It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 250

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Starting point is 00:00:37 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, and welcome to the show. It could happen here today.

Starting point is 00:01:07 I am James and I'm very lucky to be joined by Margaret Kiljoy. Hi, Margaret. Hello. What a good day to talk about good stuff. It's good stuff, right? Unfortunately, Margaret, I hate to break it to you. It's the government declaring left groups terrorists again. Oh, that seems bad.

Starting point is 00:01:27 Yeah, it does seem bad. Especially in this case, like it's an attempt to drive autonomous left organizing off the internet. And so if people are not familiar, we are talking today about autistici inventati. There's a forward slash in between those two groups because on the 26th of August, the Office of Foreign Assets Control added them to a list of specially designated global terrorist groups because it alleged that A-slash-I services were designed to facilitate violent attacks. I think I'm going to refer to them as A-slash-I just for brevity and, also because I don't want to use AI, because sadly, that's already taken.

Starting point is 00:02:08 That's what I was thinking, too, is I'm either going to call them Autostiti or A-slash-I. Yeah, so we can go through a little bit of blow-by-blow of what's happened since then in a minute. But I first thought, Margaret, perhaps you could explain a little bit about the role this organization played, why does it have a forward-slash in its name, when did it come about, and where's it from? Yeah. So there is a group that is made up of two groups, and the name of the single group is Autastici slash Inventati, and you might be able to guess that the two groups that make it up are Autastici and Inventati. They've been around since 2001.

Starting point is 00:02:47 I want to say March 2001, if I was at the right place of my own script, I would be able to tell you that for certain. And they came about during the alter globalization movement, which is something that I've talked about a bit on my show, cool people who did cool stuff. And it is one of the things that, I mean, if you were there, you know what I'm talking about. But basically, there was a massive movement against the stripping of resources from the developing world by the developed world. There was basically a massive attempt by people all over the world, kind of spurred on by the Zapatistas and Chiapas, to get everyone together to say, stop using free trade agreements

Starting point is 00:03:26 to take all of the wealth of the global south and give it to the global north. It's a really important idea to wrap your head around, but complicated right now in this era where tariffs are the bad thing, and free trade is the lesser evil, right? We weren't fighting against, this is the movement that I came up in. We weren't fighting specifically against free trade, although we were fighting against the free trade agreements, so much as specifically that we were fighting for fair trade, and we were fighting for people getting paid decently and, yeah, stopping the economic extraction of the world.

Starting point is 00:03:59 Fair trade is a proper noun, right? But it's also a concept, and they differ, and that's all I think I need. to say about it. Yeah. And so during this period, activists from all over the world created all of these, like, massive protests, bringing people all together and creating horizontal decision-making structures and doing all this important work. And one of the things that came of that, for better and for worse, is the concept of social media. We can trace it directly back to the hacking groups of this era. Community journalists, citizen journalists would go out and work with, especially something called indie media.

Starting point is 00:04:34 Yeah. And they would go out and they would film what was happening. And so there was this international network of people who created a structure called indie media where indie has like I and DY media. Yeah. Right. And be able to report on what was happening in their regions, but have it all networked together. And it kind of created microblogging, which is what created Twitter.

Starting point is 00:04:56 And there's actually like direct lineages with some of the people. And so sorry about that, that we did that. I was a part of indie media for a long time. And a group in Italy, two groups in Italy, among many others, came together to do indie media work in Italy. Italy was an important part of the ultra-globalization movement. Unfortunately, it's where we first saw police kill a protester, RIP Carlo Giuliani. I was like, oh, I'm going to really quick read their own history that they said. But what they did is that 10 years, like, 2011 or so, they put out 140-page book that describes the, like, oral history

Starting point is 00:05:32 of the creation of their project. And so I have not fully read everything in this yet. But in general, Autostici is from Milan. And it was started by basically like cyberpunks, although one of the people was like, I'm not a cyberpunk, you know? Of course. But literally, like, it was coming out of groups

Starting point is 00:05:47 that would use concepts from William Gibson's books, like intentionally. Like, it was a consciously cyberpunk movement. And then you also had in Florence, or in Frides, if you're wanting to pretend like you've been there, you have a group called Inventati. Now, Autistici, you're like, that sounds like the word autistic. It means autistic.

Starting point is 00:06:08 It's the autistics, right? And what their concept was, I don't know, I'm not holding this up to today's lens of how we want to talk about this neurodivergence. What they were saying is, we're all interacting with computers instead of each other. So that's what we're going to call ourselves, are the autistics. Inventati was the self-invented, and these were the citizen journalist and they came out of a group of basically protest journalists that were mostly students in Fidenze in Florence. So they came together and they formed a thing.

Starting point is 00:06:43 Why does this matter 25 years later? Well, on some level, that's a good question. It kind of shouldn't. The thing is that these groups, when we call them hackers and hacktivists, actually one of the things that they talk about is that they basically do the reproductive labor of social movements.

Starting point is 00:07:02 They're not out there hacking places. They are creating infrastructure for people to talk to each other in non-corporate ways. Because the corporate environment owns so much of the internet and they have from the beginning, they are so much older

Starting point is 00:07:16 than all of their enemies, right? 2001 is ancient in internet terms. And they created ways to have websites called no blogs, which is a WordPress platform. They created email servers and they created list serves. Right. And they kept doing it. And they, every now and then the government would fight them. They'd say, someone that you are giving a blog to has done something bad. And every single time, they would take it to court. They're not underground people. This isn't a shadowy organization. Yeah. They have names and legal, like this is a legal thing that they pay for internet services and host website servers. So they are trying to have a free internet. And that is what the government is coming for.

Starting point is 00:08:00 when they are being designated this way, they hosted approximately 10,000 blogs on the no blogs platform, and that is from people all over the world. So they are basically stripping away the platform by which 10,000 people or groups do their communication and do their publication. That's what I got. Yeah, I think that's really good. I'll just give some examples.

Starting point is 00:08:23 There are groups in Myanmar who use no blogs, for instance, right? Like, it's very easy to see this from an American lens because it's the American government doing it. Or the United States government, I should say, right, America, two continents, United States, one country. Yeah. Lake America, not a thing. But let's look at it a bit more broadly, right? Because, like, you and I can remember this era of the internet because we're old now, the free internet, when the internet was cool and we were really hoping that it would be a liberatory force for humanity, right? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:08:53 We gave it a good shot. We gave it a fucking try. like people may not remember the Arab Spring, right? But like there was this idea that like Twitter, I think it's rather myopic to say that Twitter gave us Arab Spring, right? Like decades of oppression and people wanting to live free and bravely standing up against state and violence gave us the Arab Spring. Yeah. But Twitter paid a part in people communicating. But like before we had that, we had things like hush mail is another example, right? But like, yeah, there was an independent internet structure that wasn't always explicitly anything politically apart from anti-corporate.

Starting point is 00:09:30 Yeah. Let's take a break here and come back after we've heard some advertisers. All right, we are back. The internet is dead. Let's talk about what an SDGTO is, especially designated global terrorist organization. These come from an executive order. I think it's 133324. I've down here that was signed by George W. Bush in the wake of September the 11th, right? September the 11th, 2001. If you're wondering if I'm talking about the Catalan National Day, no, I'm not, I'm talking about the attacks on the World Trade Center. Yeah. Oh, interesting. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah. Have you heard that Trump is claiming that he was at Ground Zero and got dragged away by firemen? No, that's a, that's a new one for me. It's a complete lie. He was further away from Ground

Starting point is 00:10:28 zero than I was. Yeah. I looked it up before we started recording. I was much closer to the ground zero than he was. Perfect. Anyway, whatever. Great. Okay.

Starting point is 00:10:36 Yeah. Well, what a guy. Yeah. Again, like, I don't want to harp on, like, being old or whatever. The world changed after September the 11th, 2001, it's so many ways. One of them was the United States' pursuit of these new anti-terrorism laws, right? And these new anti-terrorism sanctions, right? An SDGTO is a sanction, right?

Starting point is 00:11:00 There were a series of executive orders from between 2001 and 2003, which kind of amended how they did this. I guess the first example of how the SDGTO sanction was supposed to work would be the Holy Land Foundation, right? He has the largest Muslim charity in the United States. It was at one point, yeah, a huge Palestinian-American charity. Its offices were raided, its assets were seized and it was closed. Previously, like, it collected, like, we're talking tens of millions of dollars here,

Starting point is 00:11:31 or like more than $10 million, I can pretty confidently say. This is a big organization, right? And what the SDGTO sanction does is it can list individuals or organizations, but it effectively makes them sanctioned so that people cannot transfer assets to them, right? So that makes them more or less unbankable. And that is what, as we'll see, has happened to A-slash-I, right? It is a different designation. This is important from an FTO. FTO is a foreign terrorist organization, right? The difference there is that this is an economic sanction, whereas an FTO also contains the State Department itself, as well as the Treasury. Right. Like, they're probably not going to drone strike people over this.

Starting point is 00:12:15 Yeah, exactly. An FTO designation does a couple of things, but one of them, as you say, is it gives them that pretext for more like physical, genetic, if you want to use. used the term that people in the industry use violence, right, as opposed to economic attacks like we're seeing here. And the FTO is kind of the highest level of designation, right? And with it comes a series of things that become illegal for any US individual, US person who is, or indeed anyone globally who is involved with that organization. In practice, what this does is it removes their ability to interact with the global banking system, right? And Being an FTO does too, right? That's the FTO designations that we saw earlier in the Trump administration that impacted Greek, German.

Starting point is 00:13:04 Was there also an Italian organization in those? I don't think so. I don't know. Certainly, it has made it very hard for a number of organizations in Germany to have bank accounts, period. Yeah. And what happened was no one tells you, apparently. No one gives you a call to be like, hey, just so you know, like you're a specially designated global terrorist now. they learned that this was coming because of Marco Rubio tweets.

Starting point is 00:13:28 It had already happened. And then immediately their PayPal gets shut down. There's some irony to this because theoretically PayPal was created in order to kind of be a libertarian way of getting past government interference with money or whatever. But that's probably long gone and probably was never good in the first place. Their PayPal got shut down immediately. There's no reason why their PayPal had to be shut down immediately because in this designation there was a specific exemption, given for a month. There was a 30-day or one month to September 25th. Hey, if you have business dealings with this group, you have until the September 25th to stop. Now, theoretically,

Starting point is 00:14:06 this only applies to United States people, right? There is no method, well, there is a method. There's no legal method by which this necessarily applies more broadly. But pretty much immediately, Banca Etica, which I am not certain, I believe means an ethical bank, is a specific cooperative bank. It is an independent cooperative bank working for the highest interest, that of everybody, including yours, according to their website. And the bank that is basically meant to be the less evil bank of Italy shut them down pretty much immediately.

Starting point is 00:14:44 And they released as of this morning as a recording Tuesday, September 8th, Autistici, slash inventati released a statement saying like, this is what happened. They shut down our bank. Because after they received this order, after they got told that they are this, this designation, and they had to tell they're more than 10,000, not customers, because they're all volunteers and no one had to pay to use their services, they had to tell all those people like, hey, this is what's happening. And when it first happened, they came out and they were like, look, we're going to fight

Starting point is 00:15:18 this. because they have fought in court all the time, right? But the thing that is important and different in this particular situation, they have no legal recourse. They've been accused of kind of similar things. Like, hey, you hosted a website that included a manifesto about some people who did some crimes, right? It's a thing that gets used against them a lot.

Starting point is 00:15:39 Yeah. And they go to court and they're like, this is what we are, who we are, this is what we do. We don't have fucking anything to do with the people who we, you know, publish or whatever. that is not an option in this situation. And so they were waiting for their bank to give them a chance to fight, to argue.

Starting point is 00:15:54 And their bank just didn't because of basically a fear of secondary sanctions. Yeah. So no EU court, no Italian court, has accused them of any wrongdoing. The intention is not to pin a crime on them so much as it is to remove this infrastructure from the internet, right?

Starting point is 00:16:12 Yes. So what the State Department is alleging in its press release here is that I'm quoting here, it provides encrypted tools and services to numerous violent, far-left extremist groups operating in the United States and around the world. And then they say that groups have relied on the collective digital infrastructure to plot or incite violent attacks, recruit others to engage in criminal activity, publish official communicates by US-designated FTOs and disseminate maps of critical infrastructure.

Starting point is 00:16:38 They go on with other stuff, right? But they are not alleging, the State Department itself is not alleging that A-slash-I themselves did anything. It's that they hosted a platform where people who they are saying did terrorist things could either recruit to do those or talk about them or claim credibility for them. In amongst the examples it gives sabotage of the trans alpine pipeline that's in Europe, they talk about Jane's Revenge in the United States, which it calls a violent far left extremists. It talks about Stop Cop City.

Starting point is 00:17:10 They list a number of listed FTOs, right? But they're saying a far-left extremist group claiming to be a tool for global militants relies on AI. So they're not saying the FTOs do directly. They're saying a group claiming to be a tool for those people relies on the A-slash-I infrastructure. So it's always, I guess, like one tier removed from them. Right. But I think that that in a sense is what the point is here, right? back in the day, they used to smash printing presses, right?

Starting point is 00:17:46 The state. Yeah, the state would smash printing presses, so would bosses, right? Yeah. When I look at my own research, right, when I'm doing archival research and I'm writing about, specifically about Spanish anarchism, about union organizing,

Starting point is 00:18:01 my first research project was on like the Catalan Builders Union, you see this, right? Like, they're putting out publications and their means of communication is being destroyed by the state. And it's one of the most essential parts of any resistance movement, right, is the ability to communicate. I remember reading a biography, an autobiography by someone who survived, the Warsaw Ghetto, right? And this of Warsaw Ghetto uprising. And there were three things that the Warsaw Ghetto fighters were smuggling in from outside.

Starting point is 00:18:33 The three things that mattered. Yeah. Food, small arms, and printing presses. Like the ability to have printing presses, we see it over and over again as an essential part. And not just of resistance movements, but also social movements and also just free exchange of cultural ideas. Yeah, like I'm reading a lot about the Mexican Revolution right now. I'm thinking about magazines like VESPA, right, which was an anarcho-feminist magazine. Even Flores Magolitan was a journalist, right?

Starting point is 00:19:02 Like he came to St. Louis to try and continue writing safely. you can specifically look at Bofiolias if you want to look at like the state attacking people's ability in that instance, right, to communicate freely with each other. The reason like this is important is because it's, it's one of the last parts of that old internet. Yeah. Right.

Starting point is 00:19:24 Like I'll give the example of like, and I know it's, there are no blogs pages about Kurdistan as well. But like if I give the example of Myanmar, right, like everybody in Myanmar to talk to the, them, apart from people who are really part of the Spring Revolution who will talk to me on Signal, I have to use Facebook, right? Because Facebook is the internet there. Because in some cases, you don't pay for data if that data is going through the Facebook app, but you do pay for data if you're using it through a browser or an email client. So Facebook is synonymous with the internet.

Starting point is 00:19:59 Therefore, Facebook controls the internet. And so we get to this situation with the beginning of the genocide against a Rohingya people where the military is running a massive bot network. And we have NLD government officials trying to call Facebook being like, you know, like a genocide is actively beginning and you are complicit in it and Facebook not responding until they shut it down, they shut down Facebook entirely, right? Yeah. And then in doing so, basically disconnect a large portion of their population from the world. And like, the people who had the tools to stop that genocide were in offices in California.

Starting point is 00:20:38 And I think they had one Burmese language content moderator. What I'm getting at here is that like the corporate internet is not equipped. It just doesn't care about the consequences of lots of things, including misinformation, right? And at least the autonomous internet, people could speak freely, right? they weren't controlled by the policies of Facebook. They weren't controlled by the policies of Google. Yes, what the government is alleging is part of the consequences of that free speech were that they are saying that people who were doing violence were organizing on it.

Starting point is 00:21:12 Free speech is also, like, to just go like super liberal American, right? Like, it is a very First Amendment that they made to the Constitution. The printing press and pamphlets were integral to the revolution here, right? Like, if you just want to be super fucking patriotic, Yeah, yeah, like it's a betrayal of the concepts that like this country, many other of those concepts are bad things, like slavery. Well, but do you know what else is a foundational concept of the American economy? Oh, is it the sale of products and services? That's true, and the advertisement of products and services.

Starting point is 00:21:46 Right, yeah. Of which we are a proud continuing that tradition. That's true. All right, we're back. So, as we discussed before we started recording, neither of us are total Internet understanders. I read a blow by blow. No blogs.org, et cetera, have gone down. If you want to keep up,

Starting point is 00:22:14 inventati.org is still up as of this recording. And keep it free.a.i, which is probably the only good. coma in existence is where you can find press releases and things like that, right? And they did, as of a couple days ago, as of two days ago, A-Slas-I, was like, all right, we're done. We don't exist anymore. You beat us. And a lot of that has to do with the taking.

Starting point is 00:22:38 down of all of their infrastructure, and it's interesting. And part of the reading is so chilling is that back in the day, when we thought of the internet as a very resilient thing, it's very decentralized, it's very resilient, if you own your own server, unless it gets seized in a raid by the police, like a physical computer as a server, right? Yeah. And these days, it's even hard to imagine that, like, a lot of people used to just have servers like under their desk, you know, or in their closet, right? They were like, oh, I run an extra cooling fan in there, and I have a website in there. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:23:09 You know, my first website was on my boss's server living at his house, you know? Yeah. And so you would defend the physical server, and fairly regularly, police would raid and capture physical servers in various places around the world, you know. And it was usually seen as an overreach

Starting point is 00:23:28 and often found later in court to be an overreach. But what's happening here is they got censored off of the Internet in a different way. In a way that's a little bit frightening, And again, I read all of the data about this, and I even have some technical background, and I don't fully understand all of it. But even if you have your physical computer

Starting point is 00:23:48 and you own your dot org, right, you own no blogs.org, the concept of dot org is owned in America. Yeah. I know this isn't totally what you asked me to do, but I think this is what's really important for everyone to understand, even if you don't care about any of this stuff, tyranny in America can fundamentally gut the internet.

Starting point is 00:24:10 Yeah. Because there are American parts on a lot of this stuff. You know, it's kind of like how the UN is everywhere, but it's also in New York City. Yeah, like, I think it is really important to reinforce that, right? Like, because there's somebody sitting in the mountains of Myanmar right now who can't communicate to the world anymore. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:24:29 Who probably doesn't know what A-slash-I are. Right. Let's go through, like, exactly what happened. Margaret and I spoke about this couple times. Neither are us of internet understanders. I'm sure some of you listening to this have a better grasp on the nuts and bolts of this than we do. But essentially on the 28th of August,

Starting point is 00:24:46 so that two days after they were declared by the Office of Foreign Assets, for all to be a specially designated global terrorist organization, there was a DNS level issue with their website. From what I understand, the domain status was on something called server hold. the level at which this happened, I guess, is attributable they believe, to the public internet registry. Yeah, so like your website's address

Starting point is 00:25:11 isn't coolzone lover.org, right? Right. Your website address is, I'm making this number up, don't put it in your computer, 148.2.994.94.255.0.1. Right? That's your actual address.

Starting point is 00:25:27 That's your IP address of the server, right? And that is what goes to that. But no one wants to walk around remembering whatever number I just made up. I don't remember it anymore, even though it's my website, even as cool, coolzone lover.org. And so what we have is we have domain name registries, which is basically an agreed upon list of, well, this points here. Yeah. Right. And so there used to only be a couple of these TLDs, top-level domains.

Starting point is 00:25:55 They used to only be.com.com.net.org.org.edu.gov.m. I'm probably missing a couple. And then there's like all the nation ones. dot us, dot whatever. Dotk.k. Yeah. But like those are not centrally owned, right? Those are not coming from one place.

Starting point is 00:26:13 But so if you take down someone's DNS, I believe that this is the same thing as saying, like you're disconnecting from the registry where cool zone lover.org goes to that string of numbers. But I'm actually a little confused about what's happening in this particular thing. case because I and I some of the stuff I read says like it's actually

Starting point is 00:26:34 kind of not known and maybe by the time it comes out it'll be a little bit clearer because there's also discussion that they have probably been hacked at some point and also very importantly there was no official declaration that everyone had to stop if nothing else

Starting point is 00:26:50 they had a month to comply right so it seems like there's been some compliance in advance and I know that they were in the process of basically trying to DUS themselves right? When it first came out, they said, all right, we're going to fight this. And they planned on fighting it. And they started doing the work of fighting it. And they started looking to say, where else can we host our domain names and stuff like that, right? Because the physical

Starting point is 00:27:14 servers aren't in America. And they're like, all right, how do we get clear of this? But they were not given the chance because of the advanced compliance of organizations like their bank, right? Because you can't run an above-ground organization where you all say, hey, this is my name. and you pay for internet services if you can't give those people money. And that is very often the choke point. That is like why sex workers are so fucked in America is that all of the payment process.

Starting point is 00:27:42 It's not illegal to sell nudie picks on the internet. Everyone knows that. But you can't do it. You can't do it. But you have to put a lot of work into it because even if it's not against a site's like content moderation, the payment processors won't let you do it because they're afraid of getting anywhere near anything that could possibly be a crime.

Starting point is 00:28:03 So they're going to destroy people's way of life and cut them off from the banking institutions. And so it's just more of a problem about how all of these centralized infrastructure can be seized by fascists. Again, that only partly answers it. So by, what was it, September 6th, they threw in the towel, essentially. And they said, like, we've been talking to everyone. And this just isn't working. We can't do this. And I actually think that's a way of being responsible to the people who rely on them.

Starting point is 00:28:29 instead of trying to pretend like they're going to soldier on. If I sound defensive, it's because I think some people are kind of curious about why they gave up, but they write very eloquently about why they stopped. And on September 8th, they wrote a statement about the banking situation. Quote, we are undergoing U.S. sanctions without any kind of hearing in a court of law, without any possibility to defend ourselves, and without ever receiving a request to take down specific contents or abide by laws that we may have been deemed to infringe upon.

Starting point is 00:28:59 Yeah. I think that's a very good summary of like where we're at with this. I'll just say like a couple of things. One, if we want to look for places where violence is coordinated and organized X.com, the everything website. Yeah, totally. Everything including organized violence. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's where the violent right has organized for years, right? Yeah. And then increasingly since Elon Musk purchased it.

Starting point is 00:29:19 The other thing that I wanted to say is that these are WordPress sites, right? WordPress, to be clear, if you're not familiar, is not owned by A-slash-I. It's a software that can be used on other blog hosting platforms, right? So some of these people will be able to host their blogs somewhere else. I imagine that given what has just happened, it will be hard for them, right? To include groups that have nothing to do with those mentioned in this executive order. But like the fact that it is WordPress makes that movement to another platform a little bit easier for them. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:29:56 if they were able to download their data, there's been a lot of complicated things about whether or not data has been accessible. Okay. Yeah, that sucks. I don't have the current blow-by-blow of that. Yeah, that's really difficult. But yeah, because the entire banking system runs through America,

Starting point is 00:30:13 no one will want to bank with A-slash-I. And I imagine because of what has just happened, other places where they might otherwise put their blogs will be concerned. So we will see how this plays out for those groups, right? We'll see what happens to them. Again, people were not paying for this, so they weren't transferring money to an organization.

Starting point is 00:30:40 And again, there was a time period in which these would be implemented. So these people are not directly impacted by the sanctions because A-slash-I stopped existing before those sanctions would have come into play. Right, which is one of the things that they are doing by throwing in the towel is they're not letting people make a specific dangerous decision or even more so accidentally by not having not paid attention to the news. Right. You set up a blog like this 18 years ago and you forgot about it. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:31:12 And you're suddenly like, you know, being called a terrorist by the U.S. government. I think that they're saving a lot of people a lot of trouble. I hate saying that. I think they made the right call, but I do. Yeah, like I don't quite know how because I'm not transferring money, but I'm not an expert in these things. But it does seem like a risk. That's what's messy about it, right? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:31:31 Yeah. The whole point, I think, is that you don't quite know how. This is one of the many things that the U.S. began doing after 9-11, which were fundamentally betrayals of the Bill of Rights. Yeah. And we live with the consequences of them every day now. Yeah. Like DHS. DHS is a post-9-11 thing.

Starting point is 00:31:52 Yeah. This country did just fine without it for a very long. Well, it was doing just fine. Still lots of fucked up shit going down. But yeah, didn't need DHS. But, you know, even if your goal is to be like a fucked up kind of center, right guy, America was doing just fine. Didn't need all that shit.

Starting point is 00:32:09 Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I think the part about the open internet stuff is so essential because it's like everyone was starting to say with the rise of fascism, people were starting to say, like, hey, we should probably. get off meta. Yeah. Right?

Starting point is 00:32:24 And I'm not telling people what to do. I have an Instagram still. I hate it. But people are starting to say like, how do we organize

Starting point is 00:32:32 outside of this? And in ways that have been perfectly legal since the internet existed, right? It's just like the kind of thing

Starting point is 00:32:39 that seems like such a non-issue, you know? Yeah. And it's a way of keeping all of us trapped on platforms

Starting point is 00:32:48 where we have to abide by their moderation standards, which of course change all the time and become never in positive ways, you know? And it's a real

Starting point is 00:33:01 they come for them in the morning, they come for you at night kind of thing. I think that this is a pretty serious statement by the federal government that they are interested in attacking autonomous infrastructure and not just structure for autonomous Marxists, but I mean infrastructure that is autonomous

Starting point is 00:33:21 from the corporate world that everyone is aware of being pretty dystopian. Yeah, and again, this will have global implications, right? Just real quick, to sum up the other stuff that they talked about, oh, in that sanctioned document, talk about how, like, violent acts and acts dangerous to human life are exempt from the First Amendment. Again, we've been over how, like, AI was not doing violent acts, right? A-slash-I, yeah. Yeah, A-slash-I, sorry.

Starting point is 00:33:49 AI itself actually is doing violent things by proxy. And that's sad. They also mentioned in this sanctions document, Palestine Action. They referred to it as a foreign terrorist organization. I think what it's important is that if you're hearing this, not reading it, those letters are used in lowercase. So it is an organization which the United Kingdom has prescribed as a terrorist group, as opposed to a listed FTO.

Starting point is 00:34:14 There is a list of foreign terrorist organizations. We talked about that before, right? That's kind of the highest level. that's, to my knowledge, not what they're saying here because it's not on the FTO list and because the use of lower case text I am taking to mean that it's, and also because it is factually true that it's prescribed by the United Kingdom. And then they also sanctioned a group which they claim acts as a front for the PFLP, the popular front of liberation of Palestine during that time, all of which they bundled together under far left extremists and violent

Starting point is 00:34:44 far left terrorist networks. The internet continues to get more dystopian every day. Yep, but learning some of the hacker type stuff, and again, I don't mean breaking into computers when I say hacking. I'm talking about like, although, you know, do whatever you want. But the way that they built this kind of infrastructure was that they got together and they said, we want to build this kind of infrastructure. What does that look like?

Starting point is 00:35:07 And people did it all over the world. One advantage of being not a very centralized movement, this is a big blow and it sucks. But if you want to fight back, one of the ways you can do it is get together with your friends and learn about how to use the internet at a pretty fundamental level to put up websites and things like that, host servers,

Starting point is 00:35:31 a bunch of people who weren't even necessarily technically savvy when they started, just started teaching themselves. Especially the inventati seems like they just were like, we're going to teach ourselves how to do this and they did it. And it sucks when we have to fight the same battles over and over again. But that's life, baby, that imagine Sisyphus happy. Perfect. Margaret, you have another podcast if people want to hear about life

Starting point is 00:35:54 and some of the nice things that have happened during people's lives. I have a show called Cool People Who Do Cool Stuff. James is often a guest on that. Sometimes I think even a host teaches me the thing. And it is a Radical History podcast, and I did a long series on the Alter globalization Movement somewhat recently, you can look in the archives for that. And I'll probably be talking more about this issue on there.

Starting point is 00:36:17 I just finished a four-parter on Flock and the fight against Flock and the popular revolt that is currently winning against Flock. So if that's up your alley, cool people who did cool stuff, yeah. Yeah. If people want to understand Antiglobe, a relatively short summary, if you like reading more than listening, yet you've made it 40 minutes into a podcast, is The New Anacus by David Graber.

Starting point is 00:36:40 Yeah. Graber rights accessibly. I'll put it in the show notes. Yeah, that's what I got. Thank you, Margaret. But yeah, thanks for having me. Thanks for coming. The music you love, radio stations, everywhere you go, the podcasts everyone's talking about,

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Starting point is 00:37:28 the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast Here's what you missed And the argument is Do you want to win If you don't win You have no power It's real

Starting point is 00:37:40 Those are the very people Who I always say Vote against their own Economic Interest And they complain about The very thing they're receiving It's raw I knew that the issue of

Starting point is 00:37:49 transgender athletes was not going well with a lot of black men. Roland Martin unfiltered. I went off, I said, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Y'all going to scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same vein. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network. Twelve seats, those are moving south. So if you Democrats, you don't wait to 2030, you better be hitting the Greenwood. going a heart in the South now.

Starting point is 00:38:21 And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the IHart radio app, Apple Podcasts. Wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to It Could Happen here, a show about everything being totally fine and great. Always right now. I'm Garrison Davis. I'm joined by Dr. Coffeyoda. Everything is great. You're doing great.

Starting point is 00:38:48 I'm doing great. Things are fantastic. Oh, ketamine. It's good to see you again, Kave. Last time we spoke was on your podcast, House of Pod. Yes, about looks maxing. Yeah, thank you for having me. First of all, it's just nice to see you.

Starting point is 00:39:09 And it's nice to see your face. And it's nice to hear your voice. And I know we're going to be talking about some stuff that I actually am very curious to hear your thoughts on. I exist very much in the doctor science public health world online. and I hear a lot of those voices. I have a good sense of the variety of voices coming out of those spaces on the topics

Starting point is 00:39:29 we're going to touch on today. But, I mean, I really want to hear your thoughts about it. Oh, I want to hear your thoughts on it, not just because you're a doctor, but because you have also done a decent bit of research or have spent some time in the digital Maha universe. Yeah, I have. As an outsider.

Starting point is 00:39:48 Yeah. We talked about Maha not too long ago on your show as well We kind of talked about some of like the class dynamics of maha, how how the sort of healthier lifestyles that some of these influencers push for is unaffordable to a lot of working class people. Right. And we're going to talk about maha once again today. And because of how much time you've spent watching those horrible maha podcasts. Too much. I listen to a lot of RFK Jr.'s podcast.

Starting point is 00:40:18 I think it might have hurt my brain. I think I did things to myself that I have had. not fully recovered from. But because of your experience, I want to briefly ask you what maha is. What do you understand maha being? But before we talk about this whole idea,

Starting point is 00:40:35 which this episode is about it's in the title, about if you should do outreach to these people, what are the risks of that? What are the benefits of that potentially? Yeah. Who actually are these people? Like, what is maha? That's a really great question.

Starting point is 00:40:48 And something I have been trying to figure out myself. I largely, like a lot of people, when I first heard of it, was kind of hoping it would go away. It wasn't. It didn't. And it is a actual factor now that we have to take into account and discuss. It's real. And it's very important. And what I have learned from going into these Maha spaces, which I tragically have done.

Starting point is 00:41:12 And also, not just Maha spaces, but sort of the Maha adjacent spaces. Yes. Things like the Andrew Huberman podcast and Peter Attia. stuff. I've done a lot of work into that for episodes. And that has given me, I think, a pretty broad sense of what's going on. Now, I think the easy thing for most people, when they hear Maha, they think anti-vaxxer because, you know, RFK Jr. RFK Jr. anti-vaxxer. That's like the first two associations. Right. But it is important to know that they are not monolithic. There's a lot of variation there. And actually, if you pull them, if you ask them, which I think we're going to get into,

Starting point is 00:41:49 maha supporters of which there are varieties of from mild to severe supporters, they will actually not say that vaccines are their top issue. Now, I don't believe that. If I'm being totally honest, I just don't believe that. I mean, there are Maha people who vaccines are their top issue. Absolutely. Right. And they are very vocal online. I think what we'll kind of get to in a bit is that there's other Maha people, as you say, this kind of Maha extended universe who may We do not list vaccines as their top issue. Yes. But obviously, this is, like, culturally, like, a big part of the Maha Association.

Starting point is 00:42:27 That's right. And when you ask them, what is their top priority? The thing that comes up the most is actually the cost of health care. And then that's sort of followed by other things like, you know, chemicals and foods. Yes. Restricting environmental pollutants, limiting corporate influence in food policy, and limiting, you know, malfeasance by health care institutions. and insurance, which, you know, when you say that,

Starting point is 00:42:53 it all sounds actually pretty reasonable and pretty, if you take it out of its current context, left-coded. These are all sort of, you know, relatively traditionally left-coded things. Yeah. Now, that being said, you know, aside from ushering in the golden age of diarrhea, undermining vaccines has really been at the core

Starting point is 00:43:17 of Kennedy's HHS. And one of the few things he's actually successfully accomplished is dismantling that. And so even I, we're going to talk about it. And I see the polling that says, no, it's not only about 4% of MAHA really care about vaccines. I've definitely seen other polling, which. Yeah. And I'm just from my personal experience online. Again, and I am an old, as you are very well aware, Garrison.

Starting point is 00:43:40 You have helped me out in the ways young people do with old people online. In the ways of looks backstage. Yeah. You help me out a lot of this stuff. But I have, when I am online or even IRL, as I hear the kids say, if you push them on vaccines, it becomes pretty clear that there are really only very few pro-vaccine Maha folks. And even then, it's usually like, oh, well, the polio vaccine was fine. And they don't even think that's necessary anymore.

Starting point is 00:44:06 So Maha's a big, diverse group of people. It is. And the movement itself is really powerful. It has done a lot in two years. And if nothing else, they have done an amazing thing with their branding and being able to draw in people to this big tent. So that's the best I can do to explain maha, I think. Yeah. I really understand why this question of should you do outreach to these people is so charged because this really is a life and death issue, like in like a literal sense.

Starting point is 00:44:39 Right. Right. This is sort of like movement that's come up like up and around RFK Jr. has caused a lot of deadly harm. Yes. In the world, right? In the name of Make America Healthy again, RFK Jr. has rolled back childhood vaccine recommendations,

Starting point is 00:44:55 has overseen massive budget and staffing cuts at HHS, CDC, and the FDA. The administration has cut snap food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, and the anti-vax movement more broadly has contributed to measles outbreaks in multiple states, right? This is real harms that have been done in the name of health. Yeah. Yeah, that's the funniest part about it. That's the great part about all this. And as something that we'll kind of get to in a bit, any sort of potential outreach, and I'm not even, I'm not recommending my listeners to do this outreach at all. That's not what episode

Starting point is 00:45:28 is for. But because all of these things that RFK and Trump has done in the name of health, because of how bad they are, that does also open up a lot of opportunity for people to attack RFK Jr. on this massive level of failure, including failing on a lot of things. that Maha people largely believe in. And I think something that's really unique and interesting about Maha compared to other aspects of like the Trump world is that like Maha doesn't have the exact same kind of like

Starting point is 00:45:56 cult of personality around RFK Jr. The way Maha does around Trump. Yeah. And Maha is also just not nearly as loyal to like Trump himself. Well, actually, let me ask you that because that is the narrative now is that Maha and Maga are headed for a divorce

Starting point is 00:46:14 and that they are diverging. But I don't really see the evidence of that. What you say, I think, is really interesting, though, in that even though Maha is a pretty popular movement, we'll talk about the numbers of people that support it, at least in some way, RFK Jr. is not viewed, like, largely by the American population as trustworthy and, like, someone that they rely on.

Starting point is 00:46:36 No, Maha is much more popular than RFK Jr. is. Yeah, right. And I think it is really, important in this discussion to understand that like maha isn't even uniformly republican right and the movement and its goals are actually much more diffuse according to a political poll from june of twenty 26 so fairly recently just under one third of u.s adults identify as a part of maha 31% and 20% of respondents said that they support the movement but don't identify as a part of it so that that's 50% of americans who say they at least support

Starting point is 00:47:14 the movement, only 30% of which wants to actually openly identify with the movement. And of the people who Politico polled, 20% of those who identified as Maha also voted for Kamala Harris. That's interesting. It's actually more than expected.

Starting point is 00:47:30 And 17% of respondents who support the movement but don't identify as a part of it in name also voted for Harris. And you can compare these results to a poll from the KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation. Their poll was from May 26. They found that 41% of U.S. adults are Maha supporters, half of which identify as

Starting point is 00:47:52 Republicans, 30% independent, and 15% Democrat. There's a lot of interesting things about this polling. One, that it's more common, commonly you'll see online people refer to the four and ten American support maha, but there is a variation of how much support that means. And if you're to ask somebody, yeah, do you want chemicals in your food? Most people will say, no, not really. Or they'll say, do you want stricter food monitoring? I mean, most people are going to say yes, unless you're some weird libertarian. That's just like the marketplace of diarrhea will solve those problems. So it's understandable. Again, the branding is really good and it works for a lot of people. It is interesting that so many people who may believe in at least some degree of it don't

Starting point is 00:48:42 want to be labeled as Maha. I think they realize how it looks largely. There is a stink to it. Yeah. And there is a very strong kind of anti-science component to Maha like in name proper, most of which, but not exclusively, most of which revolves around vaccines. Yeah. And like you said, there actually is broad support for many components of Maha, things that Maha, you know, influencers talk about pretty often, regardless of whether people actually identify with or agree with the movement as a whole. There's broad support for improving our diets and increasing fitness, for reducing exposure to harmful chemicals, and limiting the influence of pharmaceutical companies. There is general broad support for all of those issues in this political poll,

Starting point is 00:49:26 regardless of whether the respondents were Maha or not. So there is this broad support, with the exception for vaccines. And that is where all of these kind of polls and stats take a really big divergence. Yeah. In this place, political poll, 65% of Maha said that they support reducing how many vaccines Americans receive, compared to 23% of non-Maha. And those who support the movement but don't identify it in name are kind of in the middle at 45%. Yeah. So that is like the clearest split in all of this, in all of this polling. But what's interesting is that this vaccine question also has, in terms of all of the Maha priorities that people in Maha support themselves,

Starting point is 00:50:14 this has the least amount of support among their own movement. This is 65% as opposed to limiting the influence of pharmaceutical companies, which had 80% support. So that is an interesting peak into the fractures within this Maha brand itself. Yeah, it is. It is interesting as it's becoming bigger and becoming more like, they're trying to codify it a little bit as an organization or as a group, how you're starting to see some of those little cracks form.

Starting point is 00:50:44 I mean, getting to the question, which has been coming up about this, does this mean that we should be reaching out to these people because there is this variation in beliefs and that we have the opportunity as people who, I don't know, believe in vaccines to talk to these people and bring them back? Is it politically something that's worthwhile to bring those people into the margins? That last part, I don't know, because I don't really have a great sense of, you know, how politically this group will function in the next coming elections. I don't really know if AOC has to do the outreach that she's been doing and that's been getting a lot of press.

Starting point is 00:51:24 I do think the question from just the public health standpoint is a really interesting one. And it's one I'm really grappling with. What do we do? Do we in this country need Maha? Does public health need Maha? That's a literal question that has been asked by some very smart public health people online, some of which I know very well have been on the podcast like Craig Spencer and got a lot of grief for it. It's a tough question.

Starting point is 00:51:48 And honestly, I may have a different answer in a month. My belief is we don't need Maha, but we do need the people in Maha to reconsider some of their voting patterns and their vaccine choices. And it's a tough call for me. I'm really of two minds about it. On one hand, I do believe it's important to reach out and convince as many people as we can that Maha is making people less healthy overall. While all the things have been enacted in the name of Maha, even despite all these things that they seem to be interested in, haven't really done that. Yeah. And then on the other hand, yeah, historically, we've probably done a poor job of explaining the point and the safety of vaccines.

Starting point is 00:52:28 You know, to be fair, it didn't always used to be the issue that it currently is. There's always been this anti-vaccine sense. but public health officials and doctors were not really trained in political persuasion the way a lawyer is. And I understand I might be a little condescending when I say all this stuff. And I don't mean to be, but two things.

Starting point is 00:52:48 I refuse to believe that we're in the situation that we're in now because we somehow messed up and we weren't nice enough to like the Jim Carries and the Jenny McCarthy's of the world. And yeah, maybe your doctor was a jerk at some point and made you feel bad about not getting evasurates. vaccine, but that's not the reason we have the situation we're in. And even if it was, it doesn't mean that everything that we have to do in terms of MAHA is changed. Our outreach

Starting point is 00:53:14 does not need to change because of that. We should, I do think that. I think we need to be talking about these people. We need to be connecting on the things that we can totally connect on. And these polls show us that there are a lot of varieties of what we can connect with. We can connect with the cost of health care. We could talk about improving public health infrastructure and we are politicians who are aligning with these things, they should make it clear that President Trump not only didn't run on it, him and RFK Jr. haven't advanced any credible benefit to lowering health care costs. In fact, the big, beautiful bill is only going to make things worse

Starting point is 00:53:49 and going to destroy rural hospitals. I think there are things in these polls that show us we can address some of those points with people without having to capitulate. And that's key. That is the key aspect. Right. Because I know people are worried about that, that this could be like the Trojan horse. If we try to embrace these Maha people, then it'll shift AOC or all other politicians or even public health officials sort of to be more, you know, open to the anti-vax perspective.

Starting point is 00:54:19 I don't think that's the right attitude. I mean, as distasteful as it may be, and again, I'm probably not the right person for this because I don't have the sophistication. But as distasteful as it might be, this movement is just two years old. and it draws some level of support from four and ten Americans. And it's something that we have to take seriously and we have to try and connect where we can, try to be empathetic when we can, try to understand what we can. But we cannot, and I think this is super duper important,

Starting point is 00:54:48 we cannot give an inch on our scientific principles. And I think those two things are manageable. I think we can do those two things at the same time. 100%. and I honestly, I don't see anyone arguing the alternative to that, that we should compromise those things. And the type of outreach the rest of this episode will focus on, and what prompted so much debate and discussion online last week, has not been based on appealing to or validating pseudo-scientific beliefs or conspiracy theories on vaccines, but rather focused on some of those other Maha priorities that may overlap with some concerns that you, the listener, may have too.

Starting point is 00:55:34 And if left-wing politicians actually address those concerns, how that could perhaps undermine the monopoly Maha currently has on those issues in our attention economy. And so next we will discuss and debate AOC's approach to this outreach, and the pros or cons that may have. But first, here's some ads. Now I do want to go a little bit more into AOC's kind of version of this outreach, which has kind of sparked a lot of debate online regarding this topic, is how she has approached this problem, because she has seen the same things that I've been kind of talking about,

Starting point is 00:56:26 and she has decided to act on it. About like a week ago, Politico ran this story about AOC's outreach tomorrow, both like, you know, influential figures within the movement, but then also trying to put out content to appeal to normies who see themselves as maha. Right. This reporting from Politico seemed to be prompted by an interview on the majority report, left as best, between Emma Vigland and AOC last July, where she talked about environmental policy.

Starting point is 00:56:56 AOC had recently been to Tennessee to help campaign for Justin Pearson, and she said that people there in Tennessee are, quote, unquote, pissed off about data centers. And she talked about how her constituents in the Bronx are a less ideologically driven electorate. They're very working class and racially diverse, but they might not have all the same concerns as a tree-hugging activist. And so when she was first elected, she did a quote-unquote deep canvas of the community to learn how to talk about climate issues in a way that isn't just academic and theoretical. that actually points to day-to-day issues in people's lives. So eight years ago, it was me doing teachings in public housing saying the lead in our water, the sky-high asthma rates that we deal with, that is environmental.

Starting point is 00:57:46 And this is directly contributed to with the gas infrastructure that we have in our public housing that is leaching into our air. And all of the other environment. issues that are going on. And so with the data center fight, I think that this is, it's, it's the similar analog. People are seeing how all of this is wrecking their health, wrecking their communities, and it makes environmental issues not academic, but very real in people's everyday lives. She later said, quote, we always have to be making three arguments at the same time for any issue, a moral argument in economic,

Starting point is 00:58:29 argument and also a political argument. And when we're able to argue for something in a chorus of all those three, then we're able to build a majoritarian coalition to actually win on them, unquote. This is something she's been animated about for the past like two years, is building these sorts of majoritarian coalitions to actually win the things we believe in, not just endlessly scream about them online. Yeah, one thing in there that I think is really astute is, and this goes for us in public health as well, is that we need to show people that we are fighting for them, even for the people in the Maha movement. Because we do, still no matter what, they are our responsibility to take care of.

Starting point is 00:59:10 And their public health is also our responsibility. But something in there that's interesting is we have to also show them that we're not just fighting to preserve our precious institutions. It's not just that we're fighting for the CDC and FDA to retain some sense of normalcy, which, you know, we are. but we need to show them that we're fighting for them. And I think that's a really important thing that if she can do that,

Starting point is 00:59:33 I honestly don't follow her career well enough to know her as a politician, but she seems very smart and very savvy, so I don't see why she couldn't. I feel like that is not, that's a really reasonable approach, I think, to doing this, is to try to connect with them on those levels.

Starting point is 00:59:48 And one thing she's talked about trying to appeal to Maha supporters through is not by, you know, capitulating to their crazy stuff, but by pointing out to them how the administration has completely turned their back on a whole bunch of like very base, like popular policies that Maha also supports. Yeah. I mean, but here, okay, here's also where I get cynical

Starting point is 01:00:14 because there's a part of me that sort of like, yes, we need to be doing this and we absolutely need to be showing people that not only are other people that you're not voting for, apparently, fighting for these exact principles you care about, but the people that you're now aligned with are actively doing things to dismantle the regulations that are the things you care about. And there's a part of me that's just like,

Starting point is 01:00:38 how can you not know already? And that is something I have to deal with. I have to sort of get past because we have to. I mean, we just sort of have to get grow past that point. But I also don't see how it's not apparently obvious to everyone at this point, that these people are doing all the things you don't want. You think the environment has gotten any better?

Starting point is 01:01:00 Do you think that there's been any meaningful, like, food safety or improvements? Yeah, a couple of red dyes. Now you can get, like, very pale Cheetos. But, like, people have to see past that, I think. And I don't think they are. I think in order to see past it, they have to be presented with that argument. Yes. And if no one in their media orbit is doing that,

Starting point is 01:01:21 or if they don't, if they feel like anyone who would make that argument, argument is like, you know, actually against them is hostile, then they're not going to listen to that person. And I think that's the needle that she's trying to thread. Something she's talked about specifically in this majority report interview is that if Edems end up taking back the house in the midterms, they have to go after, quote, not just corruption generally, but corruption in the ways that undermine their base. Right. And a big factor that contributed to Trump's win in 2024, which was a blind spot to the Democrats and the media analyzing the election results was the Maha movement. I actually think a lot of it was Maha. I think that

Starting point is 01:02:00 there was very little political analysis done on how they really focused on women, on moms, on radicalizing and doing a lot of persuasion in an electorate that was much more swingy than than, you know, to be frank, white male voters. Those are generally broken more strongly towards Republicans, but they really focused a lot on women. And they have had probably the biggest betrayals with the glyphosate rulings, with their complete throwing in with Big Ag and Monsanto and Bayer, including coordinating with the Supreme Court and all of that. And so I, I think their political vulnerabilities are in, we want to focus on corruption in the ways that undermine their promises. And we want to go after investigations that cut off the supply of their illicit money flows.

Starting point is 01:03:10 Adding on to that, like the food safety cuts at the FDA, right, leading to this massive food safety crisis that people in like half the country are dealing with. Yeah. It's a very easy thing to point to. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think that's, it's great. We should, you're, you're right. You're right. It is easy these days to be in a echo chamber where all the people who are getting this mom information are getting it solely from like wellness influencers on Instagram or TikTok. They're solely getting it from like their news station that they listen to Fox or One News or wherever they're getting that stuff from. I think it's great. And I do appreciate when someone tries to get out into that. break through that that bubble. I actually did watch a clip of Fox talking about AOC in this interview and the outreach. And there is a little truth to it. You can kind of tell that they are taking it seriously because I think they know on some

Starting point is 01:04:06 level that it is a smart strategy. Yeah. These are like easy touch points. I will say though, I do see a little danger in it. And again, this doesn't mean we shouldn't do it, but we have to discuss it. And there is a little bit of real danger to doing this. And you're right. Very few people are saying, hey, we need to capitulate totally on science.

Starting point is 01:04:29 But it doesn't require that much. What I see, what really bothers me is that we just aren't fighting and pushing back on all this COVID revisionism that's been happening. And it's because it's easier. But like, that's part of what I think we need to be doing is while we are making these outroads while someone like AOC is focusing on those exact issues, cost of health care. They also need to be very clear that the science and the vaccines works and it's sound. And this COVID revisionism is hard because I think a lot of people, doctors, I'm talking about

Starting point is 01:05:08 public health professionals, they just don't push back on it because it's too hard to do. The people that have come out with like, oh, see, we were all lied to, Fauci lied to it. It's all lies. And it's just this narrative that is so strong out there that people just kind of step away from it. And now they're like, sort of, hey, well, let's focus on things we can focus on. I say, no, let's do that. But let's also be very clear that those were not all problems. Sure, there wasn't completely perfect, you know, practice with Fauci and with rolling out of vaccines

Starting point is 01:05:40 and talking about mistakes were made. As oftentimes there is in a novel disease crisis, people were moving as fast as. they could with what information they could and things weren't perfect. But there is this real asymmetry to what people will tolerate with Maha versus what they tolerate from someone like Fouchi. Like Maha makes mistakes all the time, prove it wrong all the time, and people forgive them because, oh, they take big swings. They're at least trying to help the American health care system. But then if Fauci like made a mistake talking about masks, then, you know, he is the literal devil. You know, so there is this asymmetry. We have to be very vocal about.

Starting point is 01:06:17 about that, we have to push back on COVID revisionism the same exact time we are doing this outreach. And I think that, I think it's great. Agreed. There are young people in politics like Mamdani and what I see with her that are getting really good about staying on target with the messaging. I think that is message discipline. Yeah, message discipline. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:06:42 I think we're seeing more of it these days, which is nice. I agree. I agree with everything you say there. And I think that all has to be done, like, in conjunction with addressing the base problems that cause people to be compelled by the crazier parts of Maha in the first place. Right. And this is something that Vigland and AOC talked about, how, like, Maha charlatans have been able to, like, tap into some issues and then manipulate people based on their, like, anxieties around our totally broken healthcare system, right? They're able to tap into this notion that everyone has that we're all being fucked. over and our health care system is broken.

Starting point is 01:07:19 Yes. And so if it's broken, maybe I'll look for solutions outside the healthcare system. Maybe I'll listen to what people outside of this industry are saying. And that can lead you down some very dangerous roads, as we've been talking about. Yeah. And this part specifically is why AOC mentioned that she's actually been meeting with some Maha advocates and activists. It's to understand the issues that they're tapping into.

Starting point is 01:07:45 And this is like the clip that. has, you know, sparked this whole discourse. And I'll play it here for you in case you haven't actually heard the whole thing. A lot of them really don't believe that their fight is partisan. And it's not in many ways. We do have extraordinary corruption in our agricultural system, in our big corporate system as well. You know, and this is an area where both parties and our entire political system, has been compromised.

Starting point is 01:08:18 Like one of the first things I did was be part, when I first got to the house was be part of these congressional investigations on PFAS dumping. Right. And you have companies like 3M and others that, you know, and this goes back decades where you have a big company that is doing manufacturing of some kind and they just dump whatever cancerous byproduct that they have in poison communities around them. And then they just pay off our political class to ignore it and to let it continue to happen or to shield them legally, like with glyphosate from everyday people trying to get that back. So, like, that's an example of one of these, like, very real issues that then has been used to, like, you know, on-ramp people.

Starting point is 01:09:06 Yeah. Into these much more, like, cultic milieu, kind of, like, dangerous information spaces. Yeah. But it is, it is based on, like, a real material issue. You know, same thing with, like, cost of health care, right? If you look at that KFF poll that breaks down, you know, what does Maha people, whether they're Republican or Democrats, where do they rank as they're not top issue?

Starting point is 01:09:25 Among Republican Maha voters, the most frequently cited top issue was lowering the cost of health care, including prescription drugs. Yeah. The second top issue for, again, Republicans, not just Democrats, but for Republican Maha voters, was restricting the use of certain chemical additives in the food supply. Right.

Starting point is 01:09:43 I mean, the PFS thing is a very, interesting discussion, these forever chemicals. I've actually done two episodes on it with authors of these really well-researched books on the matter. And I still left that with more questions than I had answers. And that requires a bit of a nuanced conversation on what the real risks are to the general population. But I will say this, the more you learn about those companies, 3M, and she didn't mention it, but DuPont is the other big one. There's a number of them. the more you learn about them, the more you just realize the real villain is, I mean, if anything was going to radicalize me, it's that sort of stuff. You learn about these corporations, they're, they're

Starting point is 01:10:23 truly awful. Truly awful. As a quick aside, you've got to watch the show The Boys. I love it so much. And the major reason is it's like a superhero movie. It's a superhero show. But really, the villains are the corporations. And that's really, I think such a, I think more Americans should watch that show. I think it's super important. Anyways, so you will learn about those things, but you learn about the people behind those companies, and it's not the people that Maha is fighting against right now. It's the people that currently aligned with are the people that are behind these corporations. That's the part that gets me, and I don't know how to educate them, but that is going to be the important thing. If that, the cost of health care and those regulations

Starting point is 01:11:07 are important to them, then I think we need to hammer that as much as possible. And get on those points. And people like, I hate to say this, but people like me and other healthcare peoples, we need to get into those spaces to have those conversations. But we're also not trained to do so because we don't have like, if, if I go on like a talk show with RFK Jr. And he gish gallops me, I'm going to get pissed and I'm going to like say something mean about his voice. And then I'll feel like a jerk. Like, you know, like we're not trained. Totally. And like to be completely clear. When I ask, should we do outreach, I'm using we in this royal we sense.

Starting point is 01:11:48 I am not proposing that you or any of the listeners actually need to go out and do this stuff yourself. And I'm certainly not proposing that guesting on Maha podcasts or debating on Jubilee to find your common ground is the way that we should do outreach at all. public outreach can be done completely on your own terms, either through your own social media accounts or your own health podcast where you can talk about these issues that Maha adjacent people claim to care about, but in an actually scientifically backed way. According to KFF, more Maha voters say that healthcare costs and food safety will have a major impact on their vote than vaccine policy,

Starting point is 01:12:37 which is, I think, not something your average blue sky, user would be aware of. Like I, I, I, I, there is this sort of like idea of like the average Maha person who's like, you know, eugenics crazed anti-vaxxer. And some of them are that. Yes. Yeah. But there's also a lot of like normie moms.

Starting point is 01:12:58 Yeah. Who, for whatever reason, have had a bad experience with, with a medical system. Or maybe they have too much time on their hands and they're going into crazy, you know, internet rabbit holes. Both are things that happen, but there is a lot of like kind of normal moms who will fall into the stuff because they do care about their children's health and they feel like the world that their kids are being raised in is not one that's actually set up to prioritize the health of their kids.

Starting point is 01:13:25 And without people, including, you know, politicians, speaking to that, you know, accurately and backed by real science, it opens the door to people who will speak to them about these concerns. Yes. But without that scientific background. it can funnel them into these places that are, like, not actually going to benefit the health of anyone as we've, as we're now living in the national consequence of. You're absolutely right. And I recognize that. And it is something that I think is important.

Starting point is 01:13:50 And that's, you know, a big part of why I, a simple country doctor decided to become, you know, active online and have a podcast and do this sort of because I felt it was a good way to fight misinformation and to connect with people. And it is, it is very important that, that we do that. I, I, I do think that's absolutely sure. It's absolutely true. I mean, it is hard. It's a challenge. It's a real challenge.

Starting point is 01:14:14 But we all can find our own ways to do it. And God, I really, I hope that these outreaches have some benefits, some positive benefit. I become a little bit, and this is not mean by my nature. I'm an optimist, but I become a little bit pessimistic about the ability to win back some of these people with at least the current Democratic. leadership. Oh, I mean, certainly, yes. I'm much more hopeful that with the younger people that are much more savvy or net savvy and know how to speak to people, I'm much more hopeful that they will be able to connect broadly on some major level in a way that, you know, Chuck Schumer never could or care to. I should also say something else. I also recognize fully that there are real problems

Starting point is 01:15:05 with our health care system. I am not here to say that, like, hey, our medical health care system is awesome in this country. Why would people be dissatisfied? No, people, you're totally right. There is real dissatisfaction with our health care, the cost of it, the delivery of it, the access of it.

Starting point is 01:15:21 All these things are real. And there are issues that, you know, we have to show people that we're championing or we're trying to champion. Because there are real problems. And that's why it's working. It's people are easy. I mean, you're right.

Starting point is 01:15:33 There's some degree of just bored people. like getting down internet, like conspiracy theories about this stuff. But there's real issues that are plaguing our public health care that we need to address. And we need to show that we are not. I mean, it's so funny, like, I get accused of being like a pharma shill all the time because I'm like, for vaccines. And I'm like, I hate pharma companies more than you. I guarantee it. And I have good reason to. Yeah. Because I see what they do to patients. And I see what they do to the cost of health care. So I have we we have to show people that we are on their side. And this is the right place to start.

Starting point is 01:16:10 Absolutely. And that's also something AOC talked about on the majority report as a reason why people are getting pulled into Maha. My mom's side of the family is evangelical. Right. And I see how all of these issues that have been at their surface level expressed as right wing are actually very much just. the anxieties that we have as working people, not being able to afford health care. And so it's also like, how do I stop being sick?

Starting point is 01:16:46 How do I prevent being sick by limiting my exposure to things that I think are toxic? And then, which there are things that are actually toxic and things that aren't actually toxic that get taken advantage of. And then also, when I do get sick and I can't afford medicine, what are the holistic and low-cost alternatives that I can turn to because I know that I can't afford to see a doctor? So yeah, those were AOC's comments on the majority report, which then served as the basis for a political piece earlier this month, digging into her quote-unquote maha outreach and the varieties of issues that she was discussing with Maha advocates.

Starting point is 01:17:30 This newsletter also clarified the sequence of events in terms of why she started this outreach when she did. And she started this effort last spring ahead of some hearings with the EPA head Lee Zeldin. And the political reporting does know that AOC, quote, still has significant differences with the broader Maha movement, including its vaccine's guttism. But she sees overlap on things like. pesticides, corporate power, and access to safe food, according to a person close to AOC, unquote. So in spring, her office began specifically working around the issue of glyphosate and pesticides and ended up contacting some Maha organizers who together helped FOIA some emails and correspondence which then influenced how AOC addressed and questioned EPA administrator Lee Zeldin.

Starting point is 01:18:29 and this produced a lot of viral clips. In fact, tens of thousands of lawsuits in the United States, many issued by farmers with high exposure, have been filed against Bayer for failing to warn them about the cancer risk of exposure. Now, interestingly, Administrator Zeldin, on February 18th of this year, President Trump released an executive order

Starting point is 01:18:57 to increase the production of glyphysm, in the United States, correct? Yes. And not only did that executive order call to increase the production of glyphosate, it also called for legal immunity for bear from the tens of thousands of Americans who are seeking justice in court for their toxic exposure. So a lot of people in the Maha world saw clips from this hearing and found them compelling. and then thought maybe AOC isn't all that bad.

Starting point is 01:19:34 Maybe I could listen to some of the stuff that she's talking about. I think that is the crux of why she is doing this. Yeah. She can address some of these issues around glyphosate, around, you know, specifically these internal EPA emails showing that the pharmaceutical company buyer was in communication with the EPA about the then upcoming Supreme Court case regarding the carcinogenic weed killer roundup. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:20:00 And that buyer sought information regarding EPA's regulatory review of Roundup. And to quote this internal email, quote, buyer will provide a small thanks for updating the glycophate webpage from the EPA and work on maha. Unquote. Insane. Yeah. An insane thing. This glyphosate update that they're referring to seems to be correlated to the EPA agency

Starting point is 01:20:26 withdrawing its support for California's cancer warning. on glyphosate. Now this is important because five days after the EPO this year, Bayer filed their opening brief to the Supreme Court citing the Trump's executive order and hinging their case on the EPA's warnings or lack thereof of glyphosate. So we have internal emails from your agency saying that Bayer wanted to thank you and your agency for removing support for California's warning because their case before the Supreme Court right now hinges on you not warning the American people and withdrawing your support on glyphosate. Do you understand the conflict of interest that is before the American people right now, Mr. Secretary?

Starting point is 01:21:14 I understand. The gentlelady's time has it. You might have a response. Thank you. So after this sort of viral moment, a few other people in the Maha world started to get into communication with AOC to address issues around, pesticides and chemicals, which someone close to this situation told Politico were of the issues that, quote, the traditional left has cared about for decades, unquote. Well, me, for your listeners also, I should probably mention. So in case I'm wondering,

Starting point is 01:21:41 glyphosate is the weed killer in Roundup. And there is this big question about whether or not it can cause cancer. And this is something that I'm glad that she's addressing this. I think this is low-hanging fruit, and she should. And this is the kind of thing we can all agree on. Like, If there's a chance of it, why not try to get rid of it? But it also, I think we should be careful. Because these can be just like PFAS, these gateways to greater conspiracy theories. And we should be careful about what we do and do not know. We should say that like the honest answer is, you know, we don't know how much of a risk it is for cancer.

Starting point is 01:22:17 Probably a very small risk for people who use it rarely. And then a more moderate risk of developing non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, which is the thing that seems to be connected to it. people who use it a lot. So yeah, it's bad. You know, if there's any way we can make sure it's not around and we need to follow it and find out how it slipped through the cracks of testing. And those are all questions that we need to address. But I also would say let's also caution making that our new boogeyman. I would love for the people in charge to be adults about the stuff and to talk about these things like what we do actually know and don't know. And, not to score points based on just the fact that we want it gone. We should. It should be gone.

Starting point is 01:23:02 But, I mean, like, it's, again, it's one of these, like, we have a lot of fish to fry. And if this is what it takes to get Maha thinking that she's cool, great. But I also have much bigger health related issues that I would love for her to be focused on. Yeah, it's like kind of one kernel at a time. I mean, this became an issue because of Trump's executive orders trying to give companies, you know, complete immunity for any any possible health risks as a result of people using these products. And so, you know, a part of politics is both being proactive, but then it's also responding to things happening in the world. And this Supreme Court case was one such instance. I'm just saying it's good to score some easy points. These are layups talking about stuff like this.

Starting point is 01:23:50 We should take care of it. But I also don't want it to stop there. Sure. I don't want this. to be like where the limit of where our public health discussion ends, you know? Something else we learned in this Politico newsletter is exactly who some of these Maha advocates are that AOC has been meeting with. According to Politico in late July, AOC met with Zen Honeycott of Moms Across America, Joe Maxwell of Farm Action, and government consultant Emily Steinbridge. Moms Across America is a very influential kind of maha adjacent organization, especially on Facebook. The main four petitions hosted on the Moms Across America website currently relate to data centers, glyphosate, and pesticide manufacturers.

Starting point is 01:24:51 There's also pages on independent food testing, talks screenings. A whole section of the website is actually on data centers. But there are also web pages on things like genetic. engineered food, EMF wireless radiation, and a page promoting vaccine skepticism. The founder, Zen Honeycott, believes that autism can be partially caused by childhood vaccines, and claims that an organic diet helped her son's autism symptoms. Honeycott told Politico that her meeting with AOC was a quote-unquote thorough conversation, touching on pesticides, PFAS, and environmental health.

Starting point is 01:25:32 She's quoted in the newsletter saying, quote, I don't agree with socialism, and most moms across America also don't. But we do believe in corporate responsibility. Even if someone isn't a socialism or a conservative, I think we should agree that everyone should have access to non-toxic food, unquote. There has also been some recognition among certain Maha figures that a connection with AOC could hurt their own assets. access to the Trump administration.

Starting point is 01:26:05 Vani Hari, the food babe influencer, had quote unquote trepidations about meeting with AOC because she, quote, wants access to the administration still, according to someone familiar with the matter. Considering the variety of beliefs, many harmful that some of these Maha influencers have, I do want to mention a variety of the risks of talking to these people.

Starting point is 01:26:34 And again, to reiterate, I am not arguing that you, the listener, do this. I'm not calling on you to debate your unpleasant family member about vaccines at Thanksgiving. I'm not saying that you have to go on Maha podcasts to argue these things, but there are people in positions of power whose job it is to navigate politics in this way.

Starting point is 01:26:58 And there are some real risks from doing that. the main one being capitulating on your values and beliefs for political benefit, right? Compromising with people, compromising with, in some cases, like, you know, eugenicists in Maha in hopes of winning some votes. And I don't believe that's what AOC is doing. But for people who are extremely skeptical of like AOC's political motivations, I can see how that would be a concern. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:27:24 Another risk factor is that in your communications with these people, you end up platforming platforming people with genuinely harmful beliefs, stuff that causes active harm to the public health through kids not being vaccinated. And by extension, if you end up promoting some of the justifications for those anti-fax beliefs, which are very dehumanizing against people with autism, sometimes with this like soft eugenics component, right?

Starting point is 01:27:50 That is a real, you know, possible danger of talking with influential people in this world. There's also this factor that, just by talking with them, you might end up like legitimizing some of their crazy beliefs, right? This is an idea that people have. Right. My counter to that is that they don't need to be further legitimized. Donald Trump is the president, the Republicans control the whole of the federal government.

Starting point is 01:28:19 RFK Jr. runs HHS. They have received institutional legitimation like already. Yeah. Right. You're right. It's not about you can't platform these people. these people are the platform at this point. And AOC's not platforming these people.

Starting point is 01:28:34 Yeah. She isn't telling her followers or supporters to seek out these Maha activists. She isn't live streaming with them. She's doing outreach in private to pull people from their side, maybe back towards reality. And I think it's working. I think it's actually working for her at least. I mean, assuming that this is going to be for a potential presidential run or at least for some sort of political maneuver. for whatever reason she's doing it, I think as long as she's able to collaborate with clear

Starting point is 01:29:05 boundaries, addressing the legitimate concerns like the PFAS, pesticide exposures, cost of healthcare, while really clearly addressing the scientifically unsupported claims, like these chronic disease things, the soft eugenics, the vaccine narratives, I think that's important. But what's important to me, though, those have to be vocally addressed because, like I was saying before, with all these people that have been pushing these COVID revisionist thoughts, like just letting those people say those things without responding, it does build this narrative overall that COVID vaccines were a mistake and that they're dangerous, et cetera. We have to not just, you know, focus on things that we agree on, but she has to clearly set boundaries and say that

Starting point is 01:29:54 the things we did were really good. The one good thing that Trump ever is connected to, really in my perspective is Operation Warpspeed. The worst... Operation Warpspe. The worst name for a vaccine project that you could have made. But still, you know, that's like the... That we have to be really clear about those two things. And I think if she can do that, that's great.

Starting point is 01:30:16 And people should take the lead. And I'm going to get hurt for saying some of this, because I know a lot of my, you know, doctor friends, public health friends who have a much different perspective about Maha and don't feel there's really any benefit to talking with them for all the reasons that you mentioned. Maybe I'll get there. I'm not there right now.

Starting point is 01:30:36 I'm just not. I feel like we need to be able to connect. I mean, yeah, I would like to kind of touch on that for a sec. Because like there is this idea that you can maybe ignore the problem away. Right. That instead of trying to talk to these people, we just want them to go away. So you should not acknowledge them.

Starting point is 01:30:53 You should not. You should just pretend they aren't there until they go away. Yeah. How well has that strategy worked for us thus far? Has it worked that well? Has it worked that well? It hasn't. And to be this idea that you can just not acknowledge this whole problem is just like a rejection of politics to me.

Starting point is 01:31:14 Like that is just rejecting what politics is. And again, I'm not saying that you have to do this. But to say that our solution is going to be just making fun of them until they go away. to me that feels like a kind of liberal bourgeois position from someone with enough privilege to just reject real politics to pretending that a very big group of people simply do not exist.

Starting point is 01:31:41 Yeah. And I don't think that's how we're going to get ourselves out of this problem. And when I said this online, someone said, well, yeah, but I mean, if you're going to talk about real politics, real politics is when I asked my dad to see a doctor about his stomach problems, and he said he's not going to, and he's just going to use cod liver oil. Yeah, the one trick that I don't want you to know, I personally don't want you to know that, folks. It's going to put me out of business.

Starting point is 01:32:06 And like, that's a huge problem. Like, that is a huge problem that someone's dad said that. But that problem won't be solved by ignoring the problem. Correct. Right. This is, this is the end point of what we're trying to do is reach people who have this reaction. and that's going to require massive health care reforms and building public trust in state capacity

Starting point is 01:32:30 and in our ability to actually help people. And this is going to be a long-term project. I'm not saying this is going to be fixed by 2028. But towards the end of this political article, there's a really interesting quote. Quote, AOC's outreach comes at a moment when the Maha vote itself appears to be up for grabs ahead of the 28 presidential election

Starting point is 01:32:47 amid ongoing frustrations with the Trump administration. Alex Clark, a turning point USA person, and the host of the Health and Wellness podcast, Culture Apothecary, told Politico she's, quote, certainly concerned about the possibility of the influential block of voters slipping away. Clark said she's already seeing interest in AOC among her own viewers after AOC began publicly talking about pesticides. Clark said audience members sent her clips with reactions along the lines of, wow, this is crazy. Agree with AOC, to quote Clark, Maha voters are not Republican. They're so focused on health issues,

Starting point is 01:33:29 they don't care who it is that's saying they're going to get it done, unquote. And this sort of movement points to why I think it might be a good idea for someone like AOC to talk to some of these people and disrupt the pipeline from the alternative health industry. Give them an off ramp. give them a wrong from, because the alternative is that they're just going to get even more insular into this world of conspiracism and eventually, like, eugenic style fascism. So for someone who's doing outreach, you have to, you have to first, like, figure out what the variety of concerns are that are held by these big groups, right? Where do these concerns come from? And if there's any overlap between some of the material concerns that they actually have with, you know, scientifically based environmental issues or left-wing critiques of corporate interests.

Starting point is 01:34:19 And this might lead someone to kind of question, okay, but then why would you do outreach to influencers and leaders of Maha rather than just regular Normie moms? Well, AOC is also doing that through her own, you know, social media channels. But how do you think she can reach Normie moms in the first place who are very bubbled, right? Who are in their own information silos. Right. It is through, you know, talking with some of these movement leaders in private that can help you learn about their political operation, about how their ideas are disembodeled. disseminated, what their leaders believe, what their followers believe, the range of their politics, and like, what's exactly being sold. And also you can learn things that they might only say in private. All of that information can help inform how to target regular people, which AOC does from time to time on Instagram, and also through, you know, visits to data centers, which get picked up on local news coverage. Yeah. And like, these Maha influencers command very large audiences that ordinarily would not be exposed to the substance of what AOC's politics actually are. But now they might be.

Starting point is 01:35:21 And if AOC can position herself as a figure that someone in the Maha world can go to for takes outside their regular bubble, ideally over time she might be able to off-road them away from the crazy stuff towards health policies that actually make us healthier. And I think there really is value in attempting to pull these followers away from the Maha side and educate them on real harms being perpetuated by profit-seeking industries. And part of a politician's job is learning how. how to talk to people, right? Yeah. Talking to like these like politically lost parents who have concerns about the health of their kids might mean different things than talking to like a leftist, right?

Starting point is 01:36:00 AOC has to learn or, you know, anyone has to learn how to talk to different types of people. Yeah. And building a base that's like capable, you know, a coalition, a majoritarian coalition that's capable of challenging capital, challenging these big corporations, will mean talking to people that you disagree with or might even have some harmful beliefs. This happens in unions all the time, right? There's people in working class unions who might believe some things that are bad.

Starting point is 01:36:30 But if you're going to build worker power, you're going to have to talk with them. And maybe then through the process of building solidarity, you can address some of those harmful beliefs that they have. Once you have that solidarity kind of built, once you realize, you actually do have shared interests. And these sorts of harmful beliefs are actually working against those shared interests. interests. Agreed. We need a bigger tent. I mean, people who want to make these fights that we need as big a tent as we can. I agree with that. This is the same thing with the data center battle, right?

Starting point is 01:36:58 Yeah. Like that has a lot of conservatives supporting it. Right. Right, right. Yeah. And it's a very interesting topic to bring up along with the same thing. You know, with the same people whose perspectives on this, how aligns with Maha and how that aligns with the greater Maga picture is really interesting. And you're exactly right. It's about listening, about being empathetic. for what it's worth. There are studies that show if you want to change public opinion on health care and the health care infrastructure. That's what is required. And what does seem to work is listening, showing empathy. It is difficult to scale is really the issue. You know, that that's a kind of thing that is a challenge to scale. But it is exactly what you're talking about. It's coalition building whenever you can. And we're at a crisis moment where I think that's necessary. And when we talk about, I talk about building, you know, building. a bigger tent. For me, that means we're bringing in these people, but it doesn't mean abandoning the other things. The same way... Our tent

Starting point is 01:37:55 does have rules. Our tent has rules for its continued operation. And if you're going to come in here and start assaulting people in our tent, if you're going to start hitting down the stick... Throwing trans kids under the bus

Starting point is 01:38:10 for it. Yeah, then our tent should not be for those people. I agree. No. But there is legitimate problems that if the left doesn't address in actually substantive ways, which the right can never do, because the right's whole ideology is very contradictory. They have these kind of

Starting point is 01:38:27 populist maha things that they can never actually fulfill, as you see with the Trump administration. But there is some legitimate issues or anxieties that motivate issues both legitimate and not. And if the left doesn't address those, then we give

Starting point is 01:38:43 the opening to the right to sell crazy bullshit. Yes. And like that is the thing that that needs to be disrupted. To kind of show my cards at the end here, the reason why I kind of like care about this is because like I grew up with like a crunchy mom. I'll use that kind of terminology.

Starting point is 01:39:01 And I have seen her shift politically to the left over the years, right? Like if Maha was a thing 20 years ago, she would have been like a Maha person. It's all the same types of stuff around like some legitimate issues, some kind of borderline issues like is, organic food necessarily better than non-organic tomato. Maybe, maybe not.

Starting point is 01:39:23 And then also vaccine hesitancy. That was a big thing in my family. And I saw my mom change her opinions as I grew up. And for me, it can be really sad to see so many, so many people assume that like large swaths of just regular people must like have to be these like completely unreachable lunatics. Yeah. Not all Mahas sympathetic people are crazy anti-vaxers, but there are some. There are some. And even those people, I think, are still people that should be reached. I'm not saying that you have to do that. I'm not saying that AOC doing a congressional hearing is going to do that immediately. Yeah. But when you start writing off so many people as just like beyond saving, then again, you have kind of given up on politics.

Starting point is 01:40:16 Yeah. We are still responsible for those people. people. Yeah. We are still responsible for those people's public health. Even the people who don't believe in vaccines, I feel responsible for their health. So it's really well said. And it gives you an interesting perspective on it and it's good. And I think if most of us are, you know, really think about it, we probably have someone in our lives like that as well. A lot of your listeners probably are people who grew up with parents who have pretty different ideas. Some of them probably haven't shifted that much, but a lot of them probably have. There's someone in your life that probably has shifted over time. I think it's important that we keep trying to. I mean, these are people

Starting point is 01:40:52 that we have to, to some degree. I think the bottom line is we have to keep communicating with Maha, and we have to show that we're listening. And it doesn't matter how much we know if it doesn't show that we care. And that's super cheesy, but it is true. And I think that's at the core of what AOC is doing. And again, I don't know her politics that well. I haven't followed her that closely, but she seems pretty savvy. And I feel like that empathy thing she nails. And I think that's great. And I think that's probably something more of us need to do.

Starting point is 01:41:22 More politicians should be doing. The empathy aspect is really important. And of course, something that just doesn't get encouraged on social media because of the way those platforms are structured and the way the algorithms work. But in trying to answer this question of should we, the royal we, do outreach to Maha people. I think we first really need to ask ourselves, do we actually want to understand this problem,

Starting point is 01:41:51 or do we just want to feel superior to anti-vaxxers? Because if we just want to feel better than other people, then, yeah, ignoring the issue and just making fun of these people online, that's enough to fulfill your goal. But if your goal is to actually address these problems and their root causes, you're going to actually have to try to understand the diffuse the nature of maha, the variety of issues it tries to address, and the anxieties it feeds on.

Starting point is 01:42:17 Because if you don't, your understanding of the people in Maha will not just be incomplete, but politically useless. A lot of regular people in the world don't vote or shape their beliefs based on deeply held ideological or partisan conviction, but through trying to respond to the material conditions in their lives. Now, sometimes that means they may get tricked by a con. man. And it's really easy to just laugh and shame those people as gullible fools. But like, how is that useful? Or is it just a way to make yourself feel superior amidst a public crisis? It's worth

Starting point is 01:42:58 remembering that one out of 10 Mamdani voters voted for Trump in 2024. And Mamdani started his campaign by talking with Trump voters in the Bronx on Fordham Road. That was like his first campaign video. in November of 2024 after the presidential election. Rebuilding faith in public health will take a long time. Oh, boy. I think passing universal health care would be a huge step towards that. Having people occupying the government that is actually transparent, doesn't just lie about being transparent,

Starting point is 01:43:33 will be steps towards that goal. And I guess I hope to see that goal one day, even if it is not right now. But do you know what you can do right now, is listen to House of Pod if you want some real information about public health. You sure can.

Starting point is 01:43:50 As soon as you're done, listen to this, and I mean including the ads that come at the end of this podcast, once you're done, listen to all of those, then go listen to my podcast, the House of Pod,

Starting point is 01:44:00 where we talk about a lot of these same issues, I bring on experts from all kinds of different fields because I don't know everything about medicine, although I am pretty smart. I don't know everything. So I bring on people smarter than me

Starting point is 01:44:11 whenever I can. And we'll cover things from wellness grifters, Dr. Oz, Peter Attia, more obscure people that you probably haven't heard of to what RFK Jr. is currently doing to our healthcare infrastructure. And it's a pretty fun show. It's not too science-y. So I think if you like this podcast,

Starting point is 01:44:32 there's a very good chance you're going to like the House of Pot. Also, if I may plug, I have a new podcast coming out that I'm very excited about. It's a little different. It is called Persian of Interest. It's going to be a Persian history podcast. It's going to take a look at stories of Persian contributions to the arts, to music, to philosophy. Going to look at stories that Persians have largely been written out of or minimized in where the role is more prominent.

Starting point is 01:44:58 And I think it's going to be a lot of fun. So stay tuned for Persian of interest as well, which should be coming out at the end of this month. Thank you so much for coming on and talking about a very, very challenging topic for G. an hour. Bring me back in like a month and let me see if I'm still feeling as open to talking to Maha. We'll do. Thank you. The music you love

Starting point is 01:45:27 radio stations. Everywhere you go. The podcasts everyone's talking about. All in one place and it's free. High Heart Radio. Whatever you want to hear. Listen anytime. Anywhere. Music, radio, podcasts. Unlimited audio. It's on the

Starting point is 01:45:45 free I-Hurt Radio app. One app. No subscription. Always free. Grab the free app. My heart radio. Everywhere. Your app today. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast?

Starting point is 01:46:02 Here's what you missed. And the argument is, do you want to win? If you don't win, you have no power. It's real. Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interest and they complain about the very thing to receive. It's raw. I knew that the issue of transgender athletes,

Starting point is 01:46:22 was not going well with a lot of black men. Roland Martin unfiltered. I went off, I said, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Y'all going to scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same vein. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network. 12 seats, those are moving south. So you Democrats, you don't wait to 2030,

Starting point is 01:46:48 you better be hitting the ground going hard in the South now. Download Roland Martin Unfiltered on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everyone and welcome to It Happen Here. My name is Dana Elkurd. I'm a researcher and analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics. Today's episode is going to be about the role of the U.S. in the Middle East and the debate around that that's happening in D.C. and policy circles at the moment. Very smart people are debating because of the Trump administration's disastrous policies, including the war on Iran. whether Washington's decades-long position as essentially top dog in the Middle East just died or is dying or was never quite what everybody said it was. So here it is. I'm going to give you the definitive answer on what the role of the U.S. in the Middle East is and is going to be.

Starting point is 01:47:45 Okay, just kidding. Obviously, what I would want might piss a lot of people off, but I'm going to summarize for you what the debate is. So the different arguments that capture this debate can be encapsulated in the next three sentences. They were published within a few weeks of each other by three, you know, serious well-credentialed people who studied the Middle East for a living. So the first sentence is, quote, outsiders continue to play their balance of power games within the borders of weak Arab states. Overall, the Middle East emerging out of this upheaval looks a lot like the one that existed before. The second sentence is, quote, the American Middle East is finished. And the third sentence is, quote, It is no longer possible to talk about a U.S.-led order in the Middle East.

Starting point is 01:48:28 These are all from articles published in foreign affairs or directly on the Council on Foreign Relations website by Greg Goss, Mark Lynch, and Stephen Cook. They're all looking at the same set of facts and arriving at some opposed conclusions about whether something around the U.S. role has actually ended. I think there's a lot here that is accurate and, like, worthy of engagement, but the focus for me is a little off.

Starting point is 01:48:54 Not because they're wrong about the facts, the facts are mostly right. It's because the question of, is the order over, misses how the order function to some degree and that its functioning was predicated not just on a tolerance of repression, but the generation of authoritarianism. So these scholars and analysts do acknowledge the impact on people in the Middle East to some degree. They reference what happened in Gaza and Lebanon and other places. I think the scope of the American impact on the region isn't necessarily emphasized enough. Just in the last year, hundreds of Iranians have been killed in the war. The Lebanese have been displaced for like the third or fourth time.

Starting point is 01:49:32 In 20 years, by a war, they didn't start and they can't seem to end. And Palestinians continue to die, even during a so-called ceasefire. And these are referenced sometimes in the discussion. So they do talk about that in these articles. But when policy people reference these things, they reference them as kind of casualty figures. on the way to maybe a bigger argument about primacy. And I think this captures kind of what's off about the discussion and encapsulates maybe how the American order works. As I've argued endlessly before, talking about this American order ending misses the point. For the people who actually

Starting point is 01:50:08 live in the region, there was never a legitimate order there to lose in the first place. And U.S. hegemony, key to the quote-unquote liberal order that people are now talking about saving, was established on the Middle East being the way it was and sustaining American hegemony all these years. Okay, so let's start with the article by Greg Gauz titled The New Old Middle East and Subtitled Wars of Sound and Fury. His argument is essentially, yes, the last two years have been transformative looking. The U.S. and Israel fought an actual direct war against Iran. Iran's supreme leader of 36 years is dead.

Starting point is 01:50:45 Bashar al-Assad in Syria is gone. Hezbollah has been decimated. Gaza has been flattened. These are all real, all enormous impacts. But, and this is his real point, none of it changed the underlying structure. So outside powers are still playing a balance of power game inside weak Arab states. The Iranian-Israeli conflict is still unresolved and the Palestinian question is still unresolved. And the U.S. is still stuck in the position it's occupied for years now, which is characterized as unable to actually order the region the way it wants, but to enmesh to leave.

Starting point is 01:51:18 So his evidence is strong. Iran, despite losing its senior leadership, despite watching their infrastructure get pounded, despite Israel and the U.S. going after it directly, Iran came out the other side still standing. It's still running its, you know, quote-unquote resistance foreign policy. It's still engaged in Iraq and Lebanon through its allies and now has a chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz that it's used extensively. Gauze's phrase for it is, it's still got it. And it's a good phrase. The regime that the war was supposedly going to topple is, by his account, arguably more entrenched

Starting point is 01:51:49 afterward because it can now tell its own public that, you know, we took a direct hit from the two most powerful militaries aligned against us and we're still here. Now, Goss talks about the Iranians killed. He says this. According to the human rights activist news agency, Iranian security forces killed at least 7,000 protesters during a wave of unrest in December of last year. Other organizations put the number in the tens of thousands. The fact that the regime killed that many and got away with it essentially functions as evidence for a claim about regime durability. So it's there to explain why Trump thought Iran looked weak enough to bomb. And that's the throughline of the whole kind of continuity thesis.

Starting point is 01:52:28 Gauz, of course, mentions the human cost. He does so repeatedly. I would say more than a lot of his peers in these circles. So he talks about Lebanon over, you know, 4,200 people killed, a million displaced, the West Bank. But the analytical weight of the piece sits somewhere else on whether weeks, states can produce durable peace and whether Iran retains regional influence on whether the U.S. can restore a more, quote, stable region. So it's all about stability, order, primacy. These are

Starting point is 01:52:59 the units of account. And this isn't a problem with this particular author. I think this is what the genre requires. Foreign affairs as a publication is, you know, asking what should Washington do, which means its whole vocabulary is built around a subject, the U.S. government, or occasionally Israel or Iran as fellow state actors, and everyone else becomes the terrain that that subject acts on. Palestinians, Lebanese civilians, Iranian protesters, Yemenis, they appear as like populations, undifferentiated, something that gets caused to suffer by the real actors doing the actual politics. In the end, Gaz concludes that the region, quote, looks a lot like it did before the war. I'd actually push on that a different way than he does.

Starting point is 01:53:43 What he means is the balance of power hasn't shifted, the conflicts are the same conflicts, But I'd say the region also looks a lot like it did before in this other sense, that the people living in it are still structurally objects of a debate about state power, rather than participants in it. And that continuity is real, too. Okay, now we move on to Mark Lynch's quote, the end of the American Middle East. It's also in foreign affairs.

Starting point is 01:54:17 Lynch's argument is the opposite of Gaza. He says, no, something did actually end. The regional order that's existed since the first Gulf War in 1991, built by George H.W. Bush, sustained through five presidencies, organized around Israeli security and the flow of oil and American hegemony, that order is dead. And the Iran war is what killed it alongside the destruction of Gaza. And it's not because Washington lost the battle. It's because the bargain at the core of this order stopped functioning. So the bargain, you know, in Lynch's estimation was align with us, basically the United States saying this to others.

Starting point is 01:54:55 Arab and non-Arab state actors, align with us and will protect you. And then when Iran shot the Strait of Hormuz and bombarded the Gulf states that had both signed the Abraham Accords and didn't, so they've been attacking many of their neighbors. And the United States and Israel, quote, with all their military might, simply failed to dislodge the Iranian regime. That bargain kind of broke in front of everyone. So Gulf leaders watched that bargain break and made that assessment. that it was broken. I want to be clear about what I really appreciate in this piece, because there's a lot, and it's rare to see it in this venue. Lynch writes, and I'm just going to read this directly because I don't want to paraphrase it into something softer, quote, for Washington, the strategic benefits

Starting point is 01:55:40 accrued from this order seemed to justify the cost of the war required to sustain it. But the price was much higher for those who live in the region. For most people, the U.S. order meant only violence, hopelessness, and deprivation. By nearly every economic, political, and developmental indicator, the Middle East under American domination has performed far worse than any other region, end quote. So for this publication, it's a genuinely, you know, bold, radical sentence. He's naming the thing plainly that this wasn't a stabilizing project that had some unfortunate externalities and that it was predicated on violence for the people who live inside it. And he goes farther than that, too. He talks about, quote, the moral hazard built into American security guarantees,

Starting point is 01:56:20 how they let autocratic allies disregard Washington's stated interests because they knew they were untouchable, and how U.S. support for neoliberal economic reforms essentially let regimes loot their own populations under the cover of privatization, and how the war on terror gave Washington's allies a permission structure to build surveillance states. If you listen to me talked before, you know that's basically very close to the argument I've spent my career making about U.S.-backed regimes in the Arab world, that Washington's security relationships didn't just fail to prevent repression. They were often the delivery mechanism for it. But of course, and understandably for this publication,

Starting point is 01:56:56 the fix on offer is still a fix for Washington. Lynch's closing argument is that the next American president has a, quote, real chance to build something better, renounce military intervention as a first resort, pressure Israel on settlements and annexation, stop pushing Iraq and Lebanon to disarm the militias before they're ready, recommit to international human rights norms, etc. but essentially everything on this list is the U.S. as a subject. I don't say that to be glib. A U.S. government

Starting point is 01:57:23 that actually did those things would matter enormously. And domestic U.S. politics is showing a shift. You know, it's showing that two-thirds of Democrats now think Washington is too supportive of Israel. And there was a House vote to cut military aid to them. So in this context, he's right that there's more room now than there's ever been for a shift. But again, the theory of change, it still runs entirely through whether an American, administration decides to be different. It's not, for example, Palestinians get self-determination because Palestinians have built the power to demand and win it. It's that, you know, they might get relief from Washington if Washington decides it's in its interest to provide relief. It's not nothing, but it's not the same thing as like agency. Additionally, Lynch's frame as like

Starting point is 01:58:08 order versus disorder or old order versus new order, reaches for the Suez analogy, for example, In 1956, the last kind of gasp of British and French imperial power. But his argument is essentially the American Empire in the Middle East is following the same arc that the European ones did, decaying kind of for structural reasons, and eventually that would receive to. Now, I'm sympathetic to this historical analogy, but I want to flag something about it, which is that it's still a story about the transition between empires or between an empire and a vacuum or between an empire and some future multipolar agreement.

Starting point is 01:58:44 it's not on its own a story of what the people of the region actually want, which, and this is the part that's, you know, available if you go looking in a lot of different types of surveys, is it's not usually, please replace American hegemony with a different hegemony. You know, it's just people in the region want very basic things. They want accountability from their own governments. They want an end to being treated as a security theater for other people's conflicts. They want actual sovereignty over the decisions that get made about their countries. in Washington or Riyadh or Tehran without them in the room. So Lynch is closer to writing about this than anyone in this genre, but again, he is focused on what Washington should do next. And I'm wondering if we should start also asking what it would take for the people living in this region to be the ones deciding. And finally, the third piece by Stephen Cook at the Council on Foreign Relations published just this past week.

Starting point is 01:59:39 I'm recording on August 21st. So it's about something that I think a lot of people outside the region, or those who study the region, haven't fully clocked yet, which is the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement. So here's the quick version. On August 7th, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey signed a mutual defense pact they called the Mecca Agreement. The full text hasn't been released, but reporting indicates it functions like kind of a NATO Article 5 clause, which is an attack on one is treated as an attack on all. On paper, it obligates Saudi Arabia and Turkey to come to Pakistan's defense in a war with India or Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to back Turkey

Starting point is 02:00:16 if it comes to blows with Israel over Syria or any other adversary. 48 hours after the signing ceremony, the Houthis hit a Saudi Aramco refinery. Now, Saudi Arabia didn't invoke the pact. And Cook reads that, correctly, I think, as less about whether the treaty's security guarantee is credible and more about what its existence signals, which is that Saudi Arabia, is building an alternative to relying on Washington full stop. Cook's argument is very similar to lynches that the U.S.-led order is over, but he gets there kind of in a different way.

Starting point is 02:00:52 For him, he's not emphasizing like the moral bankruptcy or the violence against ordinary people. It's, you know, straightforward, realist account. After the U.S. failed to defend Saudi Arabia directly when Iran hit its oil facilities in 2019 and after kind of the whiplash of Obama signing the Iran deal and then Trump tearing it up, and all of the disasters of the Biden administration pushing the Abraham Accords, even as Gaza was being erased. After Trump's own kind of Iran war, the Saudis simply stopped believing that Washington's guarantees were reliable, and so they went and built their own.

Starting point is 02:01:29 And the part I find most striking about Cook's argument is the picture he draws in the end, which is a Middle East splitting into two competing blocks. the Abraham Accords block versus the Mecca Agreement block. So the Emirati is staying tight with Israel and the United States and then the Saudis Turks and Pakistanis building something that explicitly competes with that. And he calls it, quote, a major change

Starting point is 02:01:51 and says it's hard to overstate its significance. And honestly, structurally, I think he's right that something has shifted. But here's where maybe I would slow down a little because I think the piece has a missing question. Cook frames the whole thing as a story about whose order it's going to be. So American order giving way to kind of regional multipolarity and Riyadh and Ankara shaping the region instead of Washington. And okay, sure,

Starting point is 02:02:18 but shaping it how and for whom? The three signatories to the Mecca Agreement are, and I just want to say this plainly, all authoritarian. One is an absolute monarchy, another is a rapidly authoritarian, an increasingly authoritarian state run by a man who jailed his last series. electoral rival, and then a military-dominated national security state that's fought multiple wars against its own populations. So this is not a coalition of the region's public's asserting themselves against outside domination. This is three governments, each of which has spent considerable energy over the past decade, surveilling and jailing and in some cases killing its own dissidents. They're deciding they'd rather coordinate their security agreements with each other than depend on

Starting point is 02:02:57 Washington's. And that might genuinely be bad news for American hegemony. I just don't think it's automatically good news for anyone living under these three governments or anyone in the region. multipolarity is not a synonym for liberation. Sometimes it's just another table with more authoritarian's on it, none of whom actually answer to the people they govern any more than, you know, American hegemon did. Now, Cook's piece to its credit doesn't claim otherwise. He's writing a narrow, careful analysis of this, like, security architecture shift, and he says so. But it's worth noting that, you know, quote, the U.S. led order is over,

Starting point is 02:03:31 and something better is emerging are two completely different claims. and only one of those three pieces that I talked about today, even gestures at the second one. And even that piece, which is Lynch's, gestures mostly by asking Washington to be nicer. So here's my synthesis. Gauz says nothing structural has changed. The game is the same game.

Starting point is 02:04:01 Weak states are still weak. Iran and Israel is still locked in. The Palestinian question is still open, and the U.S. is still stuck playing a role it can't fully commit to or walk away from. And Lynch says something did change. The moral and material bankruptcy of the American security bargaining, has been fully exposed, and now there's a narrow window for Washington to build something less

Starting point is 02:04:20 violent in its place. And then Cook says something has changed, but it's not about morality or bankruptcy, it's about credibility. American guarantees stop being trusted, so regional powers built their own, and now we're watching this kind of bipolar regional order emerge that doesn't run through Washington at all. And all three, I think, have a real and important argument. I don't want to flatten that. The difference between nothing changed and the empire's ending or something more competitive is taking its place, that's not a trivial disagreement. It has real implications for what happens next in Gaza and Lebanon and in the Gulf. But again, notice what all three arguments hold in common underneath that disagreement is they're all arguing about whether an order existed and whether

Starting point is 02:04:59 it's ending. And maybe we don't emphasize enough existed for who and ending for who and according to whose clock. So I want to back up a little bit further from the three essays we just walked through. All three of them write as though the story starts with the Iran War or with Gaza's destruction or with the Mecca Agreement. So a story that begins in the last two, three years. But let me go back to December 2023. Just a few weeks after October 7th, the Hamas attacks in Israel and then the start of the war on Gaza. Back then, the working assumption in a lot of Washington rooms was that this could still be contained. I wrote a piece about that in December of 2023 for the first.

Starting point is 02:05:42 the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and I called it the re-emergence of the Palestine question in world politics. The argument had three parts. Part one was that Palestine functions for Arab publics as what I call a gateway to dissent, not because everyone in the region is single-mindedly obsessed with Palestine at the expense of their own politics. It's because organizing around Palestine is one of the few forms of political mobilization that Arab authoritarian regimes like historically had a hard time fully criminalizing, because the regimes themselves had claim to support the cause rhetorically, even if they worked with Washington or maybe sometimes Israel behind the scenes. And there's all sorts of examples about this, like Egyptian revolutionaries in 2011

Starting point is 02:06:20 during the Arab Spring. They pointed directly to their earlier organizing around Palestine as kind of the training ground for their work. In 2023, after October 7th, the same dynamic reappeared. There was protest that Arab governments, several of them allied with Washington, that they struggled to contain around Palestine. Because for once, you know, the people's anger. anger and the regime's professed position were pointed in the same direction, which made it very hard to police. Now, part two of my argument was Palestine and violence. This is the part I think is particularly useful now. I argued then that Israeli military conduct, plus very visible American acquiescence to it, was functionally handing the Palestinian cause over to the actors most willing to

Starting point is 02:07:03 escalate around it, so Iran and its proxies, who explicitly positioned themselves as the keepers of the Palestinian cause. At the time, the Iranian officials and others used the term unifying the fields, meaning they coordinated the attacks with Hezbollah and the Houthis and the militias in Iraq and Hamas. So I cited an Arab barometer polling at that time that was already showing growing public traction for, you know, quote unquote, the resistance access. And I flagged that shift in how Israel was fighting itself. There was reporting at that time that was coming out of 972, Mag. on the use of AI targeting systems that basically were enabling, in their words,

Starting point is 02:07:46 these wars of, quote, massive scale rather than precision. So my worry was that when extremist actors and militias are the only actors that are left actually representing the Palestinian cause by force, you get a zero-sum dynamic that produces exactly the kind of mass

Starting point is 02:08:04 multi-front violence that becomes very hard to de-escalate. That was the argument I made in December 2023. And it's, I think, more or less, a summary of what's occurred. The 2026 Iran War, the Hothi's re-engaging. Iran's whole regional strategy still oriented around this kind of unifying the field logic I was describing before. Now, part three of my argument was Palestine and the World Order. I argued that Washington's simultaneous position, the kind of full-throated backing at the time for Ukrainian sovereignty against occupation, paired with material and diplomatic a cover for Israel's actions in Gaza was doing serious damage to the credibility of the entire

Starting point is 02:08:44 liberal international order and not just to just, you know, America's regional reputation. I use this term from, you know, the literature and international relations of recognitional justice, which is the idea that a global order's legitimacy depends not just on power, but on whether it's perceived to deliver justice on longstanding unresolved sovereignty claims. Palestine is like the textbook case of an unresolved claim that sovereignty, was never granted and never addressed. And I pointed out then that Arab officials were already in December 2023, showing up in Moscow or Beijing, and treating Washington's mediating role as compromised beyond repair. And I closed with a very specific historical contrast. Ronald Reagan

Starting point is 02:09:28 in 1982, when Israel was attempting to destroy Lebanon, he picked up the phone and told Menachem Begin to stop bombing Beirut. And the bombing stopped. So there was like, like real leverage applied. Now compare that to Biden's approach back in 2023, which reporters called, you know, bare hugging Netanyahu. My argument then was nothing short of abandoning this model and treating Palestinian self-determination as a genuine sovereignty question

Starting point is 02:09:55 rather than just like a security management problem was going to prevent exactly the kind of regional escalation that's consuming all of us now. Now I'm not saying this to claim like how great I was to have said this. I didn't have a crystal ball. A crystal ball is not really a question. required here. The mechanism for how this was going to function was very clear in December 2023 for anyone who was willing to look at Palestine or the cause of Arab publics as a cause

Starting point is 02:10:20 rather than just a footnote. And two years later, you know, Gregory Gauz, for example, is describing Hezbollah and the Houthis reengaging exactly along this logic that I described. And Lynch is describing Gulf states starting to hedge towards Russia and China. And Cook is describing how Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan are building this alternative security structure because the bear hug model of American reassurance stopped being credible. An Arab public sentiment now has more interest in Washington because of what's happened in the last years. There was also this piece in foreign affairs by Amani Shaman and Michael Robbins, and they talked about survey data from Arab respondents that showed how lots of Arabs,

Starting point is 02:10:59 you know, a majority don't think the United States upholds international law. And single digits in these surveys pick the U.S. as an individual. acceptable mediator for the Israeli-Castinian conflict. And in every country surveyed, more people said China does a better job protecting freedoms and rights than the United States does. So Jamal and Robbins read that as kind of a recent collapse, something that had become lost for the United States after October 2023. I'd go further. We know from survey data since 2011. You can look up the Arab Opinion Index, for example, that this wasn't a cliff, it's a slope. It's been a steady, years-long trajectory of Arab publics souring on the United States that predates what's happened in Gaza and the genocide by over a decade, at least.

Starting point is 02:11:46 Between 21 and 29 percent of respondents across these nine rounds of the Arab Opinion Index have consistently named the U.S. as the greatest threat facing Arabs second only to Israel. And the share who reject the idea that the U.S. genuinely cares about human rights climbed from 49 percent in 2014 to 55 percent in the U. most recent round. And finally, 76% hold a negative view of U.S. policy towards Palestine. And none of that is just a reaction to the last three years. This double standard that the United States has upheld wasn't a failure of the liberal international order in the Middle East. It was the order. It was operating as designed, the post-World War II architecture of multilateral institutions of democratic norms and open markets and rules that supposedly apply to everybody. That's the version that the European publics and European states were sold and experienced.

Starting point is 02:12:38 The Middle East, as I've argued in a variety of different pieces, was governed through a different logic from day one. It was about securing the flow of oil. It was about guaranteeing freedom of navigation through strategic choke points and propping up whichever regime would sign on to that bargain. Democratic issues were completely optional. And, of course, unconditional backing for Israeli governments regardless of conduct. There's actually a companion statistic in the piece that I wrote from the

Starting point is 02:13:03 Arab barometer, 40 to 50% of respondents believe that the United Nations sides more often with Israel than with the Palestinians. And the conclusion is plain. Quote, many Arab citizens no longer see the problem as one of double standards alone. The root causes the bankruptcy of the entire international system. So it's not just Washington. It's this whole architecture that people were told to place their faith in, the UN, the rules, the institutions, basically read by the people who were supposed to be protected by it as functionally captured. Now, an important caveat, because I don't want to leave you with the wrong takeaway here. 68% of respondents in that

Starting point is 02:13:37 latest Arab Opinion Index still say they support democracy as their preferred system of governments. This isn't a story about people giving up on democratic values or self-determination or accountability or rule of law. It's a story about people concluding based on 15 years of consistent data that the American-led vehicle

Starting point is 02:13:54 claiming to deliver those values was never actually built to deliver them in the Middle East. And then, of course, there's the Trump administration's contribution to all of this, which I've been fairly blunt about, you know, in previous episodes. Previous administrations at least maintained the pretense. You know, there were the summits, and they gave lip service to the rules-based order,

Starting point is 02:14:14 and they, like, performed that they cared about democracy sometimes. But stripping away this performative rhetoric doesn't just look bad. It removes a tool. As long as Washington claimed to believe in a rules-based order, Arab reformers and Democrats had something to point at, like there's a gap between your stated standard and the actual conduct. And so maybe we can name and shame you and like you'll change your opinions or change your policies. Once the U.S. stops even claiming that standard, you know, that lever disappears. There's nothing left

Starting point is 02:14:43 to leverage. So what's the prescription? I don't think the prescription can anymore be, wait for a better administration. Maybe we need to stop centering Washington as the mechanism of repair at all. Instead, maybe we need to support international accountability mechanisms that Washington is currently trying to defund and sanction into irrelevance like the ICC. or build multilateral efforts to uphold something like a rules-based order without waiting for the American establishment, and develop civil society strategies that don't depend on the outcome of U.S. domestic politics, because any order that eventually replaces this one has to actually reckon with the injustices that this one spent decades systematically ignoring.

Starting point is 02:15:21 There's a really interesting article in The Guardian titled What Should Replace the American Led Order by Oslo Bali and Samuel Moyne. I'll put them in the show notes, and I think it's an interesting argument about, how to stop mourning what they call the old order and build the foundations of a new world. But when we go back to kind of the DC policymaking space, the honest through line of all the articles I engage with today is that the system is failing. But it's been failing. It's been happening for a very long time. The debate in Washington is just finally grudgingly catching up to admitting it. And even now, it's mostly catching up on Washington's terms, asking what Washington should do about it, rather than asking, you know, who's been trying to tell it this entire

Starting point is 02:16:03 time. Thanks for listening to another episode of it can happen here. Stay safe. The music you love, radio stations, everywhere you go, the podcasts everyone's talking about, all in one place, and it's free. I heart radio, whatever you want to hear. Listen anytime, anywhere. Music, radio, podcasts, unlimited audio. It's on the free IHurt Radio app. One app, no subscription. Always free. Grab the free app. IHart Radio. Everywhere you go. Always free.

Starting point is 02:16:43 Download the free IHard Radio app today. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast? Here's what you missed. And the argument is, do you want to win? If you don't win, you have no power. It's real. Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interest and they complain about the very thing they're receiving.

Starting point is 02:17:06 It's raw. I knew that the issue of transgender athletes was not going well with a lot of black men. Roland Martin unfiltered. I went off, I said, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Y'all going to scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same vein. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network.

Starting point is 02:17:31 Twelve seats, those are moving south. So if you Democrats, you don't wait to 2030, you better be hitting the ground going hard in a hard, South now. And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts. Or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to It Could Happen here. I'm your host, Mia Wong.

Starting point is 02:17:58 For a decade now, I've been seeking the answer to a single question. How does history move? It is not, as it first appears, an abstract question. in it is the answer to a more immediate query. How did we get here to a decade defined by war, by dictatorship, and by genocide? How did we live to see a world? Where India, China, and the United States, the three largest countries that have ever existed, ruling over three of the world's eight billion people,

Starting point is 02:18:42 are rolled by different forms of fascist government. And is there any way out of the endless nightmare that every summer sets the world on fire, only to leave it the same, but somehow worse? To understand this, to understand how we live to see these days of horror, we must understand why history moves at all. What is it that drives history forward?

Starting point is 02:19:10 Is it great men, and they always seem to be men in such formulations, seizing the stage of history and driving it according to their great will? Is it a moral arc of progress? Forever bending and forever pushing the world, however slowly, towards a kinder, gentler form of liberal democracy? Is it the inacturable unfolding of the internal dynamic? of capital, acting, depending on your position and political faction, as either the material basis of history or a kind of god impotentia, leading inexorably to either communism or something

Starting point is 02:19:54 worse. Is it the movement of the working class storming onto the historical stage? Are all of these simply a series of irrelevant metanarratives? My answer is this. the great Marxist historian CLR James a man as intimately involved in the process of revolution as any of the men he spent his life depicting once wrote in Black Jacobins

Starting point is 02:20:22 his magisterial account of the Haitian Revolution that quote the rich are only defeated when they are running for their lives and even in this darkest hour of the working class with fascism ascendant and a movement to break its power failing to materialize every day.

Starting point is 02:20:44 I have lived to see them run. I have lived to see their shield walls break their armies falling back street by liberated street seen those streets turn to cities and those cities turn to whole provinces. I have lived to see ancient and terrible ruling classes reduced to huddling like rats besieged in their own capitals to see a commune that outlasted the commune of Paris.

Starting point is 02:21:13 I have lived to see the President of the United States hiding a bunker where protesters fought the Secret Service outside the gates of the White House. I have lived to see history come not on horseback, but to the sound of an upturned bucket beaten as a drum and the thunder of a million voices. of a thousand peoples who cannot live to see another moment

Starting point is 02:21:37 of a world like this one. And whether you realize it or not, you have lived to see it too. And just as surely, I have lived to see what came after. I have lived to see the firebombs, the machine guns, the all-night courts filling,

Starting point is 02:21:57 the prison cells just as surely as the army filled the abattoirs. I have lived to see them build, build the wall and fill the camps and attempt to wipe whole peoples from existence. And this too is history. But the trick, the secret, the pattern so obvious that it cannot be named, is that these are the same history. History moves in and is driven by cycles of uprising and repression,

Starting point is 02:22:30 cycles of revolution and counter-revolution. It is an insight so obvious that it does not seem profound. The implications are easy to miss. But if what drives history is cycles of our uprisings and their repression, it means that history is not driven purely by cyclopean forces outside of even the possibility of our imagination, much less our control. It means that those forces, those impossible abstractions, capitalism and the state and the white supremacist order, the systems and institutions that rule the world are reacting to us. Capital is forced to maneuver around our advances, just as we are forced to maneuver around its development.

Starting point is 02:23:27 The state builds its own capacity against our movements. not from their own desire, but from their own necessity. The ruling class, for all its power, does not simply rule. It is forced to react to us. The material reality of a world of uprisings is that we are a force of history. This is a dangerous idea to even express, much less to analyze. for if you take the idea seriously that history is not driven by the pure will of great men

Starting point is 02:24:06 or the inexorable movement of capital then, just to start, elites are not, as they would have you believe, the only people who matter. It means that history is driven by ordinary people who in an hour of crisis like their mothers before them pick up a brick and throw it at the nearest simple, or personages of the ruling class. It is of such struggles, from the gates of Versailles to the gates of the White House,

Starting point is 02:24:39 that history is made. Regular people, individuals like you and me and your neighbor across the street with the cute cat you see sometimes, change the course of human history. It seems almost impossible. And yet, I know it's true because I've met them. the ordinary people thrust into the fulcrum of history. There was David Graber, the late anthropologist, who helped steal a crowd from an otherwise largely pointless protest in a park in New York.

Starting point is 02:25:14 There was Vicky Osterweil, a writer who many of you have heard on this show, who facilitated the first meeting of a movement called Occupy Wall Street. these were people just like you and me who showed up to a meeting and after that meeting the whole world was different this is the reality of history it is driven by ordinary people who in retrospect I remember it as something greater as a movement or a class or a world historical force

Starting point is 02:25:49 who at the beginning of the day rolled out of bed as nothing of the sort and yet we are a historical force and we belong on the stage of history just as much as their rulers and oppressors. It is in fact the great task of the political order, the state, the politician, the social media company, the fascist, to convince us that we can only be observers to history, that the best we can aspire to is, as Walter Benjamin described, to have a fascist dictator represent and act out our feelings. Thus, the task of counter-revolution is to clear us from the stage of history

Starting point is 02:26:34 that we have seized in the streets. And it is here, perhaps, at the kind of revolutionaries who rule the world, have had the greatest success. They have crushed the idea that we can shape history so thoroughly that the very idea of us changing the world seems like a joke.

Starting point is 02:26:53 in order to wrestle back that place in history, in order to take back our autonomy and our ability to change the horror that is the present world. We must come to understand what it looks like when we take the historical stage, how we have failed and how we succeeded. We must know at the most basic level that it is even possible at all. and so in this series we turn to the last three cycles of uprisings. An old man with a beard once said, men make their own history,

Starting point is 02:27:44 but they do not make it as they please. They do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. Marx, of course, was writing of the 18th Bremere of an earlier set of revolutions and counter-revolutions, different in many ways than our own. Each uprising cycle is shaped by its material conditions,

Starting point is 02:28:12 the social and economic structures of the age. We are to examine the last three cycles of uprisings in an age defined not, as Marx spoke of, by the triumphant rise of the industrial proletariat, but by the death of that very world. working class. I have spoken elsewhere about the death of the old working class at Tiananmen, and I will leave those details to that previous work. We are going to be looking here in the

Starting point is 02:28:44 episodes to come at the cycles of uprising that came next, beginning roughly with the cycle known as ultra-globalization and the Zapatista uprising. Now, periodization, or the task of putting these cycles firmly into lists of dates in which they begin and end is always a troublesome process. It is never quite historically precise. Movements persist and die in 100 forms and 100 places. And the waves of global uprising and global suppression that we are tracking are more complicated than can be fully captured by start date here and date here. But for our purposes, roughly, this initial period of uprisings, the first we will examine,

Starting point is 02:29:40 begins roughly with the Zapatista uprising in 1994, but really kicks off with the Battle of Seattle in 1999, through Argentina, 2001, through the water and gas wars in Bolivia, and travels, I think, to unexpected places, like post-Katrina New Orleans, before eventually ending with the Wahaka commune in 2006. The second wave, the so-called movement of the squares, that starts in 2011 with the Arab Spring, continues with Occupy Wall Street

Starting point is 02:30:16 and its myriad success in the book. movements across the world. And ends, I think, thematically, with Trump coming down the escalator in 2015, with the crushing of Ferguson and the uprising in Baltimore. And finally, we'll turn to the more recent wave of uprisings best remembered for Hong Kong and George Floyd that stretched from Lebanon to Ecuador, and roughly from late 2017, early 2018,

Starting point is 02:30:47 to probably about 2021. The periodization here is obviously more difficult because unlike with the movements of the previous two cycles, we do not have the luxury of seeing where they led. We are still living through them in a number of ways

Starting point is 02:31:09 and we are still living in the sort of kind of revolution from that cycle in ways that made periodization difficult. It's possible the cycle of uprisings after that has begun already, I simply cannot say we would not be able to periodize it until after the period has sort of ended.

Starting point is 02:31:27 Now, these uprisings save for the special case of Argentina 2001, which we will talk about at length since it is, I guess, the origin of the conception of Occupy that would become the core if an extremely different forms of the 2011 uprisings.

Starting point is 02:31:49 These uprisings do not look like the uprisings of the past. The working class has stubbornly refused to cohere into its old fighting forms. Because those forms, the mass party, the workers' council, the mass syndicalist union, were born of structures and conditions of production that no longer exist as they once did. the old identity of the working class, that of a class that was building the future with his own hands and will one day inherit its own creations, is dead.

Starting point is 02:32:24 In its wake, workers have tried over and over and over again to forge a new identity. In some cases, they found limited success. Mostly, they have failed. But in those successes and in those failures, they have defined the modern world. And that is the story we tell in this series. It is the story of Oaxaca and Argentina,

Starting point is 02:32:52 of Boston and Bosnia, of 30 years of uprisings, and the worlds we built and lost together. It is the story of how the old working class died and how a new class struggles to be born in its wake. It is the story of how conflict with the state came to be the sole force that could put us back into the streets. Once we had abandoned the occupation of the factories

Starting point is 02:33:19 that had been our domain for almost a century, and it is a story that even though many of us live through most, or even all of its components, is already being forgotten. So that today, when I speak of the time that workers took a major North American city and held it for several months, People simply don't know that I'm talking about Wohaka, and that those events happened this century in 2006, a time almost all of you listening to this were alive.

Starting point is 02:33:55 And the economic and social fuels that built these last three cycles of uprisings have not gone away. In fact, the repression has only grown worse, and whether we like it or not, there will, be another cycle of uprisings. The question, the question that we all face, is this. What are you going to do about it? Canadian women are looking for more.

Starting point is 02:34:31 More out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are 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 02:34:54 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast? Here's what you missed. And the argument is, do you want to win? If you don't win, you have no power. It's real. Those are the very people who I always say vote against their own economic interests and they complained about the very thing they're receiving.

Starting point is 02:35:20 It's raw. I knew that the issue of transgender athletes was not going well with a lot of black men. Roland Martin unfiltered. I went off, I said, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Y'all going to scream at Chanel, but you don't want to see a black luxury company in the same vein. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network. 12 seats. Those are moving south.

Starting point is 02:35:47 So if you Democrats, you don't wait to 2030, you better be hitting the ground going hard in the South now. And download Roland Martin Unfiltered on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts. Wherever you get your podcasts. This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what this means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I am joined by James Stout, Robert Evans, and special correspondent Kim Kelly. Hello. That's right.

Starting point is 02:36:22 For me. Oh, wait, no, sorry, you're Kim Kelly. I forgot for a second. Yeah, that's not, no, you're not Kim Kelly, Robert. This episode, we are covering the week of September 9th to September 16th. Big Newsweek. Oh, dear, where do we even begin? Where, indeed.

Starting point is 02:36:41 Let's start with a quick update on mail-in voting because we've been covering this story the past few weeks. and on Sunday night, a second federal judge blocked the postal services newly appointed. It wasn't actually on 9-11. I'm sorry. Yeah, I thought you were going to do a 9-11 joke. It happened like two days after 9-11, so that wouldn't be cool. Damn it. The Justice Department never gives us what we deserve. That's certainly true. But this second federal judge blocked the newly adopted final rule designed to be in compliance with Trump's executive order to restrict mail-in voting.

Starting point is 02:37:18 This rule laid out new requirements for mail-in-voting, including standardized envelopes and voter verification through a newly created online federal ballot mail portal. And if these new requirements, which were announced just a few months before the midterms, were not met, the Postal Service said that they would not accept or mail-out ballots. But on Sunday, Trump appointee Judge Carl Nichols found USPS lacked the authority to require states to submit a list of eligible voters to this online portal and only transport ballots to voters verified via this portal. Nichols wrote that if the rules implemented, there would be a, quote, increased risk that a significant number of otherwise appropriate absentee or mail-in ballots will ultimately not be counted in the upcoming elections. And this was kind of a double whammy for the Trump administration because then the next day on Monday, the Supreme Court issued a shadow docket ruling, which usually means bad news. But in this case, they denied the Trump administration's request to lift the first injunction blocking the implementation of the Postal Service's final rule, finding that the government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge. And this appears to be a 7-2 ruling with Clarence Thomas. and Samuel Alito dissenting.

Starting point is 02:38:38 Though, Justice Kavanaugh wrote a one paragraph concurring opinion, which states, quote, there is at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service's statutory authority. But applying the rule in the 26 elections would be arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act because state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections, unquote. So that kind of goes against, what Trump-appointed Judge Carl Nichols found in his other separate injunction. But this rule will not be implemented, at least for the upcoming midterm elections. Okay, do we want to move on to some of the small things? Yeah, yeah. Yes, let's do all the small things. Yep. We found out this

Starting point is 02:39:25 week that some of the drone attacks on Saudi Arabia's East-West oil pipeline had come from inside Iraq as opposed coming from Yemen, which is where many of the other attacks on Saudi Arabia that we're going to cover later have come from. Today I heard these weren't coming from like the large militia groups that you would expect, but from allegedly smaller IRGC aligned groups. And a regional operations chief in Iraq has been fired as a result of this, right, like as a result of the, I guess, the failure to address this. Secondly, the Yebyshe, that's Yekeneh, Mbessrodaner-Shingale, the Shingya resistance units have agreed to hand over their weapons to the Baghdad government and be integrated into the security forces. We'll find out if it's kind of a similar thing

Starting point is 02:40:13 to when the SDF, as the SDF are now integrating into the Syrian military. If you're not familiar with Yerbe Shea, they are a Yazidi armed group with close ties to Yepagay-Yeperjei, so the SDF in Syria or the Kurdish elements of the SDF-specific. I guess. The Ebershe grew significantly during the battle against the Islamic State and, of course, the Islamic State's genocide of the Yazidi people. Since then, it's been a pretty complicated security situation in the part of Iraq where they reside in their homeland. Yeah, especially since as a result of what happened in the early stages of the Sinjar campaign, they have no reason to trust either the Peshmerga in Kurdistan or the government in Baghdad. Yeah, because both of them left them more or less on their own, right? Yeah. To die.

Starting point is 02:41:02 Yeah. Left to die is what people told me when I was in the camps. They fled to. Yeah, left to die is what they told me as well. And of course, this is one of the moments when the SDF kind of, I guess, really entered the global. They weren't SDF then, right? They were the epic game. No.

Starting point is 02:41:18 Everyone called them just the PKK, right? Like, that's what all the easy is I talked to said. Well, some of the people who were those initial guerrillas who entered onto the mountain there probably had come, from the HPG and the PKK, right? We can argue that at length, but it doesn't matter. It was not the Iraqi government nor the KRG, the Baghdad government nor the KRG. This is something that I'm going to keep following.

Starting point is 02:41:41 Moving to Iran, the DOD this week declassified footage of the rescue of the weapons safety officer from Iran. This is the backseater in the plane that got shot down, right? The guy who was in Iran for a couple of days there where they did this crazy search and rescue mission. Interestingly, they didn't blur out, like, the people rescue, well, the people rescuing him were just visible as human shapes on like a thermal. They did blur out the helicopter.

Starting point is 02:42:08 We know they have several secret helicopters, but I found that kind of interesting. He didn't interview where he claimed he claimed he claimed he hit the ground, or they claimed he hit the ground between 70 and 100 miles an hour. He's looking pretty good for hitting the ground that hard. He had a parachute malfunction, apparently. I don't know how we could ever confirm of any of that's true. A FPV drone from NatalGPDFs, they have a gender-integrated drone unit, right? People have been saying it's an all-women's drone unit.

Starting point is 02:42:35 That's not true, but there are certainly women in the drone unit. There's many gender-integrated drone units across various militaries. Drones love gender. You've heard it here, folks. Yes. Yeah, the drone doesn't know gender. It struck a Burmese military yacht aircraft on the ground this week. This is a significant turning point for the Spring Revolution.

Starting point is 02:42:54 they have been trying to do this for years. Following the Barmo Flatilla's demise and the captures of positions the Hunter has held since in 1990s by Karen forces this week, the fighting season has really begun in Myanmar and it's not starting that well for the Hunter, right? They're also having pretty mixed success in attempting an offensive and Rakhine state

Starting point is 02:43:16 against the Arakhan army there. In Syria, protests have begun all over the country as fuel and bread prices have risen this week. So previously, certainly in the parts of Syria where Robert and I have been, these were subsidized. The government has hiked prices because fuel prices are more expensive

Starting point is 02:43:36 everywhere, right, because of the war in Iran. But nonetheless, this is making things very hard for people. The price of petrol went up about 29%. Cooking gas went up about 9%. Diesel went up more, like 40%, I think. And people have been leading with like 40% fuel hike. but we should be honest and talk about the fuel that most people are using, right? Nonetheless, this is making things very difficult for people,

Starting point is 02:44:00 which is why they're in the streets. And this is one of the first big protest movements, this new protest movements, I should say, in places it considers to be part of its constituency that this new government has had to deal with. Obviously, it's dealt with protests and has had armed conflict with other people within Syria since the transitional government came to power. Finally, in the US, a Massachusetts district court judge has blocked the Trump's administration's attempt to reduce student visas to four years.

Starting point is 02:44:31 Previously, it seemed that they were trying to restrict F1 visas period to four years from what I read in this judgment. And then you'd have to apply for an extension, like if you're doing a PhD or if you're undergraduate, it just takes more than four years, right? The court went on a great length about like how this was a bad idea and then went, we can't actually rule on whether it's a bad idea or not, but we're not. he can say it violates the Minister of Procedure Act, which it does. So that was the grounds on which it blocked it. All right. And now it's time for undeniably our biggest story of the week. Kim Kelly,

Starting point is 02:45:02 please, what do you have for us? So in pop culture news, everyone's talking about the Ed Shearren McElmore controversy. Early this week, Sheeran, who comedian Zach Woods accurately described on Instagram as an internationally tolerated acoustic guitarist. Wow. I wouldn't put it quite that far. What a precision hit. I love Zach Wood so much. He meant, if I was single, Daddy Call Me.

Starting point is 02:45:34 That's what I'm going to say. But, okay, also British. So first problem there, honestly. Okay, rude. Okay. And with Ed Shearin. No, not Zach Wood. Ed Shearin is British.

Starting point is 02:45:44 I would never lust after any. Englishman. Wow. Geez. Ouch, James. Taking strays left and right. My God. Brutal.

Starting point is 02:45:53 Kemp entering the chat. Hard. Look, brutal. My first husband was from Wigan, so I know a lot about what y'all get up to. I want you to understand that you have not picked a representative sample. Macked the bomb. Pee, I know what y'all get up to. That accent does not fool me.

Starting point is 02:46:11 But anyway, hard-hitting political news, James. this Jim Human made headlines early this week when he announced that Seattle rapper Maclemore was out as the supporting act on Shearant's current Loop World Tour. And the reason, apparently, McElmore's vocal support for Palestine and refusal to stay silent about a genocide was just a bridge too far for the self-identified non-political pop star. as well as the consortium of wealthy venue owners who are backing his tour. So here's what happened. During the tour's first two shows, which took place in New Jersey's MetLife Stadium on September 4th and 5th, Macklemore said the words,

Starting point is 02:46:58 Free Palestine on stage. First problem, and performed his pro-Palestine song, Heinz Hall, which he released in 2024 in memory of Hein Rejab, and in support of the Gaza Solidarity Camp and that was then active at Columbia University. As you'll remember, Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl who was brutally killed by the Israeli military, along with six of her family members in January of that year, has become one of the many symbols of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, about which McElmore has been extremely vocal. Not a big secret there. And at the second MetLife show, he used his platform to directly address his Jewish brothers and sisters, as he said in the audience, saying, quote, criticism of Israel, criticism of a party. being against genocide is in no way a criticism of you. This message is for peace, love, for all human beings to be treated with dignity, respect, and equality. So the Israeli-American Council

Starting point is 02:47:58 did not agree. We were like, no, absolutely not. And publicly called on Sheeran to drop McElmore from the tour. And then Robert Kraft, who owns the New England Patriots, boo, go birds. as well as Gillette Stadium, a venue at which the tour was scheduled to stop later this week, informed Sharon that McElmore had to go. The rapper noted in his public Instagram statement about the matter that Sherin had told him that Kraft called on his other stadium owner, Pals to increase the pressure to get Macamore out of there.

Starting point is 02:48:31 And it worked. According to Rolling Stone, the tour promoter, Messina Touring Group, was informed by the owners of these venues that, quote, they will not allow a concert to take place with McHmore on the lineup, which would result in the cancellation of the tour and impact hundreds of thousands of fans. So, Maca Moore got dropped, and he released a very good statement about it in which he was really generous to his old buddy, Shearing.

Starting point is 02:48:56 Like, this was not just a real appearing. Like, they're homies. Yeah. As hard as that is to imagine. Although, I guess I can imagine McElhorn at Sheeran getting along. I just don't like to. Yeah. There's some overlap there.

Starting point is 02:49:09 The Seattle vibes are very strong. Yeah, like just having a shitty tattoo off. Like, it makes sense. Yeah, get Ben Affleck in there. Kim has shared a picture of Ed Shearn's tattoos. It has rendered me speechless for the entire time. I had not seen these. Oh, dude, fucking unreal, man.

Starting point is 02:49:29 Like, I'm going to put them in the Zoom chat. Like, is there a fucking Ghana flag on this guy? There's so many things he's got Irish stuff. It's a big lion. He has a catcher. bottle. Lads on tour, fuck off. As a tattoo American, I am just so mad when I see this stuff.

Starting point is 02:49:47 This man has more money than God. A pokey bowl. Also, he is so bad at finding people to do good line work. That poker ball looks like shit. The pizza, the proportions are fucked. Everything's like bled, like fucking blown out on those weird picture frame pieces on the back. Like, it's just bad ink. Look, like, there's a difference

Starting point is 02:50:07 between a dumb tattoo and a shitty tattoo. and this man because I had dumb tattoos but like the lines work I've gotten tattooed in war zones but like at least they're competent I've watched you

Starting point is 02:50:20 with a guy with a car battery yeah yeah like the lip tattoo I got in a West Philly kitchen when I was 19 looks better than this man just higher situation the stick and poke

Starting point is 02:50:31 my buddy gave me some of these are watercolour guys as well so like they're not likely to get better over time is that a lion on his heart? Oh yeah, dude, I feel little bags.

Starting point is 02:50:44 I found his tattoo artist on Instagram because I'm a nosy bitch. And the guy's like, he just knows his career is kind of over. I feel like Ed Shearin is just paying his rent with his bad tattoos because you can't come back from that. Yeah, wow, man. God. Yeah, these are, I could do a whole, you could do a dissertation on this shit. Someone should.

Starting point is 02:51:04 Someone should, yeah, hit us up if you already have. I mean, I will do an entire episode about celebrity tax. I'm wondering if maybe my grandparents were right about tattoos. I could do a solid hour on Ben Affleck's back tattoo, but that's a respectable, that's a respectable shitty tattoo. That's a whole back piece that's just a phoenix and like nothing else on his body. Like that's a beautiful choice that says only good things about Ben Affleck, in my opinion. That's an honest man's tattoo.

Starting point is 02:51:34 That's for him. That's an honest man's got a whole tattoo. You know that's for him. Yeah, yeah. No one else ever got a moment of enjoyment out of that piece. Oh my God. Poor Jail-Lo. So Eddie Sheeran, very bad tattoos, but also a worm person.

Starting point is 02:51:55 Like, all this is happening. And Ed Shearin takes to Instagram because everyone's extremely mad at him for doing something really just not cool. wimpy and unfortunate and embarrassing. So his response, he sold out his boy. He blamed the concert promoters for dropping Macmore saying,

Starting point is 02:52:17 it wasn't me, it was these big mean people that I pay lots of money to book my shows. Yeah. And then I have leverage over because they want to make money. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:52:25 He wrote in one section, I am not complicit, which is absolutely what someone who is complicit would say. My I am not complicit shirt has a lot of people asking questions. Yeah, man, I don't know.

Starting point is 02:52:39 Remember the SNL skit was Scarjo that was making fun of Ivanka Trump being like, complicit? Oh, God, yeah. Right, yeah, deep cut. Like, if you have to say, I am not complicit, like, dog. Yeah, you already fucked up. But absolutely, like, complicit in trying to silence pro-Palestinian sentiment just because he's a coward. And also in bowing the pressure from billionaires, like his buddy Robert Kraft, who casually a former Epstein associate and also an old pal of Sheeran,

Starting point is 02:53:07 he performed at Kraft's wedding in 2022 to a very much younger woman. So, you know, I guess that's being non-political, hanging out with those type of people. And, you know, Sheeran, he can't pretend to have been blindsided, right? Like, Nakamore's pro-Palestinian stance is kind of like all he's known for. It's like the thing that he's doing right now, which is cool. We don't need another fish shop. One was enough. He's had a successful career.

Starting point is 02:53:36 He had his big 2010 hits. As McElmore said in his statement, he can afford to take this kind of hit. He can afford to use his platform to speak out for Palestinian people, for people who are being murdered and just destroyed, while some people would rather keep politics out of everything.

Starting point is 02:53:54 And his relationship dates back to that era. The two have collaborated on songs. Like Ed Sheeran was on a song that McElmore released for his daughter when his first kid was born in like 2015. So Ed Shearine knows Maclemore pretty well. He's definitely aware that the rappers become one of the loudest pro-Palestine voices in mainstream pop. And Shearin is worth like $400 million.

Starting point is 02:54:18 My God. How did we let that happen? Internationally tolerated pop star. Oh, my God. All I knew is he did a, he had that song in that Hobbit movie, which is how I heard of him. And then suddenly he's got almost half a billion dollars. What the fuck did you people do in between? Dude, the radio.

Starting point is 02:54:34 How did this happen? There's wild stuff happening on the radio, dude. It's like a whole other world. He is very much like America Beasts pop star. Yeah, okay. It's dicey, right? But one of the reasons he reached for to explain why he kicked his old buddy off of this tour for saying the forbidden, forbidden words, was that he had to keep touring because his crew depends on him.

Starting point is 02:54:57 Ed Shearren employs a lot of people to bring his nonsense on the road. And it is good to acknowledge that workers need to be paid no matter what kind of nonsense is happening. But like Eddie, like you could just pay him. Like, just give money. You got $400 million.

Starting point is 02:55:11 I mean, that is quite a lot of money. You got a smog pile of cash at your house. Like, just fucking, like, I'm not casual about like

Starting point is 02:55:19 the creators, oh, just pay for it yourself thing, but like $400 million, you could pay everyone's salary for that show and still have basically $400 million.

Starting point is 02:55:27 Right? Send him to Bali. Yeah. You could also just score a huge dub. Like I would, I don't think I've ever consciously heard an Ed Shearren song. But if he'd done that, I'd have been like, okay, cool.

Starting point is 02:55:39 Here's the thing, I don't like McLemore, but I have been forced to be like, oh, wow, that's a respectable person with moral courage. And I'd have to say that about Ed Shearan if he hadn't fucked up his response to this. You could make me, I could be miserable right now, Ed. I could be acknowledging you have worth as a human being, but I don't have to. Thank God. Well, no. The ways in which he has fumbled this are just, it's becoming not just like a blip.

Starting point is 02:56:02 It's becoming a generational fumble. because his entire tour is just in the toilet. Like hours after the news broke that Macamore got got, four of Ed Sheeran's other supporting acts dropped off the tour in solidarity with Macomore. Including his backing band. His own band, Quay, his tour. That's the funniest part.

Starting point is 02:56:24 Like, it's so good. And they also were all like, you also free Palestine, you fucking idiot. He came out looking so bad. He lost Aaron. Roe, who's Irish, Lucas Graham, Danish, a guy named Finnis,

Starting point is 02:56:38 who is American, but, you know. He's Billy Elish's brother. Yeah, I learned this against my will yesterday as well. There you go. Well, okay.

Starting point is 02:56:47 I'm clearly up on the pop men. Yeah. And Billy Eilish has spoken out against the genocide in Gaza and is pro-Palestine, so it makes sense. Sick. You got to wonder, like,

Starting point is 02:57:00 he hired a bunch of Irish musicians, first of all, and I was like, surely they'll be quiet about politics. Yeah, if the Irish have a reputation is for being quiet about stuff like this. Yeah, famously, especially Palestine,

Starting point is 02:57:13 there isn't any kind of overlap, any current solidarity efforts. One of the, his backing band, I found out through their statement, as that they're founding members of the Irish artist for Palestine movement. Like, what did you think? Probably could have Googled that, Ed.

Starting point is 02:57:31 I love he literally didn't Google, like anyone, but well before making his cowardly little thing like where where does everyone else stand on this and you got to wonder like this has never come up when you're at the bar like literally no one you've ever spoken to is like oh yeah so ooh the news you're going to Robert Kraft Stadium right the guy who rents his plane to ice to deport people like the fucking rapt patriot jets takes people to be fucking deported it tears families apart like you think your buddies aren't going to have a problem with this? Like, wild. It's that, like, so many of the statements all said, like, we know he's giving us this huge opportunity. Like, it's a stadium tour. Like,

Starting point is 02:58:13 there's going to be all these hundreds, thousands of fans. And they all, it's really, it's really impressive that all these bands were just like, look, this is kind of going to fuck us, but some things are more important. And it also just makes age sharing look like even more of a bitch, because he has so much money. And, like, You can't even, you can't be cool for one minute. Like, all of your friends just bailed on you. Everyone can see you being the worst. And McElmore, just today, I think it was today, he posted that he's donating all the money that he got paid for those two shows to six organizations that are working to help Palestinian people.

Starting point is 02:58:53 So he's, Macklemore is like, mackling even harder and better. He's Macklemore. God damn. You know it. How did the, how do they? He was making the correct amount, man. Like, we were all wrong. Yeah, we were all wrong.

Starting point is 02:59:08 We're not familiar with his game. But thankfully, we were all pretty much right about Ed Shearhan. At least there's that. I guess, like, maybe I'll do a full episode about this at some point, but I have found some people on the internet left's response to this to be frustrating, which is shocking, right? People who are never wrong. Culture is important.

Starting point is 02:59:26 Anyone who is arguing with you seriously the culture is not important is not a serious person. Like if we look at the movement against apartheid, right, and the role that culture and music and sport played in that, and so, like almost every other liberation movement in the 20th century had a cultural element to it. If you're going to really be like a fucking crass materialist in 2026, just, like, don't engage with those people. I know I'm engaging with them here,

Starting point is 02:59:53 but it's a deeply unsirious response. Like, there's, not everyone lives on Twitter or Discord, like seeing, This news is on ESPN. This news has broken containment from the lefty internet. And like any normal person who reads, oh, this guy just said some nice stuff and said free Palestine and he got kicked off this big tour. Like that's kind of weird.

Starting point is 03:00:14 Like, why is that? Why can't you just say that? Yeah. Like I think they're even discussing it on Fox News. And Jesse Waters, that, you know, sentient douchebag was like, well, you just did free Palestine? I mean, that's allowed freedom of speech. Tucker Carlson's going to endorse Michael Moore next.

Starting point is 03:00:29 Oh, fuck. This is the trouble, right? All left to say, you know. So what have we learned? It's always free Palestine. Ed Sheeran is a worm person, again, to quote our internet daddy, Zach Woods. And McElmore, you know, just keep on Macklin, babe. You're doing amazing.

Starting point is 03:00:49 You know what? There's a non-zero chance. We will have an advert that includes the music of Ed Shearron after this. If that happens to you, it's your own fault for the cookies in your browser. And we're back. Let's start with Saudi Arabia. On September 8th, Saudi oil structure in the Jazean region was targeted and struck by Houthi missiles. At least 73 people were wounded, and oil assets in the Abha and Najran regions were hit as well.

Starting point is 03:01:27 NASA satellite shows significant damage to the Jazan Refinery and other infrastructure. This is significant because Jhzan is located on the Saudi side of the Red Sea, which provides an alternate route for them to transit their fuel and avoid the straightest. of Hormuz, despite the Trump administration's claims and some reports that, you know, traffic has been trending up as the U.S. Navy escort ships through. Traffic at the strait is still disastrously unreliable. In 2025, about 21 million barrels a day we're moving through the straight at this point that year.

Starting point is 03:01:58 And right now, we're barely breaking 5 million barrels most days, right? So that's a significant drop still. Any infrastructure that has allowed Saudi Arabia to bypass the Strait of Hormuz has thus assumed extra importance in the last couple of months. So these strikes have at least temporarily forced Saudi Arabia to shut down their east-west pipeline. And this is one of the largest pieces of oil infrastructure on the planet. It goes across some very high mountains. And it's effectively impossible to defend in its entirety. Right. It is too big to be adequately defended either from small infiltration teams, which hasn't happened yet, but very well might at

Starting point is 03:02:36 some point in the future. You know, they've got some options for that. But right now, they're doing quite well, striking them with ballistics and drones. Per an article in the new Arab, quote, The kingdom is still able to export part of its oil, which is piped to Yanbo, and then exported either via the Suez Canal or Egypt's Ainsokna, where it is carried by another pipeline to the eastern Mediterranean. The other option for Saudi Arabia is embarking on a dangerous journey through the Hormuz Strait, where Iran has repeatedly attacked commercial shipping.

Starting point is 03:03:03 And, you know, how long is the east-west pipeline going to be shut down? I think you'll probably hear. fairly soon, maybe even by the time you hear this, that they've got it going again, the problem is we're not likely to see it returning to anything like full capacity, and it's going to be going off again. Like they're going to keep hitting it, right, is my contention. So this is not, and it's like the straight, right? This doesn't mean that the pipeline shut down for good. And likewise, when you hear there's shipping stuff through it again, that doesn't mean the problem is over, right? It means this is yet another piece of world critical oil infrastructure

Starting point is 03:03:38 that is kind of flickering on off like your router when the internet's fucked up, right? Like, that's the problem the world is dealing with right now. So this adds fuel to what has already been a long building calamity. And I don't need to inform anyone of, like, how critical oil and gas is to the basic infrastructure that makes civilization possible. The thing I am focusing on a lot right now because it really concerns me is what we're seeing happen with fertilizer costs. Fertilizer costs have skyrocketed as a result of the shedding off of the strait already.

Starting point is 03:04:07 earlier this year, there were serious worries that this would cause a massive food crisis in parts of Southeast Asia and Africa, which relied heavily on nitrogen shipped through the Strait of Hormuz to make fertilizer. And the good news is that the worst of this immediate crisis may have been averted, or at least has been averted for the present time, although not without cost, as this piece in the Financial Times explains. Quote, Egypt and Nigeria increased their urea exports by 98 and 81 percent respectively over that period, according to the International Trade Center, a joint agency of the UN and the WTO. The U.S. and Russia grew their share in key markets the data shows, while China also increased its exports. Analyst warned that fertilizer prices were rising to unsustainable levels for

Starting point is 03:04:47 some of the world's poorest countries. New suppliers emerged and supply change adjusted to a certain degree, but there has been a cost. For many developing countries, the challenge is shifted from finding supplies to being able to afford them. Pamela Koch-Hamilton, executive director of the ITC, told the Financial Times. And so what you're seeing here is basically a number of countries, including Nigeria, the United States, China, have kind of responded to this crisis by massively increasing the exports of things that are ingredients to fertilizer that have been cut off by the straight. And that's allowed farms to keep going and the immediate beers to be sort of allayed. But it's come with a tremendous cost, right?

Starting point is 03:05:25 And as a result, you are seeing import prices rise for urea alone amongst about 70% in Q2 of 2026. And in some parts of the world like Brazil, the cost of importing sulfur has risen by almost 200%. What we're looking at here is basically we can keep food production at the levels that are necessary to sustain the population, which was something people were worried about, but cost of food is going to rise and keep rising massively, right? And this is not just tied to, like, fertilizer.

Starting point is 03:05:55 One of the other issues for in terms of ag prices right now is that diesel has jumped up by an absolutely insane amount, right? like diesel fuel has gotten way more expensive than other kinds of fuel. And diesel fuel big ag in the United States uses to fuel combines and tractors and everything else that you need to grow and harvest two of the largest commodities that our country produces, soybeans and corn. For an article by the AP, American diesel prices are now 60% higher than they were before the U.S. and Israel launched their war against Iran in late February when the national average was about 3.76 per gallon,

Starting point is 03:06:26 according to AAA. Prices quickly climbed is the cost of crude oil, the main ingredient in diesel, as well as gasoline, rocketed amid disruptions to tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. Farms that are their cash-strapped. They're the ones that are having to figure out what to cut to make this work. Paul Mitchell, an agriculture professor at the University of Wisconsin said. There are a lot of farms facing that. And this is, again, not a, there's not going to be food in the immediate future problem, but this is a food is going to continue getting more expensive. And you're also, this is going to contribute to a number of problems that, like, agriculture has been having for a while. Like when fuel costs increase,

Starting point is 03:07:00 you start seeing maintenance deferred. When fertilizer gets more expensive, you start seeing like farms use less of particularly phosphates. And that kind of builds up like a level of debt that, you know, you can do that for a few seasons, but eventually it's going to start affecting yields, right? And that's all kind of colliding with the fact that as a result of climate change, particularly in Europe, you have like massive amounts of crops like wheat, barley, maize, and oats, not just Europe, the United States, too. You've seen huge crop losses that are kind of unprecedented. in recent times almost as a result of climate change. So all these kind of things are forming together into a perfect storm for what I think is going to be both increasing for the foreseeable future, food costs in the United States, not really shortages in the United States, but there are going to be shortages increasingly and other parts of the world. This is not a gets better soon problem or collapses right away problem. This is a things are going to keep trickling worse and worse than you're going to see sudden food shocks kind of thing. So I have my, my eyes on this situation quite a lot. It does worry me. And it is all rooted back fundamentally,

Starting point is 03:08:06 not just to our war of choice in Iran, but to climate change as well, although those are both very tied. I don't know, in less depressing and existentially frightening news, the Houthi shot down a Saudi F-15 today. There's a photo of the wreckage. And I don't think there's a lot of doubt that it's legitimate. In a statement, a Houthi military spokesman, Yaya Sari, said that the group shot down a Saudi F-15 fighter that was carrying out hostile operations. in the airspace of Marib province and that the jet had been targeted by a locally made air-to-air missile. It doesn't look like, and I certainly haven't seen any convincing evidence, that this had anything to do with the anthropic story, James mentioned earlier.

Starting point is 03:08:43 There's other kinds of locally made air-to-air missiles, right? Yeah. We're not talking about that. We're probably talking about something that was rebuilt or repurposed, right? Yeah, they have a history of doing that. Yeah, they've been doing that for a while. This is not, it's not all AI. Don't like just conflate these two stories in your head and think that they're evidence of the same thing, right?

Starting point is 03:09:02 Yeah, agreed. It's also worth noting that the same day that the Houthi shot down that F-15, Saudi Arabia accused the Houthis of attempting a drone-based attack on Mecca, which they say was shot down by Saudi air defenses. Colonel Turkey al-Malki, spokesperson for the Saudi coalition in Yemen, called attacks on Mecca a red line. The Houthis were previously accused of having tried to strike the Holy City back in July of 2017, but claimed to have been aiming for King Fod Air Base. base, and they deny these new allegations as well, saying there is no threat from Yemen to the holy sites, our operations target its oil facilities and military facilities, and are far from holy sites. I don't know that I think the Houthis really try, I can certainly believe something like hitting Mecca because it fucked up or something, but like I don't really think they

Starting point is 03:09:44 would go after just like random shit in Mecca. That doesn't seem like the Houthi move. I don't think it would really help them in their cause, but, you know, I guess anything's possible. Yeah, it does seem like a weird one. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the United States War of Choice on Iran and generally what's happening in Iran, I guess. I want to begin with on the day that we're recording, which is Wednesday the 16th of September, I guess I'll just add a little note here that if you see things that are auto-translated, especially on eggs.com, the everything website to say the 25th of September, that is because GROC has not grasped that a different calendar is used in Iran. And so the months won't line up.

Starting point is 03:10:22 But what we're looking at here is a general strike that we're called today on the 16th of September by an alliance of Kurdish political groups. They started talking about this a few days ago. It's a coalition that includes the KDPI, the PAK, PGA, Habat and two of the Kamala parties. The strikes, which are happening today, right, and there are pictures of like closed markets, closed stores, chiefly in eastern Kurdistan, right, the Kurdish region of Iran. The strikes are in part a memorial to Jinna Amini. Jinna Amini is sometimes referred to by her Persian name, which is Masha, but her family called her Jinnah. She was Kurdish, and that is important. Today, the 16th is

Starting point is 03:11:08 the anniversary of her murder by Iranian security forces. On the day before the anniversary of her murder, Iranian security forces began flooding her hometown. I mean that in both a literal and metaphorical sense. They released water from a nearby dam to block access to the cemetery where she is buried and then blocked access themselves with security forces to the main entrance. Previously, her own family have not been able to visit her grave on the anniversary of her murder. Meanwhile, in Iran's prisons, some women prisoners have gone on hunger strike to mark this anniversary. If you're not familiar with Jinnah Amini, she was 22 years old when she was killed by Iranian Morality Police after having been detained for improperly wearing her hijab on a trip to Tehran.

Starting point is 03:11:53 She was Kurdish, and we can see from other photos that she only wore hijab when it was something like she felt like she had to do, right? Like we can see her sometimes at like family weddings and things and traditional Kurdish dress. Her murder, of course, sparked a massive protest cycle, which took up the Junjan Azali slogan, which is used by the Kurdish freedom movement. It means woman life freedom. The words woman and life are like etymologically connected in Kurdish. Unfortunately, the slogan has kind of been divorced from,

Starting point is 03:12:23 the revolutionary context. Yep. And kind of commodified by a lot of people who I think it came from Iran or are ignorant of the the woman's revolution in Kurdistan, perhaps. Also, I mean, there was that like Hillary Clinton thing, right? Hillary Clinton, yeah.

Starting point is 03:12:39 Hillary Clinton has bought the film rights to the book, Daughters of Kobani, which is about the YPGA. Luckily, we have not seen a Hillary Clinton take on that yet. We'll see. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's still time. Yeah, it'd be real good if you. she could do something useful for people in Kobani.

Starting point is 03:12:56 Finally, another perfect role for Chris Pratt. God. What's that lady, Gina Caruso? Hopefully not. The protest cycle resulted in a massive outbreak of state violence, right? I have met several people who lost friends, family members, loved ones, who were tortured, or threatened with tortured themselves, both at the border here and in the derringing gap. This call for protests is brave because the Iranian state hasn't lost its capacity for violence against its own people, right?

Starting point is 03:13:30 It has continued to execute people. It is continued to rule through fear throughout the United States bombing campaign. The United States, if that was even a goal, has not been successful in doing that. This call for strikes comes at the same time as Buffalo Talibani, ahead of the P.U.K., one of the most influential parties in southern Kurdistan, met with Iran's foreign affairs. Minister in Tehran, this will likely signal an even harder time to come for anti-regime Iranian Kurdish groups. So the Rajalati groups, groups from Eastern Kurdistan that we've spoken about, have camps in southern Kurdistan, in Iraqi Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Autonomous Region, right? Last time Talibani had a meeting with Iran, they moved into their camps. Since then, Iran has bombed those camps, including this week. It seems like this time they might have to move.

Starting point is 03:14:21 entirely out of Kurdistan. I heard there's a plan to send them to Albania, but I haven't been able to confirm that. The Puk is in a very difficult position here, right? It got absolutely battered by Iranian drone strikes, and the United States did very little to help it, right? Trump has this whole animus against Kurdish people that we've discussed at length before here, and so it's really in a very difficult position. We also found out this week that the United States consulate in Abil's sustained damage during one of the Iranian drone attacks. This is part of the part of a more broad realization of the damage done to U.S. bases and assets as the DOD's Inspector General report was released this week. We also learned that, quote, the Department

Starting point is 03:15:02 of War estimating the cost of Operation, fuck, what do they call it? Epic, it's not Epic Fail, but that's what it is in my head. Epic Freedom. No, it's not. Fury, Epic Fury, that's one. Operation Epic Fury. Video game ass war. Yeah. Operation Epic Fury to be 33.4 billion as of June 29th. And that from February 28th to June 30th or 7, US service members were killed in action and seven were killed in non-hostile events during OEF combat operations.

Starting point is 03:15:34 During that same period, 417 service members were wounded in action. As we commented, things have not been going great for the Saudi-backed government of Yemen. They lost the Port City of Mohe and Mayun, an island in the Babel-Mendab Strait, This is obviously an issue, as Robert spoke about, right, because it will continue to see

Starting point is 03:15:55 shipping harassed and will further lock down global trade. According to the United Nations, 80,000 people have already been displaced by the sort of resumption of full-scale hostilities in Yemen. Talking of Yemen, this week we found out via Anthropics Threat Intelligent Report that the Ahuthis had been talking to Claude. Specifically, they'd been talking to Claude about the development of ballistic missiles. Their report identifies them as a group in northern Yemen. They tried to develop, quote, a guided rocket that used a commodity phone class flight computer with final phase

Starting point is 03:16:32 homing guidance, as well as a multi-stage ballistic missile with a stated goal range above 2,000 kilometers, and a multivariant missile referred to as the R-2000 that included a hypersonic glide vehicle variant. Anthropics said Assevka blocked many of their requests but not all of them. The actors used a variety of tactics to evade our safeguards, including hiding their goals and the products of software was meant for. And they split their work across multiple sessions, so no single session revealed their full intent. This is fairly funny, right? They were like on there being like, what if I wanted to build a hypersonic glide food delivery vehicle for better door dashing? And off Claude went. They know that the group test fired a rocket and they know that it

Starting point is 03:17:17 failed because a few hours after the test fire, they log back into Claude to ask why it had failed. Oh dear. That's fun. That is very funny. It also doesn't point to surface to air missiles. This report is bonkers. I think we will do a whole episode on it.

Starting point is 03:17:32 We see Chinese weapons companies pretending to be US firms trying to develop a whole pitch deck for an anti-torpedo system, like including asking for like a slide, a pitch deck slide and technical documents. We also see Russia trying to use it to build software from autonomous drone storm, that they trained on combat footage to avoid Russian systems and to geolocate and attack Ukrainian drone operators. This is the future that we live in now. That's super concerning. Yeah, Robert and I will do an episode on this because Robert and I have both spoken to people in Myanmar at great lengths who are attempting to develop weapon systems outside of the world. of military industrial complex, right?

Starting point is 03:18:17 Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, this is pretty scary shit. There's been a lot of AI kind of news and a frenzy around AI in the news this past week, especially in the wake of a high-profile employee resignation at Anthropic, citing safety alignment concerns, which also follows the widely publicized hugging face incident hack by Open AI agents. Just this past week, multiple tech CEOs, including Dario Amade, Sam Altman and Elon Musk have joined in calling for a regulatory, quote-unquote, slowdown of AI development.

Starting point is 03:18:53 But not all tech CEOs agree on this. Others like Palantiers Alex Karp and meta-CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as well as the Navidia CEO, have called for the opposite. Zuckerberg has said to accelerate rather than slow down AI development, as his own AI model muse has struggled to catch up to where Anthropic and OpenAI are at. earlier this week, Alex Carp told CNBC, we can't pause AI development because of the threat of China and because AI will be a quote-unquote bonanza for the U.S. economy. But you see this China thing a lot is one of the main reasons why we cannot enforce a quote-unquote slowdown or a pause on development

Starting point is 03:19:34 is because then China could get ahead. This is one of the justifications that people in Trump administration have been saying to oppose efforts for a regulatory slowdown. Trump has, very loudly been against this the past few days. True thing that the only, quote, controls or guardrails AI needs is a strong and smart, high IQ president and has compared this quote unquote AI hoax to the global warming hoax. And House Speaker Mike Johnson has repeatedly shut down calls this week for Congress to take action and regulate AI. They can self-police.

Starting point is 03:20:08 They can self-regulate. They don't need the government to tell them to slow it down. If they want to slow it down, they should. But we cannot exact. We cannot have a moratorium on the development of AI, because then we will lose our edge to China. And that has serious national security implications for every American family. A few weeks ago, Bernie Sanders introduced legislation to ban the development and deployment of quote-unquote super-intelligent AI, with penalties similar to those for the unlawful development of nuclear weapons.

Starting point is 03:20:38 But this legislation also would temporarily pause advanced AI development until a federal federal. regulatory body can establish safety guidelines. Now, the tech CEOs are against this idea for multiple reasons. One, it would hurt their bottom line. They don't actually want a pause. They want this quote-unquote slowdown. Also, they don't want to face 20 years in jail for developing this extremely dangerous technology, which they are, you know, already doing. In an episode next week, I'll go into some more detail about what this proposed quote-unquote slowdown actually amounts to. It's basically self-regulating while also trying to get the government to weaken antitrust laws to strengthen Open AI and Anthropics' monopoly over this whole industry, right? Because obviously they

Starting point is 03:21:18 have their own incentives when they're calling for regulation. This regulation that they're calling for is going to be friendly to them as the big titans in the industry. People on both the right and the left have accused OpenAI and Anthropic of trying to employ a form of regulatory capture. It's something that Linda Khan has addressed, the former FTC chair, who posted a statement on Sunday, explaining that even without new regulation, the government already has the authority to charge companies and their CEOs for, quote, creating and releasing dangerous, unvetted, or defective products. We can and must pursue any new efforts alongside enforcing existing laws. Unquote.

Starting point is 03:21:59 So like I said, I'll go into more detail about this later next week in its own episode. But this is something that I'm sure you're going to hear a lot about these next few weeks leading into the midterms. as the White House and Congress will start meeting with these tech CEOs about regulation and other even local municipalities are planning to do the same, including here in New York City. Let's go in an ad break and then have two more little news stories before we close. We are back. So last week, the Republicans held their first ever midterm convention, and unfortunately, none of us could attend. Or rather fortunately, none of us could attend.

Starting point is 03:22:52 We saved a little bit of our sanity. Senator John Federman sent in a video message to the midterm RNC. They showed Hassan Piker's thirst trap on the Jumbotron. Oh, yeah. And during Trump's speech, the president promised to give every U.S. citizen adult $5,000 if the Republicans win the midterms. If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them,

Starting point is 03:23:21 because of our economic, tremendous economic success, like in history we've never had anything like what's happening, but because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000. I'm definitely filing this Sunday. How is this legal? Is this not just bribing the population?

Starting point is 03:23:52 Oh, yeah. I mean, like, Trump knows that it's literally impossible for the Republicans to hold on to the House or the Senate, so this will never actually happen. But still, it's crazy. And a few days later, House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters, quote, If you want more money in your pockets, you got to keep Republicans in charge. It would be really funny if the Democrats won both houses and then pushed through a 5,000. dollar bribe to the American people. Just nuke the economy,

Starting point is 03:24:22 fucking a trillion and a half dollars in added spending. Crazy bullshit. Just see what happens. Another really interesting tidbit about this is that according to an episode poll from September 14th, the public seems largely negatively polarized against a free $5,000. Because we know it's a scam.

Starting point is 03:24:42 Because it's obvious, because he's a liar. It is a remarkable place to have got when the economy is really shit when people are struggling, to be polling badly of giving people free money. Because he's our lyingest, lying-ass president. It's just like loan shard vibes. Yeah. 63% of respondents said they oppose the $5,000 dividend check from Trump.

Starting point is 03:25:05 Only 17% said they support it. My God. Pretty wild. You got to be so bad at your job to get Americans to hate money. Oh, my damn. $10 gasoline, price of eggs. They try to give away free puppies and people being like, no. They have, like, there's something wrong with them.

Starting point is 03:25:25 Now, there is one other thing that happened at the midterm convention, which is something I've been keeping an eye on because this has been a kind of pet issue of like the gross, racist online right for years. They're pushing it more right now. At the midterm convention, DHS secretary Mark Wayne Mullen told right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson, that Alon Omar married her brother, echoing the years-old conspiracy theory, which Omar has called absurd and offensive. Markway Mullin added, quote, something is going to happen. We know that she married her brother to try to bring him into the United States.

Starting point is 03:26:05 There may be more to this, the whole family migration, and possibly some illegal activity for them to come to the United States to begin with. But all of this were investigating. unquote. She's been a citizen for Mad Long, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, what could you eat? The conspiracy theory goes that she married someone to help bring them into the country before splitting. Like fraud. I'm fairly sure the form that you fill out for that has a question about that.

Starting point is 03:26:35 I'm not absolutely certain. Also, like, you can sponsor family members on a form I-130. If you're a U.S. citizen, you don't have to marry them. A few weeks ago, Trump did hint towards this by posting an article on truth social with a headline claiming that Omar was the subject of ICE quote-unquote enforcement proceedings with this article detailing that ICE denied a FOIA request for documents related to the immigration fraud allegations against Omar citing an ongoing investigation. Earlier this week, after the convention, both Tom Homan and H.E. Todd Blum. Lanch have also referenced this, quote-unquote, ongoing criminal investigation.

Starting point is 03:27:21 So I guess to wrap up, I want to talk about a couple more DHSOIG reports that dropped this week. One was the Chrome immigration facility in Georgia. What we saw was what we've seen there before, right? Overcrowding, disgusting conditions. Absolutely atrocious food safety precautions. Like literally just like ambient temperature stacked boxes of frozen chicken. just vibing, which parallels what I have heard from many, many, many people who have been in immigration detention, which is that food is dangerously bad, not just like not taste good,

Starting point is 03:27:54 like dangerous for human consumption. The one I want to focus on is the OIG report. It's called, quote, unannounced inspection of ISIS, Florida, soft-sided facility brackets, quote, alligator Alcatraz, unquote. They dropped this report on Friday, September the 11th, as one does, when one wants report to get loads of attention and coverage. The report found that employees had no idea what the standards for detainees were, let alone obeying them. Every housing unit was overcrowded, sometimes three times more than it should be in order to achieve the 75 feet per square person standard. Detainees were deprived of any stimulating leisure time and not given access to legal materials. Perhaps the most disgusting find is the use of these tiny cages.

Starting point is 03:28:42 Quote, between July 17, 2025 and January 18, 2016, FSFF, F, that's soft-sided facility, Florida, Ray, confined 79 detainees in small metal enclosures, each operating about 18 square feet of floor space for periods ranging from several minutes to nearly two hours. A practice unlike any OIG team has observed in ICE facilities. The use of such restrictive spaces is highly unconventional and does not align with standards for humane treatment. That's one way of saying it. These are cages that are four feet three inches by four feet three inches by seven feet nine inches.

Starting point is 03:29:17 And the staff called them calming areas. You have to see the pictures of these. Like you should put on yourself to look up, if you haven't already. Like look up pictures of these tiny cages. They're reminiscent of shit I saw in Saxonhausen outside of Berlin. Like that's not an exaggeration. They sell bigger dog crates for training your dog than these these farming areas. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:29:39 Like you couldn't lie down. And it's a metal crate in a Florida. It's a cage, yeah. Some of them are outside. Yeah, exposed to the sun. Yeah, I think that the one I saw that was outside was under a little roof area, but they'll still be unbearably hot, right? They also state that detainees told us they did not have access to clean drinking water

Starting point is 03:29:57 and could not clean their plastic cups. Drinking potentially contaminated drinking water from unclean cups could negatively impact detainee health, something I have also heard myself from detainees. They were allowed to shower three times a week. They were only allowed toothpaste when staff members applied it to their issued toothbrush. This is a facility designed to dehumanize people, right? I have been to prison camps all over the world than a longer prison camps from like brutal dictatorial regimes. That is what this is.

Starting point is 03:30:30 This facility won't last long because it's already closed. But one day this shit will be a museum where we send our children to understand the fucked up shit that we did to people. and they will feel a sense of shame. But Florida does not. Indeed, it is not something that seems to concern DHS, because, quote, DHS stated it did not have a contract with Florida to manage the detention space at FSSF. DHS indicated Florida detained illegal aliens at FSSF,

Starting point is 03:31:01 pursuant to its delegated authority under Section 287G of the Immigration Nationality Act, and therefore the state maintains authority of day-to-day operations at the facility, and that, quote, DHS stated a Section 287G agreement does not give the federal government authority over the physical operation to any facility or over the state employees except to the extent which they are performing the function of immigration officer. This is a crazy argument, right?

Starting point is 03:31:27 Like there are ICE logos all over this facility. These people are in immigration detention for a federal misdemeanor in some cases, for other cases just for not compliance with immigrants, regulations, right? Maybe some have committed crimes or misdemeans in Florida, but they are not being detained by a court in Florida for an offense in Florida. Florida is a contractor here, just like geo-group is a contractor. How are they not performing the function of an immigration officer? They're performing the function of a prison guard, right? So like someone like a geo-group,

Starting point is 03:32:00 yeah, prison guard, right? But like, but there are ICE immigration officers there, that absolutely are, right? What's worrying about this is, yeah, this facility is closed, but the baker facility, for example, is run under 287G. There are other people detained under 287G. And the line that DHS is taking is that there is no minimum other than that which the state decides to enforce in terms of the quality of these people's food, the way they can be mistreated, the way they can be tortured. Like, this is really alarming. And that is what I want people to take home from this. Like the conditions were bad and DHS is asserting that there's nothing, they can do about it. Like, it's one of these

Starting point is 03:32:42 pie in the sky legal arguments that the Trump administration has increasingly been making and sometimes sticks a landing on. And this one is wild. There is no minimum. It's such a chilling phrase. Yeah, like, I don't think it's possible to overstate how fuck this is. Immigration detention under Biden was fucking inhumane. Like, I spoke to hundreds. I interviewed someone on this show who had just left immigration detention. And it was horrific then, right?

Starting point is 03:33:08 they call it the ice box because they keep that place super cold. And it is something that I didn't, well, I mean, I'm constantly, I've underestimated how terrible shit could be in this country, but it has got worse and that should be a national shame. Well, that is all of our stories for this edition of executive disorder. Yes. Kim Kelly, where could people find more of your work anywhere online or maybe in flush space, I don't know, at a bookstore, perhaps.

Starting point is 03:33:41 Oh, yeah, I have some books. Flesh space. Give me a break, okay? Absolutely not. I don't know. Like, we're all internet people. I've been reading these anthropic reports all day. It's the only way I can think now.

Starting point is 03:33:54 Chapter the Matrix. Oh, my God. But if you do like old school analog books, I have created some of those. You can find Fight Like Hell and Fight to Win, the kids version of my radical labor history. It is out there.

Starting point is 03:34:08 The paperback is so much cheaper. Buy it for some kids, radicalism. I'm freelance, so I am a labor journalism mercenary. You can find me all over the place. And as of fairly recently, sometimes I pop up here in the cool zone. So, yeah, you can Google me, and we can argue about tattoos on Blue Sky or Instagram. And also, I just wanted to say there was a little update from Robert Kraft and Gillette and all that. How cool.

Starting point is 03:34:35 After McElmore had posted that he was going to donate a million dollars to these Palestinian organizations, Robert Kraft posted. Actually, before that happened, I talked to Ed, and we decided we're both going to donate $2 million. Also, I've been really cool to Palestinians, so meh. So internet bullying works is my final sort of takeaway for you guys. Yeah. Yeah. If you want to email us about Ed Shearing's tattoos, don't. Send him to me.

Starting point is 03:35:07 Yeah. You can find Kim at I Write OK on social media platforms everywhere. Goddames. Oh, no. But if you would like to email us about a story tip, you can do so. It is Coolzone Tips at Proton.me. We reported the news. I think the newsroom guy got like divorced or he's like broke up with his like girlfriend.

Starting point is 03:35:30 He did. He and Amanda Cypred are getting divorced. And the rumor is it's because. Because she's actually into women, so good for her. So poor one out. Honey. Good for her. Godspeed.

Starting point is 03:35:46 We reported the news. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Coolzone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia. Or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you. you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources where it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast. Here's what you missed. There should not be a single law enforcement agency. It does not have

Starting point is 03:36:30 body cameras. It's real. Black farmers have been under attack. This is just the latest example of them just slapping DEI on anything. It's raw. And I'm sitting here going, they are playing y'all for fools. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the black information that and download Roland Martin unfiltered on the IHart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHart podcast. Guaranteed Human.

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