It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 183

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Starting point is 00:02:27 new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Hello and welcome to Icarapin here. This may be my final episode on Latin American anarchism. That is, we've covered Peru, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, the many countries of Central America, the former countries of Gran Colombia, and the Hispanafón Islands and the Caribbean. Now we're finally getting to the big one, Mexico. And I say we because I'm here with- Garrison Davis. Hello. This has been, it's got to be like a year long series now, right? At this point, yeah. It's been, it's got to be like a year long series now, right?

Starting point is 00:03:05 At this point, yeah. It's been going on for some time. With breaks in between and everything. I'm very, very excited. Yeah. To introduce myself real quick, I'm Andrew Sage. You can find me on YouTube at Andrewism, and be sure to check out the show notes for all the references,

Starting point is 00:03:21 including Angel Capuletti's anarchism in Latin America, which was an indispensable resource for the entirety of this project. Without further ado, Fávános. We have a lot to cover. Mexico is a massive and storied country, so I can only really give you a gist of its pre-colonial and colonial history for the necessary context. We have to start thousands of years before

Starting point is 00:03:45 the name Mexico or Mexico even existed, of course. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the land we now call Mexico is home to some of the world's most unique ancient civilizations. First came the Olmecs, often called the mother culture of Mesoamerica, known for their colossal stone heads and influence on later cultures. Then the Maya, with their dazzling cities, mathematics, and calendars. And eventually the Aztecs, who built the grand empire settled on Tenochtitlan, which is now Mexico City. Unfortunately, we can't spend much time on this rich history. We must progress to the time of European contact. In 1519, everything changed.

Starting point is 00:04:26 Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes arrived and within just two years, the mighty Aztec Empire fell. Disease, alliances with native enemies of the Aztecs, technological advantages, and brutal warfare aided the Spaniards in overthrowing a civilization of millions. What followed was three centuries of colonial rule under New Spain, marked by extraction, Catholic conversion, and the mixing, often violently, of indigenous European and African peoples. By the early 1800s, the winds of independence were finally blowing.

Starting point is 00:05:00 A Catholic priest named Miguel Hidalgo sparked the fight with a cry for freedom in 1810. Specifically, he sought the end of rule by Spanish peninsulars, which are the people who came from Spain and ruled over Mexico. He called for the equality of races, and he called for the redistribution of land. As Angel Capulete put it in Anarchism and Latin Miracle, Hidalgo proposed to abolish, even if by gentle and gradual means, what he called in almost Pridonian terms the horrible right of territorial property, perpetual, hereditary and exclusive. This whole land topic is going to come up a lot in the history by the way.

Starting point is 00:05:40 You may be familiar with the phrase, land and freedom, tierra y libertad, that comes from Mexico. Anyway, it took more than a decade of war, but by 1821, Mexico had finally broken free from Spain. Freedom though, didn't mean stability. The 19th century saw emperors come and go, cause there was actually a time when Mexico was a monarchy, foreign invasions by the United States via the Manifest Destiny, and Napoleon's France via Monarchical Latin League, and internal power struggles. The Zapotec president Benito Juarez, who from 1864 to 1867 had resisted foreign

Starting point is 00:06:18 occupation by Napoleon's Emperor Maximilian and fought for constitutional reform, sought to stabilize, secularize, and modernize the country. In the mid-1800s, figures like Juarez led a sweeping movement against the old powers of Mexico, the Catholic Church and the military, which had long dominated both land and politics. Through the layers de reforma, they seized church property, secularized education, and promised a new era of rights and equality. But there was a catch. Because to weaken the church, the liberals sold off its land, not to the peasants or indigenous communities who had worked on it for generations, but to wealthy buyers. Ejidos, the communal lands of indigenous peoples, were privatized.

Starting point is 00:07:06 Under this liberal banner of freedom and progress, they created a new class of landlords and pushed rural people deeper into poverty. Benito Juarez died, but his legacy lived on with those reforms to cement the separation of church and state, freedom of religion, the prohibition of forced labour, and so on. But following him came the Porfiriato, a 30-year long dictatorship under the Mixtec president Porfirio Diaz, who continued the modernization of the country but also deepened its longstanding inequalities. Porfirio Diaz surrounded himself with intellectuals known as the scientificos. They were positivists, as in adherents of the Positivist School of Philosophy, which advocated for rational planning and economic development as a path to

Starting point is 00:07:51 social progress. His slogan was Pan o Palo, the bread or the stick, and reflected the policy of rewarding compliance with prosperity while punishing dissent with severe consequences. in compliance with prosperity while punishing dissent with severe consequences. The liberty, order, and progress equation sacrificed liberty, as the Mexican people were expected to trade freedom for the benefit of these policies. Workers ended up facing low wages, long hours, and of course, lacked rights, while estate laborers were landless and under the arbitrary rule of mayordomos. Education was largely restricted to elites in major cities. Groups like the Yaqui Indians were forcibly relocated as cheap labor to plantations. Governors, though supposedly

Starting point is 00:08:37 elected, were effectively presidential appointees, monitored by jefes politicos to intervene the local affairs. The Rularis, an elite constabulary, maintained order but often disregarded due process, which fostered a whole reign of terror in the rural areas. Diaz's popularity eventually waned as prosperity was monopolized by a small, often foreign elite. This elite emulated European customs, which created a stark divide with the growing proletariat and middle classes. By the second half of the 19th century, Mexico was caught in a contradiction.

Starting point is 00:09:13 A state that promised emancipation through property rights, while dispossessing the very people it claimed to free. The liberal project had failed them, and in its failure, space opened for deeper critiques of property, power, and the state itself. A younger generation began questioning the system, and with this rising criticism came rising repression, which set the stage for the Mexican Revolution of 1910. This whole era of like the of like the turn of the millennia, and the start of the 20th century has like so much of this same

Starting point is 00:09:56 stuff happening all over the world. Like that's kind of one of the biggest trends that we've been able to see throughout your Latin American anarchism series is like how how much they all mirror each other and like how much of like a global movements used to exist like not not like a organized fashion but like there's like some like other force that is that is like a driving these like Global trends of like revolt and revolution. Yeah, And like we see this a lot in like the yeah, like the 1910 to 1920 time period.

Starting point is 00:10:28 I mean, even just in Latin America. Absolutely. I also think, of course, it's really easy to notice these trends and notice these tides of history in retrospect. You know, when you're submerged in it, it's just like, you know, all these conversations and stuff happening for sure, all these events and stuff happening around you. But as we might look in the past, you could say, oh, wow, this was like a global pattern. You know, so I'm always curious to see, like, when we look back,

Starting point is 00:10:55 I mean, the 2010s are already over. The narratives around it are still formulating, right? We're still in the midst of the 1920s, the 2020s. So, you know, the narratives around it will still be developing all now. But we're already halfway through and I'm sure people have already seen certain trends that are going to make for some excellent retrospective commentary. Definitely, yeah. Like the past 10 years, we've seen this like global far right power grab and this like rebirth of right-wing populism sweeping a whole bunch of neoliberal democracies like post-90s, post-war on terror, post end of history stuff where you see like the full extent of like the Clinton, Reagan, Thatcher economics completely crumble

Starting point is 00:11:39 with far-right populism like taking over the reins of most popular consciousness, to the point where even like the more like liberal parties are being, quote unquote, forced to adopt like similar rhetoric, looking at like the Labour Party in the UK and here in the States, how much like the Democratic Party last year, like completely caved on like far-right populist talking points on immigration and stuff. Exactly. I think part of it as well is a failure to advance a positive direction and a positive program. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:12:13 You know, when we allow the tunes of discourse, the arena of discussion to be dictated by the right, when we simply react to what they are saying, when we simply respond to their policies and their efforts, you know, we may slow down the progress of their goals, but ultimately, as long as we are engaging in dialogue with their goals, they are slowly inching their goals closer and closer to reality. Yeah, yeah, that is certainly the trend that I've been seeing the past 10 years, and I'm sure many people have. Yeah, I mean, the Overton window is pretty much entirely dictated by what they decide.

Starting point is 00:12:48 You know, I think I've mentioned this before. The right decided they wanted to talk about critical race theory, and then critical race theory became the center of conversation. The right decided they wanted to target... DEI, gender ideology. Right, yeah. And then that becomes the whole thing is the whole center discussion. They're not putting forward the policies that are going to hurt pretty much everybody as the center of their policy.

Starting point is 00:13:14 That's more like an aside thing. Only when they give themselves salary raises and the cut taxes on the rich. That's not the center of the political messages. The center of their political messages, you know, various cultural related issues that they can use to rally their base. But it's nothing that's actually benefiting people. You know, and instead of circumventing that effort to dictate the course of conversation, dictate our own conversations, instead of just following along the tale. But that's a bit outside the scope of this digression here.

Starting point is 00:13:52 Before we get to the point of the Mexican Revolution though, we should really take a look at the slow and steady development of radical ideas in Mexico during the 19th century. You see, indigenous resistance persisted throughout Mexico's history through often quiet revolt, acts of non-cooperation that would steadily ensure that Spain could never fully establish its dominion. Even after independence, the colonial structure lived on in the haciendas, the church and the state, so the indigenous communities would continue to resist, sometimes in profoundly anti-authoritarian ways. By the 19th century, and this history is courtesy Angel Capuleti's anarchism in Latin America, as I mentioned, in 1861 a man arrived in Mexico with a very distinct name.

Starting point is 00:14:36 He was Protino Constantino Rocañati. He was a Greek immigrant, radicalized by the revolutions in Europe and steeped in the works of Fourier, who was a utopian socialist, and Peron, who was an anarchist. He had fled the counter-revolutionary tide crashing over the continent with a mission. Rurikonati believed Mexico, with its long-standing indigenous traditions of communal landholding and mutual aid, was the perfect place to plant the seeds of a new utopian society. And in a lot of ways, he was right. He saw in the Ejido system, the indigenous communal land tenure, a living echo of the kind of society utopians in Europe could only dream of. Where the liberal elite saw backwardness,

Starting point is 00:15:21 Rudrakanati saw potential. His aim wasn't to civilise these communities, but to learn from them and help them protect their autonomy from the encroaching state through political philosophy and praxis. He seems to be a very interesting fellow, by the way. I mean, he apparently spoke seven languages. He practiced medicine by day and philosophy by night. He was a Christian, but not anything like the Christians that dominated Mexico at the time. Because as Angel Capuleti put it, for him the essence of Christianity is charity, that

Starting point is 00:15:53 is, love for all, as it is taught in the Gospels. And that essence is the moral foundation of socialism and revolution as well. Pure Christianity, he wrote, is the religion that will regenerate the world when people finally come to understand the power of its basic principles – liberty, equality, and fraternity. But it is Christianity without dogma, like St. Simon's, and without priesthood, liturgy, or hierarchical organization – the model for which he finds the life of Jesus and his earliest followers.

Starting point is 00:16:21 Primitive Christianity is authentic Christianity, but has been entirely degraded by the Catholic and Protestant churches, and has nothing to do with so many sects that call themselves Christian." A few months after his arrival in 1861, he published a socialist primer in Mexico that marked him as the first anarchist to put forward distinctly anarchist theory in the country. In the mid-1860s, he formed a group called La Social, the goal of spreading the ideas of mutualism, free association, and anti-capitalist cooperation through books, pamphlets, and education.

Starting point is 00:16:54 Hirokanate and his collaborators launched worker schools aimed at promoting literacy, political consciousness, and autonomy. One such school was the Escuela del Rayo y del Socialismo. The school of lightning and socialism. Hell yeah. It combined moral instruction with a deep critique of the exploitative labor system. This was education as a rebellion. Not just to read, but to recognize the exploitation and to imagine alternatives. Rudiconati thought of his socialism as the fullest expression of the French revolutionary

Starting point is 00:17:27 motto of liberty, equality, and fraternity, which no half-measure like liberalism could ever reach. He recognized that the immediate objective must be, quote, the extinction of poverty, the distribution and increase of the commonwealth, the abolition of prostitution, and the conservation of all our faculties, including the intellectual, physical, of prostitution, and the conservation of all our faculties, including the intellectual, physical, and moral ones, for the transformation of humanity through science, beauty, and virtue." One of those things was not like the other, as I'm sure you noticed.

Starting point is 00:17:56 There was a standout inclusion there, but it makes sense considering his background. He also saw himself as a cosmopolitan, perhaps owing in part to his unique circumstances as a man with a Greek father, Austrian mother, a French education and Mexican home. He said quote, we are cosmopolitans by nature, citizens of all nations and contemporaries to all the ages. The greatest and most heroic human actions belong equally to all." In other words, our country is the entire world and all men are our brothers. He also wrote that, the abolition of all government in the nations which frightens you and you

Starting point is 00:18:37 consider impossible and absurd, though you've never tried it, will usher in a totally new world of institutions in which the peoples of the world will live in happiness." Robert Conati was a pacifist in his approach to anarchism, which owed to his original introduction to socialism being via Charles Fourier. But eventually he came to understand the need for a class struggle, as he said quote, a social revolution in which many heroic victims will be sacrificed in the sacred altar to restore the justice denied to the people. His work attracted young radicals, many of whom would later play key roles in the development

Starting point is 00:19:23 of Mexico's labour movement. Before he started La Social, he had initiated the first grupo de estudiantes socialistas, from which came figures such as Santiago Villanueva, who tried to organise the workers' movement, Hermenegildo Villavicencio, and Francisco Zaracosta, a leader of rural masses. It's the core of this group that would help him to create La Social, which would educate and agitate but also assist workers beyond mutual aid to an active class struggle posture in defense of their interests against bosses. So basically, he took these mutual aid societies and made sure that they didn't stay mutual aid societies, that they were radicalized into resistance societies. Because those sort of mutual aid associations were very common in Latin America at the time. Workers would create these little groups where they would try and support each other.

Starting point is 00:20:12 But it's very easy to fall back on that and to assume that's all you have to do. Making sure that they have a radical posture, a revolutionary posture, is important to ensure that you're not just resting your laurels and expecting change to come to you. And indeed, they did not expect the change to come to them. In June 1865, these resistance societies supported the first industrial strike in Mexico. Unfortunately, it was crushed by the leader of the country at the time, Emperor Maximilian, but it was his occupation and the economic harshness

Starting point is 00:20:45 of it all that fomented the spread of anarchist ideas. Another student out of the Rocanates schooled Kim Julio Chavez, a precursor to the more famous Emiliano Zapata and a fervent anarchist communist. He agitated for peasant rebellion and engaged in land expropriations, which grew in popularity wherever he was active, from the Chalcotecsoco region where he began, to all the states of Puebla and Morelia. As Capuletti recounts, quote, the Federal Army finally moved against him and defeated and imprisoned he was executed in 1869 by order of President Benito Juarez. Before he died, Chavez cried out, Long live socialism. His manifesto, which was written a few months before he died, would help introduce more

Starting point is 00:21:30 masses in the Mexican movement to the idea of class struggle. And like a light bulb over one's head, it immediately made it clear who was responsible for their suffering. Santiago Villanueva and a fellow student of Arroganati named Villa Vicencio worked arduously to organise the artisans and workers in Mexico City. But they helped to organise an industrial strike in a textile mill in 1868. In 1869 they established the Circulo Peraltario and in 1870 the Gran Circulo de Obreros de Mexico and in 1871 the newspaper El Socialista.

Starting point is 00:22:06 And this is when the red and black so famously associated with anarchism came into the Mexican workers movement. The 1870s saw struggles between radical and moderate factions among workers, proletarian presses making a name for themselves, and the first convention of the General Workers Congress of the Mexican Republic in 1876, with a manifesto that indicated the growing influence of libertarian ideology in Mexico. Of course, there was a tension in that congress between the socialists and the anarchists, but water is wet. Sadly, Mexico wasn't ready for revolution.

Starting point is 00:22:40 Or rather, the ruling class wasn't. While Rota Canati and others sowed seeds among students and workers, the country was swinging toward reaction. As I mentioned earlier, with the rise of Forfeiro Diaz in 1876, any space for radical thought began to close. Diaz, the strong man of modernization, was obsessed with order and progress. He welcomed foreign capital, built railroads across the nation, and gutted the countryside to make room for exports. And he crushed dissent.

Starting point is 00:23:12 While Rui Canati avoided outright persecution, thanks in part to his foreign status in Pasifest Lenin's, the educational projects he inspired were dismantled or sidelined. The more confrontational elements of the early anarchist current went underground. Those who spoke of abolishing property or questioned the Porphyrian vision of modernity were met with jail, exile, or worse. Rodeclarity's allies Alacosta, through his newspaper La Internacional, promoted a 12-point socialist agenda advocating a universal social republic, municipal autonomy, workers' rights, worker associations, wage abolition, and property equality. Despite Diaz's rise, in 1877 he led a present uprising in Sierra Gorda and Planes de la

Starting point is 00:23:55 Baranca, battling federal forces until 1880. Despite his defeat and imprisonment in 1881, the rebellion persisted. Santa Costa's ally, Colonel Alberto Santa Fe, introduced the Ley del Pueblo, influenced by MacUnin's ideas, though not a purely anarchist manifesto. This document emphasized land distribution, national industry promotion, army suppression, and free education. Santa Fe argued that true Mexican independence depended on reclaiming stolen lands, a movement which of course gained traction among the peasants. General Negrete supported Santa Fe's revolutionary efforts just as he had backed Chavez Lopez

Starting point is 00:24:35 and Salacosta earlier. Santa Fe's resistance against Diaz's dictatorship was more radical than mere electoral opposition. It aimed at transferring sovereignty to local municipalities and land to peasant collectors. However, by the 1890s, Diaz effectively suppressed most worker movements through bribery and repression. While industrial workers and miners fared slightly better than the peasants, wages steadily declined after 1898. Nurtucanati left Mexico in 1886 after giving over two decades of his life to the cause, but his two decades of sowing seeds would eventually flourish in the Mexican Revolution, which we'll be covering in the next episode.

Starting point is 00:25:15 Thanks for tuning in. I'm Andrasage, you can follow me on YouTube at Andrasung and Patreon.com slash St. Drew. Thanks again, this is it, good app and hail, all power to all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this Taser the revolution.

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Starting point is 00:27:51 or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcast. And it's going to take us to heal us. It's mental health awareness month. And on a recent episode of just heal with Dr. J, the incomparable Taraji P. Henson stopped by to discuss

Starting point is 00:28:17 how she's discovered peace on her journey. So what I'm hearing you saying is healing is a part of us also reconnecting to our childhood in some sort. You said I look how youthful I look because I never let that little girl inside of me die. I go outside and run outside with the dogs. I still play like a kid. I laugh, you know, I love jokes. I love funny. I love laughing. I laugh at myself. I don't take myself too seriously. That's the stuff that keeps you young and stops you from being so hard. I love funny. I love laughing. I laugh at myself. I don't take myself too seriously. That's the stuff that keeps you young and stops you from being so hard. To hear this and more things on the journey of healing, you can listen to Just Heal with Dr. J

Starting point is 00:28:55 from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything. In 1978, Roger Caron's first book was published and he was unlike any first-time author Canada had ever seen. Roger Caron was 16 when first convicted. He had spent 24 of those years in jail. 12 years in solitary. He went from an ex-con to a literary darling almost overnight.

Starting point is 00:29:28 He was instantly a celebrity. He was an adrenaline junkie and he was the star of the show. Go-Boy is the gritty true story of how one man fought his way out of some of the darkest places imaginable. I had a knife go in my stomach, puncture my skin, break my ribs, I had my guts all in my hands. Only to find himself back where he started. Roger's saying this, I've never hurt anybody but myself.

Starting point is 00:29:54 And I said, oh, you're so wrong. You're so wrong on that one, Roger. From Campside Media and iHeart Podcasts, listen to GoBoy on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to Get Up and Hear. I'm back with- Garrison Davis. Hello.

Starting point is 00:30:20 And I'm Andrasage, or Andrasum, on YouTube. Now, previously, we explored a lesser known chapter in Mexico's radical history. Before Magón, before the revolution, when a Greek emigre named Plotino Rurikonati arrived in the 1860s, convinced that Mexico's indigenous communal traditions could form the basis for a new anarchist society. Through schools, pamphlets, and mutual aid societies, he helped sow the first seeds of anarchist thought on Mexican soil. Some of his students pushed even further and flirted with many burgeoning streams of anarchism, even as Porfirio Diaz's regime clamped down on anything that challenged his

Starting point is 00:31:00 drive for order and progress. Rodric Anati faded from view and many of his students and associates had to go underground for a time, but the ideas would live on, like quiet sparks awaiting for the next revolt. And that next revolt would come in 1910, when the Mexican Revolution erupted. But keep in mind the context here. When we talk about revolutions, the focus tends to be on the flashpoints, the gunfire, the slogans, the major figures. And I will do a lot of focus on some of the major figures throughout this history. But we have to keep in mind that revolutions have roots that run deep, run deep below the surface. That revolutions

Starting point is 00:31:40 are often shaped by decades or centuries of injustice, and Mexico's revolution was no exception. Because for over three decades, Javier Diaz ruled Mexico with what was basically a velvet glove over an iron fist. He brought railroads and electrification, but also grave, grave costs for the rural poor, the indigenous communities, and the working classes. By 1910, thanks to his efforts, almost all the land in Mexico was in private hands. The rural poor now found themselves as peons and haciendas,

Starting point is 00:32:12 while those that fled to the city found themselves proletarianized, made to work at various industries for long hours, low pay and little protection. Despite appearance stable and efficient and orderly, the system in Mexico was profoundly unjust. And yet, many saw it as a model for progress in a region full of instability. A description that seems eerily familiar to the situation that's currently taking place in El Salvador. Beneath the polished veneer, tensions were brewing. Workers were organizing, journalists were risking their lives, teachers and lawyers and even wealthy landowners began to murmur about the need for reform.

Starting point is 00:32:57 And the countryside, those old communal memories refused to die. Even after the land was taken, the land was remembered. By the turn of the 20th century, Diaz approached his 80s with no successor in sight and the people were getting fed up. Which brings us into the first phase of the Mexican Revolution. According to Árjel Capuleti, the author of Anarchism Latin America and the main source of this episode, Francisco A. Madero wasn't quite a revolutionary. In all honesty, he just wanted to tweak the status quo, to keep a free market but ban the re-election of presidents. He came from money, he was an upper class intellectual,

Starting point is 00:33:35 a believer in parliamentary democracy and in free markets. He read the review Spirit Day religiously, it was a spiritualist journalism, and he believes in a kind of metaphysical liberalism, where good governance and good intentions could steer history in the right direction. Madero's party, the Partido Democrata, was formed with a single, clear goal. Ending Porfirio Diaz's decades-long grip on power. But some more radical forces, like Ricardo Flores Magón and the Partido Liberal Mexicano, or PLM, Madero's vision was nowhere near enough.

Starting point is 00:34:13 Don't get fooled by the name, by the way. The PLM had some revolutionary credentials. It started off as a simple, anti-clerical, anti-dictatorial party, but perhaps with the influence of North American and Spanish immigrant anarcho-syndical anti-dictatorial party, but perhaps with the influence of North American and Spanish immigrant anarcho-syndicalists, it eventually took on a libertarian character, guided also in part by the ideological evolution of Magon himself. It was neither liberal nor truly a party in the end, but rather a truly revolutionary libertarian organization. We'll get back to Magon's story in a second.

Starting point is 00:34:45 But the point is, when Magon was calling for social revolution, land redistribution, and workers' control of production, Madero merely wanted electoral reform. He had no real programme for agrarian justice and was, quote, generally indifferent to the problems of the Mexican masses, as Capuleti put it. Still, Madero's 1910 campaign electrified all of those who were yearning for change, revolutionaries and reformists alike. His challenge to Diaz helped ignite a broader uprising that managed to bring Madero into power in 1911.

Starting point is 00:35:19 Before we get into what happened during the Madero presidency, let's go back in time to follow Ricardo Flores Magón's story. Magón was born in 1873 in the village of San Antonio in Oaxachitlan, in Oaxaca. His roots straddled both indigenous and mestizo heritage. As a law student in Mexico City, he found himself swept into the tide of anti-government agitation. Before he even turned 20, he was jailed for the first time. He joined the radical press in 1893 with El Democrato, an anti-Diaz paper that the regime quickly snuffed out, but he wasn't deterred. In 1900, he co-founded Regeneracion, the publication that would become the voice of the Mexican left in the 20th

Starting point is 00:36:03 century. It was while behind bars where he often found himself that Magón encountered the ideas that would shape his life's work. Thanks to the library of liberal landowner Camilo Arriaga, he read the writings of Kropotkin and Malatesta, and through those texts, crystallized his anarchist vision. Now even though Magón's ideology incubated quietly in his early political life, it didn't stay buried for long. As his conflicts with the Diaz regime intensified, so too did the radicalism of his actions. He edited El Hijo del Ajizote, a satirical rag that earned him yet another stint in prison,

Starting point is 00:36:42 and after his release in 1904, Magon fled to Texas where he relaunched his generation with renewed poopers. By 1905, the paper had helped spark the creation of the Partido Liberal Mexicano, or PLM, which as I said wasn't much of a political party as it was a radical organ, though it did have some reformist demands mixed in. They were trying to soften their language, at times to appeal to conservative sympathizers of reform away from the ads. The PLM sought the abolition of the military tribunals, free secular education, workers' rights like the 8-hour workday and minimum wage, and the expropriation of idle lands.

Starting point is 00:37:19 In short, it went further than the 1917 constitution that would come a decade later. It could be seen as the crystallization of many of the Mexican Revolution's most popular aims. Magón and the PLM established alliances across borders, particularly among the industrial workers of the world. But that put a target on Magón's back for both Mexican and US authorities. You already know they can't be having solidarity like that. The Pinkerton's rolled up, backed in part by Diaz himself, and they were on Macron's tail constantly.

Starting point is 00:37:53 Even ended up as far north as Canada, just trying to escape their constant harassment. But despite the repression, their momentum could not be killed. Between 1906 and 1908, the PLM helped organize a string of strikes and uprisings. The most infamous was the Canary-Nair copper strike. Mexican miners were paid starvation wages while their American counterparts earned double for the same worth. When the miners struck for fair pay and better conditions, they were met with deadly force. The rebellion that followed saw American rangers and Mexican troops massacre more than 200 people, and thousands were jailed.

Starting point is 00:38:33 Another uprising ignited in Rio Blanco, where textile workers, already paid appitance, organized with the leadership of José Niera, a student of Magón. When negotiations failed and repression ramped up, the workers responded not with another petition, but with insurrection. On January 7th, 1907, they stormed the mill, freed prisoners, cut wires, and declared open rebellion. The state responded with a blood bath. Entire families were dragged from their homes and executed. Another one of the uprisings was a peasant revolt that began in 1906 in Akayukan and spread through Tuxlas, Minatitlan, and Tabasco.

Starting point is 00:39:12 It was crushed, of course. In 1908 in Villescas, though their plans had been leaked to the authorities, revolutionaries had a firefight with police and freed a town jail. Just two days later in Las Vacas, other students of Magone were fighting for justice. Another set of guerrillas arose in Palomas, but they failed. Yet another insurrection happened in Faya Dolid, Yucatan, and they suffered summary executions. And all those events, all those small revolutionary bands challenging the states, they failed. But they emboldened

Starting point is 00:39:45 the dream of a different world with their will to act. McGone was jailed again in 1907, but it wasn't over for him yet. And I really don't like to romanticize, you know, this idea of these uprisings that they fail, but, you know, they're still inspiring. We don't want to go too far into that where, you know, self-sacrifice for self-sacrifice sake, but I think it's important to point out that there were multiple failed attempts before the successful uprising that ushered in the Mexican Revolution. It wasn't you know a first time successful attempt. And by the time Magón was released from prison in 1910, the revolution had already begun to burn across Mexico and that is in part in thanks to the

Starting point is 00:40:37 efforts of those uprisings even though those individual uprisings failed. The Catalan immigrant Amadeo Ferez pumped up this energy in 1911 with El Tipografo Mexicano, yet another newspaper with a fierce anarcho-syndicalist spirit meant to mobilize urban workers. At the same time, old anarchist typographers were not only printing their message, they were forming unions like the Union de Canteras Mexicanos. In mid-1912, Juan Francisco Moncaliano arrived from Cuba and quickly rallied a diverse group of workers into Grupo Luz, set on establishing a progressive education platform, a la Francisco Ferrer. By September 1912, these unions and Grupo Luz united to form La Casa del Obrero, forging a distinctly

Starting point is 00:41:26 anarcho-synicalist identity. They organized lectures, built libraries of classic anarchist works, and launched a new bi-weekly called Lucha, all while energizing a massive May Day rally in 1913, where 20,000 workers rallied. Like Magón, these radicals saw through the hollow promises of Madero's democracy. Voting for a new president wouldn't free the peasantry. Legislative seats wouldn't redistribute land. No Congress, no matter how liberal, would ever voluntarily dismantle the system that

Starting point is 00:41:56 fed it. For them, revolution was no less than putting land and production in the hands of the people. No bosses, no landlords, no masters. Just workers, organising life on their own terms. Madero's revolution, if we could even be called that, had immobilised peasants, workers and radicals. But that moderate phase was about to end, because once seated as president, Madero leaned heavily on old elites. He really siphoned energy away from genuine social change with that reformist push he was doing. A move that sounds all

Starting point is 00:42:31 too familiar. Madero's refusal to enact meaningful change lost him as allies very quickly. Figures like Pasqual, Orozco and even Emiliano Zapata, who had initially supported the rebellion against Yaz, became disillusioned. So while Madero governed, the PLM continued its fight, now against the emerging new regime. In northern Mexico, PLM-aligned forces initially rose alongside Madero's, but did not make common cause with him. When strategic positions in Chihuahua were lost, with the middle class and Orozco siding

Starting point is 00:43:05 with Madero, the Morganists turned their attention elsewhere. The next target was Baja California. In early 1911, they began seizing towns. Mexicali, Los Algodones, Tecate, and finally Tijuana, seeking to establish a libertarian society, a model for what they called a free America. But the backlash was swift. American, British and French businesses owned pretty much all of Baja California. Landowners and newspaper moguls in California, USA, which were often the same people, panicked and ended up smearing the McGonest as secessionists

Starting point is 00:43:45 trying to hand over Mexican land to the US. In truth, as McGon wrote in Regeneration, does Baja California belong to Mexico? It does not. It is under the control of foreign capital. Mexicans owned nothing of it. The PLM's campaign was not about taking Mexico apart. It was about reclaiming it from the hands of foreign elites. Nothing less than land and liberty. As Capuleti put it,

Starting point is 00:44:11 quote, on the contrary, McGone's goal was nothing other than a classless and stateless libertarian society that would provide the archetype and point of departure for the Mexican and world revolution, end quote. The downfall of the Baja California campaign came at the hands of bourgeois champion Madero, backed by the US government and capitalists. By mid-1911, the McGonagall uprising in Baja California had effectively been extinguished. Yet the saga didn't end there. On the 14th of June in 1911, McGonagall and three of his associates were arrested, tried in Los Angeles, and Magón himself was sentenced to McNeill Island Prison in Washington State,

Starting point is 00:44:50 a fate he endured until 1914. Which meant that Magón wouldn't be present in Mexico for the death of one of his biggest ops. Since Madero failed to gain the support of radicals or secure the loyalty of reactionaries, the conservative military overthrew and assassinated him, installing Victoriano Huerta into power in 1930. And just like that, the so-called moderate phase of the Mexican Revolution ended in blood. Huerta's dictatorship tried to turn back the clock to the Porfirian era. Huerta ruled with military force and repression. The usual stuff,

Starting point is 00:45:26 persecuting labour organisers, shutting down radical spaces, deporting foreign activists, jailing dissenters, murdering people. Crackdowns eventually hit La Casa de Lobrero's publications and destroyed the anarchist library. But out of this repression emerged a new tactic. They basically said, you know, you could burn our books, that's fine, do what you have to do, but you're not going to stop us from spreading our message. They established grassroots orators, the Tribunal Roja, who took the revolutionary message directly to the working classes, giving speeches where they were at and sharing the message even without access to literature.

Starting point is 00:46:06 By May 1914, a new people, Emancipación Obrera, was launched, though it too fell prey to the regime's brutality. Thankfully, the regime wouldn't last long, because Huerta's power didn't go unchallenged. From the north, Venustiano Carranza and the constitutionalists rose to oppose him, claiming to defend Madero's legacy. From the south, Emiliano Zapata refused to accept any government that ignored the demands of landless peasants. And throughout the country, armed struggle reignited.

Starting point is 00:46:39 Which brings us to Emiliano Zapata himself. He was doing his own thing politically, but he was inspired in part by the anarchist supporters of Magon. His ideology was rooted in the Kalpui, the collective land systems of his indigenous ancestors. He eventually adopted the slogan Tierra y Lerotad and rallied behind the Plan de Ayala, demanding land redistribution and local self-governance. He had little tolerance for political maneuvering.

Starting point is 00:47:05 He saw the false promises of figures like Huerta and Carranza. For Zapata, revolution was not about elections or modernization. It was about giving land back. That's really all he cared about. In contrast, as the Wario to his Mario, there was Pancho Villa. He was a charismatic northern general and a populist who worked with and against Carranza. As Magone described him, Zapata delivers riches to their true owners, the poor. Villa executes the proletarian who takes a piece of bread." Though both were opposed to Carranza, their goals, strategies, and ethics were far apart. Like I said, Marriot is worried.

Starting point is 00:47:47 Cuerta didn't last long, as I mentioned, he was ousted by 1914, so just about a year of being in power and being a violent dictator. And after Cuerta fell, Finustiano Carranza rose to fill the vacuum. Like I said, he claimed to be continuing Madero's legacy, and his vision of Mexico was just as top-down. He wasn't exactly fond of anarchists or the radical left in general, but faced with pressure from the Zapatistas in the south, alvarez forces in the north, he coerced labour organisations like Casa de la Brera Mundial, offered gestures of support, a few favourable labour reforms, and even physical space, like giving them the Jesuit College Santa Brigida as headquarters.

Starting point is 00:48:31 In return, Carranza hoped to build a loyal base of organised workers, integrate them into his constitutional army, and neutralise the more radical strains of revolution. And I'm sorry to say that it partially worked. He was able to buy off some of these workers. While this alliance gave La Casa de Lobrero space to organize workers throughout the country and ramp up educational and proselytizing efforts, much like what would take place in Spain years later, the anarchists began to lose their anarchist roots from the collaboration. Instead of backing Zapata, in February 1915, La Casa signed a pact with the constitutionalist forces and created quote

Starting point is 00:49:12 unquote Red Battalions within Carranza's army. But although La Casa expanded its influence and managed to mount strikes among miners, teachers, drivers, bakers, oil workers, textile workers, carpenters, button makers, and barbers in 1915. In response to the economic pressures of inflation and unemployment, by early 1916, their government allies were cracking down on them. Not long after hiring the Red Battalions, they fired the Red Battalion. They shut down La Casa's offices. They sent key figures to jail. In response, the workers' movement held a national congress in Veracruz, and out of this emerged a new labor federation built on anarcho-synocles principles, committed not to capturing power, but to dismartening it.

Starting point is 00:50:01 In May 1916, a general strike erupted in protest of the imprisonment of La Casa's leadership and to demand urgent economic relief. While the strike was an immediate success, its ease led many young militants to believe that change could come through a benevolent state. Notably, Luis Morones, who would later lead the Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana, or CROM, signed agreements with Carranza's government. Matters intensified 10 months later when a second strike broke out due to low pay. In response, Carranza ordered mounted police to break up assemblies and declared martial law.

Starting point is 00:50:40 The strike was crushed, its committee suspended all activities, and one prominent leader was nearly executed before his sentence was finally commuted. La Casa shut down and the strike failed, but the anarchists endured. By mid-1917, new groups like Luce and several local casas had reappeared throughout the country. However, internal debates culminated in the October 1917 National Workers' Congress, where reformist forces led by Luis Morones properly marginalised the anarchists, setting the stage for the rise of the CROM and a more moderate pro-management approach, aligned with, of all people, the American Federation of Labour, the AFL. Carranza's crowning achievement came in that same year, with the signing of the

Starting point is 00:51:37 Constitution of 1917. On paper, it was progressive, land reform, limited untrained power, labour protections. But to many revolutionaries, including Magon, this wasn't the revolution fulfilled. Far from it. It was a revolution managed. Their wildest dreams trimmed down to a policy. Even its better reforms were hardly enforced. But with the constitution of 1917, Carranza could still claim legitimacy. He could claim progress. And he could claim that the revolution was over.

Starting point is 00:52:09 But what happened to the revolutionaries? Zapata was still fighting for land in the South, but Carranza would assassinate him in by 1919. Magón was imprisoned in the USA, denouncing the betrayal from behind bars. Workers were still struggling for real power in their workplaces, and the vast majority of rural Mexicans remained poor, dispossessed, and disillusioned. In case you're wondering what happened to Magon, in 1916 he was jailed in the US until

Starting point is 00:52:37 a group of exiled anarchists led by Emma Goldman and Alexander Bergman paid his bond. Now that feels like a cameo or crossover episode of some kind, right? And then in 1917, the year of the new constitution, he was back in jail again for speaking out against the First World War and calling for a social revolutionary war instead. He was sentenced to 20 years and his health deteriorated steadily. He wasn't a fan of Carranza at all. He called him a strikebreaker, an assassin, and a wolf in sheep's clothing. When Carranza's government offered him a

Starting point is 00:53:10 pension, he said quote, all money obtained by the state represents the sweat, the anguish, and sacrifice of workers. If this money came directly from workers, I would gladly and even proudly accept it because they are my brothers. But when it comes to the intervention of the state after being compelled from the people, the money would only burn my hands and fill my heart with remorse." So long story short, he didn't accept the money. When the US said they might let him go if he said sorry and petitioned for a pardon, he said in many words, hell no. Among his more beautiful words he said quote, repentance. I have not exploited the sweat, anguish, fatigue and labour of others. I have not oppressed a single soul. I have nothing to repent for. My life has been lived without my

Starting point is 00:54:03 having acquired any wealth, power, or glory, when I could have gotten these three things very easily. But I do not regret it. Wealth, power, and glory are only won by trampling others' rights. My conscience is at peace, for it knows that under my convict's garb beats an honest heart. So he died in his jail cell in 1922, possibly assassinated. Zapata, like I said, was assassinated by Carranza in 1919, and Carranza himself was assassinated in 1920.

Starting point is 00:54:34 In case you were keeping track, both of Magone's major ops he ended up outliving, right? He outlived Madero and then he outlived Carranza. But he still died in jail, which is kind of tragic. But Carranza's successor, Alvaro Obregon, was both friendly with reformists in the CROM and not as hostile to the anarchists as Carranza, which gave the anarchists an opportunity to regroup. Strikes built up across the country. Miners, oil workers, textile workers, dock workers, and more. Some 65,000 workers in July 1920 alone.

Starting point is 00:55:11 Out of this momentum came the Federacion Comunista del Proletariado Mexicano, or FCPM. It was an ideologically mixed group, but leaned in an anarchic direction and starkly contrasted itself with the reformist ways of the CROM and the international ally, the AFL. The FCPM went on to establish the Confederación General de Trabajadores, or CGT, in 1921 as a direct challenge to the CROM. They were fully declaring their independence from state and party. Their focus was on class struggle. The Mexican government flew to a socialist language from time to time, but the anarchists

Starting point is 00:55:49 saw through the charade. They called out that so-called socialist-like government's deportation of anarchists and socialists. They even called Morrone, the guy who started CROM, Mexico's Mussolini. The CGT stood against the Moscow-backed Third International and instead allied with councillors like Rosa Luxemburg and Anton Panacuec. They also formed a specifically anarchist section within the group meant to play the same role played by the FAI for the Spanish CGT. The Mexican CGT backed strikes, including in 1921 when they backed a rail worker strike

Starting point is 00:56:25 against US companies. And in 1922 they expelled CGT leaders who had flirted with electoral politics, reiterating their anti-party stance. They would not allow themselves to be retaken and capitulated to reformist aims. That same year, May Day protests turned into confrontations when right-wing thugs killed the demonstrators' child in front of the US consulate. And they didn't stop there. Anarchists and the CGT helped organise tenant strikes in Mexico City and Veracruz.

Starting point is 00:56:57 They led general strikes in textile mills and rallied against state violence. They protested in solidarity with international struggles from Spain to Boston, from the murder of Salvador Segui to the jailing of Sacco and Vincetti. They also had to deal with efforts to defame them through misinformation, such as the accusation that they were embezzling Buca's funds. Throughout the early 1920s, you had some new libertarian publications jumping out. You had Verberojo, you had La Humanidad, Sachitario, Tierra Libre, Alba, Anarquica, and so on. And by 1924, under President Calles, who followed the assassinated Obregon, the tides began to shift. Calles was more hostile to the anarchists than Obregon and openly favoured Cron. He gave Morones a cabinet post,

Starting point is 00:57:46 passed laws to undermine CGT organising, and escalated repression. The CGT held its ground, organising general strikes, occupying textile mills, confronting police, expanding to the countryside, all their usual stuff. They fought for short term relief and long term revolution. By 1926 CGT had grown into a federation of 157 affiliated groups. Unions, syndicates, agrarian communities all included. And yet, by the late 1920s, things started to free. The CROM was declining due to their attachments to a government that was no longer conciliatory to their political ambitions. And the CGT couldn't capitalise on that decline of the CROM. The government sought to marginalise them entirely. Thousands of former CROM members joined the CGT while the CGT itself began to make

Starting point is 00:58:36 some slides toward concession and reformism. And so it reached a point where they were calling themselves anarchists. But the anarchism was nowhere near there. And yet, anarchism didn't die. It morphed, it migrated, and it regrouped. After the fall of Spain in 1939, exiled members of the CNT and FAI arrived in Mexico, reinvigorating the scene for a time. They published TRI Libertad, built new organizations, and kept the memory and the fight alive. A few anarchist impulses managed to emerge within the Mexican Communist

Starting point is 00:59:11 Party into the early 1930s as well, at least according to Kirk Schaffer. President Caes ended up founding what became the Institutional Revolutionary Party, a contradiction if I ever heard it, and they basically ran the show in Mexico for 71 years straight, from 1929 to 2000. Their administration co-created the conditions that would birth the newest apatizmos in 1994. They're not anarchists, as they have been very clear to state, but maybe they will get a two-parter in the future going into their history in more depth. The history of anarchism in Mexico has been quite the story, I must say.

Starting point is 00:59:50 And with that we've reached the end of that classical history. Its modern history is still being written, still being told. But this is the end of our exploration for now. Not just of Mexico's anarchist history, but of this entire series of anarchism in Latin America. I joked about making an episode about Quebec's anarchism scene, but that may remain a joke for now. We've journeyed a very long way together, from the Andes to Buenos Aires to Montevideo

Starting point is 01:00:19 to São Paulo to all over. We've seen how, long before the name anarchism arrived on Latin America's shores, people were resisting hierarchy, through indigenous forms of autonomy, African maroon communities and peasant traditions of land sharing and reciprocity. We saw how these anarchic and anarchish instincts met new ideas, genuinely and intentionally anarchist ideas, coming from Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kapotkin, brought over in pamphlets and in the minds of exiles and immigrants. In Mexico, those forces took on a revolutionary scale. Roto-Kanati planted the seed.

Starting point is 01:00:58 Magon amplified its voice. The workers, the peasants, the students, they all gave it their all, their fire. And even when that fire was smothered by reformists, by nationalists, by reactionaries, by capitalists, by the bullets and the bribe, it never truly went out. Across the Americas, these movements rarely won in the traditional sense. They were often betrayed, suppressed, and erased from history. But although anarchy was not achieved, anarchists and the anarchist idea will survive. Anarchist thought is radically resilient, and it never really disappears. It usually just goes underground or into the margins, or into new forms, from student collectives,

Starting point is 01:01:42 to feminist organizations, to to squats to ecological struggles, inspiring movements that aren't necessarily anarchist, but lean in a direction that questions some of the familiar patterns of authority. Thank you for walking this journey with me. I've been André Sage, you can find me on YouTube at Andréism and support the work over at Patreon.com YouTube at Andrewism, and support the work over at Patreon.com slash Jane True. All sources, citations, and further reading can be found in the show notes. This has been It Could Happen Here, all power to all the people. Peace. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Starting point is 01:02:38 Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated.

Starting point is 01:03:11 I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, twoaser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st, and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Ad free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

Starting point is 01:03:40 I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the We're on Drugs podcast. Sir, we are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner.

Starting point is 01:03:55 It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote unquote drug bans. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. Got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette, MMA fighter Liz Caramouche.

Starting point is 01:04:20 What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcast. And it's going to take us to heal us. It's mental health awareness month and on a recent episode of Just Heal with Dr. J, the incomparable Taraji P. Henson stopped by to discuss how she's discovered peace on her journey. So what I'm hearing you saying is healing is a part of us

Starting point is 01:05:08 also reconnecting to our childhood in some sort of. You said I look how youthful I look because I never let that little girl inside of me die. I go outside and run outside with the dogs. I still play like a kid. I laugh, you know, I love jokes. I love funny. I love laughing. I laugh at myself know, I love jokes. I love funny. I love laughing.

Starting point is 01:05:25 I laugh at myself. I don't take myself too seriously. That's the stuff that keeps you young and stops you from being so hard. To hear this and more things on the journey of healing, you can listen to Just Heal with Dr. J from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

Starting point is 01:05:44 or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything. of Roger Caron was 16 when first convicted. Has spent 24 of those years in jail. 12 years in solitary. He went from an ex-con to a literary darling almost overnight. He was instantly a celebrity. He was an adrenaline junkie and he was the star of the show. Go-Boy is the gritty true story of how one man fought his way out of some of the darkest places imaginable. I had a knife go in my stomach, puncture my skin, break my ribs. I had my feps all in my hands.

Starting point is 01:06:32 Only to find himself back where he started. Roger's saying this, I've never hurt anybody but myself. And I said, oh, you're so wrong. You're so wrong on that one, Roger. From Campside Media and iHeart Podcasts, listen to GoBoy on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the War Update, an update about war. I'm your host, Mia Wong.

Starting point is 01:07:05 With V is, is James and Robert. Yeah, war never changes, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, except for, yeah, I mean... All the fucking time. All the time it changes. Yeah, except for all the changes. Yeah, I think it's a line from a film. Yeah, I mean, the most important part doesn't change,

Starting point is 01:07:24 which is most things in proper place at right time, right? That's what determines war winning. The things that matter are what change. Yeah, yeah. Also, what doesn't change, not great fun for the most part, not an enjoyable way to spend your time. Not enjoyable, except for the chunk of people who tend to make most of the calls.

Starting point is 01:07:44 Yeah, yeah, enjoyable. They. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah enjoyable Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're an old guy in a big house Yeah, so we're gonna be talking about three wars Yeah I think we're gonna we're gonna lead off with the India-Pakistan war and then we're gonna do the other two wars in some order You want to do it to announce the other two wars? the other two wars in some order. Do you want to announce the other two wars?

Starting point is 01:08:04 Yeah, we're going to talk about the end of the armed conflict between the PKK and the Turkish state, maybe. Yeah, we'll be talking about Yemen a little bit. Yeah, man. Yeah, let's, oh God, let's do this. Okay, so the good news is that, look, we do have good news, which is that we have not all died in nuclear fires. I know there are some of you for whom you are very disappointed, but we're all still

Starting point is 01:08:30 here for better or for worse. I mean, for better. Like I'm very glad we didn't all die in nuclear fire. Yeah. So let's talk about the recent war between India and Pakistan lasted about four days. So all right, we talked about this a little bit before the very basic sort of elements of this conflict. We talked about partition on the show before when India sort of gained independence from the British Empire. It split into India and Pakistan,

Starting point is 01:08:58 millions died, horrific sort of conflict, people killing each other, like mass migrations across the borders, very, very, very unstable set of borders get set up that change a bunch of times. And one of the aspects of this of this sort of whole thing is that cashmere was supposed to be this independent state. And then through an extremely convoluted process that I am again once again pushing off to another episode with like actual good experts on this because this is a very very convoluted thing but the short version of it basically is that this series is sort of escalating conflicts and ends basically in a sort of short war and then Kashmir being split in two

Starting point is 01:09:45 between India and Pakistan where like about a third roughly of Kashmir ends up under Pakistani control and then about two-thirds ends up under Indian control now there's an agreement signed by Kashmir's ruler at the time to to let India like annex like two-thirds of Kashmir or so the actual dividing line basically ends up being like Where the army stopped, you know, it changes over the years But the important thing here right is that Kashmir is supposed to have had an independence referendum Right. That was like yeah the deal Now in a move that he's like genuinely even more stunning than the shit that Indonesia pulled in West Papua,

Starting point is 01:10:29 so in West Papua, Indonesia pulls a fake independence referendum? Here! They've never even done that! They've never even pretended to have the referendum that they're supposed to have! It's like a sub-assad level attempt at democracy. Yeah, they're just like, nope, eat shit. Like you're basically a colony now. Now, as part of this deal, right, Kashmir got a pretty substantial amount of autonomy.

Starting point is 01:10:57 I'm going to read, there's actually, there's a very good Jacobin, one of the rare good Jacobin articles, which usually tend to be the ones written like not by the American jocubin writers. Yeah, some freelancer who made 50 US dollars for writing it. Yeah. And that's their rate to gone up.

Starting point is 01:11:14 Yeah, this is written by Arish K. And I'm going to, I'm going to quote here from this article, quote, central to the instrument of a session. It's the document that the ruler of Kashmir signs to sort of like hand Kashmir over to India, quote, was the constitutional provision of Article 370, which assured the Kashmiri people autonomy over all matters besides those pertaining to defense, external affairs and communications. The article was supposed to be temporary and provisional because there was a promise of a referendum by which the people of Kashmir would decide their own political fate. To remain part of India, to join up with Pakistan, or become an independent state. But as we've already mentioned this just never happened. I mean they didn't even do a sham one. It just literally

Starting point is 01:11:56 didn't ever happen. And India has just been imposing its rule on Kashmir ever since. I mean it's also worth pointing out that Pakistan has also been imposing its rule on cashmere ever since it is I mean it is also worth pointing out that Pakistan has also been imposing its rule on like it's part of cashmere But the Indian occupation has become increasingly brutal basically since it's starting It's just continued to get worse and worse and it is sort of a full-blown military occupation, right? there's just like a bunch of fucking Indian troops in the street and As it becomes clear that India is like never going to let Kashmir be free or just even let the Kashmiri people decide what they want militant struggles ensues and as Kaye points out it's originally spearheaded by

Starting point is 01:12:34 the secular Jammu Kashmir liberation front and this group is just sort of wiped out because it wanted an independent Kashmir and this was convenient to neither the Indian or the Pakistani government, because Pakistan once and Pakistan talks about this a lot internationally, like one of their sort of international political

Starting point is 01:12:51 things is like, yeah, we want free cash. But it's like, no, you don't. You want cash to be part of Pakistan. That is not the same thing as being free. Like, clear about this. Yeah. And so and so Pakistan's

Starting point is 01:13:03 engagements towards Kashmir is always been about this, right? It's always been about making sure that there wouldn't be any kind of sort of independent Kashmir. And so both India and Pakistan crush the sort of secular Kashmiri independence group that have been spearheading a lot of this. And over time, Pakistan has sort of, through a complicated series of things, has asserted a lot of control over a lot of this and over time Pakistan is sort of through a complicated series of things has asserted a lot of control over a lot of these groups or has intelligence relations with them ISI kind of notoriously works with militant groups like the ISI is the group in Afghanistan that like really full-on did

Starting point is 01:13:43 the thing that everyone thinks that the US and the Saudis sort of did in terms of like funding the worst parts of the Mujahideen like that was really mostly Pakistani intelligence. Yeah, so like they have a lot of relations with a bunch of people who absolutely fucking suck and and they've you know sort of used a lot of these a lot of these groups as like a way to sort of poke a stick in India and also you know like attempt to obtain their sort of like domestic political goals of like weakening India for for their own sort of internal stability which we'll come back to

Starting point is 01:14:15 later or the internal stability of like military of the power of the military in Pakistan and also like taking the rest of Kashmir. Yeah and so this has caused a really horrific conflict in which the people of Kashmir have suffered a bunch of horrible shit. In 2019, that autonomy, you know, again, the autonomy that was the carrot in order to like join in order in exchange for Kashmir joining India. Right. And if supposedly getting this this referendum, like the carrot was supposed to be that they're supposed to have an unbelievable amount of internal autonomy. And in 2019,

Starting point is 01:14:53 it had been being eroded for a long time, but in 2019, India is just like, eat shit, fuck you, it's gone now, have fun. And this causes a bunch of protests, it causes militant group attacks, it causes a genuinely astonishing crackdown. I mean, like they turned off the phones in the internet in Kashmir. The Indian government just like did this and it became unbelievably difficult to get any information out. They arrested unbelievable numbers of people.

Starting point is 01:15:20 There are, I mean, just absolutely horrifying accounts of the shit that Indian security forces were doing to people you know what I mean like this is this is this is a colonial occupation right the things that happen in a colonial occupation they fucking torture people they kill people they'd like they rape people it's it's really fucked and drain this as as more sort of like, militant attacks erupt, like, India does the first version of its, well not the first version, but it does, like it launches a series of attacks on

Starting point is 01:15:56 southern Pakistan, and this is kind of, you know, there were escalations of it a couple of years ago, but, you know, the sort of big deal this time was Insurgents and it's we have a group that claim responsibility for it It's still I don't know. It's still unclear the extent to which packs any government was actually involved There's a whole thing with this but a bunch a bunch of sort of insurgents killed like 25 Hindu tourists Yeah, in in a Kashmiri tourist town and it's really fucking horrifying. This immediately causes this just unhinged wave of Hindu nationalism

Starting point is 01:16:34 like a sort of nationalism in India. We talked last time about all of these Indian government officials like literally talking about quote an Israel style final solution to Kashmir. So bunch of very very Horrific shit is happening. Yeah, and then India decides that it's going to start launching attacks across the border There's like the immediate small arms fire. There's missile strikes. There's drone attacks and then as This sort of escalates India launches attacks on three Pakistani air bases and again, like they hit an air base that is

Starting point is 01:17:06 in the city where Pakistan's army general headquarters is which is a kind of provocation that has not happened since like the last time these two countries were just straight up at war and you know like that could have killed us all it didn't but it absolutely could have. And it was also just horrifying for it. And it's worth pointing this out, right? The people who are getting killed on both sides of the border here, like our Kashmiris, right? Because like their home has been occupied by these two powers. When India and Pakistan go to war, the people who die on both sides are Kashmiris, right?

Starting point is 01:17:46 Who are being killed by two states who decided, fuck you, we get to control your fate, we get to be the people who fucking occupy your land and then claim to be the people who represent you. And, you know, the civilian toll of this is fucking horrifying. There's a bunch of civilians are killed. People spend a huge amount of time cowering in these like horrifying overcrowded bunkers. There's a good sort of BBC report on this. Like there's so many people packed into bunkers that like you can't even like walk everyone

Starting point is 01:18:15 just like pressed against each other. And three days later you come out of your bunker and your fucking house is gone. And those are the people who survived. Right. It's just horrifying. And eventually there's a ceasefire. Everyone is now saying different things about the ceasefire. The Indian government is trying to downplay the US's role in the ceasefire. The Pakistani government has been talking about how a whole bunch of places were involved, including like Iran and Turkey

Starting point is 01:18:43 to some extent, or Turkey more than Iran. It seems like the US, the UK and Saudi Arabia all played a role in sort of mediating it that we can sort of confirm. The US seems to have played the largest role, which I guess. I don't know, like Marco Rubio was like, we should probably not have a war between two nuclear powers which okay I'm glad that like he's finally found a thing a level that he won't stoop to which is we all die in nuclear war I mean like I would rather Marco Rubio was not the Secretary of State but like of the people who could be under Trump administration,

Starting point is 01:19:25 he's not as bad as some of the other folks. Yeah. I mean, it's like he, we are, we are fully in like, which of Hitler's generals would you prefer to be in charge of this territory? So like fuck all these people. Yeah. We don't need to, we don't need to debate Rommel right now. What we do need to do is throw to ads, the Erwin Rommel of the podcast industry.

Starting point is 01:19:57 Okay, so there are a few things about this conflict that are very, very bad. One is that India has demonstrated the capacity to launch attacks against Pakistan that don't involve them mobilizing their ground troops, which takes forever. It is hard. That's really fucking bad. It's also bad that again, they fucking hit like the air base next to Pakistan general army general headquarters, which means if they try to do another attack, they're going to have to hit a bigger target. And they apparently it seems like the Indian government has sort of

Starting point is 01:20:27 concluded that they can do this now. It's also very bad that like most of the like domestic Indian left supported this including CPIM, so Communist Party of India Marxists, which is like the sort of social democratic, technically Maoist party that is supposed to be like the left in India like back the attacks and they've always had a fucking terrible line on Kashmir So it's also worth mentioning a little bit. There's been a lot of reporting about India, you know Modi isn't making a bunch of noise about trying to just straight-up cut off Pakistan's access to water Which is very scary. Yeah

Starting point is 01:21:03 It's worth noting Kay talks about this in in that Jacobin piece Kays argument basically is that like they don't actually have the infrastructure to do this, which is good because that would be a genocide. If they just knocked out all Pakistan's access to water for agricultural purposes and for drinking purposes, it'd be really bad. But here's what I'm going to read this quote. Under the treaty regulations, India is required to share hydrological data that is essential for planning to deal with floods and or droughts during monsoon seasons. Denying Pakistan access to this data would have a damaging impact. Moreover, because of the limited storage capacity, India can change the timing of water flow,

Starting point is 01:21:34 which is crucial for many crop string sowing seasons. So there is still a lot of damage they can do. They can't straight up do like a genocide, but they can do a lot of damage and While both sides have backed off of like direct military conflict India still is committed to every single thing they can do to fuck with Pakistan which affects just like the people of Pakistan. This has also been politically very good from Modi because Ultra-nationalism it's been bolstering the sort of like Pakistani military government because there are ultra-nationalists feed off of this and it's Once again really fucking bad for the people of Kashmir who are the ones getting killed on both sides of the border. Yep. War is bad. Free Kashmir. Hate this.

Starting point is 01:22:13 Yeah. Well, speaking of war being bad, let's talk about what's going on in Yemen. So if you remember from the last quarter or so of the Biden administration, after Israel launched their reprisal attacks to October 7th on Gaza, the Houthis, which is a, depending on your stance, either the legitimate government of Yemen or a rebel group in Yemen, you know, the international community stance is a rebel group, the Houthis stance is different. Yeah. Started launching a series of missile attacks, both aimed at Israel and aimed at shipping in the Gulf of Aden, right?

Starting point is 01:22:52 In order to disrupt because a significant amount of the world's trade goes through there. And this took a number of forms. They have ballistic missiles. Some of them are indigenous, by which I mean made by the Houthis, oftentimes using stocks that were captured from the military and government of Yemen previously, you know, that they supplanted in a lot of areas, and other times using missiles that were given to them by Iran. Yeah. Right?

Starting point is 01:23:19 So it's a mix of tactics. They have also used drones and they have also landed troops in order to capture bulk freighters, including one called the Galaxy Leader in I think 2023 that was full of cars. Their claim was that it was a British vessel and obviously the Brits had been helping to arm and support Israel. The vessel was actually registered in Lebanon. However, whenever we get into discussions about like, whose vessel is whose, none of that, none of what is registered matters.

Starting point is 01:23:48 Vessels are registered all over the place for a variety of, it's always nonsense. That means nothing. It means nothing. In the Marshall Islands. Yeah, nothing in the entire world matters less to the reality of a situation than where the vessel is registered.

Starting point is 01:24:02 I'm not saying that justifies or doesn't with the Houthis, I'm just saying it does not matter where the vessel is registered. I'm not saying that it justifies or doesn't what the Houthis did, I'm just saying it does not matter where the vessel is registered. Yeah. The ship was owned by a Lebanon based company, but also given the nature of capital, it doesn't matter all that much.

Starting point is 01:24:15 Now, what also doesn't matter is that in January of this year, the Houthis freed the captain of that ship and they made an announcement that they would limit further attacks to vessels flagged as Israeli or owned by Israeli individuals or entities, right? Now, that also doesn't mean a lot, right? Because the nature of international trade means that there are a lot of, you know, you could basically argue if you're the Houthis, well, this is owned by a multinational corporation who owns companies

Starting point is 01:24:45 in Israel or who has heavy investments in companies in Israel, therefore, right? As a result, you know, the Houthis continued doing the Houthi stuff and Trump saw them as kind of a convenient target, a convenient place to flex his military muscles. And there were some people within the United States defense establishment that considered that extremely convenient too. This is largely due to the fact that Biden prescribed a very limited campaign against the Houthis. Now, this does not mean inexpensive or insignificant. We kept at least one aircraft carrier carrying out strikes in Yemen for like a year or so,

Starting point is 01:25:21 which is kind of the first combat duty that an aircraft carrier has had in quite some time. That was really like active taking incoming fire, not incoming fire that ever really threatened the carrier itself, but that's sort of beside the point. And there were people within the US military establishment who were consistently frustrated with the Biden administration that they were not letting them operate at a high enough tempo, right? And kind of the number one guy advocating for this side of events was General Michael E. Carilla, who is the head of Central Command or CENTCOM.

Starting point is 01:25:52 Right? And his attitude had been, we need a much more aggressive high tempo campaign. He pitched the Trump administration when they came in, I think it's like an eight to 10 month long campaign, where initially they would degrade Houthi anti-air assets. So first we go in there and we use our air power to establish what's called air supremacy. Air superiority means that you have better quality air support, but also your shit can get knocked down.

Starting point is 01:26:18 Air supremacy means you have complete control of the skies. The US military is fairly used to having air supremacy. If you look at like, for example, our combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, when it came to like fighter aircraft, helicopters would get shot down from time to time, obviously, and have accidents. We weren't losing F-18s in Afghanistan, right? Like they weren't getting knocked out of the fucking sky by the Taliban. We had air supremacy.

Starting point is 01:26:46 In Ukraine, depending on what part of the battle space you're talking about, either things have been more or less at a standstill or Russia has had air superiority, but not supremacy, right? Because Ukraine has very solid modern anti-aircraft defenses and it has been able to exact a toll. We will talk to a greater extent about what's been happening with India and Pakistan.

Starting point is 01:27:07 It is exceedingly unclear at the moment who got the better of the engagement. Did any of those Chinese anti-aircraft missiles actually knock out aircraft? Did India lose any aircraft? Did Pakistan down any aircraft? We actually, like everyone's making different claims right now and I don't have objective evidence, right? Other than that, we can we know that things that there's

Starting point is 01:27:28 at least evidence of an at least one case what looks like refuge of a ruffal and in at least one case there's what looks like a knocked down Chinese anti-aircraft missile. I'm spacing on the exact name right now. But again, that doesn't mean anything about how they actually fair in the battle space, right? So anyway, this motherfucker, head of CENTCOM Michael E. Corrella was like, I've got this plan, we need a much more forceful, we're going to knock out their anti-air defenses, and then we're going to basically carry out a modified version of what Israel carried out against Hamas and Hezbollah, right? Where we start targeting and killing the leadership cadre once we've knocked out their defenses.

Starting point is 01:28:04 And he estimated that would take about a little under a year, right? But the better part of a year. And the Trump administration said, you can have your higher tempo war, but you've got to show results in about a month, right? And in about a month, the US military carried out about 1,100 strikes. They killed, they say hundreds of Houthi fighters destroyed quite a bit of weapons and equipment, very unclear how many fighters they killed. Certainly hundreds of people. Were those all Houthi fighters destroyed quite a bit of weapons and equipment Very unclear how many fighters they killed certainly hundreds of people were those all Houthi fighters How many weapons and equipment were destroyed?

Starting point is 01:28:32 I don't have access to that sort of data and I'm not entirely confident that anyone in the US military has a much better idea Certainly a little bit more data, but also they get that shit wrong all the fucking time Yeah, it's also like it's worth noting right when they're talking about like casualty numbers The Houthis are not a like small rebel group like they control the capital of Yemen, right? Like this is like the government Yeah, they are not a peer state in terms of the US and that they do not have the manufacturing base and capacity, but they are equivalent to a small state actor, right? Yeah.

Starting point is 01:29:10 Yeah. And so what you're bombing them, right, like you're just, you're blowing smoking craters in apartment buildings in- And the Houthis are so experienced with getting bombed. They've been bombed by a lot of people before. None of this is new to them, right? Yeah. So in the first 30 days, while they, you know, the US has made a lot of claims about how many people

Starting point is 01:29:32 they killed and level of degradation of Huthi capacity. The Huthis have done some damage to US capacity. They have shot down seven, at this point, at least seven MQ-9 Reaper drones, which are $30 million each. And in addition now, four F-18 jets have been lost. seven, at this point, at least seven MQ-9 Reaper drones, which are $30 million each. And in addition, now four F-18 jets have been lost. Not probably, probably just to fuck ups

Starting point is 01:29:53 that are a result of the tempo of activity, right? These all tend to be craft that are landing and don't get caught by the catapult system that they've got on these aircraft carriers, or otherwise wind up in the Red Sea, right? There is some suspicion and debate as to like is there any sort of like internal Treason going on here is somebody on the aircraft carrier making these fuck-ups happen. This is being investigated

Starting point is 01:30:20 I believe although there's no confirmation about like what exactly has gone down investigated I believe. Although there's no confirmation about like what exactly has gone down. It's weird to lose this many FA-18 Super Hornets in a very short period of time. Yeah I will say my my understanding of it also is that the other thing that's going on here is that this aircraft carrier has been out past the point it should have been refitted. Yes. Like so extraordinarily. And it's also not weird that people fuck up when they are carrying out operations at a tempo they never have before, right? And there's a very good chance that it's nothing more than that. The more you fly, the more accidents are going to happen. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Period. Also, I want to say, I want to say,

Starting point is 01:30:56 imagine you are like the deck officer. Oh, man, that poor motherfucker. That motherfucker's getting fucked. Yeah. I'm not gonna say poor motherfuckers, their motherfuckers getting fucked. Yeah, yeah, okay, like the first one goes over right and then the second one uh-huh goes Yeah, and now it's happened and now you've probably been fired. Yeah, you're out of a job And that first guy's kind of lucky because when the next two fall off at least maybe that's less pressure on you Yeah, like imagine like you're the deck officer of the fourth one. Yeah. Yeah That's gotta suck so within about 30 days the US military had burned more than a billion dollars on this operation Right at which point Trump and people around him are like, oh, fuck, we can't keep this shit up. We can't maintain this tempo of operations. There were warnings given

Starting point is 01:31:50 for within the Defense Department that we have used so many of our most advanced munitions that if China makes a move on Taiwan, we're not sure we have the reserves necessary, right? These munitions, when we talk a lot about the capacity of US firepower, people talk about shit like in 2018, how we like, we got a, there was this Al Qaeda guy who had been responsible for the attack on the USS Cole fucking 20 something years ago. Yeah, a long gas time ago. Who used a cell phone he shouldn't have used briefly

Starting point is 01:32:18 and then turned it off and we were able to get visual confirmation of where he was from the cell phone signal and knock his ass out with a drone, right? And we do have incredible capacity potentially to make unbelievably precise strikes. However, that capacity is reliant both upon a functional network of human intelligence, a functional network of operators of aircraft and drones who are not completely burnt out by the tempo of operations, and access to incredibly advanced munitions which we do

Starting point is 01:32:51 not have in inexhaustible capacity and are reliant upon an international supply chain to continue to manufacture, right? And all of that has been endangered by the tempo of this campaign. And ultimately, there's a great New York Times report on this that's just absolutely damning to the military that came out. It's called, Why Trump Suddenly Declared Victory Over the Houthi Militia, that declared that after all of this, the best we can say is perhaps a modest degradation of Houthi capacities that they can easily recover from, given enough time, which they're going

Starting point is 01:33:25 to get because Trump both declared victory and stated that the Houthis had yet again agreed to stop striking shipping in the Red Sea. And he was like, this is a win. We made a deal with them. Big deal maker. Donald Trump made a deal. Now, if you look at what the Houthis said, all they said is we're going to stop striking Israeli shipping, which if you'll recall is what they had said in January.

Starting point is 01:33:46 So did we win? No. Did the Houthis win? Not yet, but they're, you know, they didn't lose. And again, if you understand your insurgent warfare, you win by just not losing for long enough. Right? Yeah.

Starting point is 01:34:04 Well, and it's also worth, it's worth mentioning too, when you're talking about the global supply chain part of enough, right? Yeah. Well, and it's also worth it's worth mentioning too when you're talking about the global supply chain part of this, right? On the one hand, like the US has done an extraordinary amount to try to make sure that as much as the supply chain as they can is in the US. On the other hand, it still requires a bunch of other places, including a bunch of rare earth metals that the US gets from China. Now, you may be noting, we are currently fighting a trade war with China. A bunch of our strategic planning is about stopping a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. So, and we've just expended a shit ton of our stack pile of munitions that we can only replace by using shit we get from China. So absolute just genius brain shit that's happening here right now at the highest levels

Starting point is 01:34:44 of the regime Myanmar has a lot of rare earth metals, but we had China is currently a lot closer to securing those than the United States is Yeah, it's not great. Well, that's all I got. That's the Houthis. Let's have another ad break real quick here Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that, let's have a break. Lovely. What a nice advertising break. We are now back. I know many of you have been asking me about what is happening in Kurdistan. So I'm going to try my best to very briefly explain that in the last segment of this show. So the PKK, right, the PKK being the branch

Starting point is 01:35:35 of the Kurdish freedom movement that has operated in Turkey, Turkey or Northern Kurdistan and mostly since the mid-20 teens has been based in Iraq or southern Kurdistan, right? It convened its 12th Congress in the second week of May and it decided to disband itself, lay down its arms and I think that the phrasing it used was to cease armed activities under the PKK name, which is a way of saying things. More broadly, it did genuinely seem to indicate a commitment to like the sort of ballot, not the bullet approach. I'm going to quote kind of extensively here from the statement that the PKK

Starting point is 01:36:21 released and then from other statements from like people, Jemil Bayek, the leader, one of the co-chairs of the KCK. The KCK, if you're not familiar, it's a Kurdistan Communities Union. That is the group that allows the different areas of the Kurdish Freedom Movement, all of which are inspired by the political thought of Abdullah Ocalan, to sort of come together and inspired by the political thought of Abdullah Ocalan to sort of come together and discuss their paradigm, their goals, their methodologies, I guess. So I want to read from the PKK statement to begin with, quote, the process initiated by leader Abdullah Ocalan statement on February 27th and further shaped by his extensive work and multi-dimensional

Starting point is 01:37:05 perspectives culminated in the successful convening of our 12th party congress between May 5th and May 7th. Despite ongoing clashes, aerial and ground attacks, continued siege of our regions and the KDP embargo, our congress was held securely under challenging conditions. Due to security concerns, it was conducted simultaneously in two different locations. With the participation of 232 delegates in total, the PKK 12th Congress discussed leadership, martyrs, veterans, the organizational stretch of the PKK, an armed struggle, and democratic society building, culminating in historic decisions marking the beginning of a new era for a freedom movement. It's a very long statement as tends to be the style of statements from the Kurdish freedom movement.

Starting point is 01:37:51 It talks a lot about Abdullah Ocalan as tends to be the style of statements from the Kurdish freedom movement. I've linked to it in the show notes if you'd like to read all of it. I'd encourage you to if you're interested in this sort of thing. They talk a lot about the democratic nation concept and the idea that Kurds and Turks have co-existed in Turkey for a long time. I thought this part was of interest. I'm going to quote again here, The decision of our Congress to dissolve the PKK and end the method of armed struggle offers a strong basis for a lasting peace and a democratic solution. Implementing these decisions requires that leader Apo,

Starting point is 01:38:35 Apo, it's the evocative form to democratic politics be recognised and that solid, comprehensive legal guarantees be established. At this stage, it is essential that the Grand National Assembly of Turkey plays its role with historical responsibility." So a couple of things sort of note there. One is that they're talking about this transition towards democracy or about brotherhood of nations. They talk about somewhere else, right? Brotherhood of peoples. It's occurring under the leadership and direction of Abdullah Öcalan. If you are not familiar with Abdullah Öcalan, you can listen to Robert's theories, the women's war, which has a great job of explaining a lot of the stuff that we won't have time to get into today. Very briefly, Apo has been in Imrali and

Starting point is 01:39:19 various other Turkish prisons since 1999. For long periods of that time, no one was able to see him. He was held completely incommunicado. At times there were hundreds of troops guarding only him on this Turkish prison island. That is no longer the case. Right. He made this statement on the 27th of February. And since then the Kurdish freedom movement has had access to Oshulan. He actually made another

Starting point is 01:39:47 statement on the 18th of May, where he said, and I quote, a new contract is needed based on the law of brotherhood. What we are doing represents a major paradigm shift. The nature of the Turkish Kurdish relationship is fundamentally different. What has been broken in the bond of brotherhood. It seems like through the Dem Party, right, which is a left-leaning party in Turkey, which has supported the Kurdish cause and for a long time has served as like the interlocutor between Turkey and the Kurdish freedom movement. Through the Dem Party, they have access to Ocalan and they're able relatively frequently, it seems like these Dem Party officials to go to him rally and talk to him. And so they're talking about his leadership continuing through this democratic transition for the Kurdish freedom movement.

Starting point is 01:40:40 Cemil Bajik, Cemil Bajik again is the co-chair of the KCK in institutions within the Kurdish Freedom Movement. There's a co-chair system, right, which means that a man and a woman both share the chairmanship of of an institution such that patriarchal structures aren't replicated in the movement. That's the goal of the co-chair system. He has a two-part interview in ANF, which I've linked again in the notes. He talked about how like the first role of the PKK of the movement even before it was called the PKK was to quote unquote, reveal the Kurdish quote unquote Kurdish question, right? That's how they refer to it. Other times I'll talk about how Kurdish people were on their knees and like under the leadership of Ocalan, they stood up.

Starting point is 01:41:25 They talk about also how Mount Ararat, Turkey has a plaque apparently where it says like here is buried the imaginary Kurdish nation. And like the Kurdish nation is certainly not buried anymore, right? Like it's very active. Kurds are very politically empowered in two of the four countries where Kurds live, right? Like in Turkey, they are to a lesser extent, but they're still present, no one could deny their presence in Iran, it's still, I guess, more difficult at the time for the Kurdish freedom movement. Bayek said, within our initial paradigm and our first manifesto, the Kurdish identity,

Starting point is 01:41:57 the Kurdish people and Kurdish society were formed. A society in love with freedom was formed. A people emerged that would fight for freedom under any circumstances. On this basis, we are now developing a new paradigm, a second manifesto. This paradigm of this manifesto aimed to resolve not only the Kurdish question, but also the issues of the peoples of the Middle East and humanity as a whole. Reba Rapo, um, Reba just means leader, Reba Rapo is no longer leading only the Kurdish people. He's leading all peoples and humanity. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's

Starting point is 01:42:38 Yeah, it's this is a sort of rhetoric we can expect from they get the, right? Like they're very dedicated to Auschelin as a leader. Yes. Yes. And, you know, Robert and I have both been to Roshava. I've heard a lot of No Life Without Our Leaders speeches and seen a lot of, seen a lot of those posters as well. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:42:56 Yeah. Like you can't really go into a space. You'll see other, like, it's not just Auschelin, right? You're going to see Irine Mercan and you're going to see, it's not like just a guy with a mustache, you're going to see Arun Malkan and you're going to see it's not like just a guy with a moustache, you're going to see women idolizing the movement too. But Ojulan to the greatest extent is like their dear leader figure, you can see his face all over Rojava. And they're very dedicated to

Starting point is 01:43:18 Ojulan's leadership. And like this change in structure does not change that, or this change in approach does not change that. In fact, it underlines that, right? From the letter that Ocalan wrote, and he wrote letters to different parts of the Kurdish freedom movement, came this change, right? So it's still at the instruction of Ocalan, albeit with the consent of these delegates who went to this PKK Congress, right, and voted.

Starting point is 01:43:47 I've reached out to the KCK to ask for comment on like exactly what this means in terms of like most of the KCK, as I said, are in the mountains of southern Kurdistan now, and they have fought Turkey there for years, right? We've covered that on this is podcast, Northern Iraq, Southern Kurdistan, however you wish to call it. Like, like Turkey has been bombing. They were bombing it last time I was there. I'm sure they were bombing it last time Robert was there. They've been bombing it ever since.

Starting point is 01:44:15 And the villages that have really suffered as a result, right? People have lost their children. They've lost their lands. They've often had their crops burned, by these bombs. So I'm interested to know, like, will the idea of the Kurdish freedom movement leaving the mountains there is, I mean, it would be a hell of a sight. They've been in those mountains for a long time, but I don't know what this means for the Kurdish freedom movement in southern Kurdistan, but I have asked. I don't know if this means that they will attempt like a straight up electoral strategy,

Starting point is 01:44:52 right? Or when Auslan's asking for a new contract, right? Like a new social contract. That's how in Rojava, they literally have a social contract, right? The social contract is generally like a theoretical construct in most neoliberal democracies. The idea that you and the state enter into an agreement whereby you give up some freedom and you lose some danger and the state gives you some safety and it takes some of your freedom.

Starting point is 01:45:17 In Rojava, the social contract is a real thing, right? Like it's a thing that is formed in consultation with society. So when we see Apo asking about a new contract, does that mean that they will engage like on the basis of a new Turkish constitution? I don't know. I don't think any of us have answers to these questions. And I imagine that they don't either, right? Like they have decided to pursue this strategy of peace. They've decided that through their armed conflict,

Starting point is 01:45:46 they were able to prove that they exist. And that's a that's a phrase that specifically people have said to me in the Kurdish freedom movement, like we had to pick up arms to prove that we exist. And now that there's no denying their existence, they can use different methods, right, like they can put down their weapons and talk and establish with Turkey how to coexist, having established that they exist through the arms struggle. So for them, this is like they're celebrating it, right? They'll draw the analogy very often to like Sinn Fein in Ireland. That's one that you'll hear pretty often.

Starting point is 01:46:19 And that this is their Good Friday. Now in the Good Friday agreement, Britner released people from prison. A number of very highly cherished, very highly respected members of the Kurdish freedom movement are still in prison. Of course, Ocalan being the most sort of widely loved and respected member of the Kurdish freedom movement. I don't think we're seeing Ocalan come out of prison. I don't think there's a world in which Turkey would let that happen.

Starting point is 01:46:45 But maybe we will see some other people released. Maybe we will see those people enter into electoral politics. Some of them have been in the struggle for 50 plus years, right? Like 50 years living in the mountains and constantly being worried about being bombed. Yeah. So it'll be fascinating to see how this, this has been a long, bloody conflict. It's been going for longer, but any of us have been alive. If the friends are happy, then I'm happy for them.

Starting point is 01:47:13 Right. And if peace is what they want and they can get away to continue, like General Bayek says, like the people in love with freedom, like if they can keep their freedom and they could do it without war, then I'm happy for them. Because like I've talked to a lot of Kurdish parents who have buried their children. Yeah. God almighty. I've been to too many of the graveyards in Northern Syria.

Starting point is 01:47:35 Yeah. Yeah. There's still a white graveyards with little children's faces like that. Will stay with me forever. Yeah. Whatever stops that, you know. Yeah. Like if one of the things that kind of struck me when I was in

Starting point is 01:47:47 Rojava last time is that like, death just falls from the night sky sometimes. Yeah. And maybe, maybe it's your baby. Maybe it's you, maybe it's your grandma. And it's a pretty horrible way to live. And going through that for your freedom is something very brave. And they have endured some of the worst conflict on the planet in the last few decades, right? They fought some of the worst fucking people on the planet and won.

Starting point is 01:48:14 And if there is a way that the people of Kurdistan can enjoy peace, I want that for them, because they've been at war for a very long time. Yep. Hi, everyone, it's James, and we're just adding this pick up to the episode. I was able to get some questions answered on behalf of the Kurdish freedom movement and I would just like to share those answers with you. So I asked if Ocalan was able to address the Congress. I'd previously been told he was. This is a response throughout the more than 26 years that Kurdish people's leader Abdullah Ocalan has been held hostage in the prison island of Imrali, he has always found ways to convey

Starting point is 01:48:49 his messages and perspectives to the Congress of the PKK that has taken place. So it was again regarding the 12th Congress of the PKK which convened from May 5th to May 7th in the Free Mountains of Kurdistan. He was able to forward his ideas and analysis via the various delegations that had visited him throughout the last few months. I asked about Öcalan's call for a new social contract and they told me, Kurdish People's leader Abdullah Öcalan's calls and the historic initiative that he has taken do not imply that the Turkish state has adopted the same attitude or that the state has changed its approach. Kurdish People's leader Abdullah Öcalan is not simply hoping for a change of mentality in the state,

Starting point is 01:49:24 but is moving forward developing his project and thereby pulling the state along with him. What he is currently primarily concerned with is a redefining and reconstruction of the historical alliance of the Kurdish and Turkish people, which has been derailed during the past century. A long-term democratic solution to the Kurdish question necessitates a recognition of the role of the Kurds in the establishment and development of the Republic. Relations between the peoples must be brought back to their historical roots. Such a vision cannot be realised unilaterally. It lays in the nature of the way the struggle of the Kurdish peoples lead Abdullah Ocalan and the PKK that when they want to achieve a solution to a specific issue, they initially create, through struggle, the necessary

Starting point is 01:50:01 conditions and context for it. What Abdullah Ocalan does is to set the context and to encourage all related circles in Turkey to take upon their responsibility for a lasting peace. And then I wanted to ask about the people who were incarcerated and like the steps that they needed from the Turkish state in order for this peace process to continue. And this is what they said. A historic initiative was taken by Kurdish people's Leader Abdullah Ocalan at the PKK. First of all, there was the publication of the quote call for peace and democratic society and quote on February 27th. Then there was a declaration of the unilateral ceasefire on March 1st and now

Starting point is 01:50:38 there was the 12th PKK Congress May 5th to 7th. It was a decision to dissolve the PKK. All of those steps were unilateral steps that were not the result of negotiations with the state. So far, no official negotiations have taken place and no written or verbal agreements have been reached. The steps taken were only a sign of goodwill and expression of seriousness about peace. Now it is upon the Turkish state to answer to this initiative and take the first practical legal steps. So far, all we have seen is empty rhetoric. For the process to actually unfold, Kurdish people's leader Abdullah Öcalan must first of all regain his physical freedom and the

Starting point is 01:51:13 conditions for him to work freely, healthily and securely must be guaranteed so that he can fulfil his role as the chief negotiator of the Kurdish people. Also, the constitutional reforms that grant the basic rights of the Kurds and recognise him as one of the Kurdish people. Also the constitutional reforms that grant the basic rights of the Kurds and recognize them as one of the primary constituents of the republic must take place now. These are the first necessary steps. From there a peace process can unfold. If you're wondering about Rojava, just to finish up, Muslim Abdi made a statement. Muslim Abdi, leader of the Syrian Democratic Forces, right, sometimes called General Muslim, Haval Muslim, depends who, depends what side of things you're on, I guess. Muslim Abdi made a statement congratulating the PKK, saying he hoped all parties supported the peace process. The SDF is still in clashes with remnants of the so-called Islamic State

Starting point is 01:52:00 and increasingly with Sunnis within the Syrian revolution who are growing disheartened with what they see as Al-Sharah's moderate turn, right? The Damascus government being too lib for some of these Sunni groups. And so ISIS, the Islamic State, whatever you want to call it, Daesh, is using that as a chance to recruit people. And that is why we are seeing ongoing fighting. I literally, I saw that they were, they were burying one of their SDF fighters in Kalmischloh today. Um, so unfortunately for the people of Rojava, um, the, the killing and dying continues, which is sad.

Starting point is 01:52:41 Yes. Yeah. I want peace for my friends there and in Burma. Like, despite the fact that Robert and I get paid to go to wars sometimes, it doesn't mean we don't want our friends to live in peace. Yeah, I would like there to not be any more to go to. Yeah, that would be great. I'll find something else to do. Yeah, fuck it. I'll go run with the bulls again.

Starting point is 01:52:58 I went white-rotter rafting yesterday. It was nice. I could just do more of that. Yeah, no, I'll rock climb, you know. All right, everybody. We, I'll rock climb. Yeah, you know, all right everybody We're done for the day. Mm-hmm go hopefully not live in a war zone. But if you do hopefully that stops it. He's I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.

Starting point is 01:53:46 Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two and three on

Starting point is 01:54:22 May 21st and episodes four,, and six on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is season two of the World of Drugs podcast. Yes sir, we are back. In a big way. In a very big way.

Starting point is 01:54:40 Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote unquote drug thing. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown.

Starting point is 01:55:06 Got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette, MMA fighter Liz Karamoosh. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does.

Starting point is 01:55:21 It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcast. And it's going to take us to heal us.

Starting point is 01:55:46 It's mental health awareness month and on a recent episode of Just Healed with Dr. J, the incomparable Taraji P. Henson stopped by to discuss how she's discovered peace on her journey. So what I'm hearing you saying is healing is a part of us also reconnecting to our childhood in some sort. You said I look how youthful I look because I never let that little girl inside of me die. I go outside and run outside with the dogs.

Starting point is 01:56:13 I still play like a kid. I laugh, you know, I love jokes. I love funny. I love laughing. I laugh at myself. I don't take myself too seriously. That's the stuff that keeps you young and stops you from being so hard.

Starting point is 01:56:26 To hear this and more things on the journey of healing, you can listen to Just Heal with Dr. J from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T. Connecting changes everything. In 1978, Roger Caron's first book was published, and he was unlike any first-time author Canada had ever seen. Roger Caron was 16 when first convicted.

Starting point is 01:56:56 Had spent 24 of those years in jail. 12 years in solitary. He went from an ex-con to a literary darling almost overnight. He was instantly a celebrity. He was an adrenaline junkie and he was the star of the show. Go-Boy is the gritty true story of how one man fought his way out of some of the darkest places imaginable. I had a knife go in my stomach, puncture my screen, break my ribs, I had my guts all in my hands. Only to find himself back where he started.

Starting point is 01:57:28 Rodger's saying this, I've never hurt anybody but myself. And I said, oh, you're so wrong. You're so wrong on that one, Rodger. From Campside Media and iHeart Podcasts, listen to GO! Boy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to It Could Happen here, a show about things falling apart. And today, the thing falling apart is the Galactic Empire. This is episode four of our four-part series, talking about the politics of Andor season two.

Starting point is 01:58:08 Andor has sadly come to a close. This will be our final discussion episode, talking about Andor season two, episodes 10, 11, and 12. I'm Garrison Davis, I'm joined by Robert Evans and Mia Wong. What a exhilarating four weeks this has been. Yeah, I'm gonna miss it. Yeah, we're getting relief from the horrors to live the horrors in another universe. Yeah, no, it sucks now that we have to just do all this stuff except like the eight years

Starting point is 01:58:39 in the past version because the level in which they've advanced here is far beyond certainly the US's revolutionary potential. Alas. Yes. Trashic. Hey, if anyone wants to be Armand Mothma, take it to applications. You can be the good liberal. You can be it.

Starting point is 01:58:58 Oh man, I'll take a fucking Krieger at this point. So I I think we're gonna do these episodes a little bit differently. I'm not gonna do a whole synopsis for each of these episodes since for these last three the show has mostly a shoot plot for emotional and character beats. So instead I want to quickly go over each of those character points and then we can discuss those in detail. And most of our discussion will probably be around episode 10, Make It Stop. Yep. Let's start at the beginning, Lonnie's last meeting.

Starting point is 01:59:34 Oh yeah. So the ISP double agent Lonnie Young calls Luthen to an emergency meeting to give him one final batch of intel after burning his cover. It's really shocking and worrying when we see Luthen and Lani meeting in public. That already lets you know, like, oh, this is like... Things are bad. This is the end. This is... Stuff is like the most jover it's ever been for Lani.

Starting point is 01:59:59 There's a great line. They got one of the strongest reactions with the folks I was watching it with. When Luthen's about to head out and he's talking with Clea and she's like, don't do this meeting. If it doesn't look perfect, we don't engage. Yeah. And Lutheran responds, I think we've used up all the perfect. I think we've used up all the perfect. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:00:19 It's this really good, there's some very impressive like face acting from Skarsgard here where you see... He's so good. There's so much he wants to say to this person who as we'll discuss is essentially his daughter. But ultimately all that happens is she says, tuck your shirt in. Like... It's insane. Yeah. So he meets with Lonnie. Lonnie needs like assurances for like him and his family's safety.

Starting point is 02:00:42 Luthen tells him that they'll be able to flee to Yavin together. Sure buddy. So by accessing Dejra's computer files, Lani learns that the Emperor's new energy project, the Kalkite mining on Gorman, the Kyber on Jedha, are actually part of a massive super weapon. Luthen is warned that Dejra and the ISB are preparing for a raid on Coruscant and he may be the target. Luthen ends up killing Lani to tie up loose ends and passes off the information to Kleia to relay it to the Rebel Alliance, while he goes to thermite their computer hard drive saying, quote, unquote, I'll do the burn. Again, it's Jover, like our shop, our little home, our little base of operations in Coruscant

Starting point is 02:01:27 is getting destroyed. This is truly the end of an era here. Luthen either knows or has decided that he has run out of time. And the only way to be sure that the information safely reaches the Alliance is to give the ISB a distraction, and that distraction is himself. Yeah. And again, it's very consistent. He's clearly trying to buy time for Clea to escape, right? Like that's part of his purpose here. And I think he's also just done, you know? Totally.

Starting point is 02:01:59 He's done. He's tired and he doesn't have it in him to run anymore. That's kind of what he discusses in this next section, which is such an efficient piece of screenwriting. When Dejra arrives at Luthen's gallery. Yeah. You can only hide in plain sight for so long and that time has come. As Dejra arrives, Luthen says, here you are at last. Every line in their exchange, like before she lets him know, like, hey, I know who you are,

Starting point is 02:02:33 but like every line leading up to that is a double entendre. Like every single exchange they have is actually communicating something else and it's wild. Forgery is the sad curse of antiquities. At the moment, only two pieces of questionable providence in the gallery. Insane stuff. Insane writing.

Starting point is 02:02:53 And it's perfect that she keeps trying to get some sort of acknowledgement that she's won. That's all she wants out of this is for him to basically She's actually kind of desperate for him to say you did good kid you caught me It's crazy and all he does is throw shade at her No, it's like he's shit sucker, rebellions are already gone. You dipshit fascist like you fucking failed Too late No, but like referring to himself and in some ways her as like as an antiquity like like you said like he is tired he is done he is he's kind of a relic for the current era of the rebellion and you don't know it yet but so are you yes and so is so is her only two pieces of questionable

Starting point is 02:03:36 providence are in the gallery yeah amazing so luthen hands de dra a ceremonial dagger she asks if it's real he smiles and and remarks, we still don't know. And the tension mounts. The tension mounts, yeah. It's amazing. So good. Again, every single line. It's like the screenwriters playing with us.

Starting point is 02:03:57 Just amazing. I think Tom Bissell and Tony Gilroy, all these episodes, just phenomenal. Deidre, now I'm nervous. Luthen, you've come all this way. And then she unveils this artifact that she has brought to Luthen for evaluation. She says, it's a little damaged, perhaps, but I'd say it's held its value as she looks Luthen up and down. Again, same thing, very efficient.

Starting point is 02:04:22 Luthen is a little damaged, but he is held as value. And Dejra reveals the Vintage Imperial Starpath unit that first brought Luthen's operation under Dejra's eye. And now that both of them have their cards displayed on the table, they get to exchange a little bit more clearly without having to use these like coded phrases like they were before. And they had this fascinating back and forth. She talks about how Luthen's been hiding in the shelter of imperial peace and quiet and just wants to burn the galaxy down. And Luthen gets to poke at her for how he's been aware of her this entire time and she's

Starting point is 02:05:02 only learned who he is. Quote, I've known you all along, hardly seems fair. She says, you disgust me, everything you stand for. And he says, do you know why? Freedom scares you. This is what Dejra's last arc is like really about. And it eventually, you know, paradoxically leads to her fate. Now, I think probably the best line in this little exchange is Luthen telling Dejra, quote, you're too that's what, you know, that's what, you know, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's

Starting point is 02:05:27 what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, that's what, He's this whole time he's been like increasingly cooking her like And also cooking his hard drive buying time as his heart. Yeah, yeah. Yeah

Starting point is 02:05:56 It's just it's just some great some great stuff and the Deirdre we get some great face acting Yeah, what is it Denise is her name, right? Yeah, Gal I think where you just see in a second She sees the smoke and then Lutheran collapses because he has stabbed himself in the heart Which is also like it serves as another kind of repose to every argument that she's been making like it's his ultimate Counter to her claims that like you're fundamentally selfish. You're just doing this for yourself and your own, you know You're so chaos. He's like no bitch, I'm gonna stab myself in the heart. Like, you don't know what commitment is. Yeah. It's great.

Starting point is 02:06:31 Yeah, he uses this ceremonial dagger that he, that he earlier hands to Dejra and stabs himself so that the Empire won't be able to torture and try to extract information from him about the rebellion. But you gotta have some explosives. Like, you can't be reliant on stagging yourself with the dagger. This is like a screenwriting thing. Like, Dejra has to get out of this.

Starting point is 02:06:52 They have to access the computer later. I was like, come on, buddy. Come on. I think this is very, like, poetically written. Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's beautiful. I like, like, the romance of it. Yeah. But man, Dejra fucked up so bad here

Starting point is 02:07:08 Fundamentally ruins absolutely her entire life The emotions really got the better of her she really wanted to like like win one over on Axis to like validate herself and her obsession The same way like Cyril does and it fucking bites her in the ass. It destroys the Empire! It destroys the entire Empire! Yeah. Yeah, and I like that they had her simultaneously. She's both right in that if she had been listened to, she could have stopped the rebel victory,

Starting point is 02:07:40 but also she fundamentally destroys the Death Star as a result of her insistence on being right Fits into that old Marxist category of objectively revolutionary Yes, well this up will get to What you know I think we've talked about how, like, the Death Star plans got stolen, like from her fucking hard drive. Yeah. Or like the learning of the Death Star existence through the hard drive. Oh yeah, sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 02:08:14 Yeah, they don't have the plans yet. Yeah. So, Luthen's transferred to the hospital, and then we get a flashback with Luthen as an early Imperial army sergeant involved in a massacre on Kleia's home planet. We see him like huddled over in his ship with a flask repeating the words, make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop.

Starting point is 02:08:39 As like sounds of carnage and destruction go on in the background. What's interesting to me is, yeah, they have, you're basically just hearing what's happening outside. He's in an Imperial Army uniform and you're hearing like radio chatter. And it's radio chatter that could have come from like any war of the last 20 years. Like it's very much modern radio call. It sounds like a lot of the shit you heard

Starting point is 02:09:00 and like the collateral murder video, like some of the stuff that got leaked by Chelsea Manning where people are like, yeah, hit everything on that hill dies, you know, anything past this point in this like line of buildings, anyone you see on the heat scope, kill them, like it's that kind of stuff, right? And it's very much like, it's very non-Star Wars chatter, you know? He's like horrified at like what he's doing. He's trying to find ways to cope with it. He's drinking out of a flask and yeah, just like repeatedly repeating to himself, make it stop.

Starting point is 02:09:33 Just this like very short scene like recontextualizes a whole bunch of things about Luthen's character. Yes. Including his behavior on Pherex during during riot, where he doesn't get involved and instead looks on from a distance with a very blank expression. When I first saw that episode, to me it felt like Luthen was first confronted with the fatality that he's dealing with. Confronted with the consequences for actually engaging in revolution.

Starting point is 02:10:05 Because he's always been kind of in the shadows. He's been more of this, like, orchestrator. He doesn't see, like, the tactile death that accompanies his actions. It's like, that's how I first saw that scene. And now this has been fully recontextualized as, like, Ereks is like a PTSD moment for him. Like, this is, that's not the first time he's seen combat. Yes.

Starting point is 02:10:26 This is, this is, it changes the way you can now look back at that scene, which is very, very cool. Yeah. And it's also interesting to think that he's putting himself in the perspective, as much as anything, of the Imperials doing the massacre. Yes. Yeah, as opposed to the civilian victims of the massacre. I read an interview with Tony where apparently, because they did not have Luthen's backstory set up in season one. Like they didn't fully know where he was going to go. They didn't have a single one nailed down yet. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:10:56 And it was apparently Skarsgard who was like, don't have him be another person who's pissed, like who just hates the Empire because it took everything from him. Like a normal revenge story where like the Empire like close his family so that he becomes an insurgent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:11:13 And I really, I think it's beautiful that like, yeah, his backstory is that no, he was made complicit. Like however, whatever got him into the army in the first place, maybe just conscription, you know, he may not have even had a choice to join, but the Empire forces him to do, like, puts him in a position, and he's, it's as much discussed with himself that he goes along with it as far as he does. And you get in those lines that he's just repeating to himself over and over again as he, like, make it,

Starting point is 02:11:38 like, that's his whole motivation, right? Like, that's the next 20 years of his life are him trying to make it stop. Yeah, that's the title of the episode. Yeah. Well, we'll talk more about that and his motivation at the end when we discuss kind of Clea. Speaking of which in this flashback, it is shot from the perspective of Clea hiding in like a cubby on on this ship. Yeah. And Luthen named I think layer Lahr which is layer Sergeant layer is an original name

Starting point is 02:12:09 Well, we don't know what his search was, but he just reverses it. Yeah This is also like poetic right this is this is oh it is this is this is Star Wars poetry, right? It's like poetry it rhymes obsec wise don't do that. do that. I just gotta put this in there. Don't do that. Do better. But Sergeant Lair finds Kleia as like a six-year-old hiding, hiding on this ship. We then go back to the present as Kleia infiltrates a space hospital to get to Luthen, intercut with flashbacks showing how Luthen used his military experience to train Kleia in insurgent warfare. So here we see Luthen being kept alive in this Coruscant hospital for later interrogation,

Starting point is 02:12:56 and then suddenly, Dedra is arrested in the hospital by an ISB marshal for at first unclear reasons, which we will get into later. The ISB has found Lani's body, so there's a dead ISB agent in Coruscant. They've heard of how Dedra did this raid without authorization, without notifying the agent now in charge of the Axis investigation, and then she's taken into custody. In these flashbacks, we see Luthen and Kleia going town to town, In these flashbacks, we see Lutheran and Clea going town to town, pawning historical artifacts. Well, he teaches young Clea insurgent warfare. One of the most devastating exchanges is when Lutheran describes Clea as his daughter to

Starting point is 02:13:36 a shopkeeper to help negotiate a price. And afterwards, Clea asks, am I your daughter now? He replies, when it's useful. Yeah. She's... And then he says, I'm Luthen, you're Clea. I'm Luthen, you're Clea. That's all we need to know right now.

Starting point is 02:13:54 That's who we are now. Yeah. Clea says, I'll have to think about that. And Luthen says, sometimes it's not up to us. Yeah. Another exchange happens after Cleo watches this like imperial firing line kill a batch of kids who are allegedly suspected of shooting a stormtrooper. I think it probably could have actually been Luthen.

Starting point is 02:14:18 It's unclear and it essentially just demonstrates like collective punishment, right? And Cleo gets very upset at watching this massacre and runs off to Luthen. And also like interestingly, like when Luthen knows this is gonna happen, he like chooses to like not watch. He's like, we don't need to be here. We can just leave.

Starting point is 02:14:36 But Clea chooses to stay and watch and then runs back to him. And he tells her, we fight to win. That means we lose and lose and lose and lose until we're ready. All you know now is how much you hate. You bank that, you hide that, you keep it alive until you know what to do with it. Yeah. And I love both that he's attempting to give her as much agency as he can within this situation where he's also crafting her into a person. And so if she decides she wants to go see this massacre,

Starting point is 02:15:12 he'll let her do it. Like he's not going to, he's not going to try to make her, but if that's what she wants, he's not gonna stop her. And then when she's seen what she needs to see, he's going to give her the best advice that he can give her. There's another line coming where she asks if he's scared and he's like, only about what I'm doing to you, right? Like, he is still deeply, he feels deeply compromised by this position he's put himself

Starting point is 02:15:36 in with this only other person that he really can trust. Yeah, they do their first large-scale direct action together on the Emperor's home planet of Naboo. He teaches her how to blend into the surroundings as they remote detonate an explosive planted on a bridge. While, in the present, Clea disguises herself as a nurse to disappear into the hospital where Luthen's being held and blows up the hospital parking lot as a distraction to get to Luthen.

Starting point is 02:16:02 These two things mirror each other. It's like poetry. It rhymes. Clea says to Luther, you're afraid. He says, I'm only afraid of what I'm doing to you as he hands this child a detonator. Yeah. She's not willing to, she can't like make herself use it yet.

Starting point is 02:16:20 I mean, I feel like she was almost willing to... She was psyching herself up to it. Luther actually took it away and had himself do it. Yeah. But that scene by itself where he's like telling her not to like look at it to make sure you're like looking at me, only turn after everyone else has turned, very fun stuff happening in Star Wars. Yeah, it's great. Like the whole... the decision he The decision he makes here is, you see a lot about their relationship. And again, how deeply compromised he feels by it. Both like, I have to get this person

Starting point is 02:16:55 ready for what's necessary, and also I have to protect her from the worst things that we're going to have to do together. He does want to remain primarily the one complicit. So, I think in part because he does believe, I mean fundamentally that's the core of his character. He does believe she has a future outside of this. Totally. And that's the entire point of what he's doing. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:17:18 You know what else is necessary, Robert? For us to throw to ads because otherwise we can't keep this movable feast on the road. Okay we are back. Back in the present day on Coruscant, Cleo finally reaches Luthen in his hospital room. And I guess, like, leading up to this moment, it's unclear if she's gonna try to, like, rescue him, like, extract him. And no, there's no time for that. She takes him off life support and lets him die. There is no escape for his character.

Starting point is 02:18:02 Yeah. Like, Luthen never gets to see that sunrise, but he did everything he could to give the rebellion the best chance. And Kleia gets to finish and live out what he started. He wants to give Kleia that sunrise. This relates to his core motivation as a character. He's not getting revenge against the Empire for killing his family or something. That kind of cliched story is not what they're doing here. a character. He's not getting revenge against the Empire for killing his family or something.

Starting point is 02:18:25 That kind of cliched story is not what they're doing here. Instead, this is all about Clea. It's about how he's found Clea, and both of them are broken by what he has done. So then he spends the rest of his life building the rebellion for Clea so that she can live on and she can beat the Empire. And that's the entire point of him. That is what's driving him. He is like the most selfless character. Tony, in an interview, said, quote, there are only a certain number of reasons that you can change your life, and one of them is just absolute self-disgust. So we found a way for him to have a belly full of it at the right moment.

Starting point is 02:19:07 Yeah, and I love that that like, that's his whole motivation ultimately is like undoing the only part of what he was involved in that he can undo, which is saving this person. And like saving this person involves destroying the thing that took her life away from her. Yeah, the entire apparatus of the Empire. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 02:19:29 I think we're kind of wrapped up with this episode here, but like the Cleo Hospital, like, infiltration sequence is superb. So good. Like one one person doing all of this stuff to the absolute befuddlement of like the Imperial troopers. She's really embodying the line from Rogue One, make ten men feel like a hundred. Yeah. And yeah, she's able to infiltrate this hospital.

Starting point is 02:19:54 Like she's working with a team of like ten people and it's just her. Shout out to the granny alien in the elevator. Very fun. Great little comedy moment, yeah. Incredible. Yeah But let's say you do anything else to say about episode 10 I mean, yeah, I like this this is obviously like my favorite episode of oh, yeah particular batch By a mile best in the whole series like this is absolutely. Yeah, I love the Lutheran clay a moments I love seeing like how at the same time this like hint when you're seeing them kind of

Starting point is 02:20:27 Haggle over the price of this antiquity that they've got that like, okay So Clea always had this this degree of like cunning and yeah This ability to kind of like recognize what's going on with probably how she survived in the first place, right? She's she was always someone who saw more than other people which probably how she survived in the first place, right? She was always someone who saw more than other people, which probably like- She's the girl. She's the girl. She's it. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:20:50 Yep, yep. And at the same time, you get this piece of Luther. Like there must have been like, whatever he was before he joined the military, it was somebody who had this kind of deep knowledge of antiquities and probably this desire to make something of his life other than what became of it. And all that he's got left of it is like utilizing that real piece of himself to make a fake person, right? Like that's, which is such an interesting character beat for him that like this, this thing that is probably closest to the real Lutheran, the one that existed before his military service, before the empire ruined him,

Starting point is 02:21:26 is completely remade in the service of making himself into something he's not. So when I first saw this, I was really worried because I think one of those interesting parts about Clay as a character is that she is the only person that Luthen trusts absolutely, right? She's the only person that he sees fully as an equal.

Starting point is 02:21:42 She's the only one who has all the information that he has. And, you know, I was kind of worried that it was OK, well, now she's effectively his daughter and it's like, no, it's actually like she is still the only person. Yeah. Like even though Luthen has been sort of raising her, like is like he's been trying to raise her as an equal as much as much as he possibly can. I think that's a really, really, yeah, sort of fascinating like way for this thing to have gone. Like the actress of Clea has said,

Starting point is 02:22:09 like from Clea's perspective, like she doesn't really fully see Luthen like as her father figure. Because like inherently like he was like involved in the actual killing of like of her family. Like she has found a way to kind of love him through that. But it's not like, it's not like that immediate familial love. Like it's a different rationalization that she can still like give him like a final kiss on his deathbed.

Starting point is 02:22:39 And like, does, like does care for him. But like it's so much more like complicated and murky and like They roped in with politics and roped in with yeah but here's here's the thing what I'll say about that and and this is kind of my favorite part of that is I Can see how she would be like this feeling I have towards him like isn't like what someone would feel towards a father But also she doesn't really know how people feel about their parents because she didn't get to have them very long. People can feel like that way about their father.

Starting point is 02:23:11 Feeling both this deep sense of love and disgust towards your parents is an incredibly normal experience and she just doesn't, I think maybe there's a degree to which she doesn't even really realize how common that is because of what was taken from her. No, that's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah. All right, episode 11, who else knows? Krennic and Dejra queen out together.

Starting point is 02:23:35 Hell yeah. Yeah. Look at them go. So Dejra is in this interrogation chamber and Krennic grills her about how this piece of information- He's so good, he's so good. chamber and credit grills her about how this piece of information has escaped containment and Dejra's face throughout this whole scene. Oh my god.

Starting point is 02:23:55 If she comes into it you can tell she thinks I'm gonna get out of this. I'm gonna talk my way out of this. Yeah, surely. We'll sort this all out. of this? Yeah, surely I'm... We'll sort this all out. Yeah, no, once she realizes that this is actually about, like, the leakage of, like, the Death Star plans and not just a simple raid on a rebel, like, weapons dealer, she realizes the kind of gravity of her situation. She she complains about how, like, she's been forced to, like, scavenge for information

Starting point is 02:24:23 because there's not an efficient intel sharing operation across different imperial branches. And Krennic says to her, if you're not a rebel spy, you missed your calling, which is the biggest insult you could say to her. Oh my god. Right? This destroys her. This is the same mistake that Serial makes, right? They're trying to like to like do this like try hard stuff. You think initiative is rewarded here exactly yeah

Starting point is 02:24:51 Yeah, you know you follow orders Do not take your initiative you are not your own person you follow what you're told to do you don't take things into your own hands This is how the whole system crumbles. Yeah things into your own hands, this is how the whole system crumbles. It's phenomenal how, like, she is so much, like, you know, like, especially in Cyril's eyes, right? She is like everything that he wanted to be, but like couldn't. And yet she has all the same flaws as him. They're both children trying to like grab and seize their spot, like in the the Imperial world And they can never escape the logic of children. Yeah, it's phenomenal So so yeah, basically because because she was sent memos Accidentally, she was accidentally added to who the PC small group

Starting point is 02:25:41 Then Lonnie was able to access with like a stolen code cylinder, and this is why she's detained. And I love too that Lonnie makes a statement that like he didn't tell Luthen he had this, because he's like, well, you would have made me use it. Super cool. And there's this, yeah, like Lonnie has gotten very good at this. Like he was right to not tell his boss. Sometimes you share and sometimes you don't. And yeah, no, the idea of him holding onto this code

Starting point is 02:26:08 cylinder this this whole year, knowing that you can only use this once before you're kind of found out and then like waiting until he's heard chatter that like Luthen's going to get raided, uses the cylinder, then discovers all these other files. It shows how like important Luthen's operation is. I think this is I think what these last two episodes are really about is kind of like Yeah, the redemption of Luthen in the eyes of of the other rebel agents. Mm-hmm. So so yes Dejra is completely fucked and it's hilarious and Ben Mendelsohn is

Starting point is 02:26:39 Prancing around the scene. He's having such a good time It's so good. This is like it's like this and and the thing where he's going cow kite Yeah, so good. It's only his two best like yeah, it's also just really like God They didn't let him cook an and or like oh, it's a hammer and like it's not time to know how to cook You know oh, yeah, but it's like it's like like these it's like This series is you've been getting to watch yeah, sorry yeah in Rogue One Yeah, it's like you've been getting to watch these people who have just been playing like Kind of generic Star Wars characters, and you get to watch them cook. It is a thing of beauty the real freak gets to be

Starting point is 02:27:20 All freaks there's that glorious moment when she realizes how fucked she is when he puts his finger on her head Like she's just an odd she's there for him to act off. She's a right, right? She's a button we can push you when we can push you when we desire to but you don't you don't go off by yourself It's phenomenal. Yeah, and he's turning her off. Yeah. And he has this line where he's like, you think I would come here for the death of an ISB clerk? Say the word!

Starting point is 02:27:52 It's phenomenal! Yeah, say the word. Death Star. It's amazing. And then yeah, he turns her off and is like, yeah, we'll get by without you somehow. Yeah, hopefully we'll be able to get by without you. Yeah, and it's both funny because like he is just he is nuking her There's nothing left after this and also

Starting point is 02:28:17 He's dead like two days Tarkin's about to obliterate his ass with a button. Tarkin's about to be space dust along with Y'allarad and everyone else. Yes, everyone's a button. And it's crazy how much of the ISB gets totally wiped out, like, the week of the Death Star's destruction. And this shows the real decline of the Empire is this administrative bureaucratic state that's been running the real day to day operations gets completely wiped out. And now these two like Sith lunatics

Starting point is 02:28:48 have to personally run everything themselves and they can't do it. They just can't. They were relying on all of like the Republic holdovers that actually knew how to like run a state. Yeah, these guys like Yelarin and whatnot who were like. Partagas, he's like good at his job. Yes, yeah, yeah. Oh, Part part of gas they they all get iced out

Starting point is 02:29:09 Yeah, yeah, I mean and this is a dynamic that I think like cuz like everyone you're a trained from birth in the US to know the like the revolution devours its children thing and The Empire talks about this side of the fire is just like no The liquidation rate for these people is astonishing. They also all turn to these people. And it's like you can watch like Vader doing this to people. Where like Vader, like, yeah, Vader just keeps fucking killing his officers. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:29:36 On his Super Star Destroyer. All the time. Well, and what we see throughout Andor is rebels fuck up all the time. They fail all the time. We see moments of failure from Luthen. We see them from Cassian. We see them from Draven and the guys at Endor, Bael, Mon Mothma, they all fuck up. And then they get the chance to learn from their mistakes

Starting point is 02:29:59 and get better, which is ultimately why they win. And that privilege is never extended to the the you know, you're really good You're going to make some mistakes and the first time you do Darth Vader chokes you to death And so the Empire never gets better It's interesting cuz this was a point in the old canon We're like one of the one of their arguments of like why the rebels won the war was like X wings have Shields yeah and TIE fighters don't. And so you can make a mistake in an X-Wing, but if you make a mistake in a TIE fighter, you're dead.

Starting point is 02:30:29 So the Rebel pilots end up being better than the Imperial ones because they survive. And there's this other like, there are lots of these interesting parallels too where like, the death of the administrative state was also sort of an old canon thing where it's like, so the way it plays out in the old canon is like at Endor, and this is the thing in the new canon too I guess, but like all of the best officers are trying to get promoted up the ladder And so they're all on the Emperor the Emperor Super Star Destroyer Yeah, and when that thing goes down It's like yeah it like and this is partially just a thing of also about like how imperial administration works is how centralized it is

Starting point is 02:31:00 Is that they have single points of failure and this is for example how about Deja fell? Yeah, it's like yeah They put all the fuel in one spot. It got blown up. Oh no! It is is that they have single points of failure and this is for example how brodija fell yeah It's like yeah We don't have a state anymore because everything's so centralized and it being so centralized and everyone being so essential and also you killing all These people because your organization doesn't tolerate failure It just creates these dis-cascading failure points where you knock out a couple of people on it and suddenly it's like everything's destroyed I I do want to return to the point of how fascism eats its own at the end because Tony has some quotes on that. I'm just going to speed run through these next few points here.

Starting point is 02:31:32 The Ice Bee tracks Cleo's movements via hospital security cameras, even though she tries to avoid and evade detection. She is basically stuck on Coruscant and starts hiding out in the old safe house, broadcasting an emergency pulse code to her comrades on Yavin. Meanwhile, a divorced Cassian and Melchi get drunk and start bullying their autistic robot friend while playing poker. So good. It's so funny. There are such cases. Hey, I know. Oh, I know. I'm well aware.

Starting point is 02:32:02 I am the sober autistic girl in every one of these things Well, and they they understand the most important thing about television sci-fi Which is an a robot awkwardly playing poker with his human friends? Data K2so holding hands meme, and I love the K2so is also constantly being like you guys are drinking a lot Holding hands me and I I love the k2so is also constantly be like you guys are drinking a lot like Yeah, I love that when they're about to go on this last mission Cassian is drunk driving Shot away from blacking out. It's time to pilot a spacecraft most most realistic insertions No, I will be this drunk again until like no like many many years later in it in this galaxy until like there's Civil War generals yeah are fighting each other's next up. It will be this drunk

Starting point is 02:32:57 Yeah, you listen Simpson Grant is the last person to be as drunk as Cassie and and or was in this scene Wilmans old like Lutheran radio goes off with an SOS message. She takes it to Cassian, who then, yeah, drunk drives their UA off Yavin. Let's have a shout out to our man Draven here. He's kind of, he's kind of, he's kind of based. I like Draven. I love that they managed to both make him be, he has to be the foil to Cassian,

Starting point is 02:33:28 because Cassian does not want this chain of command bullshit. He's so sympathetic. But he's not wrong and he's not a dick. He's like, look, man, I've got like 400 other freighters I'm worried about right now. I love Draven. There's like shipments of rifles that I have to keep. I have to keep all of this in my head.

Starting point is 02:33:43 I can't write any of it down. I haven't slept in days I eat nothing but Tums like I can't even drink hot coffee because otherwise my fucking ulcers light on fire I don't even remember when I ate solid food my IBS has IBS Can you please stop taking off in the middle of the night? It's so funny that the thing that Cassie does at the end of Rogue One is just like a regular Curvance on the face. He just keeps doing this.

Starting point is 02:34:12 But no, like consistently Draven even if he gets pissed off at Cassian Consistently has his back still which is I think really really sweet. Yes. Yeah. Krennic realizes how fucked they are and tries to get the entire ISB to mobilize to locate Kleia as she is probably in possession of the Death Star intel. There will be no horizon to the scope of your inquiry. And this is where we have some of the most interesting stuff from Partagas and how he views rebellions and revolutions as a disease. And this relates to some of his lines from season one, where he describes the ISP as

Starting point is 02:34:49 quote unquote, healthcare providers. We treat sickness, we identify symptoms, we locate germs whether they arise from within or have come from the outside. The longer we wait to identify a disorder, the harder it is to treat the disease." And then when the ISP decides on what grounds they are looking to apprehend Claya, Pardigraz proclaims that, quote, She's diseased. She escaped the hospital with infectious condition that threatens everyone with whom she may come into contact. I'm so glad they did this because this is such a core part of the ideology of fascism, of seeing the body as a nation and there being these sort of parasitic infections that are inside the nation that are undermining it.

Starting point is 02:35:34 That's just the core of fascism. And you're just getting to watch the people in the middle of the empire just literally trying to do the thing in the most literal way possible. Right? Like they're just they're just coming out and saying what the ideology is and how it works. And I, it may be, it may still be a level of metaphor that is slightly too high for the average Star Wars viewer, but they are just telling you the politics. Yeah. And I really appreciate that. Yeah. Now, while stuck in an ISB holding cell with an unbuttoned collar, Dejra is crashing out. And you can tell because the collar is unbuttoned.

Starting point is 02:36:13 But somehow she's still able to give the ISB a lead to track Klea through her use of obscure radio signals. One of the cool parts here is an Imperial radio technician is impressed at Lucent's radio setup. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And can't help but be excited when learning how it works. But they say that Luthen targeted the storage files and the radio signal library when he burned the console. But still they were able to track Kleia's pulse code to a nearby apartment on Coruscant.

Starting point is 02:36:43 And in preparation for the raid on the safe house, the ice speed jams comms around the area right as Cassian, Melchi and K2 arrive to extract Clea. As Cassian gets into the apartment and finds not Luthen, but Clea and then tries to plead with her to come to Yavin, he also like kind of lambasts Luthen for not coming to Yavin sooner because he couldn't swallow his pride. And Anclayah says, quote, -"Thank the galaxy he didn't. He stayed for this." -"Yep. Yep." The people in Yavin have to know what they're up against.

Starting point is 02:37:16 -"Thank the galaxy he didn't." -"Yeah. So good." All right. Let's go on break, and then we'll return to discuss the final episode. Okay, we are back. Episode 12, Jeddah Khyber Erso. So, Cass is trying to convince Clea to leave like right now, right this very second, please dear God, come with me. And Clea is still like kind of pissed about the whole situation. Like Gavin, after all these years, what a bitter ending. Cass tries to argue that if she comes, she's helping to keep Luthen alive, which she calls big words.

Starting point is 02:38:01 The Imperial SWAT team, importantly not stormtroopers, instead these goofy-ass SWAT guys surround the apartment trying to locate Kleia. As the ISB locates Cass, Kleia, and Melchi, they throw a stun grenade, which, this is very interesting to me, does not really affect Cass and Melchi as much. Like, Kleia gets knocked knocked out but the Narcina five prison shocks Conditions Melchi and Cass against the stun grenade. Yeah, which is again Phenomenal it's so good I think just generally like clay has again Luther has protected her from a lot of like the direct She doesn't have CTE, right?

Starting point is 02:38:41 If Cassie and lived another 30 years like his fucking brain would have been melting because he's been around too many goddamn Explosions and he's been electrocuted and the same things true a Melchi right they just barely feel it To be fair. It's not like she hasn't blown up a bunch of things I mean she has distance from a distance Distance we just watch her liquidate an entire imperial security complement to go kill Luthor. Like, it's not like she hasn't done this before. No, no, no. But she's raised by an old soldier who does the responsible thing that you do if you have the experience, but she'd tell the younger people, no, no, no, use your ear pro.

Starting point is 02:39:15 No, get further back. I know you don't think you need to be, but get further back. Like, my ears ring all the time. Don't fucking take risks. I also kind of wonder if maybe there's the level of protection from the stun grenades you get, again, when you are still right on the edge of a blackout. Yeah, that's compelling.

Starting point is 02:39:42 So as K2 just completely demolishes this Imperial Riot team, the ISB calls for backup, but everyone is spread too thin because they're out searching for the emergency disease warrant from Parnagrance. So good. So, Kleia does get to Yavin, and here we see a lot more of like the tricky aspects of Yavin politics Saw is kind of getting impossible to deal with he is huffing way too much fuel He's huffing an amount of fuel. I don't know if I'm gonna say it's too much, but I do Dude we know you're we know you're on jet. He's like no idea

Starting point is 02:40:25 You don't know where I am. You know, yeah, like, Mon's trying to argue with him about about how they're trying to like get to the bottom of like the Imperial Kyber mining on Jeddah. And they're like, we know you're on Jeddah. And he tries to deny it. You don't know where I am. Yes, we do. There's also this great thing at the end of that where Moth was like, we're just trying to help you and then and Saw just cuts the line and I think it's Draven or whatever The rebel intelligence ghoul in the room cuts the line and Moth was kind of just going like uh, and he goes, oh no, we've absolutely been sending spies into his group and Moth is just like, oh, fuck you guys. We've been bugging him. He's absolutely right.

Starting point is 02:41:06 And this is something I think is interesting about, because like, in Rogue One, Saw is like, seems like such an unbelievably paranoid asshole. It's like, no! Like the Rebels really have been like, trying to, the Rebels and the Empire really have been trying to infiltrate his group for like, so fucking

Starting point is 02:41:22 long that he's completely lost his mind from just like the paranoia of it all. Also, he is canonically, again, a 46. Yeah. Huffing all that fuel really does rapid age you. Yeah, yeah. It's not great for you.

Starting point is 02:41:36 So then we have, I guess, the most frustrating part of the episode. Like, good, but frustrating to watch with this this this rebel spokes council meeting about Lutheran and the Death Star Intel. Oh my god are these people annoying. Ugh. Yeah. What pieces of shit. These people these people who have like done basically nothing. Yeah. There are senators who's like who have who have defected to Yavin and they don't know the cost of things that they're actually dealing in. Bale says that Luthen stayed on Coruscant too long. And again, no, Luthen stayed for this piece of information. And Mon's getting

Starting point is 02:42:13 kind of increasingly frustrated as everyone's kind of like bad talking Luthen. Again, we've been very clear on the show about Luthen as a complicated character, with some people more pro-Luthen than others. And Mon, like Mon herself, has a lot of reservations about Luthen. But she also knows, is like, her directly and everyone else are only here in part because of what he's done. That's not saying he was right about every single thing. But that still is true, right? Like he, this is, he's still very important to this. And everyone's being quite dismissive of Cassian and the intel from Luthen. And Cassian kind of gets, you know, put into confinement and it gets dismissed and

Starting point is 02:42:54 requests to visit Clea in the hospital. And this is where Mon finally speaks up and immediately grants him permission because like she's, she, she knows all these people. Like, like she's, and she's the only one on this little council that knows all of these people and knows how much they have sacrificed. But still, Mon is still a good operator here. And she asks her cousin, Vel, to talk with Cassian

Starting point is 02:43:18 and suss out how real this Death Star intel is. When Vel does this, she doesn't try to do it like covertly. She like talks to Cassie and very like flatly being like, hey, like Mon sent me here to try to figure out if this is legit, is this legit? And they discuss the intel. Meanwhile, Clea gets up from like her like medical, medical bay and starts walking around Yavin in the rain.

Starting point is 02:43:42 And like, oh my God, somebody please hug her. Like someone like do something like she should not be left alone. Like, she's had one of the most traumatic days of her life. Someone like, take care of her. And Vel runs into Kleia, and like, Vel and Kleia have had like, kind of like a dicey relationship. But like, in this moment, we see just the importance of sheer solidarity. And Vel like, cares for her, gets her to like, cover, gives see like just the importance of like sheer solidarity and

Starting point is 02:44:09 They'll like cares for her gets her to like cover gives her like a place to sleep And it's a really touching scene And I want to talk about this moment a little bit because I think it's an interesting character thing with Claire here where Claire throughout This entire show is the only character who hasn't put together the entire time Yeah, like even part of gasp at like the very end starts to sort of crack, right? Yeah, like even part of gasp at like the very end starts to sort of crack right Claire is the one character who like even everyone is falling apart around her when and or is falling apart when like Even when Luthen is falling apart clay is always on it fuck you pull yourself together You have to hold this together. Yeah, yeah, and it's like her and you have this moment like her task This is when she's finally is able to break. Yeah. Yeah, she's been holding in so much

Starting point is 02:44:44 Yeah, yeah, yeah, like one her task is finally over and so she can like let herself fall apart and two It's like a thing that could finally actually drive her to fall apart It's the fact that she just had to fucking she to kill losing kill the person who raised her Yeah, she's a fucking kill Luther and then get out and you can see this thing where that I think is like very familiar a lot of people were like She's been and she also has to hold all this information in her head because if she forgets any of the information that she's been told by Lutheran the rebellion is doomed and and and when Andor like first meets her on Coruscant She's like it's spilling out. She's just a jumble of words. Yeah, and it's like

Starting point is 02:45:20 It's it's this thing where like you're she, she's finally reached the point where it's like, she has one last thing to do and she can fall apart and then she can finally, instead of having to be the one who's caring for literally everyone and holding literally everyone else together, she can finally like, rest. And she doesn't know how to do that. Because she's always had to be the one

Starting point is 02:45:40 who's holding everything together this entire time. I do love the moment when Luthen first gives her the information and he like forces her to like repeat it back to him, like make sure you can you can express it to me. And then she does the same thing to Cassian and Cassian like doesn't like Cassian doesn't repeat it back to her. And yeah, like that small like, you know, like, like you have to have like a ritual you have to have like you have you have to have like a protocol to make sure you actually like to make sure that

Starting point is 02:46:03 I know you actually have this information, you need to have like a protocol to make sure you actually like to make sure that I know you actually have this information You need to like express it back to me. Yeah, it's it's just a nice little short moment in the next morning We see Cassian taking care of Bixis plants good for him yeah, and then this is when Cass and Vell talk and They say that they're gonna drink to Luthen just this once which again Cassian's drinking right in the morning Drink to Luthen justice once, which again, Cassian's drinking right in the morning. Good stuff. Yeah. As soon as he wakes up. Like he does every day.

Starting point is 02:46:30 Yes. But they say, you know, like, we can't toast them all. Like Lieutenant Gorn, Nemec, Cinta, Farrick, Smarva, Gorman, the Eldanis. And one short little tidbit here. Vel talks about how there's people falsely claiming that they were part of the Eldani crew, which is the most accurate thing I have ever seen. Oh yeah.

Starting point is 02:46:54 Yeah, where they're like, everybody keeps taking credit for this, and she's like, man, if someone did that in front of me, I'd just shoot their ass. I fucking killed him. Yeah. No, it's like, they are the only two people from the El Donnie raid still alive. And like yeah, like the idea that we're getting like rebel stolen ballers, but very realistic. You know, I actually punched Richard Spencer as like a 14 year old. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:47:18 It's very cool. We then start hearing Nemec's manifesto playing. And it's unclear if there's playing it for the show. To remind us of it, yeah. But then we realized that it's Paragraz listening in the Imperial Security Bureau's briefing room. And it's a really wonderful thing to return to. And one of Paragraz's underlings walks up to him and says,

Starting point is 02:47:46 it just keeps spreading, doesn't it? And he says, it's been hard to contain. Again, using this disease rhetoric, he then asks for a moment to collect himself and then shoots himself in the head. This is one of the most fascinating parts of the show, like, like knowing like the kind of the, the terror that he's going to face for like, for failing while also being confronted with like, how much of his work for the Empire has been worth it. Like it's not, his emotions here are not clearly laid out to you because it's more interesting for you to think about them yourself. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:48:23 And I've seen everything from like, oh, he realizes he was wrong to he realizes like the Empire is the disease or just he realizes the disease got out of control, like more than they had realized. But either way... And the punishment he could be facing from the Empire is not worth it. Like he is, he is, he's a career man. And why would he be sent to Narkina V? Like, he is not going to El Salvador.

Starting point is 02:48:48 Finally, Cassian is sent to meet a source on K'Fring. That's one of the guys infiltrating Saw's operation to learn the location of Galen Erso, the designer of the Death Star. And then we have this final montage across all of our characters. We have Mon and Vel having breakfast with the grunts. You have divorced Perrin flying around on Coruscant. You have Dejra in a Narcina prison. And Kleia gets to see the life of the Rebellion. Saw's at Jedha. Krennic is at the Death Star.

Starting point is 02:49:21 B2emo has a new friend. And Bix is holding a baby watching the sunrise. Uh-huh. So... I wanna talk mostly about Bix here. But first, I think Mon eating with the rebel troops is like very cool to have her just like with the regular people. She's not like with like Baal and like not like... Not like often like a special like counselor's room.

Starting point is 02:49:43 She's like just with everyone. We'll also talk a little bit about Clea here as well. But I think I wanna just do Bix to start if that's okay. Sure, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. So Tony has talked a lot about this ending scene and about how he wanted to end with a sense of hope. And like the hope for like life beyond, you know, the empire. Like life beyond imperial oppression and Bix with the baby is supposed

Starting point is 02:50:08 to like symbolize this. And Bix is literally like looking at the sunrise, right? And this metaphor of the sunrise has been something for Luthen, how he's never going to actually get to see like life beyond the Empire. And he knows that he sacrificed that. It also calls into view Cassian dying at like the false sunrise of the Death Star. And I've And to not only do I have to say this, but I have to say that, and I think it's a great thing that we're doing this. I think it's a great thing that we're doing this. And I think it's a great thing that we're doing this. And I think it's a great thing that we're doing this. And I think it's a great thing that we're doing this. And I think it's a great thing that we're doing this.

Starting point is 02:50:34 And I think it's a great thing that we're doing this. And I think it's a great thing that we're doing this. And I think it's a great thing that we're doing this. And I think it's a great thing that we're doing this. And I think it's a great thing that we're doing this. And I think it's a great thing that we're doing this. And I think it's a great thing that we're doing this. of things going on here. This show goes so, so like way, way beyond like simple politics of like, of like representation and like woke casting, right, which can often end up feeling like shallow boxes to check. Because this show actually like depicts things like carceral

Starting point is 02:50:55 injustice, manufactured consent for genocide, how structural patriarchy drives imperial oppression. Like the depth of the political mechanisms the show is tackling, I think, is so much more worthwhile. And it's not immune to criticism for those reasons, but I think that aspect can be overlooked, oddly. I think we kind of take for granted how good the show is at so many aspects of politics. And this show specifically has women in so many different roles beyond like the, you know, pop feminist, girl boss badass, which has been linked to Star Wars through Leia, Ahsoka, and to a lesser extent, like Rey and Jyn. And this trope is itself kind of low-key misogynistic.

Starting point is 02:51:34 But in Andor, we have Mon Mothma, we have Vel, we have Cinta, we have Clea, we have Dejra, we have Marva, we have Bix. And I think motherhood is something that characters should be allowed to embrace. And like motherhood's always had a very tricky relationship with Star Wars Because of Padme, but like being being a mom is not the issue with Bix's character No, you can still critique how she was relegated to becoming like the punching bag for the show

Starting point is 02:51:57 But being a mother is like not bad There is there's a quote from the Palestinian militant There's a quote from the Palestinian militant, Layla Khalid, like revolution must mean life also, every aspect of life. And she specifically referenced motherhood. And like Bix is a fighter, she's a survivor. She fights her way out of depression and PTSD, and she does spend years engaged in revolutionary action. And yes, it may have been nice to see more

Starting point is 02:52:25 of that revolutionary action on screen. We do see some. It might have been nice, but this is also right, a limited series show with a ton of characters, like 400 speaking roles. And that is not been afforded to everybody. And that can be unfortunate. But I think I understand what's going on with this character. And I do not think the problem is the baby itself. I think that's actually fine. And her deciding after years of fighting to take a few years off to have a baby should be viewed as a choice that she's allowed to make, I guess. I also think there's something, like there's a lot of agency in the choice to like I'm done

Starting point is 02:53:06 But I'm not gonna make that decision or this other person for Cassian. Yeah. Yeah But I don't know I like it it's scanned to me I do like thinking that in this last scene is we're like watching these last bits of all our characters You know not only as people have pointed out is Cassian gonna be dead in like two days, along with Ben Mendelsohn, and shortly thereafter, Grand Moff Tarkin. But like all the other stuff that's canonically going down, like right as fucking Clea sees that first sunrise,

Starting point is 02:53:35 like you have to imagine Han Solo somewhere is doing a line off of like a space prostitute in some sleazy bar. It's like 4 a.m. in the morning where he is. He hasn't slept in days. You know, Luke Skywalker is looking at his aunt and uncle being like, well, they're never going to be lit on fire, obviously. Just beautiful. To kind of reiterate on the point about how like fascism also eats its own, something that Tony has discussed before,

Starting point is 02:53:58 specifically in relation to like Cyril and Dejra and part of Graz, right? Tony says like, quote, fascism doesn't just take down the oppressed, it doesn't just come for the people it's trying to control, it inevitably destroys the people who have worked the hardest to build it. And that's been true all through history as well. In a different interview, he says that the empire

Starting point is 02:54:18 is just shattering, fragmenting, grabbing, destroying and taking, and then the people that are doing it on the imperial side are all isolated. They think they're part of something, but really they're not. Look at what happens to Dejra. Look what happens to Parnagras. Look what happens to Cyril Karn. He tries to believe in the dream. It's the carelessness and the cruelty and the lack of empathy. That's what I'm pitching. Even in this little final montage, we have this brief shot of Perrin, which is interesting. That's Mon Mothma's

Starting point is 02:54:45 estranged husband, I guess. And Tony has discussed Perrin as well. And during like the wedding scene, we learned that that like as a kid, like while he was in school, he was kind of a quote unquote political firebrand. And he has sacrificed that a little bit. Tony says, quote, there are a lot of sacrifices in this show, all variety of sacrifices. He's made his sacrifice for hedonism. He doesn't look happy in that car, unquote. No. I do like the little wrap up we have on parents' character there. Although I also love, if you'll notice, he's with the wife of the guy they married their daughter off to.

Starting point is 02:55:21 It's Skulden you have to assume has gotten purged at this point Because they realized that he had been funneling funds to the rebellion But I I do like we even get that this is this is the only little private Rebellion that he can manage right now as he sees fucking this guy's wife Has their own rebellion Man, I guess I finally I guy at least for me I guess part of me wanted to see more of like the development of Yavin as like how like revolutionary cells come together. And Tony has addressed this as well. Quote, Yavin makes me nervous. If you want to know the truth, there's things about Yavin that make me nervous. And the logic about Yavin that makes me nervous, even within the Star Wars canon. The security there and how some people know about it, but the ISP doesn't know about it. And there's some places where you don't want to

Starting point is 02:56:08 poke too aggressively because you don't really want to get into the undercarriage. That was a place where I didn't really want to get into the undercarriage very much. That is understandable. And then finally on Kleia and Luthen. And specifically, like like Clea's last look there like in the morning after her walk in the rain after all of this you know frustration between like Luthen and Yavin. Tony says quote, Clea and Luthen are over amplifying the distrust and hate in the same way that some of the people on the Alliance are over ramping the disagreement. I think one of my favorite moments in that montage at the end is when Cleo wakes up the next morning after her night in the rain, and she looks out and sees that there's people

Starting point is 02:56:50 running and people carrying supplies, and she's seen how big Yavin is. And there's this Mona Lisa smile that she has that's almost beginning to take pleasure in some sense of ownership of what she's helped create. She realizes how much of a contributor, how much of an investor she and Luthen are in Yavin. She's watching the people there and just a little moment of pride comes on her face that she warms up just a little bit and begins to take ownership of the rebellion. That's everything to me." There's something I love about Yavin, where you get to see sort of the beauty of it and the beauty of what's going to destroy the Empire.

Starting point is 02:57:25 Where it's like you keep just seeing like people who survived all of this shit and make it to Yavin. Like Meshi is like the other survivor of the Narcina V prison break. And he's like one of the people going out with Andor. What's the other rebellion twinks name? The kid who threw the kiddie through the break yeah willman willman willman's french resistance girlfriend makes it there and like all of these you get this little microcosm of like all of these people who are like the survivors of all of these

Starting point is 02:57:57 imperial sort of like horrors like have gathered in this place and it's like these are the people who are going to destroy the empire and I think something really beautiful about that and Then I also think there's a really interesting thing in in the oven politics We do see which is that like, you know, so like I get I am notoriously the shows like Luthen hater I'm not really a hater of Luthen I just I just don't want the most annoying people in the world to try to replicate him in real life But also like the central rebel command is a shit show. It's complete disaster They're like top-down hierarchical command from that council.

Starting point is 02:58:27 Those people, every single instance of this, attempt to lose the boar, right? They're too pissed off at Luthen to like listen to the information that he literally fucking died to give them, right? Like this entire operation had been about giving them the information to destroy the superweapon that will destroy the empire. And they don't listen to it they like In Rogue One like that council tries to surrender like they literally vote to be like yeah, sorry We can't fight the Empire They're too strong and then like the rebel military defects and is another is not the fact like they stage an insurrection They go right they rebel yeah, yeah, they go rogue and they and they're the ones who do this and I think there's this interesting

Starting point is 02:59:02 Thing here as much as Gilroy doesn't want to like touch And they're the ones who do this and I think there's this interesting thing here that as much as Gilroy doesn't want to like touch Yavin that much, there's this there's an interesting political dynamic of like, yeah, okay, so like we finally developed this sort of like centralized political force capable of bringing all these things together, and they're useless. They are worse than useless. They, they nearly destroyed the rebellion that they had been sort of like trying to bring together on multiple occasions. And they're only stopped by doing that by these sort of like unhinged guerrilla like

Starting point is 02:59:26 People who are completely out of control and like these like rogue operator People who fundamentally like the the inheritors to Luthen's legacy, right? Like which is Cassian Yeah, by the actual rebels not the fucking senators and and I think that's like a cuz I've been I've been seeing There's been I've been seeing some small attempts to like recuperate Mon Moth but from this it's like no, Moth was the only senator who backs the like go for it like we're carrying out this raid to seal the Death Star planch like she's the only one yeah

Starting point is 02:59:58 right and I think there's, this is like the actual fundamental break here is between these people is it's like when when when the chips are down, are you willing to fight and most of the sort of like Like liberal sort of like defecting noble leadership isn't except for Mothma She should she's so bad. It's like I want to go down fighting I'm gonna go down fighting. And that's the fundamental difference. Yeah, Bale saying like, I'm gonna go down swinging.

Starting point is 03:00:26 Yeah, and that's the fundamental difference between like, someone who politically I don't like, like the Marquis de Lafayette. Like, that motherfucker went down swinging. Like, he, that man, at every single point of his life, was always funding an insurrection, was always like, I will take up arms. Yeah, let's throw a punch, let's throw a punch, let's throw a punch. Yeah. And then, and it's like, you compare that to like the German liberals or like the

Starting point is 03:00:48 liberals who when Pinochet like takes power were like yeah when Pinochet called them all to like report to like have meetings with the government they all went yeah We're gonna go report to like talk to the secret police and they all got like killed right? And that's different from those two things and that I think is a really really is a crucial political distinction to draw out is like it's not even necessarily like your class background It's not even necessarily like what your politics are because a lot of people believe the same things It's like when the chips come down will you fight or will you try to surrender? Yeah, and That's something I think I don't know like that that's to me the best part of Andor is like that

Starting point is 03:01:22 And I think that's the part of it that's like being set up in this episode that I love. The very last thing I'll say, because this has gone on way for quite a while. Yeah, I'm so sorry. Is, uh... Is like, I was talking with a friend after we watched these episodes, and we were talking about how this show really in the end is a call for internationalism. Planets are stand-ins for different countries and different cities, right? They aren't doing the full revolution on Coruscant, like the Center for Imperial

Starting point is 03:01:51 Power, right? The Imperial Corps. There is some organization happening there, right? There is people based out of there. There's networking, right? Like, Luton's Intel shop is there. But most of the physical armed struggle is on other planets. The first base for the Alliance is built on the Aven 4. But the rebellion isn't initially overthrowing the Empire on Coruscant. Though, through their interplanetary efforts, the whole galaxy gets liberated, and the seat of power can be seized. And that sort of galaxy-wide cooperation, mirroring a worldwide cooperation

Starting point is 03:02:22 that we have really lost in the past few decades, I think is one of the points that should be taken away from Andor here. Yep. All right. Well, I think that's our episode. Bye, everybody. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.

Starting point is 03:03:18 Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeart Radio app,

Starting point is 03:03:49 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st, and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is season two of the World on Drugs Podcast. podcasts. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote unquote drug band. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown.

Starting point is 03:04:38 We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Caramouche. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real.

Starting point is 03:04:51 It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcast.

Starting point is 03:05:09 And it's going to take us to heal us. It's mental health awareness month. And on a recent episode of Just Heal with Dr. J, the incomparable Taraji P. Henson stopped by to discuss how she's discovered peace on her journey. So what I'm hearing you saying is healing is a part of us also reconnecting

Starting point is 03:05:34 to our childhood in some sort. You said I look how youthful I look because I never let that little girl inside of me die. I go outside and run outside with the dogs. I still play like a kid. I go outside and run outside with the dogs. I still play like a kid. I laugh, you know, I love jokes. I love funny. I love laughing. I laugh at myself. I don't take myself too seriously. That's the stuff that keeps you young and stops you from being so hard.

Starting point is 03:05:58 To hear this and more things on the journey of healing, you can listen to Just Heal with Dr. J from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything. In 1978, Roger Caron's first book was published and he was unlike any first time author Canada had ever seen.

Starting point is 03:06:25 Roger Caron was 16 when first convicted. I spent 24 of those years in jail. 12 years in solitary. He went from an ex-con to a literary darling almost overnight. He was instantly a celebrity. He was an adrenaline junkie, and he was the star of the show. Go-Boy is the gritty true story of how one man fought his way out of some of the darkest places imaginable.

Starting point is 03:06:50 I had a knife go in my stomach, puncture my spleen, break my ribs. I had my guts all in my hands. Only to find himself back where he started. Rod, you're saying this, I've never hurt anybody but myself. And I said, oh, you're so wrong. You're so wrong on that one, Rob. From Campside Media and iHeart Podcasts, listen to GoBoy on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening

Starting point is 03:07:32 in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Sophie Lichterman. This episode we are covering the week of May 15 to May 21. Joe Biden has prostate cancer, there's anti-natalist terrorism, and the DHS is maybe going to do a reality TV show? Probably not, but it's a bad plan. How are we doing this week?

Starting point is 03:07:57 That was a trifecta from hell. It's so bad. This one's so bad. It's really, I have to do the laughing like right here because good Lord, like many, many of these weeks are bad. This one's particularly bad. I don't know. DHS reality show. We'll get to that at the ending segment. Sure. Hey, this is Gare from the future cutting in. We recorded this a few hours before some pretty

Starting point is 03:08:25 major news. The shooting of two Israeli embassy staff in DC. We will be talking about this in next week's executive disorder, as well as the new budget bill, which targets trans healthcare. Now back to the episode. I think let's start with, you know, a brief acknowledgement of Joe Biden's prostate cancer. What was Jill doing to him? Oh, my God. You could have said that start at the bottom, man. You didn't. I'm allowed to say that because I'm the most gay guy coded person on the podcast, which is saying something. So, so yes. And now, because we live in a truly sick world, Scott Adams couldn't even let... He couldn't let him have his moment.

Starting point is 03:09:13 He couldn't even let Joe Biden have his moment. This anti-Biden hatred has transcended so far that Scott Adams couldn't even let Biden have his moment and announced the same day that Scott Adams has the exact same type of prostate cancer. So two down, Biden down, Dilbert down, big week for prostate cancer. And boy, how do you have people been weird about it on the internet? Yeah, I'm not going to get into how long he maybe has known he's had it. He's had skin cancer removed before. I think that ship has mostly sailed.

Starting point is 03:09:48 I think our opinions on Biden are pretty well documented. So I don't think we can dedicate much more time to this. Okay, the one important note that I will say is if you have a prostate get check for prostate cancer, like get the screening. It's good. It'll help you. Unless you are over 75, in which case I think most people don't get screened for it. Right. Because it's slow growing. I'm pretty sure Biden's over 75.

Starting point is 03:10:14 Yeah. That's why I thought it was somewhat remarkable part of the issue there. I mean, all I could say is about once a month, I think about how at the DNC, those thank you Joe chants lasted four seconds. I have actually been thinking about the thank you Joe chants for a lot of this time this week, frankly. You had to be there. Yeah. It's one of the most horrifying things as they let this very clearly dying old man out to pasture. Because, you know, cancer diagnosis aside, very clear, he was in some degree of decline.

Starting point is 03:10:48 We don't need to retry this. This is pretty well known. But no, I have been thinking about how that whole auditorium broke out and chanting thank you Joe for like nearly five minutes. And then the following the rest of the week, not a single mention. It was done that day. It was wild. Anyways.

Starting point is 03:11:09 So yeah, RIP Dilbert, I guess. Let's move on to anti-natalist terrorism. So I've learned this week that people don't know what anti-natalism is, which as someone who grew up in Portland is kind of surprising to me because there was some very, very prominent, like, antinatalist protesters who would sit up downtown outside of Powell's books pretty frequently, and we kind of all grew accustomed to them, and honestly I'm a little bit sympathetic to their arguments. I understand where they're coming from. Uh-huh.

Starting point is 03:11:38 Antinatalism is the belief that procreation is unethical. This could be based on the idea that there's been like this rapid increase in human population, which has done extensive damage to the planet, or that simply being born is inherently a non-consensual act, especially being born into a world with high levels of suffering. So these people opt to not have children as this ethical standpoint. Everyone's entitled to their own choice, you don't need to agree with it, but whatever. Now interestingly, this past weekend there was a quote-unquote act of terrorism that has been linked to anti-natalist philosophy. I'm just talking about this as it is an instance of kind of the brain-rotification of this entire society and the redditification of terrorism combined

Starting point is 03:12:26 with this growing sense of like nihilism driving violent extremist actions. No one was killed except for the perpetrator, alleged perpetrator in this incident. But I still think this is worth talking about as it can be seen as in a sequence of weird terrorism. This is something that Robert's going to be working on for a piece later down the line, right? This is not the first car bomb this year. We had the Tesla Cybertruck explosion earlier, which was similarly kind of a weird incident.

Starting point is 03:12:58 That one was, I think, that one I think was the official inauguration of the years of lead paint, which we're perpetually living in now. Yes. Yes. I mean, the gas leak year, if you will. So yes, on Saturday, May 17th, the car bomb went off outside a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California, killing the suspect, 25-year-old man named Guy Edwards Barkas. The FBI is calling this a quote-unquote intentional act of terrorism. The clinic was closed when the explosion happened. The building was severely damaged, but no embryos were harmed. Investigators believe that the suspect attempted to live stream the bombing,

Starting point is 03:13:33 with a website being found online that appeared to be in connection to the incident, where the suspect describes himself as a quote-unquote pro-mortalist. It's slightly different from antinatalism. Correct. It is more of an affirmative version of antinatalism. Oh no. Where you want to actually take concrete steps to decrease the population of the planet. Not necessarily in a way that's promoting

Starting point is 03:14:00 the mass killing of individuals. He says, quote, "'Understand your death is already guaranteed, and you can thank your parents for that one. All a pro-mortalist is saying is let's make it happen sooner rather than later. To prevent your future suffering, and more importantly, the suffering your existence will cause to all other sentient beings. That's his definition of a pro-mortalist. It can be linked to other philosophies that encourage self-harm and ending your own life as a conscious choice.

Starting point is 03:14:28 On his website, he discussed his goal of quote, sterilizing this planet of the disease of life unquote and declared the need for a quote unquote war against pro-lifers. His website also highlights other philosophies such as negative utilitarianism, efilism, abolitionist veganism, quote, basically philosophies that have realized religion is R-worded, that there is objective value in the universe, and it lies in the harm being experienced by sentient beings. So although it may seem, quote unquote, dark,

Starting point is 03:15:04 it's the polar opposite of nonsense like nihilism." Negative utilitarianism is something that comes up a few times on his site as well. This is the viewpoint that instead of positive utilitarianism, we try to maximize human pleasure. This is trying to minimize suffering, human suffering and like the suffering tied to existence. And the like aggregate suffering as well as if there's more people and there's gonna be more suffering. So you should both make choices in your own life that may limit your suffering, but also make sure that you don't reproduce because then even more suffering will happen because of your actions through your children.

Starting point is 03:15:43 This is the most Bay Area shit I've ever heard in my entire goddamn life. Very West Coast. This is... Yeah. 29 Palms is not the West Coast. A lot of this is in conversation with the rationalist subculture. Sure. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:15:57 Post-rationalist. It's like... It offers different solutions. These people shouldn't be allowed to use computers for like 50 years. Like just a ban on California using computers. This is all like deeply online stuff. These are popular websites, subreddits, like YouTube channels.

Starting point is 03:16:15 These are people who are dealing with like, you know, pretty intense existentialism, depression, who then channel it into this like seminiche online community and online philosophy. Now, Guy's best friend, a self-described, quote, vegan, radfem, anti-natalist, recently arranged her own suicide by having her boyfriend shoot her while she was asleep. What? What? What?

Starting point is 03:16:42 Correct. Yes, this was the bomber's best friend who died very recently, like last month. And Guy claims that they were both quote unquote anti sex misandrists with borderline personality disorder. And he admits that her death, quote unquote, put him over the edge. over the edge. This is the most. This is the most online like, like, like best vegan rad femme best friend. Anti-natalist has her boyfriend shoot her is the most even though her her anti-natalist Tumblr page has like women loving women

Starting point is 03:17:27 anti-gender ideology Misandry stuff and yet still has a cisgender boyfriend in many such cases So yeah, you can see how this type of a community gets like fostered and people make online friends and then encourage their own self-destruction Yeah, we have to destroy the internet a quote that he has on his website is quote I've known for years now that I wasn't gonna to allow myself to make it past my 20s. Unquote. And like, this is a sentiment I hear even a lot of young people saying, is this like belief that they're not going to survive their 20s. Like, their belief that the world is so bent on destruction

Starting point is 03:18:00 that I'm probably not going to make it out of my 20s right now. And that changes the kind of choices that young people are making, and this is getting increasingly common. Yeah, for sure. I think it's a very different world to be growing up in than, like, the late teenage, early 20s of, you know, like, millennial people. The millennial world. It's very different. Yeah. And you even had manifestations of this in that millennial era, right?

Starting point is 03:18:22 It got kind of pushed into this, this like nihilist school shooter culture, which you still see remnants of now in the true crime community. There is some crossover between an act like this and some of the school shooter fandom, the Columbiner stuff, especially considering the resurgence of Columbiner culture that we're currently seeing right now in the United States. But yeah, the general sense of widespread dread and the interconnectedness of this is more unique. I keep thinking about that Hunter S.

Starting point is 03:18:50 Thompson quote about like those poor bastards who were born after 9-11 don't know the party's over. The party is over. And yeah, welcome to hell. So the suspect's dad said to reporters that guy had a childhood obsession with pyrotechnics. He set the family home on fire and burned it down when he was nine. He made rockets, stink bombs, smoke bombs as a child. Videos on YouTube, likely posted by Guy, show M-80s exploding in the desert, a hydrogen balloon being set ablaze, and a bucket of radioactive uranium ore.

Starting point is 03:19:20 Is that, did he obtain that like out there in Wonder Valley? This is still being investigated His voice in these videos matches the 30-minute audio manifesto Explaining his motivation for the attack saying quote basically it just comes down to I'm angry that I exist and that you know Nobody got my consent to bring me here Basically, I'm anti-life and IVF is kind of like the epitome of pro-life ideology." This is out there. Is there any information on the... Because a lot of explosives and other munitions have

Starting point is 03:19:56 gone missing. 29 Palms, for people who are familiar, is a town near-ish to Palm Springs, nearer to Joshua Tree. There's a pretty US Marine Corps base. There's a pretty big military base. Yeah, it's the big Marine Corps desert warfare training. Explosives have gone missing there before. The base claims that they've been recovered. It is unclear what explosives he used at this point.

Starting point is 03:20:17 It was a pretty large explosion. Investigators are low-key impressed at this explosion. Like it was- Exactly, so what they said in their official statement. If you read between the lines, they're like surprised at how effective this car bomb was. Again, this was a guy who spent a lot of time online, a lot of time on Reddit.

Starting point is 03:20:33 It seems like he got obsessed with this. He had a fascination with explosives at a young age. So that obsession combined with this anti-natalist obsession and this urge for self-destruction manifested in this action. This week Reddit banned an anti-natalist, anti-life subreddit, allegedly frequented by Bomber. I do just want to say that this is, I think, the only IVF clinic in the Coachella Valley, so like the people who are accessing those services, that's a serious disruption, right? Yeah.

Starting point is 03:21:04 Sucks. those services, that's a serious disruption, right? Yeah. That sucks. So I, me and Robert are going to talk more about kind of this trend that we're seeing in, in extremism or, or in extremist acts. I still don't like the nihilist violent extremism term, but we are seeing elements of that getting more and more common, especially combined with the true crime community, which essentially tries to encourage young girls to

Starting point is 03:21:22 commit school shootings. Yeah. I guess to finish up, I do just want to say that like, I know it's a really hard time right now. A lot of people are trying to find ways to cope or feeling like they can't cope or feel like they're not enough, I guess. Hopelessness, this sort of like existential nihilism. Yeah. And I combine that with a lot of people who work for the government, finally finding themselves out of work and, you know and the economic pressure that puts on people. And I understand that people are pretty in a tough spot right now who want to save very briefly, obviously, like the world is more beautiful with you in it.

Starting point is 03:21:56 And if you're experiencing suicidal ideation or mental health struggles, a couple of resources that I wanted to suggest are the Fireweed Collective and the Jane Addams Collective. Addams spelled with two D's there, A-D-D-A-M-S. We will have links to both of them in the show notes. You can also put them into DuckDuckGo and they were the first responses that came up for me. If you need those resources, reach out to those people. Yeah, it's good to see the sunrise and it's better to see the sunrise with everyone you love in it. And that's a thing that you can make sure you do every day. Thank you, James. Thank you, Mia. We're going to go on break and then come back to discuss immigration. All right, we're back. James, I see the amount of text you have in this document.

Starting point is 03:22:55 This is a very long section, James. Wall of text! I assume this is all good news. So let's hear it. All right, Garrison, I'm so glad that you have seen my wall of text because I have been looking at court documents for days. So much fun on Pacer. You have been Pacer posting in the group chat. Oh, yeah. I have been the court listener as well.

Starting point is 03:23:19 Okay. So this is one of the more insane things I've seen on Pacer in a minute. Talking about the case here of Mr. N.M. who was identified at some point. N.M. N.M. Yeah, it's not uncommon for migrants in these kind of high profile cases to be anonymized where they can, right, just for their safety. So N.M. received a final removal order in Nebraska in 2023. And on the 7th of May, DHS attempted to report an M to Libya. You'll remember that we covered that week's ED, right? They did not manage to do that. And in this court case,

Starting point is 03:23:53 we've seen from another detainee that one of these detainees was given a document to sign and told that he would quote, be a free man in Libya after signing. Obviously, it's unclear how one can be a free man when one is just dumped into a country where one doesn't speak the language, has no contacts, there is a war. Yeah. Doesn't make sense in any way. This man is not from Libya. That is correct. None of these people are Libyan. And again, whenever someone says the word Libya, you have to figure out which Libyan

Starting point is 03:24:22 government you are talking about because there are multiple of them because there is a fucking civil War going on there right now. So yeah, and whenever someone talks about people being free in Libya We should bear in mind that migrants are literally sold into slavery in Libya. Yeah by both governments Yes, NM English is limited his main language is Karen Which of course is a language of people speak in Katoole, the Karen homelan which is part of Myanmar. On the 19th of this month, that's two days ago, I sent a notification to his lawyer saying that they'd read him a notice of removal in English that they were removing him to South Africa. Ten minutes later, they attempted to recall this message,

Starting point is 03:24:59 and then later that same day, they notified his lawyer that they'd once again read notice of removal to him in English that he was being removed to South Sudan. South Sudan, the world's youngest country, if we're not familiar, a country in which conflict is escalating as we speak. The government's carrying out a barrel bombing campaign this very week. His counsel set up a video meeting at 9am on the 20th, but just before that meeting, his counsel found out that he had already been removed. Mr. M had refused to sign the order of removal to South Sudan and we're seeing right now in a court case, it's a class action, Mr. NM is one of the members of the class, right, that there was a preliminary injunction against these people being removed because they are the same people who the Trump administration previously tried to remove to Libya.

Starting point is 03:25:49 And at this point, they tried to remove them to South Sudan. Before they are sent to these places, they're supposed to have a reasonable fear screening, right? That is where someone can articulate if they have a reasonable fear of being removed to that country, right? Like if they will be persecuted there, they're likely to face torture or violence or be picked on because of who they are, right? Then they're supposed to have a 15-day period opportunity to submit a motion to reopen if the Department of Homeland Security finds that they don't have reasonable fear, right? So there's supposed to be this process where they can say, I have a reasonable fear of going there. If I go there, I'll be persecuted. And if the DHS says, no, we don't

Starting point is 03:26:28 believe you, then they have 15 days to submit more evidence. Right? Are they being allowed to do that or no? No. That is what this case hinges on. Right? So they were informed possibly hours before they were moved to South Sudan, that they were being moved to South Sudan. Then they were taken to a secure facility where they couldn't contact their lawyers. And in at least the case of Mr. NM, he had scheduled an appointment with his lawyer

Starting point is 03:26:54 and was deported before he could do so, right? And this happened a few times before as well. Yeah, that's correct. In the past like few months. That's right, yeah. And specifically there was a preliminary injunction against this. So quoting from Judge Murphy, who is the judge in the Massachusetts District Court where this is being held, the government's actions are unquestionably violative of this court's

Starting point is 03:27:16 order. The government said they have complied with my order because they didn't hear anyone yelling at their jailers that they are afraid to go to South Sudan. This is clearly insufficient. Yeah. So, what he's articulating here is like this chance to articulate reasonable fear, right? I do want to point out that in Biden's asylum ban that he passed in 2024, they moved from a question of, are you afraid to go back to your home country, to what's called a shout test where the migrant has to articulate that reasonable fear unprompted, right, to have a chance at asylum in the United States.

Starting point is 03:27:52 So this again, like all these immigration things, I'm not saying things for the same under Biden, but I am saying that there is a pathway to how we got here and it goes through Biden's executive order. And like Miller is very willing to use anything in his toolbox. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Anything that... Look, for decades, castoral liberalism has built a series of tools which now lie in the hands of a very illiberal government, right? And they are being used against people for whom those who supported castoral liberalism may have some sympathy. That is how we got here. That's a good way of putting it. supported castoral liberalism may have some sympathy. That is how we got here. That's a good way of putting it.

Starting point is 03:28:26 So the situation we are in right now is that these people were flown seemingly in a Gulfstream jet. Gillian Brockhell, who's a former Washington Post reporter who we're going to have on the show next week, was able to identify this jet based on where it took off and its call sign. It stopped in Shannon in Ireland. Notably, Shannon is an Irish civilian airport, right? It's not a US Air Force base. This does raise some questions within Ireland, within Irish politics about Irish neutrality here, right? The jet then flew on to Djibouti, which it is believed is where the migrants are right now. In court, the discussion probably half an hour before we recorded this, DHS is claiming that they can do their credible fear interviews there on the tarmac in this plane,

Starting point is 03:29:16 which people are saying is in Djibouti, right? That's suspicion that's in Djibouti. DHS is claiming that the location of the plane is classified, but there's widespread belief that this plane is currently in Djibouti, including, as I say, Gillian was first, and NYT published something that didn't credit her, should have credited her. So to do the credible theory, they have to have a chance to research what will happen to them in South Sudan. They have to have access to a lawyer. Most of these people, like Mr. NM, will also have to have a translator, right?

Starting point is 03:29:44 Then they will also have to have privacy, right? Their credible fear may be something they don't want to share with everyone else on that plane. Because that could also put them in danger. Yes. Also, just like, that's a baffling place to suggest somebody have that intimate or private of a conversation. It's just such a violation of their human rights. Yeah, many human rights being violated here. So I mean, the US has a big base in Djibouti, right? So I imagine that's why they're there. Remember that they have that 15 day period. So if DHS finds that they don't have credible fear, then they will have 15 days, right? To bring

Starting point is 03:30:24 another to reopen that. Where will they be housed? days, right, to bring another, to reopen that. Where will they be housed? Somewhere in fucking Djibouti, presumably, if that's where they are, right? There are many, many unanswered questions at this point. Now last night we learned that one of the Burmese people, it appears that there are two Burmese people, we know this because the Department of Homeland Security today started tweeting mugshots of these people. Jesus. Yeah, and claiming that they were convicted of various crimes. Among them were two Burmese men,

Starting point is 03:30:55 and M appears to be Njomjint, and the other appears to be Kjormir. Both of these men have been accused of various, been convicted, I believe, of sex crimes. That's where they got their removal orders. Other people, among the dozen or so people on the plane, have been convicted of some of them. One of them is South Sudanese, and he was convicted of removing the serial number from a firearm and of armed robbery, others murder, and various other fairly serious crimes. None of that means that you should just get dumped in South Sudan, right? That it's not a punishment in US law.

Starting point is 03:31:28 It is not a morally or legally acceptable thing to do. It's just truly baffling, honestly. Like that's, that's what they're doing. That's the move. Yeah. The move is to send them to South Sudan, where it's worth noting that South Sudan's government have said it will probably send these people back to their home countries. Evidently, the reason they are not being sent there is because they have articulated a fear of going there or they have protection.

Starting point is 03:31:53 It's called withholding of removal, right? So they can't be removed to that country. And basically that is where we're at. Evidence, they managed to remove apparently somebody to Burma today or late last night. I'm still waiting on my sources in Myanmar to confirm that the Burmese hunter is as leaky as the sieve. If those people are land that we will know about it pretty soon. We have pretty good sources in Burma. So if that happens, we will know. They also discussed another party, someone who goes by OCG, a gay Guatemalan man who asserted

Starting point is 03:32:28 credible fear of being returned while in immigration court. He was deported to Mexico, where he also asserted credible fear. Mexico gave him the choice of remaining in Mexico, going to Guatemala. He went to Guatemala, where he is now in hiding. The DHS claimed he said he didn't have credible fear and then later reversed that and said they didn't ask. So the judge is now asking how on earth they got this conclusion he didn't have credible fear and deported him. He's saying he might potentially put DHS officers on the stand to explain how this happened. In other immigration news, ICE just today,

Starting point is 03:33:03 this is Wednesday, has apparently been dismissing court cases against people who turn up for a hearing in immigration court and then immediately arresting them. What the fuck? Like right there in- Jesus fucking Christ. Yeah, like it's a little unclear what the move is here, but clearly they're trying to remove them in a more expeditious way, right?

Starting point is 03:33:23 They have a court case trying to remove this person, they're saying. Because the court case has like, you know, a certain amount of time needs to process if they dismiss the court case. And they have a right to appeal and. Yeah, but if it's dismissed, then they can expedite other like non-judicial removal. Yeah. Well, they can do what they're doing here. Yeah, they can try and run people out before they have a chance to get to their lawyer, right? And that seems to be the underlying theme of all of these things, which is that your due process and your rights under the law are too time consuming, so we're going to

Starting point is 03:33:52 try and make an end run around your rights by sending you to somewhere fucking horrific. That is the underlying theme here. Unfortunately, this removal will likely now affect a lot more people because the Trump administration has removed the 2023 temporary protected status for Venezuelan people. We talked about TPSs in my Darien series, but TPS provides protection from deportation to people who are already present in the USA when it passes. Generally, it's if a country has experienced war or other instability that makes it dangerous. You have to apply for the TPS. They don't provide a pathway to permanence or citizenship, but they do give people work authorization and they often have to be frequently renewed by the

Starting point is 03:34:35 executive branch. You have to be in the US the day it's issued, so you can't enter after, despite what you might have seen on Twitter or whatever, that's not the case, right? It also doesn't count as a legal entry, so you can't use the bridge to a green card. Trump stripped this protection from about 350,000 Venezuelans under the 2023 TPS. This does not impact. There are two different TPSs for Venezuelan people. They're in a bit of a unique situation. The quarter of a million people covered by the 2021 TPS are still for now covered by that, but it doesn't exactly bode well for them, right? This appears to be the largest blanket removal of legal status from a group of people in United States history. And it's a little unclear what this means

Starting point is 03:35:20 for the 350,000 Venezuelan people currently residing in the US under TPS, right? But it's another case of like, by their compliance, Isolatory probably knows where they live. So these people, it's possible that we will see deportations of these people back to Venezuela. Again, the situation in Venezuela is dire. It's a place where- That's just so many people too. Yeah. And like, I think again, if people haven't listened to my Darien series, I would like that because I put a lot of myself into it, but I have a great affection for Venezuelan

Starting point is 03:35:53 migrants. I've spent a lot of time in Caracas when I was younger and I've spent a lot of time with them in the Darien Gap and when they arrive in the United States. And yeah, it's really fucking heartbreaking to hear. Like when you think of 350,000 people understand that a good number of those people will be little children. Yeah. Right.

Starting point is 03:36:13 People who never had any agency, people whose parents risked their lives to give their kids a chance at a better future. And that's been ripped away from them right now with the consent of the Supreme Court. Like if you're removing 300,000 people from our country, that's just straight up an ethnic cleansing. Like that's what that is. It's about a third of the Venezuelans living in the United States right now, right? Like it's way more than decimating.

Starting point is 03:36:38 Yeah, obviously we will see what legal recourse these people have. We'll see how this goes down. But obviously very concerning for these people whose country is falling apart and being returned there will be terrible for them. Not only will they likely have none of their savings, all of the resources they poured into getting here, but they're also likely to face political persecution. So yeah, that's all the exciting and uplifting news I have from the immigration side of things.

Starting point is 03:37:10 Hey everyone, it's James with a pick up today. Myanmar now is reporting that the United States has deported 20 people since April to Myanmar. Uh, most of those people, seven of them have been released. The remainder of those people are being held by Burmese military intelligence in a prison that is notorious for torture, sexual violence, and the general inhumane treatment of incarcerated people that we've become very familiar with in our writing about Myanmar. We don't know who these people are yet. Obviously, this is a story that I'm looking into and I will continue to get back to you on.

Starting point is 03:37:53 But it seems like somehow we have not been aware of this until now, but dozens of people have been deported. They're saying that 27 people in total are expected to be deported and 20 already have. So obviously this is very disturbing news and something we'll keep reporting on. Well thanks for keeping us updated on that, James. We're going to go on break and return to talk about the FBI Palestine and some exciting new reality TV. End tariffs! I'm sad. Okay, we are back. First I want to do some quick updates about the FBI. Aakash Patel has announced that he's shutting down the FBI's DC headquarters in the J. Edgar

Starting point is 03:38:44 Hoover building. Around 1,500 agents will be transferred around the country. And in this same interview, Cash Patel and Dan Bongino went on TV to say that Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide. And of course, Megha reacts very normal to this. What do they have on them? Deep state's normal to this. What do they have on those—Deep State's got to them! You said Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide. People don't believe it. Well, I mean, listen, they have a right to their opinion, but as someone who has worked—as a public defender, as a prosecutor who's been in that prison system, who's been in

Starting point is 03:39:21 the Metropolitan Detention Center, who's been in segregated housing, you know a suicide when you see one, and that's what that was. He killed himself. Again, you want me to get, I've seen the whole file. He killed himself. I'm upset because I forgot that Dan Bongino was a person for like- Yeah, me too. Oh, I have not forgotten. This is my beat.

Starting point is 03:39:42 I have not forgotten. This is my beat. I have not forgotten. So yes, of course, Meg is acting very normal about the affirmation that Epstein killed himself. Quote, okay, now I'm losing confidence in them both. This is not good at all. Let me read one. Let me read one. Let's do this. This is fun Sad to see cash and regino have been compromised Mia your turn Dan blink twice if they threaten you or your family Now I got a deal all right. Yeah. Yeah deep state traitor Dei higher Oh classic There it is I knew it was coming as much as he likes to wear his Kuyu hunting gear.

Starting point is 03:40:28 But no, there's thousands of comments from these mega-Kyu people who feel betrayed. That people like Patel and Bongino have spent years doing content creation, talking about this grand, esteemed conspiracy that now they claim isn't real, or they are in fact covering up the real conspiracy that Donald Trump was friends with Jeffrey Epstein. So yeah. There's also an interview clip where Trump was asked if he was going to release the whole file and at first he said yes, then he caught himself and was like, well actually no, we'll

Starting point is 03:41:04 probably have to be careful about releasing the whole file because it could compromise people. Wow. What kind of people are you talking about there Dawn? Anyway. We have a chance to swing the Epstein demographic. Now is our time. Division to our enemies.

Starting point is 03:41:22 The next thing of the doc is I found interesting, Kirsten. Oh, this is just one piece of uplifting news. Yeah. This is, I'm just going to read the headline from NBC because I simply can't improve on it. No, it's perfect. Quote, suspected serial killer shouts out Trump in last words before he's put to death. Keep making America great. Glenn Rogers once told police he had killed about 70 people. He was executed by

Starting point is 03:41:49 lethal injection Thursday in Florida. That's the way that I knew it would be Florida. Literally seconds before he got the lethal injection. He said, President Trump, keep making America great. I'm ready to go. Last words. Wow. So that kind of shows you the current wellspring of Trump's support right now. That's really hitting his prime demographic of suspected serial killers.

Starting point is 03:42:10 I just have to say that had big Florida energy. For real. Mia, I think it's time to hear the Lucid Lullaby of Tarev Talk. You know, all right. Before everything gets so, so like I do the most depressing segment I've maybe ever done on here. I, tariffs. That can't be true.

Starting point is 03:42:43 No, not the tariff. The next one I genuinely think is the most depressing thing I've ever done on here. Tariffs! That can't be true. No, not the tariff. The next one I genuinely think is the most depressing thing I've ever done on here. But the tariffs, so our negotiations with China that were supposed to like solve all of the tariff problems were already breaking down. Both sides are like sniping at each other. This is not going to work. It structurally cannot work.

Starting point is 03:42:59 The US's demands on the negotiating table, which is again, the political and economic rationale behind this is that the US should not have a trade deficit with China. That can't be solved. And it's already breaking down, the talks are going to almost certainly going to fail. And we're going to be right back to where we were. It's also worth talking about a bunch of companies have been doing price raises. And I think it's worth going back a little bit to some of the some of the economic work

Starting point is 03:43:25 we've done in this show with the people at strange manners and talking about in our previous episodes about inflation about how price works, because this is really, really badly understood by just about everyone, which is that the way that people think about tend to think about price is as like, okay, it's supply and demand, there's two X's that meet on a graph. That's not how price is set. Price is set by like specific people in supply chains, right? Like they're constrained by certain factors.

Starting point is 03:43:51 And one of the biggest things, one of the things, the biggest things they're constrained about is that if you raise prices, people get pissed at you. But the way that they actually do pricing strategies is cost plus markup, right? There's a cost of the physical good, and then they do a markup and the markup is profit margin. And the thing about tariffs, right, is that the way that tariffs affect supply chains is that each part of the supply chain now that's moving, that's importing stuff, right? Each part of those things now has an additional cost so they have

Starting point is 03:44:16 to have to put into their like costless markup ratio. Now Trump wants all these companies to just fucking eat shit and eat the price of the tariffs he's been tweeting about this Or posting about it. I think on truth social and possibly also on twitter truth thing again All of his truths have been re Reposted on x now. Yeah, so retruths But the thing is right and in theory right like walmart could just like take this right in theory like like you know

Starting point is 03:44:43 Like the really some other really really big companies could in theory do this they won't like a lot of any other thing is like these companies have an incentive not to raise prices because it pisses consumers off and also because Trump is just like directly threatening sanctions on on companies that raise prices Mattel for the people who make Barbie said that they were going to raise prices on toys and Trump is now threatening them with 100% sanctions or 100% tariffs only three dolls So that's you know Completely handy situation we've gotten here we're gonna have doll quotas

Starting point is 03:45:17 But you know again again It's worth mentioning right that like in theory for a little bit of time Some of these companies can sort of eat this or they can fuck with their supply Chains the companies and public talking about this the problem is the suppliers because the distributors tend to have pretty high Margins right like your Walgreens like Amazon is so except like their margins are okay And like Amazon makes most of its money from government computing contracts anyways, so it's not as catastrophic money from government computing contracts anyways. So it's not as catastrophic.

Starting point is 03:45:47 But the suppliers operate on very low margins, the shipping companies, everything else along the supply chain operates on really, really low margins, right? And those people have to raise their price, because otherwise they're just going to die. And when they raise their price, right, that ink, that's an increase to the next company's costless market, which increases the next company's costless market, which increases next companies. And we're starting to see this ripple to the supply chain things are disappearing from grocery stores they're going to continue to disappear from grocery stores and as as this goes on and as

Starting point is 03:46:11 presumably the tariffs from China come back into effect when these negotiations break down and the next round of tariffs goes into effect and the Liberation Day tariffs come off their 90-day pause and go into effect this is all gonna get worse this has been tariff talk. Lovely. Oh, this unfortunately was the fun part of the episode. Yeah, I was gonna say, it's gonna get worse. Three, two, one.

Starting point is 03:46:36 Okay, so when I said this might be the bleakest segment I've ever done on this show, we need to do an update on Palestine, because things have gotten... Like, when I was kind of opening this episode, I thought it was going to mostly be about Trump's plan to like deport the entire population. Well, not to happen. It's like deport most of the population of Palestine to Libya. That's not even the immediate crisis.

Starting point is 03:46:56 The immediate crisis is that, and that's not even true. What I'm saying the immediate crisis. Last week, I thought the crisis was going to be the 11 week block bucket of Gaza and the fact that everyone is about to starve. Yeah. And so the actual specific thing that we're getting to right now is Israel is attempting to evacuate. That's their wording. What they're actually doing is ethnically cleansing basically the entire population of Khan Yunus by just forcing everyone out of the city, right? The United Nations has said that nearly 100,000 Palestinians have been displaced in Gaza in the last four days

Starting point is 03:47:28 as Israel has been expanding its ground invasion of the Gaza Strip. This has been combined with the 11-week-long blockade of Gaza. I think by the end of this week it might be week 12. This has set off an enormous risk of famine. I'm just going to read this from Al Jazeera. Quote, some 70 days after the Israeli military halted the entry of food, water, medicine, and all other life-saving supplies into Gaza, the report said, this is a report from a UN, a UN-backed food security group of analysts.

Starting point is 03:47:58 The report said, quote, goods indispensable for people's survival, survival are either depleted or expected to run out in the coming weeks. Quote, the entire population is facing high levels of acute food insecurity with half a million people, one in five facing starvation, it said. Approximately 93% of Gaza's population is experiencing acute food shortages, it added. The report also said that one in five people could starve between now and November. People have already started starving to death. Israel has been blocking aid from getting through.

Starting point is 03:48:32 They symbolically allowed a small number of trucks in, but aid groups on the ground, and I want to emphasize that this reporting is coming directly from the Times of Israel. If you want to understand how bad the situation is, the times of Israel is reporting that a groups on the ground say that none of the aid has gotten through, none of it has been distributed. This is, I don't know how to convey how bad it is. Indescribable numbers of people are on the verge of starving to death and the Israelis are simply not letting any food arrive. They keep talking about how they're going to let food arrive because this is actually, this is the first thing I've seen them do that's actually seriously gotten, I mean, not even seriously, but it's like gotten a lot of their Western

Starting point is 03:49:16 allies pissed at them because they're just very obviously trying to exterminate entire population by starving to the death. Yeah. And this has caused the UK, Canada and France to issue a joint statement coming out against the Israeli policy and telling them to fucking stop and let food through so these people don't starve. The UK is talking about suspending free trade agreements with Israel. They're talking about like sanctions at West Bank settlers thought the whole group has

Starting point is 03:49:41 threatened that they're going to take more actions unless the Israelis let food in Now the israelis because of the israelis shot at a bunch of diplomats who are visiting a refugee camp in janeen This was like a few days ago. Yeah, it's like a few days ago. Yeah. Yeah, and so that's that's not been like making anyone less Angry at them. It's genuinely remarkable that we've reached a place where like angry at them. It's genuinely remarkable that we've reached a place where like the UK, Canada, and France who are all major weapon suppliers to Israel are like talking about sanctions But like even targeted sanctions like yeah, you know and like the UN's like Human Rights Commission was like well This is bullshit. You can't just do targeted sanctions. It's the entire government doing this but like you know the fact that they're doing something is

Starting point is 03:50:22 An indicator of just how apocalyptically bad the situation is right now. Yeah, I want to read this quote from The Guardian from just perennial most fascist guy in the Israeli government. Which he's saying something. Yeah, who's their fucking finance minister who said, quote, now we conquer, cleanse and stay until Hamas is destroyed. He told a news conference along the way, what remains of the strip is also being wiped out.

Starting point is 03:50:50 Cleanse, conquer. Yeah, normal things to say. The extent to which they are simply doing a genocide here has reached a point where even a bunch of Israel's closest allies are going, what the fuck? I don't know. I really hope that people are able to force their governments to actually fucking do something about this because if they don't, it's gonna continue to get really bad. Yeah, and I mean, I guess right now that's mostly, like if you're in like the UK, Canada or France and you think you can apply more pressure

Starting point is 03:51:22 on your government, like go for it. Do it. Do that. Yeah. Like I don't know. I don't know to what extent pressure can even be mounted on the Trump administration, but it's yeah, I think that's pretty much a dead end. Right. Yeah. But like. But seeing these countries align outside of any US influence to potentially recognize the Palestinian state, according to Le Monde, right? Like, is significant and yeah, like people in those countries should absolutely like stay in the streets.

Starting point is 03:51:51 Yeah, because like, like, and this is this is the thing here, right? Like these countries, the stuff that they're even the stuff they're threatening to do is not enough to really make a difference here. But like, if they're willing to do this, they can be pushed further. Yeah. So yeah, you have to get your foot in the door. Yeah. And Carney has also seemed susceptible to further. Yeah. You have to get your foot in the door. And Carney has also seemed susceptible to this

Starting point is 03:52:07 as there has been a block on arms deals to Israel for the past few months in Canada. Yeah. We're gonna close with another story of like anti-humanity, but just a slightly different flavor. And I know this does, the show does often just end up feeling like a

Starting point is 03:52:25 bad news roundup and that is because there's a lot of bad news. I have a little good news for the end, actually. That's good thing we'll have some good news. Yeah, as a treat. And part of the good news here is that this probably will not end up happening, but it's still useful insight into the minds of these ghouls. And I've long advocated that reality TV is basically inherently satanic. I think it's a spiritual darkness. This is offensive to satanists. It is a spiritual darkness that has plagued the

Starting point is 03:52:51 United States for far too long. I think it's ushered in a degree of evil that is nearly unfathomable. And the current administration is essentially a reality TV administration on a very clear and obvious level. Yes, but did I enjoy watching the secret lives of Mormon wives? No. Yes, I did. I think watching it is actually a personal moral failure.

Starting point is 03:53:15 I think you're channeling darkness into your soul. And loving it. Last week, multiple outlets reported that the Department of Homeland Security was considering participating in a reality TV show where immigrants compete against each other to gain U.S. citizenship. The proposed series would be called The American. This nightmare has been dreamed up by Duck Dynasty producer Rob Worsoff, and apparently he's been trying to make this since Obama's second term, but only now has made progress on getting the necessary backing from the DHS after sending Trump's DHS a 35

Starting point is 03:53:51 page pitch. Worsoff wants it to be, quote unquote, the biggest loser for immigration, which again, reality TV is inherently evil. That's fucking insane. It should not be tolerated on any aspect of human society. No. The Wall Street Journal header reads, quote, This isn't the Hunger Games for immigrants, says the producer behind the pitch.

Starting point is 03:54:17 If you have to say this isn't the Hunger Games for immigrants, that means this is the Hunger Games for immigrants. That means this is the Hunger Games for immigrants. Getting a lot of questions about my, this isn't the Hunger Games for immigrants shirt already answered by the shirt. To quote the Wall Street Journal, quote, DHS spokeswoman, Tricia McLaughlin said that she had spoken to the producer of the proposed television reality show and that consideration of the idea was ongoing. It is, quote, in the very beginning stages of that vetting process, she said, adding

Starting point is 03:54:50 that, quote, each proposal undergoes a thorough vetting process prior to denial or approval, unquote. McLaughlin was also quoted in the Daily Mail as saying she thought the television show was, quote, unquote was a good idea. The pitch details that the immigrant contestants would board a train called The American and ride across the country to meet interesting Americans and learn about the local history and culture while competing in region-specific heritage challenges to prove they are the most American.

Starting point is 03:55:25 Such cultural contests would include balancing on logs in Wisconsin, building a rocket at the Florida NASA headquarters, assembling a Model T Ford in Detroit, and collecting gold in a San Francisco mineshaft. Prizes would be quote unquote, iconically American, like 1 million American Airlines points, a $10,000 Starbucks gift card, or a lifetime supply of 76 gas. Immigrants would be split into teams that compete head-to-head across one-hour episodes, ending with an elimination challenge, followed by a town hall and a final vote. To quote the producer, quote, along the way, we will be reminded what it means to be American through

Starting point is 03:56:05 the eyes of people who want it most, unquote. I feel like even this will humanize migration to the United States too much for them. And like, they will be afraid of that. Like, of these people articulating their desire to be here and what it means to them. And like, I feel like that doesn't end well for the administration that thinks that- This might be too liberal for the Trump administration is what you're saying. Yeah, it could be too liberal. I'm not even joking.

Starting point is 03:56:34 This is a concept just should be the death knell for the idea of America. Like, if America as an experiment, we tried it, it failed. This is the most America thing I've ever heard. Like it's over. As an experiment, the tried it, it failed. This is the most America thing I've ever heard. Like it's over. Yeah. As an experiment, the American project was a fucking disaster and we need to, it needs

Starting point is 03:56:49 to stop because this is what it's done. No more, no more American project. The pitch has pre-vetted contestants first arriving at Ellis Island aboard a boat called the Citizenship. They are greeted by the show's host, quote, a famous naturalized American who was also born in another country, unquote. The pitch recommends Sofia Vergara or Ryan Reynolds. Upon arriving, the host would gift each of them a personalized baseball glove.

Starting point is 03:57:23 America's pastime. There's no way Sofia Vergara or Ryan Reynolds would ever fucking do a show like this. That's batshit. Yeah. I fucking hope so. To quote the producer's pitch, quote, we'll join in the laughter, tears, frustration, and joy. Hearing their backstories as we are reminded how amazing it is to be American through the eyes of

Starting point is 03:57:46 12 wonderful people who want nothing more than to have what we have." This is one of the most evil things I've ever heard of. Yeah. The live finale would have the winner getting sworn in on the steps of the US Capitol by a quote, top American politician or judge with F-16s flying overhead. Quote, there won't be a dry eye in the house. Unquote. There have actually been like high spectacle single individual awards of citizenship before. I'm thinking for example, Herman Boccia was a he's often known as like the one

Starting point is 03:58:33 man army of Boona. Herman John Boccia, he was I believe living as an undocumented person in the United States when he joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War where he was an officer. He then joined the United States military and fought again in World War Two. During the Battle of Buna, he personally led a charge against several Japanese pill boxes, which he eliminated with grenades. He then had his eardrum perforated and I believe he was shot in the arm. He was awarded, I think he wasn't awarded the Medal of Honor, but he was recognized for his bravery. Congress passed an act to make him a citizen and he declined to attend the ceremony because he wanted to get back to the front lines.

Starting point is 03:59:18 That rules. Yeah, bit of a legend. Yeah, a little bit cooler than the live grand finale of The American. The pitch clarified that the losers would not be immediately deported and that the contestants would have a leg up in applying for citizenship the more traditional way based on being pre-vetted for this show. So it's good that he had to clarify that they would not be immediately deported upon getting eliminated. That's a good sign.

Starting point is 03:59:49 Yeah, another thing that you should always have to clarify on a TV page. At a Tuesday congressional hearing, Christy Noem denied having knowledge of the reality TV show, despite reporting to the contrary, while also defining Hebeus Corpus in this hearing as a, quote, constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country, unquote. So there you go. Yeah, that's not what that means. Christi Noem is a disaster. That is kind of the opposite of what habeas corpus is.

Starting point is 04:00:20 And there is substantial reporting showing that DHS staff are looking at this pitch. It might not go through now based on all this backlash, but they were looking through the pitch, including possibly Corey Lewandowski. But yeah, that is the reality TV news. James, do you have anything to end on here? Please, James, please. Yeah, I know, something a little bit nice. So, for those of you who, like me, enjoy a strawberry,

Starting point is 04:00:50 ICE agents arrived at the West Coast Berry Farms facility in Oxnard, California earlier this month, where they were met by a gatekeeper who demanded a warrant and refused to let them enter the facility without one and eventually refused to let them enter the facility without one and eventually managed to turn them away. So this is a rare dub, I guess, clearly, as we enter the time of year when things need to be picked in the fields. This will be a place where ICE sees the opportunity to conduct its enforcement operations. And like, it is genuinely positive to see that this company, I guess, critical support to this company that obviously underpays and takes advantage of migrant labor, that they have provided them according to an anonymous

Starting point is 04:01:36 source in SFGATE with Know Your Rights training. And in this case, the gatekeeper was able to not let the ICE agents enter and eventually they left. Like ICE isn't impervious. Like all week, ICE has been releasing statements complaining about being compared to the Gestapo. Once again, right? Like another thing that you shouldn't have to be releasing statements about. My I am not the Gestapo shirt has people asking a lot of questions Yeah, and they're also publishing false stats about ICE officers being assaulted in the line of duty So like obviously they are they're facing some kind of like fear even among their own agents That's why they're all like covered up wherever they go They're trying to prosecute people or posting information on ICE agents in your area. Yeah. Yeah, like but like I say, they're not impervious

Starting point is 04:02:23 There is a difference between a judicial warrant and a warrant that ICE has essentially made itself right, the latter not being signed by a judge. And it appears that the gatekeeper was aware of that. We still have courts, you still in theory have rights. And for you know, well, it depends. But yeah, yeah, theoretically, I'm saying that was a pivotal word. But yeah, shout out to the gatekeepers at the Oxnard Strawberry Plant. They can be stopped by a doorkeeper. Like, they can be resisted. They can be stopped from doing things. Yeah, and like, it is genuinely important that this person understood the difference between a judicial warrant and these documents that ICE might produce. And it does illustrate the value of being educated and educating people in your communities

Starting point is 04:03:08 about these things if they might be at risk for this. All right, we reported the news. Boy, howdy did we. We reported the news. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonedmedia.com, or check

Starting point is 04:03:37 us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,

Starting point is 04:04:16 or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI-fuelled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts. This is Levittown, a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg, and Kaleidoscope about the rise of deepfake pornography and the battle to stop it.

Starting point is 04:04:43 Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs by Ken. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports.

Starting point is 04:05:02 This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season

Starting point is 04:05:16 two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, I'm Sam Mullins. And I've got a new podcast coming out called Go Boy, the gritty true story of how one man fought his way out of some of the darkest places imaginable. Roger Caron was 16 when first convicted. That spent 24 of those years in jail. But when Roger Caron picked up a pen and paper, he went from an ex-con to a literary darling.

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