It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 69

Episode Date: February 4, 2023

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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 hey everybody robert here um i recorded this with jason uh about two days before Wizards of the Coast put out an announcement completely backpedaling on everything they had been planning to do to the open gaming license. Wizards deauthorizing the 1.0 open gaming license. And I mean, what it looks like is a lot of people unregistered from D&D Beyond and a lot of people called in complaining and the numbers folks at Wizards panicked.

And as a result, they are completely folding on the plans to rescind or deauthorize the open gaming license. And in fact, have announced that they are making it, the exact terms they use are irrevocable. And yeah, that's good. Yeah, and they put everything under an irrevocable Creative Commons license. So this is all just breaking. But I think it's broadly good news. Anytime a giant company chooses to do something kind of crummy with a piece of what I would say is actually pretty meaningful intellectual heritage, and then they get slapped down and panic and reverse course, that's a good thing. It shows a number of things, one of which, probably the most important of which, is that the community of people who recognize the value in these kinds of games, in this pastime, this recreational activity, also fundamentally value the essence of what is open source ideology, which is nice. It's nice to know that the open source folks, we can still throw a punch every now and again, even if it's just a punch at Wizards of the Coast. So happy ending, everybody. Happy ending. Also, the good folks at Paizo sold out of eight months worth of Pathfinder books So that's nice, too.

Ah, It Could Happen Here is the podcast that you are listening to right now. I am Robert Evans. This is a show about things falling apart and sometimes putting them back together. And today we're taking a little bit of a different tact. In recent weeks, you've listened to us cover a wide variety of issues, from conflicts in places like Myanmar, to conflicts here at home in the city of Atlanta, to deep dives in history and all that good stuff that you know and love us for. Today, we are talking about a subject that is unusually close to my heart, Dungeons and Dragons. Now, I'm going to guess just given the nature of our listenership, a decent chunk of you grew up playing D&D. And

just because of how really shockingly suddenly it's become much more popular than it ever was previously and much more mainstream. A lot of you may have encountered it as an adult. There's a lot that's actually been written kind of sociologically on what Dungeons and Dragons is. And one point that some people will make is that it's kind of the first new game that we had, that human beings made up since like chess, by which I mean, you have had war games for a very long period of time, but the concept of a role-playing game and the way that D&D is where you're essentially sitting down with a group of people and engaging in an act of collaborative storytelling that's kind of an interesting fact you'll run into is that in the late medieval period, a lot of jousts had role-playing elements, including ones where like rulers and their court would dress up as the knights of the round table and act in character

as those knights. So elements of all of this stuff have existed for a while. But when Dungeons and Dragons kind of came together as a game for the first time, it was, it is kind of worth seeing it as something really new and valuable in the history of play and the history of human creativity. So as a result of that, I do kind of think, I personally think there's something a little bit sacred about that basic idea. And one of the things that's really interesting to me about the industry that grew up around Dungeons & Dragons is that there have always been a lot of people in it who I think feel the same way. And I think one of these people was a guy named Ryan Dancy. And Ryan Dancy was vice president in charge of Dungeons & Dragons at Wizards of the

Coast for a while. And he helped actually negotiate the sale of the Dungeons & Dragons at Wizards of the Coast for a while. And he helped actually negotiate the sale of the Dungeons & Dragons property to Wizards of the Coast when the company that had been distributing it fell apart. And Dancy was a big part of the institution in the year 2000 of what became known as the Open Gaming License. And basically what this meant is that the set of rules that D&D worked by at around 2000, which was, I think you would call it like 3.0 was the system in place, basically got elements of the mechanics got effectively open sourced. And so Wizards of the Coast went from what had been the previous move of the people who'd owned D&D, which was kind of to oppose people trying to make third-party content using the ruled source, to embracing it and allowing

it to do that freely. And now I'm going to introduce our guest, who is one of the people who is kind of one of the most influential folks in what happened after this. Because once the open gaming license came into effect, there's suddenly this galaxy of new games and supplemental materials that people start making, which, you know, Wizards is not profiting from directly, but which the hobby profits from. And one of the people who has been most influential in that is our guest today, Jason Bowman. Jason, you are the lead game designer at Piazzo and the creator of Pathfinder, which is the, I mean, it's not Dungeons and Dragons, but it uses as its base that kind of open gaming system. And it's what I play when I get the chance to sit down and play a role playing game. So first off, Jason, thank you for several thousand hours of my childhood and early adulthood spent playing

Pathfinder. Yeah, well, thanks for having me. And yeah, Paizo kind of spun off from Wizards of the Coast, you know, back in the early days of the open game license. And we were their official publishers of their magazine until that kind of came to an end. And then we started making our own game based off the open game license. And did I get all that right earlier? Do you have any kind of clarification you'd like to add before we move further into the

conflict? And there is a conflict. We're not just talking about how cool D&D and Pathfinder are. I think there's an interesting thing to note about games. Games are kind of weird when it comes to copyright and ownership. And it's kind of why the open game license is so important right so tsr the company that owned dungeons and dragons before wizards of the coast was pretty pretty litigious as you mentioned um but they ended up getting into kind of a bind

because you know the game itself is one that encourages people to make their own content to kind of homebrew stuff and invent their own stories. And what it comes down to is that, you know, ultimately game mechanics can't be copyrighted. That's been long held, that those sorts of things you cannot copyright. That's why you see so many versions of like Scrabble that aren't Scrabble.

Yeah, and it's why anyone can make a basketball team or a basketball league and play basketball you don't have to get the nba's approval to play fucking basketball exactly exactly so the open game license wasn't about giving everyone permission to use rules which is something they could already kind of do it was about giving them kind of a safe harbor a place that everybody involved kind of knew that this was all okay. No one was going to be filing frivolous lawsuits and that you could use kind of direct references without having to be a copyright lawyer or retaining a giant staff. It allowed a lot of very little businesses to kind of spring up making, hey, here's my cool adventure that I ran for my group. You can buy it and play it with your group now. Little things like that.

And I don't think it's for nothing that, number one, a huge thing, and this has become, as Silicon Valley has kind of turned more mercenary, this has become less of a thing, but a massive thing in the early history of Silicon Valley in the tech industry was the open source movement. You know, was the idea that a lot of people should be able to collaboratively work and iterate on things without having to worry about who owns the basic idea, right?

You know, Linux is a great example of this. And the ideology behind the open source movement was a big influence in the open gaming license. I mean, Dancy kind of admits that himself. There's a quote where he says that like, yeah, I think we need to embrace some of these ideas at the heart of the open source movement, because I think it will be a good business decision for Wizards of the Coast. It will, on the whole, even if we're not profiting directly from every sort of like thing that people make off of this, the fact that it's going to cause the hobby to explode will benefit us.

And I think he's been proven right in that because D&D has gone from this thing that like I got bullied for in high school to there's these massive podcasts, there's been TV shows that are just people playing the game. Like it has reached this level I never really expected it would

of like critical and, and mass acceptance, which has been really cool to see. It's been one of the things that I've been happiest about watching occur socially in the last couple of decades. Yeah. You can't disagree that the, the business case wasn't super tight,

right? The way that the OGL got all of the other game companies, many of which had their own entirely different games in the early two thousands, they all abandoned them and started making content for D and D. Um, and that just kind of carried forward a large swath of kind of the game industry, which is pretty cottage, right? There's a bunch of small players. There's not a lot of large corporations in here. Um, you know, uh, in fact, Wizards is by far the largest. And so you got a bunch of small game companies that are seeing this as a great opportunity to kind of play in the big pool. And a lot of them

follow suit. So obviously, the reason we are here today is that a Paul has been cast recently over what has up until now been kind of a lovely thing. Wizards of the Coast got a new CEO pretty recently, right? Yes. Cynthia Williams is relatively new. Yeah. And there is basically murmuring coming from the company that's like, we don't think D&D is properly capitalized. We believe that we are leaving money on the table here. And kind of in the wake of some of that stuff coming out,

they announced a series of changes to the open gaming license. And if you kind of want to take it from here and explain, because I've read and listened to a number of different folks, some saying like, well, it's not as bad as people are are fearing and some folks saying like this would effectively kill a huge chunk of the hobby and a bunch of the companies that have grown up in the wake of the open gaming license and i'm i'm interested in your take on what what wizards is doing here and what actually kind of is at risk so yeah i think you you you've clued into the start of this, which was in early December of last year, Hasbro earnings call. Cynthia basically came out and said D&D was under-monetized. And they had been spending the entire previous year really proliferating Magic the Gathering, which is their other giant brand, and kind of really making a lot of money,

like talks of like, it is a billion dollar brand. And as a result, you know, there was kind of some murmurings and some rumblings going through December, talking about a new version of the OGL. Wizards themselves came out on December 21st, so just a few days before Christmas, and said that a new OGL was coming and that it had notes in it about royalty reporting and, um, you know, mentioning that folks won't need to pay until later. Um, and that, um, you know, really this new license is only going to be to make books and PDFs.

So they said this on December 21st and the royalty part of that is was really quite challenging because it said if you make over 750 000 a year um you might have to pay a sizable percentage of your your your gross profit like 25 and that's terrifying which when you're talking about a business and and this is not the gaming industry does not run on huge margins um no no unless you're like making warhammer models that you're selling for 120 dollars for a piece of plastic that's tight yeah the margins are pretty tight um so saying like past you know 750k your company with however many employees has to give a quarter like that that'll sink people yeah i think a lot of companies the the larger ones couldn't sustain that right i mean i think

saying pay 25 of your gross over 750k just basically means make sure you only make 749 thousand dollars that year um i i do think that that is that is a real real dangerous thing to a lot of these businesses now for a lot of the content creators, this is never going to matter. But I do believe that part of this was, you know, seeing gigantic multi-million dollar Kickstarters happening and kind of going, where's our cut? Yeah, we want a piece of this. Yeah. And the answer to that is that, like, you know, it's problematic just crediting the creation of D and D solely to, to Gary Gygax, but like the people who came up with and play tested and made D and D a

thing. And then the people who iterated and changed and evolved it from, you know, the original game to a D and D, um, and the years of Thaco to, to 3.0, like,

like morally outside of like what I think is justifiable in corporate law and stuff like morally. I think it's fucked up to say that like some company forever gets a piece of that when what it is is like human beings coming together to try to figure out the most efficient way to run an engine for storytelling. I don't know. It's it's it's it's fucked up to me to think about it this way. So they announced this alteration to the open gaming license, and I'm going to guess those were some dark days at the PSO offices. So, yeah. Most of us at Paizo at that point in time were kind of on vacation, and we kind of just filed it away, and we're like, okay, well, it's a draft and they're just talking.

So, um, you know, we get to back, you know, from our break and it's the beginning of the year and this is now January 5th is when a bombshell article drops on Gizmodo by, uh, and they really laid out kind of what was in this proposed license, apparently having had portions of it leaked to them. And, you know, it confirmed a 25% margin, but maybe only 20% for Kickstarters, which then got confirmed by someone at Kickstarter on Twitter. Kickstarter on Twitter. And it also included a bit in there that there was a clause that said Watsi could, Wizards of the Coast, could use any of the content you create under the license for free, never having to pay royalties to you, never having to give you any credit. They could just take your work. And they phrased it in such a way that it sounded like it was, you know, well, just in case we make something similar, we don't want

to get sued. But yeah, and we're talking about just to clarify it for people. We're not talking about like if you introduce mechanics, because again, that that's not what this is. We're talking about if you create characters, if you create or if you build stories, they have a right to utilize that story that you've made. Things that are actually copyrightable, right? Stories, ideas and expressions are copyrightable, you know, but rules aren't. So that drops on the 5th and on the 9th, the full draft document leaks. And on the 9th, the full draft document leaks. And you've got streamers and influencers reading it live on YouTube.

And this thing just starts to snowball. And from the 9th forward, things start moving very quickly. On the 10th, a number of major kind of third-party publishers, these are folks who print with the OGL, announced that they were not going to go with that. And one of the largest ones announced, yeah, I'm not doing that at all. I'm going to create my entire brand new game. I'm leaving all of this behind. And the fervor on social media turned into basically a firestorm.

And it's really a sign of how much more, how many people both love and play versions of this game that there was so much media attention from like major media organs. Like this was not just, you know, those of us who are into gaming, you know, freaking out over this change that Wizards of the Coast has made. This was like, I mean, I was seeing it everywhere. Very few things have like broken as widely in my media in ecosystem as as this there was an article there was a story about it today on npr um so there was another one there was one other important aspect in the leak um that i think is really important one is that the new OGL could be canceled at any time with 30 days notice. And they were claiming that they were deauthorizing the previous OGL, which up to this point, everyone kind of assumed was irrevocable,

right? It had, it has clauses in it that say, if we ever put out a new version of this license, you can ignore it and continue to use this one. Right. But it uses this word in there that says you can continue to use any authorized version of the license. Yeah.

Never minding that the contract doesn't mention how you might deauthorize a license. So this draft of the OGL says that they're deauthorizing the previous version, which puts all of the work of the past 20 years into doubt. And at this point in time, the fans are revolting, right? There are a lot of folks canceling their subscriptions to D&D Beyond, which is kind of their in-house character generation tools that you pay a monthly subscription for. uh character generation tools that you pay a monthly subscription for um and things really start spinning out of hand to the point where dnd actually has to respond to it and and pull back um and kind of retreat from this and saying hey we're going to answer your questions what you saw was just a draft um you know and uh that was never supposed to leak. But it was at this point in time that we actually launched our own license. We had been talking to some of the other publishers, and by that I mean we, Paizo, to create a brand new safe harbor for folks to publish under.

Now, it's not going to be owned by us. It's going to be owned by a law firm that actually drafted the first OGL. But you started to see this giant fork happening where a lot of folks are just abandoning ship. And I mean, what do you think this means? Because obviously Wizards has already announced a new version of the of the OGL beyond like the one that got leaked, and I think are kind of in damage control mode, do you think this is something that like there is any way for them to pull back from? Or do you think that kind of the inherent instability

of the OGL, now that they're kind of making these claims that, well, we can actually change the deal anytime we want, has that sort of irrevocably altered the ground? I think that they've damaged a lot of people's trust in them. Right. Uh, I think over, over the past few weeks, especially when they went silent

and then frankly, the first retraction was really kind of awkward and filled with kind of like, well, we didn't lose. We won. This was great. Now we learned how to make a better license, right? They're clearly stepping back, stepping back, stepping back. And their most recent step back, which just happened, uh, you know, on the 18th. So, you know, a week ago, uh, or so, uh, basically said that they were going to release the core of the game to creative commons and their new

license was going to be irrevocable and last forever. But it still contains a lot of kind of poison pills, things like we are still deauthorizing the first version of the license. And we have this morality clause that says if we find your content offensive, we can just kill your license without. Yeah, which is fucked up because I mean, I don't think I need to explain why that's fucked up. That that puts that puts a lot of the most creative kind of projects to at risk. Like I got that's that's ugly. Um, but there's a lot of stuff that is frankly a lot more marginal and, and explores, you know, issues of the human condition that folks might want to explore in a game. And who's to say that someone at wizards might go, well, sorry, that's offensive to me. You don't get to make it. Um, I don't think anybody wants to invest their creativity and risk their business on what someone they will never have met. Thanks of their work. Yeah. The problem is not that like I want as the most offensive role playing games I can get. The

problem is like, well, who determines what offensive is? And it's a bunch of lawyers and businessmen at Wizards of the Coast. At least that's the worry, right? Like not necessarily that that's how it would work out, but you just you get no guarantee. not necessarily that that's how it would work out but you just you get no guarantee and this stuff this stuff evolves over time right you know what what is fine today may be problematic tomorrow we learn those things we evolve from them and we change but i don't think anybody wants to have kind of the this you know axe hanging over our head of like well sorry that's now offensive so we're going to kill the entire license yeah so where are we where are we now like it looks like paizo y'all are moving forward with the orc along with a number of other

people can you give me an idea of what that's going to look like because one of the things that that does concern me is um and this is a very selfish concern but like i grew very comfortable with you know 3.5 which is essentially the machinery that underpins Pathfinder. And it's one of those things like if I didn't play again for 20 years, I could probably sit down with the material in my head and run a campaign just because so much of that stuff is burnt into my brain. Are we like what is the mechanics kind of underlying the ORC and how is it going to be different from what we've gotten used to? So I'll say this. We're in the very early days on this. And what's happening right now is we are, you know, in coordination with a number of other publishers working with Azora Law.

And they are the people who wrote the original OGL and had, you know, fully intended for it to be a perpetual license. And we're working with them to create kind of a rules-neutral license that the entire game industry can use to share work. Because there's like a lot of nuance that was in the OGL that allowed different companies to share creative work together. And a lot of companies used it as kind of a bridging license, even if they weren't using Dungeons & Dragons at all. They would just use the license as a framework to kind of exchange ideas. And that's what we want the Ork to be. The Ork needs to be a license that allows everybody in the game industry to open up their content and share work with each other and iterate

and expand and grow. That's our real goal. And ultimately, we are not going to own it. No one's going to own it. We're actually going to try and find a nonprofit to administer the license going forward so that we don't ever have to worry about this again. Nobody wants to go through what we've been going through for the past three weeks. So that's kind of one half of it. The other half is what happens to Pathfinder. And obviously, you know, when it came to Pathfinder second edition, we rewrote the game from scratch and it is now fully our game. It's something we own and we control. So we feel pretty confident that we're just going to keep on rolling with Pathfinder. And ultimately, you know, we don't actually believe that the previous version of the OGL even can be

rescinded. Um, so I guess we'll see how that plays out. I can see this having an overall positive outcome just in that if we get this new kind of thing that creators can use, um, as a, as a core point to branch off from when they're making games that's

actually under solid legal footing, that isn't kind of reliant upon the whims of a publicly traded company, then in the long term, it's better for creators because it's more like the way things were for the first 20 years of the OGL. Do you, I mean, like, what do you see as kind of some pitfalls in sort of trying to make this happen, trying to move things in this kind of more productive direction? Well, I think you can always, you know, kind of fracture, you know, balkanize the market to the point where everybody has such a small slice of it that no one can really get the kind of numbers they need to succeed. Because you're right, it is a pretty small industry. The margin on printed media isn't exactly great. But I think a lot of these companies do have the numbers to survive. But I think that right now, everybody's trying to figure out

how to replace parts of what has just been lost. Everybody's trying to kind of go in their different directions right now. And some of that is going to be really good because I think we're going to get a lot of really great games. And I'm excited to see them.

But I do think that, I think one of the worries just for the industry is that they kind of all had one flag they were rallying around. And now everyone's running in different directions and hoping that after all of this shakes out everybody has kind of enough gamers to support a community I think it's going to work out I think that there's a number of standouts happening already um you know MCDM and Kobold are obviously racing to do things. There's a bunch of kind of known players in the industry.

Us, Kobold, Chaosium, Green Ronin, all of them are pretty big companies positioned to kind of have good player bases with great games and mechanics underneath them. So I think the big loser here is frankly Wizards of the Coast. think the big loser here is frankly wizards of the coast they you know up up until you know the end of this year or the the end of last year they were undisputedly the largest uh game company in the entire tabletop role-playing game industry and that's still true today but there's a lot of cracks in that armor and it does make me wonder how it's going to fracture out over time and how many of their fans, many of which never heard of Pathfinder, never heard of, you know, these other game companies, Call of Cthulhu and stuff are now suddenly exploring these games. And, you know, frankly, the wealth of smaller

Indian zine games that are out there, there's so much to play right now. And Watsi has just told their fan base, Hey, go check it out. It's interesting because it kind of speaks to something that I've always loved and also found kind of sociologically fascinating about tabletop gaming, which is you just brought up Call of Cthulhu, which is a game that I don't believe is under the control of the original company that it was made under. People have been playing versions of Call of Cthulhu for a very long time. Dungeons and Dragons has gone through multiple owners. Shadowrun, which I played a lot of as a kid, has gone through multiple owners. And the rule sets change and the company that is profiting from the official licensed material changes. But no matter what happens, even when those companies go under, the games keep going. And that's, there's something I think unique there that is, it's not the case even like, you know, there's versions of it that happens in PC gaming, but there's also this thing that happens

that a lot of gamers I know complain about, which is that like periodically, shit will get removed for whatever reason. A company goes under, a game is not supported, and that game is just gone. That little piece of culture is just gone. And it seems like so far, I'm not going to say in every case, because obviously there have been games that have, you know, people stopped playing and stuff in the tabletop space. But there's this continuity, you know, even in face of of changings of the guards in terms of like what companies are successful um of like people keep playing these the same games and iterating them and changing them and um i don't know that's that's always one of the things i found most inspiring about the way tabletop works yeah i. I mean, I do think the legacy of tabletop role-playing games is one of cooperation.

It was there from the start, right? You know, the, the moment Gary and his, uh, and Dave and folks, you know, got together and started turning their, you know, miniatures war game and giving characters to them. And everyone started building a story together. That spark was the start. Yeah. game and giving characters to them and everyone started building a story together, that spark was the start. Yeah. And it's carried through in a million different ways and a million different tables.

And even if, you know, the companies go under or disappear, people with those books are still playing those games. There's plenty of people still playing AD&D first edition, right? You know, they never left and they're fine with that. And I salute them. Yeah. Yeah. right you know they never left and they're fine with that and and i salute them yeah yeah i think about and again this is like one of the reasons this has such a place in my heart i i started playing ad and d but you know it was my friends and i would play at a at cub scout camp outs and we didn't have access to dice so we we had the rule books we had like the monsters manual and

the player's guide and we use those as jumping off points. And we would bring like a bunch of nickels and we would figure out ways like, okay, for this action, you got to get three heads out of five flips or something like that. And that's a success in this. And like so many people have stories like that, have variants of that, because it really is fundamentally what you need for any of these games, which is what makes them so durable is a group of people to want to sit around a table and tell a story together, which is rad. Yeah, I mean, there's nothing else like it, right? There really isn't. And that's why I think you're seeing so much fervor over this, because for a lot of people, this is very deeply personal.

Gathering together with your friends and telling a story together that's something you and your friends built and you know uh if you happen to find a way to make some money off of it great that's that's your creativity coming to life and frankly kind of having a big giant corporation come in and say hey where's my cut is not really very fun. No, and my heart goes out to you and your colleagues over how stressful this last three or four weeks has been. And I hope that we're past the worst of it. It certainly seems like what's going to come out of this is going to be pretty exciting.

So I'm hopeful, and it sounds like you're hopeful. Yeah, I think, you know, over the past couple of weeks, there's been a lot of sleepless nights and a lot of emergency meetings. But frankly, I feel more excited and energized about the future of Paizo, about the future of gaming than I have in quite a long time. So buy Paizo's games, pick up some Pathfinder books, go to your nearest game store and pick one up or two or three. Jason, anything else you want to plug at the end here? Yeah, you can learn more about Paizo and our games. That would be Pathfinder and Starfinder at Paizo.com.

We have a blog there talking about the Orc, and we'll undoubtedly have more to say about it here in the coming weeks as for me you can find me on all the various social media platforms at backslash Jason Bowman B-U-L-M-A-H-N thank you Jason both for sitting down for this interview and for all of the many many

countless hours I have spent playing games that you had a hand in making thank you Robert we'll have to get together and roll some dice together soon. I would love that. All right, everybody. That's a sowed. See you tomorrow. Welcome.

I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. since the beginning of time.

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lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian.

Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami.

Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, and welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast which today is only me and my guest, Nicole. And today we're going to be talking a little bit about immigration, about immigration policy over the last three or four years, and about some of the strange laws that impact it.

So Nicole is joining me. She works for Alotrolado. And Nicole, would you like to introduce yourself and explain a little bit about what you do? Hi, my name is Nicole Elizabeth Ramos, and I am the director of Al Otrolado's Border Rights Project, which is based in Tijuana, Mexico. Great. Okay. So I think perhaps to start off with, you could clue people in on a little bit of what you guys do, because you do some incredible work and it's very very valuable to border communities and I think a lot of people if they don't live in along the border might not be familiar with it. At El Torado we provide legal orientation to migrants that are considering seeking asylum in the U.S. We started off as a project that focused locally on migrants in Tijuana.

And over the years, we have expanded to serve migrants in Mexicali and then remotely in other cities along the U.S.-Mexico border, including Reynosa, Matamoros, Juarez, Piedras Negras, Laredo. And in this legal orientation, we're providing information about what are the current policies at the moment that will impact their ability to seek asylum in the U.S. or prevent them from doing so, or how these policies might be impacting their family composition. So policies that are related to detention or family separation. After we provide legal orientation, we are then identifying asylum seekers that fall into several vulnerability categories to provide additional accompaniment through this process. Because the

policies are shifting and changing and becoming more restrictive over time, it's very confusing and cumbersome to weed through all of the fuzz and figure out what you need to do in order to seek asylum in the U.S. So that's where we come in. And we provide the orientation in multiple languages. The border is a very diverse place. It is not just Spanish speakers that are coming, but people that speak Haitian Creole, French, Farsi, indigenous languages, Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish, and all of these people need access to information. That's one of the pillars of our program is that migrants have the absolute right to accurate legal information about the process that they will be entering. Among the asylum seekers that we work with, we also identify those that are in need of

shelter and make referrals appropriately to shelters for medical care. In some instances, we assist with obtaining medications or obtaining a needed surgery if the migrant does not have access to those resources, helping them obtain access to HIV medication or hormone treatment. And of those migrants, we are also connecting them with other supportive services from our partners that have shelters, that have programs where they're giving them basic dispenses of food because they are struggling with food insecurity, trying to create as much of a social safety net as possible because folks are waiting at the border for longer and longer periods of time. The border used to be a place that people passed through. Maybe they were here for a few days before ultimately they were able to present themselves at a U.S. port of entry to a U.S. official and enter the asylum process.

However, now we have individuals that have been waiting at the border for years who may not have work status in Mexico, may not be Spanish speakers, and are really struggling to meet their basic needs. And so we've had to expand our services from not just legal service provider, provider of legal information, but also providing humanitarian aid so that people can be healthy and as well as possible while they're waiting. Yeah, and it's incredibly valuable. And it's amazing how you guys have like can continue to step up and scale up as the federal government has continued to fail people. And I think if people haven't come to the border, they probably won't be aware of,

like you say, that diversity of people who come to the US-Mexico border. Like I remember a couple of years ago, I was working with an Aromo translator and we would speak to people who had come from Ethiopia, people who come from Eritrea. It's a very, of course, people coming from Ukraine now. It's a very diverse space,

which is something that kind of gets collapsed pretty often in border reporting, I think. Like all that diversity gets collapsed into just people are lumped together as migrants or people seeking asylum and and that's a shame because it's what makes part of what makes us so complicated but also what makes these border places such kind of interesting and special places and i like what you said about all the sort of services that are provided as well it's incredible to look at how these services are provided by a huge broad

network of like volunteers of non-profits of ngos as well as some government agencies and how people have stepped up consistently especially in the last i guess six seven i don't god it did seem such a long time uh it's like since 2017, how people have stepped up to help each other along the border. So perhaps if we go back, you and I were just talking before we started. If we go back to 2018, which people may or may not remember

was the midterm and the middle of Donald Trump's presidency. And a large caravan of people, a group of people, particularly large or remarkable, a group of people arrived at the border and became kind of the center of something of like a and they became i think their their arrival was used by both political parties as part of their sort of midterm messaging um and i think that was maybe for some people especially if they're younger and had been watching their news a sort of first introduction to the asylum process.

So can you explain kind of how asylum is supposed to happen? And then maybe we can get into some of the weird and bizarre things that have been happening to it in the past three or four years. Asylum is supposed to be a system that's managed first by government authorities under Title VIII, Section 1225 of the United States Code. A U.S. immigration officer at a port of entry or at any point in between ports of entry, such as Border Patrol, when they are presented with a person that expresses that they have a fear of return to their home country, that they fear persecution, to refer them along the track to be processed as an asylum seeker. Now that can mean that that person is still detained for the entirety of their asylum case and sent to an immigration detention center. that could also mean that that person is given

court paperwork to show up in immigration court at a later date to begin the process of explaining their case to the immigration court and getting a final decision. Over the years, beginning at the end of the Obama administration, continuing through the Trump administration, and also continuing even now into the Biden administration, we have seen policies issued by CBP, which restrict access to the port of entry for asylum seekers. Initially, it started out in 2016, where the Obama administration came up with a policy called the metering policy, which was known as the waitlist, which required at first only Haitian asylum seekers to put their name on a waitlist with Mexican immigration authorities. And then

they would be called in groups to enter the U.S. And that was in response to the exodus of immigrants that we saw coming from Haiti and through Brazil in 2016. The metering list was later expanded to apply to all nationalities, including Mexican migrants that were trying to flee their own country, including those that had legitimate claims for protection of being persecuted by members of their own country, including those that had legitimate claims for protection of being persecuted by members of their own government, everyone had to still get on this list. That policy was extended in an ideological framework when the Trump administration came up with a program known as Remain in Mexico, and just building upon that idea that it is okay to make asylum seekers wait in territory in which they fear persecution because a lot of people fear persecution in Mexico yeah um and

under the remain in Mexico policy also known as the migrant protection protocols MPP they um we always refer to it as the migrant persecution protocols because it feels it's extremely Orwellian, right? Like people like to use Orwellian wrong, but that, that one, uh, that one's pretty 1984. Yeah. This program required asylum seekers, uh, that were entered. They were placed into a program called MPP. They were given a court date and people paperwork to appear at court in their nearest border city where there was an immigration court at some date in the future. It could be a few

weeks. It could be several months. It could be a year. And in between their court hearings, they would be required to remain in Mexico. They could only go to the port of entry on the date of their court. They would be transported to court and then transported back to Mexico after their court, leaving people in Mexico in limbo for years. And then when the pandemic came, we saw the border close entirely under Title 42. The Trump administration billed it as necessary to protect the American public from migrants that could be carriers of COVID-19. But this is really no different than other immigration legislation that we've seen throughout history, which tends to paint immigrants as vectors of disease, and we need to just keep

them out at all costs. And under Title 42, it's just a wall of policy. People try to present themselves at the port of entry and they're turned away. People enter the U.S. at different points that are not ports of entry without inspection and get caught and they're expelled immediately back to Mexico, or if it's not a country that Mexico will accept an expulsion, they could be detained in U.S. custody and then expelled back to their country of origin without any opportunity to speak with an asylum officer. Right now, we have been dealing with Title 42 in a process where a certain number of people are exempted from this blanket denial every day. And different ports of entry along the border participate.

Each port of entry has its own cap, numerical cap. Miracle Cap. And initially when this program started in May, the names of people that were being submitted as exemptions, the asylum seekers names, were submitted by civil society organizations such as El Otro Lado. El Otro Lado, just this year alone, we've submitted around 11,500, I'm sorry, in 2022, 11,500 exemption requests um and that was from individuals from 29 different countries speaking just over 30 different languages so now though the system has recently changed to a smartphone application known as cbp1 which requires migrants to download this application to their smartphone, assuming that they have a smartphone and then complete this lengthy application, um, that, uh, requires them to upload a photo, um, for facial recognition software and wait for an appointment date to

be made available. And they have to keep entering the system multiple times until an appointment date becomes available, waking up every morning at 5.30 for when the new slots are made available at 6 a.m. And the problem among many problems with this application is that right now it's only available in Spanish and English. So if you speak any other language, you are not able to access it. And we have, to give you an example, we have an online survey where people register or try to seek help from us. We have over, since April 21, over 15,000 unique, 50,000 unique responses. Around half of those are from Haitian Creole speakers cannot access this app to get an appointment. The other issue is that the facial recognition software that's integrated into the CBP One app, there's a lot of studies throughout the years about how this software will lead to false positives or failure to recognize for individuals that have Afro

descendant features or individuals that have more indigenous features. And we have seen this firsthand. So many of our Haitian clients are unable to even complete the profile and they are taking photos with cameras that have a decent you know lens capacity and they still can't get past the facial recognition software yeah it's just like a layers on layers of sort of I don't know sometimes it's just them being like ineffective sometimes it just seems cruel let's go back a little bit to title 42 because that word's been thrown around a lot right um title 42 isn't an issue it's not immigration law is it it's it's public health law is that right i guess it's public it's a public health policy that's part of immigration law

yes it's public health policy that's being applied in the immigration context to close the border yeah and then one thing that i think uh we've seen a lot recently is like uh one of the worst accounts on twitter which is the border patrol union likes to they do occasionally like tweet their own losses which is kind of funny um but um they like to throw out these statistics right constantly about encounters at the border can you explain how under title 42 each encounter might not be a unique individual yeah absolutely those individuals are overcounted because people will make multiple attempts to try to enter the U.S. because they're so desperate.

It's a dystopian hellscape on this side of the border with people being trafficked, kidnapped for extortion, tortured, raped, murdered, sold. And so if that were any reasonable person, you would try 10, 15 times, whatever it took to get across to safety. And the Border Patrol Union is disingenuous because it knows this. And instead, it pulls out a figure that is much larger than what it represents in actual people. And they're disingenuous in how they describe it. Yeah, I think it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see through it and of course when we combine this with the the wall or the fence or whatever you want to call it it people are crossing in more remote and more dangerous

areas which makes the crossing more risky right and results in a higher instance of people dying or hurting themselves trying to cross which as you say it's it's not a reasonable thing to do when you're faced with these terrible circumstances yeah there's a beautiful poem called home by warshan sire who's a somali british poet and one of the lines is you don't put your child in a in a boat unless it's safer than the land in a boat unless it's safer than the land. No one would attempt to cross a 30 foot wall or wade the Rio Grande or cross the Arizona desert in the middle of summer unless what was behind them they were so sure was going to kill them. And the way that we've structured the wall and raising the height of the wall to make it harder to cross and to build as much wall along the places where it would be a little bit easier to cross for people making it

so the only way to cross is through the most dangerous parts that's an that's intentional yeah that is you know designed for people to die because the government mistakenly believes that if it kills more people that folks will be deterred but that's um not actually what we see on the ground no and like it's not a vacuum right people are coming from bad things like making just making the border difficult one will do nothing more than kill more people which is what they've succeeded in doing sadly and so and then another thing i wanted to get at title 42 with this this crazy series of court cases around title 42 right so can you explain like uh why title 42 hasn't been repealed when we've done away with almost every other protection for people in kind of an ongoing pandemic title 42 could be repealed if the government was so not so intent on fighting the repeal of title 42 the aclu has been in court for

the last few years around title 42 um in a case called we show weisha v. Mayorkas. And the judge in that case issued a decision in December ruling that turning away asylum seekers, using Title 42 as a pretext to turn asylum seekers away, was unlawful. However, that decision was stayed. The government requested that the decision be temporarily stayed to give it time to make their arguments about how their interests were harmed by the decision. So now that case is before the Supreme Court, and they will not hear the case until February, and we could be waiting as long as June for a decision.

Yeah, many of those, lots of those states weren't even along the border right they're some of the ones who sued yeah that's um still a mystery to all of us along the border how interior states that sure might be receiving people coming from the border but um don't have that close nexus as in their border community and they're being immediately impacted. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty, pretty venal stuff. And the other issue I want to raise for people is the narrative is that we're in a crisis. The border is in a crisis. There's so many people, we can't possibly help them all. We closed the border for over two years. So of course, there's going to be more people, because we've made it impossible for people to access. events. This is something that was learned during the context of our litigation against CBP around access to the port of entry. And we see that the government is capable of responding rapidly in a

manner that is consistent with human dignity and how it responded to 30,000 Ukrainians showing up in Tijuana this spring. In some days, CBP accepted as many as a thousand Ukrainians in a given day, whereas on those days they were accepting zero of other nationalities. And they were able to get up to speed so quickly because every port of entry has a contingency plan. We are the United States government. We are arguably one of the most powerful, well-resourced governments on earth. If you buy the line that this is a crisis and we don't have a contingency plan, then we've got a lot of work to do here. And so it's a manufactured crisis.

We have the resources. We have the personnel. CDP has the largest law enforcement budget of all the law enforcement agencies in the federal government, and they have tens of thousands of personnel. agreed to under US federal law, as well as the Refugee Convention, which we signed following World War Two, which was designed to prevent further genocide, further persecution of large groups of people. But we continue to renege on those obligations to which we agreed to. Yeah, yeah. Like when we talk about genocide and persecution, like I personally know people from Myanmar who are really struggling with the United States asylum system right now. Yeah, it's really deeply just infuriating to see them continue to pursue this kind of like waving my hands in the air, I don't know what to do kind of thing. Let's talk a little bit about Joe Biden and his policies, because they've been lackluster or just completely like in some cases, you know,

he's issued executive orders, which basically have gone unfulfilled regarding asylum. And so they made a statement a few weeks ago now when Biden visited the border. Can you explain what he said in that statement and then sort of what the Biden administration hasn't done to clear up the asylum system that it promised it would do? The Biden administration made a lot of promises on the campaign trail, made an effort to put advocates in places in DHS, other key positions to give the appearance that it was serious about reform and treating immigrants in a way that is dignified and humane. But what we've seen is a continuation of Trump policies, which restrict access to the border. For example,

Trump policies which restrict access to the border. For example, the new asylum ban that they are proposing through regulation where individuals that have transited through another country and did not seek asylum in that country, even if that country was not a safe country for them, that they would be precluded from applying for asylum. A lot of people have been enthusiastic about these new parole programs for specific nationalities like the Faraguans, Venezuelans, Haitians, Cubans. However, those programs are really just scraps. They have a 30,000 person cap um the ukrainian parole program had a hundred thousand person cap which has already been surpassed surpassed um ukrainian sponsors well as the ukrainian asylum seekers that were presenting through that parole program had much less by way of requirements um and so they've made a a separate and not equal program for other nationalities which just happen

to be nationalities that aren't white yeah yeah it's hard not to see a kind of uh white people first approach to asylum here uh yeah it certainly challenges your ability not to believe it's outright racist so i wonder like going forward um obviously people listening will probably be sort of upset and concerned at the continuing failures of our government to do anything about it can you outline like how people can help i know uh there's lots of people who will do direct mutual aid right like people like food not bombs are feeding people in tijuana but how can folks maybe who are at the border and then who aren't near the border how can how can they help well organizations that are at the border including ourselves do work with volunteers that are remote um particularly if they have a foreign language skill because we can't serve tens of thousands of people each year with just the staff that we have and so we have a really robust remote

volunteer network. I would also encourage people as you pointed out to look for organizations in their own community that are serving immigrants. It is incredibly humbling to move to another country and realize you don't know how to read the light bill. You don't know how to register your kids for school. Can your kids go to school? Where can I go to the doctor? What is an ambulance? Do I not have to pay for that? All of these things that might be different for them and a real lack of volunteers to assist people with those daily integration activities that are so important to figuring out how your new community works. I also encourage people to, when there's an opportunity to have conversations with your elected official,

to have those conversations, write emails, go in person if that's an opportunity. Different officials will have open days for their offices where you might be able to get, maybe not FaceTime with that official, but with their point person who is overseeing that issue. Right now, our elected officials, they don't care about immigration because a lot of their constituents are not making it known to them what it is that they care about and that they're willing to go to drastic measures such as shutting down their office if they don't take action on immigration. We're all just thinking about it as, okay, well, this is happening to immigrants. This is not me.

I am a citizen. But all of the worst fascist policies are tried out first on groups in society that have less political power, on people that have criminal convictions, on the people who have disabilities that make it impossible for them to convictions, on the people who have disabilities that make it impossible for them to communicate, on immigrants. And so I would really encourage, if you're concerned about

fascism, if you're concerned about how your rights may be trampled in the future, focus on immigrants, because they are the testing ground for a lot of fascist government's worst intentions. Yeah. And we've already seen that, right? If people aren't familiar, it was Bortak, among others who were out there running around Portland, chucking people into unmarked vans. It was DHS drones surveilling people in Minneapolis. It was indeed DHS surveilling, I think, people from Malo Totrolado and other organizations in 2018 when lots of us were crossing the border very often to help people who were part of what was called the migrant caravan then.

So this is happening to us, right? There's a thing that Crimethink have on some of their posters, which I always like, which is the border doesn't protect you. It controls you. Which I think is more true than ever now. Like it's this sort of yeah, it's a place where we experiment with these policies and they seem to they seem to get away with them. Right. Like it doesn't seem to be something that people care about that they did even two or three years ago under the Trump administration. under the Trump administration.

I wonder, Nicole, how can people, another thing that I think people lack is like a direct connection to people seeking asylum or to the situation at the border, right? Like every time something happens, I'm sure you've seen this more often than I have, someone from LA or DC or New York or wherever kind of parachutes into border communities, does, I can see that this

is the frustration that you share it does a story which misses masses of context and then buggers off back to the place where they came from and so like uh where can people find better connections to the situation for people seeking asylum i really like uh a blog and it's also a podcast every week, Border Chronicles, Todd Miller's Border Chronicles. I also would recommend reading all of Todd Miller's books. He is an incredible investigative journalist that does deep dive on how we got to this militarized state of the border. So I would recommend starting with Border Patrol Nation and just going straight through there. I also think ProPublica also does really great investigative long dive reporting. The Intercept. I would look at those places.

Yeah, yeah. I think if you're in a border community, like it's really not that hard to cross and see what's going on for yourself and and do a little something to, you know, make some of your money that you set aside for helping other people can go a long way if you choose to use it that way. And Nicole, how can people support your work directly? Like is there a website or a Twitter account they can follow to find more about El Otro Lado? We do have our own website. We're also on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. we do have our own website. We're also on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. We regularly post opportunities to volunteer remotely, volunteer in person, and campaigns that people want to donate to. There's that opportunity as well. Great. Is there anything else you want to share about that you feel that our listeners should know, maybe if they haven't

been following border situation closely? The border situation is part of a larger historical context and briefly i talked about earlier the u.s is a signatory to the refugee convention which is an outgrowth of of the horror that the world collectively felt um when we came to grips with what happened during the Holocaust. And we collectively said, never again, never again. Part of our part in the Holocaust was we rejected the MS St. Louis from the coast of Florida. And there was over 900 Jewish refugees that were on that boat. No other country accepted them. Cuba, Canada rejected and ultimately had to go back to Europe. And some of those people ultimately died in the Holocaust.

And those deaths are on our conscience. And any time that asylum seekers are being turned away along the border when they have the legal right to present themselves under existing U.S. law and international law, have the legal right to present themselves under existing u.s law and international law it's a it's a repetition of the ms st louis except it's happening all across the border every single day yeah that's very well put and it it is like it doesn't matter if it's one person or 100 people like it's a tragedy every time we can't give some we have plenty of safe places for people to go but when deciding not to not to welcome them and yeah it's very very sad well thank you so much for giving us some of your afternoon nicole um yeah if people want to find you personally do you have a personal uh social media yeah you can find me on twitter um and i'm loose on la frontera on on

twitter okay great and uh al otro lado is it just Alotrolado on Twitter? Yes. Alotrolado, sometimes we have Alotrolado.org. Yeah. So that's A-L-O-T-R-O-L-A-D-O if people need to spell out, right? Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters. To bone chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. ¡Suscríbete al canal! Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities,

artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean.

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

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

Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here. Once again, hosted by myself, Andrew, from the YouTube channel Andrewism, as we talk about whatever and whatever in question is the second most populous country in the world and one potential vision for its future drawn from its anti-colonial past i'm speaking of course about india a subcontinent from which i draw a good portion of my heritage and one that boasts over 9,000 years of recorded history and roughly

55,000 years of known human settlement. India is an incredibly diverse country, ethnically, linguistically, religiously, and otherwise. But unfortunately, it has suffered much of the same fate that the rest of the world has, falling prey to the rapacious appetite of British colonialism. Now, historically, the Indian local economy was dependent upon the most productive and sustainable agriculture and horticulture and, of course, pottery and furniture making. Jewelry was very well known for jewelry. and of course, pottery and furniture making, jewelry. It was very well known for jewelry. In fact, Indian jewelry makers ended up starting some very successful jewelry businesses

when they were freed from indentureship in Trinidad. They also got involved in leather work and a lot of other economic activities in India. But the basis of India has traditionally, historically, you know, for thousands of years, been textiles, different types of textiles. Each village had its spinners and carters and dyers and weavers, who were, of course, at the heart of that village's economy. But an interesting outcome of British colonialism in India has been the flooding of India with the machine-made, inexpensive, mass-produced textiles from Lancashire during Britain's Industrial Revolution. The local textile artists were very quickly put out of business and village economies suffered very terribly.

So, I mean, you know, I think we're familiar with this sort of general story smaller uh cottage industries uh became overrun by you know mass production and of course i don't mean to sound like i'm entirely demonizing mass production just describing what has happened of course mass production has had its many benefits in providing access to resources and to products to many different people but of course it's also had its many drawbacks including you know the sheer environmental impact as well as the impact on people um you know as mark spoke about of um their alienation from the process of production as the industrial system basically separated each step in the process of production to different workers. And so no one had a hand in the production of a product from start to finish.

And of course, that had significant social and I would also assume mental impact on the people. With, you know, that whole era of British economic imperialism happening in India, the changes that took place within a generation was so rapid, you know, your head would spin. That devolution of, you know, theian home economy was really a sight to behold and another element of british uh economic imperialism and british imperialism more broadly was the introduction of british education under colonial rule in the 18th century um when lord macaulay introduced the indian education act in the brit Parliament, he said, and I quote, A single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India. Neither as a language of the law, nor as a language of religion, has the Sanskrit any particular claim to our engagement.

We must do our best to form a class of persons indian in blood and color but english in taste in opinions in morals and in intellect so the typical uh racism typical white man's person burden typical you know um of course this phrase was used in a north american indigenous american context but i believe the phrase is taking the indian out to the man yeah kill the indian save the man yeah right um so it's kind of interesting it's a different type of indian talking about there but that sort of idea still applies and really that sort of sentiment is something that has existed throughout the history of colonialism something that you know is seen in all of britain's former colonies because once this aim was put into parliament and pushed forward it was pursued

with the might of the british raj all the traditional schools that took place in different village communities were gradually replaced by colonial schools and universities of course taking advantage of the caste and class system that was in place in india prior to their arrival the british would have selected wealthier indians to be sent to public schools such as ethan and harrow and universities like oxford and cambridge and those indians that you know they learned english poetry english law english customs to neglect their own culture you know it's like why read the classics of the vedas when you have shakespeare and the london times and so having been raised in that environment having grown up having basically their minds

colonized from the crib uh they began to see their own cultures as backward uncivilized old-fashioned regressive and again something you see all over the world you saw it in residential schools you see it in the uh schools in the caribbean you see it in schools in africa basically everywhere the colonizers went um they would take a generation they would take generations of young people and they would develop that self-hatred um that disdain for their own culture by you know positioning their education british education as you know superior in fact during the process of decolonization quote unquote um of of, you know, formal political independence for many of the former colonies of Britain,

particularly in the Caribbean, as that's where I'm most familiar, a lot of the people who became, you know, the first prime ministers of the country, the one that would establish the trajectory of the country for years or decades to come. I'm thinking of people like Bustamante in Jamaica uh Eric Williams Dr. Eric Williams in Trinidad and Tobago um among others basically all of the first prime ministers

basically every single Caribbean country they had all been educated um in English schools in uh English universities in well in the prestige schools of their countries they didn't end up being flown out to britain itself and they basically became the rulers became the leaders um were handed power over by the british to basically rule in their stead of course with all the talk of finally independence, people got caught up in that energy of political independence and freedom from the control of the British after all the decades and centuries of struggle. But unfortunately, it proved, I believe, to be a ruse as very little changed for the average person in the years post-political independence.

thrown out by actual revolutions you get this class of like like lawyers and intellectuals who are like have been educated like in imperialist powers or in sort of their schools who wind up as like the first generation of of post-independence leaders and those people like you know what whether they want to or not end up sort of like reflecting the sort of values and political positions of like of the former colonial powers and there's this whole sort of dynamic that like i i feel like i feel like this is the part of phenomenon that people don't read very much but that's about how these leaders sort of like lose touch with it with the sort of like anti-colonial masses and how they sort of like wind up reincorporating their countries back into sort of colonialism yeah yeah that's really how you see that neocolonial dynamic developing um and it's really it's hard to tell um

retrospectively whether these leaders thought they were actually you you know, anti-colonial or if they knew that they were, you know, carrying on a particular legacy. But I find that because Trinidad is only, only recently celebrated just last year, 60 years of independence. There are of course people who were alive prior to independence. And so you find a lot of the older generation, how they, how some of them speak, particularly the the more educated ones how they carry themselves how they dress the attitudes they espouse is very much like to get any kind of respect in their time you had to behave as you had to present yourself as you had to present yourself you know as approximate to Britishness as possible the whole you know conversation of

respectability politics and stuff so i have some understanding of what they had to go through and where they're coming from when they hold on to these perspectives still because that's what they grew up in um but it really is a shame that they've been holding back progress for so long now uh because they still hold on to these deeply conservative deeply religious deeply reactionary ideas that were uh just you know uh they're just inculcated with in the education system and in the cultural zeitgeist of their time i was just when you um may was talking about fano i was thinking as well about like, have you read a book called Beyond a Boundary by CLR James, Andrew?

I haven't because it's about cricket and I'm not too integrated, cricket. But I know it's an iconic, I know it's an iconic read. I think he explains a lot of that very well. I think if people could read it, even if they don't like cricket, I'm not a big cricket person,

but it's certainly one of the best sports books I've read and maybe one of the best books. He does a good job of explaining it. He put a lot of bangers in his tank. Yeah, he did have some bangers. Highly recommended. If you don't want to read about cricket, he also

talks about this in the Krumer and the Gunner Revolution. You do want to read about cricket, he also talks about this in the Krumah and the Ghana Revolution. Yeah. Which is very good about cricket. That is not about cricket. It's more of an autobiography, like seen through the lens of his cricket, I think. But yeah. Oh, that'd be cool. Because I know he spent a lot of time,

he grew up, of course, born and raised and stuff and turned out. So it'd be interesting to see sort of, if he talks about his political development how Adaro is in his time in Trinad yeah I think he does it's been a while since I've read it but I think he talks about like how he sort of saw himself constituted as colonial subject like through his experiences interacting with British people uh on one of the places where the terrains where he'd encountered them I guess was playing cricket Right, yes of course

and thankfully we've come to decimate them at their own game as usual It's true Yeah And even like English cricket at a certain point like we're getting really into cricket which i know is a diversion uh but like they had rules where you could only have a certain

number of international players playing for each english county uh it's extreme like if you look at how the empire constituted whiteness through sport and like who was allowed to play rugby which is a touching sport and who was allowed to play cricket which which isn't normally a touching sport like it did it's racist as fuck um yeah i mean of course there's a lot of racism in sports history yeah sorry for the cricket diversion sorry please continue ah it's entirely fine i see it's all greek to me because i don't know what any of those points or numbers or anything means. There are too many different types of cricket. I mean, I've had people try to explain to me before.

It's just not my thing. I know people who play it though. So, you know, good for them and all. But back to India, right? If there's one particular person in India's history that really represented this type of Western educated, colonized subject subject trying to be something bigger than that kind of mentality it was Jawaharlal Nehru who became the first prime minister after independence Nehru of course sought to promote the industrialization of India not via a capitalist route but by more of a centralized planning route which is why if you look in the india's constitution

you'll see that it's refers to itself as a socialist country yeah weirdly if i'm remembering right nehru was like a he was like a fabian socialist or something yeah yeah his inspiration came his inspiration came from the intellectuals of the london school of economics and the fabian society so yeah he's quite the character you see the sort of direction that you end up putting the the country and i mean even today india in many ways continues to be ruled in the english way without english rulers um just like in the caribbean continues to be ruled in the English way without English rulers in Africa

the various countries have been ruled in their various colonizing powers way rather than in their own way without the colonizing rulers without the colonizing rulers the industrialists, the intellectuals the entrepreneurs, all of them are working with the government to see the salvation of India taking place in a subordination to the world back and the imf and the gatt uh you know they see india

as part of this global economy meant to submit and to serve to multinational corporations um but of course the people of india are not too pleased and the people of India are suffering under the brunt of that. After seeing the failures of, of course, the Congress party under Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi, the poor continues to be poorer than ever the middle classes uh and turning towards uh should i say certain directions um and of course as we've seen in the past few years the farmers have been agitating uh against the various pressures they've been placed under. Things kind of suck.

And it was pretty much how Mahatma Gandhi predicted that it would, because unlike Nehru and unlike other Western educated thinkers of his time, Gandhi thought differently about what India's potential could be, what it it looked like and that's part of the reason they killed him and i must preface this discussion of gandhi's vision of a free india by noting of course that gandhi himself was a very flawed person um you know racist sexist um pretty sure he assaulted somebody he did some very um fucked up stuff to his niece yeah yeah yeah yeah i'll just we'll leave it at that but i mean that's not something you can put aside, so it's something to be cognizant of. But one of the aspects of his time on this planet had been his development of a sort of a vision of a free India. Not as a nation state, but as a confederation of self-governing, self-reliant, self-employed people living in village communities, deriving their right livelihood from the products of their homesteads.

It would have been a sort of a bottom-up system where the power to decide what could be imported into or exported from the village, where economic and political power all remain in the hands of village assemblies, where people in these village assemblies in these communities would continue to live in relative harmony with their surroundings with they would continue to weave their homespun clothes eat their homegrown food use their homemade goods care for their animals their forests and their lands, take care of the fertility of the soil, enjoy the homegrown stories and epics of India and continue to build their temples and appreciate their various regional distinctive cultures. This was meant to be the system, the practice, the idea, the philosophy of Swadeshi, which is a conjunction

of two Sanskrit words, swa, which meaning self or own, and desh meaning country. Swadeshi as an adjective meaning of one's own country. According to the principle of Swadeshi, the idea is that whatever is made or produced in a village must be used first and foremost by the principle of Sudeshi, the idea is that whatever is made or produced in a village must be used first and foremost by the members of that village. So, I mean, there could be trading and collaboration between villages and communities,

but Gandhi thought it should be minimal, like sort of an icing on the cake. Goods and services to him was something that should have been generated within the community. The things that needed to be used by the community should be created in that community. Another influential, perhaps the most influential aspect of Swadeshi and Swadeshi philosophy took place in the early 20th century

as a direct fallout to the decision of the British India government to partition Bengal. The use of Swadeshi goods, or the goods that were produced and made in India by India for Indians, and the boycott of foreign-made goods were among the two main objectives of the Swadeshi movement. And so the boycott resolution ended up being passed in Calcutta City Hall in August 7, 1904, boycotting the use of Manchester cloth and sold from Liverpool. In the District of Barrasal, the masses adopted the message of boycotts of foreign goods and the value of the British cloth sold there fell very rapidly.

Various songs and cultural works ended up being produced in the time um to sort of bolster the movement at one point 150 000 english cloths were burnt as part of the boycott and the symbol of caddy spinners the sort of tool that was used to weave cloth to weave fibers to create yarn uh became a major force in the movement and in the representation of the movement i think i get what you're saying like we can all benefit from a little specialization and and the uh like improvements that that brings while still sort of acknowledging that autonomy is desirable yeah i think there needs to be some some balance between your autonomy and self-reliance that kind of thing and also uh collaboration i think he goes a bit too much in that autonomy

direction but in the context of when these ideas are being developed it's sort of understandable because um in this time you know the self-reliance of the people was being vastly eroded uh people being forced into you know cities they've lost their livelihoods um and they were there was a sort of a developing reliance in the global economy, where Swadeshi proposes that, you know, India avoids economic dependence on external market forces that create these vulnerabilities in communities that end up, you know, really harming the members of that community.

Swadeshi's meant to avoid the unhealthy and wasteful, environmentally destructive transportation of goods between communities, avoiding the excessive emissions that would cause and promoting, of course, the development of a strong economic base to satisfy the needs of the community, to satisfy the local production consumption. Swadeshi is kind of about both creating a self-reliant India and also creating self-reliant villages within India so that each village is a microcosm of the greater India, a web of sort of a distributed, decentralized web of loosely interconnected communities in a time where the british were promoting this centralized industrialized mechanized modes of production gandhi was turning to the principle of decentralized homegrown and handcrafted modes of production rather than mass production production by the

masses i think there was also a spiritual component to the idea of swadeshi because at the time gandhi was not a fan of the idea that people were not using their hands to produce the idea that you know everyone should be involved in some kind of trade or skill of some kind that utilizes their hands because of, you know, the whole spiritual component of using the body that you have fully. the idea of this locally-based community enhancing a community spirit, community relationships, and community well-being. An economy that actively encourages mutual aid, that encourages the principle of care between families, neighbors, animals, lands, forestry, natural resources for present and future generations. It's a direct confrontation of the driving force between mass production which

gandhi saw as this cult of the individual where there must be to expansion of the economy on a global scale uh and expand the consumption production for the sake of economic growth out of a desire for the individual's personal whims, for the desire for personal and corporate profit. Another reason, of course, that Gandhi rallied against this idea of mass production and promoting production for the masses by the masses is because mass production lets people leave in their villages their land their crafts and their homesteads to go work in factories where they became cogs in a machine standing in a conveyor belt living in shanty

towns and dependent upon the mercy of the bosses and of course as those bosses gained access to more efficient technologies because they were constantly in pursuit of greater productivity and thus greater profit, the masters of this economy, you know, they want more efficient machines working faster. And so they want less people working those machines. And so the result was that the people should not be something that subordinates the worker but instead something that is subordinated to the worker that it doesn't become the master but instead it is mastered and allows us to orchestrate our own pace of you know human activity it's not that swadeshi is necessarily against automation, against technological development, but it's more so that it aims to circumvent the harms that could be caused by such technologies

being out of the control of the people themselves and in the control of the select private few. and in the control of the select private few. I think Swadeshi has a sort of an element of glorification of the past. In doing my research for this episode, I ended up looking into, of course, the writings of proponents of Swadeshi and people discussing Gandhi's thoughts on the subject and i'll just quote one particular passage swadeshi is the way to comprehensive peace peace with oneself

peace between peoples and peace with nature the global economy drives people toward high performance high achievement and high ambition for materialistic success. This results in stress, loss of meaning, loss of inner peace, loss of space for personal and family relationships, and loss of spiritual life. Gandhi realized that in the past, life in India was not only prosperous but also conducive to philosophical and spiritual development. Sudeshi for Gandhi was a spiritual spiritual imperative i think it's understandable that a decolonial project would attempt to develop a pride in the history of the people who have gone through so much um in you know their legacy and their traditions and their ideas

but i think it's a bit of a stretch to um glorify uh india's past in and pre-colonial past in such respect i don't think any uh people's pre-colonial past should be excessively uh glory glorified or um like mythologized you mean mythologized yeah romanticized yeah that's a good word yeah because i i feel as though one that clouds our judgments um and our critical eye for the aspects of you know past societies that do do need be challenged, do need to be changed. I think that's part of my issue with Sudeshi, is this idea that if things just go back to these sorts of villages and village communities,

that everything else would just be okay. But of course, there were other issues that India was dealing with even prior to colonization you know in terms of sexism in terms of the control of the caste system and the higher castes and the other aspects of Indian society that of course were made um more severe by british colonialism uh colorism i think is one of those issues that of course existed prior to colonization but was made worse by the british and their presence in the subcontinent but i think striking that balance of uh cleaning learning from respecting that um that pre-coloner past but also in our take on our projects not excessively romanticizing the past in an effort to progress towards the future

these days i believe swadeshi is most known for its focus on protect protectionism uh it's distinctly you know foreign important investment but it of course, a very wide-spanning philosophy. It was a vision and a philosophy of life that Gandhi held for his entire life. It's not something that I was familiar with prior to looking into it in my continued pursuit of decolonial perspectives and explorations of various post-colonial projects but and philosophies but

it's something that i've appreciated despite my criticisms of some aspects of it that's about all i have for you all today you can find me on youtube at andrewism on twitter.com slash underscore St. Drew, and you can support me on patreon.com slash St. Drew if you're so inclined. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters

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Or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola mi gente. It's Honey German. And I'm bringing you Gracias Come Again. The podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities,

artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries.

Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh.

And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez.

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

Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast that's being done for the first time and not the second time because we had bike problems. We did not just record a very funny intro that is now completely lost in time. Yeah, you'll never hear it. You'll never know what great fun we had. The joy was in the creation, though, not in the sharing. Yeah. Process, not an event structure etc etc yep yep so i'm i'm mia i'm uh i'm doing this episode also garrison is here hello hi and also james hi i'm recording so we're good now i mean yeah the the good news is stunningly as as as much as it seems we are now more prepared

to record this episode than we were last time so yeah well what are we uh what are we talking what are we talking about we we we are talking about the age of the gender bureaucrat so as as people are probably aware there is a raft of anti-trans bills sweeping through state legislatures um the latest of these bills to pass as of time of recording is a bill in Utah, which has banned minors from getting gender-affirming care, like hormone therapy, hormone blockers, and any kind of gender-affirming surgery for anyone who's not already receiving them. Does the Utah one also ban, like, therapy?

Like, talk therapy? No, but there— So, on the one hand, it doesn't ban talk therapy on the other hand there's a provision in there that i think might also suggest that people do conversion therapy so that's great um it fucking sucks ass uh yeah kid kids are going to die because of this bill the people who are writing and signing these bills know that kids are going to die we know this because utah's governor, Spencer Cox, who is the guy who signed the bill,

vetoed an earlier ban on trans athletes participating in school sports, specifically citing the risk of suicide. So he knows this is going to kill kids. He signs this anyways. And we are now living in what I call the age of the gender bureaucrat. We're going to spend, we're going to have another episode later on

where we spend a lot of time going through all the individual bills and the stuff trump's been saying about this because jesus christ pretty pretty pretty grim stuff that they're i mean on on the one hand making making trans people out to be the boogeyman did not work in their favor greatly in the mid terms but it seems like they're not trying to they're not trying to change their uh their tactics here they are still going all in based on trump's speech from a few days ago of using the using the transgender menace as the as the greatest threat to america and the and the and the nuclear family so we'll see how that goes for them like

electorally but it's pretty bad rhetoric to see flying around yeah i think they um it does really well with the people who who are loud and like like you you often see this in like uh primaries right like people push to the limits of their party because that plays well with the most politicized people and for sure if you're going to a trump rally what like three years after he got kicked out yeah you are also a bigot yeah yeah but before we do that i i want to before we actually like really do an episode on this i i want to take a look at the sort of bureaucratic grounding for this entire thing and to do that we need to look at gender bureaucrats the american gender bureaucracy so i'm going to cite my sources a bit and say that

i stole this from a incredibly unlikely source which is the maoist review of shrek 2 what wait stop wait yeah never speak those words again this is the maoist review of shrek 2 is is one of the three great sort of texts of american maoism there's this one there's towards a protracted people's war, the Florida Everglades. And then there's that time the RCP got into a fight with the PSL and they were both trying to grab each other's signs. Amazing, amazing stuff. But unfortunately, you know, having come up with the term gender bureaucrat, which is incredibly useful, they're Maoist, so they're constitutionally and politically just unable to understand what a bureaucrat is.

So I have now stolen this term and I'm using it for other purposes. Reappropriate. No, it's stealing. They're Maoists. It's never wrong to steal from Maoists. Okay. Fine. So, alright. Getting back

to some more serious stuff. To understand what this is, I want to talk about sort of the term assigned gender at birth um this used to be a like it used to be fairly common kind of in in in circles to like refer to people as like amab or afabs like assigned male at birth or assigned female at birth and it's a it kind of sucks as a term it's been replaced by other stuff but i i think there's something important here which is i want to go back and look at the assigned part and i want to i want to look at specifically the part about the gender being assigned because i think there's something that

gets lost in sort of popular discussions of this which is that when people think about like the term like the assignment of gender right they think about it as something that's created socially right they think about it as you know people being like pressured to perform one kind of gender or another by the people around them sort of by their families by just like people walking down the street and this is all true but there's also something else going on here that's something else going on here is we need to ask ourself when we talk about someone's gender being assigned, who is it being assigned by? Because this is an actual specific person, right? The person who actually assigns your gender is a doctor or sometimes a nurse or a midwife. And this person is the first gender bureaucrat. And they're the first gender bureaucrat because they are the

person who sits down and puts down what your gender is on a form now okay you you may be asking yourself right mia why should anyone care that your gender is now on a piece of paper well because and also maybe like they're they're also mainly at least you know in like a in like a medical scientific sense it's mainly like oh what parts do you have? And then using those parts as, as a carryover for gender, as that's been modeled after ever since we stopped dressing boys and girls and dresses and all the same clothing. Yeah.

And we'll get into sort of like how this has sort of changed over time, but okay. To understand why this actually matters. I think we need to talk about what bureaucracy actually is, because this is a thing that used to be fairly common to talk about on the left, and then people have stopped doing over the past maybe like half decade. The anthropologist David Graeber wrote extensively about bureaucracy throughout his career. Probably his most famous book is one of his later works called Bullshit Jobs.

But I want to go back to an earlier thing that he wrote called The Utopia of Rules. I'm going to read a little bit of one of the first sections of it. Bureaucratic knowledge is all about schematization. In practice, bureaucratic procedure invariably means ignoring all the subtleties of real-life existence and reducing everything to preconceived mechanical or statistical formula. Whether it's a matter of forms, rules, statistics, or questionnaires, it is always a matter of simplification. Typically, it's not very different from the boss who walks into the kitchen to make

an arbitrary snap decision as to what went wrong. In either case, it is a matter of applying very simple pre-existing templates to complex and often ambiguous situations. The result often leaves those forced to deal with bureaucratic administration with the impression that they are dealing with people who have, for some arbitrary reason, decided to put on a set of glasses that only allows them to see 2% of what's in front of them. So we can see some of the core aspects of bureaucracy here, right? Bureaucracy inherently is an act of simplification because of sort of the tech, like literally the technical systems

of what a bureaucracy is and because of how it stores information, how it moves information around. It can only see the world in incredibly sort of simplified terms. Yeah, it has to like abstract these things and then make assumptions based off those abstractions in order to have any types of functionality. Yeah so so great graber graber later says that like this you know

okay on the one hand like simple the sort of simplification and model making that goes on in a bureaucracy can be really really frustrating when you have to interact with it but on the other hand you know so the the reduction of the complex to the simple, it's not just a thing that's inherently evil in and of itself. It's the basis of all thought. Because we actually can't, in and of ourselves, process the world by immediately holding in our minds all of the information at one time. The way we understand the world is simplifications and models. Yeah. It's pattern recognition.

We're creating recursive thought loops that give us the very concept of meaning and like that's how we know what words are yeah and that's what jordan peterson well so true you know you can you can look you you it's also possible to take a lot of data and make nonsense out of it uh this is this is this is a field called economics. Marketing, yeah. But yeah, you know, okay. So this is also the basis of all social theory, right? Like social theory is about taking a bunch of incredibly complicated, like messy relationships and just statistical stuff and just the noise of people doing things in their everyday lives and trying to establish sort of like ways of understanding them. And, you know, this in some sense is a kind of violence right it's it's a violence of

simplification but on the other hand you know the the violence you're doing to reality here bears more resemblance to sort of like bakunin's creative destruction right you're you know you're imposing a kind of violence on reality you know in in simplifying and destroying a bunch of aspects of it so you can understand just like one part of it at a time. But, you know, this is a useful thing, right? It's how we think. Like, we literally couldn't do anything without it. But as Graber puts it, the problem arise, the problems arise at the moment that violence is no longer metaphorical. Here, let me turn from imaginary cops to real ones. Jim Cooper, a former LAPD officer turned sociologist, has observed that the overwhelming majority of those who end up getting beaten or otherwise

brutalized by police turn out to be innocent of any crime. Cops don't beat up burglars, he writes. The reason, he explained, is simple. The one thing most guaranteed to provoke a violent reaction from police is a challenge to their right to, as he puts it, define the situation. Yep. That is to say, yeah, that, that,

that perfectly describes any, any physical interaction with police. Like, this is, this is, this is one of the things I like about Gray, because I mean, this is,

this is something that I noticed when I was in academia is it is very, very easy to tell who, like when you're reading a theory, social theorist talking about stuff, like who has been tear gassed before and who hasn't yeah it's like who has actually dealt with a cop yeah i'm always reminded when we talk about like academics who have a real fucking life of that picture of edward saeed throwing stones yeah yeah single most based academic thing anyone has done yeah and like graber graber i think i think it's been tear gas on

five continents or something like that like he's he's gotten around he's he's done a lot of stuff yeah it is it is always nice whenever the you can whenever these types of theorists who like you know they often will philosophize about like the nature of power the nature of the state and sometimes it can get a little bit wishy-washy and it's nice when there's people who do that yeah also know like the material like the material reality of like power yeah and and how that transfers on yeah like how how how like the how like the philosophy of power transfers over to street politics is always uh always an interesting difference to to to compare compare various theory to in 2020 i was teaching a world history course and obviously it's remote because of the pandemic right um so like we would just log in in the morning

like fully aware that i had seen and been tear gassed with some of my students the night before and then just discussed like how the state has a monopoly on violence people would be like yeah all the fucking lines up looks like you've got a massive bruise again yeah it was it was very instructive and everyone should do it in their history classes yeah

okay so I'm I'm gonna keep reading from this quote because there's a couple more things I want I want to get out of this cool so okay so he

you know he's talking about how like you get a violent reaction from challenging their right to define the situation that is to say no this isn't a possible crime situation. This is a citizen who pays your salary walking his dog situation, so shove off. Let alone the invariably disastrous, wait, why are you handcuffing that guy?

He didn't do anything. So true. It's talking back above all that inspires beatdowns and means challenging whatever administrative rubric, an orderly, a disorderly crowd, a properly or improperly registered vehicle has been applied by the officer's discretionary judgment. The police truncheon is precisely the point where the state's bureaucratic imperative for imposing simple administrative schema and its monopoly on coercive force come together. It only makes sense, then, that bureaucratic

violence should consist first and foremost on attacks on those who insist on alternative schemas or interpretations. At the same time, if one accepts Jean Piaget's famous definition of mature intelligence as the ability to coordinate between multiple perspectives or possible perspectives, one can see here precisely how bureaucratic power at the moment it turns to violence becomes literally a form of infantile stupidity yeah it's it is this weird like childlike sense that is a that is an interesting combination of thoughts that's a fantastic graver passage i. I love it. Literally reading this book is one of the things that really committed me to anarchism. It's a book that actually takes violence seriously.

While talking about bureaucracy, it's something that really doesn't... I don't know. It's a good critique and we kind of have lost it over the years. I don't know. It's a good critique and we kind of have lost it over the years. I feel like we've gotten into arguments about this sort of thing when discussing the usefulness of like Foucault's theories about power and like how power functions. You've definitely brought up this passage before talking about how the extent of that is always measured by where the truncheon is hitting. Yeah. On like the actual street level. Yeah, but you know, okay, Graeber isn't writing about gender here really right he's he's mostly writing about sort of

direct police violence although i mean it is worth noting that like all the stuff that he's writing is informed by sort of like like uh by actually specifically by by actual critical race theory and by sort of like uh like feminist standpoints theory stuff yeah um but you know okay if if you if you look back at this right and you look back at sort of the you know the the the the point at which the state's bureaucratic infinite uh imperative for imposing simple administrative schemes and the monopoly on force come together or specifically the parts that are about right like the the way you get a violent reaction is by being something that a bureaucrat thinks you're not. Yeah.

That is – It's challenging their version of reality. Yeah. It's challenging the validity of their perception of reality. Yeah. Yeah, and if you think about this for about five seconds, if you're a trans person, that's not good because a bureaucrat has already assigned you a gender at birth. And if you're not that gender, things are going to get really bad really quickly. Well, do you know what? Bureaucracies are actually worthwhile and things that you should definitely consider greatly is all of the bureaucracies that support the products and services that

fund this podcast. Well, I hope you enjoy your five new bars of gold. Thank you for supporting the show. We are back. Let's talk about gender and the bureaucracy that seeks to contain it. Violence. Yeah, sure. You know, if you are, for example for example intersex the point at which the

state's bureaucratic imperative for imposing simple administrative schema and its monopoly on coercive force comes together is on the operating table of the hospital where you're born um you know first you a doctor assigns you a fucking gender which is never intersex by the way the doctor just decides whether you're male or female and then you know puts that gender on your birth certificate um it's technically possible in some places to get it changed to intersex later in life but when i say it's technically possible i i i there might even more people who've done it the first person who we know ever changed their gender to intersex did it in 2017 so yeah i'm sure there were like yeah i mean pre-bureaucracy indigenous societies i know they're oh yes oh absolutely yeah but this is this yeah this is yeah i mean like yeah like and

and this is like the the way that like we treat intersex people also has gotten worse yes yeah yeah yeah like yeah and we're gonna get into this but too but it's like it's like you know this is a very like it's a very obvious thing where there's clearly more than two genders Yeah, yeah, yeah. like you know you have like an incredible amount of violence that is inflicted onto them and then secondly the the the the way intersex people is dealt with it's something that reveals a lot about how the society is going to look at gender and how society is going to look at the enforcement of gender i think on the point of how in a lot of ways the treatment of intersex people has gotten has gotten worse in the past, like a few hundred years. I feel like as the bureaucracy grows, the amount of violence that is necessary to maintain it also grows.

And the, the bigger, any, any small thing threatens the validity of the entire bureaucracy. So they have to come down hard on anything that, that is, that is like deviant from that because they need to maintain the validity of the system that they have to come down hard on anything that that is that is uh like deviant from that because yeah they need to maintain the validity of the system that they have built i think that's

definitely an aspect yeah and the other thing that's really really bad is that you know we're going to talk about this more a bit later but like the the actual capacity of the bureaucracy to enforce this stuff has increased so dramatically even in the past 50 years it is like like the u.s is a if someone does someone living in 1890 right the modern u.s is an incomprehensibly bureaucratic society it is like like it even like the even like the yeah like you know like like yeah like even like the the most sort of like totalitarian stalinist bureaucrat like looks at the u.s and is like what the fuck sort of like totalitarian stalinist bureaucrat like looks at the u.s and is like what the fuck guys you guys are taking bureaucracy too far like even just like the surveillance capacity is oh he definitely would like he would have loved that well to to

be to be fair to be fair the east germans did really well with what they had but i think it's really so i think also just in terms of how surveillance impacts the way you're able to do gender when you're yeah well and this is gender. When you're getting targeted advertisements for stuff based on your internet searches, they're like, that's one side of it. And there's other sides of it in terms of people seeking to make different gender presentations illegal. How that type of surveillance will eventually lead into pretty draconian stuff. And I think in a lot of ways, like, the violence that is done to intersex kids is sort of – it's one of the sort of origin points of this, right?

I do actually want to – I want to sort of get into what this is a little bit. Since the 1960s – and again, I'm saying this saying this like this stuff is kind of recent right um doctors have started commonly performing non-consensual surgery on intersex kids to force them to conform to a gender um here's from a 2013 report from the united nations special rapporteur on torture that's cited by human rights watch children who are born with atypical sex characteristics are often subject to irreversible sex assignment, involuntary sterilization, involuntary genital normalization surgery performed without their informed consent or that of the parents in an attempt, quote, in an attempt to fix their sex, leaving them with permanent, permanent, irreversible infertility and causing severe mental suffering. And this is fucking horrible it happens it's all the time and on all of the people who write these fucking laws that are like giving giving someone gender affirming care is like mutilating them specifically carve out sections so that doctors can keep fucking doing this intersex kids and it's horrible it's really interesting how like um so often the

sports field is a terrain where this kind of gets hashed out or like this brutality happens for the first time like the sports governing authorities have been fucking brutalizing intersex athletes for 50 years now and every time it's because, yeah, and they'll put forth an argument and then lose in court most of the time because they'll seek to advance like a very narrow definition of gender based on chromosomality or something or testosterone levels or something.

And then demonstrably, this binary doesn't exist, right? And then they'll lose and they'll respond to losing by fucking destroying that person yeah uh yeah it's there are plenty of cases people can uh can find in history of that happening and yeah it's fucked up yeah and and i think the more i've been thinking about this the more i think that the sort of like that a lot of what turfism is is this kind of like it's it's

attempting to take the bureaucratic categories as literal truth but that doesn't work it doesn't it doesn't actually work on a sort of either on a scientific level or on a sort of more philosophical level because again what what what what that sort of bureaucratic assignment is is there is a radical simplification of reality that destroys it destroys reality itself in order to create a sort of like an m or an f on a page and when you when you try to go back into the real world that shit doesn't work it only works when you can enforce it with violence toughs do be loving to enforce gender with violence yeah and you know i mean this is this entire thing is sort of this this is the basis of the sort of of the of the american

gender bureaucracy right it's inherently violent. It's not just sort of a procedure for recording what your gender is. It always sort of has been and is increasingly more so now becoming a system that imposes a gender on you. And there's also a lot of ways that this bureaucracy gets imposed on you that are less extreme. And there's also a lot of ways that this bureaucracy gets imposed on you that are less extreme. If we go back to the question of like who are you assigned a gender for, right? You're assigned a gender for the state. And almost everything in your life depends on these bureaucratic documents because that's how the state understands you as a person. By these bureaucratic documents, like specifically birth certificates, but also like driver's licenses, social security cards.

Passports, immigration papers. Yeah, I mean like here's the American Bar Association talking about birth certificates. They are so common that we might even overlook their significance. In the United States, birth certificates serve as a proof of an individual's age, citizenship status, and identity. citizenship status, and identity. They are necessary to obtain social security, apply for a passport, enroll in schools, get a driver's license, gain employment,

or apply for other benefits. Humanitarian Desmond Tutu described the birth certificate as, quote, a small paper, but it actually establishes who you are and gives access to the rights and privileges and the obligations of citizenship. You know, and I think Des chuchu is being enormously optimistic about sort of what it means to be seen by the state here because the other thing that it does is it exposes you to the state's violence in a way where you know it now the state like this is this is a mechanism through which it now knows who you are right so does not having one like yeah yeah it's

when the sovsids try to not have birth certificates for their children uh yeah it gets real violent and this and this is the thing one of the things i hear about this is that like you know okay you used to be able to like get away with not having birth certificates right like a lot of a lot of americans used to not to used to like not but one of one of the things that happens over the course of world World War II is there's this enormous expansion in the state's bureaucratic capacity. And there's an expansion in the state's bureaucratic capacity because it has to go to war. But simultaneously, and this is something that didn't have to happen but did, is that you get the army and you get employers starting to ask for people's birth certificates. But people don't have them because like, I don't know, I was, why the fuck do I need a record of me being born?

Right? Like this is not everything you need need it's only a thing the state needs yeah it's interesting to look at like i was just thinking about how this is also where the kind of front line of colonialism happens yeah like the the enforcement of a binary gender on indigenous people like you can look at specific individuals um osh tish is one of them they were a crow person from the crow nation who like fought for the united states as a scout um was what's called a bad day and then was like in later life kind of forced to conform to a binary gender with which they didn't identify in the they hadn't lived that way and because they had to having been assigned identity papers to live on a reservation,

you have to take one of the fucking boxes. Yeah. And, you know, and the thing about those fucking boxes, right. Is, you know,

even like to this day, there are a lot of States where you can't change your gender. Like on, on you, you can't change what it says in the fucking card. You just can't. And, you know,

if, if they've assigned you a gender, that's not your gender, then, well, tough luck. They have they have an op. They have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. And you don't. You know, there's other states where you need a fucking court order saying that you've had surgery in order to get the fucking, you know, in order to change your bureaucratic person. And again, the reason for this is and I cannot emphasize this enough.

Fuck you. That is that that is that that is the reason for this is and i cannot emphasize this enough fuck you that is that that is that that is the reason for this um yeah i i want to i want to go back also to you know look to look a bit more about sort of bureaucratic effects um i'm going to read from an ieee piece about a trans guy in the uk in the 50s from the start the sensationalized press coverage of ferguson's transition focused on some surprisingly quotidian elements. Quote, chains of sex puts him in a different employment category with a raise in salary, reported one newspaper, underscoring the fact that being reclassified as male in the eyes of his employer, the British government tied into a complex network of gendered economic and labor discrimination. a complex network of gendered economic and labor discrimination in fact not only did his pay change but his whole job category changed even though he was doing exactly the same work under the same

conditions this was because women workers were simply were not simply paid less but also kept in feminized job grades in the civil service despite the government's claims that service was a meritocracy a question a question raised in parliament by an NP who had heard about Ferguson demanded to know what form and number of proofs, other than a mere announcement by the subject, they misgendered them a couple of times, is required before a female, quote,

like civil servant is permitted to obtain a higher salary in a different employment category owing to a change in sex. By gaining a, quote, official change, Jonathan Ferguson suddenly transformed himself – suddenly transformed into chief experimental officer with a male breadwinner salary large enough to support a family rather than a woman's lower wage that was expected to be supplements mental to a family's earnings for obvious reasons, noted the treasury. We should not have to say anything, which would have led to a request for the male pay rate to be applied from his data's entry to the civil service. In other words, the treasury wanted to ensure that Ferguson did not try to claim back wages.

Incredible. Turf Island always been very normal. And I want to read a little bit more of this. Conversely, a different civil servant, this time a trans woman, who was working in the Admiralty Department and transitioning around the same time, was advised it was in her, quote, interest to delay official recognition of the change until at least January 1960, assuming full equal pay in the civil service is introduced by 1961 her employers wrote that it was in their quote own interest in their

opinion to continue wearing men's clothing for the time being in order to avoid a significant reduction in pay that is it's funny because like i it's not funny it's fucked up and it's stupid isn't it but uh like i knew trans people in britain who would have grown up around this time who like socially transitioned after retirement yeah or at least like openly to you know we weren't like bffs or anything but it's absolutely fucking insane that like that this argument was deployed. Yeah, and you can see what's sort of going on here, which is that it's more explicitly obvious in here than it is in a lot of other cases. But your status in the gender bureaucracy is a key element of how you're able to extract resources from the state. And sometimes that's literally just an explicit pay gap, like it was based on institutional sexism. But, you know, I think the second case is in a lot of ways more revealing, right? The state and its gender bureaucracy is very explicitly saying, conform to what the bureaucracy says your gender is, and you'll get paid more. And if you don't, you'll get paid less. says your gender is and you'll get paid more and if you don't you'll

get paid less and if you look at this more abstractly right in order to interface with the state in order to extract welfare benefits in order to pay your fucking taxes in order to drive in order to buy alcohol apparently now in order to buy the stupid cleaning bottles of compressed air that you have to

use to clean out your computer keyboards in order to buy alcohol in order to get on an airplane you have to conform to the state's bureaucratic view of you. And if you don't, you can't do it. And, you know, this brings up the question, what right does the state have to assign my gender? And, you know, the state will spit out a variety of sort of like pseudo-medical and pseudo-political explanations, but the answer is that the state has no right to tell you what your gender is

except force. And, you know, the extent to which the state has actually been able to sort of do this kind of stuff has changed over time. We've talked about this a bit, but what, like, you know, over the course of sort of, over the course of sort of the over the course of sort of the the point of the 20th century and you know we can also look at things like uh we can look at the war on terror we can look at neoliberalism and david graber's iron law of liberalism

uh which is the iron law of liberalism states that any market reform any government initiative intended to reduce red tape and promote market forces will have the ultimate effect of increasing the total number of regulations the total amount of paperwork and the total number of bureaucrats the government employs which i always love but you know like we've we've seen the sort of consequences of this playing out over over the course of of you know the the last about a century right if you go back to the 1890s it was possible for basically private citizens to have just full-on wars with each other in parts of the u.s and the government would just be like sure okay whatever like the the the people mining bird shit off of the coast of california are shooting each other with cannons again like whatever right like it's it's not really until the 20th century and really even like the last 50 60 70 years has

been a massive expansion that's like the state actually has full territorial control over everywhere that it claims to have control of right we're like we are just now getting to a place where the police can actually you know like have like militarily hold the entire country at one time and even then they can only do it as long as people sort of cooperate with them um but you know this this is really bad if you are a person who does who who the bureaucracy has deemed to be something else or and this is another you know another sort of angle on this right like if you're someone who does not have documentation the state very very quickly

will just attempt to destroy you because you know oh hey you don't you don't have the right papers this means the government can fucking arrest you and kick you out of the country yeah and you know this is fucking horrible um there's a lot of stuff like there's a lot of other angles you can look at this from right i mean like at some point we probably will do an episode about like the process of getting medical care and all of the people who you have to convince that you are your gender. politicized gender bureaucrats, not only to force people to comply with their sort of state mandated gender when they deal with the state, but also to force them to inhabit that gender in their private lives, which is constitutes nothing less than a form of full scale gender totalitarianism. We talked about that fucking Utah bill, which, you know, again, prohibits minors from getting gender affirming surgery, puberty blockers or hormone treatment, that that is a bill that

forces people to live in their state-mandated gender. In Florida, gender bureaucrats are allowed to physically inspect athletes they suspect of being trans,

which is to say not conforming to fucking state bureaucratic gender controls. It's children, right? Yeah. Fucking children. They are allowed

to molest your child because they think that because they're they think they're trans the other aspect of this is obviously there is something we've talked about before it's something that you're starting to see with these bills is they're trying to make the bills uh uh age number go as high as possible there's there's bills proposing 25 now 21 there's bills proposing 25 not enough so it's trying to pull trying to police and control the the bodily autonomy of of complete adults which obviously is not not a new thing uh for the gop specifically especially in the wake of uh the roe v wade

overturning um but just another aspect of like this, this, this goes beyond just people who are younger than the age of 19. Yep. This, this, this, this, they're going to try to keep raising this as much as, as much as possible.

And this is where the types of surveillance that I was talking about before, it's going to become a problem because if you're, if you're Googling how to do DIY HRT and get stuff shipped in from Brazil, don't think that the surveillance stuff's not going to, not going to impact your ability to do DIY HRT and get stuff shipped in from Brazil, don't think that the surveillance stuff's not going to impact your ability to do that. It also polices the gender presentation of cis people, specifically cis women, I think.

The people who are getting physically inspected because of these laws are just girls who are good at fucking sport. They're cis girls, they they might be like like taller or stronger or and like it's some anyone has the power to just be like oh you're not you're not a girly enough girl uh but so fucking now you get to go to the pervert room and get inspected you know we've seen this like in texas right the law right now is that if the state if the state thinks your fucking child is not sufficiently close to their gender, they can fucking take your child from you and force them to be whatever

fucking gender the state wants them to be. And, you know, any other period in history, if you walk into a room and tell a bunch of people the state is going to decide your fucking gender, everyone would lose their goddamn minds. This would be like, this is a, like, unfathomable,

like, even in sort of like the depths of the sort of totalitarian like nightmare estates this is like an unfathomable level of sort of state bureaucratic like imposition onto people's lives and yet you know it's the fucking us right we have we have we are the most bureaucratic society humanity has ever produced nobody thinks it's the most bureaucratic society has ever produced and you know we are right now every day seeing the point at which bureaucracy meets violence the last thing i have to say is that you know like this this this is the future of gender the future of gender is government bureaucrats whether they're cops politicians doctors child protective services or school board administrators forcing you to be a janitor that they're not. But fundamentally, they have no fucking right to do this, right?

What they have is power, and their grasp on power is still, right now, tenuous. So, you know, it is possible to stop them from going any further than this. It is possible to beat back the power of the state, and it is possible to have a world that's not this. And we know it's possible to have a world that's not this, because it wasn't fucking like

this, like, 50 years ago. So, yeah, fuck them. And that's, that's, that's not this and we know it's possible to have a world that's not this because it wasn't fucking like this like 50 years ago so yeah fuck them and that's that's that's that that that's that that's gender bureaucrats people should read david graber uh learn about intersectionality for a fucking second another another another great resource to learn about how you can like uh mix up gender stuff there's this new video game out right now which has a pretty intense character creation selection where you can it's called let me see it's called hogwarts legacy is that what it's called no i thought you're going with cyberpunk oh no no it has it no It has a lot of different customizations that you can do For your gender presentation And your body parts

I've been refusing to do this on Twitter But I need to take fucking one minute And talk about the dumbest argument anyone has ever made Which is that I have to buy this game In order to support the developers Which, think about this for five seconds If you have to buy this game to support the developers Don't you have to buy every other game To support the developers, which, think about this for five seconds, right? Okay, if you have to buy this game to support the developers, don't you have to buy every

other game to support their developers? In fact, are you not morally obligated to buy every single product on Earth? Because if you don't buy every single product that's ever been made, the people who made those products will not be deployed. It's bullshit! Fuck off!

This is such a weird capitalism poisoned moment here. Of thinking you're obligated to consume things I have been holding my tongue on twitter about this for months now watching people make the argument I have to buy something to support the developers which again buy a different game

support those developers go on strike I don't know if you want if you want to support the development give your money to cut this off someone who isn't a fucking video game developer well i'm glad we could i'm glad we could have that that special bonding moment over the very inclusive gender settings inside this new hit video game. So that's, that's pretty cool. Hopefully we get an ad from them soon.

I hope so. I hope so. The worst Twitter day of my life is the day we get that fucking ad. Gold presented by Hogwarts. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories

inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture,

musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love.

Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean.

He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home

and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. It's It Could Happen here, and it's just James today, because today I'm doing a little interview on the situation for Rohingya people.

If you're not familiar with the Rohingya genocide, we're not going to cover that in depth, but we will give a little bit of an overview. And I'm talking to Ongkyo Mo, who is Rohingya himself and who works with the National Unity Government in advising them about Rohingya people's human rights. I think the news cycle hasn't really covered many Rohingya issues since the Rohingya genocide. The world's kind of moved on from caring about them but they're still in a very difficult situation and we want to update you on issues that continue to face the Rohingya people. I hope you enjoy the interview. So today I'm joined by Ong Kyomo who's an advisor to the National Unity Government of Myanmar which people will hopefully be familiar with if not he can explain a little bit of what that is. He's an advisor to the Ministry of Human Rights and also a Rohingya human rights activist himself.

And so, Pai, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me. Yeah. So what I'd love to do today is, I think if our listeners have listened to our previous coverage of what's happening in Myanmar or Burma, depending on which one you prefer, Myanmar or Burma, depending on which one you prefer, they will know a lot about the coup and they will know a lot about the things that have happened since the coup, right? The PDFs and the ethnic resistance organizations. But I think they might not be as familiar with the situation that Rohingya people have been in for a long time and continue to be in. It's a different part of the country. We were in Mesot, which is on the other side. That's something we've covered a lot less.

So perhaps you could begin by explaining why there are so many Rohingya refugees who have left. Obviously, the history of the persecution of Rohingya people is very long. who have left. Obviously, the history of the persecution of Rohingya people is very long. But if you could give us sort of a potted history of the persecution of Rohingya people by various governments in Myanmar, and what has led to this massive exodus and this big refugee population of Rohingya people now, that would be great to start with. thank you thank you for having me uh in the history is very long but i yeah i will be concrete and and and short uh the rohingya people has been in myanmar uh before burma even exists before burma become burma and before british came and their significant architect related infrastructure that exists indicates existence of the Rohingya and there's a lot of literature

research and Rohingya people themselves living in generations and generations there it indicates that Rohingya are part of Myanmar and it used to be and it will be and it will be. And Rohingya are not only the ethnic minority, they are also the religious minority. Majority of Burmese people are Buddhist and of course the second largest followed by the Muslims are Christian

and then the third largest are Muslim and Rohingya are Muslim. And Rohingya are single Muslim ethnic groups and also religious ethnic groups. And there has been historical exclusion discriminations sponsored and carried out by the consecutive government of Myanmar to target this religious and ethnic minority to exclude from religious, ethnic and social aspects of the society. And it has been politically motivating for many governments. It has always been beneficial in convincing the larger populations of Myanmar by showing Rohingya as a threat to the country

because of their religious differences and the way that we wear and we eat are slightly different than Burmese because we have our own culture and own traditions and own language and it's enriched by those. Thus the first start of executing these discriminatory policies to work to the Rohingya has started as uh as long as um yeah as far as back in 1960 where the first coup took place 1962 when first coup took place and then military consecutive military government accelerated that to form to uh a situation where it can be uh defined and fall under the category of the crimes against humanity. So in 1978, there is a big operation against Rohingya people to deport them, and 200,000 people have to flee to Bangladesh, and some of them still remain as refugees to third generation fourth generations

in bangladesh not being able to repatriate it to the place where they uh they come from and followed by that uh the 1992 there was another influx of the refugees and uh the refugee uh it's also the quite significant larger number of the refugees and and uh and not everyone could come back and there is another uh layer of the refugees that uh remains uh from the repatriating then from the the violation of the human right violations became toward the rohingya as business as usual uh limiting the child uh the number of child that you can have and treating you less than an animal, not having the religious right to exercise the way that you believe and restrictions of movement, killing, raping and it's continued and it has been accelerated in different form and shape where it

could be it could come to a situation, it's from crimes against humanity, it's being transformed to genocides. And in 2017, it's one to the highest peak of the genocides where a million people are being deported by burning and many thousand people died and many thousands women being raped. And there are a lot of fatherless child in the camp today women being raped and there are a lot of fatherless a child in the camp today being

being born by by by by the women who victims of the of the rape of the myanmar military and today there is a million people in bangladesh and uh with no hope to be repatriated soon to the place of origin with safety and and dignity and and of course the political landscape in Myanmar has shifted. It used to be in the democratic transition from 2010 to 2020 with two consecutive different governments. And the democratically elected government has been overthrown by a Temku, by the military, who had ruled the country for many decades. And of course, the democratically elected government, which I advise to, some of the members of the government are

being arrested and some are in the ethnic territorial control and some are in exile. control and some are in exile. And so the country said the reactions of the 50 million people has been different because there has been several coups in Myanmar. And this was the political calculations of the military leaders to attempt the coup was wrong, that they did not expect the resistance of the peoples. And then, of course, the young generation Z people came in to resist. Usually they claim to be peacefully protesting to hand over the power back to the democratically elected people but as a result they were being brutally cracked on and killed, arrested and then young people started to understand that we need to speak the language that they understand. So they speak that language is grabbing a gun and forming the military. So followed by that, national unity government has been formed by with elected members of the parliament,

both lower and upper house. So the national unity government today is the most legitimate government of Myanmar and having also some territorial control of course majority of the government infrastructure are being uh being captured uh illegally by the military junta yeah and it's interesting that people aren't familiar with the sort of ethnic makeup of previous governments and then the national unity government from what I understand it's not as much dominated by the majority ethnic Burman people in the National Unity Government as it was before, even under the NLD, right, even under sort of the most democratic that has been in Myanmar for some time, like there was still a domination by one ethnicity, right, that the National Unity Government is more ethnically diverse. Is that right?

Correct. But still, there are a lot of rooms for improvement, particularly Rohingya people has always been part of Myanmar and politically excluded. And despite a million people being pushed out to Bangladesh through a genocidal attempt, the remaining populations in Myanmar is 600,000 people, politically representable size of populations, under continued genocidal attempts of the Myanmar military. And the National United Government did not include politically, meaningfully, the Rohingya population till now. And they appointed me as an advisor, but a politically representable size of populations

need to be represented, not by functions alone, it needs to be both represented by functions and it's need to be fun both all represented by functions and number uh equally to to uh to other ethnic and we are in the context of uh identity uh politics in myanmar and your political rights and and responsibilities to what the nations are associated that the very identity that you were uh so time to time there is a big questions like you know we are moving forward to the path of democracy to make the country back to the track of democracy. But the very principle of democracy is majority rules and respect the minority's right, right? And still the Rohingya are being, despite the international pressure, particularly the United States and its allies, to have inclusive democracy. And Rohingya people are not yet meaningfully included in the government.

Yeah. And I think that's something we've spoken about a lot with Karen and Karenni people who we've spoken to about sort of the need for a more inclusive structure, whether that's like a federal democracy after, after the military hunter has been deposed or certainly something that's more inclusive and perhaps we can talk about how like it's very interesting to me when i talk to young people generation uh z people from myanmar they will say that like they wouldn't have even said sometimes Rohingya, like 10 years ago, that they wouldn't have used the term. They'd have seen the people who we now, who we would call Rohingya as Bangladeshis, right?

Because this was the narrative. Can you explain how, you've explained very well that that's not true, but how that narrative was constructed and what it was used to do? narrative was constructed and what it was used to do. I think it's once again to exclude Rohingya and to carry out systematic distractions mentally and physically on the Rohingya is also a lot to do with the spreading propaganda, misinformation and disinformation through state-led media both online and offline. So this means this destruction has happened with the state-sponsored and state-preplanned intentional way of doing it.

And thus the society, the Rohingya people, has been restricted from moving and this is one of the least developed regions where the Rohingya people live. And a lot of people from from like other uh state uh wouldn't be able to travel and go and see what is happening really inside there and to ring people would not be able to move out of that to tell their stories so all the narrative that people hear is the military and the government what the government used to put at that

moment so in the in the in the eyes or in the perceptions of the people, the Rohingyas are from Bangladesh, and they are trying to take over the country, and they are a national security threat. And that was the narrative. So the reality is being defined by the perceptions and false and misinformation that's being given in a consistent, intentional way to the young people. And of course, today, I think has changed slightly to be seeing what is reality and people showing the sympathy to what happened to the Rohingya, because it's every time something happened in Myanmar like that, it's consistent to what to the Rohingya, the human rights violations,

crimes against humanity and genocide. And the the people 50 million people in Myanmar were not either they are seeing neutral or they are standing with the military not like to that this should do this and this is right to do to kill people try to rape because they are National security threat but uh uh what had happened to the rohingya people perhaps in the not uh the same shape and same uh uh celerity or or velocity or momentum or or intensity uh has started to happen after the coup to to the to the bama people and then they tend to realize oh what happened to the ringer what ringer used to tell burning the whole village is killing and raping is exactly what what is happening uh more or less exactly what is happening to us than they

they were right and it's uh the victims change and the proper treatise remain the same and with that concept people come to but again I think the still it's very small number of the populations uh uh compared to the whole populations that lives in Myanmar. And in the democratic principles, there is no, like, you don't tend to say something just because that you sympathize and there are principles and values that you do not compromise in any circumstance. So equal rights, justice, and inclusivity, and like celebrating of the diversity. These things are very core principles of the democracy that we are, like as Burmese people, asking from international community to help. What we are preaching for towards the democracy need to be demonstrated

at home first. We need to act upon. And so I think the benchmark shouldn't be defined to include or exclude someone based on the sympathies, it needs to be based on the principles and values. Can you explain a little bit about the situation that Rohingya people who have left Myanmar, maybe they're in Cox's Bazar, maybe they're in no man's land, maybe they're now being moved to an island right can can you explain what life is like for those people of course the when rohingya people fled to bangladesh it was attempting to survive uh like they managed to survive and otherwise many died and they they could be one of those who who died and they they survived meaning that these all people are have physical and mental destruction and unhealed scars in their

physical and mental aspects of the life and and of course a million people in bangladesh to be hosted by the bangladeshi government bangladeshi people has been also very difficult because the resource in the given area is very limited and Bangladesh itself is a small country with limited resource. And we should always appreciate Bangladeshi people and Bangladeshi government to open their arms and heart to Absorbs and the Emilian people. And again, I think the problem started in Myanmar and the solutions need to be in Myanmar and people need to be going with safe dignified way to the place of origin. And of course, Bangladesh, it has been five years plus now

that the people like the largest influx took place in 2017 and the repatriations that time being made. And when people fled from Myanmar, jumped into the Napa River and Bay of Bengal in 2017, because the land was more dangerous than the sea. Situations remain very same or even worse than that now in Myanmar to be going back. So you escape from a grave that you have buried

to be killed and being pushed to go back to Myanmar, it's as in sent him back to the grave that he escaped from dying. So the situation doesn't favor for a safe, dignified voluntary return for the Rohingya. That's Bangladeshi authorities are trying to find different innovative modality different ways how to how to create a sustainable situation for the Rohingya including relocations of the of the certain number

of the of the of the Rohingya populations because the the the the camps are very congested and the hygiene level in the camp are very low. And there are a lot of also the, like, you know, if a million people in a small scale place like that start being closed, anything could happen anytime, you know. So the idea was to, by the Bangladeshi government, which doesn't fall into the principle of international way of doing things and relocating some of these refugees to an island that is a new island, no human being has been ever lived there.

And the island has been technically, from various technical assessment has identified, it's not livable by human being yet and because there are a lot of like cyclones and and floods and things like that and it's very far away from mainland of Bangladesh and and it so there is risk from various perspective to be able but despite this Bangladesh government has built built shelter there and relocated some number of Rohingya. And some of them went by their own will, seeing that it might be different and some are being maybe perhaps forced. And of course, there are a certain number of like around close to five to six thousand people in no man's land.

When Bangladesh at the beginning did not open its border to when drinking were fleeing and so this no man land were being occupied by the nearby villages because Bangladesh wouldn't open the gate for them and they were stuck in India so they have happened to be stuck there since last five years and the the remaining Rohingya lives in Cox's Bazar districts of Bangladesh in different parts of this district. So that's the situation.

Yeah, that's very well said. Some people have taken on recently leaving these camps in Bangladesh. They've taken on this very risky boat journey, right? I think they're going to places like Malaysia, if I'm not mistaken, Indonesia. Can you explain a little bit about like how prevalent that is? And of course, how incredibly like high risk it is for people to take that journey?

Sure. The, the situations in the camp is not much different than the life that they used to live in Myanmar, despite that the level of human rights violations and the treatment that they are having may not be the same. But Bangladesh is not a signatory to 1952 refugee conventions, and it's not legally obliged to be following all international norms and protocols to be hosting the refugees, but despite they have demonstrated the humanity and demonstrated the moral obligations towards the humanity to host the Emelian people. And then the Emelian people, some of them has been from 1978 and some of them are from 1992, some of them are from 2017, has a very dark future. They are closed in this fence camp and the movements are restricted, access to information

are not given, like the access to information, like internet service and things like that has been denied, access to livelihoods are denied and they are not able to legally work and solely rely on to the international humanitarian assistance, access to education has been denied. So the young people who are growing in this camp does not see a future that they will be able to go back to Myanmar or if they live here as if you are living that like you know you don't have any any any way forward seeing a bright future so there is uh there is the only uh they don't have a best alternative uh to be trying to be exploring different path and the only part it happened to be is being created in the

past uh uh in the past by some rohingyas taking these boats and making to Malaysia, where they could do some domestic works and get a refugee status and maybe able to work. And some, you're lucky enough to be resettled in a third country, a small number, maybe less than 2-3% of the total Rohingya in Malaysia. So the journey is very risky. The boats that they are taking, first the sea is very risky the the the the boats that they are taking the the first the sea is very rough that they take and they are the the infrastructure what infrastructure that they're taking are not uh built like they they not built in a way to be coping with this rough sea and rough uh rough weathers and climate so many of these rohingya people who make this less than 50

of them may make it to the to the destinations uh either they die on the sea or they are being arrested by different navies and and or they are uh they are being uh jailed uh by by my myanmar junta and in 2022 alone 3 500 more 3,500 people, including children as young as two years old, are jailed to five years for trying to attempt to go to Malaysia. So this is what is happening. So the life is meaningless there. And of course, taking this journey means that you are tossing a coin, whether you get a tail or you get a

you get head or you got tails you know and and and uh so it's like betting your life whether if you make it uh your life to somewhat level meaningfully if you don't make it your life and it is more or less the same that you will live in there in there uh so that's why these are the push factors and of course they are pull factors uh reunifications. If a son has made three years ago, five years ago to Malaysia and working in the constructions or gardening like levers and you have a remaining family in the camp and you don't want to see your family in that situation and you want to bring your family, the kids or children or wife, and you do that. And lastly, also they are growing youth in Malaysia who want to marry the Rohingya and maintain the culture and language and things like that. So they want to have rights bringing from the refugee camp. And so there are different pull factor as well from Malaysia. But the primary factor is the push factor in Myanmar and in Bangladesh.

Right. Yeah. And it's perfectly reasonable for people to want some future, some chance to realize their own life and their goals. So can you explain, people will probably have seen, like, I think we're recording this on Thursday, which is the 19th. And people will have seen the last couple of days, maybe videos of fires in no man's land. And they will probably have seen like some acronyms, which are a lot of acronyms when you're reading about Myanmar, it can be very confusing. So could you explain a little bit about who these two groups that we've seen,

right, the ARSA and the RSO, who they are and what they represent, and perhaps why these two groups who are normally Rohingya are fighting each other? In the context of Myanmar politics, the ethnic people have been fighting for decades and decades has been fighting for decades and decades with Myanmar military and Burma supremacy, like larger majority supremacy. At the beginning, they were attempt during the time of independency through reconciliations and dialogue, meaning like without arms. But the language again being understood by the Myanmar larger majority is the language that they speak as well. So then ethnic people started to grab the arms and resist, control their territory, to attempt to control their territory in order to get equal right and decide for their own future be part of the decisions that collectively impact the nations and and basically equal right justice and and those those things that's what ethnic peoples are are uh uh fighting for and giving their lives and

livelihoods uh it's nothing less than that and nothing more than that's very simple we want to live with dignity freely equally equally with anyone else. And so many ethnic revolutionary organizations, forms came up in different parts of Myanmar, representing different ethnic. And Rohingya also used to be one of those back in 1950, after 1948, depending. And 1952, Rohingya is the first one to drop the gun in exchange of the peace with the government,

saying that we are peace-loving people, and as long as you give us our identity, and we are able to... So then there's a certain period of time that the Rohingya people did not have an armed opposition group, because I am someone who believes in non-violent movement but in a context like myanmar again non-violence movement wouldn't go anywhere if it's worked 70 years uh myanmar wouldn't have longest civil war in the world yes more than 70 years right so we need to be practical and seeing the reality like that so So then 1978 again these things happened and the Rohingya thinks okay then what we have been promised and what we are being told to be promised to be given is not given so we have to grab the gun again and do as others are doing.

So the Rohingya Solidarity Organization has been formed and it has been one of the popular organizations getting a lot of popularity from the Rohingya community. And then there were issues within the institution that has been growing, of course, they were not able to maintain the institutional growth and institutional resource management and then the institution collapse and as well as it has to do something with it like you don't have a territory like other other other armed opposition group will be in stations in Myanmar where Rohingya where

stations in Bangladesh and Bangladesh government were not really supporting enough for them to survive with with with them to enhance its military capability and and of course there are several other other other things and and so then it's disappeared in between and then and 2014 uh this guy a guy called uh this the guy who is leading currently the ARC, the ARC Consolidation Army, who was born in Pakistan and grew up in Saudi Arabia. His parent, he claimed his parent is Rohingya, of course, he speak the Rohingya language,

that's mean it's indicate that he is, and came to our Rakhine state states to mobilize people saying that you need to grab the gun and this is what then people of course who have critical thinking skills and did not believe into things because it's need to be from and within and someone who does not understand how Myanmar politics look like cannot lead revolutions because revolutionary has to do a lot with the with the politics political landscape as well in the country and and uh but however there are certain number of people who believe in it and follow very small number and uh and rohingya didn't want to again fight or or enter into violence and they just want to live peacefully and and that uh uh and and they are resilient uh to what to the to to what they are trying to uh

gain uh equally as others and and uh so then the uh our conservation survey um arsa has attacked the post uh 30 different police force in 2017 that's where the the collective punishment has been given as a result to the Rohingya community and it's not collective action it was individuals action a certain hundreds of people gathered together and at temple is forced and the whole Rohingya population has been punished so then followed by that as well RSO has been re-strategizing themselves and then so our strategic themselves and then so our our rohingya solidarity organizations also pop up parallelly back in 2018 2019 and and and of course the the ideology that they stand uh are slightly different from one another and uh so the the the uh that's why the the clash happened. And Rohingya solitary organization think that,

like the way that ARSA has been conducting and they're responsible for what happened to the Rohingya people as collectively genocides and things like that, creating opportunities for Burmese military to wipe out the Rohingya and deport the Rohingya. And so there were these political disagreement between these two groups.

And this nomad land has been mostly occupied within the Rohingya refugees there. Some ARSA members are often try to enter there and stations there. And so recently, what we have learned from the ground is that our SO, Rohingya Solidarity Organizations, wrote out operations to remove them from there so that the Rohingya refugee in the normal lands could live peacefully without crimes and things like that.

And that's how the fight started and it's escalated. And there were 200 houses being burned down shelters ring refugee shelters around 2500 to 3000 people has been uh uh has to be displaced uh they were not allowed to enter to Bangladesh because uh no man land is not accessible by neither parties and and it's it's just in between so some of them has destroyed the fans to or to Burma and enter to there because they are just from the nearby villages they could see their villages for five years but they could not go back so they so they uh so they they went back there uh but now Myanmar military is pushing them out uh from from their back to the no man lands yeah it's just a yeah terrible situation um and if both these aren't the only armed groups in that state, right?

There are other armed groups, but this sort of explains it more succinctly. If we get into the other armed groups, it gets even more complicated. So I wonder what people listening obviously will... They've heard a lot about the conflict in Burma, about the various different groups that are being persecuted by the Burmese military. How can they help specifically with this issue? Is there ways that people can help out? I think we have seen how the world came together to help Ukraine people unjustly uh illegally uh to be attacked by by

Russia and uh and threatening the Democratic Society of the world and and that has been very inspiring appreciated and and we stand with the Ukrainian people and people in Burma has the the life of the the value of the life of the people in Burma, there is no difference in lives. You can buy one. So the people in Myanmar have been fighting for the cost of life and livelihoods today with whatever means that they have to make this country back to the path of democracy. And so international community should do beyond releasing the statement of concern. And statement of concern may name and shame and may put political pressure. And political pressure is not the thing

that's being cared by the junta. So the total enemy of the overall people, including the Rohingya people, are the military. And they are the one who has destroyed this country, and they are the one who is destroying, and they are responsible, primarily responsible people, institutions who wiped out the Rohingya and who carried out the genocide. So I think the international community should do beyond sanctions, embargo and respective citizens of the country should claim to their respective government to do more for Burmese people and the Rohingya people to demonstrate the moral obligations to the humanity.

And in 21st century, genocide took place while the world was watching. And we set in the United Nations back in 19, 1950, 48. That's never again. And it's very shameful that it could, that genocide could take place in the eyes of eight billion people in 21st century in modern age and the world failed to protect the Rohingya despite there has been compelling stories images and satellite arrays and still it's continued to be so and followed by that crimes against humanity war crimes has been being committed continually by the same military that committed genocide. And I think the international community will have at some point to answer to themselves on their beliefs of the humanity.

Yeah, like I think the international community let this happen for too long and they ignored it for too long. And then now this always happens, right? Like it's like Foucault's boomerang. The violence spreads and gets used in the metropole. And yeah, it's deeply upsetting. What does that support look like from the international community?

Does that mean manpads for PDFs? Does it mean recognizing the national unity government? Like what concrete things should the community be doing? The international community should recognize there are some issues that need to be fixed within the national unity government, particularly the inclusions of the Rohingya and its positions to the religious,

other religious and ethnic minorities particularly, those are small and that need to be fixed and international community should do it in incentivized way that okay you do this and we will do this for you and the recognitions come with incentive of supporting because it's only legitimate. Whether we like the national unity government or not, we don't have the best alternative to it. It's democratically elected, and there is a lot of issues within the national unity government, particularly when it comes to the Rohingya issues.

So these need to be dealt with. In the national unity government, i have been consistently advising them to fix this acting beyond policy and and and showing like state level prioritized agenda uh with concrete milestone to uh to uh to the change to what to the rohingya uh and of course parallel to that international community should ensure that big are being given, being recognized. And in order to win these revolutions, which has shaken this very institution that has consumed the resource of the country in various means and ways, and one of the strongest institutions has been shaken by the young people uh with very small means uh that they have very small and time to time very innovative uh and and and and utilizing

whatever means that they had an international community should provide support to pdf uh to be uh first and foremost institutionalizing and and and, enhancing, acting upon international standards we are operating as a military group. And of course, when you are being established as a military institutions, and it's being formed by the legal government of Myanmar and to support this this this military and many many nations are getting military assistance package yeah and and I think international

communities should have no problem to provide military system package to of course in in a very principles and value base with with the value-based approach and and and and and that's include the technical support to to to set up the mechanisms mechanisms to hold accountable and to ensure the transparency and accountability across this spectrum. Yeah, yeah, I think that's very well said. And they do tend, like if people aren't familiar with the way the PDFs have been organized, like they have been very respectful of norms and laws of war and things like that, which obviously the Burmese military have not. and things like that, which obviously the Burmese military have not. I think an institution that's a group that has been with hundreds, hundreds of thousands of people,

young people with no prior military experience, and mostly operating in a very limited to no resource context, and being able to respect the human rights and human dignity should be recognized you know there is when you you have a gun and uh there are things that happen and need to be justified and and being held accountable for but i'm saying that i'm not saying that it should be allowed in any any kind of misconduct within the military systems need to be investigated properly and take actions upon and held accountable those who carried out these actions and who gave comment

to carry out this action. But the number of cases related to the PDF has been significantly low when it's come to the human rights violations. And it has to be zero, and even one is too much. But I'm saying compared to, and I think continued support needs to be given there in order to enhance their capacity to defeat the junta, plus to defeat it in a principle and value-based approach. Yeah, yeah, certainly. They could definitely do it. Like the people we've spoken to are terribly equipped by any modern standards incredibly brave and

innovative and they could certainly do a lot better if they had a lot more okay where can people if people want to follow along with your work which is very impressive how can they find you do you have like uh do you want to share your twitter account or a website maybe where can people keep up with you so i'm on twitter and facebook mostly and my twitter is akmo2 uh and which uh you can see it's uh with my pictures and and i have put my bio as well there and i'm also very active on the facebook and and what uh the work related most of the work that i do uh are being uh not of everything but some part that international community need to know are being portrayed there and particularly uh the the the human rights situations uh related to the rohingya and ringer refugees in bangladesh are being uh being uh being shared there in a timely manner,

sometimes even lives. It's happening now. Yeah, you've been very good at that. I follow your Twitter account. It's very informative and it helps me stay informed. So it's AKMOE2 if people are searching for it. Thank you so much for giving us some of your evening. I really, really appreciate your time.

Is there anything else you want to get to before we finish up? No, it's lovely to be part of the program and thank you so much for having me once again. Thank you very much. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

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