It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 240

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. What's up, fam, it's sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the hosts of Everyone Watches Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together. We're breaking down the biggest headlines,

Starting point is 00:00:15 the viral moments, and the stories everyone's talking about across women's sports. From game-changing performances to culture-shifting conversations, we'll give you our takes, our debates, and a few laughs along the way. Because everyone watches women's sports.

Starting point is 00:00:28 Listen to everyone watches women's sports. on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, this is Chuck from Stuff You Should Know, and we're submitting our most sciencey episodes for your peer review with our new stuff you should know doing science playlist. Out now. You want to know about Occam's Razor? Simplest explanation is usually the right one?

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Starting point is 00:01:05 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Can superstars even exist the way they used to? 2016 was sort of that last era of monoculture where we still consumed things in community. Everybody wanted to be Beyonce at that point. I don't think we'll ever see another beyond. What does it mean to be black and eat in America? You will never make me feel bad for being a black girl, for being a black American girl, ever.

Starting point is 00:01:32 From music to food to the conversations shaping black culture right now, therapy for black girls is bringing it all to the mic. Listen to therapy for black girls on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. It just came out. Jeremy, what did you just do? You just sit yourself up for failure. I've never heard you tell this story. I have never told this story.

Starting point is 00:01:51 This must have been tucked deep, deep in the Jeremy Lynn file. My name is MC Jen. I'm excited to tell you about laugh, but not least. chatting with guests from all walks of life about the power of humor when it comes to facing difficult times. These will be conversations that remind us all, life is hard, laugh harder. Listen and laugh but not least with MC Jen on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. AllZone Media.

Starting point is 00:02:18 Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Hello, I'm going and welcome to It Could Happen here. My name is Dan Al-Kurd, and I'm a researcher and analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics. Today I want to talk about football, soccer, whatever.

Starting point is 00:02:55 And I'll just start by saying, obviously, FIFA is a terrible, terrible organization. And while there are many heartwarming events in this World Cup, the World Cup gets me, gets a lot of us, despite everything. There have also been egregious incidents against players and referees and fans from the global south. Take for example what happened to the Somali referee who wasn't allowed to come into the U.S. to do his job. He was kept hours and hours in the airport before being unceremoniously returned to Somalia. Similarly, the head of the Palestine Football Association was denied a visa into the United States, not allowed to come to the World Cup on U.S. soil. This is in spite of the fact that FIFA invited

Starting point is 00:03:34 association heads from around the world to attend, and he did attend the opening game in Mexico City. Or one of the worst incidents, if you can call it that, the way that the Iranian team has been treated. They weren't allowed to stay in the U.S. despite the games they were playing in this country, were constantly made to fly back to Mexico after every game. Clearly they were put at a severe disadvantage because they weren't allowed to rest and recuperate like the other teams. And listen, I'm not going to say it is a conspiracy, but having not one but three goals discounted by VAR, eventually leading to their elimination from the tournament, just adds insult to injury. But like I said, of course, there are many heartwarming stories. For me, as a Palestinian, it's been great to see how much Palestine keeps popping up.

Starting point is 00:04:18 Despite the fact that the environment in the United States is much more hostile on this issue than Qatar, the last World Cup, people are still talking about Palestine and advocating for Palestine. thousands of Bosnian supporters, for example, turned Toronto into a sea of blue as they marched toward the stadium for the Canada match, chanting Free Palestine. And they did that in a number of places, Englewood, Seattle. They also chanted Palestine within the stadiums in multiple games. At that Canada game, activists also unfroled a kick Israel out of FIFA banner. And it makes sense, really, when you understand the experience of Bosnians with genocide themselves not too long ago. Similarly, Moroccan fans held Palestinian flags or wore Morocco jerseys with the word Palestine on it, and this showed up on TV. At the very opening match in Mexico City, pro-Palestine demonstrators gathered to form a giant human Palestinian flag,

Starting point is 00:05:09 and South Korean fans brought Palestinian flags to the tournament, honoring a promise they made during their qualifying, when their fans had chanted, we'll take Palestine to the World Cup with us. In Gaza, Palestinians are watching the games too. Spain is the favorite team these days because of the government's position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and because of superstar player Lamin Yama, who has been unapologetically pro-Palestine. Obviously, the genocide that has unfolded in Gaza and the war and killing that continues in the Middle East in both occupied territories and in Lebanon are part of the reason why this issue seems to be ever-present. But it didn't start with the genocide.

Starting point is 00:05:46 The story of Palestine at the World Cup is more layered than that. And the 2022 World Cup in Qatar was a good demonstration of why Palestine keeps popping up and what Palestine represents to fans, especially Arab ones then and everyone now. I know it might seem strange to be talking about this now a few years after the fact, but I've been thinking about it a lot, especially given everything that has unfolded since. And I think the World Cup moment is one of those events that gets more interesting, not less, as time passes. Back then, as it does now, is showing us something important. not just about Palestine, but about the limits of what governments can actually control

Starting point is 00:06:21 when it comes to what their own people believe. So let's get into it. Palestine did not qualify for the 2022 World Cup. The Palestinian national football team was nowhere near Doha in an official capacity. And yet, Arabs from across the region and across the world began referring to Palestine then as the 33rd team because Palestine was everywhere at the 2022 World Cup. there were Palestinian flag straped over shoulders and stadiums. Crowds erupted into chance of Maltany, the Palestinian anthem, after Arab teams won.

Starting point is 00:06:53 One Tunisian fan ran onto the pitch mid-match for the Palestinian flag, and when Morocco pulled off their historic upset against Spain, so it's the first African and Arab team to ever reach the semifinals of a World Cup, Moroccan players ran to the crowd and held up the Palestinian flag. This was significant. Morocco had just signed the Abraham Accords with Israel, only two years prior to this game. and their players didn't seem to care.

Starting point is 00:07:16 Israeli journalists who traveled to Qatar to cover the tournament reported being coldly received, followed, and in some cases physically shut out of interviews by crowds of Arab fans. Some of these reporters were caught on camera claiming to be from other countries, like France or Switzerland, in order to get people to talk to them. Some of them masked their logos from their stations.

Starting point is 00:07:36 Israeli media at the time expressed something between confusion and outrage. One reporter remarked, and I'm paraphrasing here, But he basically said that the hostility wasn't just coming from governments, as they had assumed, it was coming from ordinary people, and this surprised them. But it shouldn't have. Now, none of this was purely spontaneous. That's the part of this story I find most interesting and the part that gets maybe the least attention. Months before the World Cup began, a Qatari activist group called Qatar Youth Opposed to Normalization, QA-Y-O-N, started planning. They were founded in 2011, and by 2022, led predominantly by Qatari women, they had been working for over a decade to push back

Starting point is 00:08:15 against Qatar's slow drift towards normalizing ties with Israel, which is something the Qatari government had been entertaining, largely under pressure from the United States and from its goals of neighbors. And in a country where over 80% of people opposed normalization with Israel, this organization, Qatar youth, had a base. But they had to work carefully because you can't have unsanctioned civil society organizations. There's all sorts of restrictions on independent and activism, extremely severe in Lebanon. But they saw the World Cup as a window, an opportunity to turn what already existed,

Starting point is 00:08:47 which was deep, widespread, popular solidarity with Palestine, into something visible, coordinated, and impossible to ignore. So they got to work. They persuaded Qatar's national team captain to wear a kaffia patterned armband before the opening match. And then there was this hashtag, the captain's armband is Palestinian, which started trending on Arabic Twitter.

Starting point is 00:09:07 They reached out to Qatari influencers from prominent. journalists who amplified the campaign across social media, and they called on local businesses to display signs that they were compliant with the boycott divestment sanctions movement. They also ran a kind of counterintelligence operation against Israeli media, because they were the ones that began identifying Israeli journalists and their logos on social media, flagging them so that Arab fans at the tournament knew who to avoid. And this is how those videos of Israeli broadcasters being turned away kept appearing online. They also organized fans to chant for Palestine at the 48th minute of every match. That's not random. That's a reference to 1948 and to the Nakhba, where close to a million

Starting point is 00:09:44 Palestinians were expelled from their homes with the founding of the Israeli state. Key members of Qatari said the goal was to turn Arab fans from sympathizers into participants. And they were honest about something else, too. This only worked because the ground was already ready. As they put it, the campaign would not have succeeded had it not been for people's own proactive support of the Palestinian cause. And that's worth sitting with for a moment. The organizing mattered, The strategy mattered, but the reason it spread so quickly so far is that there was already a fire there. Qatar Youth just lit the match. Now, to understand why people were so upset, you have to understand the Abraham Accords.

Starting point is 00:10:30 I've talked about it on this podcast before. The normalization agreements brokered by the Trump administration in 2020 between Israel and the UAE, the United Air of Emirates and Bahrain, and later Sudan and Morocco. These deals were sold as historic breakthroughs as a new era of peace. And in terms of official diplomatic relations, they were breakthroughs. They were historic, but there was a problem. Nobody asked the people, and these accords didn't solve anything. Now, Arab public opinion surveys have consistently shown that the vast majority of Arabs opposed normalization with Israel absent a resolution to the question of Palestinian statehood

Starting point is 00:11:04 and the ongoing occupation. And in the most recent polling before the accords, it was something like 88% of Arabs across 13 countries that rejected normalization with Israel. And nearly two-thirds of those cited the occupation of Palestinian land as their reason. Only 7% cited something like religious objections. The fear had always been that if you normalize relations with Israel, without a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel would not have any reason to try and resolve the conflict or address the grievances of Palestinians, that Israel perhaps would become more aggressive if the guardrails were off. So what the Abraham Accords actually did from the perspective of ordinary Arabs was deep in the sense that their governments wouldn't listen to them, were willing to sell them out, sell out the Palestinians for economic and

Starting point is 00:11:50 security arrangements that disproportionately benefited ruling classes anyway and the U.S. Israeli security architecture. I've written about this academically and what I found is a kind of paradox at the heart of these so-called peace deals. Peace initiatives that don't address the root causes of conflict don't actually create peace. They create a different kind of violence, a structural violence, because they maintain the root causes of conflict and they enable the root causes of conflict and they enable authoritarian practices by governments. So Israel shares a lot of tools, surveillance technology, propaganda frameworks, security cooperation, both material and discursive tools.

Starting point is 00:12:25 And these have a way of turning up in the hands of governments repressing their own citizens. Now, I'm not saying the United Arab Emirates or Bahrain needed encouragement to repress their own citizens, but it's just another added layer, another way that the red lines shift and new ways that these governments can attack their own citizens and their own activists. For example, Emirati activists involved in anti-normalization activities after the accords became targets of surveillance operations, and people who spoke out about the deals faced travel bans. In Bahrain, civil society organizations were newly restricted.

Starting point is 00:12:58 The quote-unquote peace came with a repressive apparatus baked in. Which is exactly why when thousands of Arabs gathered in Doha's public squares to watch the World Cup, the energy around Palestine wasn't some just like emotional sentiment. And it wasn't a relic. It was fresh. it was the anger of people who had just watched their governments make deals they never asked for, and deals that were used to oppress them and not solve the Palestinian issue. There is a concept that academics and activists have used called sports normalization.

Starting point is 00:13:27 The idea is that sports, because they're presented as a political or maybe as entertainment, as a space above politics, they can be used as a soft avenue for normalizing relationships that would be otherwise politically controversial. Israel has long pursued this strategy. The logic is if Israel and Arab athletes compete together, then this image of coexistence replaces the political reality of occupation. You don't need any kind of solution or diplomatic agreement. You just need enough footage of an Israeli and Moroccan shaking hands on the pitch

Starting point is 00:13:57 to make people feel like things are moving in a good direction. Qatar youth were very explicit about targeting this. They hosted panels on sports normalization. They released a statement pointing out that Western political boycotts of Russia extended to sporting events after the invasion of Ukraine, and nobody then complained that sports were being mixed up with politics. And to them, the inconsistency was glaring, that mixing sports with politics was apparently fine

Starting point is 00:14:20 when it was about sanctioning Russia, admittedly, very appropriately, but somehow inappropriate when it came to Palestinian rights. And this double standard, I've encountered it constantly in my work. The insistence that the Palestinian cause is uniquely problematic, uniquely in need of being kept out of polite conversation or unreasonable, this insistence falls apart the moment you compare it to any other conflict where the West has chosen a side. Now, the World Cup made that visible in real time.

Starting point is 00:14:48 When the Palestinian flag showed up in a stadium in Doha, it wasn't just a symbol of solidarity. It was an argument. It said, this issue is not resolved. We have not moved on. It doesn't matter what the Abraham Accords said, or how many photo ops. It's going to make any of this go away. Now, I want to dwell for a minute on Morocco. Full disclosure, that's the team I support.

Starting point is 00:15:07 I hope they go as far as possible. But Morocco is an interesting case, and I think it illuminates something about the limits of top-down normalization. Like I said, the Moroccan government signed the Abraham Accords, and the deal actually included U.S. recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, which Morocco has long occupied. It's self-a-case of a people's right to self-determination being traded away in this diplomatic agreement situation. So it was a completely cynical arrangement all around. And yet, when Morocco beat Spain and reached the semifinals, their players held up the Palestinian flag. When Morocco beat Portugal, and the streets of Rabat and Casablanca erupted, the Palestinian flag was there too. And fans in Doha, who had traveled from across North Africa and the Middle East, were wearing Palestinian kufias chanting for Palestine.

Starting point is 00:15:51 Now, the Moroccan governments deal with Israel did not transfer to the Moroccan people. And this is the key insight from the World Cup, the one that I keep coming back to, that governments can sign papers, but they can't really sign on behalf of public sentiment. and these countries are not democratic, so any kind of push to do something like this seems like a betrayal to their own citizens. And they can't normalize what has not been normalized in the hearts and minds of their own citizens.

Starting point is 00:16:16 There is a kind of arrogance in the Abraham Accords framework. The assumption is that if you get the right signatures, if you get the right photo up on the White House law and that the conflict can be ignored, that the Palestinian cause can recede, but the World Cup was a direct refutation of that assumption. Now, I've been thinking about all of this in the context of everything that has happened since, the genocide in Gaza, the daily images, the death tolls,

Starting point is 00:16:37 the wholesale destruction of Gaza's society, and the ongoing question of what normalization means now, and whether any of those Abraham Accords frameworks can survive what the world has watched happen. Now, I do think it will survive. These governments do not care about what happened in Gaza. But what it shows is that the fears around the Abraham Accords were completely founded. Ignoring the Israeli-Palestadian conflict would lead to an escalation in the violence. I think the World Cup moment was a preview back in 2022. It told us something about where popular Arab opinion actually was, not where governments claimed it was,

Starting point is 00:17:11 and not where Western media assumed it was, but where it actually was. And it showed us that organized strategic activism can channel that sentiment that something visible and politically costly for the forces of normalization. Now, Qatar youth opposed to normalization was a small group, and they were operating under real restrictions in a country that doesn't allow independent civil society. and they still manage to turn a global sporting event into one of the most visible expressions of Palestinian solidarity in years.

Starting point is 00:17:37 And that matters. Not because a football tournament, a soccer tournament is going to solve anything. It doesn't. Palestinian families don't get their homes back because people flew a flag in a stadium. But movements build over time and through moments of visibility,

Starting point is 00:17:50 through the accumulation of pressure, and through the refusal to let the issue disappear into a manufactured consensus that was never real to begin with. And today, in 2026, this is not specific to Arab publics. Even Western publics have seen their governments ignore genocide, have seen their rights recede as their government's ally to protect genocide in a variety of ways. Now, I'll end with something a little more personal. When I watched those World Cup crowds back in

Starting point is 00:18:16 2022, when I saw all these different Arabs, Moroccans and Tunisians and Saudis, people from countries that have varying and complicated relationships with this issue, all waving the Palestinian flag, I felt a kind of hope. And it's not naive. it's not the hope that this will be resolved soon or easily, but the hope that says Palestinians are not alone and the cause is not forgotten. And the silence that has been imposed on this question, attempted silence top down for so long, is not the consent it pretends to be. Governments can sign accords, but they can't erase what people know and they cannot sign away what people feel when they watch a team lose and a flag goes up in a stadium and

Starting point is 00:18:55 thousands of people start chanting. Palestine keeps showing up, uninvited. At a every table that tries to exclude it. And I think it will keep doing that. Thank you so much for listening to It Could Happen Here. I'm Dan Alcurt. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.

Starting point is 00:19:42 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHeart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up y'all? It's your girl, Sam Jay. And we're the host of everyone watches women's sports, a new podcast from Together and I Heart Women's Sports. Because let's be real, women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments to take over your entire timeline. In the conversation, that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports.

Starting point is 00:20:15 We'll give you our takes, our debates, and probably a few disagreements. We'll talk to athletes, celebrate big moments and get into what's happening on and off the field, court, track, and beyond. Because we're not just interested in what happened, we're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. So if you're already a fan, or you're just getting into the game, there's a seat for you right here. you right here. Listen to everyone watches women's sports on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Here's something that should not be as complicated as it is,

Starting point is 00:20:52 getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is, getting a new one put up in its place. As long as there's a politics of race in America, there's going to be a politics of remembering the Civil War. To get to school, I had to go down Robert Lee Boulevard. Get to the grocery store. I had to go down Jefferson Davis Parkway. You're an historian and you leave out half of what the history is, you're not doing your job. I'm Akila Hughes, and Rebel Spirit Season 2 goes deep on both of those things. The fights, the politics, the people who won, and my personal campaign to add something to the Kentucky State House that's actually worth the wall space. We are more than our bodies. We contain essence. We contain spirit.

Starting point is 00:21:33 How do you represent that? They are just fueling a fire that is really catching. You'll see what I mean. Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bill, why is my eye twitching? Does this mean I'm in perimenopause? Maybe I have adult ADHD. I need to look this up.

Starting point is 00:21:55 Where's my phone? Juliana, your phone is hot to the touch. I think it's asking you for a break. You know what? Maybe I should just ask chat GPT. Or maybe we can ask an actual human. Yes, like a couple sex therapist. Whoa, that escalated quickly, but okay.

Starting point is 00:22:09 Because I have questions. We have questions. And I bet everyone has questions. Like, is it normal to sleep in separate bedrooms? We do that. How about this one? Is bribing your kids bad parenting or just negotiating? Oh, and I still do need to know why was my poop green that one time?

Starting point is 00:22:25 Hypothetically, right? Okay, well, instead of letting the internet guess, we've got actual people answering these exact questions. And laughing with us has got to be better than spending three hours down a rabbit hole online. Listen to Bill and Juliana. The podcast. on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Before we start, I want to make something inescapably clear. I am not against human rights or the ideals they embody and aspire to.

Starting point is 00:23:00 Human rights are in fact a flawed attempt at making the world a better place for all human beings, and it is exactly those flaws that I want to address here. Just having universal human rights does not mean any progress or any improvements in that regard are no longer necessary. To reach those, there need to be in-depth conversations and critiques. I've deliberately chosen a provocative title to start this episode, if said title makes it through post-production, because I think the best way to have this conversation is if we temporarily strip any blind assumptions.

Starting point is 00:23:33 There should not, for the time being, be a standard answer to just default back to. So let me say it again, the concepts and ideals of universal human rights are good and well-intended. This is not a plea against either of those, this is just to ensure that we can all engage with the flaws and the criticisms that are currently laid at the feet of those human rights. Please don't hate me. Further, there will be some abstract concept and theories here. I'll do my best to explain them in layman's terms.

Starting point is 00:24:01 Unfortunately, the ivory tower of the university is still a thing, and I think this bit should be accessible to everyone, not just university-educated people. So if I'm being a bit reductive or un-nu-nanced, it is to make it widely available. And with Dead, hello everyone. Welcome to It Could Happen here. I am Mick. I'm joined by the lovely James Stout. Hi, James. How are you doing?

Starting point is 00:24:26 Hey, good. I'm good. I'm excited about this. Yeah, we're going to go through a lot today. When I pitched this, I thought it would be just a fun 30-minute episode. And now we're at like 5,000 words and 10 pages of script. So, yeah, these things can get away from me. Yes, exactly.

Starting point is 00:24:44 and there's always the context. It's always context. You can just throw things out there, but I had to kill some darlings, unfortunately. But there we go. So to start off, we first have to explore a little bit about the history of human rights

Starting point is 00:25:00 and how they came to be. When we are talking about rights, we are speaking of either a legal, a social, or an ethical rule that is connected to legal systems, social conventions, or ethical standpoints, that are seen as normal for a certain group at a certain time,

Starting point is 00:25:18 because they evolve, they change. These rights are often inscribed, codified, or written down in either legal documents or in the public consciousness. And what I mean by the latter is like 4Magu for the bus or the train. It's not something that's often written down in a legal code or something. It's just an unwritten rule that exists between the people. Yeah, convention. Most likely if you're going to skip cues, you'll never be prosecuted or fined for that.

Starting point is 00:25:47 People will probably think you're a bit of an asshole. So, yeah. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed in 1948 by the UN. Prior to this, the concept of human rights was largely found in the idea of natural rights. The very first historical notion of this that we know of was in the Zoroastrian religion in the Iran region, which thought that citizens have a fund. the mental right to enlightened leadership and that people had the right to rise up against those who are wicked. Similar ideas surrounding rights are also found in ancient Greek philosophy, like the Epicurean

Starting point is 00:26:24 School of Thought and the Stoics. Later, it was also explicitly named by Roman philosophers, which they probably stole from the Greeks. Like Cicero and Seneca did that. Cicero once said that we are born for justice and that right is based not upon opinion, but upon nature. And I think this is important to, like, Zubay, not a bit. Romans were very, not very religious, but it was a religious society. They had tons of deities. But despite that, it's to nature that Ciceroa makes that claims.

Starting point is 00:26:58 Yeah, as opposed to God or gods. Right. Exactly. There's something innate or something by virtue of being human that gives you those rights. Yeah. There was in the 17th century was the English philosopher John Locke, who discussed similar things, particularly that fundamental rights, as he called them, such as life, liberty, and a state, a state meaning property in this case, are things that could not be handed over or transferred under the social contract. With social contract, it is often meant that you as an individual have surrendered some of your rights and handed them over to the authority under which you fall or to which you are subject.

Starting point is 00:27:43 Often this exchange translates to death the authority to which you hand it over will then protect your remaining rights. Usually this is trained as consensual as a voluntary deal you make or have made with, again, whichever authority happens to hold control over you. I also think it's worth noting that consent implies an active decision with knowledge and circumstances and the ability to consent. And this is just my own personal gripe, whenever people refer back to the social contract. It's like, I didn't agree to anything. I must have missed that meeting, but.

Starting point is 00:28:20 Yeah, it relies on this like thought experiment, right? Like this idea of like, would someone in X circumstance do Y thing? This is what Hobbes does, right? Yes. Like, I guess Hobbes Lock and Rousseau would be the people you'd want to read if you wanted to learn more about this. In Roshava, they have an explicit social contract, right, which is like a document and people do get to consent on it. I guess I should say consult rather than consent, right? There was a long consultative process that was part of the formation of the most recent social contract in Rajava,

Starting point is 00:28:50 as opposed to requiring universal consensus to be established. Once again, Rojava is leading the way. Yeah, he's showing us all the way. But that's right to be unusual. Yeah. We will be touching a little bit on Hobbes and Rousseau. Okay. Fun.

Starting point is 00:29:06 But to sum the latter bit up, like the virtue of being born, I hardly checks my boxes for active consent. But, you know, I think there's some bureaucrat out there who will disagree with me on that. As you said, James, the idea of the social contract came from philosophers. Lousseau and Hobbes and are core to our contemporary understanding of like social and political theory and are also foundational to like most liberal democracies. The ideas is following. First, there was like no state and no authority and everyone was in a state of nature where human existence was harsh and brute and short. Nasty brutish and short is the like, here's the exact words.

Starting point is 00:29:50 The Hobbs quit. It gets deployed a lot about people and things. Yes, ignoring the fact that Hobbs was an idiot. Yeah, and that life without the state is not nasty, brutish, and short, and we have a lot of examples of this. No, but it's this retroactive justification, because this is how things are now, so I am inventing a story to justify how we end up here. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:30:12 Jim Scott, I guess, kind of deals with this a little bit, right, in the art of not being governed, when he's talking about the idea that those who exist without the state are behind those who exist within the state, as opposed to just on a different pathway they've chosen to follow. Yeah, because we need the authority and you need the social contract

Starting point is 00:30:30 because otherwise humanity is just subject to its own worst impulses. Like a hunger games without the dystopian stuff inside it. Therefore, we need authority, which was created to keep this state of nature at bay and make or keep us civilized. And this also then ties in with like

Starting point is 00:30:50 the monopoly on violence, because that is one of the one of the rights that you surrender under the social contract and is given to like specialized government forces in order to use the violence that is necessary to maintain order. As a small side note, the whole state of nature thing is pretty much bullshit on why that is is discussed at length in the dawn of everything by David Graber and David Wengro. But it would be way too much to also include here. You'd have to listen to me all week.

Starting point is 00:31:20 I do have an audiobook of the dawn of everything and it is. it's a lot of audiobook. Yeah, it's such a massive book, just massive. Yeah. Just as a small clarification before we move on. There are many more notable figures who've written about like natural rights, Francis Hutchin, Hegel and Thomas Spain. Clearly, there are also many more who did that in the American context,

Starting point is 00:31:44 like Thomas Jefferson. But everyone listening to this knows the American stuff way better than I do. So I'll just skip that, including the parts where Jeffer, was pretty selective on who counted as a human being and who didn't. Many such cases, yeah. Many such cases. Unfortunately, it has not gone away as much as it should have. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:32:05 So the biggest criticism that we have here to address against natural rights is that you can't draw from facts. It's something that you say is out there, but you can prove it through science or through empirical research, through data collection. it's something that comes from tradition, authority or morality. There is no argument to be made that it exists in the same way as the coffee on my desk as I'm writing this. To put it very bluntly, natural rights being inherent or unalienable is just saying they exist because I say so. It has just as much weight as me claiming that I now own James's chickens, which I now do. It is a fact.

Starting point is 00:32:49 You have to fight me for them. I'm not surrendering the monopoly on chickens. Yes, you know where I live. You can you can FedEx them to me. So what has happened is by putting these natural rights into law, we can make them like real or tangible in the sense that there is something you can point to. Like that thing says it or this law says it. It transforms natural rights from something that is scientifically baseless

Starting point is 00:33:16 into like a part of the social contract. and that should be upheld by whatever authority, state or government you happen to be subject to. The creation of constitutions in democracies is like a very explicit attempt to make rights real, but as we all know, they're also not infallible. In the wake of the horrors of the Second World War, the international community drafted and voted on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was a massive step at the time. of the 58 member states at the time 48 voted in favor,

Starting point is 00:33:51 two did not participate and eight abstained from voting. For those you are paying attention, there are so little countries that voted on it because judges were less countries back then, and an exact number is very hard to find because all data sets and all definitions just differ. To this day, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is still one of the most significant milestones

Starting point is 00:34:13 of the 20th century. It has pretty neutral language in terms of culture, religion, or any particular political system. It also became a stepping stone for the International Bill of Human Rights and several different treaties with all 193 UN member states

Starting point is 00:34:31 as of now assigning at least one or more of those treaties. Yeah, I can't understate how massive that achievement is. Yeah. And before we were actually criticizing it, I do think it's right to recognize it. But it isn't perfect, which is why we're also going to kick against its shinbone for a while.

Starting point is 00:34:51 So to the surprise of no one, human rights are flawed, but good. They've also been used pretty disingenuously, and that is where I like to start. They have often been used as like a justification for war to obscure or hide other motivations. Think of the Iraq war. No, not that one. the Iraq invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The Saddam government publicly stated that they wanted to support a revolutionary government in Kuwait, that it was for Arab solidarity.

Starting point is 00:35:24 They also cited that the current administration over there was incredibly unpopular and thus they had to invade for greater political and economic freedom for the Kuwaiti people. What was widely seen as the actual motivations were oil resources and more regional control because of course. Yeah. Russia has also used human rights as a reason for invading. Yeah. You look very surprised at that shapes.

Starting point is 00:35:49 Yeah, I was about to say the same thing. Like, Russia loves to do this. Yes. They did it in 2008 with like when they invaded Georgia because they had to protect Russian citizens and peacekeepers while it was mainly about like preventing NATO expansion in the newly independent Georgia. Same thing happened in 2014 when they first invaded Ukraine. because Russian speakers had to be protected from Ukrainian fascists.

Starting point is 00:36:15 There was also the Serbian forces in Bosnia and Kosovo, where the Serbs were under threat. And India's campaign into East Pakistan, now known as Bangladesh. Although in that latter one, the motivations seem a bit more muddled because it appears there's some genuine concern there for human rights or humanitarian aid. But again, muddled limited time. And I think it's always telling where states decide that it's important to go to war for human rights and where they don't, right? Yeah. We're very selective when these rights need to be enforced or when there's violence needed for it to be enforced.

Starting point is 00:36:55 No one's rolling out to defend the human rights of Rohingya people in Myanmar, for example. No, exactly. And I think you said this at some point, but like when in Myanmar, the revolution started. that there was like an explicit appeal to like human rights. Yeah. And like a very well lucidated appeal to like R2P, right? The right to protect, I think I'd have to check. Responsibility to protect is what R2P stands for, not right, but responsibility.

Starting point is 00:37:24 So it's a responsibility of a state to intervene in the internal affairs of another state if human rights are being abused in that state. It's the best of my understanding of it anyway. And this is, as it's been strange to me, by many, many young people in Myanmar. I actually spoke to a young person in Myanmar who had orchestrated at great risk of their life, a massive R2P, like, floating sort of symbol that could be seen from the air, I guess, like explicitly to alert the world that our human rights are being violated. And we have human rights.

Starting point is 00:38:01 So surely the people who guarantee those rights, question mark, will intervene to protect those rights. So, like, you saw science explicitly calling on ASEAN, on the UN, on the European Union, on the United States. And, like, also people trying to make signs that were very funny so that they would go viral in English because they wanted the world to see them and they figured if the world saw them, they'd be like, huh, human rights are being violated. And it took a lot of dead people for, I think, because that's a very entrenched view that many of us have, right, that we have these rights. we do, but rights only matter in so far as someone is prepared to use force to protect them in this instance, and nobody was apart from the people of Myanmar themselves. Right. So the rights-based discourse is still very, very common there. Now those rights are backed up by people who, you know,

Starting point is 00:38:55 initially used homemade and 3D-printed firearms and now have much better firearms. But like the reason those people have those rights is because they fault for them, not because the rights-in-fors themselves or any other state decided to enforce them. No, exactly. It is pretty revealing that when a people desperately in need for their rights to be upheld by some force or by some army or whatever, and they're making explicit appeals to it, and the international community as a whole is like, nah, they get it close their rights in there is.

Starting point is 00:39:29 But they were unalienable, so yeah, great. They still technically had them sort of maybe. Right. Yeah. They should have bought the premium package. And also, yes, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. I did not forget it. It was very much justified as a mission of liberation and freeing people from a dictator. Well, it was much, again, oil and influence, as it always is, which is why you will now have to listen to ads. So Coulson Media can get some much needed oil and influence. Nice. And we're back. Now, loaded with petro dollars. It is time to dive deeper into the critiques.

Starting point is 00:40:20 So someone whose work was incredibly influential in the realm of philosophy and ethics was Simone Vail. James, I think you may have heard of her. Yeah, she was with the Duruti column in the international group. She burned herself frying eggs in a farmhouse that they liberated and had to go home. Yeah, she is a fascinating figure. Yeah, someone who just like, forest gumps through

Starting point is 00:40:46 like the history of amazing things in that time period. Yes, it was like, I have written this down in the script, but when she was eight or nine, she refused to eat chocolate or something. It's solidarity with the soldiers overseas or the soldiers who were fighting in World War I. There's

Starting point is 00:41:03 tons of like incredible stuff in there. Amazing. I didn't know that. Like she taught at the university, but then in 1934, she took a leave of absence from teaching to work anonymously in two different labor factories because she better wanted to understand the working class. A few years later, she would join the anarchist Doruti column, as you said,

Starting point is 00:41:27 and fight in the Spanish Civil War, where she very badly wanted to fight despite her outspoken pacifism, but her comrades held her back because she was incredibly near-sighted. They're like, yeah, we don't trust you with this machine gun, which fair. Yeah. And she died eventually at a very young age in 1943 due to her poor health. That is, while she was sick, she would only eat whatever she thought residents of Nazi occupied France

Starting point is 00:41:54 would be able to eat and refuse to eat more. As her biographer, Richard Rees, summed up, as for her death, whatever explanation one may give of it, it will amount in the end to saying that she died of love. Wow. That's badass in my book. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:42:10 That's a cool way of phrasing, too. It's a beautiful sentence. Yeah. Simone was very critical of the concept of rights, and she much preferred to speak of obligations. The latter, she argued, are much more fundamental than rights, because rights are only meaningful to the extent that others respect those rights. To her, rights are relative and related to certain conditions, but obligations exist outside those conditions. On the surface, this may seem like the same criticism we had earlier, that they only exist

Starting point is 00:42:42 out there and only because I say so. But I think she moves further than that because she sees a system that has its foundation on these obligations, specifically what she calls the need for a soul. To her, these needs are the things that we as human beings require to thrive, food, shelter, medicine, but also like equality, freedom of opinion and security in the form of not having any persistent fears. There are many more in her book. I'm not going to delve much deeper in it because I think the justice out there. This may seem like a very theoretical difference, but let me illustrate what I think is a very strong example of rights versus obligations. I have stolen this metaphor from the philosophize this podcast, from the episode in which the host discusses the modern day

Starting point is 00:43:32 concentration camp and Giorgio Agamben. So all the credit to that host for this metaphor. So let's get back to those chickens that used to belong to James, but that I now own. Like, it is my right in a legal and economic sense to sell these at the markets. And it is my right to sell them for any price that I think they are worth. Just this is my right to very quickly go out of business because nobody wants to buy my $5,000 chickens. And now I'm going to be a bit provocative. James feel free to respond. What if someone were to be forced into prostitution?

Starting point is 00:44:08 either by coercion or violence. Okay. Why is that wrong? Why is that disgusting and abhorrent? Yeah, for many reasons. Is the reason for that because this person has a legal right to not be forced into prostitution? Or is there something else going on there? Well, there's a lot more going on there, right?

Starting point is 00:44:29 Like, it's a part because it's like disgusting to us as people that someone's forced to do this without their consent and without consenting, like actively. to doing a thing that they are being forced to do against their will. Exactly, but it speaks to the nature of rights that, like, your first instinct is not to say, oh, but that's against the law. Yeah. Your first instinct is to say, like, oh, geez, that's fucked up. Yeah, that's wrong.

Starting point is 00:44:56 And it is wrong because what you're doing is, like, violating the agency, the autonomy, the dignity, the sense of belonging to themselves and their bodies. It is something that it is much more a gut feeling. something that exists out there rather than pointing to law 23 subsection to paragraph 3, whatever. And we can put it in a more concrete example, like The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, in short for those who are not familiar with either the book of the show, it's about a patriarchal, totalitarian republic, very religious,

Starting point is 00:45:34 where some women are forcibly assigned to powerful and high status men, to bear children for them. Now, in this society, the sexual violence, the forced pregnancies, the births, they're entirely legal. Like, the people doing it, and that's not just the men in those books, they are doing it within their rights. It is legal what they're doing. But also going to ask you as, like, the listener, does that make it any less fucked up?

Starting point is 00:45:59 Yeah, like, I guess we can argue the same thing in the Islamic State, right? there were people who were forced into, into slavery, sexually assaulted, sexual violence was commonplace. It was at least accepted. I'm not familiar with the exactly legal structures of the Islamic State with regard to that, but certainly it was widespread and not condemned. And like, that doesn't matter. It was still wrong.

Starting point is 00:46:22 It was still disgusting, right? Which is why people, including people in Kurdistan, decided to take up arms against it. And very rightfully so. Yeah. I guess they're like, universal. universal human rights were violated, that their rights under the Islamic State so much as there was a state,

Starting point is 00:46:40 which it was, were not. Yeah, and we'll get there, because there's like a difference between having universal rights and having a sovereign that is going to respect them. So, yeah, sorry for that painful metaphor. I think that both of these make it clear,

Starting point is 00:46:57 although maybe painfully clear, like legality is nothing to do with it. Like, the rights have nothing to do with it. It's your human, respond on your lack or the fact that you have a sense of decency, that makes something like wrong or right. Yeah. So the right to not be preyed upon can be taken away as they're all right, but the sense of injustice of wrongness will not. There exists an obligation to the people in your community, regardless of which community or the size of it, to not do horrific shit like

Starting point is 00:47:28 that and in the process destroy part of someone's solemn being. The lack of the lack of the of any empirical data does not mean that there isn't something there, even if it's just like a gut feeling or a sense of justice. Well, and myself would say it's wrong because we have an obligation to others to respect them that by just being born human, you have to have your agency and your autonomy and your dignity respected. But do you know what will destroy your soul and being? Is it the products and services, it's support this podcast? It definitely is. Yeah, they already have. And we're back after the identity crushing stream of surdochs and produses, or whatever.

Starting point is 00:48:23 So quickly recap what we said before the break, which is that you can say that there is something beyond rights, as rights can conveniently be taken away when those in power think that is what they need to do. It is what Simoneville would call the difference between being a subject and being an object. Being a subject is something in the sense, that you can be subject to a queen. Through that lens, being a subject means that you're only seen as something that this value rights in relation to the queen.

Starting point is 00:48:55 There is a relational aspect here that defines what, for who you are. Being seen as an object here means that you exist in and of yourself and that you're not defined because of the definition of something else. I think a good way to view this is to think of someone's child, son or daughter, author and thinking of that same person as just themselves. Like in the first one, it's the relation that you emphasize. In the latter, you just see them as a person, regardless of like linear and nature relation.

Starting point is 00:49:27 Yeah. I fear this next part could be rather complex, but I'll do my best to go into like layman's terms. It evolves some pretty complex philosophy about authors who many people have read, but you understand. Yeah. Myself included. I'm an idiot. I'm just trying to make it.

Starting point is 00:49:43 make sense and make it clear and legible for everyone who hasn't read these offers and I probably wouldn't recommend reading them. So we're speaking of Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben. I both made some major critiques of human rights and these are in relation to each other to an extent. So to start off, they make distinctions and definitions on what it is to be human and what it is to be recognized as a human being. Iran uses this terms Zoe and BIOS for this, like the Greek terms. Okay. Zoe is the idea and the concept of life in a purely biological sense as just a biological unit that breathes, that consumes, that defecates.

Starting point is 00:50:31 Okay. Think of someone living alone in the mountains without anyone else nearby or any contact with other human beings. Like, biologically, yes, they are human. There's just no denying that. but in terms of bias, meaning a life that has meaning and that is political, it becomes less obvious that that person alone in the mountains, can be recognized as human.

Starting point is 00:50:55 Sure, yeah, like part of being human is being part of a community, right? Like, we only are able to fully realize ourselves in the context of other people. Exactly. And that is what I'm getting at. We're not saying that this person in the boundaries is not a human being, but they're isolated and not part of a community. think of making meaningful moments together with like those dear to you. That is in a sense the meaning that the term bias kind of points to. Living alone in the woods also means like there's no community or no sovereign power

Starting point is 00:51:27 to hold someone accountable or to uphold. They're supposedly unalienable rights. As a little pointer between I'm going to use like state, power, sovereign or government pretty much interchangeably, because I don't want to repeat the same words, or say power every two sentences, I think that would make for a boring listening. But just so you use the listener know that that is somewhat intentional. So it is in the context of the Man in the Mountains that we should interpret Zoe and BIOS, not like as in literal black and white checkboxes, but like as a nuanced lens to look through.

Starting point is 00:52:09 And if we look through this lens, then the following, pops up. For someone to have bias, there needs to be a community, there needs to be a sovereign, or as Hannah Arendt would say, a political community. That can be any group of people, any country, political identity or ideology that doesn't really matter for you to belong to a political community, whichever one of those categories it is. But that is the most fundamental right, according to Hannah Arendt and we'll get into why. She also calls it like the right to have rights

Starting point is 00:52:45 the right to belong to a political community that in turn cherishes you and uphold those rights for you. The man in the woods has no one to do that for him. He lacks a certain political and legal recognition of his humanity that

Starting point is 00:53:01 comes with like being part of a community. Yeah. If we think of people on the move, of migrants or of stateless people, then we can look at them as not having a political community and in the context of bias as Aaron puts it there is also no political community to emphasize their humanity or uphold their human rights

Starting point is 00:53:22 yeah because there is no system or sovereign that can uphold them or enforce those ideas sometimes like they're able to act collectively to protect each other right like within that but that is a different thing, right? That's, I guess you could call the obligation, right? That is their obligation to each other that they are fulfilling when they do that, right?

Starting point is 00:53:48 Like, as you say, that no powerful entity is obliged to protect their rights. You could look at the example of outdoor detention in the US, right? I remember once I was out feeding people in outdoor detention was with prop, actually, he also has a podcast on this network. And we ran into this guy, he had like a, he had like a, holo on. And I said, the fuck, you didn't, who the fuck is this? They had like nice shoes. And I was like, what's happening out here? The guy was from the office of the immigration detention ombudsman,

Starting point is 00:54:16 because you have a bunch of rights in the US, right? That person came along and they had a clipboard and they did a bunch of stuff and it didn't matter, right? A bunch of those people's rights were being violated. I'm sure the person ticked a bunch of boxes on their, like, which rights are being violated for them. It didn't feed those people. We did. Didn't keep them warm that night. We did. Didn't build them a shelter. We did. Right. Like, yeah, it was us fulfilling our obligations to each other, not their theoretical rights under the state which mattered. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:54:44 And just to point out, like, they're prior to that not necessarily part of your political community, but you just feel that it is your obligation as a human being to, like, I can help these people, I can feed them, I can keep them warm. Yeah, exactly. And is it Locke, who does us not for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee? Maybe not. Hemingway?

Starting point is 00:55:05 Hemingway wrote the book, but it's based on No, it's, oh, man, shit. We've got to Google this because otherwise, that's not for him the bell tells. John done. So other John. I think about that a lot. It's something I would hear, like, occasionally referenced in reference to the international brigades in the Spanish Civil War, including by John McCain,

Starting point is 00:55:25 who wrote an obituary for the last American international brigadier to die, which is like one of the less shitty things John McCain did, which he did to many shitty things, terrible things. But, like, inherent in that is the idea that, like, Like, the bell here being the funery bell, right? That, like, I guess when humanity is devalued, my humanity is devalued. And, like, I am not fully realized as a person if people are being stripped of their dignity in my presence, in my community. So, like, those people are not part of my community.

Starting point is 00:55:56 But, like, my community is being devalued because humanity is being devalued in my community. And the way I'm going to make sure that doesn't happen is by stepping in in order to protect those. people, to keep those people safe, to show those people that fundamentally human dignity is guaranteed by the humans and not by other states. Yeah, very well said. So I have one last example here. If there's too many examples for the listener, I apologize, but I just want to make it clear. So I've done my best to find examples and explain them. Yeah. The sentinelese people in the Bay of Bengal. I think most of you have heard of them. They are like an indigenous people that are isolated, on a single island and they've had little to no contact with the mainland or air quotes modern world.

Starting point is 00:56:44 I think in 2018 or something there was a missionary. Yeah, every few years some Bell End will try and go and give them the Bible and they'll kill them or fire arrows at them. Yeah. Those people. Now, like, I can't guarantee that this is what is going on because I haven't spoken to them, obviously. But I'm guessing that they don't speak of human rights. and we, the non-sentinelese people, don't really speak of their right to health care, their right to freedom of opinion. My point is more that unless there is contact with them and they become like a political community,

Starting point is 00:57:19 there are really not any human rights for them to speak of to uphold. Like in a sense, they don't have human rights because there is, yeah, no contact and nothing to uphold or enforce. At this point, James, this is where we are going to isolate ourselves on an island. until it is time for part two. Yeah, perfect. Looking forward to seeing you very soon again for our next shin-kicking badass. And I am fashioning a bow to defend us from Christian missionaries in boats. Yes.

Starting point is 00:57:50 Let us also throw like spears and arrows at missionaries coming to our isolated island. Yeah. Canadian women are looking for more. More out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders and the world are at them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.

Starting point is 00:58:21 Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the host of everyone. Everyone watches Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together and I Heart Women's Sports. Because let's be real, women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days.

Starting point is 00:58:51 The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments to take over your entire timeline. And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. We'll give you our tapes, our debates, and probably a few disagreements. We'll talk to athletes, celebrate big moments, and get into what's happening on and off the field, court, track, and beyond. Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. So if you're already a fan, you're just getting into the game, there's a seat for you right here. Listen to everyone

Starting point is 00:59:28 watches women's sports on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Here's something that should not be as complicated as it is, getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is. getting a new one put up in its place. As long as there's a politics of race in America, there's going to be a politics of remembering the Civil War. To get to school, I had to go down Robert Lee Boulevard. Get to the grocery store, I had to go down Jefferson Davis Parkway.

Starting point is 00:59:58 If you're an historian and you leave out half of what the history is, you're not doing your job. I'm Akila Hughes. In Rebel Spirit, Season 2 goes deep on both of those things. The fights, the politics, the people who won, and my personal campaign to add something to the Kentucky State House that's actually. worth the wall space. We are more than our bodies. We contain essence. We contain spirit. How do you represent that? They are just fueling a fire that is really catching. You'll see what I mean. Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 01:00:36 Bill, why is my eye twitching? Does this mean I'm in perimenopause? Maybe I have adult ADHD. I need to look this up. Where's my phone? Julianna, your phone. is hot to the touch, I think it's asking you for a break. You know what? Maybe I should just ask chat GPT. Or maybe we can ask an actual human. Yes, like a couple sex therapist. Whoa, that escalated quickly, but okay. Because I have questions.

Starting point is 01:00:59 We have questions. And I bet everyone has questions. Like, is it normal to sleep in separate bedrooms? We do that. How about this one? Is bribing your kids bad parenting or just negotiating? Oh, and I still do need to know why was my poop green that one time? Hypothetically, right?

Starting point is 01:01:14 Okay, well, instead of letting the internet guess, we've got actual people answering these exact questions. And laughing with us has got to be better than spending three hours down a rabbit hole online. Listen to Bill and Juliana. The podcast. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to It Could Happen here. I am still Mick and I'm still with James. if for some reason you haven't listened to the first parts,

Starting point is 01:01:50 I would strongly urge you to do that first because we're going to dive straight in here and I'm afraid you're going to miss a lot of context and a lot of explanation as to what's going on. So yes, our next shin kicking badass is Giorgio Hacambam. I mentioned him before. Some of you may have heard from him because around the COVID pandemic,

Starting point is 01:02:12 his work became incredibly popular all of the sudden. he follows a similar philosophical path that Hannah Arendt already laid out, but he goes like a few steps further. I'm sorry to say that we have once again some concepts to explore before we get to go deeper. Agamben strongly uses the concept of a homo caesar. It's a Latin term used during some time in the Roman Republic. It means sacred man or a cursed man. It is a person who is banned from society, might be killed by anybody, but must not be sacrificed in a religious ritual. So Agen-Ben sees this as someone who is exiled from society and also not recognized as someone fits or worthy of being used in religious rituals.

Starting point is 01:03:08 Like, in fact, the Roman state has declared that this person is just a biological life form. Okay. That's in essence what this boils down to. It upholds like the sovereign power over this person because it is like the Roman state that could enforce this or retract it. But for all intents and purposes like the homo sacer is like stripped of humanity from political community essentially rightless. Yeah. And this is also like a really weird position because you're still sort of subject to the state without the state wanting anything to do. do with you. Yeah. Almost like a very one-directional relationship. And Agenbaum, in turn, adapts this concept of the homo Cesar into his state of exception. In his work of the same name, he lays out how in times of emergency, usually this is what like the German philosopher, Carl Schmidt often referred to, but Aganban is taking it in a much

Starting point is 01:04:07 cooler direction than Carl Schmidt ever did. Okay. In times of emergency, where on a political level, the dude. decision is made to increase the legal power of the sovereign system. This increase can be an addition of new laws or the annulment of others. The question of how legal this is, this increase in power, is often a very, very gray area. Like, martial law is a good example. Like, there is a real perceived or imaginary threats to the country or society, and thus whoever is in power invokes martial law and suddenly all bets are off because they can't be restricted by law in order to deal

Starting point is 01:04:47 with that situation. Like many a dictator has invoked martial law just so they could like crush down on everything. Yeah. I think there are so many places where I can think of where there's been like a state of exception or a state of emergency for decades, right? I mean to an extent since the United States passed the Patriot Act or like in the United States we famously have the first ten of the first ten of the United States. amendment because the Constitution, which are referred to as a Bill of Rights, right, which enshrined

Starting point is 01:05:15 many of the things that the States are supposed to do to us, unless you happen to be in the border enforcement zone or subject to some of these, like, sneak and peak warrants that the Patriot Act allows, right? Or other pieces of legislation as well, right? Like, there are many, many, many examples of this. Yeah, where Hannah Arendt has, like, very distinct, like, the Zowa and the bios, and Arcanbent sort of sees, like, an in-between area where, yeah, you become this homo-sacer where like you're not really the one you're not really the other and in that gray area just anything can happen yeah i think that like humans without right concept is yeah useful yeah and they become so fluid in a bad way like if i were to arrive at like lax

Starting point is 01:06:01 if i make the wrong joke while i'm in the gray zone then probably every one of my orrophysicers will be searched for like drugs or other things but once i step out of out of LAX, then the LAPD can't do that to me. Right. Without a whole different bureaucratic legal animal that they'll have to deal with. Yeah. But like physically, I just took three steps. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:06:25 Right. Yeah. Yeah. Or like if you think of the rights that migrants and refugees have, right? Like they can be in the same space as someone but have completely different rights. Think about how the Rohingya people are in the camps in Bangladesh, for example. Like a Bangladeshi person could come there. that they would have very different experiences of the state and their rights,

Starting point is 01:06:46 especially if they tried to walk out of there together. Or like Palestinians living in certain areas, and the Palestinians will need to be able to identify themselves at each checkpoint where they have to wait two hours, and an Israeli person will just walk through it and wave to the guards. Yeah, they're the exception, so they can be treated differently. Yeah, like you literally have roads that they can't go on, right? But yeah, a Palestinian and Israeli person is a good example, right?

Starting point is 01:07:15 They could be holding hands, walking together and enter a checkpoint. From the moment they enter to the moment they left, they would have completely divergent experiences. And the whole different set of legal rights and legal protections. Yeah. Another example that I wrote down here was like the pandemics and the lockdowns. Because I know at least in the Netherlands when we had lockdowns, it was very unclear as to if it was constitutionally even allowed to do that, and if the crisis was severe enough to justify those measures on a legal level.

Starting point is 01:07:49 Right. Yeah. That's also a discussion here. Yes. Well, I'm not an expert on the US, so I can only use my own example here. At this point, this is where all the critiques sort of start to blend together. And this is where I hope, like, it's going to make the most sense. As Simoneville already said, like, rights are conditional and require,

Starting point is 01:08:10 power to uphold them for you as a subject. What we run into now is this distinction between being human as a biological unit or as a political one, because the latter has access to rights. The former doesn't and as a consequence that person becomes this homo-sacer in a sense outside of society and the protections that that offers. You get all the downsides of being a subject, but none of the benefits. Like the social. contract sort of becomes revoked. Yeah. The tricky part is that our can also treat you differently based on like biological categories or political categories. Like prison labor is a very good example of this.

Starting point is 01:08:54 Yeah. Under the 13th Amendment, slave labor was made illegal except as a punishment. So as soon as power can give you a punishment, some of your rights just dissipate. Yeah. Like another one is healthcare. Like if you're a assistant. woman experiencing like menopausal issues, it's relatively easy to get like hormone treatments. But if you're a trans woman, it suddenly becomes incredibly difficult or downright illegal to get those very same hormones. And that's also like this categorization in order to treat someone differently. So what I think I'm trying to say is that our can also navigate in such a way that even if you are part of a political community, it can negate the rights and the

Starting point is 01:09:42 human rights that should come with it by categorizing you differently. This is a gumbens, like massive fatigue, because rather than you getting human rights and getting them respected by power, it makes you dependent on power to recognize and honor it. Yeah. In a way, human rights become a liability instead of a protection, because, power, the sovereign, the state can still decide whether or not to recognize you as biological or political. So one of the most tangible and powerful examples of this not being recognized comes from our good friend, James, President Gregory Wookie Bush and his seaside resort in Guantanamo Bay. I think I had that to correct. Under international law, you're still entitled to have certain

Starting point is 01:10:46 human rights when you are detained as a prisoner of war. Yeah. I'll be citing a little bit from the Third Geneva Convention in which this was like ratified. The status of POWs only applies in international armed conflict. POWs are usually members of armed forces or of one of the parties to a conflict who fall into the hands of the opposing party. The Third Geneva Convention also classifies other categories of people who have the right to POW status or maybe treat it as such.

Starting point is 01:11:15 POWs must be treated humanely in all circumstances. They are protected against any act of violence, as well as against intimidation, insults, and public curiosity. International humanitarian law also defines the minimum acceptable conditions of detention, covering such issues as accommodation, foods, clothing, hygiene, and medical care. So you know where this is going, yeah, because Greg Walter Walker Bush circumvented by proclaiming that certain people were not prisoners of war, but rather enemy combatants. And as such, not subject to the protections of the Geneva Convention. It's a bait and switch that is as smart as it is diabolical because power simply switches

Starting point is 01:12:03 around the political community that applies to you. And suddenly they can do whatever they want to you because you're just the biological unit. Yeah. Like it's a linguistic switcheroo. Yeah, and it shows how our rights are perceived in the US law to come from the state as a guarantor of them, right? Because these people were quote unquote terrorists and they weren't fighting on behalf of a state, therefore obligations to them and to the state that we're at war with don't exist. And so therefore they don't have rights because there is not a state to say, hey, you're violating them, even though many, many Americans,

Starting point is 01:12:44 including in many, many court cases, said, hey, you're violating their rights. And even when they were citizens of other countries, British people were in Guantanamo Bay. Yeah, from all over the world. Yeah. Also, I think there never has been a single conviction because of whatever the fuck happens in Guantanamo Bay.

Starting point is 01:13:01 Yeah, they have their own special court. I don't know if they've convicted people there, but they definitely have a court there. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't know about the convictions, but I remember teaching a sociology course and getting into Guantanamo Bay quite a lot, that was some time ago.

Starting point is 01:13:16 I've had students who served at Guantanamo Bay. Oh, fuck. And I think it's fair to say that, like, that the psychological damage that does to everybody involved should not be underestimated. Like, it goes back to your idea of, like, we have an inherent gut feeling of right and wrong and participating in something that you know to be wrong

Starting point is 01:13:38 isn't good for you. It's not the same as being tortured and waterboarded, but knowing that you are in a place to be clear I don't know anyone who has participated in any of that enhanced interrogation bullshit but just being a fucking cook in a place where that happens is still

Starting point is 01:13:55 damaging I'm sure to you and your sense of being a person who believes in their obligation to others. Yeah like I would not I would not trust anyone who wouldn't be affected by that yeah exactly like that person that person who is not affected by that

Starting point is 01:14:12 is like either a psychop path or like that inside. Yeah. I'm not going to be nuanced about that. But like this is like the core of like the entire critique against human rights because it is simply the state decides that you're not part of a political community or just cuts you off from it and suddenly we can play like Hotel California 24 seven and drive you insane.

Starting point is 01:14:35 Yeah. Or lack of sleep too hot or too cold. It's it's so weird to have something that we are taught is like unalienable. is actually just like the premium option. But you can't buy it. Like there is a power that has to say, oh no, this person has the premium package and you get to have human rights. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:14:55 Like it is this right to have rights, as Aaron said, that makes it really weird because you're still dependent. And unless recognized, you're still just an animal existing out there. It's, yeah. So, and this is why I thought it would be a good idea to have this discussion because I think we can look at pretty much any continent at the moment and see things like, oh, you can see this pattern everywhere. Yeah, it's very relevant to the United States right now, right? Because like we got, you know, largely the Department of Homeland Security going out and doing stuff, which is violative of people's rights, both in U.S. and international law terms.

Starting point is 01:15:32 And like, there's been a response, right, by certain groups of people. And I understand, right, if you have spent your whole life seeing, like, rights as guaranteed by the state and the state is a benevolent actor, that it's hard to make that mind. which I do understand that. But like, it actually doesn't matter. And this is very hard for some people to grasp judging by my replies on B-Skyi. app. Yeah,

Starting point is 01:15:51 that's actually illegal. It doesn't matter, right? Like people just being like, oh, they can't do that while they're doing it. It doesn't matter that they're violating like half the Bill of Rights in a two-minute period. They're still doing it. There is no accountability

Starting point is 01:16:05 because the state doesn't hold itself accountable. So, like, when we need to think of a framework where, like, our, our assumptions can line up with reality. You come back to obligations because, look, what do you think is right and wrong to happen to people? Yeah, we'd meet that a lot with outdoor detention, actually, like, when we were feeding people. Like, you'd be like, hey, just trying to get help from folks, you know.

Starting point is 01:16:30 Like, trying to be like, hey, you know, we're trying to feed these folks and help us out, give us whatever. Like, people will be asking friends in their community. And then folks will be, well, they can't do that. they have the right to her, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you'd be like, cool, do you want to come tell them? Like, we'll see how it goes, I guess. But, like, they are doing it.

Starting point is 01:16:50 And we have an obligation to take care of them. And, like, I think people have become very comfortable outsourcing their obligation to the state without realizing that, like, therefore, they no longer get to decide who gets right to when, when you do that. Yeah. I think it's important to highlight, like,

Starting point is 01:17:09 this little switcheroo. If you think of like the Palestine protests, they can't outright ban protests because then you're very much violating the constitution. Right, yeah. But if you say like, oh, no, but this is not because they're protesting. This is because it's anti-Semitic and we need to protect these other people. Yeah, like the acts that are happening on the ground have not really changed, but the way you can approach this from a legal and a political level,

Starting point is 01:17:35 become a whole different ballgame. And I think that that doesn't pertain to human rights as much as like the example you mentioned, but it is again this bait and switch that keeps happening. Yeah. And I'm sure everyone listening can think of times or examples of that. And it is not great. Yeah, it's not great. Yeah, that is all I have.

Starting point is 01:18:10 Unfortunately, I don't have any advice or anything or know how to deal with this for you as the listener. Yeah. It doesn't help to tell if a cop, they're violating your human rights. They won't listen. Yeah, I think it could be easy for people to assume that this is a hopeless thing, right? Like because the rights only matter when the state decides they matter, that therefore they don't matter. But it can also be a hopeful thing because maybe if we look at the example, I wrote back to my book, right, of the Yazidis when they were in Schengal. And they were on their mountain, right? And the Islamic State, I think it was ISIS at that time. I'm not sure if it had declared itself the Islamic State yet, was surrounding them and very much coming to violate

Starting point is 01:18:52 every single concept of rights and decency that one can imagine for a human being, right? And I remember we're interviewing a Yepege commander about this in Rajaba and him saying, obviously, I'm translating here to an un-direct quotation, but we were very disappointed in the states of the world at that moment, and so we decided to go ourselves. And it was a very small number, right?

Starting point is 01:19:15 Different accounts have had different. numbers of, I think, entirely Kurdish. We can debate if Azidi people are Kurdish or not, but like, it's not the place for that, is it? No. People from the YPG who went to the mountain and eventually built corridor with their blood, with their bodies, right, to allow those people to come to Rajava. Now, unfortunately, those people, this is a very good example now, I think, about actually, right? So those people acted as guarantors of someone else's rights.

Starting point is 01:19:47 by fulfilling their obligation. Now, if we look at where the Azzidi people are in some part, not everything like Azzidi person, but many Azzini people are still in refugee camps in Iraq, right? The conditions that they are in, we hear a lot about how bad conditions are for people in the Islamic State prisons or were. We do not hear as much about how bad conditions are for the Azei people,

Starting point is 01:20:06 but they are bad, right? They have a right to a much better life. The states of the world are not fulfilling that right. They are not fulfilling their obligation to these people who did nothing. other than live the way they've lived for thousands of years, and because that way was considered to be heretical by the Islamic State, they were targeted for genocide, right? And would have been killed in much greater numbers,

Starting point is 01:20:28 were it not for those people who are willing to fulfill their obligation to go and defend them? And then the states of the world have let them down again, and so, you know, try to find a future for themselves. So, like, it's... We're very good at that. Yeah, yeah, this is the thing that we do. I may have a hopeful example.

Starting point is 01:20:45 Nice. I told you, James, that I had a random person living in my house. And, well, for you, the listeners, like, through the community, it became known to us that there was someone who had flat an unsafe home situation. League adults, but I'm not entirely sure how much it should say, but it sounded very serious and we took it very seriously. And I had a spare room at that time. I did not know this person. I only have a first name. Never learned a second name or anything, never asked for an ID.

Starting point is 01:21:19 I thought to myself, like, the world I want to live in is one where someone can feel safe in situations like that. Yeah. So despite me being a pretty introverted person, like, I was like, okay, come live here. Because you need someplace to get back on your feet. You need somewhere to be safe. And that is a way which you can, like, uphold your obligations to other people. also with like the safety, security without persistent fear, a roof over their heads, even just a place to cool down a bit and figure things out.

Starting point is 01:21:56 And it would wreck my own political convictions to be able to help in such a situation and not do it because I find it a little uncomfortable to have a stranger living in my house. Also for the record, nothing was stolen, nothing weird or bad happened. this person just lived here for a week and moved on. But that is a way in which you can also in any small way, like, fulfill your obligation to other

Starting point is 01:22:21 people and to live in accordance with like your own convictions and your own moral and ideological compass. Yeah, I think that's a great example of how you can act according to your obligation, right? Yeah, and we can all do that in different ways, right?

Starting point is 01:22:37 Different senses. And like, that's one thing like I liked what you said a lot that if the world you want to live in is one where that person can feel safe and we only do that by building it ourselves my perception of politics is that like we are wasting our time asking the state to build that world for us

Starting point is 01:22:57 and instead we can build it like piece by piece along the way and I know people like perceive anarchism to be like a chaotic and violent but like most of the time when you're doing anarchism you're making someone food or giving someone a blanket. Like a very nice, pleasant things to be doing. It makes me feel better that we can make a world where that happens through our individual actions. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:23:22 Very nice, David Graber metaphor there for the digging a well. Yeah. So like Mia likes to say, like put a trans girl on your couch. Yeah. That's also protecting human rights. Yes. Yeah. I'm sorry. I just thought of it.

Starting point is 01:23:37 But, yeah, put someone on your couch who is in dire deed of a safe place. Yeah. But be also safe yourself, clearly. I think that's all we have, James. This was depressing and then uplifting enough. Yeah, that's what we do here. Okay. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:23:52 Well, take care everyone. And until next time. Bicar, the host of the podcast, Encore. Check out our brand new episodes featuring music from the show that everyone is reheating as we speak. Heated rivalry. Join me as I go behind the songs that brought Shane and Elia together. I'll tell you the stories of Fice, My Moon, My Man, Wolf forades, I'll Believe in Anything, and tattoos all the things she said, and how they all became a part of this global phenomenon.

Starting point is 01:24:30 Stream encore on IHeart Radio, Crave, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the host of Everyone Watches Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together and I Heart Women's Women's Sports. Because let's be real. Women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments to take over your entire timeline.

Starting point is 01:24:55 And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. We'll give you our tapes, our debates, and probably a few disagreements. We'll talk to athletes, celebrate big moments and get into what's happening on and off the field, court, track, and beyond. Because we're not just interested in what happened. what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. So if you're already a fan, you're just getting into the game, there's a seat for you right here. Listen to everyone watches women's sports on the IHeartRadio app,

Starting point is 01:25:31 Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Here's something that should not be as complicated as it is, getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is. Getting a new one put up in its place. As long as there's a politics of race in America, there's going to be a politics of remembering the Civil War. To get to school, I had to go down Robert Ely Boulevard. Get to the grocery store. I had to go down Jefferson Davis Parkway. If you're an historian and you leave out half of what the history is, you're not doing your job. I'm Akila Hughes.

Starting point is 01:26:04 In Rebel Spirit, Season 2 goes deep on both of those things. The fights, the politics, the people who won, and my personal campaign to add something to the Kentucky State House that's actually worth the wall space. We are more than our bodies. We contain essence. We contain spirit. How do you represent that? They are just fueling a fire that is really catching. You'll see what I mean.

Starting point is 01:26:28 Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bill, why is my eye twitching? Does this mean I'm in perimenopause? Maybe I have adult ADHD. I need to look this up. Where's my phone? Juliana, your phone is hot to the touch.

Starting point is 01:26:46 I think it's asking you for a break. You know what? Maybe I should just ask chat GPT. Or maybe we can ask an actual human. Yes, like a couple sex therapist. Whoa, that escalated quickly, but okay. Because I have questions. We have questions. And I bet everyone has questions.

Starting point is 01:27:02 Like, is it normal to sleep in separate bedrooms? We do that. How about this one? Is bribing your kids bad parenting or just negotiating? Oh, and I still do need to know why was my poop green that one time? Hypothetically, right? Okay, well, instead of letting you know, the internet guests, we've got actual people answering these exact questions. And laughing with us

Starting point is 01:27:21 has got to be better than spending three hours down a rabbit hole online. Listen to Bill and Juliana. The podcast. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Welcome back to It Could Happen here, a podcast about it continuing to happen here. I'm Robert Evans, and today I've got a friend of the pod, Laura Jadid, in the studio. Well, not literally in the studio. You know how things work with the Internet folks. And last weekend, Laura traveled to the Great American State Fair in our nation's beautiful capital of Washington, B.C.,

Starting point is 01:28:04 where she witnessed a lovely celebration of America's 250th anniversary with no inclement weather whatsoever. Is that right, Laura? No, it was charming and beautiful and very professionally done, and everyone had a lovely time. Awesome stuff. Laura, yeah, let's start. Was this just kind of as soon as he said he was doing this?

Starting point is 01:28:20 You were like, well, I have to be there. This is just simply not an option for me to miss. I mean, I definitely wanted to go. I actually was in town for a different, I was there for a religious extremist conference, which is a whole different ball of wax. It ended early. And I was like, you know, I've got several hours before I need to return home. Why don't I go have a nice time at a fair?

Starting point is 01:28:39 I haven't been to a fair in a while. I should go to a fair. Yeah. So how was it? Walk us through, like step by step, kind of your experiences at this wonderful event, celebrating 250 years as technically a country. Yes. Well, I would say the highlight, other than the weather, which we'll get into, was going into, there's these little rooms where they've got booths for states and territories and departments of the government and random sponsors.

Starting point is 01:29:03 And my favorite booth, I think, was probably the Department of Justice because it was completely empty. And by empty, I don't mean there wasn't anybody there. I mean that there was a card table, three folding chairs, a battered backdrop, and nothing else. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. It was incredible. I'm perfect.

Starting point is 01:29:22 It was so heavy-handed. That's great. You know, I know people who use subtext, and they're all cowards, and there are no cowards in this administration. Yeah. Your photos of that were really funny. So I guess the layout is like, it almost sounds like a trade show or something. We've got like these booths for each of the states and a bunch of government agencies,

Starting point is 01:29:39 and then like what all is going on? Yeah, it's like if a rent fair and a trade show had a baby and the baby had the worst aspects of both. It was incredible. Like, you enter it. And I will say this. So, you know, people, you've probably seen pictures. Everyone's, I think, seen pictures of what this thing looks like.

Starting point is 01:29:54 Yeah. And the Fourth of July was different and that there were a lot of people there. Because that's the day people came from all over the country to celebrate the Fourth of July and D.C. So it was crowded. But everything else was somehow worse than it looked in the picture. Because, like, you know, you can see the pictures of, like, the Timu arch. And you see how bad it looks. But there's nothing like walking towards it.

Starting point is 01:30:13 And from a distance, it's like, oh, that's an odd thing in the middle of a field. But it looks fine. And then the closer you get the worse it looks. And it's just this. this kind of slow dawning the horror of this like uncanny valley objects. There were the two long buildings that were just going by either side, basically for like the length of the Washington Mall, just little like tent slash trailer buildings with canvas stapled to them.

Starting point is 01:30:35 And the canvas had this illusion of columns and bar reliefs and stuff like that. And we've seen, you know, that's in pictures. But walking down the mall and seeing that optical illusion not shift with your perspective is just, it's like being in a really badly rendered video game, but it's real and you're touching grass at the same time. And it's just, the whole thing is so eerie and strange. Yeah. Yeah. So what can you tell me about like the audience? Like what's the vibe like on the ground when you, when you show up at least for the first portion of this before the weather starts to change. Yeah. So I've been to a lot of right wing events. It's kind of what I do. I've been, you know,

Starting point is 01:31:11 I go to a lot of these. And this was less Maga forward. I'm not saying there were no Trump hats or Trump shirts, but it was mostly just like America. Hell yeah. But everybody there was very clearly a Republican. Everyone assumed everyone else was a Republican. The booth operators assumed everybody was a Republican. It was pretty safe assumption. It was Maga Light, I'd say. I mean, it was almost more horrifying in that way because it felt like it was kind of realizing their fantasy of like all real Americans supporting Trump. You know, these were all the real Americans out here celebrating America. It was regular folks who think Trump's doing a great job and aren't at all disgusted by this fair. So the vibes were kind of cheerfully rancid, I'd say. Cheerfully rancid. Yeah, what a great term to describe the country as a whole right now. Do you have any kind of like top faves like of the things you saw like on the ground?

Starting point is 01:32:00 They're like, what stuff really stuck out to you? So initially, before the weather went to hell and by focus changed, I decided, because you know, there's been a lot of articles about how absolutely god-awful and dumb and silly the Sarah's. Yeah. I decided to do something a little different. I was going to go to every single state and territory booth and rank them. And the variety in the state and territory booths I found interesting. You know, you had Oregon.

Starting point is 01:32:22 Actually, I gave out some like fake awards when I wrote about this on my substack. And Oregon won the Most Fuck You Award. It was close. But it was just this very small booth, two of the walls, blank white canvas, kind of plasticy. And then there was just like a thing that's in Oregon, the Beaver State. And there was kind of a little banner of some of the things that are in Oregon and a Columbia sports like bag. just kind of clip to it with like just a, you know, a kitchen clip. And I was like, yeah, well, that wins this.

Starting point is 01:32:49 Yeah, that sounds like Oregon, baby. It was great. It was great. Yeah. And then you had like Puerto Rico, which was clearly sponsored by the businesses that want people to go to Puerto Rico for the tax breaks. And it was very lush and there were big screens. And it was populated entirely by hot Puerto Rican guys who were teaching Middle America

Starting point is 01:33:05 how to salsa and everyone enjoyed that very much. Oh, yeah. That sounds good. Yeah. Georgia's was completely about poultry, AI generation. entirely pictures of poultry, sponsored by Purdue Chicken. Uh-huh. That's what I think of when I think of Georgia.

Starting point is 01:33:20 Of course. Poultry, obviously. Yeah. The infamous Georgia Poultries, yes. And so it was like some states went all out. Some states kind of were like, you should visit our state. Some states were like, we sold this booth to a company. And then some states were like, this is a booth.

Starting point is 01:33:34 We are here. Yeah. We're legally required. Yes. We have fulfilled our requirement to have an object at this fair. Yeah. And then there were these like little flashes of normalcy in this otherwise very abnormal event. Those were almost more disconcerting because it was like a glimpse of what might have been.

Starting point is 01:33:51 Like the DC Metro had a full scale subway car, like three subway cars linked up, mock up railroad. And you go inside it. It was like a museum of the history of the metro and how it's helped DC and how it was built and fun facts about the metro. And it's like kind of a boring exhibit. But it was an apolitical celebration of a real achievement. Oh, yeah. Yeah, right? And so, you know, naturally Freedom 250 hid that behind one of the long, low buildings and also a 24-7 Christian revival tent just to be sure nobody accidentally stumbled on anything that wasn't just weird as hell.

Starting point is 01:34:25 Just to be sure there wasn't anything that, like, Americans broadly could enjoy. Exactly. We can't have that. Yeah. It has to be here, but you don't have to put it out of the way. Don't worry about it. Everything's got to be culture war-oriented. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:34:36 Yeah. So that was kind of the most normal. If I had to pick a most abnormal and it's tough. It's a, that's a, that's a crowded field. Yeah. The Department of Education booth was completely 100%. Banners by far right organizations. Awesome.

Starting point is 01:34:53 Great. I love to see that. Yeah. So yeah, just purely the most like racist homeschooling forward, cut school funds, vouchers, yay. Like, teach kids Vietnam didn't happen. Gay people don't exist kind of bullshit. Great. A lot of turning point.

Starting point is 01:35:08 Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very much America is a Christian nation. Yeah. Yeah. So weirdly, I was surprised if you were to say wasn't in there, one of the ones, Prager You, obviously, you know, the premier university of America, Prager You was in there. Also, a thing called Patriot Academy, which I wrote an article about them in 2022, not realizing they would be part of our education system at the time. But I went to their constitutional self-defense course at the Wittington Center in New Mexico, where we learned how to shoot handguns and also about the biblical origins of our Constitution. So that's good. Yeah. It seems like a good thing to teach kids. It seems like a really good program to implement. maybe, you know, in our school systems. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:35:44 I'm not optimistic about the fact that that's the Department of Education's booth. Yeah. It's not optimal. Not great. Yeah, any other like weird kind of culture war signifiers at the booths that are particularly noteworthy? I mean, so this has been discussed elsewhere, but it clearly can't be mentioned enough. It feels like very emblematic of the time we're in.

Starting point is 01:36:06 There was like a, I think it was the American, I don't think it was the Innovators Hall. It was America Made in America Hall. It was a much larger building with a lot more exhibits and right in the center of it, taking up the majority of the real estate, like the largest by far, just portraits after portrait, large oil paint portraits of the American flag, including a cross-straped in the American flag because why not? And the artist whose name, I guess, is Scott Labido. Okay.

Starting point is 01:36:32 There's a quote by him above his beautiful works of exactly one subject, which says, and I quote, I have flirted eye to eye with Mona Lisa in Paris. I have touched the thick, painful brushstrokes of Van Gogh. And I gasped in awe at Michelangelo Sistine Chapel. Yet still, to this day, my favorite work of art is dot, dot, dot, dot, the star-spangled banner. Oh, my God. I'm on this guy's website right now. And the first thing on the Scott Labito website is sign my petition to install a giant permanent flag at Ground Zero, New York.

Starting point is 01:37:08 York City. He's got 116,000 signatures. Yeah, that really matters. Yeah, yeah. No, and if there's one saying the Ground Zero needs, it's more American flag in the 9-11 Museum. It's not very American. You would never know going down there about patriotism at all. He also has a documentary about him that I think it's just an ad streaming on Amazon Prime and Apple TV called the Relentless Patriots. Oh, God. Relentless is a fair adjective. I found the paintings very relentless personally. Yeah, his art is incredible stuff here. There's some very, for over 30 years, America's artist Scott Labido, and America's artist, Scott Lobido, every first letter in that is capitalized, has respectfully painted thousands

Starting point is 01:37:50 of renditions of old glory on schools, homes, firehouses, police stations, cars, and canvases. Scott's past is rather colorful. Okay, so he's some sort of criminals. Yeah, amazing shit. I really want to know that his colorful life prior to this point. Oh, my God. I like to imagine it was some kind of like petty theft. And he's like, you know what?

Starting point is 01:38:08 It would make me way more money. Yeah. It's just painting the flag forever. It's a fucking crude American flag drawings with Donald Trump in them. Or a fist in one of his works of art. Oh, wow. Like a BLM fist or just a fist? No, it's like a fist in a flag.

Starting point is 01:38:21 And the fist is covered in, like, paint that's like flag colored. That makes sense. I'm on Facebook here. He's got a video of it. Let's wait for this fucking thing to start. But it looks like, yeah, he's unveiling a piece of art. I'm trying to click through to the unveiling because I don't care what this fucker has to say.

Starting point is 01:38:36 but it looks like it's just a middle finger. Yeah, it's just a middle finger. Wow. And I think it's a four-fingered hand. No, there's a fifth. There's a fifth. Okay. But it's just not a very well, it's not like a good,

Starting point is 01:38:46 like the proportions are really bad on this. Anyway, I'm sorry. We're spending way too much time on Scott LeBito. I mean, I will say, if America had to have an artist right now, a poorly drawn middle finger, you can do worse. You can have a word's representation. A poorly sculpted middle finger, yes. Oh, my God.

Starting point is 01:39:02 Speaking of poorly scopeded middle fingers, maybe our advertisers sell. that. I don't know. That's not my job. And I'm back with Lord B. Laura, let's continue. What next do you want to tell us about the great American state? Also, it's not a state fair. It's like the federal. It's like the national fair. Yeah, like the states were there, but kind of as best stars. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, the fair was just, it was pretty boring. There was the fairest wheel. The merry ground from the World Fair was probably the funnest thing there. That was from, you know, a time when America did things well. But yet, no, it was just kind of a lot of what I've just said.

Starting point is 01:39:49 That is until the rain started. And I think that might be a decent place to go because it seemed that despite this having been forecast for about a week, they had made no plans whatsoever if what would happen if it actually did rain at all. Sure. That sounds like the Trump administration. Yeah. Yeah. God wouldn't let that happen. No, God loves America. Why would he let it rain? Absolutely not. Yeah. So at a certain point in the fair. My phone was dying. I had forgotten my charging brick at home. And I decided to charge it at the Department of Justice booth since no one was using it. So I stuck in there and I, you know, plugged in my You pay for the Department of Justice. You know, our tax dollars, pay for that power. God damn it.

Starting point is 01:40:26 My tax dollars, yes. And no one, you know, I occupied the Department of Justice plugged in my phone. And about five minutes after that, this announcement starts going out over the speakers on loop for like, you know, at least an hour and a half, just, you know, due to inclement weather, the fair has been, quote, temporarily postponed. Please make your way to the exits and then we'll let you back in. when the storm blows over. And, you know, I'd waited an hour to get in like most people, and it was very hot, and they'd take in my nice pen away, and I was kind of salty about that. I didn't want to wait in line again.

Starting point is 01:40:53 And I'm like, I have electricity here. I have my backup pen they didn't find. I have Sour Patch kids, and I'm just going to hang out. So I did that for a while until the fair people found me and kicked me out. And then when I went outside, I found that I was not alone in this logic, that a lot of fairgoers were like, we'll just get wet here instead of getting wet out there. Right. Because they were telling us, you know, well, go shelter in your cars or in the surroundings.

Starting point is 01:41:14 buildings. And, you know, we were encouraged not to bring cars because it's Washington, D.C. And there were a lot of people, and there's only so much parking, so people didn't have cars. And this is, you know, 7 p.m. on a national holiday in the middle of D.C. So the buildings mostly weren't open either. So, you know, rather than go be wet outside, people decided to be wet inside. And this went on for about an hour until the cops showed up. And in a scene that I think would be recognizable to you as well, a line of cops just kind of trumbling. down the fare in motorcycles. The big difference between this and any other protest was that the cops were nice and not screaming or deploying tear gas and just kind of herded everyone out,

Starting point is 01:41:53 you know, past the throngs of thousands already trying to get back in. Because there was nowhere else for people to go except for to block traffic for blocks and blocks and blocks, which is what they did in the rain. It was, yeah. And so you've got a crowd of people who are both soaking wet and dehydrated, which is a great combination. And people start dropping as people are want to do. And so ambulances are coming through the crowd constantly. And, you know, this line that we always hear about protests, how they're, you know, they're blocking traffic. And what if an emergency vehicle needed to come in? Well, that was very much in play. But for some reason, that was okay in this case. They just put on their sirens and went two miles per hour and got through. For what I want to say

Starting point is 01:42:37 about an hour, this was just everyone standing around waiting to get back in, getting out of the way for ambulance is everybody getting more and more tightly packed until the crowd from doing those little, like, freaky lurches and shoves that, you know, it's like, we're on the verge of a stampede here because they've planned this so well that, I mean, what else was going to happen? They weren't going to go home. It was temporarily postponed. Right, right. You want to come back.

Starting point is 01:42:58 Yeah, they said temporary. Yeah. It's a terrible idea. Right. Yes. Like, don't go home. Hang out here. Wait outside the gates and get soaking wet because this is safer than being inside the fair

Starting point is 01:43:09 where you could, like, do things instead of just standing around and being angry. Yeah, it's both saying, like, we want you to stay out where you will be in danger, but also we want to put you into a situation where a lot of you have to move at once. Yes. Yes, and it'll be upset, and the security will be overwhelmed. Yeah. Yeah, it was brilliant, really, really brilliant stuff. And, you know, the storm continued to get worse.

Starting point is 01:43:32 It did not improve. It just got more and more rainy. And people were more and more determined to stay. I mean, there was a little bit of attrition, but mostly, you know, and I fell in with a group that. was more determined than most. They were, you know, following the ambulances in because the ambulances were making space. It was a good way to move up to just be completely antisocial in this way. Eventually, this group got far enough down the street that it seemed like we were going to make it in.

Starting point is 01:43:54 And we kept moving a little bit. And there were the chance of USA. I believe God bless America was sung at one point. But the progress slowed and then it stopped. And then music began to play just beyond us inside the fence. And the crowd became a bit more agitated. And God bless the USA, start. started playing. And that was a huge catastrophe because, you know, that means the speech is about to start. And we were going to miss Trump speaking, which was a problem. And then Trump started speaking. And this was the moment that I think that the crowd just completely broke. Their will and spirits broke because the reverberation from the poorly placed speakers were such that you could not understand him. It was kind of a nightmare world for me in a different way because you can hear Trump's

Starting point is 01:44:35 cadence and voice, but not his words. It was just this like psychotic babble of nothing, just watching over us. Yeah, reading transcripts of it even. It was just like, honestly, it's like, it's like ASMR. Yeah. Right? Like it's just, he's, he's creating at this point like a soundscape for them to kind of exist inside for a little while. Yeah. Yeah. And then amplified by the fact that it was coming at us, you know, from several directions out of sync. So truly incomprehensible. Just this weird Trumpian gibberish washing over this crowd and the boo that erupted when they realized they couldn't hear their leaders speak. It was just like this primal like. That's funny. It was great. I was having the, I mean, I was soaking wet, having the best time.

Starting point is 01:45:15 Yeah, they're all in withdrawal, yeah. Yeah, it's like, no. And so, you know, he speaks for a while and midnight passes, and there have been no fireworks. So the 4th of July, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence has now passed in D.C. with zero fireworks whatsoever. But, you know, everyone was excited for 850,000 fireworks to go off, which they eventually started to do at around, you know, 1215, completely obscured by the trees, completely obscured. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:45:45 Could not see them at all. After all that waiting. Yeah, I saw your pictures and stuff from it. It's like, in like the top corner above a tree, you can see little bits of an explosion peeking out. Just the worst fireworks show. So, it was so bad. Oh, my God.

Starting point is 01:46:02 So I'm walking out, and they're playing Journey, you know, so don't stop believing. Like, I have stopped believing. Yeah. Then Bon Jovi's living on a prayer. I'm not really living on anything at this point. The smoke is so thick, even if we could have seen, it was just an orange glow on the horizon. It was just a crackling of bombs. It was just like...

Starting point is 01:46:19 Awesome. Well, we will conclude this story and your experience at the Great American State Fair. But first, here's one last ad break. Okay. So how many times I'm curious would you estimate you heard Lee Greenwood's God bless the USA during your time there? You know, believe it or not, just before Trump came out, just the one. which was, refreshing.

Starting point is 01:46:51 That's good. That's good. That's not bad. I was surprised as well. I assumed it would be playing nonstop. But I guess that's like Trump's theme saw. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:46:58 Yeah. Yeah. They wanted to keep it like for him. It's like a WWF thing. That's like what plays him on stage or whatever. Exactly. Yeah. You know,

Starting point is 01:47:06 I feel like this was a small rebellion because there was music playing inside of the state fair. But what you had was like Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville as I'm like staring at the arch. Just, I mean, they played fortunate son, which I guess isn't surprising. Not surprising. Not surprising. Not really proper. But not really proper.

Starting point is 01:47:22 Katie Perry's firework played several times because, I mean, you know, of course, firework Fourth of July. So it wasn't really like a big patriotic music fest. It was just kind of like pop music that was barely related and or a little sad. It was, yeah, yeah, odd. Odd. Well, anything else about the event at all that you feel like is really worth getting into here at the end of our tale?

Starting point is 01:47:46 I mean, the fact that there isn't, I feel like isn't. itself something. Like, it was so empty. It was such an empty thing. Yeah. Everything was so sad and small and lazy and lazy and trashy and cheap. The feeling I kept having was that it all felt AI generated. Even the stuff that like couldn't have been, like the arch looked like an AI generated image just stuck in the real world. And like a lot of the booths, I mean, there was a lot of AI art there, but it just everything, all of your pictures, I kept thinking it's like my friend is trapped in like an AI generated version of reality. That's really lazy.

Starting point is 01:48:24 It's exactly. That is such a good way to put it. It really did. It was just like the ethos of AI infuse this place. Like it's kind of like if you described, I mean, I feel like I'm comparing everything to the backrooms right now because I just watched it and I'm a little obsessed, but like. What a backrooms vibe. This person who just watched the backrooms.

Starting point is 01:48:44 And yet, I mean, it really was like if somebody described what a building was and then someone who'd never seen one before, was like, oh, like this, right? Like, yeah, sure, like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just, no, it was so soulless. I mean, you know, whether or not you care for America, I personally, you know, like, countries got a lot of problems. I would like a lot of them to be better. But, you know, I live here.

Starting point is 01:49:03 I'd like it to be nice. And it was just kind of embarrassing. It was sad that this, this is really what we are right now. We are just, yeah, this like soulless, AIS-th, phoned-in sad part is, like, That ain't part of it's not even the right word. Like radically far right bullshit. Yeah. It's gross.

Starting point is 01:49:25 Yeah. Yeah. Gross. It's like funny in a cosmic sense, but mostly depressing, to be honest. Yeah. Yeah. I enjoyed my time there because I enjoy depressing horrible things, but I can't, I can't say that like if I was giving a Yelp review.

Starting point is 01:49:39 It feels right in this era of America to be like depressed and disappointed. Yeah. Yeah. Like the people, and I've caught myself doing this. Like, you know, this isn't a representation of who we are. Like, yes, it is. No, this is a pretty good representation. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:49:52 This is exactly who we are. What am I talking about? They got the vibe more or less. Yeah, 4.5 stars. Nailed it. Yeah, I say that a lot. Like, whenever someone's like, this isn't who we are, like, isn't it?

Starting point is 01:50:05 Have you been us? I have. And this feels like us to me. Yeah. Periodically, during like the riots in 2020, I'd post some footage and one of the comments would be like, this isn't the America I grew up in. It's like, I don't know.

Starting point is 01:50:22 It's the one I grew up in. I'm like, I mean, it wasn't the one I grew up in, but that's because I lived in areas where the police weren't. So, yeah, it was always there. I just wasn't visiting it, you know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:50:35 Well, Laura, anything else? Plugables to plug at the end here? Yeah, well, you can check out. I've got a newsletter at firewalledmedia.com. I am Laura Jedeed on basically every social media platform, We're mostly active on blue sky right now, but theoretically on all the other ones as well. And yeah, come come check me out. I am the only Laura Gede in the world, so I'm very easy to find.

Starting point is 01:50:54 Excellent. All right. Well, thank you, Laura. And thank you all for listening. We'll be back at some point in the future. Well, actually, tomorrow. You know how this works. Listen.

Starting point is 01:51:17 And you're there for heart-wrenching knockouts. The world's biggest stage. And breathtaking triumph. 2026 FIFA World Cup The knockout stage Every match, every moment Listen on TSN Radio Join the globe

Starting point is 01:51:35 On the road to the July 19th final 2026 FIFA World Cup Stream it all live on TSN Radio Available on IHeart Radio What's up fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers Hey what's up y'all? It's your girl Sam J And we're the host of everyone watches women's sports A new podcast from Together and IHeart Women's Sports

Starting point is 01:51:56 Because let's be real. Women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments to take over your entire timeline. And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. We'll give you our takes, our debates, and probably a few disagreements. We'll talk to athletes, celebrate big moments and get into what's happening on and off the field, sport, track, and beyond. Because we're not just interested in what happened, we're interested in why everyone's talking about it.

Starting point is 01:52:27 talking about it because everyone watches women's sports. So if you're already a fan, you're just getting into the game, there's a seat for you right here. Listen to everyone watches women's sports on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Here's something that should not be as complicated as it is, getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is,

Starting point is 01:52:55 getting a new one put up in its place. As long as there's a politics of race in America, There's going to be a politics of remembering the Civil War. To get to school, I had to go down Robert Lee Boulevard. Get to the grocery store. I had to go down Jefferson Davis Parkway. If you're an historian and you leave out half of what the history is, you're not doing your job. I'm Akila Hughes. In Rebel Spirit, Season 2 goes deep on both of those things.

Starting point is 01:53:17 The fights, the politics, the people who won, and my personal campaign to add something to the Kentucky State House that's actually worth the wall space. We are more than our bodies. we contain essence, we contain spirit. How do you represent that? They are just fueling a fire that is really catching. You'll see what I mean. Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 01:53:46 Bill, why is my eye twitching? Does this mean I'm in perimenopause? Maybe I have adult ADHD. I need to look this up. Where's my phone? Juliana, your phone is hot to the touch. I think it's asking you for a break. You know what? Maybe I should just ask chat GPT.

Starting point is 01:54:00 Or maybe we can ask an actual human. Yes, like a couple sex therapist. Whoa, that escalated quickly, but okay. Because I have questions. We have questions. And I bet everyone has questions. Like, is it normal to sleep in separate bedrooms? We do that.

Starting point is 01:54:15 How about this one? Is bribing your kids bad parenting or just negotiating? Oh, and I still do need to know why was my poop green that one time? Hypothetically, right? Okay, well, instead of letting the internet guess, We've got actual people answering these exact questions. And laughing with us has got to be better than spending three hours down a rabbit hole online. Listen to Bill and Juliana.

Starting point is 01:54:37 The podcast. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. This is it could happen. This is it could happen to your executive disorder. That's right. Our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Mia Wong and Robert Evans.

Starting point is 01:55:06 This episode, we're covering the week of July 1st to July 8th for some small things. Last week, Ben Gavir, the Israeli national security minister, canceled an upcoming trip to New York City for the UN Police Summit, amidst calls for him to be arrested for war crimes. That's good. That's good to see. It's nice to see that he feels scared, even a little, you know. Yes.

Starting point is 01:55:33 Yeah. The planned protest outside of the UN took place, even though Ben-Gavir did not travel to the city. No one really knows if Mitch McConnell is actually still alive as he remains hospitalized after being admitted in mid-June for suffering cardiac arrest. On Tuesday, a bunch of Republican senators said that they for sure talked to him for multiple minutes about all his favorite topics. Definitely not AI-generated images and shit. Yeah. Yeah. There's really no clear indication on what his current mental state is.

Starting point is 01:56:10 Laura Lumer has said that he's effectively brain dead, not a reliable source either. Not at all. No. But the audio from the 911 call indicates there was CPR being performed. Based purely on that, what Lumer says is very likely, because when people at McConnell's age need CPR. and are like at the time at which EMS arrives, this is not an uncommon result. Like what Lumer suggested, yeah. We could see a historic weekend at Bernie's, even in American politics.

Starting point is 01:56:43 Yeah. If Republicans would hold on to the Senate seat without doing a special election. Honestly, it'd be the best way to honor his memory. Like, that's the appropriate way to honor Mitch McConnell's memory. One last filibuster. Kind of breaking the law one last time to stack things. in the GOP's deck. I also want to note that friend of the show,

Starting point is 01:57:05 Myra Lazzine, from Trans News Network, did request comment about the status of McConnell from his office and has not received a reply. We will let you know if we get any kind of confirmation from their press staff, that he is in fact alive. And our colleague, James Stout, who will have a special segment later on this episode,

Starting point is 01:57:27 also wanted us to note that, San Diego has begun defunding and closing more than 30 public toilets today. Cool. To that, I will add in a not humble brag fashion that Momdani and the MTA announced a new plan to expand bus routes. Great. The same day. Anyway. You can have either world, people, but not if you live in California, actually.

Starting point is 01:57:54 No toilets or slightly faster buses. The two choices of American politics. Yeah. The two choices that are presented to voters. Well, okay. I'm going to present a third choice, which is I do want to talk briefly about something that's happening in France right now. There is an attempt that has passed a lower house and is pending a vote from the upper house as we speak to pass a police immunity law. I don't know what exactly the term to describe it is, but it is a law that would automatically treat any police killing as justified until proven otherwise. this is obviously an extremely dangerous bill it effectively allows the police to as long as there are no witnesses kill someone and not be investigated or removed for it so that is still technically

Starting point is 01:58:43 making its way through the french parliament but very much looks like it could pass and is extremely bleak cool yeah just obviously this is a bill backed by the french far right that's also being backed by you know a bunch of the french quote unquote center right and yeah, quite bad. Speaking of bad, let's get on to our first main story this week. As many of you know, there's been a major update in the main Senate race. On Monday, a woman named Jenny Rassico came forward with an allegation that Graham Platner raped her in 2021.

Starting point is 01:59:22 Rasko told Politico and CNN that she and Plattner had been seeing each other on and off for about two years. And then one night in 2021, Plattenor entered her home, quote unquote, heavily intoxicated, despite Rassico explicitly telling him not to come over. Once inside, Plattner forced himself on her while she resisted and repeatedly told him to stop, and then he raped her. Rasko told Politico that Platter did not remember what he did the next morning, but shortly thereafter, she caught off contact with him after telling him what happened that night was not consensual. Yep. I guess this is what it took, unfortunately. I'm like, I'm sorry this lady had to come forward and say this. Yeah. But, you know, it does look like this has done the job, finally, of ending this guy's career.

Starting point is 02:00:11 I mean, I guess we'll see. Anything could happen still. But I don't know what else to say. Her specific allegation is heavily corroborated in the reporting. Yeah. Pletico interviewed the woman's next boyfriend, who in 2020, she's, told him about what happened with Platner and also reviewed emails to a therapist discussing the sexual assault. Politico published some private Facebook messages between Rasko and a friend of hers whom she warned against getting involved with Platner, and that was years before he ran for office. I'll read of some of those texts here, quote, he can be charming and funny, and he's a decently intelligent person. He's not all bad, but I ended up in a bad situation with him, and I will just

Starting point is 02:00:56 very politely call him consensually careless at times. She followed up by writing, when drunk, plus PTSD, he lies also. Doesn't listen to you when drunk, unquote. And it's still remarkable, honestly,

Starting point is 02:01:11 how much slack she was trying to cut him in that message. Like, unnecessarily empathetic way of expressing that to someone else about a person who had done that to you. Yeah, I don't know. That's what struck me about that. One of the most devastating parts of this is that Rastico told Politico that she previously

Starting point is 02:01:31 with hertile this accusation because she agrees with Platner's political platform. Yeah. One of the reasons I didn't come forward sooner was the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics, but not supporting him as a person. I just want the truth out there. I just want people to have a whole scope of who he is as a person, unquote. Yeah. after Resco made this allegation, which is Platinor's first public allegation of rape or sexual assault,

Starting point is 02:02:01 Lindsay Fifeld, the Republican operative who was at the center of the New York Times report on Platner last month, told the Washington Post that Platner sneakily removed condoms during sex. Jesus. Which is also a form of sexual assault. Yeah. In a video released on Monday, Plattener denied the... allegations and said, quote, we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward. Following the allegation, Platner lost high-profile endorsements, many of his volunteers,

Starting point is 02:02:36 and support from community organizations. The 30,000 member activist organization, Maine People's Alliance, whom Platner was a member of, withdrew their endorsement and told him to step down. The Democrat nominee for governor, Hannah Pinnigree, who Platner supported as a ranked choice candidate, released a statement calling for him to drop out of the race. Quote, for Maine, for the future of control of the U.S. Senate, and because no party should stand behind a candidate facing allegations of assault, Grand Platner should exit the race immediately. Democrats need a nominee who can beat Susan Collins in November. Grand Platiner is no longer that candidate.

Starting point is 02:03:13 Grand Platiner tapped into something real. Voters, hungry for change, showed up with real passion and energy. That energy doesn't have to go away. it needs a new candidate to carry it forward. That last little section by Hannah is part of what I was trying to express in my recent piece outlining the campaign's platform and on the ground strategy. And I think looking back at his campaign, it really is worth trying to understand why it worked as well as it did.

Starting point is 02:03:44 Up to this point, up to this allegation, this election has highlighted that there can be a considerable gap in the way certain candidates are talked about online and how they are viewed by the local organizations or the local electorate. Now, at least the organizations are breaking with Platner. We don't have a great idea yet of how voters see him post these allegations. But there was a series of focus groups that the bulwark ran in June with a group of main women who supported Plattner, but said that they would draw the line at an allegation of sexual assault. So my last episode was focusing on trying to explain how he won the primary and how his relationships with unions and local activist groups contributed to that campaign success.

Starting point is 02:04:35 And there was a reason that I waited until after the primary to discuss that platform in detail. And we had done some piecemeal reporting on some of his other scandals. But the information circulated on Blue Sky right now about Daniel. Moroff, who was mentioned in the piece, was not as publicly accessible when that episode was written. And I think a piece fully evaluating or relitigating all the personal issues with Platner or some of his staff would have needed to be a separate episode, which is why that piece starts off with mentioning all of them means scandals before narrowing its focus on why he

Starting point is 02:05:09 won the nomination. And focusing on why he won the nomination so handily, like over 50 points against a Democratic establishment candidate, I think it's really important to understand what's happening in American politics right now, right? Yeah. Plattner got the most votes in state primary history.

Starting point is 02:05:26 He did 83 town halls amassed over 15,000 volunteers, and just a, like a semiotic analysis of Platner as a person doesn't tell us how his campaign attracted such historic support in Maine, right? Politics isn't just about vibes, and symbols or even individual character,

Starting point is 02:05:48 but rather structural forces. And there is a distinctness at the root of politics between symbols and the real forces of society. Those forces can be aesthetically flexible and adapt a lot of different symbols. For every Graham Platner, right, a bad guy who represented good politics in Maine.

Starting point is 02:06:09 There are many more people who represent very bad politics who dress themselves up in a spotless, like, moral symbology. Look at right now, right, there's a lot of democratic, like, party figures who are taking a lap. People who have supported

Starting point is 02:06:24 Andrew Cuomo and the Clintons who are saying, like, aha, I told you so, who couldn't have seen this coming? And, like, that's gross on its face because of the types of behavior, they are very clearly okay with excusing to put forward their candidates.

Starting point is 02:06:40 But also, I think this reaction of, like, who couldn't see this coming, right? there's all these red flags. This also fails to, like, understand how we got to this point. Like, Platner wasn't chosen to be the nominee by online leftists, but rather the people of Maine. But there are contributing factors that led us to a very, a very precarious situation, including the lack of serious vetting by some of the consultants working on this campaign.

Starting point is 02:07:07 Oh, yeah. As well as Chuck Schumer's clearing the field of other Democratic candidates, which helped create this effectively one-on-one Mills v. Platner matchup, while other qualified candidates were pushed into the governor's race. And now some of those people might be going after the Senate nomination following the assumed dropout of Platner in these next few days. We do have to wonder, and by the time people listen to this, there's a good chance, I guess this won't matter, but like what if he decides to just fuck the party, right? Like what if they don't sort all this out? It's not an impossible situation from where we're sitting right now. I don't think it's the

Starting point is 02:07:46 likeliest, but it's not impossible from where we are right now. It's not impossible. That is an interesting kind of thing to think about. Consultants like Morse Katz are urging him to drop out, and there is a lot of reports coming out that are suggesting that he will. And to this point, a Platner has been a very effective conveyor of a working class-centric platform. And his resilience as a candidate through his other well publicized personal issues have proven a real hunger for a new kind of politics. But by making himself the avatar of that movement in Maine, he has also severely compromised the movement. There's a lot of people who supported his campaign despite his past, based on this idea that those past experiences led him to this working class politics.

Starting point is 02:08:37 his campaign was predicated on that he was not the same person who made those, like, awful Reddit posts a decade ago. But the details in the recency of this rape allegation suggests that is not really the case. This allegation affirms a larger pattern of behavior, which is itself disqualifying and illuminates false and misleading statements. Platner has made to supporters, which further undermine his integrity, reliability, and the trust necessary for an electorate, for unions and community organizations to put forward a candidate with faith that he will follow through on the working class platform that he adopted. This redemption story that the campaign ran with attracted a lot of supporters. Supporters who Platner assured that no new

Starting point is 02:09:22 damaging allegations would be coming out against him. And this not only betrays the trust of those supporters and his volunteers, but it also puts the viability of their shared working class politics at risk based on their association with him and especially this new accusation of rape. I think there's two things that are sort of important to keep in mind when thinking about this. One is that it's quite common for someone who is a rapist to also be extremely charismatic, to be a good communicator, to be very skilled at manipulating social situations, and that none of the things that they can be good at, like make it okay for them to be a rapist, but also that's how a lot of the people who are able to do these kinds of things are able to maintain themselves and

Starting point is 02:10:13 are able to survive. That's how a lot of politicians you get into this place are able to just, you know, survive despite the fact that they have credible rape allegations. Like we should mention, you know, for example, that there are significant credible rape allegations against the president of the United States, a thing that has not stopped him from being elected twice. A conviction. Not just allegations, it's a conviction. Found liable in civil court. Multiple allegations, right?

Starting point is 02:10:37 Like, you know, and then I think the second issue here, right, and this is something you were mentioning when you're talking about, like the problem with him making himself the avatar of this sort of like move into structural forces is that this is just to some extent one of the risks and one of the challenges you face when you're attempting to run a working class movement that is centered around a charismatic figure because there is always just a decent chance that they've done something horrible. Like this is a problem with just like

Starting point is 02:11:04 the structure of electoral democracy, right? Yeah. This is a structural problem with the way that electoral democracy is about selecting your rulers and the fact that people who want to become rulers also just have a higher chance of being able to get away with shit like this. And that's something that you have to manage

Starting point is 02:11:19 to make sure that like your movements are not just one guy who can fuck the entire thing over by being a piece of shit. Yeah. And yeah. Rastico is specifically talking about how she hesitated to come forward because she agrees with this, with this politics, with this movement. I mean, it's completely devastating. And like this reminds me of, you know, the Caesar Chavez allegations, right? Like, sexual assault is a problem across everything from, you know, like non-hierarchal anarchist organizing to the labor movement to electoral campaigns. Yep.

Starting point is 02:11:52 Not every rapist is going to have a Nazi tattoo. Bad politics. Neither is going to have bad politics, right? Yeah. And like re-looking at the sort of many red flags this has, I think a lot of people saw that, like something like this is a possibility, but a possibility is not an inevitability.

Starting point is 02:12:10 Yeah. And for a lot of people, especially in Maine, right, the political platform and the community ties that Platner established outweighed the many red flags of Platner as a person. He kind of pushed that to a very far limit, like farther than I've seen in a lot of electoral campaigns of how far he was able to maintain support.

Starting point is 02:12:30 Yeah. Rather than that illustrating something uniquely special about Platner as a person that shows the depth of the desire to unseat Susan Collins and the lack of trust in the Democratic establishment. Now, this rape allegation is obviously completely discrediting by itself and also because of how it clearly illuminates this pattern of lying and dishonesty. I think that that compounds a lot of the issues that people have been talking about with Platner for a long time. And even something like the tattoo, right, even if he did not know what the tattoo was when he got it. Which I never believed. Like, and we said that at the time, that that was never a credible story, right?

Starting point is 02:13:13 Fellow Marines in his group who also got the tattoo were interviewed by Zito, they said they didn't know what it was. That's not what I'm talking about is he stated that he had not realized prior to it coming out that it was Nazi. after he had said that he loved the movie Come and See, which that image is in repeatedly. That was when I was like, well, he's a liar, right? Yes. We talked about this on air, by the way. Just to be clear. Yes.

Starting point is 02:13:36 And debating whether or not he is a Nazi overlooks the other very clear issues exemplified by the tattoo. You know, recklessness, poor judgment. And then considering these new allegations, you know, Platner's dishonesty, right, based on the conflicting reports of when he learned of, you know, the tattoos Nazi associations. And I think that bolsters the fact that he has a pattern of lying and especially like lying to get into power. Multiple times these past few months, Platterner has reassured senators, supporters, and

Starting point is 02:14:08 volunteers that no new allegations would be coming out against him. Even while he was aware that Jenny Rasko was speaking with outlets like the New York Times. Plattner has until July 13th to drop out of the race to be. be removed from the ballot. And the party has until July 27th to select a new candidate to appear on the November ballot. There's a lot of conflicting reporting on when exactly Platner is going to drop out and why he has not yet. And I might do an update on this based on what will change in the next few hours the next day. But as of right now, there's seemingly a conflict or kind of a power struggle between his campaign and the Democratic Party on deciding the transparency

Starting point is 02:14:54 of the process to select the next candidate. There's been a few people from the governor's race, as I mentioned, who's thrown their hat in the ring. Troy Jackson has filed paperwork. He was the only DSA endorsed candidate in the main governor's race, also endorsed by Sanders. Dr. Nirov Shah, a kind of more like moderate, progressive announced his intention. And as part of his announcement, he mentioned opposition to Israel.

Starting point is 02:15:20 So he's kind of trying to move in the direction of Platon's politics, even though traditionally he has been more of a moderate liberal. We'll find out in these next few days if the platform and campaign style that was so successful can transfer to someone else. Because I think this campaign has provided a very effective blueprint of in-person engagement, town halls, leaning on local organizing connections,

Starting point is 02:15:44 and having those connections and organized labor helped determine a platform, a platform that has stuff like Medicare for all, tax the rich, no money for Israel, Supreme Court reform, destroying Citizens United, but also stuff like investing in manufacturing, public utilities, building clean energy, and strengthening labor organizing laws. Yeah. Quick update here.

Starting point is 02:16:05 A few hours after recording, Platner released a lengthy 11-minute video maintaining these allegations are false and attacking the corporate media system and the quote-unquote political establishment. Towards the end of the video, he announced the campaign. is suspending operations and said he will withdraw from the race. Though he has not yet officially dropped out of the race, and reports indicate he will not do so until Monday, which is the deadline. Also on Wednesday night, we got a better look at what the replacement process is going to be, and instead of an open caucus, basically a mini-primary, the main state Democrats have decided to go forward with a 600-person nominating convention,

Starting point is 02:16:56 with 500 delegates elected proportionally by county committees and 100 delegates from the state committee. This is not the most open or democratic option the state party could have gone forward with and could cause some real blowback from voters who will be unable to participate in choosing the nominee. Well, we should talk about, I guess, the Ryan Grimm of it all. Yeah, sure. So Ryan Grim with Dropside News published earlier today. And breaking points as well. Yeah, and breaking points.

Starting point is 02:17:28 Earlier today, this was Wednesday the 8th when we recorded, that essentially the initial reports had not mentioned a couple of what they felt were relevant facts, one of which was that before texting him not to come over. She had texted about needing a massage on her glutes, which I don't see. as super relevant. No. I think the argument being made particularly by Dropside is that like, well, this was still a relevant detail that was not included. The other thing that was in that report that is more relevant is the fact that Politico had details about this assault way before they released them, right?

Starting point is 02:18:03 Like way before it actually came out that may have been relevant to voters. I do think that's a fair critique. I don't agree with the relevance at all of her mentioning that she needed a massage. That's not an invitation to sex. that doesn't, like, I see that as entirely irrelevant. And I think that this is within a tradition of that particular journalist defending people that he likes from allegations that are credible. I don't particularly respect this decision.

Starting point is 02:18:30 But it's relevant. It's a pretty gross move to take this moment and then try to, like, inject any amount of doubt into what's happened and peddling this politely, I'll say, soft rape apology. that's it's disgusting. There's a very similar thing coming from the young Turks from Ancparian and Chen. I'm happy that the majority report

Starting point is 02:18:53 people turned on Graham immediately apologized for defending him throughout these past few months and said that they were wrong about him as a person. I'm glad they did that, but what Grimm did

Starting point is 02:19:09 here and what the young Turks are doing is just completely despicable. Yeah, I think it's gross. Repulsive. Yeah, like, I don't think there's any reason to bring that specific detail up other than to try to indrict out, like you said. Yeah. I want to say just one thing about the way that consent works, which is that if you withdraw consent at any time, no matter what happened before it is withdrawn, that's how it works. And if anyone, like, regardless of what happened until that moment, you have to continue consenting.

Starting point is 02:19:43 stop consenting, the moment you stop consenting, you have stopped consenting, and it becomes assault. I just, I want to be extremely clear about that because people are trying to muddy the waters about this, and this is just an important thing for people to understand about the way that consent works. I think that would be even more relevant if she'd said, come over and then said don't later, but like what she said was not even starting the, yeah, no, it's not even that, but, but I just, I just want to be clear about. According to Grimm's report, she did not even ask him for a massage. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:20:14 His entire motivation to do this is so, is so suspect. Like, he's trying to say this is about, like, journalistic integrity and how Politico and CNN were dishonest with Rassico's, you know, claims. And, like, that's, that's, it's completely absurd. I think anyone with half a brain itself can see what he's trying to do here, and it's, and it's gross. I simply don't agree with that. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:20:34 Yeah. And I think the other thing that's kind of very bleak about this is that, like, there is more proof here than most people who are sexually assaulted are going to have, right? And this is still the reaction that it's getting from like, fortunately not a

Starting point is 02:20:53 very large number of people, but still people who have large platforms. But still pretty influential. Yeah. People. Yeah. And that's, you know, like this is part of the reason why, you know, when this shit happens everywhere from like five person anarchist collectives up to like the DSA, up to like the Democratic Party, up to the president of the fucking United States,

Starting point is 02:21:12 why this shit plays out like this, because this is just a structural factor of politics writ large is that you are going to have to deal with people who fucking do this and their fight to get away with it and people who try to run cover for them. Yeah, I think this is part of

Starting point is 02:21:28 why I have an issue sometimes with folks when there's like a new allegation against like a conservative politician or like a right wing church figure or something and they're like, it's always these guys. And it's like, no, it's ever like, pedophilia is all over the place. It exists in left-wing organizations and right-wing organizations.

Starting point is 02:21:44 And when you start being like, well, this is a thing the bad people do, not a thing the good people do, then you've created a place in which the people who do that have cover. Like that's what you're doing when you're like, no, bad people do that. So no one that I agree with would. Yeah. Yeah. Like sexual violence and getting away with it, that's a structural force. Right. Like that's something that is brought about by like large-scale structural forces that, yeah, regardless of what people stated politics are transcendence.

Starting point is 02:22:09 divides and people do it anyways. Well, let's go on a break and then we will return with more news because more things happened this past week. Yeah. All right. We're back and, you know, there's simply nothing to say, but it's time for a little musical interlude. Ah, oh, God, that just hits every single time.

Starting point is 02:22:58 It's been too long. Yeah, it really has. It really has. It really has. The time makes fools of us all. Mia, what's happening in tariffs today? The tariffs have been in committee, which is why the tariff song has been in the box, but they are no longer in committee. So long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, which is to say February in a slightly different department,

Starting point is 02:23:22 we talked about the possibility of Trump replacing the tariffs at the Supreme Court struck down by using a series of different sets of tariffs. One of the sets that we mentioned are tariffs imposed by using Section 301 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974. This allows the administration to carry out an investigation into unfair trade practices and then imposed tariffs after the investigation is concluded. Now, the administration basically set one of these investigations in motion effectively the moment the ruling was decided in February. and on July 2nd, they returned with their conclusions, which, lo and behold, found that 54 countries were failing to take appropriate measures to, quote, impose and effectively enforce a prohibition

Starting point is 02:24:10 on the importation of goods produced with forced labor. Now, these countries, on top of Russia and China, include traditional U.S. allies like Israel, Japan, South Korea, and India. I think you mean the Islamic Republic of Japan. I'm sorry. I could not let that one escape me. I missed that reference. Trump today said the words,

Starting point is 02:24:33 the Islamic Republic of Japan. I think he did not mean to say the Islamic Republic of Japan. What country has taken fewer Islamic refugees than Japan? I don't even understand how that could be like a conservative bugbear. He says the Islamic Republic of Japan fired missile. at U.S. chefs. Okay, okay. He just misspoke.

Starting point is 02:24:58 He mispoke. He was trying to say Iran. Okay, we're good. We're good. We're good. It's just a normal senior moment from our president as he launches or continues

Starting point is 02:25:06 a series of illegal attacks on foreign countries. Just a normal senior moment from our war monger president. We're good. We're good. Everything's fine. Yes.

Starting point is 02:25:16 Incredible stuff happening here that are, yeah, our president cannot produce. Actually, admitted, admittedly, this is not the first time in our lifetimes that our president has not been able to correctly name the country, which he is bombing. Sure isn't.

Starting point is 02:25:31 Sure isn't. It's not even the second president that this has happened to in our lifetime. No. I'm not certain it's the third. We're like three out of four. I'm pretty sure Bill Clinton could do it. So that's like three out of five? But I'm not 100%.

Starting point is 02:25:47 He's a country boy. He probably fucked it up once. Now, we didn't bomb as many people when he was president, but we didn't bomb no people. That's probably true. Good God. Good God. Okay. So... Sorry. Sorry. My apologies. It's okay. It's okay. Returning for this bleak interlude. So again, countries that the U.S. are saying are not enforcing this prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor.

Starting point is 02:26:12 So these, again, include a bunch of traditional U.S. allies like Japan, South Korea, India, and Israel, which is sort of interesting. It also says, quote, the following six economies have failed to effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor, Canada, Ecuador, the European Union, Indonesia, Mexico, and Pakistan. So on this list, that is the entire EU, Canada, Mexico, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, and Turkey, which is a list of the world's largest economies. And then also there's a few kind of oddball ones like poor Sri Lanka, which they really have something out for Sri Lanka. I don't know exactly why it keeps showing up on these tariff lists, despite the fact that these poor people have been just suffering unbelievably devastating economic

Starting point is 02:26:59 consequences for a very long time. Now, I am in the unfortunate position of having to agree with California's Attorney General, a thing I am not typically doing, but he did in fact say something which is true that this list of countries is in fact 99% of all U.S. imports. So, Okay. Now, we can obviously note here the hypocrisy of imposing tariffs for forced labor in a country whose constitution specifically allows forced labor for prisoners and note that, you know, forced labor of various kinds from indenture servitude to debt peonage to various kinds of slavery have been key elements to the development of capitalism from the beginning. But this is not about forced labor at all, as I think anyone who is even remotely paying attention will understand. So the tariff rates are nominally. tied to setting up systems that ensure that goods produced with forced labor aren't being sent to the U.S. With countries who are like out of compliance with the U.S. system would do that, getting a 12%, 12.5% tariff rate and countries who are complying facing 10% tariff rates, that's at least the theory. The practice is not that, as the diplomat notes, quote, the proposed tariff rates, however, cannot be explained by human rights concerns alone. Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines have not established import prohibition systems meeting U.S. standards,

Starting point is 02:28:18 face a 12.5% tariff. Malaysia and Cambodia likewise lacks systems but face a tariff of only 10%. So this is just a fairly naked attempt to reimpose the set of tariffs that Trump initially imposed in February

Starting point is 02:28:34 in the wake of that Supreme Court decision. We talked about those in a different episode. They are up for a July 24th deadline, so it's pretty clear that this report is time to come out in a way to allow these tariffs, which are very, very similar to the ones that already in place to go into effect. Now, it's worth noting that those tariffs had some bad court

Starting point is 02:28:57 rulings. They're probably not going to last long enough to get like a good Supreme Court ruling on it before they come out of effect. So those ones probably won't be lifted by a court order just because there's not enough time, but there's a good chance that these tariffs are also not going to survive. But the California Attorney General is part of a very large group of state attorney generals, which features the Attorney General of almost every state with a Democratic governor, which I'm not going to read the list out because it's a bunch of them. But they are once again suing the administration over these tariffs. So here we are again riding the tariff rollercoaster.

Starting point is 02:29:35 And yeah, we're back with the Trump administration trying to impose 10 to 12% tariffs on most of the economies in the world. Speaking of the Islamic Republic of not Japan, Oh, boy. Here is James Stout with a special segment. So what I want to talk about today is this lawsuit recently filed by the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, represented by public citizen, which has some incredible accusations about what the United States government has done to people who are Iranian nationals seeking asylum in the United States. Specifically, they're alleging that the U.S. government has disclosed confidential information on Iranian national. seeking asylum in the USA to the Iranian government. I am going to reference a complaint

Starting point is 02:30:23 and quote from it a length quite a bit here because these accusations are crazy. Not crazy in that I think they're false. I don't think they're false. Crazy in that they are abhorrent and disgusting, especially when you consider that the United States government has consistently talked about the rights of people in Iran while all the time violating those same rights. So let's quote from that complaint. Quote, many of the asylum seekers are pro-democracy protesters, members of religious minorities such as evangelical Christians or members of the LGBT community who seek refuge in the United States because of the grave dangers they face in Iran. It's closing their confidential information to the Iranian government

Starting point is 02:31:02 violates the asylum seekers' confidentiality rights, endangers their family members and acquaintances who may still be residing in Iran, and puts those who are subject to removal to Iran directly or through chain refinement via third countries at risk persecution, torture and death following their rival in Iran. If you're not familiar with chain refinement, it's sending someone to a third country that will then send them to the place that the USA can't or won't send them due to concerns of persecution or torture. So it's an end run around international law. It's barred by the 1951 Refugee Convention and the UN Convention Against Torture, but the US has been doing it a lot under the Trump 2.0 regime. In the course of my work, I have met Iranians from all of the

Starting point is 02:31:45 groups described in this complaint, as well as those who are ethnic minorities and country, in addition to being parts of the groups described in this complaint. I can think of a group of young Iranian women. I met the Dalian gap. I spent a good deal of time talking to you. Really lovely folks. There's a man with them as well. Actually, now I think about it. You can hear them in my Darien series, her met him Iranian Christians in outdoor detention, a number of them. Number one of them was having a heart problem, so it's been a deal of time trying to help her and get her medical attention. As I've covered before on this show, throughout the USN, Israel's bombing campaign on Iran, Iran has kept killing its own citizens. In the last couple of

Starting point is 02:32:26 weeks, it has engaged some of the armed Kurdish groups, and there have been casualties on both sides. The process of the US government sharing these records with Iran, the suit alleges, began in March of 2025. It seems to have continued when the US was bombing Iran that year. It seems to have continued while Iran massacred thousands of its own citizens in January of this year. And it continued throughout the United States and Israel's current war on Iran. Indeed, a flight left for Iran on January the 25th of this year, as the dead from the pro-democracy protests were only recently in their graves. Iran doesn't have an embassy in the US, and these affairs go through the Iranian interest section of the Pakistani embassy. It was to that Iranian interest section that the State

Starting point is 02:33:16 Department reached out in March of 2025, according to the lawsuit. Quote, the March 2025 meeting produced an agreement between the United States government and the Iranian government under which ICE and Iranian government officials have begun holding monthly meetings to share the immigration files and information of Iranians in ICE custody. In addition, since the March 2025 meeting, U.S. government officials have periodically mailed or hand-delivered immigration files of Iranians in ICE custody to the Iranian government. It then goes on to allege that ICE has provided officials from the Iranian interest section with access to people that it has detained and worked with the Iranian government pressured these people to waive their rights.

Starting point is 02:34:02 This is going to be them signing quote-unquote voluntary deportation paperwork where very clearly is non-voluntary when they're held against their will and pressure to do it. But that's what you hear it called. Quote, many of the Iranian detainees did not consent to meet with the Iranian Interest Section officials but were required to do so by ICE. According to Iranian detainees who met with an Iranian Intersection official, the official had knowledge of their immigration cases,

Starting point is 02:34:27 including the details of their asylum applications. These non-consensual meetings with the Interest Section officials solidify the detainee's belief that they have been identified to the very same repressive government that they had fled. The United States government allowed the Iranian government to select the Iranians deported to Iran, according to this complaint. Some of those people were then interrogated by an intelligence section of the IRGC on their rival in Iran.

Starting point is 02:34:55 Some of these people had detailed on their application as they must to make a good asylum application, right, that they had participated in the 22 Jun Jhan Azadi movement, woman, life, freedom. It's a Kurdish slogan of the Kurdish freedom movement that was used by pro-democracy protesters in Iran after the murder of Jinnah, Amini, by Iranian police. This sparked a whole movement, right? I'm sure you can find a great deal of good. writing on that movement. It was very well covered. I have met women who took part in that movement. As I said, before you can hear some of them in some of my podcasts, they tried with every fiber of their being to make it round better. They saw their friends die to try and make it around better. And then they fled because it was made very clear to them that the state was willing to fill the streets with blood before it changed. Now those people are obviously afraid of telling the

Starting point is 02:35:55 truth on their asylum applications, or even to their lawyers, especially while they're in detention, because they now know that that information could be delivered directly into the hands of the Iranian government. They may have said in their applications, I was part of this movement because I'm opposed to the government, and now that information is being delivered to the government. They came here to experience some of the freedoms that their friends died for, and instead they were hand delivered to the regime that they had fled from. The US did not have. ask for any protections or guarantees for their safety. At the very same time, the USA was using the rights of Iranian people as a pretext for its war in Iran.

Starting point is 02:36:35 It did this as it was depriving people of those very same rights back here. This is disgusting. I will link to the complaint in the sources as you'd like to read it yourself. I'm going to keep an eye on this one. Even amongst the horrors of the second Trump administration, this is just particularly, apparent. We'll go on a break and then return for one more batch of news. We are back. Next up, two shootings by ICE, which have both occurred just this last week, exactly half a year after the shooting of Renee Good. Robert? Video captured Wednesday morning in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,

Starting point is 02:37:28 showed ICE attempting to arrest an undocumented immigrant from Mexico named Clemente Laura Hernandez. There's video of this incident. You can see like a black car with flashing lights, like an unmarked police car blocking like a white SUV. Agents get out of the car and rush the SUV. And again, they just kind of look like guys with guns in a moment. And one of them starts screaming that he's going to shatter the window and yelling at the driver. at that point the driver pulls away in a panic.

Starting point is 02:37:59 They hit the black unmarked car that had been blocking them. They speed off. The fucking ice points out there going wrong way down a one-way street. And they hit another uninvolved civilian vehicle. And it was like, yeah, they were panicked because an unmarked car drove up and gunmen ran out and started surrounding and screaming at them. It scared them. That's the kind of shit that happens in countries where the cartels are in charge of everything.

Starting point is 02:38:23 if you pretend that like ICE is in any meaningful way different from a cartel or a gang. As of us recording this, this person has not been taken into custody. I hope they stay that way. Yeah. Also earlier this week in Houston, Texas, Lorenzo Salgado Arajo, who is 52 years old, was driving in the East End when the same basic thing happened. Unmarked cars surround him. Guys with guns get out.

Starting point is 02:38:49 He gets really scared and he drives off. and he gets shot as he's driving away. Ice accused him of having weaponized the vehicle. He was taken to the hospital where he died. So Gato Arajo had no criminal record. He had been in the country for more than 30 years. He was in a car with several people, including his brother. There's no evidence whatsoever of any kind of violence in his past.

Starting point is 02:39:16 There's no evidence that he wanted to hurt anyone. There's no evidence that he was doing anything, but being terrified by unmarked, armed men. surrounding him. His son has come out and said that if he knew they were ice, he certainly would have stopped and complied. He had no idea what was happening, which again seems very credible to me. There's already been a cavalcade of people coming out to demand an independent and impartial investigation into what happened, including U.S. Representative Sylvia Garcia, who's a Democrat from Texas, and obviously his son and Alejandra Salinas, a Houston City Council manager, also called for

Starting point is 02:39:52 an immediate impartial investigation. I don't know what good I think that's going to do, like, realistically. For one thing, no law enforcement entity can be trusted to conduct an independent and partial investigation of ICE, period, especially right now. For another, there's literally no way to guarantee that they will be held to account, even if the evidence, and I think it suggests that they were acting entirely wrongly and murdered a man. Like, I don't believe anything's going to happen to this guy at this point.

Starting point is 02:40:18 So, I guess I support the idea of an independent an impartial investigation, I just don't think that's going to get us anywhere yet. Yeah. I mean, I think if we want an actual independent, like impartial investigation, it's going to have to happen after this administration regime is out of power. And that's a thing that can be done, right? But it's going to just take a bunch of time until these people don't have control of all of the state security services.

Starting point is 02:40:44 And in the meantime, they're just going to keep doing the same shooting over and over again. There's been growing protests in Houston these past few days. days. This is some audio recorded Tuesday, published by Reuters. People are here to work. Families are dying. People are dying. What are they doing? Murdering, innocent Mexican people. They come to work. They come here to work. So what if they don't got papers? So what? Trump did this to us. What happened to taking the murderers out? What happened to taking the rapist out? What happened to taking the drug dealers down? Not innocent people.

Starting point is 02:41:24 That's not what you said, President Trump? You didn't say that. Since then, the protests have only grown. On Wednesday evening, hundreds of people marched in Magnolia Park on the street where Lorenzo Salgado-Oraho was shot by ice. For our last segment, let's talk about America 250. So this past weekend marked the 250th anniversary of the United States, and things went off without a hitch. heard the great American State Fair was lots of fun, that it was totally packed, that no

Starting point is 02:42:03 parts of any stages on nearly killed dancers as they were setting up the event, that there was no severe weather events that disrupted it. I heard it was fun. And adding to the fun was President Trump, who spent much of the Fourth of July weekend talking about the growing threat of communism and the need to pass the Save America Act following the Supreme Court's ruling in support of counting mail-in ballots. In Trump's July 4th speech commemorating the historic occasion of America's 250th birthday, the president said that to keep America great, we must pass the Save America Act, the troubled voter restriction bill that has failed to pass Congress. Quote, all voters must provide a little thing called proof of citizenship. There will be no mail-in ballots except for

Starting point is 02:43:00 illness, disability, military deployment, or travel, and you won't have cheating on the elections anymore. It's very simple, unquote. Speaker Johnson has indicated his plan to pass another version of the Save Act through reconciliation. The bill has repeatedly been stalled in the Senate, and that has bolstered a lot of Trump's frustrations these past few months, now following the Supreme Court ruling. It appears that Republicans will take another crack at it. But Trump also spent much of the America 250 address railing against communism. Quote, America will never be a communist country.

Starting point is 02:43:42 It's like a cancer. You've got to cut it out and you've got to cut it out fast. The communist system is the opposite of the American system. and the communist system has never worked. Our warriors did not fight communism on battlefields across the world, only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America, unquote. Real 1950s style reaction to seven social Democrats getting elected. But I think that the fact that how scared he is and other people,

Starting point is 02:44:20 including on the Democratic Party side. And there's been a wave of articles from the Atlantic, really scared about the more kind of social democratic, democratic socialist direction that the party's been going, really frightened. In fact, I think like a few days ago, Trump even said the words to social Democrat

Starting point is 02:44:36 and said they're just communists. But the fact that Trump had to learn what social Democrat is is a really interesting indicator of where we are at as a country. On the eve of July 4th, Trump gave another speech. at Mount Rushmore, after speaking to the AI ghost of Roosevelt.

Starting point is 02:44:56 Oh, God. And during this Mount Rushmore speech, he spoke at length about how communism is a, quote, moral threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or even 9-11. World War I is simply not a threat to our country. Not in any way, shape, or form. Was our country threatened at any point in World War I?

Starting point is 02:45:20 Obviously, some Americans were killed as a result of Germany attacking shipping, but in no way were we in danger. Yeah. Does he understand that Pearl Harbor was part of World War II? Does he like get that? He was just shooting buzzwords off. I think that's all that was. Yeah. Incredible guy to control the largest nuclear weapons arsenal in human history.

Starting point is 02:45:42 Trump also called communism the enemy of the Constitution, the enemy of July 4, 1777. Quote, on the eve of this 250th anniversary of American Heritage, we resolve and swear for all to hear that the citizens of the United States of America will vanquish communism quickly. President Trump also had this banger line, which is the only clip I actually want to play of this speech. You can be loyal to Karl Marx or you can be loyal to America. You can be a communist or you can be a patriot. you cannot be both. As for those who peddle Marx's lies about our heritage, who tell our children that we live on stolen land

Starting point is 02:46:30 or that our heroes were oppressors, they're doing something much worse than slandering our past. They are slandering and attacking our future. Not going to let that happen. You can be loyal to Karl Marx, or you can be loyal to America. So true, so true. President Donald Trump.

Starting point is 02:46:51 It's just really stunning, thinking about this is how the president of the United States is spending the 250th anniversary of the country. Yeah. That he thinks it is important to start bringing this stuff up. I just thought that was a little interesting tidbit that happened this weekend. Anyway, I think that is all we have for news this week. Okay. Well, I guess it's been, it hasn't been a short. newsweek, but, you know, we don't always have to talk for an hour and 20 minutes about the

Starting point is 02:47:22 shit that's happening. You now kind of know what's happening. No, this is just a 55 to one hour in three minutes with James Sigmund. Instead, a short news week. Yeah, a short news week. All right, go, go with Christ, my friends. We reported the news. We reported the news. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It could happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcast Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeartRadio app, Apple

Starting point is 02:48:01 podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources where it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. What's up, fam, it's sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the hosts of everyone watches women's sports,

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Starting point is 02:48:38 On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, this is Chuck from Stuff You Should Know, and we're submitting our most sciencey episodes for your peer review with our new stuff you should know doing science playlist. Out now. You want to know about Occam's Razor? Simplest explanation is usually the right one. We got you covered. Wondered what chaos theory is ever since the first time you saw Jurassic Park?

Starting point is 02:49:01 Well, come on down. So distill a nice pot of tea, everybody. Turn down the gas on your Bunsen burner and slip into your most comfortable lab coat and listen to the stuff you should know doing science playlist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Can superstars even exist the way they used to? 2016 was sort of that last era of monoculture where we still consumed things in. community. Everybody wanted to be

Starting point is 02:49:29 Beyonce at that point. I don't think we'll ever see another beyond. What does it mean to be black and eat in America? You will never make me feel bad for being a black girl, for being a black American girl ever. From music to food to the conversations shaping black culture right now, therapy for black girls is

Starting point is 02:49:45 bringing it all to the mic. Listen to therapy for black girls on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hello, my love. I'm Ryan Weiss. And for the past 15 years, I've been an emotional intelligence coach and a spiritual guide, and I'm sharing with you my new podcast, Waking Up with Ryan.

Starting point is 02:50:04 Waking Up with Ryan is a daily audio video podcast, here to help you connect with yourself before the noise of the day takes over. So let's start our days together with a moment of calm that's just for you. Listen to Waking Up with Ryan on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Thank you.

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