestinian,

she writes books dealing with real factual Palestinian history. And her books are critical of Israel. But the silencing of Palestinian voices is a global project. It is across all media industries. You see it in traditional book publishing as well as journalism. Another an author friend of mine, Hanin Orikat, has had the hardest time. She's been on sub with her book and she's been told by multiple editors to change the main character from a Palestinian character to just a generic Arabic character. Because being Palestinian is seen as inherently too controversial to publish. Yeah, I read that. That's just, I mean, again, not completely surprised, but just so shameful that that is something that is still happening in these modern times. I think another thing to

remember is a lot of people get confused between the differences between being non-white and white in the scope of like this world. I guess it just seems so obvious that colorism and racism both exist in today's world. And I really liked what you mentioned about the difference between colorism and racism. Can you talk about that for a little bit? Yeah. So I was explaining that in the Western media, Israelis are treated as white and Palestinians are treated as non-white. And it really is regardless of the color of your skin. So a lot of people giving me pushback on that comment say, oh, but there's black and brown and white Israelis. Yes. And in the racist apartheid state that is Israel, people of different skin tones are treated very differently within Israel. We've seen there was forced sterilization of African Jews immigrating to Israel. But when it comes to the

Western media, our view of the conflict is not as nuanced as recognizing those differences. And so I was explaining that colorism is, you know, discrimination based on the color of your skin. Racism is a racial construct. It's about social, economic, and legal discrimination. And while colorism is often used to determine racism, that's not always 100% the case. And in the case of Israel, when you're talking about the Western media looking at Israel, Talking about the Western media looking at Israel, they report on Israelis as people, as people who are to be mourned, as people whose deaths are important, as people whose lives are valuable.

And they report on people in Gaza, Palestinians, as human shields is the most sympathetic way we hear them talked about. Their deaths are not deemed important. They're not humanized within the media. If they're killed, they're either combatants, or they were a human shield. They were someone being used by combatants and their deaths are, you know, maybe the lip service is paid to those deaths being regrettable, but they're seen as necessary and not unconscionable in the way that deaths in Israel are reported on. Yeah, I think you bring up a really good point about the media and how important semantics are. I think something that we've been seeing time and time again is how deep the dehumanization goes.

Like Israelis have been killed versus Palestinians have died. The Gaza Strip is being referred to, I've seen it as an enclave. Oh my God. You know, an enclave where terrorists lurk. So yeah, the words used to describe the city of Gaza, the words used to describe people as combatants, the words like, you know, Palestinians die in a clash, when that clash was racist Jewish settlers with machine guns coming after them, you know, so.

Yeah, yeah. Passive voice does a lot of work. It does. It does. I mean, we've seen it just recently with the hospital bombing, how the New York Times changed their headline like three times from strike and then to blast, I believe, was what they landed on. Blast, which I just find honestly comical when I really think about it too hard. Yeah, Elizabeth Warren came out and condemned blasts. Warren came out and condemned blasts. Like that is just so, just the passive voice is so dangerous because it really, it really obfuscates the truth, which is that Palestinian people are dying of genocide. Even calling it a war or a conflict does not do what's happening justice because it still implies there are two equal sides that are fighting against each other versus

an occupier and oppressor versus the occupied the oppressed so i think semantics are so important for us to keep in mind even when we're talking about it with our peers to make sure that we talk about in the correct way because i feel like it unconsciously becomes ingrained in us even if we don't realize it when we keep talking about certain things, the way the media wants us to talk about them as a conflict or as a clash or whatever it is. And something else that I've really tuned into is really being careful not to pit this as a struggle between Muslims and Jews. Any framing like that is both Islamophobic and anti-Semitic and incredibly inaccurate. This is about an ethno-state, a nation-state, an apartheid state, which is Israel, targeting its captive population. And there are Palestinians who are of all different faiths

who are discriminated against because they are Palestinians within occupied Palestine. So, like, for example, I, it just came to my attention that there are some in the, I'm a book talker. My book talk channel is Bookstagram, is mostly what I do is just, you know, share about books for folks to read and share about the books I'm working on. And some of my fellow book talkers have been recommending people read books by both Palestinian and Jewish authors so they can show both sides. A Palestinian author, Hannah Mushebek, just wrote a great letter to sort of call in our community and explain this is a very this is very anti-Semitic to conflate Judaism with Israel, the policies of Israel. You know, yesterday we saw 500 Jewish activists get arrested in the Capitol building here in D.C. in protest and demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

So there are many, many anti-Zionist Jews. and demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. So there are many, many anti-Zionist Jews. Judaism and Zionism are not the same thing, but conflating them gives Israel more power and gives it a stronger moral foothold to say, oh, we're representing all Jews, not just this state. So that's something also to be really careful about

is to not pit this as a Muslim versus Jewish fight because it's not. It's about Israel, the state versus Palestinian people. Yeah, that's vital to remember. Let's take our first break right here and we'll be right back. And we are back. You were just talking about how this is just 100% not a religious issue. And I think talking about semantics again, framing it as a religious issue is another way for people to stop talking about it, to be too

afraid to get into this complicated ancient battle of all time, this archaic thing that we can't even get into because we can't understand it. I think the Zionist narrative wants us to believe it's about religion so people can ignore what's actually going on and be too scared to speak out. It's like time and time again, something that I want to remind people is that it's not Muslim versus Jewish, which is what it gets framed by most of the time. But speaking of Zionism and how it's not equated to the Jewish religion at all, if anything, Zionism is anti-Semitic in and of itself. I believe that wholeheartedly. Yeah. I believe Zionism makes all Jews so much more unsafe. Yeah. It's also rooted in a lot of anti-Semitism. Even the way the state of Israel

was created was Europeans being like, hey, Jews, can you go here? It wasn't this gift to the Jewish people. It was also about to be in Africa, which I find fascinating. And also, I think people always forget the majority of Zionists in the United States are evangelical Christians. That is 100% accurate. That's why they support Zionism. And it's because they want all the Jews to go to Israel for the rapture to happen. It is the most like comic book idea I've ever heard. And everyone just goes along with it. Yeah. homeland. I think what you discussed is really important because of this narrative that a lot of Zionists teach to Jewish people about how they're constantly being persecuted. I think people are led to believe that Israel is their safe haven. Like, if all else fails, I have Israel

to go back to. That is my home. Even like American Jews that have no connection to Israel, really. Why, in your opinion, do the Jewish people not necessarily need a homeland? Right. Well, I made that video speaking to other leftists. I was addressing other leftists. So I think if you agree with me on the premise that everyone should have a safe place to live and everyone should have equal rights, which I think are two pretty, pretty basic tenants of being a leftist, then you just can't have anybody having a theocratic ethnostate, which is what Israel is. I mean, they say they're not, but that is how they act and how that is how that country is run. And so, you know, a lot of people misinterpreted that

video as, you know, kind of tried to argue with me saying, but there's other theocratic ethnostates. But I'm saying, yeah, if you're a leftist, you should think that's bad everywhere. Because a theocratic ethnostate is an inherently fascist construct. It's inherently saying one religion and or one ethnicity in the case of the way Israel interprets Judaism. These people are more valuable and are more citizens here and have more rights here than everybody else. And that is just incompatible with leftist values, I think. And so the point of that video is nobody should have a theocratic ethno state. And this is a line that I've heard even some leftist Jews saying,

well, oh, we, you know, this is a complicated issue because Jews need a homeland. Well, I'm sorry, our world is just too heterogeneous, too diverse. You know, migrations have been going on for tens of thousands of years all over the place. There's no one plot of land on earth anymore that you can carve out and say, You know, migrations have been going on for tens of thousands of years all over the place. There's no one plot of land on Earth anymore that you can carve out and say, OK, just this one type of people are going to get to live here and be citizens here and have rights here.

Now, I'm an anarchist personally. So I when I say no theocratic ethnostates, I'm also like in a bigger picture way saying like no states would be the ideal for me. But certainly theocratic ethnostates are even worse within that framework compared to like liberal democracies or something. So, yeah, I that was a video that was like, intended to be an in group conversation. And then it got a million views and got because my following has like really exploded over the last week. So I wasn't expecting it to go so far. And so for people who idealize ethnostates like Japan or Sweden, they were really having a hard time with me saying that and thinking it was really anti-Semitic for me to say, oh, I don't think Jews should have a theocratic ethno-state. But no, I think nobody should have a theocratic ethno-state.

That's a really good point to make. I mean, it goes back to the idea of Jewish suffering being more valuable in some way than other suffering. I think it continues this hierarchy of sorts. And everything you described about people not being treated the same and not having enough rights, that's all apartheid. I think people forget Israel is committing the definition of apartheid and has been against the Palestinian people. And I find it weird that, I mean, Amy Schumer posted this crazy video proving in her words that it's not an apartheid state, actually, and how people have all the rights in the world, when in reality, it's shameful. Yeah, it's like the UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch are all saying this is

like the UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch are all saying this is an apartheid state, but okay, Amy Schumer. Yeah, it's not actually that complicated. It's really not. I've been really appreciating Amanda Seals. She did like a reaction video to what Amy Schumer posted and like laid out all the racist reasons why actually apartheid is what you would call that. the racist reasons why actually apartheid is what you would call that. I think something that has bothered me within the both sides thing is, this is not a term that I hear often anymore, but like the progressive except Palestine. I think that idea has been really damaging because it makes it seem like you can still be so liberal and progressive and still not really recognize that Palestinians are being genocided for almost a century. Yeah. And this is just so frustrating because, again, what you're seeing in Palestine,

it's so stark. The violence is so obvious and it's so egreggregious and there's all these social justice you know organizations and accounts that i follow there's like queer jewish liberation accounts who've said nothing about palestine there's um also non-jewish queer you know all sorts of queer liberation queer activists out there which is like a whole nother network that i'm tapped into and many of them are staying silent on this genocide and it's like we are all fighting the same evils the same type of oppression and if you want people to stand with you when your rights are being taken away you got to stand with everybody else That's the only way intersectionality is the only way that we can overcome these enormous forces of oppression in the world. So, yeah, it's it's been very frustrating to see just how many, you know, anti-racist organizations, queer liberation organizations are just staying completely silent on Palestine.

on Palestine. Yeah, I have been really frustrated about that as well, because it encourages this sort of selective outrage that is reserved for certain kind of people that are deemed as human versus the people that are not. I really believe one of the most powerful voices in the fight for Palestinian liberation are Jewish anti-Zionists, because they can speak to what people deem is the source of that problem from a different place. But I hope you realize how important your voice is just in general, especially now. And yeah, I just really thank you for what you've been doing because it's kind of scary too, I'm sure, to suddenly have a big platform and have all these people analyzing everything you're saying and trying to find little holes in your arguments. But I appreciate that you're not backing down.

Yeah, it's been a trip. I went from 6,000 to 180,000 followers on Instagram in like a week. I didn't realize that you started at 6,000. I was wondering about that. That is a crazy jump. Yeah, it happened really, really fast. And on TikTok too. I had 50,000 on TikTok just from my like book talk, author talk account, which I've been, you know, growing over the course of two years. And then it went now it's like at 150,000. So it like tripled on TikTok. But yeah, it's definitely made me more careful about what I say. Like, again,

I had that one video that was sort of like an in-group comment to leftists because I'm used to being on like the leftist side of TikTok and then realizing, oh, crap, like everything I say is going to go out to like absolutely every single kind of audience. So I need to like really think about the context of what I say and that it, yeah, it's a, it's a lot. It's a lot. Yeah. I mean, it sounds really overwhelming and you've been navigating it well. And I don't know, I really appreciate you. Before we wrap this up, I would love for you to talk about your work a little bit, maybe your book, where people can find it, where they can support you in your work. The platform is all yours. Yeah, so I actually had a book come out about a month ago called The Free People's Village, and it is relevant to this topic.

It's a very leftist book. organizing to save their warehouse from demolition to make room for a new electromagnetic hyperway in an alternate timeline where Al Gore won the 2000 election and declared a war on climate change instead of a war on terror. But it's a book that's really critical of neoliberal politics. So this solar punk utopia that's been created this world has really only impacted wealthy white neighborhoods while leaving everybody else behind. So it's a book about centering racial justice within climate organizing. And the final scene of the book actually takes place at a free Palestine protest. And so that's definitely like a presence throughout the book. And based on experiences I've had organizing with the incredible

Students for Justice in Palestine and Palestinian Youth Movement organizers that we have here in Houston. So for people who are listeners of this podcast, I do think they would enjoy the Free People's Village and you can get it. The best place to get it is always your local indie bookstore, of course. You can is always your local indie bookstore, of course. You can also support your local indie bookstore by shopping at bookshop.org, which allows you all the convenience of ordering online, but you get to pick your favorite indie bookstore to benefit. And then, of course, you can get it also from all of the big corporate retailers.

And it's available in hardcover and ebook and audiobook and you can find me online at at sim kern uh on tiktok and if you search sim car it's at sim bookstagrams badly on instagram but if you just search sim kernel i'll pop up on instagram and that is S-I-M-K-E-R-N for people that don't know. Yes. Just to leave us with something that we can take away from this. Do you have any advice for people that are trying to open up these discussions with their peers and how should they approach them? And I don't know.

I think these conversations are essential to humanizing Palestinians again. So do you have any advice before we sign off? You know, same advice, which was the first piece I gave, which was just to read a lot and learn a lot and seek out those Palestinian voices. Also, Jewish Voice for Peace. If you go to their JVP.org website, they have a ton of like great tools and kits for learning how to talk about Palestine. And so I would say, you know, always be learning and reading. If you feel like you don't have the language yet to have these conversations, like you said, it's really powerful to repost things by, you know, commentators that you respect, journalists on the ground in Gaza right now who are doing amazing, courageous work, just letting people know what is happening and putting

something out that disrupts an imperialist narrative can be really, really powerful. Thank you for saying all that because it's really needed. And I will put in the description all the info to where you can follow Sim and their work. And maybe I can put some recommendations for Palestinian books as well. And yeah, that's the episode. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. Free Palestine. Halstein. Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter.

Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows. Presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America

since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available 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 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 things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez,

will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. a man who has commenced his one-man war against Qatar Airlines,

who detained me against my will for most of the last two days in a very small part of a very big plane. See, there's a, you know, airlines from Middle Eastern countries are usually, like the best airlines are like Royal jordanian and and air emirates um if it's if it's owned by a king it's usually a safe bet um but but cutter airways that's what they say about england breaks that mold proudly breaks that mold yeah um yeah fuck me uh one of the one of the less pleasant experiences available to a human being that doesn't end in death is a 36-hour trip from Kazakhstan to Southern California, which I have just enjoyed. I always enjoyed those trips back from Air Emirates because when you're on the Air Emirates flight, if you ask the steward or whatever, if you tell him, hey, I would like eight shots of vodka

and four glasses of orange juice, he'll just give it to you. Like, not even a question. Not even a question. And so, have I vomited on a couple of Air Emirates flights? Yes. Is it always a good time? Probably.

You don't remember. No, no, no. Yeah, see, I was at the point of frustration where, like, and I i'm as a english man uh if i become frustrated and drunk then my instinct is to fight everyone uh or throw bottles and i thought that that would probably result in further detention so decided against decided against becoming bladdered uh or i could have started singing I guess that's the other option available to me that fits my culture. So we're not here to talk about things that I like to do in my free time as much as I would love that but we are here to talk about things that I have been seeing

in my work time when I was traveling to Kurdistan last couple of weeks. Kurdistan, for people who are not familiar, is a big area, the area where Kurdish people live, and it spans several countries. The areas I went were in Iraq and in Syria, or it's not really in, I guess, Syrian regime territory, but if you look on the map. Yeah, northeast Syria, known as Rojava. The other two parts that are generally considered part of Kurdistan are a big chunk of southern Iran and also a big chunk of southern Turkey. Yeah.

So Rojava just means west. I think Rojelat is east, eastern Kurdistan. So, yeah, I've spent the last several last week and change in that area. And while I was there, the Turkish state began a massive drone bombing campaign, which is what we are gathered here today to discuss. So for people who are not familiar, it's four years, almost this drone bombing campaign started almost four years to the day since Turkey's invasion of what they call the m4 strip uh so that's uh the area around surah kaniya and tel abiyad uh we've talked about that before on the podcast so if you want to know more about that uh you can go back and listen to it um it's it's the area along the border one of the areas on the

border between turkey and syria um and as as as people will know, Syria is a country that has had a long and terrible civil war, which they've heard about in lots of episodes, right? And we're not talking about that today so much as we're talking about the Turkish state's use of drones to bomb what people generally in this country will know as Rojava, right? So just to give some statistics off the top, this is the fourth year in a row of aggression at this time of year, right? So there have been two land attacks, I think Operation Olive Branch and Operation,

there's one called Peace Spring. And then two years, the last two years, there have been drone strikes at this time of year. At this time of year, it seems very hard not to conclude that these are attempts to destroy civilian infrastructure and make it very hard for people in the cold months of the year. So right now, around 2 million people in northeast Syria are going to be without power and without water. And I experienced some of that when I was there and the places I stayed were run off generators. And so you'd have like intermittent power, you'd have power for a bit, and then they'd put some

petrol in the generator and the power will go down or the generator would have a little tantrum and the power would go down. But generally I had a lot better access to power. Some people had a lot better access to water. So people had a lot better access to water and so as i was traveling around i noticed some people didn't have access to to like running water right they can't turn on the tap and get water obviously that's a massive problem it's something i think like as people are listening to this uh israel is also bombing the shit out of uh gaza and the whole of the Gaza Strip. And the US recently intervened to ensure that people there have access to water.

And they have done very little in the case of protecting people in North and East Syria. So across this drone campaign, 48 people have died. And the worst, I guess the highest casualty-producing strike was one that happened while I was there. 29 Asaish. Asaish are like internal security forces. Sometimes you'll see it translated as police, but I don't think that's quite accurate, that they don't do cop shit.

They're not there to arrest you for parking in the wrong place or do the things that cops do. They're there largely as like internal security due to the the various uh non-state armed groups that are in the area and state armed groups i guess that are operating in the area that would make things dangerous for people living there so these particular assays were anti-narcotics assays and again why i'm grounding this and what they do is because they're not the people who like uh send you to jail for the rest of your life for like having an ounce of weed they're the people whose job is to prevent the trading cap to gone uh will people know do people know what cap to gone

is absolutely not yeah it's uh it's it's uh it's one of the drug i mean it's that when you when you hear about drug interdiction forces like like police in rojava they're going after captagon it's um a big chunk of both what kept isis it's it's the it's the pervitin you know the the meth that nazis took that for isis right yeah and it was also a big chunk of how they got their funding was was moving the asad regime also gets a piece of a lot of the the captagon trade it continues to fund these largely these like it's the most insurgent groups right in the area because it's small and it's high value uh and like robert says to give it to their fighters uh it's this is very common like around the world we we discuss this in myanmar too right the military there take um something else called yaba but there's these

kind of meth derivatives are very common and they're very commonly sold. That's how a lot of these non-state armed groups get money to buy stuff, right? So when we're talking about drug interdiction, it's not done in a vacuum. It's not done because they think that necessarily the drugs are bad or that, you know, there's some kind of moral failure that comes from the use of these substances.

It's because it allows funding for groups that are trying to kill people on the ground. So interdicting the drugs is part of an anti-terrorism operation that allows people to live safely, which is what they deserve after 10 plus years of war in that area. So 29 people is a lot of people, right? 29 anti-narcotics issues is a lot of the people who do that job. It's going to make it significantly harder for them to continue doing that job, which means it's going to make it significantly easier for those armed groups to get funding, right? It's also, so while I was there, there was a massive funeral for these people, right?

Every town, every settlement across rojava has lost somebody in that strike right so in kamishlo in in kabani uh in alhassaka like all these places had big funerals because you know three or four or ten people came from that town and like that's i saw a little girl like going to her dad's right? Like a little girl holding a picture of her dad. And it's pretty fucked up. It's hard for that not to affect you. Especially as these people weren't fighting anyone. They weren't attacking anyone, right?

They were just, they were taking a training. They were taking an anti-narcotics training at night. And 60 of them were gathered in this building. 29 were killed, 28 were injured. And it's in the sort of furthest northeast part of northern East Syria, around a town called Derik, which is on the border of Al-Maliki. Derik, yeah, probably my pronunciation is arse.

Al-Maliki, it might say on the map, if you're looking on Google Maps, if you're trying to work out where this is. Lots of these places, the reason they will have two names is court edition and arabic right and so like under the previous asad regime uh like arabic was the sort of language that people were enforced to speak and use uh and now under the self-administration people tend to use kurdish and they tend to use um a latin script as opposed to an arabic script right and so that's why you'll see two names very often if you're looking on a map um but like 29 is is only you know that's there's

19 other people uh mostly civilians right uh who were killed and two million people are now living without power without water and and without these basic services which in turn will result in more death, right? More people will die because they don't have access to those things which are life-sustaining, right? Old people, young people, sick people. Those things are the very basics of sustaining human life. And so without them, things are going to get a lot harder. I want to talk a little bit about where these drone strikes happened. Because largely, aside from the one on the SH,

they weren't at large groups of people or buildings. Instead, they were deliberately targeting infrastructure. So of the ones that I saw and the ones that I read about, they targeted an electricity substation in one case uh they targeted a lot of water facilities right like like water pumping stations etc that allow people to get water a cooking gas plant which it's pretty obvious what that does right it allows people to get bottles of gas to cook their food um and uh a lot of oil infrastructure so i saw a few of those um they're called like uh donkeys you know the things that go up and down yeah am i using the word i

don't know the word but the little crane things yeah yeah yeah the uh like the the things you can see if you drive through baker's field i'm sure there's a name. Yeah. Are they oil derricks? Yeah. Someone googled the name of the nodding dog. A pump jack. Is that? No? Yeah. Wait, that's the first thing that came up. Sounds like a dude who goes to the gym

a lot. Yeah, bro, I'm pump jacked. I mean, it is called an oil donkey as well. So you weren't wrong. Nodding donkey pumps. Yeah, that's what you weren't wrong. Nodding donkey pumps. Yeah, that's what I thought they were. Nodding donkeys. Okay.

Yeah, that's a phrase we're going with. So you could see a lot of these that were like knocked over on their side, right? That had been drone struck. And then you could see others that were just knocked out because the power to them had been knocked out. So obviously that's not only a major revenue source, but also like that is how people in a region get fuel, right? So like it's going to be harder for them to get diesel. It's going to be harder for them to drive around.

People already don't drive around a lot because a lot of the drone strikes on people in the YPG, so the people's defense forces and women's defense forces. Lots of drone strikes have happened when those people are driving their cars, when they get in a car. So it can be quite hairy driving. A lot of people were driving too, like I drove around. But that's just one of the areas of risk for people, right?

Of the people killed, 35 were SAE, 11 were civilians, and two were SCF. So most of these were either internal security or civilians. And I think Robert, Robert and I spoke while I was there, and Robert made a good point about how this enables these non-state armed groups, like either ISIS or HTS. My main concern for you while you were there was not that you would get hit in an airstrike, but it was that because of the damage done to the security forces as a result of the Turkish airstrikes, there's always been ISIS cells there, right that they're they're they've never gotten rid of all of them and periods where the aanes self-administration is under attack are the

periods in which it's most dangerous because it provides there's less security forces you know watching everything people in general are are out less which provides cover for for some of these groups that may want to do like a kidnapping yeah yeah yeah and uh it's not a place where a lot of uh i guess folks who look like me um i'm sorry that that was a concern for us and like it's a concern for these people too right they they still do car bombs in derazor uh not you know they think still kill civilians yeah they they roll up uh isis people on a probably weekly basis and people are interested in getting more information both about the drone strikes and about what they call sleeper

cells the rajava information center uh very nice people uh they have a good website uh it's rajava information center.org they produce monthly reports uh on both things So that will give more information on those things. Now will be a good time to pivot to adverts, but I've got a buckle that is... Do you know who else provides great services? I don't think we can... I don't reasonably make that claim.

The products and services that support this podcast. Here they are. We're back and we are discussing drone strikes on northeast Syria. I guess not just from northeast Syria. These also happen up around Soleimani. Soleimani, if you're looking on the map,

depends again on the language, right? Those have happened again against KCK, which is like the Kurdistan Communities Council. uh kck which is like the kurdistan communities council so that would be the i guess the um the that if you look at like syria iran turkey and iraq as different countries all of which uh have some administrative control over the nation of kurdish people right kurdish people live in all four countries and they live in other countries too of course um then the movements in each of those countries are subsidiary to the kck um and so uh some of those kck folks are up in sulaymaniyah so like there will be drone strikes there and that's that's far inside iraistan, right? You're a long way from the border there.

And that's what these drone strikes... I guess the drone strikes allow Turkish intelligence and the Turkish military to target people much, much further inside with very little consequence or risk on their end, right? These drones are largely not being targeted because certainly in ANES, the Autonomous Administration in Northeast Syria, they don't have the means to target them, right? The United

States hasn't supplied them with the weapons that they would need to shoot down those drones, which I think brings me on to the role of the US in this. And I guess more broadly, the role of the coalition. in this case coalition is a coalition to defeat isis right it's made up of dozens of countries the uk the us germany lots of other uh western i guess countries broadly and countries in in that part of the world too like i think iraq is part of it um certainly like iraqi kurdistan has done their own operations against isis sleeper cells um peshmerga and like everywhere you go right you'll go through peshmerga checkpoints like i was going through an area where they had arrested

uh an isis member the day before so like it's they'll be getting you out the car you know going through your bags looking through your stuff right um um so that's all part of the same operation but the u.s has a base in a place called al-hasakah which again you can look up on the map right it's a little west i'm trying to line up my compass here a little west of kamishlo um which is the capital of the region and the u.s pretty much u.s troops don't do a great amount of leaving that base. It's fair to say they'll come out in helicopters. They were going out like sort of supporting SDF patrols in the Alhazard region, but they were supporting them from the air. They generally aren't going out and about like with people on the ground talking to people unless it's a specific mission which they do sometimes um you can if people are interested in like the

u.s presence it's it's called operation inherent resolve and they have a twitter account where they'll sometimes post themselves doing things uh but what they don't do is protect that like and so the u.s and the autonomous administration are allies in this fight against isis right but they are only allies in this fight against isis the u.s is not supporting them in defending themselves from drone strikes or like ensuring that a civilian population is protected from those attacks so the u.s has the capacity to shoot down these drones and they prove that by shooting one down uh last week or the week before, I'm a little bit jet lagged,

so I'm a bit bungled on time, but I think it was last week, the US shut down a Turkish drone. So that'd be about two weeks ago for when this is airing. Yes, yeah, sure. Good point. So yeah, two weeks ago,

the United States shut down, an F-16 shut down a Turkish drone. So specifically it was a drone called an akinji uh which is a newer variant of the bayraktar drone we've spoken about these drones before right they're the drones that people like i know you can go on etsy and buy a stuffy version of these drones which right that's because that's concerning yeah It's really dystopian And crazy I don't like it I do not like it either

I think it illustrates the way the war in Ukraine Has become like a football match for some people Yeah Or like a film where I just want to reinforce It's turned into like fandom I think that's an excellent way of putting it It's not cool when anyone gets fucking drone struck it's not cool when uh like everyone in

an area spends every night worrying if death is going to come from the sky at some point right like the effect of these drone strikes isn't just on the people killed or the people injured or even the infrastructure the effect is on every single person uh worrying what's going to happen tonight right like and i can speak to a tiny part of that experience right nothing compared to what people are living there have gone through at all but it's a concern every time it gets dark you know well it's tonight the night especially for the rural folks who might be living in a rural area but near to a substation or near to one of those uh nodding donkeys or other infrastructure which has been targeted or near a cooking gas plant right those things i can imagine explode with quite some force uh what they can't leave

right they can't just up and and not live near any infrastructure infrastructure is what allows the place to be survivable for civilians so they just have to live with this constant fear and it's very odd to see that and then simultaneously see this this sort of deification of drone strikes that are happening in ukraine and like this you know people with dog dressed as napoleon twitter avatars uh yeah cheering someone's kid dying yeah i mean throughout all of the kind of new conflicts we've had the past five years like the and especially the past like two three years like the idea of like politics as fandom has produced some of the like most like inhumane gross uh aspects of how people have been like consuming social media and just the sheer

it's like people forget that this is like thousands of people's actual like human lives that they're like yes memeing about and it's it just it just becomes just they talk about it in the same way they talk about like a marvel movie or like Star Wars movie. Yeah, or sports. It's like this weird gamified – it allows you to approach these things from a very separate perspective when you're viewing it from this fandom angle. But politics as fandom in general I think has gotten a whole lot worse since the Trump era. That's where we had resistance libs that were copying off some of the stuff from the new Star Wars trilogy, which is kind of the inspiration for a lot of their stuff. We got Nazis doing a whole bunch of politics as fandom as well. It's like this team sports fandom thing that is just pervade. It's, it's,

it's, it's seeped into like almost every single aspect of like, not just politics, but now like conflict and like geopolitics. It's like, whoever has the best branding is the one that's has the best chance. Yeah. And it's,

I don't know. It's, it's, it's disturbing to watch. I, I don't know how to like counter counter it because it feels like the more you engage the further sucked into the abyss you become um but it also doesn't feel good to just like ignore it as well because it's just it's like it feels like this kind of endless trap

that is just a part of existing in this weird post-modern internet world yeah i don't know i think like one would hope that the internet in some ways could help us see that like at the end of every drone strike is a little fucking child most of the time or like like i spent some time last week with the family who almost exactly one year ago lost their 15 year old son in a drone strike and like it that like i understand people die in these things, like on an intellectual level and even on a personal level, like having spent time in these places, you know, for a decent amount of my adult life.

But fuck me, it's just like it destroyed you. Like seeing a mum bury her son, cry for her little boy, it's fucking heartbreaking. And like, I got to live that for one morning and those people live that every single day um and every time like and i don't i don't know it makes me want to shout at people when when i see this i don't actually think it's i don't mean to be a doomer here i don't think it's a solvable problem yeah um this is we are talking about it within the language of fandom, because that is kind of the defining public social relationship of our time.

But like, this is always what people have done to war one way or the other. Right. Yeah. It's faster now and more commercial. Right. Like one thing, for whatever reason, I think just because we're acculturated to it, hearing people talk about, you know, doing what they do in times of war

because of patriotism, because of nationalism, because of belief in the founding principles of their country, seems a little bit less coarse than like doing it because you fell in with a bunch of memers who use little dog avatars and shit but like i don't know it's not it's not like less logical than than yeah being ride or die

because like you happen to be born under you know so and so the king yeah fair yeah yeah and like that dehumanization i think the difference like to me is like, so like Robert and I have both experienced this, right? To, in order to kill somebody, you have to dehumanize them. To kill people en masse, you have to do that en masse, right? If you're fighting a war, it doesn't behoove you to think.

You make it sound like we're killing people, James. Well, that's the thing that we do on the podcast, Robert. Yeah, we kill people en masse, yeah. Yeah, sure. You're going to have to, cooler zone is where we talk about the podcast, Robert. Yeah, we kill people in mass, yeah. Yeah, sure. You're going to have to... Cooler zone is where we talk about the killings. If people want to subscribe, that's what we do instead of adverts

is we list the people we've killed. Yeah, James, as the quote on your Blue Sky account says, one death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic. James Stout. Yeah, that's right. And it's just... Every day I strive to get my number up, you know. But so far I've let everyone down.

That's not true. To my knowledge, none of us have killed anyone. To your knowledge. To my knowledge, yeah. Shireen's probably got some bodies in the closet, you know. Jesus Christ, God. It's just stacking them yeah so what i wanted to say is that like when yeah like if you're in the military you probably know this

right like like this sort of blood makes a grass grow shit fine whatever like that's how wars work war is undesirable it's horrible you have to be horrible you have to you have to dehumanize people to kill them you don't have to fucking do that if you're on twitter.com but like people you know people with the silly dog advertised chiefly but other people too have have begun to see themselves as like participants in conflict in a way that they maybe didn't uh maybe they did and i just wasn't around in the second yeah no i think i think that does tie into part of how the fandom things works because a part of participating in fandoms is being in these kind of very very alienating online spaces because any type of like engagement on the internet in this way is is fueled through the

process of alienation but when that kind of starts applying to to politics you feel like either the act of consuming or or like you know joining in on conversation is itself like a form of activism uh by just like just through like consuming or sharing content you feel like you're actually participating in the thing itself um yeah and i think some of it's this almost narcissistic need to not let the world pass you by because it's there there's something deeply uncomfortable about just like watching massive things happen and realizing like there's nothing I can do about this.

Yeah, to feel like you matter. There isn't a lot of the time, right? Like your take, you know, the instant a hospital gets attacked in Gaza, your take on that is not particularly helpful or necessary. Yeah. Unless you're I don't know, Joe Biden. Right. But yeah, which is not I don't think his take was helpful. But right. It was like it had an impact because he's the president. But like most of us, we're just kind of part of the churn and there's almost

there's like a degree of emotional need to it especially when you see these horrible footage of bodies piled high right you feel like i'm a bad person if i don't do something and the only thing i can do is tweet um or whatever your social media i feel like i just just to play devil's advocate for a hot sec i think it's a little different when there's so much conflicting information, especially, I mean, like the Gaza thing is a great example because the electricity is out. They don't want them to share anything. So I think when it comes to stuff, something like that, it's more about like spreading awareness versus like having a take. In my opinion, it's more just like, hey, the news might say this, but this is from the actual person on the ground telling you what's happening.

So I think there's a little bit of nuance because I also think the only reason that, like just for Palestine, for example, we don't have to go into it too much, but a huge reason why there's so much more support for the Palestinian movement is because of social media. Yeah, definitely.

People see people in gaza as people now not as statistics or uh just through the lens of hamas or whatever like yeah yeah i mean it depends i think it depends on how you do it and like i mean it is it is accurate to say that to a significant extent, the ultimate outcome of these conflicts are determined in large part due to public sympathy, right? Like that's going to be probably true of however things ultimately shake out in Gaza. And it's certainly been true of the conflict in Ukraine, right? Like the degree to which weapons keep flowing to that country is going to be heavily based on the degree to which sympathy for that cause remains among U.S. taxpayers and taxpayers in other countries that are sending them those weapons. That's going to have an impact on the presidential election, maybe.

thing, right? That like, uh, everyone who is engaging with this stuff via social media, um, there's a tendency to get caught up in a bubble in terms of just thinking about how much this is on the mind of like American voters. Maybe it'll be different this election, but generally like, again, my, my feelings on this are kind of muddled, but like very, very often, no matter how big a deal, a story is story is, you know, online and stuff, American voters rarely vote based on foreign policy concerns. Yeah, it tends to be elections. I want to say...

I'm not saying that's what matters morally. I'm just talking about like... You're totally correct. Yeah. Yeah. And especially in terms of your ability to influence something. It doesn't matter how much you care

if other people don't at an election time. I want to maybe finish up. I have just knocked over a bottle of osipropyl alcohol so my office is rapidly becoming uh the dentist like asked yourself that's why i went to turn on the fan and open the door um uh good times so uh i maybe i want to finish up before i evacuate by saying that that it's something you can do and like it's to give your time and money i know that doesn't feel as good as like you know trying to do amateur osint on reddit but if you can help actually like and you can make a meaningful difference with a few bucks

and i know i sound like an npr advert now but like uh the rejava information center has some good resources and like they they have uh i'm not going to read them out because it's quite complicated. Like I said, it's bank transfer information. But if you feel helpless, you are not. You can do a lot with a little. You can raise money. You can help to organize donations. These things make a difference.

If someone who doesn't have water now gets a pallet of bottled water, that makes a difference. If someone gets a heater for their home, that makes a difference. Even if it's someone whose kid has died, right? Like making their life a little less painful in a physical sense, right? Helping them be warm at night. That does make a difference.

And you can do that. And if you want to make a difference, I would really encourage you to do whatever it is. It doesn't have to be here, right? It's like there's an ethnic cleansing happening And if you want to make a difference, I would really encourage you to do whatever it is. It doesn't have to be here, right? It's like there's an ethnic cleansing happening in Azerbaijan. There is an ethnic cleansing happening in Gaza, right? Like these are places where like

you can show meaningful solidarity and support with a little bit of a donation or a fundraiser. It's happening at our fucking border, right? Like someone died at our border since our last recording. Someone else got run over by some chad in a truck. But like you can make a difference in a meaningful way with actions. And it's really easy to get sucked into like

just posting into the void and feeling helpless. But like there are helpful things you can do. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. And you don't have to just, you don't have to be like rich there are helpful things you can do. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. And you don't have to just, you don't have to be rich or have a lot of disposable income to do this. There's a lot of,

traditionally anarchist communities have put on benefit shows to fundraise from an entire community. So that's not just you trying to put your few pennies aside. There is there's ways there's ways to do this that just involve you actually like getting involved with your like local culture. And a part of that is like, it's not politics is fandom. It is meta politics. It's where you actually put your politics into your into your actual everyday life. And it influences the friends you have, the communities you have. So whether that's, you know, a whole bunch of trans musicians doing a benefit show to get donations to send over to Rojava or send over to Gaza, or, you know, there's a lot of other sorts of things. That is a way of actually having part of your politics be not just like consumption,

is a way of actually having part of your politics be not just like consumption have not it's not just like twitter accounts with flags in your avatar uh it's actually like living your life in a way that matches the things that you believe and i think that that like sorry having spoken to people in rajava in the epigay and the epigay and these other organizations like one of the things that makes them distinct from other militaries is that they are building the world they want to see while they're fighting against the thing that's killing it, right? Like that's destroying it.

Like a lot of times we'll see leftist militaries not exactly doing the equality that leftism is about, one hopes. So like you can participate in that, as Garrison said, right? By doing the mutual aid, by doing the benefit show by doing the fundraiser like you are making a world in which this shit will happen less

when you do things to stop it happening or to ease the pain of it happening now so uh and you're building communities right and strong communities are more resilient to this shit uh yeah and like things are getting pretty bleak and we're only going to get through them by helping each other. And so building a network that continues, like if I think about how much better the mutual aid response has been this time to what's happened at the border compared to what it was in may, that's because people built networks,

didn't go away. And it, it was good in may in part because we built networks that, that help to make being unhoused in San Diego feel be survivable. Right. And like those networks are resilient and they're, they're flexible, but they,

and they help us like mentally process all the horrible shit and also physically help people. So yeah, you, you have that within your means to write, you have a signal on your telephone. Like you, you can organize things.

I don't have to feel helpless, but I feel dizzy due to the isopropyl alcohol that I have spilled so maybe that's a wonderful time to end the podcast James is going to hallucinate in his office and you I hope are going to hallucinate wherever you happen to be right now

enjoy hallucinate a better worlducinate a better world. Hallucinate a better world. It might be the only way to live through one. What a wonderful podcast to Garrison Davis is, everyone. Hi, it's me, James. You thought I died, but I have not.

I survived the isopropyl alcohol fumes. I wouldn't advise doing that to yourself. Very unpleasant. But I'm back just to update you. We recorded that last week and I am recording this the day before this goes out. So I'm recording this on the afternoon of Monday, the 23rd of October.

I just wanted to update everyone. As Robert mentioned in the show, the weakening of the SAE shrink and the fact that people are not able to be out and about because of these drone strikes, combined with the events in Israel and Palestine in the last couple of weeks, have resulted in a significant uptick in violence in the area. So I just wanted to update you on that, especially as I've seen a decent amount of misinformation, which will be shocking to many of you on Twitter.com. So there have been a series of rocket and UAV, UAV unmanned aerial vehicle, right, drones, drone attacks on US bases across the north of Iraq and across Syria.

So some of those happened at Al-Tanf, which is further south. Some of them happened at al-Hasakah. Some of them also happened to oil pipelines and i would be very wary of of people posting pictures of big fires and claiming that there are attacks at u.s bases uh every time i've seen that it's actually been an attack at an oil pipeline and either the person doesn't know that that's not a u.s base or or they are willfully being misleading to try and get more clicks people get paid on twitter for engagement now so um i'm quite i'm

quite cynical about people's reasons for doing that but there definitely have been attacks but they have not resulted in much loss of life one contractor i believe did lose their lives uh due to a cardiac incident that happened when they were sheltering from a what turned out to be a false alarm of a drone attack um but no one has been directly killed by those drone munitions. There have been a number of people killed in increasing conflict in the area. One person was killed in Kamishlo, very, very close to where I stayed actually. You can probably see it from my hotel room, in a car bomb, which is not a normal thing to happen in the middle of a city, a car bomb going off. So that's obviously cause for concern for some people. In Deir ez-Zor, SDF and coalition forces have conducted a number of

operations against ISIS sleeper cells who are still there, arrested, detained a number of suspected ISIS members. They've also been fighting against Iranian-backed militias across the Euphrates. We've also seen fighting between the Peshmerga, so those are the military forces of the Kurdistan regional government in that area of Iraq, and the Iraqi army around the Makhmur refugee camp, which is a refugee camp for Kurdish people who had fled from Turkey. And of course, we've seen a lot of threats a lot of even fighting inside iran but it's generally been iranian-backed militias attacking u.s bases so far across that whole area and so i just wanted to update you on those things obviously we'll keep updating you on them and also to just suggest

once again that people verify the sources of information because i have seen especially about this area where i think literacy is very low among the general u.s population some outrageous claims being made by people who either don't know what they're talking about or are willfully misleading people so i wanted to counsel people to be uh concerned about that we don't have exact i don't have exact numbers of the numbers of drone attacks i'm looking at a pentagon press conference happened 39 minutes ago ago and they're not giving them out there. So I have asked them for comment on a couple of things that didn't email me back.

Very sad, ghosting me a bit. Yeah, that's the latest information on that. I wanted to make sure that we have the latest update for you. Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network. Available 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 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 things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean.

He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian.

Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a

Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here. I am Robert Evans, and this is a podcast about things falling apart. Sometimes it's about how to make things not fall apart. And other times it's more about enduring it. Today is more on the endurance side of things. And we're talking about a subject that we get a lot of requests about here.

We've discussed this a year or so ago with one of our guests, the great Carl Casarda. We're talking about like security culture and particularly the aspect of security culture that involves digital devices and how to communicate with your friends, affinity groups, whomever via your phone, essentially, or your computer. This is a thing where there's a huge amount of disinformation as to which apps are safe. What does it actually mean to say that an app is encrypted? How far does encryption get you, what sort of cultural things come alongside the actual physical reality of the security of the device in order to kind of make a comprehensive security profile. We're going to be talking about all that today and hopefully giving you some good

advice on what you can trust, because I am the furthest thing in the world from a technical expert. We have two actual experts with us today. Carolyn Sanders and Cooper Quinton have both recently published a paper alongside several other authors, Lalo Wagner, Tim Bernard, Ami Mehta, and Justin Hendricks, called What is Secure? An Analysis of Popular Messaging Apps. And it's basically going over what is the actual level of security with a number of things like Telegram, you know, Telegram's private messaging system, Facebook Messenger, Apple Message or iMessage, I guess it's called, and obviously Signal. And kind of as a spoiler, Signal is your best bet, but that also isn't where you should end, right? I think we want to also talk about kind of like why and to what extent that's the case. But anyway,

I'm going to turn things over to Carolyn and Cooper now because I have talked enough about this. Hey guys, welcome to the show. Hey Robert. Thanks so much for having us on. Yeah. Thank you so much. A big fan of the podcast. So always lovely. Really lovely to be here. Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, it's really lovely to have you both. Again, listeners, if you want to take a look at this, their paper, if you just Google what is secure and analysis of popular messaging apps, you'll find the Tech Policy Press has a summary of it. That's pretty quick. The full paper is 86

pages or so. I also recommend reading that. But if you wanted to give this, you know, the summary of SCIM before you continue, that might help. But I kind of wanted to start by asking you guys, what is it that makes Signal a good option for people, right? Because I think most folks, you describe it as sort of security folklore, right? The stuff that you hear about security from your friends. And if you're not a technical person, you kind of just like trust what the folks around you are saying. And that was sort of how I got into Signal, right?

I'm not a technical person, but people I knew and trusted who were, were like, this is your best option. Yeah, thank you so much. That's such a good question. And I think Cooper and I probably have similar, but also like very different answers to it. Cooper, I can go first if you want.

One of the things I love about Signal is it's just really easy to use. It's end-to-end encrypted. It's a messaging app. There's not a lot of stuff on it, but you can do a lot with it. So you can do video calls. You can send actually pretty large files like PDFs.

You can have drag and drop stuff. It's such a low threshold for use for users because it is a messaging app, but it does so many different kinds of things. But then related to that, it's also actually quite minimal. So the paper, which everyone should read, and we'll probably get into this later, different apps like Telegram or Facebook's Messenger app, for example, have this thing we've been calling feature bloat. They are messaging services that actually feel a bit more like social networks if you look at the amount of stuff that's on there. And by stuff, I don't just mean like stickers.

I mean, if you look at there's all these sort of specific and strange settings you can use to have all different kinds of messages and all different kinds of privacy settings. And while privacy settings are really, really great, because Telegram and Facebook Messenger are not encrypted by default, actually some of those settings can make you feel more secure when you're not. So kind of the beauty of Signal is that out of the box, it's incredibly secure. It's in an encrypted. They're not holding any data about you. I believe the only only day they hold is like when you like when a phone number or a profile has downloaded signal, like when you've when you've signed up. But again, it's it's incredibly easy to use. And another thing is, you know, if this was a few years ago, we've been looking at wire, for example,

one of the nice things about signal, and this might be controversial to some designers is that it does follow modern design patterns and standards. So if you're using like an iOS or Android version, like there are buttons in places where you expect them to be signals, not perfectly designed, but it is quite usable. So for me, that's kind of what I think makes it, makes it really wonderful. Yeah. It's definitely as much as I love it. It's my like standard messaging app. I do every now and then run into the thing where like my friends will call me through signal, which is great if you need a call to be secure. But it's not nearly as good like it drops a lot more often than a regular phone call. And I'm like, we're just trying to meet at the movie theater. It's okay if the NSA knows. call and I'm like, we're just trying to meet at the movie theater. It's okay if the NSA knows, right? I've definitely had that with friends where I'm like, yeah, I'm like, we're just calling to talk about like your dog. It's probably fine. The FBI can have this stuff. Yeah. Please send dog pics through all messaging apps. But on that note,

writing usable software that is also secure is really hard, right? And as a cryptographer, I'm not a cryptographer, but as somebody cryptographer adjacent, we got that wrong for a long time, right? Before Signal, the most used encryption methods were probably uh pgp email which is a method for encrypting email and off the record

chats and both of those none of those ever got to the sort of level of of user base that signal and and and certainly not whatsapp have right and And that's largely because they were pretty much unusable. Like PTP, almost entirely unusable, even by cryptography professionals, right? Even by computer security professionals like ourselves. OTR chat, total pain in the butt, right? Like just a real nightmare to use. So like Signal, there are still some rough edges

and we talked about some of those in our paper. But overall, I think that the big innovation they've had is just remembering that what people want to do on a chat app is not encrypt things. What people want to do on a chat app is they want to chat, right? And the second that the security sort of gets in the

way of that people will stop using it and go find something that's more usable and it seems like that's been signals sort of um guiding star and it's and they've you know doing the doing the most secure thing that you can while still being fun and usable to actually just chat on. Right. And I think that that has served them quite well. Yeah. I think there's, it's, it's so important. One of, I think one of the things that, that contributes to good overall security is setting yourself up for success, which means setting yourself up for a system that can function well, if you're lazy, which is one of the nice things that, you know, with signal, you don't have to worry about like opting in and out and like selecting a bunch of stuff. It's pretty safe, especially for a normal person's uses right out of the box, which is huge.

And kind of in the same line as that is the fact that because Signal doesn't store metadata, you're not relying upon them being like committed, you know, anti-state actors or whatever, like because they don't have access to the thing that, for know, anti-state actors or whatever, like, cause they don't have access to the thing that, for example, Facebook will hand over to the cops. If the cops just like breathe in their direction. Yeah, that's, that's exactly right. And that's, that is, that is the other really cool thing about signal. You know, we, as Carolyn said, the only data that signal gives over in response to a subpoena is the time that the phone number signed up for a signal account.

And the last time it connected to the signal server. And the reason we know that is because signal publishes transparency reports with the full text and full response of any subpoena that they get. So like we can actually just see if in the responses that all they've given over is these two pieces of information, because that's all they have. And they've done some pretty clever things, uh, to make that be the case. weight that law enforcement puts on them. So for our report, I don't remember how much it's mentioned in the report, actually, but we did go through and look at Apple, Meta, and I think Google, like in their own transparency reports to try to get a sense of how that would stack up in comparison to signals. I think in some cases, it's saying like they received some kind of like

notification, but like no, nothing really clear or specific on like what, what they received from law enforcement or government, but rather just that they received one. And so that's also the really great thing about signal is you are getting all of this information that you're not getting from other companies or platforms. Yeah. I wanted to kind of, in this same subject, and going back to, I kind of opened this by introducing the concept that y'all introduced me to. I guess I was aware of this, but not the terminology, security folklore. And I wanted to chat a little bit about kind of the most recent example of this, something a lot of folks have probably been wondering about since we started talking about Signal, which is that roughly a week before y'all and I sat down to talk about this,

a kind of viral info meme started coming through that was like, Signal has a zero-day exploit, which is basically a hole that a hacker found in an app or program that can expose you. You have to turn off link previews, right? Which is that when someone sends you like a link to an article in Signal, you get a little preview. Not dissimilar to how you used to get. Little link previews. And I think to be fair, just based on my very limited knowledge, that is when I think about like what are potential holes in signal. I don't think it's unreasonable to be concerned about that specific feature.

But that warning was not what it kind of seemed to be basic or not as accurate as I think a lot of people took it as being. I know I'll let I'll I'll turn it over to you guys. I think that's the next thing I want to talk about. I'll turn it over to Cooper, who had you had a you have a lot of feels about that but i have so many feelings about this i i was working on this all weekend so this yeah so this copy pasta i'm calling this like the signal copy pasta yeah um which is a term from you know 4chan and uh other horrible internet places. I feel like the Coolzone media audience is probably internet enough.

I'm going to guess a good half of the people listening at least got that message. First of all, this is not... If you had a zero-day end signal, which is an exploit for a signal that has been unpatched,

that has not been patched by the vendor, so you can actively exploit it, there are no people in the world who would choose to quietly leak this over vague signal texts. There are two types of people. One, people like us that would bring this to signal immediately and get them to patch it to protect the you know millions of high-risk users that use signal or two the type of people that would go sell this exploit to some horrible company that would use it you know sell it to to saudi arabia or something and use it to kill activists right like there is and there's no in between there's nobody that is going to quietly leak this for you know just for fun with vague details right so this this message set up

red flags immediately and like it's because i really do not like link previews and in our paper we discussed some of the issues that we have with link previews. You know, we think that they can leak some information about your chats to the owner of the website, right? We think it's a kind of a large attack service. It's not super necessary. Would you mind explaining to actually the audience too, like a little bit about what we found when looking at link previews?

Yeah, so the way that link previews work is when you, the way that they work on Signal and on WhatsApp is that when you send a link to somebody, the Signal app or WhatsApp goes and like fetches the webpage that that, you know, for that link, right? It goes and downloads, you know, downloads the content of that link and gets a, there are some special HTML tags that describe sort of what the page is about, what the title of the page is, and like an image for the page. And it gets those tags and it puts them all together

in this little package and then sends that all as part of the signal message. So when you put a link in Signal, your phone actually goes out and gets that web page and it gets that web page with a, um, what's called a user agent, which is like a, a piece of text that's attached to the request that uniquely that identifies it as being a request from signal and from like from signal and from your IP address. Right? So when you put a link in, the owner of that website, whoever has the logs for that website can know that somebody at your IP address is using Signal

and sending this link over Signal. What we're, what our concern is, is that if that link is unique, then anybody else who visits that link can be inferred to be somebody that you are talking with over Signal. And so this can be a good, an interesting, a source of intelligence for website owners, especially for big websites that can easily generate unique links with like tracking parameters at the end of them, right? Like when you share a Instagram post and like at the end, it's like question mark, IG, SHID equals, you know, a long string of numbers and letters, right? Or a Twitter post where, you know, T equals a long string of letters and numbers, right? That makes a unique link.

And then anybody who visits that same link can be determined to be somebody that you were speaking with over Signal. And also WhatsApp. And also WhatsApp. And so for that reason, we think that Signal and WhatsApp should turn link previews off by default because we think that that's an unnecessary information leak.

Signal and WhatsApp's pushback on that is that link previews are a core feature that people demand. And if they were to turn off link previews by default, they're worried that people would leave the platform for less secure platforms like Telegram. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to tell them their business they're worried that people would leave the platform for less secure platforms like telegram. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to tell them their business cause I'm sure they have data on

this, but I've, I've, I've, I've never thought about link previews as being a thing that I needed. Like, yeah, I think it's,

I think it's one of those things. And, you know, we haven't necessarily done like extensive general design research in this, right? Like we haven't surveyed like 3,000 people in the U.S. And we haven't had like a Pew research survey across countries to be like, what are your thoughts on link previews? But I would probably argue because it is included in so much of modern messaging apps that we now assume it's like a core feature. One thing I will give Signal that I think is amazing that other apps don't do, and this is true of WhatsApp, is pretty much every feature except for encryption, there's something you can toggle or turn off.

So Link Preview already was available for people to turn off, right? So like link preview already was available for people to turn off on Signal. WhatsApp does not allow that. And it seems like they're making no moves to allow that feature to be optional to turn on or off. But that is, I will say one of the things that's really lovely about Signal that is so different from modern design

and modern like big tech platforms and just platforms in general is that those a lot of features are optional whereas you know WhatsApp and Meta's sort of stance on design is that a lot of things are not optional that those are things users would want why would we make foundational elements like link previews optional and you're just like sorry I'm like gesturing wildly, but like, you know, it's like, well, you don't know what people want. And I mean, what's the harm in turning off some of some of these things. Right. You know, like maybe, maybe people don't want to receive gifts.

I don't know. Maybe they don't want to receive stickers. Why don't you let them have that option? What's the harm that could happen? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't agree more. Yeah. Two things I want to say on that one is one is that and first we should acknowledge that this it turns out that there was no zero day there was no vulnerability yeah this was absolutely just something that that spread virally out of nowhere i'd be really interested to find out what the origin of this copy pasta was but i haven't uh, uh, I haven't been able to, but it's, I'm curious about that as, as well. Cause I was in another group thread that was like,

we really need outside auditors to look at these. And I was like, we have a whole report that we wrote that didn't look at this. Speaking of outside auditors, I got to pause you guys just a second because it is time for an ad break. So please spend your money and then come back to learn more. Ah, and we're back. Okay. Sorry about that, Cooper. Carolyn, you may continue as you were. The other thing I was going to say, the idea that anybody would leave WhatsApp because they stopped having link previews is completely preposterous to me. It's clownish.

It's fucking clownish. Has over 2 billion users. They are the, you know, in a position to set the standard for what people expect from a messaging app. And so like they could do things like turn on disappearing messages by default and change that culture.

They could do things like turn off link previews by default and change that culture. They could do these things and they would not lose enough users to even notice or care about, right? They are the only people in the position in the world, in the position to decide what the culture should be.

And this is what they've decided the culture should be. Totally. I hate to break it to you, but if WhatsApp just got rid of link previews, I'm just throwing my whole phone into the garbage, garbage can getting rid of that. Just tossing it back to a landline. Yeah. I'm just it into a river be like i don't need this anymore actually i'm going back to carrier pigeon that's how far back i'm gonna go i mean that that does kind of lead

into the next thing i wanted to talk about which is sort of the other uh wing from the security folklore which is security uh nihilism and And yeah, this is kind of, you introduce this when talking about sort of, if you do try to engage somewhat with the technology, or if you wind up just kind of in the position I think most lay people are, where maybe you have some friends who know more, or maybe you have some friends who think they know more, and you get all these conflicting things about like, this is safe. No, it's not. You can't trust Signal. The feds could be running Signal, all this kind of stuff. And to be fair, the feds have run security-based services before. It's not like, I don't believe that's happening with Signal, but it's not. I understand where

paranoia like that can enter into people's calculus, especially if you're not technically knowledgeable. And that can lead to this sort of state of security nihilism, where you're just like, you can't communicate at all online. There's no way to do it securely. And obviously, there's no perfect, right? You never have it. But you don't have 100% with like talking in person to somebody, right? There are individuals in prison right now who, you know, somebody they loved and trusted ratted on them. There's no no hundred percents in this world. But that doesn't mean nihilism is the right response to like trying to figure out how to set up your communication standards with people. Right.

Totally. I mean, I think the approach we take in because throughout this report, we were also teaching workshops to reproductive justice activists across the U.S. and states where abortion is banned. I'm from Louisiana. I live half the year there. Abortion is banned there. And we were also working with journalists in India. So a big, big thing for us was also teaching threat modeling and different kinds of what Matt Mitchell, a security trainer and expert, calls digital hygiene. And so a lot of this was recognizing that there was certain practices we were picking

up on, particularly with folks we were working with. So like a lot of reproductive justice activists we were working with are new to security. They're new to technology. They don't have a background in tech. And generally, you know, the American South, the American Deep South is super overlooked in terms of tech policy, in terms of just, I think, a general focus when people are talking about tech or tech literacy or tech activism. And that is like leaving really massive gaps in knowledge for people. And so, you know, when we were working on this security folklore and security nihilism,

we're both actually very, almost like, I don't say like a pendulum, but they were very connected. And so some of that was people hearing things like, oh, I should put my phone in a microwave when I'm having a very sensitive conversation. Right. And so that's where some of that security folklore is coming in. It is something that is technically safe, but it's like not the thing you necessarily like totally need to do in that moment. And with security nihilism, what it kind of came down to, and this is stuff we've seen with other groups and other circumstances, a great example are, you know, Palestinian activists and journalists, let's say, who are, you know, facing facing the threat of all different kinds of governmental censorship and surveillance. the threat of all different kinds of governmental censorship and surveillance of sort of saying like when there's this large threat sort of hanging on us and there's also physical surveillance. And this is true for a lot of journalists in other countries like India as well, for example. You know, like should everything go through signal or does it really matter? Like,

does it really matter? And this is also something, again, we saw with some reproductive justice activists as well, where it's like? And this is also something, again, we saw with some some reproductive justice activists as well, where it's like if everything is being monitored, what's safe? Like, can I send stuff like can I even use Google? And part of this was, you know, by teaching privacy and security workshops, by teaching things like threat modeling, which is a framework for just assessing what are what are threats? Like, what are what are all the potential threats you could face and kind of mapping them from like the most minor to like the most major and what you can do about that. That's a way to try to combat security nihilism.

But I think an approach Cooper and I are also really fond of is thinking of this like safer sex. There's all different kinds of things you can do that are mitigations are actually incredibly helpful. And we can't look at it as a binary of safe or not safe. It's actually like much more of a gradient. But, you know, the folklore and the nihilism, I think, come from a very similar place, which is we're asking people, like society is kind of asking or demanding that people be experts in something that's really hard. I am like a fairly

technical person. And even there are some things that I find hard to sort of wrap my head around. And I've been working in privacy and security for like quite a while. And I think, you know, it's also really hard when you think about these apps as like a brand new person. It's like one of the things that popped up a lot in our research is like, why should we trust Signal? And that's actually a great question. Like what about Signal in its interface and its design would cause you to trust it? Like some people were like, it's a nonprofit. That's great. But I don't know what that means. I'm like, that's actually a fantastic question. Like, what does that mean? Right? Like what, why should you trust this? You've heard through the grapevine that you should. And I think these were kind of all the things that people are dealing with because if you sort of take a step back and just look at software or any different kind of software generally, why should you trust that it's safe and secure

when there have been so many different kinds of leaks or breaches or things breaking, right? Yeah. Like, so these are, I think, really, really closely tied. But I think a big thing for us is trying to combat that security nihilism whenever we can. There is things you can do. I don't want to say no matter how great the threat, but I believe no matter how great the threat, there is stuff.

There is stuff you can do. No matter how great the threat is, there's stuff that you can do to make it more difficult and more expensive for that person to attack you. We all lock the doors to our house or, you know, for the most part or, you know, we all, we all do things to protect ourselves like that that aren't foolproof. Right. Somebody can always break a window to get into your house. Right. So you can find other ways to get into your house, but locking the door makes it so that somebody has to do the noisy thing of

breaking a window. Right. It, it, it makes it so that somebody has to do the noisy thing of breaking a window right it it makes it so that you know somebody has to spend more time and effort and more risk of getting caught in getting into your house right and that's and that's like we layer when you layer these protections right the idea you know is that you're you that you're making it harder. You're making there be more friction, right, to piercing your security. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And the concept of friction, you know, this is something I've talked about, not that these are exactly the same things, but in the, although there's not wildly different, when it comes to like how insurgents win insurgencies, right? It's not by carrying out these sort of like great battlefield victories that sweep the enemy from the field.

It's by friction, right? Which wears down both the culture and the kind of readiness of the opponent until they simply bounce, which is a pretty durable and effective strategy if you can keep it up. They simply bounce, which is a pretty durable and effective strategy if you can keep it up. It's this matter of like there's no there's no like sweeping, sudden, like 90 minute three act win here. It's more a matter of the more difficult, the more expensive you make it, the more you hold on to and the more all of us hold on to. Right. That's the other benefit is like even if you're not even if you are the most law abiding person in the world, like myself, having these security measures in place means that you're kind of contributing to the overall immune system of a kind of community of people who don't want the NSA listening to this shit. the NSA listening to this shit. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. And the, the, the friction thing is, is also exactly what signal does, right? Like by the, the, the threat model for signal is stopping the NSA or other global adversaries

from listening to all communications as they travel over the internet. Right. And that's when you can, when you can do that, like when you can, when you can listen to everybody's conversations as they travel over the internet, it's really cheap to spy on anybody. Right. And that's when you can when you can do that, like when you can when you can listen to everybody's conversations as they travel over the Internet, it's really cheap to spy on anybody. Right. When you're encrypting that communication, then the NSA or whatever other global adversary has to go actually hack your phone. Right. They have to they have to target you specifically.

They have to burn resources and burn weapons, right? Zero days to get access to your phone. And that's a lot more costly. It's a lot more noisy. It's a much higher risk of them getting caught. So it's introduced a huge friction in that area. And that's... Go ahead.

Okay, no, go ahead. Go ahead. I was no, go ahead. I was going to say, I think the sort of comparison to asymmetric warfare is exactly spot on because none of us are ever going to have the money that the NSA or Mossad has. None of us are ever going to have the total technical acumen that the NSA or Mossad

has, right? But like those that, you know, so we have to kind of fight in terms of corruption, in terms of encryption, a guerrilla war, right know so we have to kind of fight a you know in terms of corruption in terms of encryption a guerrilla war right and we have to make things so expensive and so annoying for them that it's not worth it yeah totally and just to sort of build on that one of the things i love about signal is while they're creating friction for our adversaries it's actually so frictionless to use as a user and i think that's one of the things I find just continually impressive about the app. I don't want this to turn into the

we're all himbos for Signal, except we probably are. Because that's one of the things as a researcher, Cooper and I sometimes have to be like, we're not paid by Signal at all, but this is in fact one of the best things you can use. But again, one of the things I think is amazing is that it is so easy to use. And it really is designed for, and I'm using the term usability as a, as a design term, meaning that it is, they're thinking about a common user, including those with like lower digital literacy, or those that are have never used any kind of any kind of security tool. And so they're hitting a

specific threshold of usability for things to be understandable. And again, that's incredibly hard to do well, and they are they are doing it quite well. Like it's very, I would argue, it's very easy and sort of seamless for people to make a jump from WhatsApp or if you're on like Google or Android using like Google messages, sorry, Google, if you're on Android or an iPhone from like iMessages to Google messages to Signal. Like it doesn't, it might look slightly different. It might be a lot more blue. It might be a lot more black depending on how yours is constructed. But for the most part, a lot of the features are kind of where you expect them to be. And it's not, it's not at all difficult to get it up and running, which is not something against Cooper said earlier, we could say about things like PGP. Yeah. I wanted to kind of move on to talking about other apps and their

security or lack of it. And I think we should start probably by talking about Telegram because that's probably close to top of the list of things people use for secure communications that is not nearly as secure as they think. So yeah, I wanted to kind of chat with you about like why that is. And I specifically I wanted to talk one of the things that is frustrating about Telegram is they kind of have they have like a secret chat or private chat like they have a couple of. Um, they're just called slightly different things in the app, which for, for again, for, for those listening that are, don't have a background in design, that's bad design. That's actually not, that's not professional. That's a, that is a mistake. Um, there's no reason for a feature to have like two different names inside of, inside

of your software. And so I don't know if that's an oversight on their part. I'm assuming so. But like those two things correlate to the same feature. And so they should actually be called the same thing. But then even further, that being said, what does private mean to a user? What does secret mean?

You know, Facebook Messenger, they call their encrypted message secure, or no, they also call it secret. Sorry, they also call it secret. But like, does that mean security? Does that mean encrypted? And so that's like one of the one of the weird things where it's like, you know, I think by using a very sort of like normalized or culturally almost like emotional name, like private, it makes something seem like it's actually quite safe when in fact it's not. And there's a variety of reasons as why like Telegram is not not a very secure app that I will let Cooper talk about more. Yeah, I would never advise anybody to have a chat over Telegram if they are concerned about the privacy of that chat. So we were talking about friction and the fact that end-to-end encrypted chats are not the default in Telegram creates a friction for users to have an actually secure chat, right? You have to go remember to turn it on. an actually secure chat, right? You have to go remember to turn it on.

And you can only turn it on, turn it on individually per message. It's not like an overall feature on Telegram or Facebook Messenger. Like you have to go select a specific, like the specific secret per conversation, which is, and another thing our report gets into is how also those chats don't look very different. They look almost identical to a normal chat. So for, for low vision users or anyone with any kind of like disability, especially a vision related disability, it's almost impossible to, it's like nearly impossible to recognize which chat you're using. if you're looking at the chat logs. Yeah. Outside of that, like if people, you know, in terms of like things that may not be options right now, I think basically everyone listening signals a perfectly viable option, but it's not impossible that, for example, you might wind up in a country where even if there's not a specific law against it, there is a precedent established that if you have a signal on your phone, you know, it can be at least used as a justification for charges that you were planning to do. So like, you know, in Atlanta, people are getting charges because they

had a lawyer's name written on their arm, right? And so the state saying, well, that's evidence that we're planning to commit a crime. You know, that doesn't mean that convictions will go through on that kind of thing, but it may be a reason why Signal might not be an option or say something comes out about it that makes it seem less secure. What are other good or acceptable options? And I know when we're talking about this, these are often options that require more input and work from the user in order to maximize their potential security. But I do think it's good to like, let people kind of know what else is out there. Yeah.

So when signal isn't an option, WhatsApp is actually not a bad option. So WhatsApp, it is owned by meta, which is a, you know, which is, which is,

you know, not, which is not ideal. But WhatsApp actually uses the same encryption protocol as Signal. So like under the hood, the way that the, you know, the way that the math works to hide your messages from the NSA is exactly the same. Right. And, and they've implemented it well. You know, there are a few more steps that, you know,

a few more precautions that you need to take with WhatsApp, like making sure that your chats aren't backed up being the main one but whatsapp is certainly good enough right if you're if you're you know chat networks aren't using signal if you're in a country where you can't use signal right like whatsapp has two billion users i'm you know it's it's you can use whatsapp almost anywhere in the world it's and it's ubiquitous enough that it's not going to mark you as you know somebody with something to hide right and like and i don't want to i don't want to um discount whatsapp right getting two billion people to have end-to-end encrypted messaging by default overnight basically was a major coup like that that was world changing right and like they

they really do deserve applause for that obviously you know i think partly because of their scale partly because they're owned by meta right they haven't taken all of these same steps like they do have more um metadata on their servers than than signal. Right. But if that's your option, that is a fine option. Yeah, I think that's really good to know, particularly since options are always more secure than not having any kind of a backup plan. Totally. And if people are even slightly nervous about WhatsApp, a great thing is they do have disappearing messages.

are like even slightly nervous about WhatsApp. A great thing is they do have disappearing messages. The downside is like the fastest disappearing message is only 24 hours, but that's something that again, you still have. Um, and I, that's like, that is, that is an amazing feature. Yeah. And that, that kind of gets into also what kind of stuff you can do in order to maximize the value of features like that. Like, for example, if you're coming back into the country or a country and your phone gets confiscated by customs or whatever, because security services have some sort of eye on you for whatever reason. If you've got, you know, thumbprint login or face login, they're going to get into that

phone, right? And your 24-hour delete thing may not have gotten taken care of everything. If you've got like a complicated eight-digit password and no biometrics enabled, maybe depending on where you are and whatnot, that'll keep your phone locked long enough for those messages to get deleted, right? Like it's all about kind of maximizing the chances that something like that helps. Yeah, exactly. We definitely recommend that people turn on disappearing messages. I think that that's just a good sensible default to have. Also, definitely recommend that if you're going to be in a situation where you think you're going to be, you know, there's a higher likelihood of you interacting with law enforcement.

If you're crossing a border, if you're going to a protest, turn off the biometric unlock on your phone, certainly. Especially in the US, the case law isn't settled, but there's a lot of state courts that have decided that police can force you to unlock your phone with your biometrics and that that's totally fine. So in the US context, it's a good idea. In any context, I think it's a good idea if you're at heightened risk to turn off electric unlocks. I mean, one thing we're also a big fan of is figuring out, too, like, and this is, again, where threat modeling is so key, is like, is this a circumstance where you need your phone? Or another thing that, you know, you can always do if you are nervous about traveling across the border is you can delete signal and reinstall it and everything is gone. You can delete WhatsApp temporarily while you're crossing a border. So it's not on your phone. You know, there are things like that you can do if you feel comfortable

wiping your phone, that's something also you can do. You know, these are all, again, these are, these are, these are different things. And I think this is one of the things our, our report, I don't remember how too much we get into it, but something that at least we've been thinking about Cooper and I run a little lab called complication. And one of the things we've been thinking about there is just also how do we instill sort of like better, better holistic practices where, where we understand that a phone is just one component of our safety. Um, and so like secure messaging, encrypted messaging is one component of that safe safety. So like, what are other things we can do?

Um, and some of that can be, you know, wiping your phone of traveling, if that makes sense for you, or if that's something that makes you feel safer or removing certain apps and then, you know reinstalling them reinstalling them later yeah yeah and it and it really is holistic right like a thing that a thing that people need to keep in mind is that you know disappearing messages can't stop uh an untrustworthy uh uh conversation partner, conversation partner, right? Like I, if, if, if my conversation partner is untrustworthy, they can take screenshots of the messages, right? They can, you know, go, they can go snitch to law enforcement about what I've told them, right. Uh, um, encrypted messaging,

disappearing messages. These are not panaceas, right. You still have to, you still have to is, right? You still have to, you still have to keep all of your other aspects of security as well, right? So don't entirely rely on these technologies to save you, right? You have to also trust the people you're working with and build these layers of security up. It's true. I mean, Cooper, you could leak all of my secrets right now on this podcast. And you've chosen not to. What a gentleman. you could leak all of my secrets right now on this podcast and you've chosen not to what a gentleman and that is scholar that is the other thing right where um when it comes to like what is secure one thing to remember is that signal for all the good things about it nothing nothing at all about that app stops the recipient of a message from you from taking a screen grab or just handing

their phone over to uh to their friendly local federal agent, right? Which is always, you know, we don't want to be, I'm not trying to be a security nihilist here. I think, you know, there's no replacing communication over phones in many situations. But if you are, for example, going to be transferring a bunch of Plan B pills in an area where that is prosecutable, that probably shouldn't go on your phone in that language, right? Perhaps, you know, you could come up with a clever code word or whatever, but don't, don't, you know, security is, like you said, holistic. You know, you should not be, um, looking at it as just like, well, the app is secure. So that's enough. I mean, one thing I also want people

sort of think about too, cause that's a really great point. Robert is like, we do all different kinds of things every day in our lives that could, you know, endanger us. Like, I think, um, a lot of the work I do is I work a lot with people facing all different kinds of online harassment. So like falling in love, for example, is a dangerous thing to do. You could have your heart broken or that person could hurt you. Um, learning how to trust people, you know, um, crossing the street, deciding to Jaywalk, right. All different things we do sort of every day actually can expose us to harm. And so one thing I think for people listening to keep in mind is that's the same when we have conversations. And I think a way to avoid nihilism is just to remember that,

that every day we are sort of going out there and actually being incredibly brave just by living our everyday lives, by deciding to be in community and have friendships and have relationships. And in my case, I love jaywalking and no one around me does. And that's why that's my choice. And I have not yet gotten hit by a car jaywalking. I think it's good to look at this the same way. There's a concept that the military has sort of developed when talking about how not to die when you're in a gunfight or something. It's called the survivability onion, right? And I think it's extremely useful, both if you're talking about like, well, I'm going to a protest and there will be violence there, you know, should I wear armor, et cetera. But it's also just really, it's really useful with any kind

of security. And the onion, it's envisioned as an onion because like the largest outside chunk of it is don't be seen, don't be acquired, which means somebody actually getting you in their headsights. Don't be hit, which means being behind cover or something. And then the very internal part of it is like have some sort of armor in case you are shot. But if the armor is useful, the majority of the onion has already failed, right? If encryption is useful, that is not a dissimilar sort of situation, right? So there's a degree of canniness is super helpful in thinking about like, what is visible about me if I'm doing something that I have to be extra concerned about the state seeing?

What is visible about me from the outside. Totally. I mean, I think that's an amazing thing to think about. Like, where are you sending a text message? Are you in a place in which, like, someone can lean over? Like, I'm the nosiest motherfucker all the time. I'm constantly, like, looking around being like, what's that person watching on an airplane? Or, like, if someone is sitting next to me scrolling, so like, you wouldn't want to like send a sensitive text

message like next to me, because I'd be like, that's, that's interesting fodder. Let's come to Texas to Cooper later. You know, and so I think it's important to think about that. Like, who's around you? Is this is like, how are you describing something? Do you know the person you're messaging? If you're in a group message, do you know everybody there? Like, do you trust all of them? You know, and if you're ever nervous, there are, this is, I guess the upside also to in-person conversations. You can have, you know, a phone call or an in-person conversation with someone, right? If you're really not sure, or you don't feel comfortable even sending something over a signal, that might be the time to be like,

hey, do you want to meet up and get a coffee? And then, you know, try to find a discreet place to have a conversation. Yeah. Yeah. I do want to roll to ads real quick one second. Then I think Cooper had something to say and we'll,

we'll continue, but first products. Ah, we're back. Cooper, you look like you had something to add on that. Nothing particularly serious. Just that. I think that that's,

I think that that's really good advice for the military and absolutely justifies the $900 billion. Yeah. I'm glad they put together a, a, a fucking graphic. I wonder how many billions of dollars that did cost i could i i could make a graphic for hundreds of millions of dollars yeah yeah if anybody if anybody wants to fund us for hundreds of millions we will do it let us know

a mere hundreds of millions we have so many good t-shirt ideas and sticker ideas, y'all. Like so many good ones, so many unhinged ones that the world needs to see. Yeah. I mean, I do, I guess just because of the amount of time I've spent thinking about this stuff from my old job, there are a couple of concepts from military planning I think about in this context. And one of them that I also think is relevant to what we're talking about with friction is the concept of an Oda loop, right? Which is, how do you win in combat against an opponent? And it's by disrupting this thing called the Oda loop.

And the Oda loop is how an adversary carries out actions in a conflict like this, right? And the steps you have to go for are observe, orient, decide, and act. And if you can disrupt any stage of that, you can stop them from taking actions, right? Which is stops them from being able to harm you. And the good security is, is going to impact all three of those things, right? It's going to stop them from being able to see you sometimes. If they can see you, stuff like, you know, we were just talking earlier about link previews, right? And how that can kind of expose maybe who you're in communication with potentially. Well, that could allow the state to orient themselves to you and to your friends, right? And obviously stuff like locking down your

devices, not having unnecessarily info online can stop them being able to decide what you're doing and how they should respond to that. And I think that's also good if you're thinking, if you're not just somebody who is concerned about your security like most people are, because it's good to have some security, if you're actually dealing with the state or a corporation as an adversary in some way, it can be useful to think about your security culture in those terms. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's absolutely right. It's, it's, and I think that it's, you know, it points to like, we should, we should understand

what the, you know, mode of, of thinking of our adversaries is, right? Like we, you know, we should, you know, mode of, of thinking of our adversaries is right. Like we, you know, we should, if your adversary is the NSA, right. Which is like probably actually not most people in the U S like for most U S activists, the NSA is not actually your biggest adversary, right? Like your biggest adversary is going to be local police, right? Your biggest adversary is going to be, um, you know, the, the, you know, somebody like your abusive partner. Right. And you need to, and this is why threat modeling is important because you need to, to really, to really think about, you know, think through like, you know, well, okay, wait,

am I actually worried about protecting myself from the NSA or am I more worried about, you know, the, the racist police officer, the that drives down my street every day. Right. And probably it's the latter. And so you can can you can take a lot more useful actions right uh uh and and you know you can you can you know break that oda loop for him once you know actually what it is right yeah if you're defending yourself against the nsa you're gonna leave yourself wide open to the actual threat. Yeah, it's totally, I think a great example. And I, I don't mean to be like, quote unquote,

subtweeting somebody here, but I've known a couple of folks like this. It's like, if you have, if you're super paranoid, you're not putting anything online. You're only talking with your close friends. You use a dumb phone, you have burners, but you also drive around with a shit load of weed in your car in a state where that's illegal well it's like well like your your threat modeling is not great in that situation right or like i do all that but i carry an illegal handgun with me wherever i go it's like well that may be more of a threat than your phone my partner the other day was like what if i got a dumb phone i was like what if I divorced you like like what if they were like what do you mean and I was like well I'm gonna be the one using all the maps for both of us yeah and having to google all the dumb shit you want to google that doesn't make I'm now your

weakest link like go fuck yourself but also I was like I'm absolutely not going to be your Google Maps bitch. Like, I'm not doing that. But, I mean, I think also, you know, to both of y'all's points, to get serious again for a second. I mean, you know, like my threat model, for example, might be similar or slightly different, maybe slightly less serious than Cooper's. But, you know, like some of But some of the journalists in India we were working with have quite a high threat model. The Indian police force are very much

like the NSA. They're very talented. They have a lot of money and tech at their disposal. And that might be different for some of the activists we're working with, let's say, in Louisiana or Texas. But the difference is we're still talking about, I would argue two brutal police forces that just have different means of

disposal at their hands. So like the Louisiana police are, are groups you should totally be worried about. They might not be able to hack your phone, but maybe eventually they could, but there are other, there are obviously other things to worry about with them. But, you know, in the context of like with some of the folks we're working with in the South, like reproductive justice activists, some of the things are probably much more serious in terms of your threat model would be like a nurse for someone who, let's say, is miscarrying or has sought an abortion. And this is something Kate Burtosh from the Digital Defense Fund, a friend of, you know,

ours has talked about, where like the people that are supposed to take care of you might be the ones that are actually your biggest threat, right? The ones that have heard you say something or you've confided in, for example. And that is kind of a horrifying thing to think about. But that is a thing you have to threat model, right? Can I trust this person? How am I describing what's happening? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, did y'all have anything else you wanted to make sure to get into in this conversation. There's so much more in the great paper you helped co-author, What is Secure? An Analysis of Popular Messaging Apps on the Tech Policy Press. But yeah, is there anything else y'all wanted to really make sure you hit before we roll out?

Yeah, please don't use Telegram for a variety of reasons, but also it's very unclear how they respond to any law enforcement or government. They don't say anything, and it's kind of impossible to reach anyone that works there. Please don't say anything, and it's kind of impossible to reach anyone that works there. Please don't use Facebook Messenger other than maybe sending memes. There's a lot of really gross surveillance capitalism inside of Facebook Messenger that the paper gets into, but effectively Meta is building this weird,

sprawling infrastructure inside of Facebook Messenger to try to link Facebook and Instagram. And one of the things we noticed is that if you've blocked someone on Instagram or muted them, but you haven't blocked or muted them on Facebook, that your stories, all those stories are still coming across in Messenger. So you can still see content from someone

because it's linking both of those profiles. So you could see how we're taking an online harassment lens, like why that's, why that's really bad. That's really harmful and could be potentially, you know, upsetting and triggering for folks. Yeah. I'll, I'll add that. I think my, the major thing I want people to think about is that encryption really does work and it works really well. And we can see that because a lot of countries right now are trying to pass laws that either weaken or ban encryption.

And in fact, the UK did just pass such a law, the online safety bill in the UK. the online safety bill in the UK. And so it's really important that we, that we, you know, push back against these laws and fight back against these laws. And whenever we can, right. And I'm not, I'm not coming at this as somebody who's a big believer in the, you know, in incrementalism and in working with governments. But I think that I still think that it's really important to, you know uh educate folks and push back against these laws and try to not let these pass because these will be you know really bad for all of us totally and not to defend the online safety bill because i would never do that i'll go to my grave not speaking highly of it uh only speaking critically at least

like the pushback from encryption experts and encryption supporters like Merith Whitaker, president of Signal, did lead to lawmakers in the UK, for example, admitting that there's no sort of feasible, safe way to build a backdoor, right? And that is, I think, also a win because of so much pushback, because of so much research, because of so much criticism that security and privacy folks gave people that are pro encryption like that. We you know, we were able to walk back that part. And I do think that's a big deal, even even if there are other issues with that bill, because I think it also sends a signal pun intended to other

governments um as well um and i think that that's incredibly important but yeah i would also say just just use signal whenever you can um but yeah yeah well all right folks uh that is going to be it for us here at it could happen here. Yeah. Thank you all for listening and thank you Cooper and Carolyn for, for coming on. Thank you for having us. Yeah. Thank you for having us.

You can find us on social media for now, I guess, until it all lights on fire. Yeah. Whichever one you want to trust. Yeah. I'm Cooper Q on most social medias. Blue Sky, Mastodon, Shitter.

Yeah, I'm Caroline Senders. My first name, last name. Our lab is Convocation Research and Design. We're Cord Labs on Twitter at the moment. Hopefully we'll be getting on Blue Sky very soon. Yeah, yeah. I'll probably get back on there more now twitter has uh gotten remarkably worse uh which you know we had a back on back in the day on uh the old

something awful forums there was a a thread in one of the debate forums about this very right wing site called free republic which was like one of the earliest reservoirs of what became trumpism and the the tagline for the thread just kind of watching these people was there is always more and it is always worse and boy goddamn if that hasn't been a continually accurate statement about the whole the whole of social media right now isn't it kind of amazing to watch someone just light 40 billion dollars on fire yeah just like yeah totally there is there is a beauty to it yeah it's like the nihilist in me being like wow comrade musk really uh really taking some hits to capitalism here Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?

Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. Modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available 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

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 things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God, things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the

iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian.

Elian. Elian Gonzalez. everywhere. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. a name that I've probably just butchered. But Rania is the communications officer for

the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate. And we're very, very lucky to have Rania talking to us. Welcome, Rania. Thank you, James. Thank you for contacting me and letting me be with you. Yeah, of course. You're very welcome. So I think, Rania, it's been a really hard time to consume news. For the first week of what's happening, I was in mostly Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan, and I wasn't maybe consuming as much news as I normally do, because I was trying to write news instead. And then I got back.

Just the barrage of information and disinformation has been very hard for people to sort of wade through. And I wonder, I think one of the things I'd like us to focus on first and foremost is the impact of Israel's bombing campaign on journalists specifically working in Gaza. I know friends of mine are journalists in Gaza. We featured on this podcast before the people of Parkour Gaza. And I know that many journalists have lost their lives covering what's been happening. So can you explain a little bit about what's been happening and maybe bring us up to date on the amount of every loss is a tragedy, but like the amount of people loss is a tragedy but like

the amount of people who have lost their lives covering this yes uh james uh well let's start that journalists in gaza are civilians who are people who travel they work um usually they should travel but they work they they do their. They try to cover the news with very hard conditions, with the daily life of Gaza. Since the beginning of the war against Gaza on the 7th of October, you know how the war started targeting everything in Gaza, not even all the people, more than the people, you know, the buildings, the children,

even the animals, the plants, you know, just bombing and bombing and bombing airstrikes the whole time. At the beginning, we tried to, we have some, our contacts with journalists in Gaza, we have our general secretary, a member, and so on. We try to get information from them. At the beginning, yeah, it was not easy, but it was okay to get some information about what's going on. But by the time now we reached to a place that when I called them, they always tell dozens of, we don't know. We are disconnected. I'm homeless now.

I am not able to get any news. I can tell you about my friend or my neighbor next to me, but I'm not able to tell you about further than this. I will just give some statistics. Up to now, we have 18 killed journalists who have been either killed while recovering. Others were killed in their homes, through airstrikes with their families and so on. We have also many, many journalists who have, dozens of them have been injured. I'm really sorry. I was, I wanted

to have some, you know, accurate statistics, but I can't give you. Until now, we are now trying to develop like a tool to get some statistics, but until now, it's not working well. Yeah.

We have many journalists who lost their homes because it was bombed or air-striked others they were ripped in this place and

many of them moved from their homes either because their homes were bombed or other because they were threatened to stay at their home safely so they go to other at their home safely so they go to other like schools hospitals and so on um the most tragic is the the journalists who are losing their families when you call a journalist to ask him about anything they tell you okay i lost my son i lost my wife i lost all my my family, I lost my mother now. They are completely

broken. You can't talk to them. It's really a very tragic situation. Yeah, it's literally unimaginable. I've attended wars, I've lost friends, but nothing. I can't imagine what it's like on this scale. It's heartbreaking to even think about it. I think some of what you said, obviously, part of the situation this creates is that it's very hard to do reporting on the ground. It's always been hard to do reporting on the ground in Gaza. I had made plans to go to Gaza, which probably won't work out now. But it's hard for foreign press. And of course, there are many very capable journalists within Gaza. We don't need foreign press to go

there necessarily. But can you explain a little bit of how, when this war started, it didn't just affect these people in terms of killing them, killing their families, displacing them, destroying their homes, but also every day this war goes on, it gets harder for us to see the impact of this war on civilians living in Gaza because of the damage to infrastructure. Is that fair to say? Yes, this is what's going on. And yes, reporting is getting more and more complicated. Because as also, you know, there is no electricity. I mean, communication is very, very difficult. When sometimes through phone call, I call them just to get something they tell me okay let wait until i get some internet and i will get back to you i wait for hours and hours sometimes for the second day to get a little information so you can imagine how they can even contact with each other

yeah and yeah and that makes it very hard i I think often we might have more info. This is not uncommon, actually. You have more information sitting somewhere with a broadband connection and access to Twitter than you do on the ground, right? They may not know everything that's happening. Yes. I don't know if I can talk about this,

but about the restrictions that on all social media applications, the restrictions on the Palestinian content on the social media, we're facing a big, a massive wave against our content, against our news through Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, all those applications. So we are not able even to reach. Many people are banned, many people are hacked. And we are just hearing about the banning of many accounts of Palestinians, the very limited reach, the very limited.

And there are some many times they are blocked or blocked from posting and so on. So even also, this is another problem that we are facing to reach out. Yeah, I think this, in a sense, obviously,

like it's in terms of specifically getting information about it, because I think that is important. I think if people could understand what it's like to see someone lose their baby and then i think very few people would be able to in good conscious support that um and the fact that this has come at a time when i think generally uh certainly for the u.s reporting on things outside the US is at an all-time low. It's atrocious. People lack the context to understand, not through any fault of their own,

but they've just been fed terrible opinion pieces for the last few years. They lack the context to understand why what's happening is happening. I think, obviously, Elon Musk has bought Twitter and it's happening is happening. And I think obviously Elon Musk has bought Twitter and it's a cesspool. It's terrible. It's full of false information. And as you say, often videos that, like I have friends who are photographers in Gaza.

I have friends who are just people in Gaza. And videos that they post will be taken down. Sometimes they'll just say it's too graphic. It's too violent. But also, that's their everyday life now. That's been happening for two weeks. Graphic violence is sadly what's visited upon them every day. Yeah, yes.

Believe me, what's going on in Gaza is very... You can't hold it when you watch it. Even the TV channels, they try to minimize how dangerous and how violent are the scenes that we see. At the same time, I had a discussion this morning. I don't want people to cry for us. time, I had a discussion this morning. I don't want people to cry for us. I don't want people to cry for the

babies killed. And so with very hard pictures and videos, I just want humanity. Without seeing the video, just hear that there is a child who is losing children, thousands of children are losing their life

for nothing, are losing their hands their legs they are now handicapped they don't know why we don't need to see the video, just know that this is going on we don't want to make a tragedy

we don't want to people to cry with us yes we want some solidarity, but it's not something to have the emotions and then we sleep and then we wake up. No, no, there is something going on. We don't need the sympathy now. We need some actions.

We need steps. We need humanity now. Yeah. So I think that's an excellent, really, really excellent point. It's not a film or something you can consume and then step away from. So what sort of solidarity actions can people take to support people in Gaza, to support journalists there, to support the greater cause of not having this issue where every few years thousands of Palestinian civilians get killed?

Yes. Well, to be honest, when we want to feel better, we turn on the television to see the demonstrations. When we see the demonstrations, London, Brussels, United States and different cities, Arab world, everywhere. When we see these demonstrations, we feel that somebody knows. There is like a kind of movement. This helps us. And we need further steps after the demonstration. We need lobbying. We need the people who elect their governments, who support those massacres,

and to say, no, we give you legitimacy to be human. Stop this inhumanity. We need the people to lobby on their governments that this should not be supported. This is the real action that we need. Lobbying, lobbying, lobbying by the people, by the power of people. Yeah, I think it's one of those things.

Some things will never change in America, at least not by voting. But some things, yeah, if enough people... And I think more people... I remember when I moved to America 15 years ago, when I was very young, I was 21. And I came into America and I had a free Palestine badge on my jacket.

I liked to sew things on my jacket. And they sent me straight to secondary you know like the they're like where they pat you down and take all your clothes and go through your bags and and like it just wasn't as big of a concern i think more people in the 15 years since then have become aware of the tragedy and the loss of life and certainly now i've seen more people wake up to what's happening and like protest or um protest or get out and do things in a way that they wouldn't have done 10 years ago. And I think that's really good. Hopefully, that demand for people to be allowed to live with dignity and safety continues.

Yes, I mean, I just always want to ask anybody, like to say, are you happy to pay your tax for killing others? Yeah, Jesus, yeah. This is the very initial, very first question. Are you happy with this? Do you pay your tax for this? Or for anything that you like to have your tax to be paid for? Yeah, this is what we want. We are facing killing, we are facing assassination, bombarding and so on. All we need is humanity, nothing else. I was thinking this morning of how, very obviously, when Russia bombed Ukrainian cities,

most people said we should help the Ukrainians, send them arms, send them medical supplies. Some of them went and volunteered to fight for the Ukrainians. And I understand that, obviously, this conflict began in very different circumstances than the Russia-Ukraine conflict. But nonetheless, little children are being killed and continue to be killed. And the response wasn't the same. And I think some of that comes from a not particularly hard to see Orientalism in the US and the US media. Also, some of it comes from the complete absence of Palestinian voices, certainly in the English language press in america um and i wonder like i know that there are certain organizations which have specifically worked to make it harder for palestinian journalists

like my friend hossam salem uh he's an excellent photographer and you can find him on all the places where you find people on the internet uh but we worked on stories together and like i know he's he's now had he's lost contract with major outlets um because of this sort of campaign of accusing him of bias i think um it's hard not to be biased when you see little children die um but i wonder if you could talk about that like how palestinian voices are excluded or missing from even now right the atlantic since two weeks of bombing now and i was looking this morning and they've managed to find two palestinian voices to share like like um you know it's maybe not i'll have to check that after we've

done but um i was flicking through these big sort of opinion piece type outlets and it's very clear that like even now people haven't like editors specifically or the greater press has not stopped excluding Palestinian voices. So maybe we could talk about how that happens, what allows that to happen, and what people can do to help lift up those voices. Well, yes, Palestinian voices are being banned all over by different movements. They are many times fired from their works in big news outlets and media outlets

for different political reasons. And if you want to go in through the stories, you find that some people are just trying to make, to make problems for those people to let them leave their work and stop writing or telling the news or analyzing or anything about the Palestinian cause and what's going on. We're facing this globally and we have many cases recorded and undocumented in the PGS and we can give you many examples about them. But I have to tell

about something that we are a member of the International Federation of Journalists. And we have also even our president of Palestinian Journalist Syndicate. He's a vice president of the International Federation of Journalists. He has been elected last year in the last Congress. We have sister unions. One of them, one of the best friends of us are the National Writers Union, the American National Writers Union, which is a very big supporter to us. a very big supporter to us. They even had a Goldbatter, the general secretary, even he visited us in Palestine a few months ago, and he's a very supporter of what's going on, of all our statements, of our news. At the beginning of the war, they produced a statement about bias and misleading news and so on, how to avoid them, supporting the Palestinians,

supporting our right to life and so on. So we highly appreciate this movement. Of course, he's not the only one. Many, many syndicates, many unions all over the world sent us solidarity letters. Some of them supported us even with some in-kind contribution, with some funds in addition to solidarity, in addition to demonstrations and so on, which really gave us a lot of power of hope so we can continue and we are not alone yeah i think that's really powerful yeah and if well i mean it's not enough but it's something that unions i think people also if they're members of a union can encourage their union to do that right just to make a statement yeah just to show some solidarity i wonder like

what um you talked about in-kind donations and you talked about the support you're getting from unions. I know one of the unions on which I'm a member, the Industrial Workers of the World, FJU, just did a fundraiser or is still doing a fundraiser for a flak vest, a bulletproof vest for journalists. What kind of support can people give in a concrete sense, beyond getting in the streets and protesting

and writing letters and emails and phone calls? Is there stuff that they can do with their money, if they have some money? Well, it's not a kind of money. It's a kind of, I will tell you now, in the situation in Gaza, we we can't all what we do we need is a ceasefire to be honest they even don't have fresh water they drink by the way and they say try to minimize the that the water they drink and they know that the water they drink

is not very clean but just to survive so you can start with this very basic need of life and then you go further. As I already told you, the safety vests are very important. But when you are under airstrikes, this will never help you. But if I want to talk about the daily life, about how it's going in the West Bank and Gaza, to talk about the daily life, about how it's going in the West Bank and Gaza, our journalists, we all work under the same conditions of aggressive events, covering aggressive events and so on. So we try as PJS to contact all the media outlets in Palestine to offer or provide safety kits for all journalists who work in the

field but for example our freelancers they work on their own responsibility and in very dangerous situation we try to tell how dangerous

that what they do when you go to cover with you don't have very full safety kits or vests. It's very dangerous for them, but they are not able to cover it and they want to, they need to work, they need to do their job. So they do it in a very dangerous conditions. So one of the things that we can support journalists is safety kits, which are very important. Medical kits also are very important. What else? We try to raise the awareness to make some materials for the journalists about safety.

Safety is very important for us. We try to teach them more about how to take care of themselves, how to report and so on about their security and so on. Yeah. about how to take care of themselves, how to report and so on about their security and so on. This is mainly what I can talk about for the needs or the in-kind contribution. As I told you in the current situation, for example, we try to support through some donations, to support the journalists with charging batteries because of the lack of electricity and power sources in Gaza. So just to keep them connected currently and they are very useful for them and it helps now. Yeah, I can see it. It's probably best that you guys just have money and then you can be flexible in getting what people need. I think that's generally the best advice

when there's a crisis is to send the people nearest to it money and then they can decide what they need. I certainly, I found that in a lot of places I worked. Yes. So you talked about the power situation. I think that sort of, it has gone relatively unreported.

I mean, it'll still say like the power and water being cut off, but that creates a lot of other dangerous situations, right? Like obviously some people rely on that power if they're infirm, if they have medical devices, that kind of thing. But also like where there are places to charge, that results in a very high concentration of people, right? Like my friend was telling me that their parents were in a hospital to charge their devices. They wanted to call their child and say, we're safe, we're alive. But their phone had run out of battery, so they had to go to

the hospital. Can you explain a little bit of some of the things that that has resulted in, the loss of power for people? Yes, of course. First of all, let me tell you that we already requested all our journalists in Gaza to be in the hospitals for their safety. We try. We expect that it would be a safe place, but there is no safe place in Gaza now, as you already know about the hospitals that have been targeted. But we already asked them to be in the hospitals. We try to make some press zones in the hospitals, some places where it's for press,

for journalists to be there, so they can get some electricity, power. And so they can all be together, try to exchange information and work together. So it will be better for them to work and safer between brackets always for them to work. To be honest, yes, I don't know if you see the news now. The sun has set so it's completely dark in Gaza. You just have some lighting spots which are the hospitals and you

know that even the solar and the fuel for hospitals is about to finish and in two days I think, but we will see.

Maybe we'll have some trucks or they will get something inside Gaza for fuel and so on, but I'm not sure about this. Yeah, every day it's changing, I guess. And I wonder, talking about getting things into Gaza, getting things to people in Gaza, a thing that seems to be completely, I don't know, it genuinely seems to me that people think people could just walk out of Gaza and go somewhere else. the situation for people in Gaza with respect to their mobility and their ability to leave. Because I think it's something that, again,

has been criminally overlooked in the United States discourse. Ability to leave Gaza, you mean? Yeah, yeah. Or lack thereof would be more accurate, right? The complete absence of that. Well, unfortunately, people in Gaza are blocked. They are not allowed to leave Gaza with any kind of borders, of that? Well, unfortunately people in Gaza are blocked they are all

they are not allowed to leave Gaza with any kind of borders, even the people who have international passports like American European or whatever passports, they are not able to leave Gaza they have to face

their fate now, they are just displaced from place to another. Some people have been displaced four times in four areas, different areas. And others were displaced and bombed later. So, no, they are blocked. They are blocked in a very limited area, which is under strikes the whole time. No place is safe. Even the Baptist Hospital, they thought that it

would be a Baptist hospital, a hospital related to a church and so on. It was striked massively, cruelly. More than 500 have been killed. They were all children children mothers are sitting just as a thinking that it would be a shelter for them so yes this is the situation in Gaza there is no safe place no hospitals if you are in a hospital you will be bombed if you are in school you'll be

bombed if you are in a mosque if you will be bombed if you're in a church you will be bombed no safe place unfortunately yeah it's yeah it's it's unimaginable and like i don't know the the act of bombing like we were talking about this before we started but like um when you're being bombed it's very different from like a small armed conflict or even like a, you know, whatever the artillery mortars rockets, like you, there isn't much you can do to be safe. It's not like there is no like cover from bombs, you know, that you, you, there's no way you can hide from them. By the way, there is no underground shelters. Yeah. And now they are in tents by the way, there is no underground shelters. Yeah. Yeah. And now they are in tents, by the way. They were in houses.

Houses, they were falling on their heads. So they went to tents. So when the tent falls, it's... Not so... Yeah. Jesus. Yeah. It's bleak.

Yeah. It's unimaginable. Like I said, I just spent a week in a place that was being very... They are protected by the sky, which is full of planes bombing them. Yeah, yeah. And every time you look up, you wonder what that is. And is this still time or is this still on? So I think one thing people are really struggling with is like overload of information, misinformation, right?

there's like overload of information uh misinformation right uh just some of the worst pieces i've ever seen in opinion pieces on things sent on social media which are like like it seems that we've returned to nothing from 20 years of killing and dying. So I wonder where you would recommend if there are members of your syndicate or other places where people can find reliable reporting, which is, you know, fact-checked, which is not overloading them.

You know, like if you go on Twitter to try and find your information at the minute, you're just going to get into an argument with someone who has the worst opinions in the world uh and it's not good and it can dissuade you from taking action in the ways that you've mentioned which are actually useful so is there a place you'd suggest people look for information outlets or individuals they could follow well um who wants to know the truth will be will find it um you know the media is always any media outlet it has its um it has its mandate and vision and so on so i just advise everyone when you go for any outlet media outlet just try to read about it. What's its mandate?

Who they are related to? Who they are supporting? And so on. So to know from which perspective you will know the truth. I can't tell now the names of outlets because it's not me who

decides who's the right one. As you know, I work in a syndicate, which is like a union, which is for all journalists with all outlets. So they are all our members. Yeah. I think that's good advice so that people can take more.

It's good advice that people can take more broadly because I think people are completely unaware of the ownership of some outlets, their mandate, their perceived biases. Yes, try to read about them, not only the news itself, but try to see about this outlet, about this establishment, how it's working, what their objectives are, how do they work, and what are their connections and so on. So you will know which kind of news they are covering and how do they cover it. Yes. Yes, this is what I can say. For us as the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate, we try now to report about journalists because this is our mandate, this is our work to tell about what's going for our members to try

to get any protection for them. Actually we are disabled in this very hard condition, but we try through our friends, through our relations, through our supporters, through our memberships and so on, to have some international support for them through information, through like a flow of information telling what's going on, how many journalists have been killed, how many journalists are displaced, how many and so on. So we try to give data. Those data are not, as I already told you, it's really a hard job that we are doing now. It's getting more and more difficult. We are trying to co-opt, trying to develop new tools to cope with this hard, very hard situation. be honest to get very real and true information not to get any misleading information there's a

flow of misleading information even we hear about many journalists that they are killed but when we try to to make sure that we found that they are not journalists so we don't put them in our lists we try to investigate as much as we can so to put our lists to be limited to journalists to our members to the people who work with us when our within our mandate and so on so to be a credible source of information yeah i think it's very important i am i saw i don't know if you guys who shared it i showed a video early on um it was when i was still in syria and kurdistan but we were watching it of a funeral of three journalists who have been killed um yeah and like someone was saying at the funeral that

they were speaking and said someone else will pick up his camera and like keep documenting things which really was very emotional for me and my friends uh yeah it was really sad but um yes it is yes i believe you it's it's uh it's just you know that's a thing that i do and i see people you know dressed like me people i know uh and it's been very of your coverage of that has been very i don't know emotionally challenging for me but it's should be emotionally challenging it's terrible um But I think people should definitely tune into it if they can. I wonder, are there social media accounts that the PJS has that people can follow?

Yes, we have a Facebook page. It's on Facebook. Yes, it's the Palestinian journalist syndicate. Yeah. And we try to download all our news on it. Also, we have our website, which is www.pjs.ps. Also, you can find some news, statements, updates, and so on. Yeah, that's great. And I encourage people to follow that if they're able to. I wonder, Renee, is there anything else you think that people, like anything that's been missing from the media narrative that you'd like people to know about the situation now in Palestine

or the situation more broadly that hasn't been reported on as much as it should be? I just want to add something about besides what's going on in Gaza, even journalists in the West Bank, even Palestinian journalists in Israel are facing a lot of threats, facing a lot of problems. There is a massive campaign of arrests. So up to now, 1,000 in three days, 1,000 persons have been arrested. We're trying to find the number of journalists, which is, I'm not sure about it, but I can't give you the figure, as I told you,

because of the big number, we're trying to make sure who are the journalists. But a massive arrest campaign is taking place now also journalists are facing a lot of threats about a lot of violations

while covering many times they are prevented from coverage, they are threatened by weapons they are threatened sometimes by the settlers, armed settlers even, not the army, while covering. Many of them also, they are subject to incitement through social media pages, like spreading their photos or their, and so to make a kind of incitement how to kill them or to to get rid of them and so on so also the journalists are facing a very hard time now um yeah they are under threat

yeah damn yeah that's terrible um and yeah completely unacceptable so um yeah i'm glad you shared that and i think it's important that people follow this and do whatever they can to help um do whatever they can to to i don't know to encourage people to stop bombing other people like it's never a good situation when people are bombing children and hopefully it comes to an end like it i don't know i've never seen this much outgoing support for palest the United States, but this is an unprecedented act of war crimes. So it's very hard to see where this is going, I suppose. Yes, we believe that the voice is reaching, maybe a little, but not that fast, not that easy,

because it's not easy. But we believe in every person who thinks and says, no, this is inhuman. I should not. I should be with those people who are under attack, who are under a lot of hard life. Yeah, it's a hard life, a lot of hard life. Yeah, it's a hard life. A lot of oppression.

So when we see the, as I told you, when we see the demonstrations, it really gives us power. It really gives us that we have right to life. This is a minimum right that we need people to tell us,

yes, you have a right to life. Yeah, I think that that's it's nice to hear you know it's like if you can feel that you're helping even just helping people feel like a little bit you know elevated a little bit better a little bit less despairing because i can see how it would be very easy if you're stuck in gaza to feel like um the world's abandoned you because it has to a large degree right like the world's abandoned you because it has to a large degree, right? The world's allowed this to happen. And it's American bombs, American planes dropping bombs on little children. Unfortunately.

Yeah. So I think that's really good to hear. It's good to hear that that has made some difference. Thank you so much for giving us some of your time. I know it's getting late. Thank you, James. Thank you so much for giving us some of your time. I know it's getting late. Thank you, James. Thank you for having me with you. I wish you all good luck.

Thank you. Thank you all who are listeners to this podcast. I hope that I was able to give you an overview of what's going on. And let's pray that this violence will end very soon. Yes. Yeah, yeah, indeed. Thank you very much. It was wonderful. Thank you. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill.

Would you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience

the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available 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'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 from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. 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 things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian, Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian, Elian, Elian Gonzalez.

At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story,

as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. your podcasts. It's Spooky Week! It's a good happen here. It's Spooky Week, the week where things are spooky. I'm your host,

Mia Wong, and with me is Garrison. Hello. And today... I did it. Alright, alright alright we've gotten the preliminary spooky out and so today we're going to be talking about one of the sort of key elements of Halloween

and that is chocolate and so on a very basic level we're going to ask what is chocolate and the answer and it pains me to say this as someone who really loves chocolate is really really bleak yeah but before we get into exactly how bleak it is uh we're gonna look at sort of the early history of chocolate so most so okay there's there's a lot of disagreement about exactly how old chocolate is.

I've seen sources that say 3000 BC. I've seen sources that say 1700 BC. The 1700 BC is the one that's pretty consistent. It seems like the Olmecs had something like chocolate. It's a sort of bitter drink that they sometimes put vanilla or red pepper in. Yeah, it was like a bitter slurry that you, from what I hear, not very enjoyable, but it got you like really high. Like not high like weed, but like kind of like cocaine. It was like it was a massive stimulant.

Yeah, yeah. From what I hear about these kind of early gross bitter chocolate slurries yeah and and you know i mean this is a thing that's this is not a regular consumption drink basically everyone he uses this and this and chocolate is consumed by a bunch of different civilizations like across like most of south america there's something sort of uh like the mayans obviously the Mayans, obviously the Mayans and the Aztecs too. There's a lot of places where this is being used.

And it's, everyone seems to use it for ritual purposes. Yeah. I think at some point, I think it was the Olmecs at some point were doing these, like they were making fermented alcohol out of, so normally with chocolate chocolate you're using like the cocoa beans right but there's like a flesh in the flute fruit around the beans and

they were making like a fermented thing out of that and i don't know i i leave as an exercise to the reader whether you count that as chocolate but the sort of conventional story goes okay so like several thousand years after the olmecs the aztecs and the Mayans using it for ritual purposes. And the story basically is, OK, so Herman Cortez drinks chocolate with the Aztec King Moctezuma. Cortez goes, this is bitter as shit and sucks ass, but he brings it back to Europe anyways. And in Europe, they mix it with sugar, also with honey, but mostly with sugar. And it becomes, you you know it becomes very very

popular drink in europe and at some point this is like the 1840s so like like takes them about like 300 years to figure out how to make cocoa powder but once you have cocoa powder you can it's not it ceases to be bitter like in the way that it sort of is naturally you can you can process it with like um like a like basic solutions which which neutralizes some of the acidic and bitter bitter tastes which is why you should always buy dutch processed cocoa powder which is unfortunately hard to find these days but it is it is it is it is the shit yeah so that's that's actually yeah so the that's that's dutch cocoa and then 20 years later someone figures out how to make that into a chocolate bar and you know sort of voila you have chocolate now the conventional histories are missing something

very very important which is something that defined has defined the production of chocolate since europeans got a hold of it and continues to define it today. And that thing is slavery. Yeah, yes. Yeah. And, you know, this is slavery is a very sort of important part of the history of chocolate, because slavery is what transforms the older ritual chocolate used by a bunch of different indigenous societies for several thousand years into modern chocolate. And this is this is a point that I want to make, because most most histories of chocolate tend, you know, when they're trying to find the origin of modern chocolate, they go, oh, it's a chocolate bar. And I think they're wrong.

I think they're very wrong. I think the distinct European innovation of chocolate is to add sugar to it. Yes. And this raises the very bleak question where does sugar come from and the answer of course is slavery sugar is one of the primary crops of slave economies in both the colonies and the west indies it is one of the key elements of the so-called triangle trade where you know you may have you probably have learned this in school i but you know for people who've been out of school for a long time so the triangle trade where you know you may have you probably have learned this in school i but you know for people who've been out of school for a long time so the triangle trade is europe sends

manufactured goods to africa it trades that for enslaved people enslaved people are taken from africa to the colonies and sometimes to america sometimes to the the colonies in the west indies uh and then they take you know the products of slavery from plantations back to Europe, and that's rice, indigo, tobacco, cotton, molasses, rum, and critically sugar back to Europe. Actually, wait, did they teach you the triangle trade? Yes. I mean, I did learn.

My Christian homeschooling curriculum wasn't the best, but we did cover some basic things it's interesting because the the triangle trade as a model like isn't that old even though even though like this is the way that we all understand like how the sort of colonial trade work it's a kind of recent thing yeah so sugar sugar is a very very key part of this entire thing and there's a very very famous sort of classic study of sugar and slavery is uh sydney w mitz's sweetness and power which is a fundamental tax in a lot of sort of uh i don't know a lot of the sort of fields around the study of slavery and one of his arguments is that the british industrial proletariat is fueled by slave

sugar because the sugar is a stimulant that you know they're putting it in tea which another stimulant they're putting it in whatever they drink and this is a thing that allows them to keep working for longer than they otherwise would have been able to yeah and this also was the origin of britain's probably largest cultural trait bad teeth um yeah and you know so so this is this is this is a many aspects of british culture are descended from from slavery and you know but but the other the other important thing for our story is that sugar is what makes chocolate sort of palatable to Europeans. And this is a sort of interesting thing that Europeans do. You know, they do this with tobacco, too.

You have something that you're only supposed to use in fairly small amounts for ritual purposes, right? And the Europeans are like, okay, but what if we purified the shit out of it and they just ate it literally every day? Yeah. Have you ever tried like unsweetened 100% like chocolate liquor uh it fucking sucks i hate it it's not good you can certainly nibble it can be a fun novelty to nibble but you certainly wouldn't want to eat like a whole bar of it yeah it's it's some real oh boy yeah so like i, it makes sense that they added sugar to it. But the consequence of this is that we can ask we can finally ask the the wages of colonialism by the european empires and sugar a slave crop that drove the colonial plantation economy and you know you might you might say mia you're you know you're being harsh

here right even if we accept your argument about chocolate the 1600s surely surely that's not true now wasn't wasn't wasn't slavery abolished in the 1800s and now i assume i assume nestle's farming practices are totally above board see and this this is i think the interesting part of the story is i gare like our readers is assuming a thing i'm about to launch into here is the mars nestle child slavery lawsuit and we will because that is a critical element of slavery and chocolate production. But there is also still slavery and sugar production, capitalism. And not only is there slavery and sugar production, there is slavery and sugar production in the exact same places there were slavery and sugar production 500 years ago. And this is one of the sort of

stunning things about, you know, the the myths of capitalism, right, which is that, OK, capitalism has had four hundred. I'm going to give them a bit of credit and be like, OK, I don't know, like I'm going to I'm going to give capitalism a little bit of credit and give it only was being responsible for four hundred years of this and not five hundred years of this because, you know, whatever complicated arguments about whether the capitalist transition is in the 1500s, 1600s. But you know, they have had 400 years to solve the problem of slavery on Hispaniola. Has it done that? No, it is. There is still slavery on the island of Hispaniola 400 years later, defense ban your law 400 years later because we're going to be discussing in a second still the best possible thing here is that maybe and and and this is it is arguable maybe last year

we there stop being slaves there now i don't even think that i don't think that's true and we're going to get into to that but you know before before we sort of launch into you know what like whether or not there are still slaves on trigger plantations in the dominican republic if you have had 400 years to solve a problem and you have not solved it you are never going to solve it hey hey let's not let, let's not pigeonhole ourselves here. There's a lot of things that have been around for 400 years that ought not to be. That's true. But if you're, if you are an economic system and your economic system has been,

you are supposed to have, you are supposed to have dealt with this at least 200 years ago. But, you know, we've arrived here and this is something we've talked about before in this show at least a bit we've arrived here at one of the real weaknesses of both sort of liberal and radical accounts of of how the capitalist economy works because both sets of accounts take as their starting point the fact that capitalism is based on free labor that it's

free people who enter into contracts to sell you their labor and that forced labor is this sort of like hold over from older economic systems no i actually just saw a thing today on the dying remains of twitter about how capitalism is the only economic system that's not based that's not based on exploitation or violence it's based on free trade between markets and it's like people really believe this shit it's like i i i don't know like i don't know at some point i'm gonna do an episode about there's a really good book whose name i'm forgetting right now because i didn't look this up beforehand but there's a really good book on these sort of dueling forced labor systems driving the tea economy in the late 1800s so that there's there's one forced labor system in china and a different forced labor system in india that are both warring at each other to control the tea market

it is certainly interesting how much tea has impacted like geopolitics oh yeah yeah we'll we'll do an episode on that one day yeah tea's not that great guys i'm sorry it's fine not tea rips tea rips i would not we just don't have good tea here i would not do as much killing as people have done for oh no absolutely it's not worth killing anyone over the number of people who've been killed over it is like an early gray is fine on like a rainy afternoon but come on yeah it's not it's not worth like conquering continents for but okay so we'll back'll back to the sort of main plot that is not tea, that is in fact

chocolate. So one of the things that we can learn, that we learn from this is that forced labor is not just a holdover. It's been a central part of capitalism for as long as capitalism has existed and given its current track record it will be a part of capitalism for as long as it exists.

And so there's always been a racial component to this right this is like trivially obvious right like there's a racial component to slavery like holy shit it's mostly about race but i i think you know we can we can expand this a little bit and and it gets you to a some sort of interesting things which is that race is one of you know so like obviously capitalism is supposed to be based on wage labor but race is what mediates your access to wage labor in the first place so you know white like if you're an american right like white americans have basically always been able to get access to to wage labor you know and as shitty as wage labor is it's

it's not as bad as the other things you can get forced into you know but yeah so like if you're black like you know you get a successive forms of slavery if you're indigenous they tried to enslave you and then either sort of kept doing it or gave up and just killed just did the genocide uh asian people like on who came to this continent and also sort of the west indies largely get debt p and engine indentured servitude and you know you can and also sort of the West Indies largely get debt, P&E, and indentured servitude. And you can sort of work this out and so on and so forth. There's different like modes of stuff that are the normal sort of like what you by default

have access to if you are X race, right? Yeah. And obviously this sort of racial access to wage labor is spread across the world. You know, your access to wage labor is dependent on sort of your subject position as colonized or colonized as well as you know your sort of global and also your like local racial hierarchies because oh boy can that shit be really fucked up but the upshot of this is that many of the descendants of enslaved haitian people are still effectively enslaved today on sugar plantations in the dominican republic and so we're gonna we're gonna tell that story but first we're oh god do you know what does no i cannot guarantee that our products and

services are slave free like i wish i could but well do you know what is also here for a spooky time this halloween that's right these products and services okay we are back i'm drinking my not mocha coffee drinking my regular unsweetened coffees therefore totally fine no problems i'm sure there's nothing everything's all nothing bad nothing bad has ever happened in the history of coffee no i'm here no tea no chocolate i'm safe i'm good anyway so unfortunately the people who are not safe is uh haitians in the dominican republic so we are not going to do an entire history of slavery in the Dominican Republic because. Because this is a chocolate episode. And yeah, we have so much time.

Yeah. You know, for many reasons. But one of the things that happened in in. So we're going to we're going to look at sort of like the modern history of this. And by modern, I'm starting it and I'm starting in the 80s because I have to pick a place. Now, one of the things that happens in the 1980s is that the Dominican army effectively,

so goes into Haiti or just recruits Haitian people who are in the Dominican Republic and are like, hey, you're going to, okay, we have like jobs for you, like come, like do this work. And so a bunch of people get in like these like army vans and then a bunch of people get in like these

like army vans and then they get there and they get washed out of the van a bunch of guys point guns at them and go you're gonna work for free or we're gonna or like we're gonna kill you so this is really bad um and this is this is how a lot of like through the 80s and kind of early 90s this is how a lot of sugar production worked in the Dominican Republic and you know it's very notable here that Dominican Republic produces a lot of sugar and it produces a lot of sugar that specifically the U.S. uses now this is like state-run slavery right on sort of like state-run plantations so then we had neoliberalism and so the state-run plantations get privatized however comma they still run on slave labor so there's a very good mother jones uh report about

this i'm gonna i'm gonna read some of it here kakata is one of about a hundred according to a local missionary's estimate isolated camps camps scattered around Central Romana. Central Romana is a giant sugar plantation. Central Romana's 160,000 acres of sugar cane attract almost as big as New York City. Most of the workers and their families live in these batalles, rising in the morning to work the cane in the punishing heat, clearing weeds, slashing and spraying the stalks. Nearly all are men of Haitian descent. Some were trafficked back in the day of... clearing weeds, slashing and spraying the stocks. Nearly all are men of Haitian descent. Some were trafficked back in the day of,

the journalist who's doing this was the guy who basically uncovered a bunch of the original armies, like the military slavery program in the 90s. And so he went back like a couple of years ago. So he's talking about some of the people were trafficked back during the military slavery program. Others were born and lived stateless, and others came from Haiti more recently, paying smugglers to sneak them across the border. For years, the government has resisted providing legal status

to people of Haitian heritage in the country, even those born there. An estimated 200,000 people, who for generations have been demeaned by race and class, are stateless. For the men in the camps, Centra Romana is the state. Their villages are patrolled by armed company police empowered to evict. Centra Romana owns the land where the Haitians work, the rail cars where they weigh and load the cane and stocks,

and the dwellings where they sleep. They are miles from the nearest Dominican town not controlled by the company. So, things going great here um yeah and the conditions you know okay so so the the the sort of the capitalist reforms that neoliberalism has brought to this system are the number of child slaves has decreased dramatically because that was a big thing when the first reporting went out everyone was like holy shit there's a bunch of child slaves this is a terrible thing yeah so we have less child

slaves right we did it and you know so instead of of the child slaves right it's now mostly adults um but the conditions here are still effectively slavery even even after the sort of child slavery stuff like is driven under on a good day these workers make three dollars a day and they are effectively and sometimes literally unable to leave now there are a lot of reasons for this one of the big ones is that most of the workers there are most like basically all like you you might find a worker somewhere who isn't stuck in this but they're caught in these debt traps by Central Romana, who, and these are like classic company, but they're worse than like, you know,

the classic American company town, because at least in American company town, you can go to another town that is not controlled by the company, whereas these people like cannot. And so they're caught in these debt traps by Central Romana, which is the company that owns these plantations. And because they're caught in these debt traps by Central Romana, which is the company that owns these plantations. And because they're so in debt, they're constantly forced to work for the company in order to pay off their debt. But they never actually make enough money to pay the debt off,

and so they have to take on more debt to survive. And largely what happens is these people work there in debt until they die. This is classic debt P&N, where sort of debt transforms people into the effective property of the debt holder, who exacerbate the debt by denying them the ability to live without taking on more debt. A very common way this happens is with medical debt, which is something I think we're familiar with to some extent here, but is egregiously worse. And the other thing that I was realizing about this is that this is actually really eerily similar to the way that Cortez and the conquistadors enslaved indigenous people during the genocide. Yeah. They would do the same thing of like, well, okay, now you're in debt to me.

And because you can't pay the debt, you have 500% interest per week. So, you know, that just accumulates. And now you work for me for the rest of your lives. And so, you know, that just accumulates and now you work for me for the rest of your lives. And this is, you know, this is one of the, one of the sort of ways in which this, the long shadow of Spanish imperialism like looms over the Dominican Republic, even in what has really been about 200 years of the age of the American empire you know and and as you know obviously like as much of an effect as the spanish empire has had here and oh god it's not good today it is the american empire that lines the pockets of the slavers of the dominican republic so central romana is owned by this this family called the fun jewel family who are these uh cuban expats who run uh this like enormous resort and shit where they live in florida and are handed and this is really fun 150 million dollars

for the american state every year in the form of price supports for sugar so like you're an american right like obviously your your tax money very obviously goes to support slavery because we have prisons. And so your taxes are paying to enslave people, but your taxes are also paying for slavery in other countries. It's incredible. Really, really great stuff from the American political system here. And, you know, and the way this has been maintained is through like two i think in the last 20 years mother jones reported they've they've spent the sugar lobbyists spent 220 million dollars on campaign contributions and lobbying and it works really well they've been able to influence the

system for a very very long time the other funny thing about the fun jewel family is that they've created the perfect political trap which is so one of one of the brothers is like a Trump guy and the other person is a Hillary supporter. And they're both like incredibly enmeshed in both of the circles. So it's great. Things are going very good. So after so the Mother Jones investigation was like in the last I think it it was like last year the year before and when the mother jones investigation about the fact that like all of this shit was still happening came out uh there was a there was a giant uproar about it and a couple of things happened one is that so

the village that the journalists had visited uh central romana like they didn't even bulldoze the villages they blew everyone's houses down with like sledgehammers and forcibly moved them to like other villages and separated people's families so that's that's great and then so in late 2022 under under pressure from this reporting the u.s government like banned imports from that specific company and okay it's unclear what is going to happen with it if you know if they're going to get unbanned eventually uh if it's going to stick if they're just going to like i don't know like transfer the assets to another company or something and use that instead so as of right now this specific set of plantations is not able to export

sugar to the US so this is this is as much of a victory over slavery as we're going to get in this episode and this victory is incredibly that's not reassuring it's only going to get worse.

This is the peak of anti-slavery stuff we're going to see here. Yeah, so enjoy it while you can. And do you know what else you should enjoy? Oh, these products and services that support this podcast? That's good. Yes. This is the real peak of the episode, folks. All right, I am rejuvenated by the

advertising industrial complex i feel ready to hear other tales of great progress okay so now now we're now we're gonna turn to the type of slavery that everyone i think expected this episode to mostly be about which which is the fact that cocoa bean production is also largely produced by slave labor. So, OK, I'm going to I'm going to read a bit from a report by the Food Empowerment Project, which has done some very good work on most specifically slavery in West Africa. They're also one of the only media people I've ever seen talk about the fact that a lot of this stuff, it's not exactly the same, but a lot of the sort of slavery stuff also seems to be happening on plantations in Brazil.

But there's effectively no coverage of it that's not in Portuguese. I don't know. So like eventually, eventually one day, I guess, like the fact that other places other than West Africa have slavery will hit the anglophone media class or whatever. But until then, I'm going to read this section. In West Africa, cocoa is a commodity crop grown primarily for export. Cocoa is the Ivory Coast primary export and makes up about half the country's agricultural export in volume. Most cocoa farmers earn less than one dollar a day and income below the extreme poverty line as a result they often resort to the use of child

labor to keep their prices competitive in many cases yeah yeah this is one of the things that happens when you when you're reading about child slavery stuff is even people who like are trying to you know draw attention to how bad this is you get stuff like that that's like jesus christ this is yeah so they're making sub one dollar a day they're using child labor in many cases this includes what the international labor organization calls quote the worst form of child labor okay these are defined as practices quote likely to harm the health safety or morals of children approximately 2.1 million children in ivory coast and ghana work on cocoa farms most of whom are likely exposed to the worst form of child

labor which is also really good that like we've we've we've kept capitalism has finally reached the you know the apex of its control of the commanding heights of the world economy which means that we're talking about we're trying to make tier lists of how bad child labor is well yeah i mean a whole bunch of child labor laws just got like rolled back across many uh many states here yeah it's really good country so it's very exciting the children for the minds it's yeah it's it's it's it's great you know so so obviously a lot of the the the child slavery on cocoa farms are from sort of like larger i mean i guess they are corporate but from sort of like larger plantations but also lest you think that it's better on family farms no family farms I mean I guess

it is technically better than like being kidnapped and enslaved is merely doing child labor on your family's like cocoa farm just just being born into these pretty pretty uh not great labor practices that you really have no say in or any agency whatsoever yeah yeah and like you know this is one of these things where like the economic conditions are so bad that people are people are facing impossible choices and and i think we can say that they make the wrong choice which is a lot of okay so like there are there are sort of different ways that children get trafficked into slavery work um a lot of them are sold by their own families who do not have enough resources to take care of them and are like okay we'll we'll basically sell these people so

they can go do this job and these families don't know that like their child was about to be enslaved right they're just like, okay, well, they're going to go off and do work. But the other way that this happens is that kids from like villages in other countries, like there's a lot of focus on Molly as one of the places this happens from. But yeah,

so there's a lot of these effect what are effectively raids into, into Molly from the ivory coast to like steal children and it also happens in bikini foso you know and this gets to the point where you know i'm gonna read a quote from one of these uh from from this report again in one village in bikini foso almost every mother in the village has had a child trafficked onto cocaine farmsffickers will then sell children to cocaine farmers. So, this is like the worst paranoid fantasies of every American right-winger, except it's, you know, this is just how chocolate is made. Yeah, this is, you know, all of the Sound of Freedom guys

with all of, you know, the whole uproar around that movie earlier this year versus all of them uh yeah enjoying their little m&ms and kit kats and hey i i like the occasional kit kats too this is this is a a massive problem i i don't know i really love chocolate I have not eaten any chocolate since I started researching this and I like but it sucks because it's like you can't you can't I mean we're going to get into more of this in a second but like you can't like

ethically consume your way out of this right like because the conditions but free trade cocoa exists oh boy yeah we're going to get into that but yeah like there's there's no there's no actual systemic like there's no way that you can like you can't change this stuff with your individual consumption habits and you know that's something that's just really fucking bleak about this because these conditions are i mean as bad as you can possibly imagine.

Um, but the food empowerment project describes like children as young as five are forced to work up to 14 hours a day, like chopping down cocoa pods and then chopping them open with machetes. And sometimes these people get, sometimes these kids are using chainsaws to like clear wood, like clear down like forests. Yeah.

And you know, okay. So this goes exactly how you expect it to go which is a bunch of these kids just have a bunch of fucking scars from they've been slashed by machetes because again you are handing machetes to children some of whom are as young as five and then they have to carry a hundred pound bags of cocoa beans through the jungle and this is the thing that's also happening in the Dominican Republic and this happens a lot in a lot of places is that they just get you know when companies want to spray like their farms with

pesticides right they don't even bother even like clearing people out which might you know help like a tiny bit to make them not like die from fucking poison but no like these fucking dipshits just like spray them with toxic chemicalsits just like spray them with toxic chemicals as just like spray them with pesticides like a lot of whom are christinogens um a lot of and this is happening in the dominican the sugarcane fields in the dominican republic too and a lot of those people just fucking died because you know they were straight with these chemicals there was a really terrible story of a of a guy who was trying to sue Central Romana and just fucking died from the like he wasn't able to get a lawsuit because he died in 2020 before the lawsuit could finish. So here's another great quote from the Food Empowerment Project.

The farm owners using child labor usually provide the children with the cheapest food available, such as corn paste or the cassava and bananas that grow in the surrounding forest. In some cases, the children sleep on wooden planks in small windowless buildings without access to clean water or sanitary bathrooms. And, you know, another key part of this, right, is like, okay, so the conditions are obviously unbearably bad, but, you know, a key part part of this like any system of slavery is the physical violence against the enslaved people who are repeatedly and often beaten and abused and tortured in ways that are very reminiscent of sort of like older epochs of slavery if they try to escape now this is the companies care about this to the extent that it's bad pr yes and the chocolate companies repeated like the chocolate companies okay they they signed a thing in the year 2000

where they said we're going to eliminate child's the worst forms of child slavery by 2005 yeah like this is this has been a known issue for, like, over two decades. Now, Garrison, yes, what year is it right now? The year of our Lord, 2023. Yeah, they have been promising to end child slavery in these... No, no, no, no. The worst forms of child slavery. So, originally, they were supposed to be ending child slavery, and then they scaled it down to the worst forms. Only the worst.

But they had been promising to do this for longer than you have been alive. Yes, correct. Which is terrifying. Yes. And as we'll get into later, right, the number of child slaves is higher than it was when they started doing these child slave reduction efforts so quote-unquote reduction efforts which are just sort of pr bullshit so industry lobbying groups are also very very powerful and this is part of part of how this stuff persists so the university of chicago has a center called norac which is like a public

research center um i don't know. I went to that fucking school. I don't trust any of these motherfuckers and neither should you because it turns out there was so, okay. So they released this report on how bad child slavery is, right? But there was a leak of the original version of the report that was supposed to come out. I mean, the original version of the report has the number of child slaves at like 2.2 million. Now, when the report actually comes out with no justification whatsoever and using a bunch of numbers for child slavery

that are from before COVID-19, the NORAC report was like, ah, there's only like 1.6 million child slaves. So 600,000 child slaves just sort of vanished in an editorial process after they got they came under fire from uh the they came under fire from the chocolate lobby yeah yeah let's uh let's round that down it makes it makes it easier to palace and and the other thing that it hides is that there's been a 10 to 15 percent increase in the number of child slaves working in like in the in Coco since COVID started, because COVID has been a giant sort of, you know, the economic damage that COVID caused. Forced a bunch of people into into, you know, increasingly desperate things.

And, you know, OK, so we tease this a little bit. You might be thinking, well, I can eat fair trade chocolate, right? I can pay ten dollars for a chocolate bar. So it's fair trade on it and it will and that will make sure that I'm only eating chocolate produced by free labor. Nope. The certifications for the chocolate are fucking bullshit. You're still eating slave chocolate. The follow is an excerpt from a study conducted by the Corporate Accountability Lab on the failure of initiatives in the chocolate industry like certifications. Quote, In order to understand the gap between consumer perception and farmer impact better, we brought

certified chocolate bars to villages where some or all of the farmers were certified. We held up the bar with the label and explained to the farmers what consumers expected out of the label. Primarily that farmers were paid a fair price, earned a decent living, and certain practices like child labor and deforestation were not present. We also explained the difference in retail price between fair trade and uncertified chocolate. The overwhelming response from farmers to this information was shock and outrage. One farmer pulled out his worn shirt in front of him and asked if it looked like he earned a decent living. A woman in one village said she can hardly afford to send her children to school, so how could anyone think she earned a fair price? Our farmer

consultations revealed virtually imperceptible differences between certified and uncertified farms in terms of living incomes, poverty, education, access to health care, farmer bargaining power, or access to information. So, yeah, all the people who are telling you they're doing some fair trade shit, they're keeping your money, and the places they're getting it from are as fucked as Hershey's. Yeah. So this is bad.

Now, you might also think, okay, we can get out of this by buying from Cocoa Cooperatives, except, except and this is a wonderful thing that capitalism has brought on the world. Most Cocoa Collectives aren't actually like workers collect, like aren't actually co-ops.

No, I'm sure they're all People's Republic of like aren't actually co-ops they're just sort of people's republic of chocolate farmers I'm sure they're all reciting the little red book this is something actually this is something that China actually pioneered because there's there's a bunch of firms in China that are also tech

I talked about this in my did an episode a bastard episode a long time ago about this milk company that poisoned 300,000 babies. And that company was technically a co-op, but like it was a co-op in the sense that there was a small group of workers who were basically managers who owned shares. And then they just hired every source,

everything out to independent contractors. So it functioned like a normal company. Yeah. And this is a thing a lot. This, the cocoa trade stuff is actually worse because most of these things that are called co-ops aren't even co-ops at all they're just set up by coco growers as like fake co-ops and they were they're like a very very small number of of these coco farms that are actually workers cooperatives but there's no way to tell which one

is which unless you spend a bunch of time like actually going and tracking the cooperatives down so there's no sort of like ethically way out of this right you're just kind of you're you know like you can't you can't eat your way out of this problem and of course everything across the board all the these conditions have gotten worse since the pandemic so you know it's it's not only is capitalism not making things better every like things are in fact getting worse now all right i promised you the lawsuits uh we're gonna talk a bit about the lawsuits so there were actually two big lawsuits there were eight people from mali who were enslaved by coco plantations after being trafficked from mali sued nestle car Cargill, Berry, Calabar. I don't know some French shit.

Mars, Olam, Hershey's and Modeles to try to get compensation from the companies by virtue of the fact that the companies sold products made by their child slave labor. Yeah. Now, there's also a separate lawsuit against slightly different companies a lot of the same company is slightly different that's using a different set of legal arguments both of the lawsuits have been thrown out and i want to take a second to look at the reasoning here both of which are sort of just amazing so i think the most famous one is the supreme court's eight to one decision that said well so like all this stuff happened but it happened outside the US so you can't sue companies for it here

which is an amazing piece of logic which is just like oh yeah no actually like corporations like American corporations could just go everywhere else and do crimes and this is and the American legal system is specifically written in such a way that like if an American corporation enslaves you in

like the ivory coast there's nothing you can do about it in the u.s and then a judge in dc threw out the other case because you know their argument was well you can't prove that the companies knew you were being enslaved on those farms there's no quote traceable connection between the people who enslaved you in the company so there's nothing we can do and the reason both these arguments work is the reason for the structure of the chocolate market right the reason cocoa plantations in the ivory coast and also brazil can get away with this you know well the reason that those plantations are in the ivory coast or brazil or other places the reason they're happening there and not in the US is because these are places

where you can get away with that level of exploitation and corporate violence that, you know, in the US would be a lot more difficult. And this shields them from legal liability. Furthermore, instead of just, you know, jumping, instead of just running the cocoa plantations themselves, which these companies could easily do, right? This is a

very, very large trade. They could just sort of like, they could just vertically, not evenations themselves, which these companies could easily do, right? This is a very, very large trade. They could just sort of like, they could just vertically, vertically, not even vertically integrate. They could just actually make chocolate. Like they could just run the process and they just, they very specifically choose not to do it. And the reason they choose not to do it, this is an a hundred billion dollar industry, right? But, but instead they, what they choose to do is to just buy cocoa from the chocolate market where all these nebulous producers sell, which allows the chocolate companies to go, oh, well, these people don't work for us. We just buy chocolate from the market.

How are we supposed to know which of these plantations use slave labor? So it puts like a one degree of separation. Yeah. Well, it's actually two degrees. It's an additional degree of separation from the way something like walmart works right where walmart has a bunch of independent contractors this isn't even contractors they're just buying finished products from things they're like they're completely unaffiliated with and this gives them like it gives them like two degrees of legal separation because it's not it's not just that their contractors are doing something that they didn't

know about. It's that they're just buying it. Right. And this fucking sucks. And, you know, since laws exist to protect the ruling class, judges and courts can just wave their hands and go,

well, these companies definitely enslaved you, but we, we have no choice, but to let them off completely scot-free so sorry about that and I want to end today with something that has been running through my mind

since I fucking started researching this which is that the bourgeoisie must pay for their crimes, the state has failed, the court has failed, the NGOs have failed and if anything is ever going to fucking happen that forces these companies to be in any way, if there's to be like a single iota of justice

for the fact that all of these companies have been fucking gorging themselves on the profits of slave labor at all, we are going to do it or no one is. So congratulations, you, the American worker. It is unfortunately incumbent on you to deal with these fucking corporations that have been destroying the entire world so yeah happy spooky week everyone yes this is very scary yeah well thank you for that lovely uh

Well, thank you for that lovely, depressing presentation, Mia. I mean, I guess, is there a sort of takeaway besides there's no ethical consumption under capitalism? I mean, capitalism will never abolish slavery. I know there is one U.S. state where they grow chocolate, which is Hawaii, which has its own problems of colonization. So even if you try to buy from a place that is, you know, arguably has less chocolate slavery, it's generally better produced. It still is. You're still implicating yourself in all of the problems relating to like the independence of that island and the US's colonization so it's we're really just

kind of trapped on all sides here is what it feels like in terms of this Halloween chocolate problem yeah I mean I think the way to think about this right is that this is an actual systemic issue, right? This is a systemic thing capitalism has been doing for about 400 years, like since its entire existence.

And if you want to end it, you have to actually – it's not even enough to destroy these companies, right? Because even if you brought down every single one of these chocolate companies, right? There would just be another round of chocolate companies that would be doing exactly the same shit. So you have to destroy the system of property by which these things are allowed to exist. And at that point, maybe you can start on being able to eat food that

isn't produced by slave labor. It turns out Willy Wonka was the villain the whole time. You know, I was trying to think about the amount of slave labor that we see from him versus the amount of slave labor in actual chocolate. We see a lot of slave labor from Willy Wonka. I think Wonka is using more slave labor, but not by as much as it should be. I don't know.

I don't know. It's hard to say. I think it's pretty clear that Wonkaoo's of slave labor is just an accurate representation of the real life chocolate industry. Yes. So, yeah, go go go enjoy your weekend and then go enjoy that new fucking Twink Wonka movie that looks, I have to say, dog shit. Oh, yeah. Bad, terrible, bad idea. Oh yeah. Terrible. Bad casting. Worst idea anyone's had since capitalism. Twink Wonka, I'm sorry. It doesn't slap. Zero out of ten.

Anyway, well, tune in in the next few days for two more Spooky Week episodes for you. We only got three this week because there's a lot of other news happening, but we at least have two other Spooky Week episodes that I am about to finish working on so stay tuned for that goodbye hey we'll be back monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe

it could happen here as 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.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow Broth. Thanks for listening. terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions.

Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. New episodes every Thursday. You've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards.